Politics, Economics and other Stuff

Afghanistan Strategy

Jim Henley enters the WP pundit contest (via Ezra Klein):

There’s been much discussion lately about whether to pursue a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan, or a more limited counterterrorism strategy. It’s important for the ordinary American to have an understanding of the difference, and to understand why it takes more troops and costs more money to pursue counterinsurgency.

In a counterinsurgency strategy, America hangs around a foreign country for years and years, occasionally killing people who live there, while pretending it’s for their own good. This takes a lot of people because the military, and the civilian parts of the government that control the military, are very specialized. You need people to do the hanging around, people to do the occasional killing of people that live there, and even more people to do the pretending. As you might imagine, pretending to foreigners that killing them is for their own good is hard! Not just anyone can pull that off with a straight face, and you need a lot of people who can. Remember how upset people got at those town halls over the summer? That was for "death panels" that didn’t even exist. Now imagine that you actually are occasionally killing people’s neighbors! Basically, you have to hold an awful lot of town halls.

In a counterterrorism strategy, America hangs around a foreign country for years and years, occasionally killing people who live there, but doesn’t bother to pretend it’s for the sake of the foreigners themselves. So you need people for hanging around and occasionally killing people, but you don’t need nearly as many people "in theater" for pretending. You need a few to pretend that you know so much about the foreign country that all the people you occasionally kill had it coming. But that’s it.

Under counterterrorism, most of the pretending happens right here at home, and consists of pretending that your counterterrorism strategy is awesome! Also that having to engage in counterterrorism for years on end is perfectly ordinary and isn’t a sign that something went really wrong back there somewhere.

Here’s the thing, though. Even under a counterinsurgency strategy, you have to do at least as much pretending at home. (The counterinsurgency strategy is awesome! etc.) So the pretending at home part of counterterrorism doesn’t constitute what policy experts call an "incremental impact." And we have plenty of people to do it anyway, including politicians and major newspapers.

Which strategy should America pursue in Afghanistan? Unfortunately I’m out of

Empire

A reader emails Sullivan:

I disagree with both Noah Millman and Fouad Ajami. We did not go into Iraq after 9/11 because we had to make a huge military demonstration somewhere, no matter how implausible the aims (Millman); nor did we want to teach "the Arabs" a lesson (Ajami). Cheney, Bush and company had long had Baghdad in their gunsights -- 9/11 was merely an opportunity, just as WMD was merely a cover. And as far as a general antipathy towards "the Arabs", I never saw that in the Cheney/Bush policies, and I certainly never saw that in Bush personally -- in fact he seemed rather close to the Saudi royals.   
 

No, we went into Iraq to fulfill a longer range strategic vision: Surround Iran. Defend Israel. Secure the oil.

And why should we be aghast at that?

That's what empires do: Surround their enemies. Defend their Holy Land. Secure their vital resources. Hardly surprising that the American Empire would do any different.

What is surprising is the sheer incompetence with which it was done.

Which seems about right.  I have a lot of sympathy for getting in position to fight for access to oil and holding down nuclear armament by non-nuclear powers, but you need to do so in a manner that doesn't cut again your ability to get the job done.  Why, as the reader above points out, Obama is a good thing.  Which for some reason people like our CT neighbor don't get...

Why are there so many air attacks on weddings?

One explanation:

Just because the Taliban portray themselves as the defenders of Afghan lives and property doesn’t mean it’s so; but that doesn’t matter. What matters is how the population sees it. If they see the Coalition as willing to bomb civilians in a heartbeat, slow to admit the truth and having been caught in several untruths (another word for, oh… I don’t know… maybe… “lies?”) then the insurgent wins. We can see that the Taliban are perfectly willing to shoot at us from occupied houses or villages. We can see that the Taliban will slip us information about a massing of forces and get us to bomb a wedding.  We can see them endanger civilian lives with reckless abandon. It matters not what we can see. It matters what the man on the street sees…

Majority-Minority Areas in China

Fallows writes:

The NYT online has a very nice graphic just now showing the parts of China with significant "minority" population. Minority, in this sense, means one of the 55 recognized groups other than Han Chinese that together make up about 8 percent of the country's population. The screen shot below is not the default version of the graphic, which shows all counties in China with at least 10 percent minority population. Instead it's the version that shows counties where at least half the people are something other than Han.



In a sense the map is misleading, in the same way "Red State / Blue State" electoral maps are misleading about real division of opinion within the United States. The big western areas marked as Tibetan or Uighur are very lightly populated (think Nevada, Montana), compared with the dense, mainly-Han areas of the east. For instance, the ethnic Tibetan areas are shown as covering not just Tibet proper but also parts of the neighboring provinces of Sichuan, Qingai, and Gansu (in all of which places I have been to Tibetan villages). But the total ethnic-Tibetan proportion of China's population is something under one percent. Still, the graph gives an idea of the control issues China has with some of its minority groups.

In terms of population these don't seem to be large groups, though you'd need to know how the Chinese state classifies people's ethnicity.  On the other hand, the map above is most likely based on the same Chinese state sources. Wiki writes:

The People's Republic of China (PRC) officially recognises 56 distinct ethnic groups, the largest of which are Han Chinese, which constitutes about 91.9% of the total population. The 55 other ethnic groups are officially recognised as ethnic minority groups. The large ethnic minority groups in terms of population include the Zhuang at 16 million, the Manchu at 10 million, the Hui at 9 million, the Miao at 8 million, the Uyghur at 7 million, the Yi at 7 million, the Tujia at 5.75 million, the Mongols at 5 million, the Tibetans at 5 million, the Buyei at 3 million, and the Koreans at 2 million.

Afghan Army to go from 85,000 to about 270,000

The WP reports

McChrystal has not yet completed a 60-day assessment of the war due next month. But Defense Department officials in Washington and in Kabul said he has informed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, including in a status update this week, of the need to increase the Afghan force substantially. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss findings that have not yet been made public.

The Afghan army is already scheduled to grow from 85,000 to 134,000, an expansion originally expected to take five years but now fast-tracked for completion by 2011. Several senior Pentagon officials indicated that an adequate size for the Afghan force might be twice the expanded number. ...

But Jones and others acknowledged that both reconstruction and competent governance cannot be achieved until the Afghan people are secure. The strategy calls for U.S. and Afghan forces to clear areas of the Taliban and then hold them. Commanders leading a Marine operation launched last week to drive Taliban forces from Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan are already asking, "Where are the Afghan troops? Where's the economic plan? Where is the government?" Jones said....

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen told reporters Wednesday that the White House and the Pentagon are "committed to properly resourcing this endeavor."

A 270,000 army isn't large for a 32 mil. population country with a security problem.  European countries can put about that many military personnel in the field for the same population, and that is after decades of peace.  For instance, Poland has a bit over 100,000 active duty military personnel, up to 340,000 once reserves are called up, with a population of 38 million.  Germany with a population of 82 million has fully mobilized military personnel of around 600,000, again the same magnitude.  Both not high military intensity societies. 

Somewhat surprising/shocking that it took so long to build up force levels in Afghanistan given the conflict, especially since it does not seem to reflect a deliberate choice to build up forces slowly and financing Afghan personnel ought to be relatively cheap. 

I know, lots of second order problems here. I'd not be surprised if we end up with force levels at 500,000 or more in 2016. This would not at all be out of line with historical experience for peasant societies in conflict situations. Hell, Serbia, very much a peasant society with a population under 5 million, could put 500,000 men in the field at the start of WWI. 

German troops in Afghanistan receive their first combat related close air support from the US

The FTD reports.  Der Spiegel as well. Fighting appears to be picking up considerably for German forces.    The Taliban are seeking contact with German forces, not the other way around. 

Afghanistan Update

No real reason for posting this beside the final remark.  Abu Muqawama links to a story in the NYT:

American commanders are planning to cut off the Taliban’s main source of money, the country’s multimillion-dollar opium crop, by pouring thousands of troops into the three provinces that bankroll much of the group’s operations.

The plan to send 20,000 Marines and soldiers into Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul Provinces this summer promises weeks and perhaps months of heavy fighting, since American officers expect the Taliban to vigorously defend what makes up the economic engine for the insurgency. The additional troops, the centerpiece of President Obama’s effort to reverse the course of the seven-year war, will roughly double the number already in southern Afghanistan. The troops already fighting there are universally seen as overwhelmed. In many cases, the Americans will be pushing into areas where few or no troops have been before.

Through extortion and taxation, the Taliban are believed to reap as much as $300 million a year from Afghanistan’s opium trade, which now makes up 90 percent of the world’s total. That is enough, the Americans say, to sustain all of the Taliban’s military operations in southern Afghanistan for an entire year.

“Opium is their financial engine,” said Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, the deputy commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. “That is why we think he will fight for these areas.”

Which seems like a very bad strategy designed to piss people off and provide the Taliban with a nice economic interest group constituency.  How do they come up with this stuff?  Does counter narcotics every work as an approach to dealing with an established insurgency?  Comments at Abu Muqawama suggest that destroying drug crops and then compensating farmers for them will accomplish two additional things: a) provide cash the insurgents, b) provide farmers with no crops to tend and time for other activities.  We might as well just start paying farmers to join the Taliban.

But here is the final remark:

"John Nicholson" is an awesome if tragic name for a brigadier general wandering around South and Central Asia looking for ass to kick. 

How important are resource constraints in Afghanistan?

What are the non-political resource constraints on the US and European countries in Afghanistan?  What are the political non-resource constraints?  We need to distinguish different types of resources.  Not clear to me. 

I've been thinking about writing a post about this for a while.  I'm reminded of the question since Phil Zabriskie writes about what he hears from locals on his most recent trip to Kabul:

[There is] absolutely no faith in this government, and a lingering sense of confusion about what exactly the US and the international community is doing here. Thoughts along the lines of, “the west could defeat the Taliban, but they do not, so they must want the Taliban here.”

One alternative hypothesis is that more resources, both military personnel and economic aid, are themselves destabilizing or at least don't contribute to immediate or medium run stability, both for the South of Afghanistan and over the border in Pakistan. 

Longest Serving Weapons Platform in History?

With the delay in the next generation bomber program it looks like refurbished B-52s may be flying well into the 2030s, as has been expected for a while, or even later.  I believe this bomber is already the longest serving combat aircraft in history, with the first flight in 1952 and the currently serving B-52Hs built in 1961/62, making them 47 years old now. 

But no, there are others as well:

1) English Electric Canberra light bomber, first flight 1950, in service 1951, not clear when last produced, retired 2006 (still flown by Peru).  This aircraft had the first non-stop unrefuelled transatlantic crossing by a jet. The main bomber used on both sides in the Indian-Pakistan wars. 

The longest serving Canberra has a 1954 production date, with a final stint doing recon over Afghanistan in 2006 before retirement. No bomber role since 1970 in the RAF. The squadron now flies Predator and Reaper UAVs. 

So the current batch of B-52 isn't quite there yet, having to make it to 2013 to match the Canberra's record. 

2) the USAF's oldest KC-135 tanker is from 1955, for a current age of 53.  This may be the record for current inventory air force planes. 

3) the Russian Tu-95 bomber had its first flight in 1952, but the current Russian inventory is from 1980s and 1990s production runs, in a recon configuration.  Most well known for its current (?) naval aviation role.  Not clear when last employed as a bomber. 

4) the oldest C-130 retired in 2008 was produced in 1961.  

So the B-52H seems to be the oldest flying weapons platform in history, since the Canberra didn't serve that long as a bomber. 

The longest serving US Navy ship ever, the Kitty Hawk, retired this year after 48 years of service (1960-2009, laid down 1956). 

Looking for a Middle Way, Sequencing and the Option Value of Waiting

Abu Muqawama writes:

By saying -- in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- that we're not going to allow the terrorists to maintain safe havens from which they can plot and train to carry out attacks, the Obama team now has to explain why we're not pursuing the same kind of whole-of-government approach toward bringing effective governance to the Horn of Africa. And the flip side to that question is even more devastating: if we're not doing it in Somalia, why are we wasting our time and money doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan? This, to me, is the biggest problem I see in the Obama plan for Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's not that we are establishing some terrible precedent, really, but rather that you can point to places on the map where similar problems to the ones in the Pashtun tribal belt present themselves and are not being addressed -- or even discussed -- in the same way. Why have we been seeking to manage the piracy problem off the Horn of Africa -- and the terror problem within the Horn of Africa -- yet are pursuing far more ambitious means and ends in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Depending on the perspective from which you ask this question, you could either get drawn into a strong argument for taking population-centric counter-insurgency operations to all kinds of new places on the globe or be drawn into an even stronger argument for a new(ish) kind of realist argument about terror and how we address it. I'm not sure I like being caught between imperialism and off-shore balancing, though. Surely there is a middle way?

Shooting Missiles over Russia

Joshua Pollack points out the unfortunate fact that US midcourse anti-ballistic missile interceptors fired out of Fort Greely (Alaska) and, I'd hazard to guess also Vandenberg Air Force Base (California),  against missiles coming in from North Korea will fly over Russia and splash down in the Indian Ocean.  Which may create problems given Russia's fragile situational awareness and command and control. 

How the US Military-Industrial Complex discovered Global Warming

Just musing about a title for a possible blog post.  The US military did fund good geo- and atmospheric physics research, especially for understanding atmospheric physics. Though it may be more the military research side of the complex than the private industrial side.  Which reminds me that the Office of Naval Research is still the lead auditor for Harvard's federal grants:

Harvard University receives approximately $500 million annually in Federal research funds and is required to maintain a Federally approved purchasing system. An approved purchasing system complies with Federal procurement regulations and internal purchasing policies and procedures. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) conducts a Contractor Procurement Systems Review (CPSR) at Harvard every three years to evaluate compliance.

When did this start at Harvard?

In any case, for global warming research the Office of Naval Research's support of Roger Revelle at Scripps one of the big contributions of the military supported research in overcoming the view that

the oceans would absorb any excess gases that came into the atmosphere. Fifty times more carbon is dissolved in sea water than in the wispy atmosphere. Thus the oceans would determine the equilibrium concentration of CO2, and it would not easily stray from the present numbers.

First step here: blow up some nuclear weapons in the Pacific. 

The Troop Buildup in Afghanistan: doubling US force levels by next year

The WP reports

Gen. David H. Petraeus disclosed yesterday that American commanders have requested the deployment of an additional 10,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, but he said the request awaits a final decision by President Obama this fall. ...

The U.S. military has 38,000 troops in Afghanistan, and the number is projected to rise to 68,000 with deployments scheduled for this year. Those deployments include a 4,000-strong contingent of trainers from the 4th brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, 17,000 other combat troops, a 2,800-strong combat aviation brigade and thousands of support forces whose placement was not publicly announced, the Pentagon said.

If approved, the additional 10,000 troops -- including a combat brigade of about 4,000 troops and a division headquarters of about 2,000 -- would bring the total approved for next year to 78,000, officials say.

About 30,000 non-US allied troops currently, 8,745 UK, going up to 10,000, 3,600 German in the north, not increasing, 780 Spanish going up to maybe 1,000, France at 3,000, Canada 2,830, France 2,780, Australia 1,090, Poland 1,300, others under 1,000.  (Nato and other sources, numbers change slightly over time).  Clearly not a static situation.  

The CSM reports what I take is the Obama Administration message:

The US strategy emphasizes a swift initiative. But as a senior official in Berlin stated, "Europe is not good at doing this speedily." ....Some US officials privately acknowledge the Obama White House will not sacrifice its presidency in an Afghan quagmire, waiting for help from an alliance that it founded, but which could be unwilling or unable to move with alacrity. For the Americans to push aside NATO on the ground in Afghanistan in order to succeed – would raise major questions about the alliance's viability and future, well before 2020.

Much actual combat in Afghanistan is not done through coordinated NATO channels, but takes place in the Taliban-heavy south, in a patchwork of often heroic and ad hoc efforts by Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Poland. As journalist Judy Dempsey noted in a March 18 column in the International Herald Tribune, "This 'Group of the South' recently convened in Edinburgh, Scotland, to discuss strategy and tactics with the United States, much to the chagrin of some NATO members, who said they should have been invited as well." The discussion took place outside formal NATO channels.

Some US diplomats have remarked that, while the new administration sought advice from European military and diplomatic officials during a full Afghanistan policy review, they received far less constructive feedback than they anticipated.

A senior European diplomat working on Afghanistan, contacted immediately after the White House announced its new strategy last week, stated that the new US approach was "still too militaristic."

The official, asked in light of the White House report if it were possible to do civil reconstruction in Afghanistan without more initial military security, agreed that troops were needed for this activity. Asked if troops were needed to allow houses, schools, roads, and security to be established, the official also agreed, and noted that to achieve a psychological sense of security among Afghans in villages, more troops were required.

But when asked again what in the new American assessment was faulty, the official repeated: "Too much military."

I don't even know what German policy makers are thinking about Afghanistan strategy -- and googling wasn't enlightening. 

Iraq Update

via Sullivan, the NYT writes:

The American military marked another milestone the other day in the initiative perhaps most responsible for taming the violence in Iraq: All but 10,000 of the 94,000 Sunni militiamen — many of them former insurgents who agreed, for cash, to stop killing American soldiers — had been turned over to the control of the Iraqi military.

Significantly, the militiamen themselves were not celebrating.

The same day, one group of the fighters north of Baghdad announced they were resigning from their Awakening Council, the Iraqi name for what the Americans call the Sons of Iraq. And in the town of Salman Pak, councils in southern Baghdad and its suburbs, an area once called “the ring of death,” met to denounce Iraqi efforts to integrate them.

These are among the signs that the fighters’ patience is fraying badly at a difficult moment. After months of promises, only 5,000 Awakening members — just over 5 percent — have been given permanent jobs in the Iraqi security forces. Those promises were made last year when Iraq was flush with oil money.

Now with Iraq’s budget battered by falling oil prices, the government is having trouble paying existing employees, much less bringing in Sunni gunmen already regarded with suspicion by the Shiite-led government.

British Navy Shrinkage

War is Boring writes:

In 1997, the British government said the Royal Navy needed 32 frigates and destroyers to protect the country’s interests. Today, the Royal Navy has just 22 surface warships. With the Type 45 destroyer program cut in half to just six vessels, surface combatant numbers will drop again, to as low as 14 under current plans, when old Type 22 and Type 23 frigates begin paying off in six years.
...
The service hit rock bottom with the news this month that there are just five active Type 42 destroyers to perform air-defense for the entire fleet.
....
Under current plans, the Royal Navy circa 2020 will be a very strange force. There will be just six high-end warships to protect two 65,000-ton super-carriers, plus a mixed flotilla of old Type 23s and FSCs numbering just over a dozen. It’ll be a top-heavy force with too few destroyers to escort the carriers into a shooting war, and too few frigates to perform day-to-day patrolling during peacetime. It’s a fleet optimized for nothing.

Which means the UK can only operate jointly with the US or the rest of the EU:

To prove it can still do its many difficult jobs despite operational and fiscal pressures, last month the Royal Navy cobbled together a powerful, multi-national amphibious and anti-submarine group comprising the assault ship Ocean, the landing dock Bulwark (pictured), several auxiliary ships, two British frigates, a French frigate, an American destroyer and two British submarines — plus a full battalion of Marines. Over several months, the task force will sail through the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, conducting amphibious and anti-submarine exercises. “We have to be prepared for the future,” Admiral Mark Stanhope told Warships International Fleet Review.

The move echoes the U.S. Navy’s and Marines’ decision, last fall, to begin deploying Marines aboard Navy amphibious ships after several years during which the Marines were too invested in Iraq to spend months at a time at sea. The British exercise also offers a tantalizing glimpse at the future British fleet. Despite deep cuts to frigates and destroyers, the Royal Navy has retained and even expanded its amphibious and aviation-ship capabilities, leading some to question how the U.K. will protect a large number of capital ships with only a small force of escorts.

The presence of American and French warships in the task force hints at one possible answer: In the future, the U.K. might provide heavy specialty ships to multi-national naval forces, while other nations provide escorts. That would jibe with the U.S. Navy’s concept of the “1,000-ship navy” comprising mixed-and-matched vessels from all over the world.

Interesting to see how jointness evolves here. Here's the recent history through 2007:

Year[12]	Submarines				Carriers			Assault Ships	Surface Combatants				Mine Counter Measure Vessels	Patrol Ships and Craft	Total
	Total	SSBN	SSN	SS & SSK	Total	CV	CV(L)		Total	Cruisers	Destroyers	Frigates
1960	48	0	0	48	9	6	3	0	145	6	55	84			202
1965	47	0	1	46	6	4	2	0	117	5	36	76			170
1970	42	4	3	35	5	3	2	2	97	4	19	74			146
1975	32	4	8	20	3	1	2	2	72	2	10	60	43	14	166
1980	32	4	11	17	3	0	3	2	67	1	13	53	36	22	162
1985	33	4	14	15	4	0	4	2	56	0	15	41	45	32	172
1990	31	4	17	10	3	0	3	2	49	0	14	35	41	34	160
1995	16	4	12	0	3	0	3	2	35	0	12	23	18	32	106
2000	16	4	12	0	3	0	3	3	32	0	11	21	21	23	98
2005	15	4	11	0	3	0	3	2	28	0	9	19	16	26	90
2006	14	4	10	0	2[13]	0	2	2	25	0	8	17	16	22	82
2007	13	4	9	0	3[14]	0	3	3	25	0	8	17	16	22	83

China Factoid of the Day

Tom Ricks writes:

In the year 2000, the PLA [People's Liberation Army] had more students in America's graduate schools than the U.S. military, giving the Chinese a growing understanding of America and its military."

(p. 27, 2008 Joint Operating Environment, a study by the U.S. Joint Forces Command)

(Hat tip to my very smart CNAS colleague Nirav Patel on this)

The Joint Forces Command paper cited doesn't point to a data source for this claim.  I do support the US military putting more students through civilian university programs -- it would be good for both the military and academia, if done right. Also more US miltary going to foreign universities would help.