Thoughts on Triage Posted by Michael Cohen

In what will be of little surprise to regular DA readers, I have some thoughts on the new CNAS report, Triage, which offers potential metrics for measuring the success of US military operations in Afghanistan and operational recommendations for achieving them.

Before I offer a more critical assessment, it's important to give credit where credit is due. For many of us in the think tank community one of our primary jobs is to influence policymakers or at the very least provide them with a policy road map. The fact that the Obama Administration failed to offer a set of benchmarks for success in Afghanistan when they announced their policy review was, in my view, a notable oversight. By making the achievement of our national objectives so unclear and open-ended they dangerously opened the door for possible mission creep. But they also opened the door for those in the policy community to offer their own counsel on this issue. While I don't share many of the conclusions that the CNAS report comes to, I applaud them for engaging so robustly in this debate. It's precisely what a think tank should be doing.

And now I'll do my job.

While I still am taking some time to digest the operational recommendations, my biggest concern with the report is that it its recommendations are built on a foundation of shaky assumptions and strategic blind spots about the nature of the threats facing the United States and our national interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

For example, the report argues:

Failure in Afghanistan would mean not only a possible return of pre-9/11 safe havens, but also
a sharp blow to the prestige of the United States and its allies.

If failure in Afghanistan is defined as the return of the Taliban to power and the recreation of safe havens for Al Qaeda both possibilities seem far-fetched.  In fact, the lack of Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan today - and the lack of a realistic possibility that it will happen any time soon -- would suggest that we've achieved some measure of success there. As for debates about US prestige; I really thought after Vietnam, American global credibility would no longer serve as a rationale for maintaining troops in an overseas locale.

Then there is this:

The conflict’s center of gravity, meanwhile, has now shifted to Pakistan, where the government’s
very survival is at stake. . . An al Qaeda victory in Pakistan would galvanize global support
for the radical Islamist movement, provide a safe haven for al Qaeda, and substantially increase the threat of nuclear terrorism.

This is hyperbole. I don't think anyone really believes that the Pakistani government is in danger of falling to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. As Ben Arnoldy's excellent piece in the Christian Science Monitor makes clear, "For reasons of geography, ethnicity, military inferiority, and ancient rivalries, they (the Taliban) represent neither the immediate threat that is often portrayed nor the inevitable victors that the West fears." And if Al Qaeda is such a serious threat then it's hard to square that with the report's call for a moratorium on drone attacks against Al Qaeda leadership.

And then there is this:

The Taliban is pursuing a strategy of exhaustion designed to bleed away public support in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe for continued Western engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If the United States and its allies are unable to halt the downward trajectory of the war in Afghanistan over the next year, then public support for the war effort in the United States will surely ebb.

First of all I'm not clear as to why the latter is a bad thing, but I wonder if the authors are misreading the intentions and make-up of the Taliban. For example, in Accidental Guerrila, David Kilcullen (a co-author of the CNAS report) makes a clear distinction between full-time fighters (Tier 1) and local guerrilas (Tier II) who "fight almost entirely in their home valley."  Triage fails to make that distinction, lumping all Taliban together,

As Jari Lindholm puts it, "While a group called ‘the Taliban’ does indeed exist, CNAS has chosen to use the term to denote all non-AQ opposition to the Afghan government and the U.S.-led coalition. This misidentifies a wide range of forces currently destabilising Afghanistan." 

We really need greater clarity on who is America's enemy in Afghanistan - and what our intentions are vis-a-vis them. For example, do we intend to eradicate the Taliban movement from Afghanistan or is our goal simply to prevent the movement from taking over the country or even creating safe havens in Taliban-controlled territory? These are two very different goals. For the former a full-fledged counter-insurgency operation might be warranted, but not the latter.

I really can't make this point strongly enough: we have to be realistic about the Taliban's capabilities and how far we are willing to go in order to degrade them. The question we must be asking is whether we are wiling to accept some Taliban presence in Afghanistan as long as we feel comfortable that the chances of them taking over the country - or setting up safe havens -- are slim. If that is the case then I am even more befuddled as to why General McCrystal is so down on the idea of reaching out to moderate elements of the Taliban (an idea by the way featured in the March inter-agency white paper on Afghanistan). But it seems instead that total defeat of the Taliban as a political movement - via military operations and legitimizing the Kabul government -- is our objective in Afghanistan. This seems both unrealistic and not in the national interest.

And as Judah Grunstein suggests, wouldn't a policy of containment rather than elimination be a more effective approach for dealing with the Taliban? And if I may ask the question that David Petraeus posed on the eve of the war in Iraq, "how does this end?" When will we know that we have achieved victory in Afghanistan? Triage offers no sense of what victory will look like or how we can hope to achieve it.

I understand that from a COIN perspective if the Afghanistan government is seen as legitimate the population will turn against the Taliban and support for the insurgency will dry up. Even accepting that point (and I'm not sure I do); it seems like achieving Afghan government legitimacy might take a few years to accomplish.  Is it a goal really worth seeking? And is it realistic?

While I'm still wading through this report, one other point jumped out at me:

Because population-centric counterinsurgency operations demand a high concentration of troops, there will still be a sizable gap between the coalition’s stated objectives and its available resources, even with these significant new commitments of forces. The United States and its allies may have enough military power to clear Taliban fighters from large areas of Afghanistan, but they do not have enough troops to hold and then build across equivalently large areas.This constraint will require commanders to triage ruthlessly, allocating their forces to areas where the smallest number of coalition troops can protect the greatest number of Afghans.

Now wait a minute, if there is a "sizable" gap between objectives and resources isn't that a pretty serious problem and doesn't it suggest that either the effort is doomed or we are on the cusp of a much longer and robust engagement? I'd love to get a respectful answer from the authors of the report on this question, but how do they believe that gap will be filled? Will it involve more troops and a longer US commitment to ensure that initial gains are solidified?  Do they truly believe that the United States is prepared for and interested in such a long-standing commitment?

The authors of the report are admirably honest about the fact that their vision of success in Afghanistan will take several years to achieve. If the Obama Administration intends to echo their conclusions then they need to say so as explicitly as possible. The American people have a right to know what a population-centric counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan will entail. My guess is that, like Iraq, if they know what such an effort truly entails, they won't be too interested.

My worry, as it has always been, that the argument for a population centric counter insurgency approach in Afghanistan is a recipe for justifying a longer and more engaged mission there. Nothing I've read in this report dissuades me from this view. And having attended the CNAS conference today in Washington I am convinced more than ever that if the COIN advocates have their way we will be in Afghanistan for a very, very long time.

Comments

[Peace]

On Rachel Maddow's show last night it was revealed that Al Qaeda was losing money and was unable to fund its fighters in Afghanistan. If this is true it further undermines the case that United States needs to have thousands of troops in Afghanistan and further alienate the local population in order to fight a diminishing and broke enemy.

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[Steve Hynd]

Hi Michael, great post. Well done for spotting the gap between current forces and those required to do any real COIN job. I don't think CNAS are being all that honest about timescales, though. "Several years" isn't too specific. David Kilcullen, however, has been *very* specific: "ten to fifteen years, including at least two years of significant combat up front".

A back of the envelope calculation gives a cost for the longer timeframe of $1.3 trillion over and above what has already been spent, that figure including VA benefits and debt servicing. But that assumes only the current troop levels. If those increase - and I agree they look likely to - then the sky's the limit.

Regards, Steve

[JustPlainDave]

@Steve - The CNAS folks didn't use the phrase "several years" as a forecast - they said "for years to come" in a context that specifically highlighted that their policy recommendations focused on the coming 12 months.

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[Steve Hynd]

JPD, would you agree 15 years and $1.3 trillion, with proportional US and Afghan-civilian casualties, is an accurate estimate?

Regards, Steve

[JustPlainDave]

No, I would not--sorry--but that disagreement comes with a twist, in that I'm not sure whether it's too low or too high. My recollection is that your estimate was more a "straight line" estimate ($X year one, $X year two, etc.) netting out inflation factors. This situation absolutely isn't going to be like that, not if budget is determined by the situation on the ground; it's simply more dynamic and it's likely to be quite volatile, if not truncated. [Geekily speaking, I seem to recall that there were some expenses that were double counted but I can't remember off the top of my head what they were - in any case they didn't matter much to the estimate (couple of percentage points at most IIRC).]

[JustPlainDave]

Oops - forgot the casualties. I don't think that one can plausibly argue that casualties would simply be proportional to time, monetary spending, or coalition force levels.

We've already seen how casualties over time varies dramatically, from the invasion to present. In terms of the money, how one spends money is going to matter - devote all of it to kinetics and sweep and clear and the casualties per unit of spending go up; do other saner things and they go down.

Similarly, I don't think that one can argue that civilian/military casualties are necessarily going to remain proportional (again we've seen that proportion shift over time). What military strategies one employs and [perhaps more importantly in this particular situation] one's enemies employ matters. There is certainly a component of civilian casualties that scales linearly with number of combatants, but how big a part of total casualties that component is could be very variable.

[Steve Hynd]

JPD, I think you're being a tad nit-picky given the dearth of COINdinista expert estimates to contrast with. I should have said "broadly proportionate" though. Clearly, the longer the involvement the higher the butcher's bill, since no-one's going to come miraculously back to life nor will there still be a significant troop presence if the fighting is over. However, on timeline and financial costs I'm willing to listen to anyone who wants to have a stab at a better estimate. So far, no-one's even making a pretense at being specific enough though. The last cost estimate from the military was Bush-era and has already been made obsolete by events. That the experts don't want to put their reputations where their wishful thinking is on such predictions worries me, frankly. To me, it suggests they know they're just blowing smoke up everyone's asses.

Regards, Steve

[JustPlainDave]

Nit-picky? Steve, the COINdinistas aren't hinging their arguments on the basis of cost - you are. You say that the effort is too expensive to be pursued, they say simply that it remains viable given what they've learned operationally. That they've in the main not offered competing estimates doesn't make yours any better or worse.

As to the butcher's bill scaling with time - that applies necessarily only in the case of coalition casualties. Remove them and you have a guarantee that they don't continue to suffer casualties - what happens to the Afghans, on the other hand, could be a very, very different story. Given what we've seen over the past, I'm not optimistic that the toll would be low.

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[david]

They say simply that it remains viable given what they've learned operationally. That they've in the main not offered competing estimates doesn't make yours any better or worse.

Given what we've seen over the past, I'm not optimistic that the toll would be low.

David from - Deeper Voice and Grow Taller

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Clearly, the longer the involvement the higher the butcher's bill, since no-one's going to come miraculously back to life nor will there still be a significant troop presence if the fighting is over. However, on timeline and financial costs I'm willing to listen to anyone who wants to have a stab at a better estimate.

[grow taller 4 idiots]

Clearly, the longer the involvement the higher the butcher's bill, since no-one's going to come miraculously back to life nor will there still be a significant troop presence if the fighting is over. However, on timeline and financial costs I'm willing to listen to anyone who wants to have a stab at a better estimate.

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Nit-picky? Steve, the COINdinistas aren't hinging their arguments on the basis of cost - you are. You say that the effort is too expensive to be pursued, they say simply that it remains viable given what they've learned operationally. That they've in the main not offered competing estimates doesn't make yours any better or worse.

John from How To Get Tall and Panic Attack Relief