President Barack Obama has ordered
the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Though
how many and how fast remains unknown, it seems
that only a relatively small force will remain
after 2014 as part of the recently signed
strategic partnership between the US and
Afghanistan.
Withdrawal will be welcomed
by large sections of the American public but it
will undoubtedly come at a faster pace than the
generals want. It will deepen the mistrust between
a liberal administration and the uniformed experts
on warfare who expected their views regarding
Afghanistan to prevail over those of a youthful
politician.
This will cause a stir in the
officer corps where the president and his party
are professionally respected but looked upon with
suspicion, to say the least. The president for his
part has signaled his aloofness from the opinion
of the military. A mutual mistrust
between liberal democrats
and the military has been part of American life
since the late 1970s. Obama's withdrawal order
could well deepen that mistrust and the issue may
be felt at November's presidential election and
beyond.
Military mistrust Only a
few decades ago, the military had an unwritten but
forceful norm against partisan politics.
Professional soldiers were the armed servants of
presidents, regardless of the latter's political
party, and many high-ranking officers even felt it
unethical to vote. Today, the generals remain
obedient to presidents but respect for the
commander-in-chief varies from administration to
administration, with Republicans admired and
Democrats mistrusted. Some recent Democratic
presidents have been despised.
The divide
goes back to the Jimmy Carter administration
(1977-1981) that lowered the priority of defense
spending and, in the eyes of the generals, held an
aversion to military action and failed to discern
growing threats in the world posed by the Soviet
Union. Carter's administration ably reflected
the public mood after the Vietnam defeat, but when
Iranian students seized the US Embassy and the
Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, both in 1979,
blame fell on the president and his party.
Ronald Reagan's electoral victory in 1980
was followed by an expansion of military budgets
and an influx of fundamentalist officers.
Military culture became more deeply
infused with political conservatism and the
religious right than ever before. Ultimately,
military culture became alloyed with
neo-conservatism. Indeed, neo-conservatism's view
of the military as a bastion of virtue and
advocate of global power resonated with the
military's view of itself.
Today the
military (and neo-conservatism) sees the Obama
administration as a replay of the Bill Clinton and
Carter administrations - eager to cut defense
spending and step back from geopolitics. In the
middle-level officer corps there is visceral
dislike for the president that manifests itself in
conversations with officials in the State
Department, the Agency for International
Development and other governmental bureaus - often
to the officials' astonishment and dismay. These
military officers see Obama as politically and
ethnically alien to American values as they
understand them. His change of course in
Afghanistan will take place in this troubling
context.
Mutual mistrust Reports of meetings between the president and
the generals often cite the former's apparent
unease around the flag officers. Some analyses
offer explanations: a callow young politician out
of his element among the professional military
elite; or a man preoccupied with domestic issues
with little interest in foreign affairs and
overwhelmed in the presence of those specializing
in strategic matters.
Both arguments show
little comprehension of the confidence Obama has
in himself, which has manifested itself for many
years prior to his taking the oath of office. His
self-confidence is clear to most who've met him,
overweening to all who've worked with him. His
unease around generals is not a sign of being in
awe of them. It's a sign he is unimpressed by them
and perhaps has little regard for them.
This unflattering view of the military is
not based simply on the president's personal
musings and capacious aplomb. It is based on the
strategic assessments of many analysts and
statesmen, including some on the conservative
side, who see recent military ventures as
stupendous blunders that have not advanced the
nation's security.
Former secretary of
defense Robert Gates fits this description and
this is almost certainly why the longtime Grand
Old Party public servant and statesman was
retained as secretary of defense when Obama became
president in 2009.
While the military does
not make policy, only implements it, the generals
have enabled costly and unpromising foreign
ventures with an institutional preference for
internationalism and an overweening confidence of
their own that will never sound retreat and never
admit a situation cannot be solved by more troops
and more resources and more time.
New
course In the autumn of 2009, amid
strategic discussions of the deepening Afghan
crisis and the future course, the president
displayed rare anger at the narrow range of
options the generals had presented him - all of
which entailed sending more troops. He ultimately
authorized a much smaller troop increase than the
generals asked for (about half) and set a time
limit of 18 months, after which he would withdraw
at least some troops, after which he may or may
not have expected an improved security situation.
In as much as 18 months is a tight limit
for counter-insurgency operations to bear fruit,
the president probably did not expect an improved
security situation, pleased though he and others
would be to see one.
The military saw the
lower troop increase in 2009 and tight time limit
as temporary compromises. In time, they believed
they could disabuse the young politician of his
hesitance and persuade him that more time and
resources would stabilize Afghanistan. [1] The
announcement of sharp troop reductions suggests
the generals were wrong in their assessments of
both the president's malleability and their
strategy in Afghanistan.
The generals'
counter-insurgency program failed to show
appreciable signs of spreading out of a few
enclaves, and the president determined that the
generals would not lead him into deepening and
protracted conflict as they did his predecessor
back in the 1960s. He ordered troop reductions and
an end to US combat operations.
The
administration's full Afghan strategy cannot be
known with certainty as there are too many
variables at play. Logistics through Pakistan and
Russia are up in the air; the Taliban's
willingness to negotiate is unclear; and domestic
pressure in the US could rise from its present-day
low levels.
Two scenarios, however, seem
to be coming into view. First, a continued war of
attrition in the south with the Afghan National
Army (ANA) taking over from US and the
International Security Assistance Force. The ANA
will not be expected to defeat the insurgents or
expand the size of their enclaves; they will only
be expected to hold fortified positions and
continue to wear down the insurgents. In this
effort they can rely on US airpower and reaction
forces.
Second, should the southern
enclaves fall, the US and ANA will retreat to the
north, where the populace is hostile to the
Taliban and reasonably supportive of the US
presence. From there, the war of attrition will
continue until meaningful negotiations come. [2]
Military response The
president's new policy, though contradictory of
the generals' position, will find some welcome
support inside the military, despite prevalent
mistrust in him. Many officers, including
high-ranking ones, see counterinsurgency doctrines
as a passing fad sold to credulous, panicked
politicians amid the Iraq insurgency by a maverick
general and his acolytes. Counter-insurgency, they
hold, has no clear record of success anywhere, not
even Iraq. More importantly, counter-insurgency
and any large presence in Afghanistan detract from
concentration on conventional warfare and the more
pressing strategic issue of containing China.
Others, however, will not like being
rebuffed by the president on a matter they profess
to have great expertise in. Discontent may surface
in the upcoming presidential election, which is
beginning to look like a close-run thing as a
softening economy looms.
Active-duty
officers will of course not openly express their
dismay, but retired colleagues may speak out and
profess to speak for those still in uniform.
However, unless events in Afghanistan turn hard
for the worse between now and November, military
discontent will have little sway in a public weary
of the war and hopeful it will go away.
Notes 1. This point is
made in David E Sanger, Confront and Conceal:
Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American
Power (New York: Crown Books, 2012). 2.
See my Plan
B for Afghanistan, Asia Times Online, July 29,
2010; Robert D Blackwill, "Plan B in Afghanistan:
Why a De Facto Partition Is the Least Bad Option,"
Foreign Affairs January/February 2011.
Brian M Downing is a
political/military analyst and author of The
Military Revolution and Political Change
and The Paths of Glory: War and Social
Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam.
He can be reached
atbrianmdowning@gmail.com.
(Copyright
2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about sales,
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