Making All Wars Forever Wars

I want to encourage you to read Paul Staniland’s op-ed in the Washington Post, chronicling how U. S. military strategy in Afghanistan, the Middle East, West Asia more generally and Africa transmogrified from counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency to “violence management”. Read it for the history. Dr. Staniland goes on to list the risks that such a strategy poses:

1) This strategy still involves the United States in conflicts overseas. It seeks to limit commitments, but cannot eliminate them. There is no guarantee that U.S. policymakers will not be pulled into deeper interventions if local partners falter or unexpected setbacks arise.

2) Violence management aims to reduce American casualties, but is much less concerned with civilians than classical counterinsurgency. Its goal is disruption, not governance, and so civilian protection takes lower priority.

Here’s an example. Numerous reports have highlighted the heavy human toll of the operations in Mosul and Raqqa. Airpower is less surgical and discriminating than its advocates often claim. Dependence on local militias and regime forces can make the U.S. complicit in extrajudicial executions and other human rights abuses.

3) Local partners have their own political agendas. They can engage in corruption, manipulate U.S. policy to their advantage, and involve U.S. forces in ethically and strategically dubious targeting of their rivals. From the Northern Alliance in 2001 Afghanistan to today’s Kurdish militias in northern Syria, local partners are active political players, not simple pawns.

4) The question of how to rebuild political order in areas of conflict remains unresolved. The counterinsurgency model’s flawed effort to solve political problems with technocratic programs left it unable to build lasting political stability.

But violence management does not offer a clear way out, either – it pushes hard questions about how to allocate political power and create durable institutions into the indefinite future. In the Philippines, for instance, U.S. aid and advising have not overcome corruption, poor training and exclusionary politics.

5) And U.S. counter-militancy strategy has not received adequate public attention to weigh these advantages and potentially counterproductive costs. In the past, Congress, the public and defense community have provided this sort of scrutiny. But the “accountability crisis” plaguing U.S. foreign policy – in which Congress has abandoned serious oversight of foreign policy – suggests that minimal attention is the new normal. U.S. senators’ surprise that there were U.S. forces in Niger is a clear sign that violence management has emerged from public drift and disinterest

I think “violence management” presents at least three additional risks. First, with enough skill and dedication any war can be turned into a “forever war”. Spreading death and chaos throughout the world does not further our interests. Peace and stability do.

Second, permanent military activities even at a low level degrade our own readiness. More injured soldiers require care and must be replaced by newly-trained recruits. Materiel must be replaced. And then there’s just plain fatigue.

And, finally, it assumes an ongoing commitment to spend ever more money on the military. IMO for the foreseeable future we are more likely to reduce our military spending than increase it. That $700 billion bump is unlikely to be permanent.