If Only Afghanistan Were Vietnam

From Obama's Afghanistan speech:

First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized, and we're better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. I believe this argument depends on a false reading of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area now -- and to rely only on efforts against al Qaeda from a distance -- would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.

Yet it would be great if Afghanistan were another Vietnam. In the popular imagination, there is a straight line from the Tet Offensive to US withdrawal from Saigon. Yet seven years separated those two events. In between, American and Vietnamese forces virtually eradicated the Viet Cong resistance within South Vietnam. There's really no dispute about this point.

The so-called "revisionists" think that South Vietnam could still have held after that point had US support continued against North Vietnamese (backed by the Soviet bloc) attacks. Whatever you think of this view, it's undoubtedly true that what ultimately ended the Vietnam war was the invasion of another sovereign country. The insurgency--while potent--was ended through exactly the sort of counter-insurgency tactics rediscovered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obviously, this need not imply that those same tactics work in Afghanistan. But that's exactly my point. It would be great if Afghanistan were more like Vietnam, where counter-insurgency worked. It's the fact that it isn't like Vietnam that's causing all the trouble.

Privatized Flying Armies of Robotic Killer Assassins Found Problematic

This week's New Yorker is actually pretty good. Gladwell's piece on football and dog fighting has gotten a lot of attention, but Jane Mayer also has a good article on the Predator Drone program:

It’s easy to understand the appeal of a “push-button” approach to fighting Al Qaeda, but the embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force. And, because of the C.I.A. program’s secrecy, there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war. Should something go wrong in the C.I.A.’s program—last month, the Air Force lost control of a drone and had to shoot it down over Afghanistan—it’s unclear what the consequences would be.

There are some ethical questions here, and a tradeoff between security and the consequences of extrajudicial assassination. As well as interesting psychological problems created by having people go to war during the day and come home to their families at night.

But what's also interesting is that using air power to conduct counterinsurgency is not new; it's not even new in Afghanistan. From Wikipedia:

Following the end of World War I and the accompanying British defence cuts, the newly-independent RAF took up the task of policing the British Empire from the air. It was argued that the use of air power would prove to be a more cost-effective way of controlling large areas than by using conventional land forces. Sir Hugh Trenchard, the Chief of the Air Staff, had formulated ideas about the use of aircraft in colonial policing and these were first put into practice in 1920 when the RAF and imperial ground units defeated rebel Somaliland dervishes. The following year, in 1921, the RAF was given responsibility for all British forces in Iraq with the task of 'policing' the tribal unrest. The RAF also saw service in Afghanistan in 1928, when following the outbreak of civil war, the British Legation and some European diplomatic staff based in Kabul were cut off. The operation to rescue them, the Kabul Airlift, was the first evacuation of civilians by air.

Arguably, the pacification of these areas by the British shows how purely air-based strategies can work. On the other hand, the fact that America is still fighting in tribal conflicts in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq--essentially, taking over previous British entanglements--suggests that these are not good long-term solutions.

Vietnam Revisionism, Iraq, and Afghanistan

Lexington reminds me to bring up a vastly under-discussed topic: Vietnam Revisionism.

Counterinsurgency broke the news after Petraeus and McChrystal, but it was actually very big in the popular and military imagination during the '60s as well. Mao's success in China sparked a huge discussion of how to conduct and defeat insurgency. For obvious reasons, the Vietnam War continued this trend.

Reading A Better War, a classic revisionist account of Vietnam, is like looking at Iraq all over again. The initial commanders in both wars--Westmoreland in Vietnam, Tommy Franks and others in Iraq--were basically clueless about how to tackle local insurgency. Westmoreland, for instance, focused on body counts and firepower. He threw artillery and air power at guerrillas, and focusing on winning battles. He exuded optimism and threw out made-up statistics during press conferences. As in Iraq, this led nowhere.

Then you had new generals in both wars. In Vietnam, General Abrams came in. He replaced "search-and-destroy" missions with ones focused on "clear-and-hold" to implement a policy of civilian defense. He focused more on training native Vietnamese units. This coincided with Nixon's "surge" strategy of escalating the conflict to leave on better terms. The dramatic change in policy as a result of following counterinsurgency doctrine and the dramatic change in the outcome of the war in America's are not in question. Needless to say, the surge under Petraeus and Odierno, and the shift in American doctrine towards COIN, was a similar story.

The disputed part about Vietnam Revisionism is whether Abrams' efforts were enough to win the war in the long run. North Vietnam enjoyed enormous support from Communist states, while Congress eventually killed all military aid to South Vietnam. In the Revisionist counterfactual, limited military aid would have allowed an insurgency-free South Vietnam to sustain direct attacks from North Vietnam.

I think a fairly convincing argument can be made for that scenario. But in any event; there are better and worse ways of fighting insurgencies, and it takes a while to develop the competency and leadership capable of fighting them.

The success of counterinsurgency in Vietnam and Iraq doesn't imply that it will work in Afghanistan, a very different country. Nor will it tell you if Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan were ultimately worth fighting. Just because a given tactic can win a war doesn't mean the war is worthwhile.

But from the point of view of South Vietnam, at any rate, it probably was. South Vietnam remained mired in poverty for twenty years after its war, while it enjoyed growth under a free market before the war, and would probably have enjoyed even greater success had it won the war--something like a North Korea/South Korea analogue (I might even go so far as to say that if you think the Korean war was worth fighting, than you should have supported South Vietnam in 1975, even if you opposed sending troops in during the 60s).