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From: Office of Terje Rod-Larsen ‹ > Subject: October 11 update Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2013 14:39:16 +0000 11 October, 2013 Article 1. The Washington Post Obama's mixed messages on Egypt Editorial Article 2. Bloomberg Cutting aid to Egypt may be a mistake Jeffrey Goldberg Article 3. The Atlantic The Key to Nuclear Negotiations With Iran is Respecting Cultural Pride Shahed Ghoreishi Article 4. Town-hall Netanyahu and the End of Days Victor Davis Hanson Article 5. The Washington Institute The Diplomatic Bonus Of Gaza's Offshore Natural Gas Simon Henderson Article 6. The Wall Street Journal Middle East Oil Fuels Fresh China-U.S. Tensions Brian Spegele in Beijing and Matt Bradley in Amarah, Iraq Article 7. Foreign Affairs The Limits of Counterinsurgency Doctrine in Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry The Washington Post Obama's mixed messages on Egypt Editorial October 11 - The Obama administration's partial suspension of aid to Egypt reflects an attempt to balance what President Obama calls "core interests," such as the security of Israel and counterterrorism, with U.S. support for liberal values. The idea is that the United States can punish the EFTA00972618 military-backed regime for not advancing a democratic agenda by withholding a few helicopters and tanks while preserving its cooperation on security matters by supplying it with spare parts. The mixed message appears unlikely to reverse the course of Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, who controls the interim government and who is cultivating a role for himself as a nationalist, populist strongman. It also looks like a poor bet for defending the interests that Mr. Obama, in his recent address to the United Nations, placed above the defense of democracy and human rights. In fact, Sunday's renewed bloodshed in Cairo, in which at least 50 opposition protesters were gunned down by security forces, adds to the growing evidence that the Sissi regime is failing to establish its authority. That failure stems directly from its attempt to establish an autocracy more repressive than any seen in Egypt in decades. Spurning appeals by the United States and the European Union to negotiate with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Sissi regime is attempting to destroy the Islamist movement by force. Hundreds of its leaders have been imprisoned without charge, and state authorities are moving to ban the organization and seize its assets. Attempts by the Brotherhood's supporters to mount protest marches, such as Sunday's in Cairo, have been met by volleys of gunfire. The regime's tactics are contemptible on human rights grounds, but they are also disastrously counterproductive. Previous attempts to stamp out the Muslim Brotherhood, dating to the 1950s, have succeeded only in driving the movement underground and, ultimately, making it stronger. This repression may be even more dangerous, as it has provoked violent counterattacks by Islamist militants, many aimed at the Suez Canal area. Car and suicide bombings are appearing in Egypt for the first time. Obama administration officials tout the regime's rush to write a new constitution as evidence that it is moving toward democracy. But the charter, written by an assembly hand-picked by the military, would grant the armed forces self-governance and restore an election system previously used to create rubber-stamp parliaments. A state of emergency remains in effect, and all media echo official propaganda — including campaigns against U.S. and European pro-democracy organizations. On the economic front, the Sissi government is flouting Western advice and common sense by embracing populist measures, such as a huge EFTA00972619 increase in the minimum wage and a law that would mandate price cuts for food. These measures, temporarily enabled by handouts from Persian Gulf states, will exacerbate an economic crisis caused by the collapse of tourism and foreign investment. The United States seeks the stabilization of Egypt under "an inclusive, democratically elected civilian government based on the rule of law, fundamental freedoms and an open and competitive economy," the State Department said Wednesday in announcing the new aid policy. The problem is that its mixed appproach leaves it still betting on a regime that is delivering none of those goods. Bloomberg Cutting aid to Egypt may be a mistake Jeffrey Goldberg October 9, 2013 -- Cutting off a significant amount of U.S. aid to the Egyptian military — a step the White House took this week — may be a moral necessity. The Egyptian military seems unwilling to use tear gas on demonstrators when the opportunity to shoot opponents in the head presents itself. And it did, in fact, initiate a coup in July against a democratically elected government (albeit one that governed undemocratically and was the target of popular rage). But curtailing aid raises some difficult questions for U.S. allies in the region, for the Middle East peace process and for American national security. It also raises a question about the utility of half-measures — because partially cutting off aid would mainly be a gesture of disapproval, rather than a profound shift in policy designed to move Egypt onto a different path. American allies in the region - notably Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Bahrain — all share the same adversaries as the Egyptian leadership, which is to say: Shi'a radicalism (in the form of the Iranian regime and Hezbollah); the Muslim Brotherhood, which the EFTA00972620 Egyptian military is brutally suppressing (mind you, with the support of millions of anti-Brotherhood Egyptians); and Sunni extremism (in the form of al-Qaeda and like-minded groups, including those currently terrorizing the Sinai Peninsula). U.S. allies already don't trust the friendship of President Obama's administration. And they — the Arabs in particular, less so the Israelis — fear that they'll be pushed aside in favor of either a more isolationist approach to the world or, worse, an American rapprochement with Iran, which they don't trust at all. Obviously, the opportunities here for meddlesome would-be superpowers — Russia, most notably — also loom large in the minds of nervous allies. Another cause for concern: the effect this move would have on peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Egypt is pressing hard against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, cutting off the flow of weapons and sealing smuggling tunnels. A weak Hamas is in the best interests of the U.S., Israel and, most important, the rival Palestinian Authority, with which Israel is currently negotiating under U.S. supervision. It doesn't make much sense from Israel's perspective — or from the perspective of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — to punish the Egyptian military while it's helping to create conditions on the ground that might hurt Hamas. On the one hand, Hamas is doing a reasonable job of suppressing rogue elements that want to ignite a new conflict with Israel. On the other, Hamas is still Hamas, opposed to Israel's existence and certainly opposed to progress on a two-state solution (however chimerical that idea might be at the moment). And then there's the Sinai Peninsula. The Obama administration isn't cutting off Egypt's counterterrorism aid, which it is using to wage a struggle against al-Qaeda-like groups in the Sinai. But alienating generals who are currently acting in the national-security interests of the U.S. could be interpreted as shortsighted. Preventing the region from descending into chaos is an important task in the fight against Islamist extremism. It is, however, in Egypt's interest to contain Hamas and fight Islamist terror, whether the U.S. helps with direct military aid or not. And the Obama administration knows this. EFTA00972621 Eleven years ago, in a famous speech opposing the Iraq War, Obama said: "Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies, so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells." This remains Obama's baseline thinking about the Middle East. And the danger in suspending aid to Egypt, above all other dangers, is that Obama, by signaling that he will act aggressively against Arab autocrats, might provide Islamists with a glimmer of hope at a time when they're generally back on their heels. Certainly, the opponents of such American friends as the king of Jordan would be pleased by this latest act of an administration that many already believe is naive about the nature of Islamic terrorism. Here's an easy prediction to make: No one at all will be particularly happy with this decision. Jeffrey Goldberg writesfor Bloomberg View about the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy and national security. He is the author of "Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror" and a winner of the National Magazine Awardfor reporting. He has covered the Middle East as a national correspondent for the Atlantic and as a staff writer for the New Yorker. The Atlantic The Key to Nuclear Negotiations With Iran is Respecting Cultural Pride Shahed Ghoreishi October 10 - Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif sat down with Fareed Zakaria on Sunday and declared "Iran is a proud nation. We believe we have the technological capability... [and] the human resources in order to stand on our own feet." Western experts have also picked up on the importance of this pride factor in our dealings with Iran. Robin Wright, a journalist and Atlantic EFTA00972622 contributor who has written extensively about Iran, said at a recent Brookings panel, "the best way to understand Persians is to think of the most chauvinistic Texan you know and add 5,000 years [of history] and then you begin to understand just how proud they are." The Iranian government has harnessed this powerful sense of nationalism to shore up greater domestic legitimacy. From a common bank note showing an image of an atom superimposed over a map of Iran, to signs in Tehran that boast of the country's nuclear achievements, this "pride investment" is hard to miss. One reason the government can't roll back its nuclear projects now is that it has already invested so much capital (both political and financial) into the program. Therefore, a successful deal between the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany) and Iran will have to not only reassure Western audiences about Iran's intentions, but also come off as a victory for Iran's domestic audience. How did this Iranian "pride factor" come about? However one may perceive Iran today, Iranians tend not to dwell on their country's current situation. Whether it's a curse or a gift, Iranians have very, very long memories. Their identity is rooted in the country's historical power, dating back to Cyrus the Great and other ancient rulers, rather than a calculus of modern power dynamics. The regional dominance of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia is still etched in Persian minds today, and it causes an immediate schism between the Iranian self-image and attempts by the current superpower--the United States--in trying to pressure Iran. How will pride factor into negotiations? From day one, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has repeatedly called for "respect" when it comes to dealing with Iran. In the context of being able to sell a potential deal at home, this is Rouhani's way of saying that the language and tone surrounding negotiations is just as important as the substance of the deal, if not more so. Just take a look at the immediate reaction from Zarif after President Obama reiterated that "all options are on the table" when it comes to dealing with Iran: "Pres.Obama's presumption that Iran is negotiating because of his illegal threats and sanctions is disrespectful of a nation,macho and wrong." Whether it be directly articulated in the above tweet or indirectly through Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's recent comment recommending "heroic flexibility", the EFTA00972623 Iranian government clearly wants to be seen as coming to the negotiating table of its own accord, rather than through external pressure. The challenge for the Iranian government now is to balance its "pride investment" with Rouhani's promised moderation, which was heavily endorsed by Iranian voters in this year's election. Shahed Ghoreishi studies international economics and the Middle East at the Johns Hopkins University School ofAdvanced International Studies. Aritcle 4. Town-hall Netanyahu and the End of Days Victor Davis Hanson October 10, 2013 -- So far Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's peace ruse is still bearing some fruit. President Obama was eager to talk with him at the United Nations -- only to be reportedly rebuffed, until Obama managed to phone him for the first conservation between heads of state of the two countries since the Iranian storming of the U.S. embassy in 1979. Rouhani has certainly wowed Western elites with his mellifluous voice, quiet demeanor and denials of wanting a bomb. The media, who ignore the circumstances of Rouhani's three-decade trajectory to power, gush that he is suddenly a "moderate" and "Western educated." The implication is that Rouhani is not quite one of those hardline Shiite apocalyptic theocrats like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who in the past ranted about the eventual end to the Zionist entity. Americans are sick and tired of losing blood and treasure in the Middle East. We understandably are desperate for almost any sign of Iranian outreach. Our pundits assure us that either Iran does not need and thus want a bomb, or that Iran at least could be contained if it got one. No such giddy reception was given to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In comparison with Rouhani, he seemed grating to his •. audience in New York. A crabby Netanyahu is now seen as the party pooper who barks in his raspy voice that Rouhani is only buying time from the West until Iran can test a nuclear bomb -- that the Iranian leader is a duplicitous "wolf in sheep's clothing." EFTA00972624 Why does the unpleasant Netanyahu sound to us so unyielding, so dismissive of Rouhani's efforts to dialogue, so ready to start an unnecessary war? How can the democracy that wants Iran not to have the bomb sound more trigger-happy than the theocracy intent on getting it? In theory, it could be possible that Rouhani is a genuine pragmatist, eager to open up Iran's nuclear facilities for inspection to avoid a preemptory attack and continuing crippling sanctions. But if the world's only superpower can afford to take that slim chance, Mr. Netanyahu really cannot. Nearly half the world's remaining Jews live in tiny Israel -- a fact emphasized by the Iranian theocrats, who have in the past purportedly characterized it as a "black stain" upon the world. After World War II, the survivors of the Holocaust envisioned Israel as the last-chance refuge for endangered Jews. Iranian extremists have turned that idea upside down, when, for example, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani purportedly quipped that "the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything." Netanyahu accepts that history's lessons are not nice. The world, ancient and modern, is quite capable of snoozing as thousands perish, whether in Rwanda by edged weapons, Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds, or, most recently, 100,000 in Syria. Centuries before nuclear weapons, entire peoples have sometimes perished in war without much of a trace -- or much afterthought. After the Third Punic War, Carthage -- its physical space, people and language -- was obliterated by Rome. The vast Aztec Empire ceased to exist within two years of encountering Hernan Cortes. Byzantine, Vandal and Prussian are now mere adjectives; most have no idea that they refer to defeated peoples and states that vanished. The pessimistic Netanyahu also remembers that there was mostly spineless outrage at Hitler's systematic harassment of Jews before the outbreak of World War II -- and impotence in the face of their extermination during the war. Within a decade of the end of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel throughout the Middle East had become almost a religion. In the modern age of thermonuclear weapons, the idea of eliminating an entire people has never been more achievable. But collective morality does not often follow the fast track of technological change. Any modern claim of a superior global ethos, anchored in the United Nations, that might EFTA00972625 prevent such annihilation is no more valid now than it was in 1941. Again, ask the Tutsis of Rwanda. The disastrous idea of a preemptory war to disarm Iran seems to us apocalyptic. But then, we are a nation of 313 million, not 8 million; the winner of World War II, not nearly wiped out by it; surrounded by two wide oceans, not 300 million hostile neighbors; and out of Iranian missile range, not well within it. Reverse those equations and Obama might sound as neurotic as Netanyahu would utopian. We can be wrong about Hassan Rouhani without lethal consequences. Mr. Netanyahu reviews history and concludes that he has no such margin of error. That fact alone allows us to sound high-minded and idealistic -- and Israel suspicious and cranky. Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book is The Savior Generals from BloomsburyBooks. Anicic 5. The Washington Institute The Diplomatic Bonus Of Gaza's Offshore Natural Gas Simon Henderson October 10, 2013 -- Palestinian and Israeli officials are believed to have agreed in principle on plans to exploit a gas field lying beneath 2,000 feet of water about twenty miles off the coast of the Gaza Strip. Known as "Gaza Marine," the field was discovered in 2000 but has not been brought onstream because of differences between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, along with the 2007 Hamas takeover of the strip. Apparently, Israel agreed to allow the field's development more than a year ago. As reported by the Financial Times yesterday, the more recent progress toward a breakthrough also stems from diplomatic efforts to boost the Palestinian economy. Secretary of State John Kerry announced such efforts in May, with support from former British prime minister Tony Blair, who now represents the Middle East Quartet (i.e., the UN secretary- general, the United States, the EU, and Russia). EFTA00972626 Currently, Israel supplies 95 percent of the West Bank's electricity, with Jordan providing the remainder. Some have proposed using the offshore gas to generate electricity in new West Bank power stations while also replacing an old fuel-oil-burning plant in Gaza. Royalties and revenues would boost the PA's budget and reduce the need for foreign aid. Despite its location, the field belongs to the PA rather than the Hamas regime in Gaza. It was discovered by a British company, BG (formerly British Gas), which continues to hold the license. The PA, seeking a greater share of the revenues, is now negotiating a revised concession agreement with BG and another investor, Consolidated Contractors Company, a Palestinian-owned, Greek-based engineering group. Israeli acquiescence is needed for security reasons, since the gas lies in an area patrolled by the Israeli navy. Yet former prime minister Ehud Barak conceded ownership of the field to the Palestinians in 2001 as a goodwill gesture, adjusting the notional maritime boundary in the area so that the whole of Gaza Marine lies in Palestinian waters rather than crossing into Israel's Exclusive Economic Zone. At around one trillion cubic feet (tcf), the field is a useful size for the Palestinian economy despite being dwarfed by Israel's own recent offshore discoveries (the Tamar field, located about fifty miles west of Haifa, is ten times its size and began production in March, while the nearby Leviathan field is even bigger at 19 tcf). Gaza Marine's reserves will probably last ten to twelve years, but bringing it onstream should encourage fresh exploration for additional fields. Among the obstacles that may still need to be overcome is Hamas opposition. Following the overthrow of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood government, Hamas lost support from Cairo, and the group's isolation seems to have increased optimism for the gas project. Even so, broader Palestinian popular support will be needed because the most commercially viable way forward requires substantial cooperation with the Israelis; this includes allowing them to buy some of the gas. The most obvious way to bring the gas ashore is by linking the field with Israel's nearby seabed pipeline structure, which connects with a gas processing plant outside Ashdod. From there the gas could be easily -- and cheaply -- piped into the West Bank. The Financial Times reported that the project would need capital investment of $1 billion and could be onstream by 2017. EFTA00972627 Developing Gaza Marine could be a win-win-win for the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel, boosting the Palestinians' economic prospects and sense of self- determination. But in a region noted for zero-sum outcomes, further progress will likely require much diplomatic effort. Simon Henderson is the Baker Fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at The Washington Institute. The Wall Street Journal Middle East Oil Fuels Fresh China-U.S. Tensions Brian Spegele in Beijing and Matt Bradley in Amarah, Iraq October 10, 2013 -- China is overtaking the U.S. as a buyer of Middle East oil, adding fuel to diplomatic tension between the nations over security in the region. China surpassed the U.S. as importer of Persian Gulf crude several years ago, by some measures. Now it is on track to overtake the U.S. this year as the world's No. 1 buyer of oil from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the largely Middle Eastern energy-exporting bloc. The turnabout has added to tensions because it leaves the U.S. military securing China's growing oil shipments in the region at a time Beijing resists U.S. pressure on it to back American foreign policy in the Middle East. For years, China and other oil-consuming nations have benefited as Washington spent billions of dollars a year to police chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz and other volatile parts of the Middle East to ensure oil flowed around the globe. But the rise of North America's shale oil and gas industry has put the U.S. on track to pass Russia this year as the world's largest combined producer of oil and gas, if it hasn't done so already, according to a recent analysis of global data by The Wall Street Journal. EFTA00972628 That rise, combined with flat U.S. oil consumption, is making America far less dependent on imported oil, including from the Middle East, even as China's reliance on the region's oil grows. China's OPEC-crude imports during this year's first half averaged 3.7 million barrels a day, versus 3.5 million for the U.S., according to Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm. At that rate, its OPEC imports will surpass America's on an annual basis for the first time this year, Wood Mackenzie said. India ranked No. 3, at about 3.4 million barrels a day. In 2004, the U.S. imported about 5 million barrels a day from OPEC, and China imported about 1.1 million, Wood Mackenzie said. An OPEC official declined to say whether China is now the bloc's top customer. China's imports have surged in recent years from OPEC nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, according to Chinese customs data. China is trading places with the U.S. by some other measures as well. The U.S. is still No. 1 in crude imports from all the world. But new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show China has slightly overtaken the U.S. in net oil imports, defined as total liquid-fuels consumption minus domestic production. China's net imports were 6.30 million barrels a day in September, versus U.S. net imports of 6.24 million, the EIA data show; the U.S. energy- production boom has helped push down its net-import figure. And China will soon import more from the Persian Gulf than the U.S. did at its 2001 peak, according to EIA and Chinese customs data. It surpassed the U.S. as a buyer of Persian Gulf crude in 2009, according to the data. China's rise as a dominant buyer of Middle East oil presents a conundrum for it and the U.S. For China, it means its economy depends in part on oil from a region dominated by the U.S. military. When tankers depart Persian Gulf terminals for China, they rely in significant part on the U.S. Fifth Fleet policing the area. For Washington, China's oil thirst means justifying military spending that benefits a country many Americans see as a strategic rival and that frequently doesn't side with the U.S. on foreign policy. Signs of tension are surfacing. Beijing has asked for assurances that Washington will maintain security in the Persian Gulf region, as China EFTA00972629 doesn't have the military power to do the job itself, according to people familiar with recent discussions between the countries. In meetings since at least last year, Chinese officials have sought to ensure U.S. commitment to the region isn't wavering, particularly as the Obama administration has pledged to rebalance some of its strategic focus toward East Asia, said people familiar with those discussions. In return, U.S. officials have pressed China for greater support on issues such as its foreign policy regarding Syria and Iran. U.S. officials in private discussions have pressed China to lower its crude imports from Iran, for example, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. Meanwhile, China faces criticism from senior U.S. leaders who complain that Beijing has obstructed tough action against the Syrian regime at the United Nations. Current and former U.S. officials have told the Chinese that stable energy flows from the Middle East will need greater cooperation from Beijing going forward, said the people familiar with the discussions. China's Foreign Ministry, in a statement responding to questions for this article, said China's oil trade with the Middle East was "mutually beneficial and in accordance with international business norms," adding that China wanted political inclusiveness, economic prosperity, and peace and stability for the region. At an April Brookings Institution conference in Washington, •., when the former head of China's National Energy Administration, Zhang Guobao, was asked whether China could assume a greater role in protecting the region's shipping lanes, he responded: "Why don't the Americans do the job for now." "The U.S. has invested time, energy and resources into creating a global system," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "China is becoming a global power and does not seem at all invested in the idea of creating a global system." The U.S. has other interests in keeping a big presence in the region, including protecting Israel and shoring up shipping lanes for allies such as Japan and South Korea. And it isn't clear whether the U.S. would soon welcome greater Chinese military involvement in the Mideast, which could challenge America's role in the region. EFTA00972630 The U.S. has dominated Gulf security since the 1970s, after Britain pulled its resident military from the region. It has more recently used weapons sales to bolster regional partners, such as Saudi Arabia, to share security responsibility. Allies have added military bases in the region: Japan's Self-Defense Forces in 2011 opened a base in Djibouti to help police shipping lanes, and France in 2009 opened a base in the United Arab Emirates. China's ability to project power in the region is constrained. It doesn't have the military firepower or expertise to actively police conflict zones or shipping lanes. Its biggest military deployment in the region has come during modest antipiracy operations off the coast of Somalia. A picture of China's strategy in the region can be seen in Iraq, a growing source of its crude imports. Chinese imports from Iraq have more than doubled since 2009, according to Chinese customs data. In the southeast region of Maysan, China National Petroleum Corp. is building a fortified desert oasis for its workers in a region blighted and pocked by the U.S.-led war. At the CNPC-operated Halfaya oil field, workers' villas line a newly-built artificial lake, which the company has outfitted with sailboats for employees. A pair of stone lion statues—believed by the Chinese to ward off bad spirits—stands guard at the company's oil-field command center. Nearby, CNPC recently finished renovations on an airstrip, which will be used to ferry in Chinese oil workers. China's political footprints in Iraq are small. In Baghdad, its presence is a modest embassy with about 10 Chinese staff not far from the sprawling American embassy, where thousands of diplomats and others remain tied up trying to win Iraq's stability. CNPC declined to make officials available for an interview and didn't respond to a request for comment. "Commercial is commercial and politics is politics," said Du Ming, a political attaché at the Chinese embassy in Baghdad. "We're not going to try to influence Iraqi politics just because our oil companies need to stay here." This isn't the first time an Asian nation has faced Washington pressure over the Persian Gulf sea lanes. Japan took U.S. criticism around the first Gulf EFTA00972631 War—sparked by Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait—for what some viewed as Tokyo's reluctance to contribute to the American-led military effort, even though much of Japan's oil originated in the Persian Gulf. More recently, Japan has escaped such criticism as it has more closely hewed its foreign policy to Washington's. Tokyo has been a major financial contributor to U.S. strategic initiatives, such as rebuilding Iraq. To mitigate growing tensions over energy security and other matters, Washington and Beijing last year set up an annual meeting of senior U.S. and Chinese diplomats called U.S.-China Middle East Dialogue. U.S. officials hoped that Washington's and Beijing's shared desire for stable energy flow from the Middle East would help them find common ground and persuade Beijing to more closely cooperate with the U.S. on issues such as Syria and Iran, said a person familiar with the meetings. But the closed-door gatherings have produced limited results, this person said. A State Department news release from the second of the annual meetings, in June, said the U.S. welcomed China's playing "a more active and positive role in the Middle East region." President Obama at the United Nations in September said the U.S. remained committed to the region's energy flow. "Although America is steadily reducing our own dependence on imported oil, the world still depends on the region's energy supply, and a severe disruption could destabilize the entire global economy," he said. Article 7 Foreign Affairs The Limits of Counterinsurgency Doctrine in Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry September/October 2013 -- Since 9/11, two consecutive U.S. administrations have labored mightily to help Afghanistan create a state inhospitable to terrorist organizations with transnational aspirations and capabilities. The goal has been clear enough, but its attainment has proved vexing. Officials have struggled to define the necessary attributes of a stable post-Taliban Afghan state and to agree on the best means for EFTA00972632 achieving them. This is not surprising. The U.S. intervention required improvisation in a distant, mountainous land with de jure, but not de facto, sovereignty; a traumatized and divided population; and staggering political, economic, and social problems. Achieving even minimal strategic objectives in such a context was never going to be quick, easy, or cheap. Of the various strategies that the United States has employed in Afghanistan over the past dozen years, the 2009 troop surge was by far the most ambitious and expensive. Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine was at the heart of the Afghan surge. Rediscovered by the U.S. military during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, counterinsurgency was updated and codified in 2006 in Field Manual 3-24, jointly published by the U.S. Army and the Marines. The revised doctrine placed high confidence in the infallibility of military leadership at all levels of engagement (from privates to generals) with the indigenous population throughout the conflict zone. Military doctrine provides guidelines that inform how armed forces contribute to campaigns, operations, and battles. Contingent on context, military doctrine is meant to be suggestive, not prescriptive. Broadly stated, modern COIN doctrine stresses the need to protect civilian populations, eliminate insurgent leaders and infrastructure, and help establish a legitimate and accountable host-nation government able to deliver essential human services. Field Manual 3-24 also makes clear the extensive length and expense of COIN campaigns: "Insurgencies are protracted by nature. Thus, COIN operations always demand considerable expenditures of time and resources." The apparent validation of this doctrine during the 2007 troop surge in Iraq increased its standing. When the Obama administration conducted a comprehensive Afghanistan strategy review in 2009, some military leaders, reinforced by some civilian analysts in influential think tanks, confidently pointed to Field Manual 3-24 as the authoritative playbook for success. When the president ordered the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan at the end of that year, the military was successful in ensuring that the major tenets of COIN doctrine were also incorporated into the revised operational plan. The stated aim was to secure the Afghan people by employing the method of "clear, hold, and build" -- in other words, push the insurgents out, keep them out, and use the resulting space and time to establish a legitimate government, build capable security EFTA00972633 forces, and improve the Afghan economy. With persistent outside efforts, advocates of the COIN doctrine asserted, the capacity of the Afghan government would steadily grow, the levels of U.S. and international assistance would decline, and the insurgency would eventually be defeated. More than three years after the Afghan surge's implementation, what can be said about the efficacy of COIN and the U.S. experience in Afghanistan? Proponents might, with some merit, claim that the experiment was too little, too late -- too late because an industrial-strength COIN approach was not rigorously applied until eight years after the war began, and too little because even then, limits were placed on the size and duration of the surge, making it more difficult to change the calculations of Afghan friends and enemies. Moreover, even though President Barack Obama announced plans to end U.S. participation in combat operations in Afghanistan by 2014, the war continues and the outcome remains indeterminate. Still, it is possible to answer the question by examining the major principles of COIN and analyzing how these fared on the ground. The COIN-surge plan for Afghanistan rested on three crucial assumptions: that the COIN goal of protecting the population was clear and attainable and would prove decisive, that higher levels of foreign assistance and support would substantially increase the Afghan government's capacity and legitimacy, and that a COIN approach by the United States would be consistent with the political-military approach preferred by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Unfortunately, all three assumptions were spectacularly incorrect, which, in turn, made the counterinsurgency campaign increasingly incoherent and difficult to prosecute. In short, COIN failed in Afghanistan. PROTECTING THE POPULATION The first principle of COIN doctrine is the need to secure the indigenous population in areas deemed centers of gravity politically, economically, and militarily. Surge advocates argued that behind the protective shield of increasing numbers of foreign and Afghan security forces, good government would emerge, the rule of law would take root, and prosperity would grow. A more secure and content people would rally behind local elected and appointed officials, and peace and stability would follow. "Protect the population" makes for a good bumper sticker, but it raises the question: Protect it from whom and against what? It certainly meant EFTA00972634 protecting the Afghan people from marauding Taliban insurgents. But what about criminal narcotraffickers, venal local police chiefs, or predatory government officials? What should be done about tribes that turn to the Taliban for help in fighting more powerful tribes with patrons in the Kabul government? And what about complex cases of ethnic violence with roots dating back a century or more? Young men without jobs are supposedly ripe for insurgent recruiting, so should protection be offered against unemployment? The provision of basic health care is frequently cited as a service the Taliban cannot offer. To make the Afghan government appear comparatively more effective, should the people be protected against illness? These were not hypothetical questions but rather very real challenges that U.S. military forces, civilian diplomatic personnel, and development specialists in Afghanistan struggled with daily as they sought to implement COIN doctrine. Late in 2010, the comedian Kathleen Madigan, participating in a USO tour in Afghanistan, visited a forward operating base in Helmand Province. With some humorous exaggeration, she told a story about meeting a young Marine captain who pointed to a nearby Afghan village and enthusiastically described how his unit was busy building a school, establishing a health clinic, creating a local government center, training and reforming the police force, helping the people with grievance resolution, actively supporting gender rights via a U.S. Marine "female engagement team," improving agricultural productivity, and more. As the list continued to grow, Madigan finally interrupted and asked, "Marine captain, when are you going to invade Detroit?" Her quip hit the mark. "Protect the population" is a vague and open-ended guide to action, with increased effort alone regarded as an end in itself. But COIN adherents believed that even if the goals were not well defined, such an approach vigorously and simultaneously applied at the national, provincial, and district levels would steadily reduce the ground on which the Taliban stood and inevitably cause their defeat. Every military leader, traditionally a professional specializing in the management of violence, was now instructed that he must be prepared, in the words of the mid- twentieth-century French counterinsurgency expert David Galula, "to become . . . a social worker, a civil engineer, a schoolteacher, a nurse, a boy scout. But only for as long as he cannot be replaced, for it is better to EFTA00972635 entrust civilian tasks to civilians." Given the prestige Galula is accorded by enthusiasts of modern COIN doctrine, it is worth parsing his guidance. First, deploying highly trained U.S. soldiers and marines to Afghanistan to serve as social workers or to manage development projects comes at a very high price. The U.S. government spends about $1 million per year per soldier deployed in Afghanistan. At the height of the surge, Washington had about 100,000 troops in theater, costing about $100 billion annually. Moreover, it was sheer hubris to think that American military personnel without the appropriate language skills and with only a superficial understanding of Afghan culture could, on six- or 12-month tours, somehow deliver to Afghan villages everything asked of them by the COIN manual. The typical 21-year-old marine is hard-pressed to win the heart and mind of his mother-in-law; can he really be expected to do the same with an ethnocentric Pashtun tribal elder? Second, Galula tempered his enthusiasm for assigning armed forces personnel such a broad range of tasks by stipulating that an army had to perform those tasks only in the early stages of a counterinsurgency campaign, when it was the only actor around with the necessary capabilities and resources to do so. But eventually, he argued, the military should be relieved of civic duties by capable civilian entities. Yet experience has shown that the required civilian capacity will never emerge, because no U.S. government department or agency will make the major investments necessary to develop highly specialized niche skills that would be utilized only briefly and rarely. Nor will Congress authorize additional department or agency funding to encourage such efforts. With no squadrons of civilian cavalry on the horizon in Afghanistan, the U.S. military, with stated reluctance but genuine verve, moved to fill the gaps. Over time, it even arrogated to itself the responsibility for deciding where these gaps existed, and then it methodically developed plans and relentlessly acquired the resources from the Pentagon and Congress needed to take action. Some examples include spending hundreds of millions of dollars on fiscally unsustainable diesel generators to power Kandahar City, paradoxically assigning a U.S. Army brigadier general to mentor Afghan officials on the importance of civilian leadership and the rule of law, and deploying multimillion-dollar female engagement teams without a clear purpose. But these expensive ad hoc efforts, while well intentioned, simply EFTA00972636 did little to pave the way for the establishment of good Afghan governance and economic prosperity. Moreover, although reasonably competent at establishing and training foreign military forces -- and, to a lesser extent, foreign police forces -- the U.S. military has overly optimistic expectations about the timelines required to build healthy local civilian institutions, such as a competent civil service or a functioning justice system. Civilian government organizations require more highly educated work forces than their military counterparts, are often only one component within a complex bureaucracy, and are more susceptible to domestic political interference. The growth rates of organic government and civil society are sociologically constrained, and at some point, adding larger and larger doses of foreign resources and assistance becomes counterproductive. Commentators would occasionally highlight extraordinary "COIN successes," supposedly achieved by certain uniquely talented U.S. civilian and military officials in parts of Afghanistan, and conclude that the problem was not doctrinal inadequacy but the inadequacy of team members and their leaders. What was needed was many more Lawrences of Arabia. Of course, even a great professional basketball coach must occasionally dream of fielding a team whose players are all clones of Michael Jordan at his prime. However, the coach does not develop a winning strategy based on such flights of fancy. Moreover, T. E. Lawrence specialized in inciting revolts, not in state building. Historically, visionary indigenous leaders backed by native populations have been the key to building viable states -- not foreigners serving one-year tours of duty, no matter how passionate and skilled they might be. Finally, Galula described a path for counterinsurgents to follow but did not specify a destination. Absent clearly defined political goals, a COIN trek might continue for many years at extraordinary expense without ever knowing when and where the journey might end. Diplomats and soldiers both agree that conflicts are concluded only when the warring parties agree to the terms of a political settlement. By contrast, COIN partisans focus on the struggle between insurgents and the host-nation government, with conflict termination achieved principally through insurgent defeat or co- option. But a different theory of conflict resolution is required in Afghanistan, where the principal causes of insecurity arise from the EFTA00972637 absence of national reconciliation (predating the rise of the Taliban by several decades), coupled with the presence of ineffectual, corrosive governance. Blindly following COIN doctrine led the U.S. military to fixate on defeating the insurgency while giving short shrift to Afghan politics and hence the political logic of the overarching campaign. U.S. military commanders became obsessed with convincing Commander in Chief Karzai to use his rapidly expanding and staggeringly expensive security forces to defeat the Taliban. However, their main efforts should have focused on helping President Karzai deliver an inclusive peace and Chief Executive Karzai build an adequate state apparatus. Galula's writings about counterinsurgency were inspired by his service as a French army captain in the Algerian War from 1956 to 1958. Ultimately, however, France lost. Although Algeria and Afghanistan mark two very different conflicts, they resonate in one important way. It was assumed in both campaigns that a grab bag of "doctrinally sound" military actions would somehow add up to a strategic win. In Algeria, that assumption proved to be erroneous, and a similar outcome appears likely in Afghanistan. CREATING AN ACCOUNTABLE GOVERNMENT Field Manual 3-24 states that as a counterinsurgency campaign is successfully prosecuted, the "government secures its citizens continuously, sustains and builds legitimacy through effective governance, . . . and can manage and meet the expectations of the nation's entire population." Unfortunately, the assumption that robust and well-designed foreign development assistance programs would, over time, yield effective governance and popular legitimacy proved to be a bad one in Afghanistan. In theory, the president of a democratic republic enters into an implicit contract with the electorate. The president's administration collects taxes in return for delivering services, such as security, justice, health care, and education. If the value of the benefits received is seen as less than the price charged, the president or his preferred successor will likely be defeated in the next election. Executive accountability and inducements to improve effectiveness are thus built into the political system. This theory, however, does not apply to the Karzai administration in Afghanistan. EFTA00972638 The Afghan government collects an extremely low level of revenue (less than ten percent of GDP), and a large share of this comes from customs rather than taxation. In effect, Afghans are not really charged by their government for the services they are provided. Moreover, for the most part, the Afghan government neither funds nor delivers the key public services offered in the country. According to estimates by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, in recent years, the United States and other donors paid for about 90 percent of Afghanistan's total public expenditures, including funding for the Afghan National Security Forces. In addition, the provision of many key services remains highly dependent on foreign advisers and experts. In their 1967 book, The United States in Vietnam, George Kahin and John Lewis wrote that "U.S. aid thus provided [South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh] Diem with a degree of financial independence that isolated him from basic economic and political realities and reduced his need to appreciate or respond to his people's wants and expectations." Like Diem, Karzai has had little reason to improve his state's effectiveness or accountability. Americans tend to see Afghan political institutions as nonexistent or immature and therefore as requiring creation or further development. The traditional power brokers in and allied with the Karzai administration see matters differently. They consistently oppose foreign efforts to create transparent, rule-bound Afghan institutions because such projects threaten to undermine their political domination and economic banditry. In the absence of an enforceable democratic contract between the ruler and the ruled, the U.S. embassy in Kabul, as an advocate of Afghan government reform, frequently served as the de facto political opposition. Such advocacy, however, found little support among U.S. military commanders, because with some 130,000 NATO-ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) troops on the ground, their top priority was to defeat the Taliban. The military had the resources and the potential leverage to influence and persuade Karzai to make the difficult decisions of state, but its leaders were focused on the tactical battlefield and the development of the Afghan National Security Forces rather than on political and economic reform. Most assumed that good governance would inevitably follow, rather than precede, the defeat of the Taliban insurgents, elections, and generous development assistance. EFTA00972639 This erroneous assumption damaged the U.S. war effort in various ways. It created a disjointed civil-military approach, allowing Karzai to operate in the seams, exploit bureaucratic differences, and attempt to pit the embassy against the military command (and often the intelligence agencies). It also damaged U.S. credibility with the Afghan people, who saw Americans less as protectors than as the supporters of the weak and predatory Karzai government (once again replaying the Vietnam dynamic). Ultimately, taking the legitimacy of the Karzai government as a given has even jeopardized the costly U.S.-led efforts to train and equip capable Afghan army and police forces, which, no matter how tactically proficient they might become, can contribute to stability only if they are reliably employed on behalf of a politically legitimate government. MISALIGNED STRATEGIES The COIN field manual declares, "U.S. and [host-nation] military commanders and the [host-nation] government together must devise the plan for attacking the insurgents' strategy and focusing the collective effort to bolster or restore government legitimacy." Heavily influenced by COIN doctrine, the political-military strategy employed in Afghanistan during the surge (and to a lesser extent in the years prior) did not meet this criterion. U.S. military commanders diagnosed Afghanistan's problem as an indigenous insurgency, albeit one made worse by the insurgents' access to sanctuaries in Pakistan. By contrast, Karzai and many of his compatriots diagnosed the problem as militant extremism, exported from Pakistan but cleverly masquerading itself in local garb. So while U.S. military commanders argued that a long, costly counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan was necessary to decisively defeat al Qaeda in the Central and South Asian region, Karzai consistently held that the so-called insurgency was mostly a "Made in Pakistan" product that Islamabad was forcefully exporting across the border. He had a point. In late 2001, the world watched in awe as small numbers of U.S. ground forces, operating together with mostly Northern Alliance militias and enabled by twenty-first-century intelligence, communications, and precision strike ordnance, quickly routed the Taliban forces that had dominated Afghan battlefields for some five years. The Taliban regime was dismantled, but it was not destroyed. Aided by Pakistan's military and intelligence services, the Taliban's leadership began to reconstitute across EFTA00972640 the Durand Line, beyond the reach of the American military. In short order, the Taliban soon reestablished influence inside Afghanistan. The Afghans observed these developments at first with puzzlement, then with frustration, and ultimately with anger. They were initially puzzled as to why the U.S. government and military generally refused to publicly admit for several years that the Afghan Taliban's center of gravity had shifted from Kabul to Islamabad. They then became frustrated when they realized that the United States would not attack the Afghan Taliban inside Pakistan because of Washington's worry that violations of Islamabad's sovereignty would risk more important strategic objectives (such as defeating al Qaeda and preserving stability in a problematic, nuclear-armed power). And finally, they became angry when the costs of counterinsurgency seemed to far exceed the benefits delivered. As the United States launched the surge, Karzai ever more frequently and publicly made such statements as "Al Qaeda was driven out of Afghanistan in 2001. They have no base in Afghanistan. The war against terrorism is not in Afghan villages and is not in the Afghan countryside." Still, the southern Afghan countryside was designated ground zero of the counterinsurgency campaign by the U.S. military. Karzai came to regularly protest aerial bombardments of Afghan villages, coalition night raids that violated Afghan homes, detentions of Afghan citizens by international military forces, abuses by armed contractors and local militias paid by and loyal to foreign forces, and the rising tide of inadvertent but inevitable civilian casualties. American commanders always respectfully listened to such complaints and genuinely tried to make amends. Yet they never stepped back and asked whether Karzai's list of grievances could properly be dealt with in a checklist fashion or if together they were actually symptomatic of strategic divergence. Getting the answer right mattered profoundly. The irony was considerable. Karzai acquiesced to the surge because it guaranteed further U.S. and international commitment to the still fragile Afghan state, but he did not support its central premise. In a different world, he would have preferred that most of the surge forces be dispatched to Pakistan to attack Afghan Taliban sanctuaries, with perhaps others deployed to accelerate the training of the Afghan National Security Forces. EFTA00972641 Instead, the vast majority were sent to those locations where Karzai said there was no war on terror to be fought -- the Afghan countryside. Despite the sharply contrasting perspectives, U.S. and other NATO-ISAF forces still managed to perform impressively, usually improving security in their areas of emphasis. Yet as these hard-won tactical wins were chalked up, Karzai seemed both uninterested in and unappreciative of what the COIN advocates took as mounting evidence that all was going according to plan. For his part, Karzai could not have cared less about complex COIN metrics invented by foreign military staffs and think tanks (such as trend lines on the number of attacks with improvised explosive devices being thwarted by tip-offs from Afghan civilians or the number of Afghan army battalions operating at the level called "capability milestone 1"). What mattered to him was achieving the interdependent aims of regaining Afghanistan's de facto sovereignty, strengthening political legitimacy and control, and bringing peace and stability to his country. In his mind, the American military's way of war did not appear to bring him closer to any of these goals. The escalation of the war in 2009 delayed the exercise of real sovereignty, something all Afghans wanted. Over the next two years, the number of American boots on the ground essentially doubled, from about 50,000 to almost 100,000. Nighttime raids and detentions of Afghans by international military forces skyrocketed. Foreign military commanders, their pockets stuffed with cash (COIN disciples emphasize that, properly used, "cash is a weapon") and accompanied by civilian diplomats and development specialists, were suddenly ubiquitous. Savvy provincial governors, district chiefs, and tribal elders all followed the bank robber Willie Sutton's maxim and made their way to the NATO-ISAF military headquarters and provincial reconstruction teams because that was where the money was. Karzai's constant complaint about the international community establishing "parallel government institutions" had merit. None of this nurtured the growth of organic Afghan governance or politics, nor did it bolster the Karzai administration's legitimacy. As the noted anthropologist Thomas Barfield has written, "The country's past suggests that to be successful . . . a ruler will need to convince the Afghans that he will not be beholden to foreigners even as he convinces these very same foreigners to fund his state and its military." Accordingly, Karzai often EFTA00972642 criticized the Afghan National Army as being more like indulged American mercenaries than an authentic native force. He frequently berated his technocratic expatriate cabinet ministers and agency heads (whose offices truly were overrun with foreign advisers and mentors) as American spies and lackeys. And he worried greatly that his people would see through the veneer designed by the U.S. military to portray him as a good leader, concluding instead that he was a puppet propped up by an infidel foreign coalition. The more resources the Americans threw into the Afghan cauldron, the more Karzai felt compelled to burnish his own nativist credentials by lashing out at what he decried as pernicious U.S. influence. A final strategic conundrum was that the surge temporarily increased the importance of the NATO-ISAF logistical supply lines passing through Pakistan, further reducing Washington's already weak leverage when it came to securing Islamabad's cooperation in attacking insurgent sanctuaries. So while U.S. military commanders endlessly traveled to Pakistan bravely maintaining the pretense of consulting with "allies in the war on terror," their troops and the Afghans continued to be hammered by the confederates of these same supposed allies. If Americans were merely confused, observant Afghans were increasingly disillusioned and disheartened. The United States' strategy suffered from a serious internal contradiction. Its military claimed to have a winning plan that it pretended was supported by the Afghan head of state and commander in chief. But this was a complete fiction. Karzai disagreed intellectually, politically, and viscerally with the key pillars of the COIN campaign. The result was that while American military commanders tirelessly worked to persuade the Afghan president through factual presentation, deference, and occasional humor that the plan was working, they never seemed to consider that Karzai just might not be on board. None of this is meant to imply that Karzai's approach to the conflict was better or worse than that pursued by the American military. Frankly, it is not clear that Karzai even had an alternative in mind. He liked to cast himself as a Gandhi-like figure, desperately trying to defend his people against the twin depredations of a self-serving superpower and a rapacious and extremist Pakistan. He also increasingly used the United States as a convenient scapegoat for his administration's massive shortcomings in EFTA00972643 accountability and performance. Ultimately, however, a COIN approach is predicated on the general alignment of the foreign and host nations' overarching political and military strategies -- and this was simply not the case in Afghanistan. In its implementation of COIN doctrine in Afghanistan, the U.S. military was playing American football, so to speak. It was not at all clear what sport Karzai was playing, or indeed whether he was even in the same stadium as the Americans. LEARNING THE RIGHT LESSONS Waging war is serious business, and military commanders must ensure that their critical planning assumptions are based on empirical evidence and probabilities, not simply on hope. This was not done when the Afghan surge was designed in 2009. "So what?" some might say. Even if the campaign plan was based on faulty assumptions, might not the final result still be an Afghanistan better off than before? That is possible. But while making Afghanistan a better place to live is certainly a noble goal, it is not necessarily a vital U.S. national interest, and the history is still worth revisiting so proper lessons can be learned. First and foremost, the U.S. experience in Afghanistan should serve as a reminder that war should be waged only in pursuit of clear political goals -- ones informed by military advice but decided on by responsible civilian leaders. U.S. military leaders should not necessarily be criticized for devising plans to fill the gaping policy hole they stumbled on years into the Afghan war. But the public marketing of these plans by some of these generals in an effort to enlist support from members of Congress, sympathetic think tanks, and the media should serve as a warning against granting too much deference to military leadership. Unbounded and unconstrained by civilian authorities, the commanders of the incredibly well-funded U.S. armed forces fixated on a way forward that was breathtakingly expansive and expensive. Citing the logic of COIN doctrine, senior U.S. military leaders insisted that there was no alternative to adopting a full-court press aimed at rapidly and simultaneously improving Afghanistan's security, governance, judicial system, economy, educational standards, health-care delivery, and more. But as the ancient Chinese military sage Sun-tzu wrote, "There has never been a protracted EFTA00972644 war from which a country has benefited." Even in the case of the United States, the high opportunity costs of these extended spendthrift campaigns matter. From the time he entered office, Obama recognized this fact, and he accordingly limited the deployment time of the surge forces in Afghanistan and subsequently set a date certain for the end of U.S. combat operations there. Still, he faced considerable political opposition in doing so, because he refused to make an open-ended commitment to those military commanders who favored withdrawal only after favorable tactical conditions emerged on the ground. Second, the war in Afghanistan has demonstrated that for all of the vaunted agility and resourcefulness of the U.S. armed forces, the risk of senior commanders' becoming intellectually arrogant and cognitively rigid is real. The COIN paradigm was applied with such unquestioning zeal that critical thought was often suspended. Countless commanders' memorandums detail how their multibillion-dollar discretionary spending appropriations (known as the Commander's Emergency Response Program) should be put into action across a mind-boggling array of socioeconomic conditions all in order to achieve variously described "COIN effects." Military commanders elevated the program to the grand macroeconomic level and promoted projects such as the large-scale diesel generator power station in Kandahar in pursuit of these same vaguely defined COIN effects. A program to improve the transparency of U.S. military contracts was unsurprisingly named "COIN contracting." And so it went, with groupthink becoming the norm. "COIN" evolved from a noun to an adjective, and its overuse became almost a parody of faithful Red Guards chanting Maoist slogans during the Cultural Revolution. As a former U.S. military commander in Afghanistan who later served as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, I developed deep appreciation and respect for various embassy civilian department and agency heads who, not wedded to a certain doctrinal framework, would offer analyses that in hindsight were often more sober and realistic than those of their military counterparts. Well-conceived plans are usually an antecedent to operational success, and unquestionably, the U.S. military excels at planning. The assumptions and risk analysis that underpin a plan, however, must be continuously challenged in a dynamic and complex conflict zone, lest commanders find themselves fighting the wrong war. EFTA00972645 The U.S. military and its civilian masters must find ways to avoid this trap in the future. Finally, even as the United States relearns the limits of intervention, it should not reject all the techniques and procedures put into practice in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fragile and failing states will continue to endanger U.S. and international security, and the choice of responses is not limited to doing nothing or deploying massive numbers of troops and civilians who must march in lockstep to the beat of Field Manual 3-24. A dispassionate civil-military study comparing the application of COIN doctrine during the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan could be useful in drawing appropriate lessons from these costly ventures. The many successful efforts of American diplomats, development specialists, and soldiers in the field during the war in Afghanistan should also be duly noted. Americans are creative and innovative people, and these characteristics have been reflected in the work of the military and civilian teams on the ground. Working with great courage and skill, they have devised countless novel, pragmatic, and often inexpensive approaches to a myriad of difficult security, governance, and development challenges. Such rich experience, acquired at great cost and sacrifice, can and should be applied in ways tailored appropriately to future problems of instability in countries and situations that matter. In sum, the essential task is deciding how to do less with less. It has been said that in Afghanistan, as in Southeast Asia 40 years earlier, the United States, with the best of intentions, unwittingly tried to achieve revolutionary aims through semicolonial means. This is perhaps an overly harsh judgment. And yet the unquestioning use of counterinsurgency doctrine, unless bounded politically, will always take the country in just such a direction. Before the next proposed COIN toss, therefore, Americans should insist on a rigorous and transparent debate about its ends and its means. KARL W. EIKENBERRY is William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He served as Commanding General of the Combined Forces Command— EFTA00972646 Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 and as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011. EFTA00972647