Strategic Paradigms by Ehsan Ahrari

Reading the pre-final draft of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) 2010, one is reminded of the old adage, “plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose,” in the Pentagon’s handling of asymmetric war, counterterrorism, and other related issues. The ghosts of the Vietnam War, of how not to lose another war, are also very much alive. Since the QDR is usually long on the details of weapons systems—in its making, the four Services fight the bare-knuckle war of pushing their preferred weapons platforms, notwithstanding their commitment to joint warfare—and short on the discussion of strategy, it is seldom clear whether ample attention will be paid to strategy when it becomes operational.

Undoubtedly, implementation of the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine will be done widely, as the contagion of instability continues to spread from South Asia to its east in Central Asia and to its west in the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, and the trans-Sahel region. The ghosts of Vietnam—about not giving COIN its fair due—are very much “alive.” Besides, the successful implementation of that doctrine in Iraq remains a powerful reason why it will (and should) also be implemented elsewhere. Besides, there is no other credible alternative for now.

There is a section in the draft document on “building regional capability.” The obvious focus is on Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. But it totally misses the differences in building capabilities in those three countries. The primary focus should be on massive nation-building, which will be different for each of them. In Pakistan, democracy has emerged from within, while in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has been enforced by the American occupying forces. Despite enforcement by outsiders, democracy seems to be emerging as a successful form of government in Iraq. So, governments in Pakistan and Iraq play a crucial role in managing any external aid that flows from abroad to rebuild their respective governing capabilities, and for the evolution of a civil society therein.

But in Afghanistan, a number of member nations of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will play a lead role in nation-building. In the meantime, the most troubling aspect in Afghanistan is that the Karzai government has become the proverbial albatross around the neck of the Obama administration. The gravest mistake made by the United States was its failure to throw out the results of Karzai’s highly fraudulent reelection campaign and to organize an entirely new election.

The emphasis on building regional capabilities of the QDR 2010 draft is also a reminder of the Nixon administration’s “Vietnamization” of the Vietnam War of the late 1960s and early 1970s. That concept was also implemented in the Middle East. Consequently, the United States learned to rely on the regime of Mohammad Reza of Iran as the gendarme of ensuring America’s dominance in the Persian Gulf region. What is different now is that there is no regime in West Asia or South Asia willing to go to that extent to defend America’s interests. In fact, all friendly regimes—Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen—are increasingly coming under heavy attack by forces of instability determined to impose their own version of radical Islamic order in those countries.

A continuing emphasis of the new QDR is discussed under the section “Enhance Language, Regional and Cultural Ability.” These are also issues on which the United States remains a hapless giant, not only in the Middle East, but also elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific. Michael Schauer’s book, Imperial Hubris, establishes the fact that the United States built a large body of knowledge on Afghanistan during its proxy war to defeat the Soviet Union in the 1980s. However, while dismantling the Taliban regime in 2001, no one made use of that knowledge. Whatever happened to that body of knowledge? Why are we not able to use it to fight the Taliban-al-Qaida nexus of today?

One glaring omission in the 2010 QDR draft is, while discussing the language capabilities in the cultural education of Pakistan and Afghanistan, it neglects to mention Urdu—the predominant and the official language of Pakistan; it only lists Pushtu and Dari—the two dominant languages of Afghanistan.

Under the section, “Counterinsurgency, Stability, and Counterterrorism Operations,” the draft document mentions the U.S. challenge to forestall the fall of weak states, but it wrongly attributes the reasons for their weakness and impending fall to “humanitarian disasters.” That is akin to stating that someone’s bad cold is a result of their upset stomach. The real reasons for the impending fall of the regimes in Yemen, Afghanistan, and others are: the absence of good governance and the presence of chronic kleptocratic, highly inept, nepotistic, and, in some instances, obscurantist rule.

There is no doubt that fighting extremism and asymmetric war will preoccupy America’s powerful military well toward the end of the next decade. However, if one is looking for evidence that the United States is on top of its endeavors to tackle extremism, instability, poverty, and other reasons for the rapid spread of political instability from Asia to Africa, the draft QDR 2010 document is not very assuring. Listing the problems, but only coming up with another catalog of military platforms or operational or tactical approaches to respond to the rising tide of political instability, is not the solution. Perhaps, that is not the intent of the QDR. If true, then one might have to wait for the National Security Strategy of President Barack Obama to see whether the United States has developed a road map and applicable strategies for its long and arduous journey to stabilize the weak, weakening, or failed states.