Parts to Wholes: the Socionomic Systems Nexus

 

His colleague, Anne Applebaum, points out one of the other elephants in the room, to wit the lack of real support from our supposed allies who have given lip service to their NATO obligations but failed to provide actual resource, support or useful contributions on the whole.

What Afghan alliance? Only very rarely do the casualties of one country make it into the media, the political debates or the prime ministerial speeches of another country. There has been an international coalition operating in Afghanistan since 2001. NATO has been in charge of that coalition since 2003. Yet to read the British press, one would think the British are there almost alone, fighting a war in which they have no national interest. The same is true in France and in the Netherlands. American media outlets hardly note the participation of other countries, even though some -- Britain and Canada -- have endured casualties at a higher rate than that of the U.S. military, relative to the size of their contingents. There is almost no sense anywhere that the war in Afghanistan is an international operation, or that the stakes and goals are international, or that the soldiers on the ground represent anything other than their own national flags and national armed forces: Most of the war's European critics want to know why their boys are fighting "for the Americans," not for NATO. Most of the American critics dismiss the European contribution as useless or ignore it altogether. As Jackson Diehl pointed out Monday, the central debate about future Afghanistan policy is taking place in Washington without any obvious contributions from anybody else. I'm not going to blame the U.S. administration alone for this: It's not as if Europe has put forward a different plan -- and there was certainly a moment, back at the beginning of this administration, when that would have been very welcome.The fact is that the idea of "the West" has been fading for a long time on both sides of the Atlantic, as countless "whither-the-Alliance" seminars have been ritually observing for the past decade. But the consequences are now with us: NATO, though fighting its first war since its foundation, inspires nobody. The members of NATO feel no allegiance to the alliance, or to one another.

Both of these problems were discussed in the previous post, and in prior posts for that matter, and are central to McChrystal's "Initial Assessment" report. The bottom line here is that if we're going to be effective, not we're saying effective not necessarily successful, is that it's going to be more important to fight smarter rather than harder. Because so far we've been fighting just plain 'ol dumb. The really good news about the Administration's careful approach is that serious debates about ends, means and realities is happening for the first time and, finally, deep, informed and accurate debate is beginning to happen. On those lines btw a few other little tidbits:

• U.S. Prods Karzai to Yield on Fraud Senior Obama administration officials, in the midst of reviewing U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan, turned up the pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to accept an audit released Monday that disqualified enough votes to deprive him of an electoral majority.
• Afghan Leader Said to Accept Runoff After Election Audit
• Goodbye Baghdad, Hello Kabul As the Obama administration debates whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, a squadron of journalists has already arrived. Many of them are transplants from America’s other overseas war, in Iraq.

• Emanuel: Gov't in Kabul Must Be Credible President Obama's chief advisor denied that the lack of stability in Afghanistan's government, owing to the disputed election, would mean a delay in the president's decision over whether to send more U.S. troops there. But White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation" today, agreed with an assessment made by Sen. John Kerry that stability in Afghan is vital to the success of the United States' mission there."It's not a matter of delay; the review will continue," Rahm Emanuel said on CBS' "Face the Nation" today. "The review will continue the next week and the following week. Watch the Video

Whatever else happens, and no matter whether or not you agree with the final decision, two things to start keeping in mind. It will not be ill-considered or ill-informed, in contrast to prior ones. And second, no matter what that decision, there will be serious consequences and it will not be easy to deal with them.

A final critical point - if, as we anticipate, we add more troops, dramatically shift strategy, and put more pressure on our allies and on the Kabul and Islamabad governments to hold up their ends of the bargains there will still be a major doctrinal hole. We haven't figured out how to build good governments and that is the sine qua non, that without which there is no other, for long-run success. (Good Government for a Stable World) Yet strangely enough something was managed, over time, with encouraging that emergence and evolution of appropriate governments in Germany, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea!

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Previous Update Emendations:

UPDATE: We've just added another excerpt from the NYT on the status of the civilian re-construction and re-development efforts, particularly on civil institution building, that largely confirms our assessment of the situation: Civilian Goals Largely Unmet in Afghanistan. A longer excerpt is in the readings.

UPDATE2: There was a slew of recent Charlie Rose discussions but the one of particular interest was with David Kilcullen and Brian Glynn Williams, both boots on the grounds, experience experts. Kilcullen discusses the operational challenges for troops, strategic changes and the pressing need for governance reform. Williams, deeply informed on the Taliban and alQ, blows away the assertion that they are seperable or that, if successful, they can be contained. Between the two of them ALL of the talking head punditry dies and you end up roughly in line with our assessment. Which is probably why we highly recommend spending the 20min to watch. Given technical changes you'll have to go to the site and select the proper epidsode from a sidebar howwever. Simply click on the highlighted word. PLEASE do so and then give what we have to say here another thought or three.

UPDATE3: If you haven't yet go read Dexter Filkins' long profile of McChrystal and the challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan and watch this brief interview on the Rachel Maddow Show. While Dexter doesn't provide a lot of analysis per se he paints an entirely accurate portrait IOHO that's consistent with our take. The interview is fascinating because Rachel, while a die-hard liberal and pushing hard toward her position, is also a fairly honest interviewer and Dexter's take about the complexities wasn't quite what she was looking for.

UPDATE4: Not surprsingly Afghanistan is still generating lots of news coverage, which fortunately is improving in depth. One of the most interesting is this PBS interview with Bruce Riedel. We point toward it since what he says is deeply informed, lines up somewhat withour observations, but most importantly, he's been a central player in formulating administration policy. On the whole we take this as indicating that, whatever the decision, it will not be uninformed or ideologically driven. Here's a brief description of his background by way of encouraging and credability:

Terrorism Expert Riedel Weighs Obama's Options in Afghanistan When President Obama unveiled his first strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan last March, Bruce Riedel was there. He chaired the high-level review that recommended a broad counterinsurgency campaign in the region against al-Qaida.Riedel spent a lifetime studying that terrorist group and its roots through three decades at the CIA, with postings to top jobs at the Pentagon and the National Security Council. Last year, he released a book, "The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future."

One of the shibboleths he demolishes en passant is that Alexander and the Brits got badly beaten there. In fact Alexander conquered the area and his successors ruled it for generations while the British established a fairly long-lasting protectorate. In other words it's NOT different this time as a brief skim of these sources will show:

•  European influence in Afghanistan
• History of Afghanistan