Unwinnable Wars (eBook)

Afghanistan and the Future of American Armed Statebuilding

Adam Wunische (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023
Polity Press (Verlag)
978-1-5095-5486-7 (ISBN)

Infos

In nine short days, Taliban forces destroyed two decades of American armed statebuilding in Afghanistan. This was no isolated failure. Over the last century, almost every attempt to intervene militarily to prop up or reconstruct an allied state has seen similar dismal outcomes. Why? This book answers that fundamental question.

By exploring the factors that hindered success in Afghanistan, Adam Wunische identifies forces common to other unsuccessful U.S. armed statebuilding missions, from Vietnam to Syria, Haiti to Iraq. These forces, he argues, inherently favor insurgencies, forfeit sustainability for quick results, and create dependencies and corruption - all of which undermine the goal of building a state that can stand on its own. Not only that, but most of these forces are inescapable and uncontrollable. This means any future attempts at armed statebuilding will likely also be unwinnable, with costs and consequences far outpacing America's interests and benefits.

Faced with a future likely dominated by proxy wars, Wunische offers a novel way forward to prevent the U.S. from chasing new wars that it is destined to lose.

Adam Wunische is an instructor at George Washington University and a military analyst with the U.S. Government who worked on Afghanistan security issues during the collapse of the Afghan Government in 2021. He was a Sergeant serving in U.S. Army Intelligence from 2005 to 2010, completing two deployments to Afghanistan in support of the 3rd Special Forces Group.

Autor

Adam Wunische is a senior analyst and researcher working on military, intelligence, and security issues. Previously, he was a military analyst and analytic methodologist with the CIA covering security issues in Afghanistan and South Asia. He is also a lecturer at George Washington University, teaching classes on military affairs, terrorism and political violence, and analytic research methods. Adam has held a number of positions throughout the policy and analysis fields, including research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Adam was a sergeant serving in US Army intelligence from 2005 to 2010, completing two deployments to Afghanistan in support of the 3rd Special Forces Group.

Inhalt

List of Acronyms

List of Tables and Figures

Preface

Introduction: The Fall of Kabul

Chapter 1: Preexisting Conditions

Chapter 2: Ticking Clocks

Chapter 3: Dilemmas

Chapter 4: Paradoxes

Chapter 5: Avoiding Unwinnable Wars

Chapter 6: Wars Worth Fighting

Notes

Rezensionen

"Unwinnable Wars combines a scathing indictment of the follies leading to the U.S. failure in Afghanistan with a detailed and dispassionate assessment of the challenges inherent in any attempt at armed statebuilding. It contains an abundance of policy-relevant lessons."
Andrew Bacevich, chairman and co-founder, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

"A critical read for policymakers and national security professionals, succinctly laying out why armed statebuilding is so difficult, frustrating, and unlikely to succeed. Wunische's conclusions are critical to preventing the costly future recurrence of these ambitious but doomed adventures."
Jonathan Schroden, former strategic advisor to US Forces - AFG

"Adam Wunische's Unwinnable Wars reinforces much of what we know from history and social science: armed statebuilding interventions are unlikely to succeed due to a long list of well-known factors. In an important contribution to existing scholarship, and a much-needed guide to policymakers, Wunische offers us a comprehensive framework to understand the narrow conditions under which military interventions could work. He supports this argument with compelling and wide-ranging historical case studies. A welcome and crucial addition to research on military intervention."
Jasen J. Castillo, Texas A&M University

"In this intriguing and original book, Adam Wunische convincingly argues that the debates about strategy in Afghanistan (and other armed statebuilding cases) are irrelevant, because these conflicts are unwinnable. Its sophistication, accessibility, and powerful analysis should make this a widely read and discussed book."
Jeffrey Meiser, University of Portland

Textauszug

Introduction: The Fall of Kabul

It was a few months from my 16th birthday on September 11, 2001. On the west coast of the United States, east coast occurrences are delayed by a three-hour time difference. So, while east coasters knew of some event occurring but did not learn the true nature of the event until after their day had begun, our day on the west coast began with the knowledge of it being a terrorist attack. I was barely aware of world events before that day. I was technically alive and aware for the fall of the Soviet Union, the Oklahoma City bombing, the first Gulf War, and the Bosnian Genocide; I have no recollection of what I was doing at the time or how I personally experienced those events. 9/11 was different. Some experienced the event firsthand and lost loved ones, but the collective American consciousness experienced the event almost entirely as one.

My parents were saving what little extra they had in a college saving account for me. The account would never be used. After that day, nothing could shake me off the path to the U.S. Army. I enlisted in 2004, shortly after I turned 18, into a delayed entry program that enlisted soldiers before their entry date and before they actually left for basic training. I signed up exactly 1 year before my basic training date because it was the absolute earliest I could do so. I could barely wait. So much so that I took summer classes so I could graduate high school early and leave sooner.

I enlisted the first opportunity I could get. I briefly considered other options for entry into the U.S. Army, going to college first and then commissioning as an officer, or becoming a warrant officer and flying helicopters. The problem was those paths took too long. It was 2004, involvement in Iraq had started a mere 12 months prior and I thought if I delayed my entry by even a few months that I would miss the war and it would have all just passed me by. I didn’t miss the war. I would be in training for nearly a year and a half. I came into my unit while they were already deployed, so I had to wait until the next rotation. I deployed twice between 2007 and 2008. I would leave the army in 2010 and go to school for the next decade, giving lectures about Afghan political dynamics and history near the end of that time. I would start teaching at university, courses on terrorism, political violence, and military strategy. I would start a new job in 2020 analyzing the Afghan National Security Forces for the U.S. government. And in 2021, 17 years after I thought I would miss the war, I watched the armed statebuilding operation come to an end and the government it attempted to build collapse in nine days.

In the waning years of the U.S. attempt at armed statebuilding in Afghanistan, and likely in the decades to follow the ultimate collapse of that effort, books, policy papers, reports, and news articles tried to identify “lessons learned,” searching for mistakes so that they might not be repeated the next time. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) published a grand culminating report after 14 years of reports submitted to the U.S. Congress saying, “Unless the U.S. government understands and accounts for what went wrong, why it went wrong, and how it went wrong in Afghanistan, it will likely repeat the same mistakes in the next conflict.”1 Many of these efforts that have already been published typically identify one strategy or policy they take particular issue with and argue that, if we are able to change how this was done for the next armed statebuilding war, we might just win it.

But what if changing one or two strategies does nothing to affect the outcome, or what if it is not even possible to change some of these strategies or limitations? If that’s the case, initiating these armed statebuilding operations is starting wars that cannot be won.

Why Did the U.S.-Backed Government Collapse in Just Nine Days?

Afghanistan was the most substantial and expensive armed statebuilding attempt ever, but the groundwork for the swift collapse was laid years in advance, if not decades. The withdrawal of U.S. forces was not a primary (not even a secondary) cause of the collapse of the Afghan government. It was a catalyst that accelerated many of the preexisting and uncontrollable forces that were inherent to the type of operation. Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, President Biden said at the time, “I refuse to continue a war that was no longer in the service of the vital national interest of our people.”2 Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said during testimony before the U.S. Senate following the collapse that, “I think the end state would have been the same no matter when you [withdrew U.S. forces].”3

Nine Days to Kabul

By September 2021, Lashkar Gah, the capital city of Helmand province in the south of Afghanistan, had been under siege for days. Helmand, along with Kandahar province to the east, together constituted the traditional heartland of the Taliban; it’s where they started their march across Afghanistan in the 1990s and is the home to the ethnic Pashtuns that comprise the vast majority of the organization. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) were stretched thin from years of high attrition. This was not the first time the Taliban had attempted to overrun a major provincial capital, but this time U.S. military power would not push it back.

The decision was made by then Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, to save Lashkar Gah at all costs. It was probably thought that the loss of a major city in the Taliban’s traditional heartland was too great a propaganda victory for the group to allow it to fall before the Americans had even completed their withdrawal. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the Soviet-supported regime survived for nearly three years after. Units and equipment from the Afghan special forces Commandos and the Afghan Air Force (AAF) were redirected from their postings throughout Afghanistan to Lashkar Gah. Commandos were airlifted into the sports stadium on the outskirts of the city, one of the few areas of the city still in government hands.

Several weeks prior, Herat City in the western province of the same name came under intense pressure from Taliban assaults. A video was posted on social media of Afghan civilians in that city chanting, “Allahu Akbar,” meaning God is greatest, in support of the ANSF defending the city. The chant became a rallying cry of support for the Afghan government and had the potential to be the first narrative shift of the war. For decades the Taliban owned the narrative of being a movement of the Afghan people to expel foreign invaders in the name of God. By chanting “Allahu Akbar,” the Afghan people were disrupting this Taliban narrative, even if by a small margin. The chants went viral on social media and videos emerged from across the country of Afghan civilians chanting in support of the Afghan government. When the commandos landed at the stadium in Lashkar Gah, the ANSF posted a video of them in full gear marching into battle chanting the same phrase. It felt as if the momentum of the last 20 years could shift, but the feeling would not last.

Both sides took heavy casualties in Lashkar Gah. After a brief pause by the Taliban as they cycled in fresh fighters, they launched new assaults in the heart of the city. After taking heavy casualties in the face of the highly competent commandos and AAF air strikes, the Taliban eventually pulled back from the city center. The city was saved for the time being, but there was a cost. The commandos were one of the few competent units in the whole of the ANSF, one of the only ones that could operate independent of significant U.S. support and planning. They comprised about 10 percent of the ANSF but accounted for more than 90 percent of the fighting.4 They had been stretched thin for years and the defense of Lashkar Gah weakened them further. The AAF was a potentially game changing capability for the ANSF, but a very nascent one and years of a high operational tempo and mismanagement was grinding them down. Lashkar Gah increased pressure on aircraft that were already being pushed far beyond their normal operating capacity. Assessments from early 2021 showed 15 of 34 provincial capitals were surrounded by the Taliban and easily cut off from ground resupply.5 The Taliban by this point had the luxury of choosing when and where to launch their assaults and as the ANSF shifted to shore up one city, the Taliban had 14 others to choose from to assault while the ANSF were distracted with, and concentrated in, the first.

With all eyes on Lashkar Gah, the Taliban pulled back from the city center, and with the government in Kabul feeling better about their prospects without U.S. support, a chain of events was initiated that would have the Taliban strolling through the streets of Kabul within nine days, Ghani fleeing the country in secret, and the United States discussing joint security responsibilities with the Taliban at Kabul’s main airport, Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA). Lashkar Gah was saved, but it pulled the ANSF’s best and most capable assets away from cities that were also cut off and under threat of a Taliban assault. On August 6, reports emerged that the Taliban had taken Zaranj, the capital city of Nimruz province 150 miles to the southwest of Lashkar Gah on the Iranian border, before any clear indication that fighting was even occurring there. Many were not even aware of where Zaranj was; Nimruz was a backwater province for the international mission in...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.11.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Vergleichende Politikwissenschaften
• Schlagworte: Afghanistan • American Social & Cultural History • armed statebuilding • Geschichte • Geschichte der Politik u. Diplomatie • History • Iraq • Kriegs- u. Friedensforschung • military intervention • Myanmar • Nationbuilding • Political & Diplomatic History • Political Science • Politikwissenschaft • Sozial- u. Kulturgeschichte Amerikas • Statebuilding • State Building • Taiwan • Ukraine • US military • Vietnam • War & Peace Studies
• ISBN-10: 1-5095-5486-6 / 1509554866
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5486-7 / 9781509554867