My friend and colleague Lee Smith, author of the terrific new book The Strong Horse
I was one of the first journalists to put my credibility on the line by saying General David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy was working in Iraq, at least militarily, and I still think Petraeus is a genius who accomplished what most people, including me, feared might be impossible. So while I’m more impressed with our ability to fight insurgencies than Lee, and perhaps a bit less pessimistic in general, I still find myself thinking about his argument and figuring out how I’ll need to incorporate it into my own thinking, as I usually do when he and I look at the same problem from slightly different angles. Lee’s perspective is fresh and all his own, so I present it to you here, without further comment, trusting that you, too, will find it thought-provoking and worth thinking about whether you agree with him or not. — MJT
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Over at “Abu Muqawama,” Andrew Exum, whom Michael and I know from Beirut, has had some interesting things to say recently about my book, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations
In his critical appraisal of my book, Andrew writes that the strong horse is not a uniquely Arab phenomenon. I do not disagree with him. Indeed the strong horse is a feature common across cultures and historical periods. However, this is not the case in the contemporary United States where, as I write in my introduction, “we are among the very few people in history who have been able to live our daily lives free, relatively speaking, from violence and the fear of violence…[I]t is difficult for us to see that our form of political organization makes us not the norm but a privileged exception, the beneficiaries of a historical anomaly.” The point I was making is that it is not the Arabs who are the exception, but Americans. I had thought I had made that point clear enough, but perhaps the problem is that Andrew is just plain uncomfortable with the idea of the strong horse, especially insofar as it requires punishing one’s enemies and rewarding one’s friends.
For instance, Andrew writes of how he had once asked my opinion concerning what sort of advice he might give to US policymakers in the event they were to solicit his recommendations on Lebanon. I suggested he tell them that we should bomb Syrian targets, including the Presidential Palace in Damascus. To me, the prospect of the gilded, gaudy residence of a man responsible for so much death, suffering and repression in ruins was a cheery one indeed, a prospect that apparently left Andrew flummoxed.
“What shocked me,” he writes, “is that Lee had not seemed to think too seriously about the political effect he intended to achieve with this act of force.” It is unclear to me why advocating the use of violence against a regime that has used violence against us and our allies is shocking. Surely the many tens of thousands of Iraqis that America has killed in the past three decades attest to a military and political echelon that does not shy away from killing foot soldiers and, if necessary, civilians. It is odd then that the idea of destroying a dictator’s palace is so distressing to Andrew. Violence done against the Syrian regime would illustrate that it cannot kill US soldiers and American allies in Iraq, or our friends in Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories with impunity. In failing to punish actors like Syria for interfering in matters of US vital interest, we allowed our adversaries to shape our actions and those of our allies at the expense of our ability to shape theirs, a point I will address in more detail below.
Of course, Andrew did eventually find himself in the position of advising US policymakers, not on Lebanon, but rather on Afghanistan, where he and his colleagues at the Center for a New American Security are credited as the architects of the Obama administration’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. In this case, Andrew believes that US force should be brought to bear on shaping a political effect, the outcome of which we are presumably certain, or else Andrew would not have been among those recommending the use of force. I leave it to him to describe what that outcome will look like, or to explain what the US wants in Afghanistan and if it is worth it. For my part, I think Afghanistan is a foolish enterprise and a waste of American power. As I have written elsewhere,
We are there for two bad reasons. The first is to defeat an outfit backed by dangerous elements of our Pakistani ally’s security services so that the government in Islamabad’s nuclear weapons don’t fall into the hands of those same bad elements of the ISI. This is not strategy; it’s a bank shot…. The other reason we’re in Afghanistan is even worse. If we leave, some say, we’ll be showing our adversaries that, in the words of Bin Laden, we’re a paper tiger. If it seems that the strong horse principle dictates that we have to stay and fight the Taliban, there is nothing strong horse about letting someone else shape your strategy and tie you down with petty affairs.
Andrew is correct when he writes that I am “quite critical of counterinsurgency,” and not just because, as he states, it will force us to negotiate with so-called non-state actors that it is best to isolate, and because it obscures the roles of states in terror. The much more fundamental issue is this: COIN doctrine, as promulgated by its advocates like Andrew and his colleagues at CNAS, is a symptom of the incoherence that currently rules US strategic thinking.
Consider this example from Andrew’s own hand, writing in a recent post claiming that the surge was a success: “[T]rying to argue that the Surge ‘failed’ at this point — even if Iraq someday descends anew into civil war — simply isn’t a credible option anymore.” If what happens after an American withdrawal from Iraq is of no consequence — even a civil war that may cost many more thousands of lives, for instance, or Iraq becomes an Iranian satrapy — then Andrew is saying that political outcomes shaped by the use of force are entirely irrelevant. Given that he is here making a very different claim than his concerns about political effects related above, it is difficult not to conclude that he is tacitly confessing to one of the faults that COIN critics level at COIN advocates like Andrew and CNAS: the political effects touched off by counterinsurgencies like the surge in Iraq and its cousin in Afghanistan are meant to be felt most acutely not in Washington’s theatres of operation abroad, but rather in Washington itself.
It’s worth recalling that the surge allowed George W Bush to leave office claiming a tentative victory in Iraq, and thus positioned for the favorable historical re-evaluation that his tenure rightly deserves. However, he does not merit that future reassessment for winning Iraq. Whether or not the American counterinsurgency waged in Iraq’s Sunni regions was successful, Bush did not win Iraq, and Washington has no intention to win Iraq. It’s not me who says so, but rather a broad cross-section of America’s political, military and intelligence classes. Back in July 2008, Andrew himself wrote the following:
The past year and half have demonstrated that despite impressive gains in Iraq and a truly heroic effort by our soldiers and diplomats, a large portion of that country’s security environment is determined by the Iranians, who have leverage with nearly all of Iraq’s political parties and factions. If Iran desires to turn the heat up there or elsewhere in the region, it can.
Even Gen. David Petraeus, the man credited with a successful counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, acknowledged in his senate testimony in March that “the Iranian regime has embarked on a broad campaign led by the IRGC-Qods Force to influence Iraqi politics and support, through various means, parties loyal to Iran. The Qods Force also maintains its lethal support to Shia Iraqi militia groups, providing them with weapons, funding, and training.”
If the Iranians are capable of heating up Iraq, if they are able to embark on a broad campaign including both political and military aspects, then the US did not win in Iraq. The test of victory is simply whether or not you are capable of imposing terms on your adversaries; if you can’t, if rather they shape your strategic decisions — e.g., if they determine your security environment by funding, arming and training militias — then you have not won. Or think of it like this: after VE Day what capacity did the Nazis have to heat things up for US troops in France and Italy and consequently determine US strategy? American society may have changed during the last half century so that we no longer know how to describe victory, but the objective standards for defining victory have not changed, nor have they changed at any time during the course of human history. The Iranians are able to shape our regional strategy because we did not win.
It bears repeating that it is not me who says we did not win, but rather our decision-makers. Of course, they do not explicitly say that we did not win, only that the Iranians can hurt us in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is the same thing. Indeed, it is the Washington consensus put forth by a broad cross-section of American leadership, political, diplomatic, military, and intelligence, on both sides of the aisle and from the last two administrations, that in the event of an attack on Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran will target US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Consequently, this violence would undo the appearance of an American victory, a prospect that is in no one’s interest. It is bad for the party of the current commander-in-chief, who seeks to leave Iraq as quietly as possible and give Afghanistan the old college try before withdrawing next summer. It is bad for the GOP, which wants Iraq to stay in Bush’s win column. And it is bad for the man whose reputation is predicated on the success of the surge, current CENTCOM commander Gen David Petraeus.
And it is not just an American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities that will provoke Tehran to retaliate against US troops, for, according to America’s strategic class, an Israeli operation would draw the same response. As Andrew wrote two years ago:
Although Israel cannot be expected to act in the interests of any nation but Israel, an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program has the potential to erase many if not all of the hard-won gains in Iraq and to make the environment there and elsewhere in the region much more dangerous for U.S. servicemen.
Andrew identified here what would become a source of tension between Jerusalem and Washington — and this is indeed precisely what has beleaguered the US-Israel alliance for the last two months. The crux of the matter is not 1600 apartment units in East Jerusalem but rather that US and Israeli interests are in direct conflict. Jerusalem’s vital national interest at present is in stopping the Iranian nuclear program; Washington’s overriding political interest is in preserving the appearance of stability, or victory, in Iraq, which would be undone by an Israeli attack. Therefore, the US and Israel are at odds.
Of course, I have no way of knowing whether the Iranians would really retaliate against us in Iraq and Afghanistan in the event of a US or Israeli attack; I am only relaying Washington’s conventional wisdom. Nor, never having been to Iraq, am I qualified to say myself whether or not we have won in Iraq; but taking seriously the statements of dozens of American political, military and intelligence professionals who tell us that Iran can and will hurt US troops in Washington’s two combat theatres, I am drawing the only logical conclusion — if we believe that our adversary can still shape our strategy then we did not win in Iraq and we do not have the political will to win in Afghanistan. If Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Al-Qods force can heat things up now with US troops present, what do you think they will do once we have gone? Look on at their Shia-majority Arab neighbor with great pride, and even perhaps a bit of envy, as Iraq becomes a beacon of democracy? Not only have we not won, we have rendered ourselves incapable of acting against the agent that is most desirous of ruining our position across the region. In short, we have deterred ourselves on behalf of our enemy, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
So how did we get here? Or how is it that an American military tasked by COIN doctrine to protect Iraqi and Afghani populations is, according to American leadership, incapable of protecting itself in Iraq and Afghanistan? How long can a nation sustain a military that its leaders perceive of as an army of hostages? Since we do not believe our armed forces are capable of defending themselves, US civilians and interests cannot be defended either, except by tailoring our strategy to suit the exigencies of a reality determined by our enemies.
If you are wondering how the US’s position in the Gulf will be ruined if the Iranians get a nuclear bomb, here is your answer: the rulers of the Gulf Arab states where we have basing rights will tell us that because we do not think we can protect ourselves, obviously we cannot protect them either. Since all our bases in the Gulf do is draw the baleful attention of Tehran, and since we did not prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon that allows them to dictate such terms to the Arabs, it is best we leave, immediately — as the Iranians have dictated to the Arabs. Expect similar arrangements, or rather the cessation of arrangements, to follow in Central Asia and everywhere else in the world where the US Dept of Defense reckons our military strategy not merely in terms of troops and weapons, but also bases — how many bases we have, where they are located, which allies, friendly rivals or outright enemies do they abut or encircle, etc. If our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely targets of Iranian retaliation then all of our bases around the world are not forts manned by soldiers trained and equipped to defend their country and, obviously, their own persons; but are in reality large, international hostels where we deposit US servicemen to serve as hostages for failed political strategies.
How did this come to pass? How did it happen that adversaries like Iran and Syria are able to shape US strategy, so that we have failed to win in Iraq and will fail in Afghanistan and have deterred ourselves from taking action against the Iranian nuclear program, and have jammed up our strategic alliance with Israel? It is because American leadership of the last two administrations failed to act against those states that have attacked our troops, allies and interests. We did we not win in Iraq because states like Syria and Iran did not pay a price for the acts of force they used to shape political effects to their own advantage; when we failed to do so we abandoned our Middle East policy to the mercy of our enemies, who, as we are repeatedly told, can ruin Iraq and Afghanistan whenever they decide to take off their gloves. We did not win because our leadership, abetted by Washington policy intellectuals, is more interested in political effects in Washington than strategic victories in the Middle East. Seen in this light, the only American victory in the region is a pyrrhic one, the bitter harvest of which we may well be reaping for many years to come.
Lee Smith is the author of The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations
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