17.Nov.2009 at 17 | David Ucko
Lt-Col Michel Goya’s ‘Vietnam Spiral’ in Afghanistan
Lt-Col Michel Goya, director of studies at the new Institut de recherche stratégique de l’Ecole militaire, in France, has published an article on the U.S. military’s ‘Vietnam Spiral’ in Afghanistan. The text is in French but struck me as somewhat out of key with other articles, footage and anecdotes on the U.S. military’s efforts in Afghanistan. Loosely translated, his gist is that U.S. forces operate exclusively from FOBs, complete with plasma screens and American products, and leave their bases only to apply overwhelming force on suspected enemy targets, delivered from the air (of course), and fairly indiscriminately too.
I am of course aware that what has been described as U.S. ‘counterinsurgency’ operations in Afghanistan have not always, or even often, subscribed to the principles of FM 3-24, or of COIN theory more generally. I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with Marine Colonel Dale Alford at a recent conference at the Naval War College, where he presented a very persuasive and memorable paper on this very point. A different version of this paper can be found here (pp. 12-15), on the site of a Marine Corps University conference on counterinsurgency, which I regrettably did not attend. Col Alford’s point, as stolen from that conference transcript, was that:
We need to re-position a significant portion of our FOBs and COPs among the population because right now they’re not. The problem is they were built for CT missions in ’02 and ’03 and in ’04 in wrong locations for a population-centric COIN effort.
And the second thing is we talk about it a lot, we write about it a lot but we are not focused on the Afghan army and the Afghan police and the Afghan border police. We don’t live with them as partnered units. We consider partnering to link up and do operations. If you’re not sleeping with them, eating with them, and crapping in the same bucket, you’re not partnered and we’re not partnered in Afghanistan.
So there is some resonance between Col Alford’s account and that of Lt-Col Goya. Nonetheless Goya’s account of U.S. force posture in Afghanistan still strikes me as something of a predictable caricature, or at least as somewhat anachronistic; it reminds me of the way Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo was crititised for isolating troops from their operating environment, or of some of the criticism of the unreal life in the ‘Green Zone’ in Iraq. Is it really the case that nothing has changed, that these bad habits of counterinsurgency still prevail? Has there been no operational learning of counterinsurgency? And what then of the many soldiers who conducted counterinsurgency so well in Iraq as part of the surge?
These are the questions I am currently trying to find some answers to. At this point, it seems to me that Goya is a little bit harsh on the conduct of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and that perhaps this criticism would have sounded more appropriate a few years ago. At the same time, Goya may also be a little too nice to his own compatriots: he contrasts the U.S. military effort with that of France, specifying that (loosely translated) “the Afghans have a good image of the French, whose community-oriented approach makes them less confrontational, more patient and more successful”. Is this simply another case of French anti-Americanism?
[...] Part II (regrettably does not include the presentation by Col Alford mentioned in the yesterday’s post) Michael Fitzsimmons, Institute for Defense Analyses David Ucko, King’s College, London Peter [...]
Cher David,
je crois que vous comprenez le français, aussi vais-je m’exprimer dans cette langue, ce sera plus clair.
Je précise tout de suite que je n’ai pas le moindre gramme d’anti-américanisme. Je crois être le seul en France à avoir écrit dans un livre et plusieurs études (et souvent présenté en conférence) tout le processus d’évolution américain, dont j’admire de nombreux aspects. J’ai donc été assez surpris par les témoignages de plusieurs officiers français et afghans (mais aussi américains) sur certaines attitudes américaines (il est vrai surtout, et sans leur faire injure, de la garde nationale) comme celle consistant à organiser une séance de tir sur un village, certes vide, que l’on vient de fouiller (il est vrai que le commandant d’unité avait annoncé qu’il n’hésiterait pas à le raser) ; à continuer de tirer, en plein Kaboul, trois-quarts d’heure après la disparition d’une menace minime ; à ne pas savoir manoeuvrer à pied. De nombreux américains rencontrés ne prennent pas vraiment au sérieux la directive Mc Chrystal.
Je concède que la situation dans la province de Kapisa est plus difficile que cela semble transparaître dans mes propos, mais je voulais combattre un peu le pessimisme ambiant en France et je savais qu’un critique trop ouverte me vaudrait les foudres de ma hiérarchie à quelques jours d’un débat au Sénat ( et d’ailleurs cela pas manqué).
Je m’empresse de commander votre livre.
Bien à vous,
Colonel Michel Goya
Merci pour votre réponse sur mon texte. Comme le dit Stéphane Taillat sur son blog, it est sans doute le cas que ce sont les décisions individuelles qui opérationalisent ou non l’apprentissage conceptuel. Votre article et argument soulignent la difficulté de conclure, oui ou non, si la militaire américaine a “appris la contre-insurrection”. Etant donné que je passerai vraisemblablement un certain temps à Paris en 2010, j’espère que j’aurai le plaisir de vous voir pour une continuation de notre entretien sur ce sujet. Avec mes sentiments les meilleurs.
[...] topic, including Michel Goya, whose piece on Afghanistan and the U.S. military I mentioned in a previous post, Christian Olsson on the responsibility to protect, and myself on the ‘dilemmas of U.S. [...]