Disjointed Ways, Disunified Means - Learning from America's Struggle to Build an Afghan Nation (2012)

2012·5.8 MB·English

by  Strategic Studies Institute

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Strategic Studies Institute Book
DISJOINTED WAYS, DISUNIFIED MEANS:
LEARNING FROM AMERICA’S STRUGGLE
TO BUILD AN AFGHAN NATION
Lewis G. Irwin
May 2012
The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do
not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Depart-
ment of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Gov-
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ISBN 1-58487-528-3
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For the dedicated professionals of America’s joint, interagency
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iii

CONTENTS
Preface ………………………..............................vii
About the Author ……...........................……..xvii
Introduction ……………........................………xix
Part I: The Challenge of Afghanistan …….....…1
1: Defining the Afghan Problem ……...........…3
2: The Scope of Irregular Warfare
and “Nation-Building” ……….................…55
3: E volving U.S. Strategic Interests,
Options, and Risks ………............................83
Part II: Disjointed Policies and
Organizational Structures ...................123
4: Disjointed Policies, Strategies,
and Objectives..............................................125
5: A Clash of Organizational Cultures
and Resources ..............................................173
6: Disunified Interagency Structures,
Processes, and Effort ..................................215
7: The Unsurprising and Uneven
Results...........................................................259
v
Part III: Potential Solutions …….................….289

8: Commonly Proposed Solutions
and Faulty Assumptions ….........................291
9: Essential Elements of Any Feasible and
Effective Solution.........................................327
10: A Way Ahead—The NSC, Combatant
Commands, and USRADCOM …............. 345
A Brief Epilogue: Contemplating the
Context and Future of “Nation-Building”..... 385
Bibliography.......................................................395
Acronyms and Abbreviations …………….… 413

vi
PREFACE
From August 2007 until February 2008, I served
with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan as the leader of
an ad hoc interagency group assigned the mission of
designing and implementing a nation-wide reform
of the Afghan National Police. This extensive police
reform initiative, dubbed “Focused District Develop-
ment,” represented a major shift in focus for the U.S.
agencies charged with developing the Afghan secu-
rity forces and their corresponding Afghan govern-
mental institutions—tasks clearly at the heart of any
successful irregular warfare effort. Coalition and Af-
ghan leaders alike deemed the mission to be of central
importance to the ongoing counterinsurgency and,
accordingly, the Afghan police development mission
received enhanced resources and concentrated senior
leader attention, as “Focused District Development”
moved forward in its design, operational planning,
and eventual execution.
In spite of these natural advantages, however,
the development, coordination, and implementation
of this high-profile initiative revealed to me major
shortcomings in U.S. Government systems for coordi-
nating and integrating the resources and effort of its
agencies, at least at the operational level of activity.
It was also becoming increasingly clear then that the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) mission
was falling well short of achieving its other major
nonmilitary objectives, despite the hard work of so
many. Given the central importance of U.S. contribu-
tions to the broader coalition effort, I began to wonder
about the root causes of the interagency shortfalls I
had observed, as well as about the potential reforms
that might enable the U.S. Government to achieve true
vii
interagency “unity of effort.” In short, how could we
realize the genuine “whole of government” approach
needed to achieve our complex national security ob-
jectives more effectively, efficiently, and directly?
As I prepared to return home at the end of my tour
of duty, a series of fundamental questions remained
unanswered:
• W ith so many talented people working so hard
to achieve “success” in Afghanistan, why were
the results falling so far short of the goal?
• W as the notion of “nation-building” in Afghan-
istan reasonable in the first place? Or was there
something about Afghanistan that predestined
“nation-building” to likely failure there, given
the basic requirements of nationhood?
• H ad the administration’s strategic guidance for
Afghanistan been clearly defined and feasible?
Did the capabilities, priorities, and effort of
the various agencies match the requirements
of this complex irregular warfare and “nation-
building” mission?
• W hat specific shortcomings in the U.S. Govern-
ment interagency processes were contributing
to these shortfalls? Did these problems stem
from structural or procedural deficiencies at
the strategic, operational, or tactical levels of
the national security apparatus, or perhaps
from some combination of the three?
• W ere there reforms of our national security
structures and systems underway already that
might reasonably be expected to solve these in-
teragency problems?
• W hat elements would any national security re-
forms need to feature in order to be successful,
given the practical realities of the agencies’ ex-
viii
isting mandates, core expertise, organizational
cultures, comparative resources, and career in-
centives?
• W hat specific national security reforms might
address those requirements directly, while
overcoming likely practical and political ob-
stacles to their implementation?
• W hat were the broader implications of these
lengthy, resource-intensive irregular warfare,
and “nation-building” missions for U.S. na-
tional security in general?
After returning home and continuing this line of
inquiry, I quickly realized that the challenges I had
discovered for myself were already commonly recog-
nized by most practitioners and observers concerned
with U.S. national security. In fact, these obstacles to
unified agency and departmental effort were acknowl-
edged to extend much further than any one operational
theater or any one reform initiative. As a result, while
my own operational-level interagency experience
served as the initial impetus for my research, this book
is not intended merely to recount my own experiences
or to focus solely on the operational-level shortfalls in
the U.S. Government interagency processes. Instead,
the goal of this analysis is to carry out a much broad-
er and more systematic review of our government’s
strategic and interagency performance in Afghanistan
to date, using the Afghan case as the vehicle for an
investigation into the nature and root causes of the
interagency problems I observed firsthand. I then use
this analysis to frame potential corrective measures
that can be applied to future irregular warfare and
“nation-building” missions in particular and Ameri-
can national security affairs more generally.
ix