Kings of War

Hello, I’m Rob Dover, Senior Lecturer in International Relations from Loughborough University. From 2001-2003, and 2006-7 I was a PhD student and then lecturer at King’s College London.

The morning bulletins tell us that the Defence Select Committee is about to release a damning report about the provision of air support (via helicopters) in Afghanistan (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8153129.stm). The situation is undoubtedly very difficult: if commanders on the ground are recommending the use of helicopters and are forced to go by land (with all the attendant IED problems) then this is a very poor state of affairs for a medium sized, full-spectrum power like the UK.

I spend too much time thinking about defence procurement – it does, at least pass the time quite quickly – and wondering how the UK got to be in the position it’s in at the moment. Air power (in all its many guises) is illustrative of the problems faced by the procurement system, problems that have been mostly created by political, rather than military decision-makers. Avionics is a particularly rich source of problems in UK defence procurement; the Chinook had to be retro-fitted with old avionics – because, in a timelessly classic UK way – we had bought black-box avionics from the Americans and therefore could do little about modifying them for our own uses… in slight variations this also applies to the Joint Strike Fighter (the flight systems will be completely sealed on delivery and HMG has had little input into their development – proper off-the-shelf stuff), and to Nimrod, which is ten years late -the Americans delivered their technology for Nimrod on time – and whilst it’s due to fly in December of this year, it seems unlikely this will be anything more than a ‘beta’ product. Why not just buy off the shelf ? It’s not clear to me that even BAE would be bothered if Nimrod was scrapped; they have much better things, and much newer products to be getting on with.

The old military maxim of needing equipment that is ’second best, now’ seems well worth rehearsing at the moment. Our troops need helicopters to lift infantry, and equipment in and out of tactical engagements – so buy it for them. They don’t need it to be built by Brits in Yeovil.. they just need it to fly, and preferably be able to be maintained in theatre (tragically the days of RAF mechanics needing to be trained to fix two completely different versions of the same aircraft or platform like F-4 Phantom, fitted at enormous expense with British engines, and then with the standard American engines, because the British variant was so terrible, are still with us in many forms – bad procurement lessons are learnt the hard way it seems). Even worse, much of the maintenance is now conducted out-of-theatre well, nowhere near theatre, making the rotation of equipment difficult.

So, buying the right equipment for the moment is vital.

Yes, the nay-sayers will say that research and development is a long process – which is why Eurofighter took 22-ish years to come to fruition – so you can’t expect equipment that works immediately. And they’ll say that BAE is the largest manufacturer in the UK, employing lots of hard-pressed graduates, and a long supply chain, so you can’t be mean to it. Well, yes, that’s all true, but it doesn’t help the honest Tommy being killed in Afghanistan now.

The Americans are the only nation to fund defence research and equipment ‘properly’; going through the European Defence Agency (one of its roles is to fill procurement gaps, or to find ways of doing so) makes us feel all European and good about ourselves, but it won’t get the job done. Eurocopter and the A400M will have their days, undoubtedly, but just not in this conflict.

The British government is in a bind. It’s functionally bankrupt, and whilst support for the troops increases, support for the government has fallen through the floor. It knows – in its heart of hearts – that it hasn’t equipped the troops properly, and it hopes that the indigenous defence industries will find a way out. Sadly, it’s time for the men in grey suits to bang on the door and deliver the bad news, they won’t. It’s time to go across the pond and ask nicely….

Two rather different visions of the Taliban and what makes them tick. Here’s Jason Burke:

Though some fight for cash, interviews with captured and active Taliban reveal the insurgents to be less motivated by economics than many think. Power, politics, culture, feuds, ethnicity, tribal vendettas and Afghan history also play a big part.

Burke is playing down the economic angle. But there is a certain tension, or tradeoff, between ‘power’/'politics’ and ‘tribal vendettas’/'ethnicity.’

Identity can define allegiance, but not exhaustively. Calculations about power balances can wreck the whole day of cultural ties.

In Afghanistan, it is more prudent, given the impermanence with which different power brokers rule, to hedge, and at the right time, to flip, to change sides and align with the winning side. As  Fontini Christie and Michael Semple argue:

After continuing uninterrupted for more than 30 years, war in Afghanistan has developed its own peculiar rules, style, and logic. One of these rules is side with the winner. Afghan commanders are not cogs in a military machine but the guardians of specific interests — the interests of the fighters pledged to them and of the tribal, religious, or political groups from which these men are recruited…Thus in Afghanistan, battles have often been decided less by fighting than by defections. Changing sides, realigning, flipping — whatever one wants to call it — is the Afghan way of war.

Not sure I’d particularise it as the Afghan way of war. But the point emerges clearly. As Fouad Ajami once said, nations cheat. They juggle their identities. They uphold blood ties and kinship when it suits them. They avert their eyes when it suits them.  Historical struggles and ancient hatreds can be powerful ideas…until the wind changes.

Is democracy an antidote to terrorism? Today’s Observer is skeptical about our ability to make this happen, but approves of the logic:

“On a theoretical level, the moral and strategic goals are joined. A democratic Afghanistan would be less likely to incubate terrorism. If there were no Taliban, there would be no need for the occupation.”

And so, goes the argument, to disrupt the chain of terror that links the Afghan mountains with British streets, we must midwife free elections, non-corrupt institutions and human rights. Ballots are the enemy of Islamist bombers.

In the popular mind, that language was tainted by the war in Iraq, where the idea of liberating and democratising a nation that had just emerged from the nightmare of a psychopathic despot was damaged by subsequent anarchy, communal bloodletting, a refugee exodus, rampant criminality, and outrage over the lack of WMD, Saddamist links with AQ, torture, and incompetence in high places.

Nevertheless, this idea persists. Its advocates, at least in the UK, recast it in a more anodyne developmental language: ‘delivering sustainable governance’, ‘instituting nonviolent political processes’, and bringing order into ungoverned spaces – you’ve heard the vocabulary. At its core, there is still a working assumption that combating Al Qaeda is bound up with a profound liberal project of transforming failed states. One can’t help but suspect that the use of the watered-down language of foreign development appeals because it puts the same idea in less inflammatory language.

(If I were a bereaved parent of one of the British soldiers killed in the past few days, I wonder whether I would be satisfied with the consolation that my son was killed to ‘deliver governance’ and ‘build capacity’? Either we use the words ‘liberate’ and ‘liberalise’ plainly, or we ask ourselves why we euphemise it with the bloodless talk of technocratic jargon.)

The military men I’ve met who do believe in what they are doing put it more eloquently: they are fighting to offer the Afghans a better and freer life and lift Afghanistan out of being an impoverished hothouse for AQ. Right or wrong, at least that describes it directly.

But must we democratise to defend ourselves? Putting aside the vast issue of expense and difficulty, is the actual assumption correct?

Thanks to its own overreaching brutality, the crackdown by the state, and some quite sophisticated as well as quite unpleasant methods used against it, Al Qaeda is now an endangered species in the society of…Saudi Arabia. Not exactly a nirvana of pluralist, liberal, open politics, of women’s emancipation or a healthy Enlightenment spirit of intellectual freedom. But militant jihad is no less unwelcome in Saudi Arabia for that. Even people living under tyranny dislike being blown up, and tyrants don’t necessarily welcome the presence of terrorists in their midst.

As for ‘incubation’, what of free-market, open, democratic societies like Britain in the 1990’s? Being a free country did not prevent the growth of backyard terrorist cells in the First World.

On the other side of the coin, Lebanon has a good measure of democracy in its politics. Imperfect, sure, and often poisoned by outside interference. But democratic certainly. One party involved in Lebanon’s democracy is Hezbollah, an armed movement, a welfare provider, and a participant in national elections. This doesn’t stop them using classic terrorist methods when it suits them – kidnappings, attacks on civilian populations for political purposes, suicide bombings. Being democratic is not the enemy of being terroristic – in fact the former can be invoked as a mandate to justify the latter. Hezbollah can claim a powerful mandate from the masses, to use a Monty Pythonism, as it justifies its grisly methods.

There are profoundly undemocratic forces in the world who share our distaste for AQ’s global jihad, including Islamists themselves, many of whom wish to keep their jihad local and not pick a fight with the American superpower and its allies. And there are terrorists who win elections.

The broad hypothesis that liberalisation and democratisation is the path to counter-terrorism seems more based on unproven assumptions about world-historical patterns of economic and political teleology – a kind of Hegelian and Atlanticist vision of progress and modernisation – than about the links between security and liberty.

This has very direct policy implications. The commitment to democracy and anti-corruption, and a strong central state, will tie us down vastly more with our resources, money and manpower, than a more minimal commitment to backing local powers whose interests coincide with ours.

In the case of the Taliban, while their ultimate position on elections is not clear, they do pose as a credible counterstate, offering services and ‘governance’ to the masses. They are fighters but they are also judges, law-and-order providers and economic regulators. And they can also pose as the protectors of a threatened agrarian class, growing the only highly profitable crop. They can claim some kind of legitimacy rooted in popular will. An Afghanistan animated by popular political passions will not necessarily be one hostile to illiberal and jihadist forces, in other words.

I’ve been a little critical of evasive language here. So its only fair that I state my own unheroic position clearly: Al Qaeda is a non-trivial and malign force but ultimately one that is self-defeating. Our objective in Afghanistan should not be to purge it via the medicine of democratic governance, which is too hard, too expensive, too dangerous and too unnecessary. (that is not to deny that Afghans may well decide to develop their own democracy with or without our assistance. It is to question whether we should be engaged in a large-scale military campaign to do so on our own timetable.)

Instead, our goal should be to leave Afghanistan as a place where AQ cannot operate safely or unmolested. They may seek to set up shop again there, but they will be hunted, harassed and permanently trying to stay alive. To do this, we need to craft a coalition of all those, no matter how unpleasant, who share this minimal aim. It means cutting deals with bastards, keeping a lighter presence, and doing rough work in the shadows, and feeding money and material support to those willing to help out. Not a perfect or humane alternative, and one where innocents will be killed, but a more realistic and affordable one.

Illiberal? Absolutely. But thirty years of endless war sounds like an even worse illiberal state.

The War in Afghanistan, as the opening campaign of the War on Terror, has now gone on for longer than World War Two. As Ken points out below, Richard Holmes amongst others has made this point.

My polite answer is, so what?

World War Two was horrific but not particularly long, if we are saying this in a meaningful, relative way. Compared to other major conflicts – the Napoleonic Wars, the Thirty Years War, the Hundred Years war, the Iran-Iraq war - it is not especially protracted. It was unbelievably intense, but that is a different thing.

As a less intense campaign of counterinsurgency, policing and nationbuilding, Afghanistan has not yet reached a historical level of exceptional duration, if we compare it to other similar campaigns.

What should give us pause is not the empty comparison with World War Two, but the problem that a resolution, political settlement or emerging strong allied state in that country seems so far away from where we are now. In that regard, Afghanistan looks like a long war in the making. It is not inflicting enough attrition to accelerate active public opposition to involvement, but inflicting enough to erode national will steadily. So domestic impatience may take some years yet before it undermines political will. As will attrition by the Taliban. Of course, nothing is guaranteed. But it is these factors which might help explain the feeling of fatigue around the Afghan war.

Of course, crass comparisons with major conventional conflicts are also the fault of those who spoke prematurely of decisive victories in those prehistoric days of 2001-2003.