Can the U.S. Win the War in Afghanistan? What Napoleon Can Teach Obama About Guerrilla Warfare
PakistanPal
For nearly eight years, the United States has been engaged in a low-
intensity conflict of high stakes in Afghanistan. Prior to 9/11, this
impoverished, mountainous nation was regarded by Washington as an
anachronistic backwater, ceasing to be a strategically important
entity since the withdrawal of the Soviet Union's army of occupation,
followed soon after by the demise of that former superpower. It was
only with the realization that the Taliban regime in Kabul had
furnished a non-state actor, Al-Qaeda, with an operational base for
planning the onslaught that killed thousands of Americans in New York
City, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania that U.S. geopolitical
calculations involving South Asia were transformed.
Ironically, even after 9/11, the Bush administration still considered
Afghanistan somewhat of a backwater theatre of operations, choosing to
mount its major military effort in Iraq, a country that did not attack
America. For most of the last eight years, the battle against a
resurgent Taliban has been fought by a small contingent of U.S.
troops, reinforced by a dozen or more NATO allies involving a
multitude of microscopic deployments, each with its own unique rules
of engagement. The opposition to the Islamist forces in Afghanistan
can best be described as a multi-headed hydra mounted on a small body.
Military specialists, especially those with expertise on
counterinsurgency and partisan warfare, would not be surprised at the
current negative character of the war in Afghanistan, which has
spilled over into Pakistan, in the process destabilizing that nuclear-
armed state.
President Barack Obama has long been opposed to the military adventure
in Iraq, on the grounds that it had dangerously distracted the United
States from focusing on crushing Al-Qaeda and its allies in
Afghanistan. History has already validated Obama's assessment on what
the correct priority should have been for the U.S. armed forces. The
question now facing Obama and his administration is what strategy to
pursue in Afghanistan. The fragments that have emerged so far seem to
indicate two trends: modestly reinforce the U.S. troop presence in
Afghanistan, while linking the Taliban and Al-Qaeda presence in
neighboring Pakistan to the overall theater of operations.
Will President Obama's approach on Afghanistan prove more efficacious
than that of George W. Bush? The lessons of history raise doubts that
deserve serious reflection. The United States has not had a stellar
record in winning wars against determined insurgents fighting a fierce
guerrilla war. Vietnam is a conspicuous reminder that even hundreds of
thousands of American troops, backed by massive technical means and a
powerful airforce, cannot guarantee victory.
There is a voice from the distant past who has something to say that
is highly relevant to the military challenges facing the U.S. military
in Afghanistan. The Swiss military theoretician, Antoine Henri Jomini,
served as a senior staff officer in Napoleon's army during the
Peninsular War. This brutal conflict, fought on the Iberian Peninsula,
began with the occupation of Spain by the French army. The population
revolted, leading to a savage conflict that gave rise to the term
"guerrilla war." The British sent a small but well disciplined
professional army to aid the Spanish insurgents, under the command of
the Duke of Wellington. In five years the combined army of Spanish
guerrillas and British regular troops utterly defeated the French.
Napoleon's defeat in the Peninsular War, combined with his forced
retreat from Russia, brought about his ultimate downfall.
When writing his seminal work, Art of War, Jomini applied the lessons
he had learned during the Peninsular War to form general principals
and doctrine on guerrilla and insurgent conflicts. The principals he
laid down align with the American experience in Afghanistan with
chilling relevance.
"When the people are supported by a considerable nucleus of
disciplined troops, the difficulties are particularly great," wrote
Jomini. "The invader has only an army, whereas his adversaries have
both an army and a people in arms, making means of resistance out of
everything and with each individual conspiring against the common
enemy."
With centuries of virtually uninterrupted warfare, including a brutal
Soviet occupation that the Afghans successfully resisted, a large
component of the country's male population is well trained in small
arms tactics, making expert use of their land's barren and mountainous
terrain. Just as Wellington's troops added stiffening to the ranks of
the Spanish guerrilla fighters, there exists a large corps of veteran
fighters, including commanders, that multiplies the effectiveness of
the younger insurgents joining the ranks of the Taliban in sufficient
numbers to extend the conflict indefinitely.
Jomini provides a description of what he learned about insurgencies in
the Peninsular War, lessons that are applicable two centuries later in
the mountains of Afghanistan:
These obstacles become almost insurmountable when the country is
difficult. Each armed inhabitant knows the smallest paths and their
connections; he finds everywhere a relative or friend who aids him.
The commanders also know the country and, learning immediately the
slightest movement on the part of the invader, can adopt the best
measures to defeat his projects. The enemy, without information of
their movements and not in a condition to reconnoiter, having no
resource but in his bayonets and certain of safety only in the
concentration of his columns, is like a blind man. His combinations
are failures. When, after the most carefully concerted movements and
the most rapid and fatiguing marches he thinks he is about to
accomplish his aim and deal a terrible blow, he finds no signs of the
enemy but his campfires. So while, like Don Quixote, he is attacking
windmills, his adversary is on his line of communications, destroys
the detachments left to guard it, surprises his convoys and his
depots, and carries on a war so disastrous for the invader that he
must inevitably yield after a time.
Unless President Barack Obama restores the military draft, raises an
army of several hundred thousand soldiers to occupy and guard every
vital installation in Afghanistan, and convinces the American people
that they must sustain such a massive occupation for possibly decades,
and accept substantial casualties and massively increased military
expenditures, he will lack the means to challenge the insurgency in a
decisive manner. As commander in chief, therefore, Obama is faced with
two choices. He either maintains the status quo with slightly more
troops, which will mean only prolonged stalemate. Or he can refocus
U.S. objectives on the limited goal of ensuring Afghanistan never
again allows its territory to be used as a base to attack the United
States.
The first choice only promises a higher list of dead and maimed
Americans, and frightful expenditures at a time of profound economic
and financial crisis. The latter choice opens up the possibility of a
negotiated resolution of the conflict, leading to the attainment of
U.S. national security objectives without the permanent occupation of
a land historically hostile to all foreign armies.
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