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211 CHAPTER 12 Assessing the Strategic Alternatives John Arquilla and Hy Rothstein Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, whose military victories in the 1860s and 1870s did so much to make modern Germany, is perhaps best remembered for his insight that “no plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter.”1 Yet, for all the wide acceptance of this aphorism by soldiers and statesmen around the world, set “plans of operations” have all too often been adhered to in wartime long after being overtaken by events. For example, the suicidal massed infantry assaults of World War I persisted for years before changes were made. In World War II, the Germans kept relying on patented blitzkrieg battle plans long after their opponents had learned how to defend against such attacks, which led to catastrophic losses at Kursk, Falaise, and the Battle of the Bulge. And in these “conventional” wars of the past, identifying the critical targets for military action was relatively easy. Today, finding the enemy’s pressure points is infinitely more difficult, thereby calling for more options and greater strategic flexibility from the start. What is clear in Afghanistan is that the status quo is untenable and therefore will not produce or sustain a stable equilibrium. Even changes at the margin that focus on troop withdrawals are unlikely to secure American interests, in the absence of significant policy and strategy changes. It is troubling to note that the American experience—since long before the war in Afghanistan—has also reflected this tendency to stick with a plan in which much has been invested. This can be seen in the case of the Vietnam War, where the US military’s stubborn devotion to its “big unit” plan of operations was the proximate cause of the debacle that ensued. Over the past decade, American field campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have also reflected a reluctance to depart from set plans. But in Iraq, a shift was eventually made from a latter-day version of the big-unit war concept to a network of small outposts that was nicely complemented by tens of thousands of now-friendly insurgents who had been induced to switch sides. This shift took too long to make, and war costs were far too high by then. 212 John Arquilla and Hy Rothstein A shift of a similar sort is under way in Afghanistan today. Hy Rothstein notes, in chapter 4 on field operations there, that American, friendly Afghan, and other allied forces have become more “packetized” and more widely distributed throughout portions of the country and are becoming more effective. It is clearly an effort to rekindle the small-unit successes enjoyed by the US Special Forces teams at the outset of the war in Afghanistan and by conventional forces in Iraq in 2006 and after. But for all the innovativeness being shown in the military operational realm, the overall strategic aim of consolidating a strong, legitimate central government in Kabul seems to have remained mostly unchanged, even as evidence continues to mount regarding the high cost and low likelihood of achieving such an outcome. This is not an uncommon situation, as larger strategic aims have often proved very hard to change—even in the face of highly problematic results in battle. Our own expectations of “right” often cloud our judgments regarding what can reasonably be achieved. And on occasion this sort of higher-level strategic stubbornness has led to terrible catastrophes. In ancient times, the Athenians, late in the Peloponnesian War, were offered peace terms short of their grander aims. They rejected the offer and subsequently lost, ending their golden age in ruin.2 Something similar happened to the Germans during World War I, when they rejected compromise peace overtures and decided to “roll the iron dice” with a final offensive in 1918, in the hope of winning the victory that had eluded them in 1914. They failed, Germany fell, and the world careened toward a future cataclysm of even greater proportions. To be sure, there are also some examples of winning by adhering to initial concepts of operations and larger strategic aims—but they are not predominant. Seldom is stasis the solution across the board. The Romans may have been quite single-mindedly devoted to destroying Carthage, but they could not have done so without first transforming themselves into a naval power, and then coming up with radical new battle tactics on land and sea. In more modern times, the steadfast Union aim during the...

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