No Longer Paying for Breakages - Western Intervention Post Afghanistan

 

Events in Afghanistan appear to be accelerating rapidly in a negative direction. The withdrawal of western forces has precipitated an offensive by Taliban forces that has resulted in the Government of Afghanistan losing control over significant portions of its territory.

Across this divided land conflict emerges again and civil war beckons, as control over the nation increasingly hangs in the balance. The worry for some is that this will herald a slippery slope, and 20 years after their fall, the Taliban will return and take control of Afghanistan and create the perfect conditions for a staging post for instability and terror to be exported globally.

The question many commentators are asking is whether we left too soon, and if we will still be expected to return? Should the UK and others take a renewed interest and commitment in the region, or is time to step back and let others do it instead?

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

At the heart of this tragedy is perhaps a deeper question – why, after decades of focus on globally deployable militaries, and trying to send troops abroad to carry out operations, does the West still seem stretched to deliver a sustainable outcome to a military operation, and is the price paid worth the investment in the military forces acquired?

A key lesson from Afghanistan is perhaps that for all the talk of nation states deploying on coalition operations, there is little ability to operate in a large scale in distant countries without the US being present. It remains the key provider of support, enablers and the ability to not just ‘kick the door in’ but also rebuild the door and put the military presence on a long-term footing to support government policy outcomes.

There are a small number of western countries that can deliver a medium scale effort abroad – the UK and France are chief in this regard, where it is possible to deploy and sustain a military force that can both operate and be credible, and not just a flag on a PowerPoint chart.

Other NATO members and allies may be able to deploy limited forces, but these are contingent on others for support and assistance. They lack the mass and technical ability to run a major operation in isolation, or without major support from other partners (who may themselves lack it if it is committed to supporting national operations).

Even if the political will existed for a major long-term commitment, the hard reality is that few countries could go it alone, and they are dependent on major players to support them in post.

When looked at pragmatically it does beg the question – why have expeditionary forces at all? There is an assumption in the West of ‘you broke it, you pay for it’ when it comes to long term boots on the ground commitments – the short term glory of a military victory is quickly forgotten and pales into insignificance when it comes to the longer term and less glamorous peace enforcement, stability and assistance training, and efforts to help nurture a country for the long haul to a place where it can take care of itself.

Paradoxically Western militaries are very good at Phase1 and well equipped for it- there is a plethora of equipment in service across NATO nations able to be used both for deterrence, and for the ability to fight in conventional war. Where things get more complex is finding the ability to stay for the long messy and often bloody next phase.

There is little public interest in staying for decades in forgotten conflicts, trying to help prevent a resurgence of violence, or training the next generation of police and troops. The butchers bill is often high, and it is hard to show progress in a metric that can easily be quantified when dealing with ancient rivalries or complex tribal divisions.

The ask here is for forces capable of not so much expeditionary warfare, but long-term presence -the ability to operate and sustain themselves at distance, while operating effectively for the long haul calls for a different set of requirements – good IT, communications, mobility but not necessarily armour, and a logistics supply chain that can, for many years at a time, keep food, fuel and support flowing into a small number of fixed locations.

The assets needed for this sort of work do not easily translate into deployable ‘heavy’ units or deter external aggression. The sorts of skills and experience needed would have been practically useless in a ‘Cold War deterrence’ scenario for many smaller nations because they added little to the ability to deter an aggressor.

This then leaves us in a curious position, where since the end of the Cold War, nations have invested in this expeditionary approach, only to find that they are reliant on others to deploy it, and that there is rarely the long-term goodwill or support to remain.

Given that interventions are costly, time consuming and require multi-decade support, is there a continued case for this sort of intervention capability? One argument could be that the withdrawal from Afghanistan could mark the end of the Western era of post-colonial policing, and a move far more away from long term boots on the ground, to one of returning to deterrence, visible presence nearby and the threat of strikes, but no ground holding commitment.

Such a move is arguably set out in the Integrated Review, which puts forward a vision of a British military optimised for this sort of presence. A global network of low level engagement, raiding parties in the form of a littoral strike group and conventional deterrence delivered by other assets.  

There is seemingly little desire for another round of endless operations in dusty places trying to build a peace in a nation that exists in name only. Far better to step back and let things resolve themselves, than get embroiled and take sides and casualties as a result.

This may sound a deeply cynical view, but one could ask what benefit has been gained from the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan after the initial military success. Nearly two decades on, Western forces have been committed on the ground time and again to hold the line, train and capacity build, and try to keep governments in power, but with seemingly little success.  The message seems to be that if you deploy in, you’re staying in for decades to come and be ready for this, or don’t bother to come at all.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

From a wider military perspective, its hard to not draw the conclusion that the West is stepping back from major operations as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. The political cost is high, they absorb blood and treasure, and the effects may not be seen or felt for years to come. Why pay a political price to sustain an open wound?

With this increased lack of desire to operate comes the realisation that without the US, these operations cannot happen. The withdrawal from Afghanistan by the US has served as a timely reminder that the US commitment and presence underpinned the operation in country.

No other nations have the resources or mass or sustainable supply chains to do in Afghanistan what the US has done, and cannot fill this gap, even if they wanted to. It is easy to forget how substantial the US military capability is, particularly when you look at the wider support provided by contractors and industry, and how reliant others are.

The realisation that missions like this can only occur with active US engagement should serve as a warning to nations with ambitions of long-term presence in other countries. This is only doable with a major infrastructure and industrial support and takes a great deal of time and money to do properly. Smashing a country to rubble is (relatively speaking) easy, taking the time to stay long haul to fix it is hard

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For the UK and other leading military powers, the question arising from what is going on in Afghanistan is ‘what is the value in having a large-scale deployable military at all’? It is clear that the UK cannot fill the US gap, and could only have a limited effect – at the cost of denuding wider operations of resources and support, and for what purpose?

UK force structures make sense as both a peacekeeping (light scale, low key and consensual presence) on an enduring basis – look at Cyprus, where this has been going on for decades, or at Mali, where it is occurring on a more robust, but still relatively speaking low level of operations.

There is also an ability to ‘smash the door in’ by sending in large scale effort and operating with partners to stage a major conventional operation. This could be the Army in Europe deterring against Russian attack, or with the Navy elsewhere with carriers forming part of international coalitions to deliver airpower. There are sufficient tools in the toolbox to deliver this as a ‘one time shot’ to send a message to countries that the UK can, and will, use force if needed.

But trying to define the benefits of this medium-term presence is harder – being sucked into longer term presence like Afghanistan where it requires a large chunk of the effective fighting component to support, and takes them off training for other operations, sucks up many resources that cannot be used to train for the deterrent mission. But its also a mission that sucks up resources for the long haul without any easily definable end step.

As has been seen all too clearly, when you set the determination to leave, all your foes need to do is wait out, put you under pressure and wait for the final planeload of troops to depart. This sort of operational activity is perhaps the worst of both worlds – it ties up resources, people and units to deliver an operation that cannot be won, but which cannot be ended without being lost.

Those nations opposed to the West will look at the withdrawal from Afghanistan with interest – it shows the limitations of Western military power, but also shows what aspiring powers need to be prepared to do to gain in the long term. The message is simple – don’t commit to a long term ‘boots on the ground presence’ unless you have a clearly definable and deliverable end state. Without this, you will be sucked into a morass that you will one day extract from with little to show for your efforts.

If the decades after WW2 were known as the Cold War, as a period where deterrent and low-level peace keeping were the order of the day, and the period 1991-2021 was the era of ‘expeditionary enforcement’, then perhaps we are entering a new era of attitudes to military operations.

The public will support or tolerate risks where a quick win is at stake. They seem to rarely mind, or understand low level training or mentoring, or even limited presence where it has a clear rationale. There is though little interest or support in getting involved in someone else’s long-term affairs, particularly when prior expeditions have had such limited success.

The era we are now entering in the West is maybe better defined as that of aggressive deterrence – namely possession of military forces used to deter and coerce others into acting in a manner we judge fit – be it by training, presence or support to multi-national activity, and in extremis used to enforce outcomes in support of international rules-based system as a message to third parties of the risks of conflict with the West.  The US will continue to act as the lead for this sort of activity, supported by other parties, but there will be declining interest or value seen in long term presence after the conflict is over.

Perhaps the time is approaching when there will be fundamental shifts in force structures and capabilities – away from a model optimised to deploy divisions with support, which in turn generates sustainable brigades on long term peacekeeping/enforcement missions like Iraq or Afghanistan, to one that instead focuses on the very small scale and the very large scale and little in between.

It will be interesting to see what shifts occur, but the model of ‘ranger battalions’, long term warship deployments with OPVs and airpower at hubs delivers in terms of this presence, stepping away from the difficulty of messy entanglements without end.

The rest of the world will see this shift in Western attitudes both as an opportunity, but also a lesson learned. Nations like China may well be reluctant to rely on hard power to fix long term problems in Africa or the Middle East, and instead drawing on the lessons of the West, leave these nations to sort their own problems out.

In the case of Afghanistan, it feels that this nation has entered a new phase of suffering and anguish, but baring an unforeseen change of events, it no longer feels like the West is coming in numbers to solve a crisis that is not seen as being a cause worth dying for on the ground anymore. It will be left, once again, for the Afghan people to do the dying amid the ruins of centuries of ruins caused by external intervention. The cycle continues anew – all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again.