Same Old Questions
A conventional strategy for Afghanistan — with an end in sight.

By Mackubin Thomas Owens, professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College & an adjunct fellow of both the Claremont Institute & the Ashbrook Center.
November 1, 2001 12:00 p.m.

sor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. Owens led a Marine rifle platoon in Vietnam in 1968-69.
September 25, 2001 8:20 a.m.

rom the very beginning of the campaign against Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda terror network, the conventional wisdom has held that a primary objective of U.S. military operations is the dislocation and overthrow of the Taliban militia that holds sway in Afghanistan ("rules" is the wrong word). But what follows the Taliban? What is the U.S. plan for "war termination?" As Fred Ikle once famously observed in a book title, every war must end.

The United States has not done very well with war termination over the last decade. While U.S. forces easily have defeated adversaries on the battlefield, the resulting military successes have only infrequently translated into political ones. A case in point is the Gulf War.

A major cause of this less-than-stellar record in war termination can be traced to an all-too-literal application of the guidelines for the use of force first articulated in 1984 by Ronald Reagan's secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger, and reiterated by Colin Powell when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the case of the Gulf War, the Weinberger-Powell doctrine resulted in military objectives, the destruction of Saddam Hussein's republican guard, that were too narrow to accomplish the necessary political outcome; the emphasis on quickly ending the hostilities — for public-relations reasons rather than for politico-military considerations — ensured that even these narrow objectives were not achieved.

During the Clinton presidency, the manifestation of the Weinberger-Powell doctrine was the occasional cruise missile "drive-by shooting." The emphasis on casualty avoidance led to over-reliance on airpower, ensuring that an adversary would hang on to fight again. As the Prussian "philosopher of war," Carl von Clausewitz observed over a century and a half ago, "in war, the result is never final...The defeated state often considers the outcome merely as a transitory evil, for which a remedy may still be found in political conditions at some later date."

President Bush and his advisers seem to have rejected the idea that this war against terrorism can be conducted exclusively from 15,000 feet. From the very beginning, military planners have envisioned the employment of ground forces, albeit so far only the use of special-operations forces. But if we are to avoid the war-termination problems that have bedeviled us in the past, we should be thinking seriously about deploying substantial ground forces.

There are those who would prefer that we count on the opposition Afghan force of the so-called Northern Alliance to provide the major effort on the ground. But there are excellent reasons for rejecting this alternative.

First, it's doubtful that the opposition forces can win without substantial help. To begin with, the Taliban forces outnumber those of the Northern Alliance. If the latter are to have any hope of success, they must be reinforced with armor, artillery, and helicopters. At the same time, the Taliban are proving to be more resilient than expected by U.S. planners, who reckoned that the Northern Alliance would have wrested the four main Afghan cities — Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, and Herat — from the Taliban before the winter. But the opposition has yet to capture even the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif.

In addition, many of the Northern Alliance distrust the U.S., believing that it left them high and dry once they had served their purpose against the Soviet Union. They remember that we provided training and equipment to fight the Soviets but were unwilling to put U.S. lives on the line. So far, they have no reason to believe that anything has changed. The deployment of ground forces to operate in conjunction with the Northern Alliance would go a long way in convincing the opposition Afghan fighters that the U.S. will not leave Afghanistan to its own devices once again.

War termination is the second reason for considering the introduction of U.S. conventional ground troops. Relying exclusively on the Northern Alliance to fight a ground war creates a potential post-war problem that the United States must seek to avoid. The Northern Alliance is made up primarily of Uzbek, Tajik, and Hazara fighters. A government dominated by these ethnic groups is unacceptable to Pakistan, which includes a sizable minority of the Pashtun, the same ethnic group from which the Taliban in Afghanistan draws its main support.

A Northern Alliance government that excludes the Pashtun altogether could destabilize Pakistan. The Taliban is popular among the Pashtun of Pakistan and the regime of Gen. Pervez Musharref is already shaky. Were a Taliban-like force able to seize power in Pakistan, both the United States and India would confront a hostile, nuclear-armed state. Osama bin Laden or his successor would then be able to portray any combined response by the United States and India as a "clash of civilizations" assault on Islam by not only "Crusaders and Jews," the current claim, but also by Hindus. This might enable bin Laden to achieve his goal of uniting the Islamic world against the United States, leading to a wider war of the sort the United States wants to avoid.

The possibility of a destabilized Pakistan means that war termination in Afghanistan will require a coalition that includes not only the ethnic groups of the Northern Alliance but also the anti-Taliban Pashtun. Such a general agreement, whether it involves the return of the King of Afghanistan or some other arrangement, e.g. a United Nations mandate, will require a substantial U.S. ground force to make it work. In other words, success in Afghanistan will necessitate the deployment of ground forces in addition to the special-operations forces currently in play.

The best way to achieve stability in Afghanistan without destabilizing Pakistan is to deploy a multinational force dominated by Islamic states, but supplemented by a sizeable U.S. ground force. Unless Americans are involved on the ground, any short-term success against the Taliban will be short-lived.

Critics of the idea that the United States should deploy a sizeable ground force invoke the specter of previous British and Soviet failures. But these examples have little applicability to the present situation. The greatest British disaster occurred during the First Afghan War of 1838-42 when the British imprudently attempted to impose an unpopular puppet ruler on the Afghans, then demonstrated remarkable military incompetence in the face of unified Afghan resistance.

The British garrison in Kabul was completely wiped out, but a punitive expedition returned to Kabul to destroy the Great Bazaar. Subsequently, the British employed a policy of manipulating the various Afghan factions. The Second (1878-80) and Third (1919) Afghan Wars were limited affairs. The Soviets faced a united front of Afghan factions, substantially supported by the United States.

Additionally, deploying ground troops to Afghanistan would constitute a major logistical challenge. Geography, topography, and geopolitics will make it difficult to concentrate a large ground force. America's preferred way of supplying war is by sea, but Afghanistan is landlocked. For obvious reasons, utilizing the Pakistani port of Karachi is not an option. Accordingly, any buildup of ground forces, particularly heavy forces, will have to rely on airlift. This will take a long time and depend greatly on the cooperation of the Russians. All of this, of course, will be complicated by the approach of Afghanistan's formidable winter. But given sufficient time and determination, the "tyranny of distance" can be surmounted.

How large a force should the United States deploy? One think tank has estimated that it would take about 300,000 troops to stabilize Afghanistan. It points out that the Soviets failed with a force half that size. Clearly, the United States would be ill advised to deploy such a force, even if it were logistically feasible. For one thing, a substantial ground force might be required for a conventional campaign against another, more militarily formidable state that supports terrorism, e.g. Iraq.

Given the limitations imposed by logistics, terrain, and the possibility that ground forces will be needed elsewhere, we should consider deploying two light infantry divisions, probably the 10th Mountain Division and the 25th Infantry Division (Light), along with a corps headquarters — about 35,000-40,000 men in all. (Elements of the 10th Mountain are already in theater). Such an effort would still be daunting. It is unlikely that these divisions could be deployed before the onset of winter. This means a winter offensive, or scaled-back operations until spring.

Neither option is appealing. But the benefits in terms of reassuring the Northern Alliance and enabling a stable postwar settlement outweigh the costs. The fact that the war on terrorism will be difficult does not mean that the United States should shrink from the effort. Doing nothing means the end of the way we live. But we should learn from our past failures to ensure that battlefield success is translated into political success. A war-termination strategy based on the deployment of ground troops is a prudent beginning.