Afghan farmers sow seeds by scattering them randomly about, known as broadcasting. The civilized way to do it of course is to plant crops in rows, thereby improving efficiency and productivity. In the West we've been farming this way for I imagine many centuries. Obviously, the needs that drove us to refine our agricultural habits are not relevant or operative in Afghanistan. The US military is trying to educate Afghan farmers on the proper way to manage crops, but a troubling fact remains: how can we ever win a war in a country governed by such a culture without utterly destroying that culture and raising up a new?
This is what bothers me about counterinsurgency styled war - if the insurgency is feeding off a culture you cannot or will not change then no matter how 'population centric' your strategy is, the key factor in COIN operations, the viability of the strategy none the less remains dubious in the long term. See for example a leaked memo by a high ranking American officer in Iraq that coherently lays out in point form how despite the best efforts of US forces Iraqi military and political cultures remain lazy, corrupt, incompetent, making a continued American presence in Iraq a zero sum game. In short, COIN operations were successful in Iraq - but to what end?
I worry that the proponents of COIN are cultivating a dangerous illusion, one that believes that 'war is so last century' and that, while acknowledging the need for military power, imagines that a more rational use of such makes the world a better place. I worry that COIN eventually devolves into a species of appeasement and pacifism but that because on the surface it still retains the trappings of military power no one notices until it's too late.
The key to empire is military vigour - once that's gone the empire quickly follows - but isn't that vigour a reflection of the culture sustaining it? I sense a cultural stalking horse in all this hyping of COIN [you going to blame this on Obama too? No - but I do think he's potentially a prime example of what I mean]; I sense perspective shifting in a direction that people think is enlightened but in the end will prove delusional.
