horse of george

Robert Kaplan in the NY Times:

Everyone keeps saying that America is not an empire, but our military finds itself in the sort of situation that was mighty familiar to empires like that of ancient Rome and 19th-century Britain: struggling in a far-off corner of the world to exact revenge, to put down the fires of rebellion, and to restore civilized order. Meanwhile, other rising and resurgent powers wait patiently in the wings, free-riding on the public good we offer. This is exactly how an empire declines, by allowing others to take advantage of its own exertions.

Of course, one could make an excellent case that an ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan is precisely what would lead to our decline, by demoralizing our military, signaling to our friends worldwide that we cannot be counted on and demonstrating that our enemies have greater resolve than we do. That is why we have no choice in Afghanistan but to add troops and continue to fight.

But as much as we hone our counterinsurgency skills and develop assets for the “long war,” history would suggest that over time we can more easily preserve our standing in the world by using naval and air power from a distance when intervening abroad. Afghanistan should be the very last place where we are a land-based meddler, caught up in internal Islamic conflict, helping the strategic ambitions of the Chinese and others.

I guess I pretty much agree with all of that - except to add this is the last war like this we should involve ourselves in unless we are willing to go all the way, by which I usually mean [perhaps naively if not with ignorance] acknowledging and accepting the consequences of the culture changing imperative at the heart of occupation and an attendant and necessary belief in full spectrum, or I might say total war. I wonder if this means Kaplan shares my scepticism vis COIN? He seems to be echoing my point that counterinsurgency possibly makes sense on a tactical level but loses merit the more it comes to dominate an entire strategy - although his last paragraph seems a bit contradictory on exactly what he means.