Stephen M. Walt. Foreign Policy, 18 April 2012.
http://defensealt.org/Ifat2Q

Excerpt:

There’s an overwhelming case for removing these archaic and unnecessary weapons from the European continent. Ideally, we would do this as part of a bilateral deal with Russia, but we ought to do it even if Russia isn’t interested.

Editor’s Comment:

Couldn’t agree more!

Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 17 January 2012.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/78566480/Defeating-Iran-s-Anti-Access-Weapons

Army Training and Doctrine Command. TRADOC Pam 525-3-1, 19 August 2010.
http://www-tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/pams/tp525-3-1.pdf

Excerpt:

This pamphlet revises the conceptual and operating focus of the Army from major combat operations to that of operational adaptability employing full-spectrum operations under conditions of uncertainty and complexity.

TRADOC Pam 525-3-1 describes how future Army forces conduct operations as part of the joint force to deter conflict, prevail in war, and succeed in a wide range of contingencies in the future operational environment. The pamphlet describes the employment of forces in the 2016-2028 timeframe and identifies capabilities required for future success to guide Army force development efforts.

Steve Coll. The New Yorker, 15 February 2010.
http://defensealt.org/HohGPm

Excerpt:

I have also heard it suggested, however, that the big and visible Helmand operation is being conceived as a sort of “demonstration project” of joint U.S. and Afghan security and governance capabilities – that “clear, hold, and build” there will be constructed as a sort of theme park of revived counterinsurgency practice.

Whatever the durability of the current operation, the Helmand River Valley is not likely to be this war’s decisive locus.

Bernard I. Finel. Armed Froces Journal International, February 2010.
http://www.afji.com/2010/02/4387134

Excerpt:

A fundamental challenge in devising a strategy for the use of American military power is that the world has literally never seen anything like it. The U.S. today has military capabilities at least equal to the rest of the world combined. There is virtually no spot on the globe that could not be targeted by American forces, and at most a small handful of countries that could thwart a determined U.S. effort at regime change — and some of those only by virtue of their possession of nuclear weapons.

American military capabilities are not a potential form of power, subject to use only following a lengthy mobilizing and requiring a long campaign to achieve significant goals. Instead, the U.S. can destroy fixed locations in a matter of hours or at most days, and implement regime change in a matter of weeks or a few months.

Because this capability is so novel — dating only to the end of the Cold War — American strategists lack a clear framework to guide the utilization of this force. They have sought to match capabilities to conceptions of the use of force from a different era, one in which the Cold War made regime change unpalatable due to the risk of escalation and that tended to make localized setbacks appear as loses in a perceived zero-sum competition with the Soviets.

The reason, in other words, that the U.S. didn’t simply remove Fidel Castro from power was that after 1962, the international consequences seemed too high and the goal too risky. The reason American leaders felt compelled to engage in a lengthy counterinsurgency in Vietnam was the concern that a communist victory would have been a setback in the broader struggle. But imagine a world in which there were few or no international consequences to removing Castro from power, and imagine a world in which the commitment to Vietnam was strictly commensurate to the threat that the Vietnamese communists could pose to the U.S. That is the change in context that has occurred over the past 20 years, and the U.S. has not yet adapted.

Editor’s Comment:

And so many in the U.S. choose to ignore how this dominant military power motivates other nations to seek nuclear weaponry or hold tightly to those they have acquired already!

Nir Rosen. Boston Review, January/February 2010.
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR35.1/rosen.php

Excerpt:

Perhaps McChrystal’s most crucial assumption—also endorsed by Obama—was that the failure to create a unified, centralized state in Afghanistan will lead to al Qaeda’s return. This claim is widely contested. Al Qaeda is already ensconced in Pakistan, where it is better protected from the United States than it would be in Afghanistan. And the Taliban are not interested in global jihad.

Barry R McCaffrey. McCaffrey Associates, 05 December 2009. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/0911McCaffrey.pdf

Excerpt:

Most Afghans are also dismayed at the injustice and corruption of the government (in particular the ANP) compared to the more disciplined and Islamic Taliban.

Twice in recent months we have seen battalion sized units of Taliban fighters conduct highly successful (not-withstanding catastrophic losses by the attacking insurgents) complex attacks employing surprise, reconnaissance, fire support, maneuver, and enormous courage in an attempt to over run isolated US units. This is not Iraq. These Taliban have a political objective to knock NATO out of the war —backed up by ferocious combat capabilities.

Adam L. Silverman. Sic Semper Tyrannis, 12 November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HHQ9VV

Excerpt:

Given the reality that the US faces in Afghanistan; the historic lack of functional centralized government, exceedingly high number of societal elements, many of which are geographically isolated or semi-isolated, the illegitimacy of the current Afghan government, and the fact that groups we are fighting are not all insurgents makes successfully reaching the COIN end state of tethering Afghan society back to the Afghan state very, very difficult. The debate on the use of COIN really needs to be focused in on this difficult set of Afghan circumstances and whether they allow any chance for a positive counterinsurgency outcome.

Karl E. Eikenberry. Embassy of the U.S.A., Kabul, 08 November 2009.
http://static1.firedoglake.com/37/files/2009/11/Winning-in-Afghanistan.pdf

Gilles Dorronsoro. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HdwsJ4

Excerpt:

…the International Coalition, with its limited resources and diminishing popular support, should focus on its core interests: preventing the Taliban from retaking Afghan cities, avoiding the risk that al-Qaeda would try to reestablish sanctuaries there, pursue a more aggressive counterinsurgency strategy in the North, and reallocate its civilian aid resources to places where the insurgency is still weak.

Editor’s Comment

Some would say that Pashtunistan is already a nation which can’t yet fully establish itself as a state (although there is already considerable local governance, both Pashtun tribal and Taliban.) Presently Punjabi (Pakistani) and US/NATO military intervention prevent the establishment of a state.

Dorronsoro’s Afghan war strategy would seem to be a step in moving the Pashtunistan national cause to within a decade or so of success. Of course, the cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad would have to fall under Pashtunistan governance eventually, even if Western forces resisted for some years.

Alissa J. Rubin. New York Times. 31 October 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HKHukc

David Isenberg. PRIO, 15 October 2009.
http://www.prio.no/sptrans/-1720057691/Isenberg Private Military Contractors PRIO Report-2009.pdf

Daniel L. Davis. U.S. Army (unofficial and unclassified), 14 October 2009. Hosted on the Sic Semper Tyrannis Website.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/go-deep-_14-oct-09_.pdf

Excerpt:
In 2009 Afghanistan today, conditions on the ground are nothing like that of Iraq of early 2007 and there is little reason to believe the tactical success achieved by the Iraq surge could be repeated today in Afghanistan. There is presently no successful “Sons of Iraq”- type operation that would remove large numbers of enemy fighters from the streets, valleys and mountains. No large segment of the insurgency has indicated any interest in establishing a ceasefire with allied forces. The insurgency in Afghanistan today is spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles of inhospitable terrain and even 40,000 additional fighters would likely be insufficient to militarily stem the tide.

James Vega. The Democratic Strategist, 12 October 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HW9Bic

Derek S. Reveron and James L. Cook. Joint Forces Quarterly, October 2009.
http://www.ndu.edu/press/lib/images/jfq-55/4.pdf

Gian P. Gentile. Parameters, Autumn 2009.
http://www.public.navy.mil/usff/documents/gentile.pdf

Excerpt:

Population-centric COIN may be a reasonable operational method to use in certain circumstances, but it is not a strategy.

Editor’s Comment:

Agreed! COIN is a collection of tactics. What is missing in Afghanistan is a strategy with any credible chance of success … despite the lip-service to political solutions.

General Stanley McChrystal, Commander ISAF, speech on Afghanistan to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 01 October 2009.
http://www.iiss.org/EasysiteWeb/getresource.axd?AssetID=31537&type=full&servicetype=Attachment

Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), DoD, 29 September 2009.
http://www.dsca.mil/programs/CPO/DSCA_StratPlan_2009-2014.pdf