A song has been stuck in my head this week, 50 ways to leave your lover by the American treasure, Paul Simon. It got me thinking about all the articles and studies written about the mistakes made in recent wars by the U.S. I categorize those studies as using the “50 Ways to Lose a War” technique. I want to shift directions to the lessons from recent wars that should be reapplied to win wars. I don’t have 50 of them, and if I did my editor would kill me. (He’s not wrong.)
9 Lessons from Afghanistan
I pull most of these lessons out of Afghanistan because although most folks have not noticed yet, the Afghan people don’t want the Taliban and their terrorist buddies back. That’s the long-game of war, ensure the citizens of a nation want the best possible governance that respects the most human rights. We don’t know yet if victory will come to the Afghan people. In long wars, victory is for historians to judge. I do know it is pointless to argue about whether America/NATO can claim victory in Afghanistan…they were always the supporting act, the ANDSF and Afghan people were the main effort.
1. Communication.
The easiest way to lose a war of narratives is to avoid talking. I’ve studied and interacted with Afghan/U.S. media and government officials daily for years and have noticed that the morale of the ANDSF and the citizens rises and falls based on what they see and hear. The most successful leaders in Afghanistan have not been afraid to speak often and directly. In my recent leadership book, I placed communication as the second chapter—because it is that important for leaders. Citizens and soldiers are constantly questioning what is happening and why. Wise leaders will fill in that space in their minds, and risk making a mistake every day. If you start every day knowing what questions are on peoples minds and aim to answer them all day long, and urge others to speak to the issues, you will make progress. You can recover from communications mistakes, but not if you are not talking.
(Shameless plug: my new book that discusses communication often is called Leaders Always Go A Little Further…Unless They Trip, find it on Amazon)
2. Logistics earlier and always.
There is a moment in the history of the Vietnam war that is often overlooked. Chief of Staff of the Army Matt Ridgway took a wise step when he saw the DC crowd clambering to get involved in Vietnam in the early 1950s. He sent a well-rounded and combat-tested recon team to Vietnam to look at factors that would be critical to be successful there—or if that was even possible. They looked at facilities, terrain, telecommunications, highways, ports, and airfields etc. With this knowledge about the giant effort that would be needed just to get a foot in the door, DC backed away, for a while, from their ideas. Logistics in Afghanistan were difficult to say the least, and while we know our engineers and logisticians like a good challenge, there are limits that you should accept about a war-zone and weave into your policy expectations. Pakistan, Iran, and Russia controlling so much of the logistics activity put a big wall up between the US and their need to target Taliban and the other terrorist network’s safehavens outside Afghanistan.
3. National policy and the will to be at war.
While some would say it was a bad sign, I find it a good sign that our government model allowed the US and their NATO plus coalition to stay in Afghanistan for two decades. A war such as this requires long-term commitment to help the citizens develop the government structures they need to defend themselves. America, for a variety of reasons, kept our military forces and other parts of the government engaged with Afghans long enough to make a generational change in their society. That occurred while citizens across the coalition were demanding we stop helping the Afghans and bring our troops home. While it was not by any grand strategy, we did stay involved through 4 presidential administrations and that will to fight was a necessary policy decision. Remember we still have U.S. forces in Japan, Germany, Italy, Korea and many other locations—long after those wars stopped raging.
4. Leaders should be chosen, not rotated in.
Again, I saw in Afghanistan that progress was made more quickly and more wisely, when leaders at many levels were hand-selected to come make changes. The typical Army system of rotating leaders through simply because they have the right rank, or are in the correct state-side position is deeply problematic. The best leaders for the critical jobs should be pooled, interviewed, and sent in for longer periods of time. Those who were able to learn more about Afghans were able to break bad news to their partners more easily. This should apply for all government members sent to work in challenging assignments. Afghans knew when we chose our envoys and military leaders carefully, and when they got the roll of the dice approach.
5. Have a plan to end the war.
I don’t just mention this because if was my niche in the war, it is so obvious that most forget to plan for it. In the atypical wars like WWI and WWII the plan was to beat the enemy into submission, and the civilians had better get out of the way. That doesn’t work in the typical smaller war setting. If you killed that many civilians today, you would be in prison. The plan to end most wars today is to grind down the opposition, stop their recruiting, counter their ideology, and find a way to reabsorb them into society as a political force and not a martial one. There are lots of books about conflict resolution available to our war planners—they should be using them to write the first and last page of the strategy, and every page in between. If you don’t start to plan for peace, you don’t start to plan for peace.
6. Listen to the locals.
Success is much easier in tactical and policy level events if you have listened to those you are trying to help. Time and again we saw the most progress made when the NATO coalition members from line-soldier to president were absorbing all the nuances their Afghan partners were explaining. You of course must verify all advice and ensure you aren’t being sucked into someone else’s problems, but you must listen. Listening also requires a variety of voices. Making it a point to hear divergent views from various segments of a society is the surest way to ensure you are not making problems worse.
7. Bring lots of friends.
I was in the rooms when American leaders were working to build the coalition for Afghanistan; NATO was actually not an easy get. Oddly many non-NATO nations were much more eager to be involved. There were also nations we didn’t want on the team due to their history in the region, and those who told us that they would rather just watch us twist for a decade than lift a finger. For all the caveats and diplomatic work needed to get a 40-nation coalition together, it is worth it. America could have never carried the load by itself and should not have wanted to. Every nation in the world brings a set of skills to a war, we should know clearly in DC what those skills are.
8. Go beyond JIIM.
The acronym of Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational is a useful start in modern war, but as we found out in 2002, it was not enough. The success of the creation of the modern ANDSF, for example, can be credited to the use of what I call the JIIM plus team. We involved academics, businesses, influencers, media outlets, non-governmental organizations, and many other actors that don’t fall into the typical government view of key players. Humanitarians and celebrities often have the same aim as militaries—to bring an end to the war and create a secure environment. But not always, so build your teams wisely and constantly add and subtract where it makes sense.
9. Study the enemy’s motivations and counter them.
When enemy morale drops you can see a relationship to the effort being put into deflating their morale. You can use force to deflate the morale of an enemy, but oftentimes it can also increase the recruiting and retention of your enemy. The key to modern war is to play the long-game as well as the short. While rifles and close air support can put a few dozen enemies out of commission in an hour, pens and computers can pull hundreds of enemies off the conveyor belt. The first and constant step of war has to be knowing why your enemy is fighting and countering that ideology. Stopping recruiting is the real key to ending small wars. Often your allies will be best positioned to lead this effort, don’t be afraid to ask them to do so.
These are just a handful of the lessons I noted as I took part in war from the Afghan-Pakistan border in Khost to executive offices in Brussels and DC. We all know how to fall off a bike; it’s the natural way of things. Staying on the bike and even letting go of the handlebars is the tricky part.
