Afghanistan Papers Quick Reaction

I don't have time to read many of the documents that the Washington Post attained, but I have read the covering story and reactions by others.  My basic take is that this is not the Pentagon Papers, at least not yet, as the stories are mostly about a lack of a coherent strategy, success or progress was hard to measure, about the difficulties of cooperation within and between countries, that clients are unreliable and inevitably so, and so on.  And these things ... were not the product of malfeasance/malice but unfortunately dynamics that are damned near inevitable and, yes, we (those paying attention) knew about most of this stuff.  Indeed, Stephen Harper, reacting to the messed up Presidential election in Afghanistan in 2009, basically admitted defeat.

I tweeted online about a series of original sins which others added on to.  Here, I just want to discuss a key civ-mil dynamic since many of the other things are getting play elsewhere: relentless optimism by the officers leading these efforts.  I wrote in the conclusion of Adapting in the Dust that this would create a credibility gap between civilians and military folks, and I am pretty sure this WashPo report will have the same effect.

Why are the military folks seemingly so optimistic?  Both American and Canadian officers seem to think that they cannot and should not say no when asked to do something.  Sure, the civilians have the right to be wrong, so the military can't say no, but perhaps they can say "x is going to be really, really hard, and it isn't advisable to do x."  But alas, they seem to think they are Can Do! organizations. 

The funny thing is that this is a big contrast to what we knew about the US military in the 1990s--that it was hard to get the military to support intervening in the Balkans and elsewhere.  Deborah Avant wrote a piece called Are Reluctant Warriors Out of Control, not something you might see these days.  What is different? 

1. I fundamentally believe that the US armed forces still prefers not to fight new wars, but is also pretty interested in escalating the wars they are in and in not leaving a war once they are there.  I remember stories on the Joint Staff about Hugh Shelton, the previous Chairman, resisting Clinton's various missions in the Balkans.  This is the kind of thing that led to Madelaine Albright famously saying "'What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"  On the other hand, once Mattis became SecDef and Trump delegated to him, we saw an escalation in the use of force and expansion of missions...  So, I am not sure that the US military opposes all missions, but it does seem determined not to leave.
2. Humanitarian missions of the 1990s?  Not something the military wanted to do.  taking the fight to the terrorists, however defined, not so much opposition.  So, it might be the kind of mission matters.
3. It could be that 9/11 changed attitudes as the threats to the US and Canada and Europe became more direct. 

Anyhow, we need to improve the civ-mil conversation so that the military can be more pessimistic when it needs to be pessimistic and more optimistic when it is more optimistic.  And the civilians need to listen.  Getting there is really hard, and, yes, the civ-mil relationship needs a heap of trust on both sides.  Is that likely?  Depends on the country.