A Well Worn Path: The Soviet and American Approaches to the Critical Tasks of Counter Insurgency
Bart Howard
The conflict in Afghanistan is clearly at the top of the list of U.S. foreign policy challenges. Each year more and more resources are committed to the effort to stabilize and secure Afghanistan. The cost of this effort is more than just monetary. U.S. “blood and treasure” is being spilled as Americans debate the potential success or failure in this enigmatic and distant country. Soon all discussion and debate will intensify on the concept of “transition” sometime in the near future.
Afghanistan has been called a “graveyard of empires” because of the long list of nations that have previously attempted to conduct military campaigns that have ended in failure. 1 The most recent super power to wage a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan was the Soviet Union, which fought an expensive and costly campaign spanning from 1979-1989. Although Russia committed billions of dollars and lost thousands lives in the undertaking, the resulting withdraw and eventual collapse of the Afghan government was perceived as a humiliating defeat for Russia.
After nearly a decade of very mixed results, the United States must ask the inevitable question, is this working? Although the records of other nation’s adventures in Afghanistan are dismal, it does not mean that history will merely repeat itself, but it does bring to light the importance of looking at the efforts of the current campaign in Afghanistan through the lens of history. The experience of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan should not be dismissed; in fact it should be seriously examined to reveal if there are key lessons that can be gleaned in the conduct of the counterinsurgency campaign.
How did the Soviet Union and the United States approach two critical tasks in conducting a counterinsurgency; Denying sanctuary to insurgents and Building effective host nation forces to conduct counterinsurgency operations?
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