The FP transcript (V): Why weren’t we more savvy about our political objectives?

[Here are Parts I,
II,
III, and IV.] 

Ricks: Rajiv,
you have been unnaturally patient. [Gestures dramatically with open right hand]
This is a man who, in Baghdad,
was famous for shouting at people, "Right now, right now, right now!" He was a great bureau chief.

Chandrasekaran:
I'm just taking all
this in. It's fascinating. I find myself agreeing with an awful lot of
what's being said around the table.

Just sort of building on a lot of this, I feel like the
military does a great job of looking at troop-to-task calculations. We don't we
do that on the diplomatic side of things? There was this assumption building
on, all right, September 12: Was the Taliban really our enemy? We then --
fast-forward a couple months -- think that we can have a reasonably strong
central government, civilian government, in a country with zero institutions,
with no human capacity. There just, from the very beginning, weren't the necessary
questions asked about what this would take, not from a military point of view,
but from a whole-of-government point of view.

All these assumptions get baked in that wind up being
completely contradictory and counterproductive to any efforts to build a stable
government, and at no point do we step up and say, "Wait. This doesn't
make sense." Part of it's a bandwidth issue. Part of it is, I think,
civilian sides of our government aren't doing the necessary sorts of
calculations about: Is this in our best interests? Is this doable? What would
it take to do it? And then, even further, getting right back to the beginning,
the question of space; one associated issue with this -- and I don't mean to
blame the victim here -- we don't do a good enough job of saying no to the
partners we're trying to help. Not just internationally, but the Afghans
themselves. You know, when the Afghans say, "We want to centralize power
in Kabul because, you know, Ashraf
Ghani says it's going to help fight corruption," we don't push back
meaningfully and say, "Yes, but it's completely unrealistic given the
capacity of your government." When [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai says,
"We want you ISAF forces to go
push into these districts because we've got bad guys there," we don't do a
good enough job of saying, "Wait a second; it doesn't make sense to do
that."

Ricks: General
Jabouri, listening to this, as someone who has dealt with the Americans, what
do you think of Rajiv's analysis? Are the Americans able to say no? Do they
make intelligent decisions, from your perspective as an Iraqi general and a
mayor of a city?

Jabouri: I think
the Americans, in the beginning, always take the ally from who said, "OK,
do everything they want." And they're strong. Like Chalabi,
Mowaffak al-Rubaie,
someone, they always say to them, "OK, I'm from this hand to this hand
[extends hands, palms up]." But after that discover they chose the wrong man.
The ally is not the man who says it is always OK to do things.

Ricks: So again,
a lack of sufficient thought, of understanding, going into the situation.

Jabouri: I think
also they depended totally on the people outside Iraq, not from inside Iraq.
The do not make a balance between that, but now we see the result in Iraq, with
what happened.

Ricks: Ms.
Flournoy?

Flournoy: I think
this point about really being thoughtful about your political objectives and
what's the goals and the strategy to achieve them and not being all things to
all people is really important. And I think it is something that we really
struggle with. When you ask why, I do think it does also speak to the imbalance
in our own investment as a government. I mean, we have this tremendously --
well, at least historically -- well-resourced military, well trained, well
cultivated. Obviously when you put thousands of Americans in harm's way, a lot
of attention is going to rightfully be focused in that direction to make sure
we know what we're doing and are managing that well.

But again, if you think what drives the success or failure
of these operations, it is your political objectives and your political
strategy and how well you frame those question. I would argue we don't grow on
the civilian side grand strategists, we don't grow political strategists. You
occasionally find them, and I can list a few I admire and respect. But I
remember one of the most difficult moments of the Iraqi government formation,
sitting in the embassy in Baghdad saying, "Well, what're we going to do?
What's our strategy to help them cohere?" Not that the U.S. was going to
dictate the outcome, but how are we going to help get over this hump and move
forward? Having the senior political officer at the time tell me, "Well,
that's not my job. My job, as the political officer, is to observe and
report." And I said, "I'm sorry. We invaded a country. We are
occupying this country. Your job is
thinking about the political strategy that's going to help put it back together
again on sustainable terms." But that's not what we train people to do;
it's not what we resource them to do. And I do think it's connected to this
fundamental imbalance of resources and that we didn't put enough time,
attention, thought, focus, resources into the whole civilian side of what we were
doing.

Dubik: In
conflicts that are essentially not winnable, militarily. The military
operations are necessary, but they're not sufficient. They're not even
decisive.

Ricks: Emile
Simpson makes this very good point in his new book, War From the Ground Up, as a young British officer who fought
in Afghanistan that you've got to turn Clausewitz on his head and look
as this as violent
politics, not as warfare that leads to a political outcome. A lot of it is
political operations coming out of the barrel of a gun.