Asymmetric wars and how to lose them
Throwing treasure and precious soldiers' lives at them is never the answer
My silence at the end of last week was deliberate: I was waiting for the fall of Kabul. Unlike the US Government (but not, for once, the British), it was obvious that the Taliban would be in charge within a couple of weeks after the start of August. Less to do with their military prowess, most to do with the abject failures of a corrupt and weak Afghan Government, it has led to a massive defeat of the West and, more significantly, Western liberal values, which reach much further than to just ideas of democracy.
Imposing – for that’s what a military occupation does, however well-intentioned – democracy on a country whose national sport is internecine conflict (going back centuries) was always going to be a Sisyphean project. The Taliban, whose timescale is closer to the eternal than most, only had to wait until principally the USA got tired of the cost in treasure and lives. And, as well, patiently chart the endless progression of corrupt incompetent local politicians. The people of Afghanistan want their Augean Stables to be cleared out: who better than Islamic fanatics whose corruption is less obvious to the majority. And so, here we are again: back to year zero.
The USA is very far away from middle eastern terrorists; Europe (and the rest of Asia) is very much closer. It will not just be European Governments who shiver in their beds tonight. Russia, with huge numbers of Muslims, threatening by sheer numbers, to become a majority soon, has much to fear. As does China, whose current response, to carry out a low-level ethnic cleansing of the Uighars, is a measure of their own desperation.
A large part of the problem for the NATO alliance, invading Afghanistan in 2001, ostensibly to eliminate the threat from al-Qaeda, after the attacks on the USA in that September, was in not evaluating the intractable problems thrown up by asymmetric warfare. We now see the cost of that failure.
Asymmetric warfare describes a form of fighting between large military powers and small – it frequently involves insurgencies. It’s why the West has lost in Afghanistan, to the apparent bewilderment of some, whose governments have thrown away precious lives and much treasure over decades in a skewed war doomed from the start.
It is tragic to hear the exact same words and phrases used by officials to ‘explain’ what is happening in Afghanistan as they were used to ‘explain’ why the USA lost so decisively in Vietnam, 45 years ago. But the principals are the same. Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars, an article written in 1975, for World Politics, goes a long way to explain the reasons.
A critical element of those reasons is what may be called the moral state of the stakeholders. In Vietnam, as in Afghanistan, the eventual winners fought for their nation, their territory, their homes and their way of life. The fact that in one case it was communism, the other extremist Islam, is irrelevant. The opposing sides – the USA in Vietnam, ostensibly NATO in Afghanistan – had a far more tenuous stake in the game. At base, they were alien invaders, imposing an alien ideology. No amount of foreign firepower will ever overcome local willpower to prevail over the outsider, the infidel.
And, we should not forget, asymmetric warfare is cheap to those who would apply its principles. I do not mean in the ghastly levels of destruction it engenders, as with all wars. The Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Vietcong in their time, don’t count loss of civilian life – at all. But then, honestly, do we?
Just how much might the financial cost be, solely for the operation in Afghanistan? To 2019, so two years ago, the USA is thought to have spent $737.592 billion (£529.74 billion). Some estimates are now saying $1 trillion. The Taliban has spent next to nothing, compared with this. Even at the financial level, the USA would have lost even if it had won. But it has lost – twice over, three times over if you count its global reputational cost.
As for the human losses here are the numbers, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University (to April 2021). The war has killed 171,000 to 174,000 people in Afghanistan: 47,245 Afghan civilians, 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan military and police and at least 51,000 Taliban and others. However, the death toll is possibly much higher due to unaccounted deaths by ‘disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war.’
NATO forces were estimated to have lost 3,500 killed to May, 2020. So, you can see clearly here, while asymmetric warfare is financially cheap to its instigators, it is equally ‘cheap’ to fight from our side – if you only count professional soldiers. War operates with such brutal niceties as these.
Apart from the hard, cold fact that the West keeps on failing in these enterprises, there is another, more damaging, cost which erodes the crucial fabric of our values.
We have been told, since September, 2001, and the al-Qaeda attack on the USA, that we have to fight a global war against terrorism. That assertion led directly to the invasion of Afghanistan, and indirectly to the invasion of Iraq, two years after that. The ‘war’ that was started 20 years ago, and which continues to this day, at huge cost, is being decisively lost. To take just one element, look at the present state of the Middle East, more volatile than it has been for 50 years. The invasion of Iraq led directly to the formation of ISIS, still a potent threat, currently carrying on with its lethal agenda in parts of Africa.
The real war, of course, is for hearts and minds. Everywhere, the West, and its core value of liberal democracy, is in retreat. Aside from the continued appeal of militant Islam to the young of poor Islamic countries, Russia, blatantly revanchist, mocks the decadence of Western democracies. China peddles the false comfort of a total surveillance society, in which citizens get ‘social’ points added to their state account by being supinely conformist. And, guess what? An extraordinary number of Chinese think their system of government is for the best. Turkeys do vote for Christmas, if that’s all they’ve ever known.
Meanwhile, and concentrating just on the British Government, for our continued defence it insists we need nuclear weapons and big warships. Both, in the context of the continued successes of asymmetric warfare, are utterly useless. Asymmetric warfare will continue to grow for a simple reason: it works for the protagonists.
Asymmetric warfare cannot be fought using conventional or nuclear weapons. It can only finally be fought using soft power: foreign aid budgets are one form (we’ve just drastically cut ours, and for the foreseeable future). Embedded in that budget is education (the old tried and tested British Council is long overdue for an updated programme designed to try to win young hearts and minds).
The BBC World Service is another means by which trusted information can be disseminated, and Western values of debate and democracy reinforced
If we are out of Europe for the immediate future, Britain might instead discover an entirely kind of moral leadership, of which denying ourselves nuclear weapons would be a huge part – the first nuclear power so to do. It won’t happen while this Government of venal trough-feeding clowns and misfits is in charge, but it is a goal for which the Labour Party, and a future Labour Government might conceivably aim.
Idealistic? One critical problem for the West, right now, appears to be in large part because we are failing to assert the ideals embodied in the Enlightenment, where humanism and science, rationality and reason ruled, and liberal democracy was born. Time to step back up to the plate and say, as loudly as possible to a troubled world, that these ideals are still the best humanity can provide for itself.
Pluralism and tolerance, not dictatorship, not populism, more assuredly not religious zealotry, is the only route ahead; otherwise, we face endless chaos, death and destruction.
As for Afghanistan, the ghastly truth – easily established from history – is that fighting is their lasting legacy to the rest of the world and that, almost certainly, fighting (each other) trumps religion. In the long run, the Taliban may well find that out, to their cost. As for the present price to be paid by the women of that benighted, blasted land, the picture is dreadfully bleak.
But then it always was.
For another, unique angle on what has happened do watch Adam Curtis’ Bitter Lake, still available on the BBC iPlayer: The film reveals the forces that over the past 30 years rose up and undermined the confidence of politics to understand the world. And it shows the strange dark role that Saudi Arabia has played in this. Its focus is on Afghanistan.
This week: Tim has begun to read what many think is H.G. Wells’ masterpiece, Kipps, the story of a simple soul. Wells writes in a style that many today might find hard to grapple with but, trust me, it is well worth persevering with this book. His prolix use of English is impeccable. Most highly recommended.