U.S.-led ambush strikes a positive note in Afghanistan

Source: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/04/17/world/ 17afghan2_600.JPG

A New York Times reporter recounts the story of a one-sided ambush in Afghanistan — this time launched by U.S. forces:

Lieutenant Smith was new to the platoon. This was his fourth patrol. He was in a situation that every infantry lieutenant trains for, but almost no infantry lieutenant ever sees. “Fire,” he said, softly into the radio. “Fire. Fire. Fire.”

The platoon’s frontage exploded with noise and flashes of light as soldiers fired. Bullets struck all of the lead Taliban fighters, the soldiers said. The first Afghans fell where they were hit, not managing to fire a single shot.

This doesn’t say much about the overall strategic situation in Afghanistan, but it’s pretty uplifting to see certain things going well. It’s also a great story.

We know the Future Combat System is overbudget. But does the U.S. even need it?

I’m all for new toys. The Future Combat System is an Army project that hopes to create a new fleet of military vehicles that can network with soldiers, robots and remotely-controlled drones. The Pentagon estimates the project will cost $159 billion. But in its latest confirmation of news we already knew, The Washington Post says the program’s critics are skeptical, raising the real cost to exceed DoD’s projections.

The problem with FCS isn’t its cost — because how do you put a price on saving soldiers’ lives? The same argument led Congress to approve some of the largest defense budgets in history. No, the real reason critics should oppose FCS is because it was a poorly executed idea. It’s a relic of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld‘s notion of network-centric warfare. Rumsfeld’s vision of a lighter, mobile military that can move faster, shoot farther and hide better is an extension of the idea that “if we can see it, we can hit it — and if we can hit it, we can destroy it.”

For the military, being able to destroy anything more efficiently has become a goal in itself. Most of the time, that’s a good thing. What use is a fighting force if it can’t disarm opponents quickly? But killing the enemy has now become less productive than it once was. Today, building infrastructure and providing basic services like sanitation have become critical to winning small wars — arguably more so than simply shooting at things.

It’s still important to prepare for conventional war. FCS would prove most useful in an all-out fight with a state with lots of tanks, planes and men. But as John Nagl has said, the U.S. has given up only a fraction of its conventional warfighting capability in exchange for immeasurable amounts of experience infighting unconventional wars.

So while FCS would be useful, it’s not clear that it makes any significant contributions to the U.S.’s already rock-solid global military posture. It’s a project that’s effective conceptually, and would certainly provide soldiers a huge tactical advantage on the ground.  Still, I can’t help but think it was designed for the wrong war — or at least, the kind of war that the U.S. should be less interested in waging these days.

The Mexican drug war finally becomes America’s problem

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00030/mexico_drug_war4_30955a.jpg

Mexico’s uncontrollable drug war is so problematic that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has plans to get involved. This is the kind of conflict that blurs state borders, making efforts to come to closure a transnational issue. It’s about time the U.S. took action. The Mexican cartels have allegedly killed as many as 6,300 people since last January amid the ongoing shooting war with government forces.

Mexican officials have said the only way to successfully limit the drug trade’s influence in the country is to add U.S. support. Much of the cartels’ money laundering and production of methamphetamine and marijuana takes place in the United States, according to the Congressional Research Service. Today, Mexican drug lords dominate the entire spectrum of drugs:

Mexican drug cartels already control about 90 percent of the cocaine trade across the United States and most of the market for marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin, with operations in 230 cities, according to the U.S. Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center. They have essentially supplanted the Colombian and Dominican criminal groups that terrorized major U.S. cities through the 1980s and ’90s, the agency said.

Add to that the tremendous volume of firearms (including high-power, select-fire assault rifles) that flow across the U.S.-Mexican border every day — and what you have is the ammunition (literally) for the continued violence. American weapons “account for 95 percent of Mexico’s drug-related killings,” says CBS News.

The U.S. finally realizes that it’s contributing to the problem, and it’s said it wants to respond to the war with counterinsurgency measures. The military plans to give Mexico $1.4 billion and assistance with intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance.

Kyrgyzstan just asked the U.S. military to leave. Does that work to Russia’s interest?

Source: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/02/04/world/asia/1231547102124/us-troops-out-of-kyrgyzstan-.html

By now, you’ve probably found out that the government of Kyrgyzstan wants to kick the U.S. out of the country. If you  haven’t — well, you heard it here first.

It’s a big deal when any country asks the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world to leave. But the strategic location of Kyrgyzstan makes this particular request especially problematic for the U.S.

The American air base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, lies within striking distance of Afghanistan. It serves as the logistics hub for everything related to the U.S. mission against the Taliban. From cargo shipments to tanker refueling, the Manas air base is central to the U.S. military.

There are signs that Moscow may have had a hand in the incident. It’s in preliminary negotiations with Washington about putting the air base somewhere in Russia — this, just after Russia agreed to loan Kyrgyzstan a large sum of money.

The hullaballoo over Kyrgyzstan raises some important questions: did Kyrgyzstan decide to force the U.S. out as a result of the loan? And did Russia make the loan intending for that to happen? If so, the follow-up: did Russia simply want to disrupt American operations in Afghanistan, or did it want something else? The U.S. to relocate the base within Russia’s own borders, perhaps, given the ongoing negotiations? And the follow-up to all of that: why??

I don’t profess to know the answer to all these questions. But while I try to find out, here’s a video from the New York Times to hold you over. It’s about life in Manas — the kind that you don’t normally hear about on the wires.

Extra soldiers help, but it’s the strategy that counts

A new report from the NYT tells us more of what we already know: that the military situation in Afghanistan is deadlocked until the U.S. and its NATO allies can get more troops to the region.

The commanders here call the current situation “stalemate,” meaning they can hold what they have but cannot do much else. Of the 20,000 British, American and other troops here, only roughly 300 — a group of British Royal Marines — can be moved around the region to strike the Taliban. All the other units must stay where they are, lest the area they hold slip from their grasp.

Vast swaths of the border remain unpatrolled and completely open. The drug trade is as lucrative as ever. But things should start looking up soon. More important than the extra 20,000 soldiers that will be deployed to Afghanistan is the strategy Western forces have come to adopt.

American commanders say the extra troops will better enable them to pursue a more sophisticated campaign against the insurgents; the overriding objective, rather than killing Taliban fighters, is to provide security for the civilian population and thereby isolate the insurgents.