Failure to consider war outcomes has heightened the risk of selecting myopic strategies that ignore or underestimate the critical strategic risk factors: an insurgency with sustainable local support and an external sanctuary and a host nation government that is unable to win the battle of legitimacy. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, military action resulted in the overthrow of an existing regime. Still, the United States had not thought through the risks to a favorable and durable outcome and the requirements to prevent or mitigate those risks. When those problems materialized, the United States was slow to recognize them and unable to address them adequately.
Exclusionary regimes took control in both countries and soon became predatory. The United States rebuffed efforts by both Sunni Arab leaders in Iraq and Taliban senior leaders in Afghanistan to negotiate some form of cessation of hostilities and political inclusion at the encouragement mainly of Shi’a elites on the one hand and Northern Alliance leaders on the other. Statistically, as Dobbins notes, politically inclusive governments are more apt to be successful when supported by peacekeeping troops than are exclusionary governments backed by a peace-enforcement mission. The data he used was available in 2001.1
In both cases, the risk factors became quickly entrenched. The United States, however, was slow to recognize the problems and to modify a losing or ineffective approach. The primary reasons had subtle differences in each conflict. Issues such as confirmation bias, inadequate strategic empathy, bureaucratic frictions, and patron-client problems were common. In neither case did the United States put someone on the ground in charge of coordinating and managing the full range of American efforts. Both administrations in both conflicts operated in bureaucratic silos. Strategic risks were emerging in the seams and fault lines between and among these silos. Local elites captured milestones and institutions. Predation and corruption, civilian harm, inadequate governance, and hollow capacity-building eroded legitimacy. Both the Bush and Obama administrations tried to treat the complex task of state-building as a complicated project. They placed political, diplomatic, military, and economic milestones along a timeline, and gave each to a department to handle. These silos were vulnerable to manipulation by local elites, even as they created a misleading impression of progress. Both administrations simply aggregated the in-silo metrics as evidence of success, while the overall situations deteriorated. These problems damaged the credibility of both administrations and public support for the missions. Loss aversion was more prevalent for Bush in Iraq than for Obama. Audience costs and risk aversion, however, seemed more salient to Obama’s decision-making in Afghanistan than to Bush’s for either conflict.
Bargaining asymmetries undermined prospects for a favorable and durable outcome in both conflicts but unfolded in different ways. Bush was unable to secure an open-ended or “conditions-based” American military presence in Iraq and accepted a strict timeline. Defense and State efforts to extend the timeframe during the Obama administration were unsuccessful. Political reconciliation efforts faltered and were probably doomed as US forces drew down, leaving Sunni Arabs exposed to Maliki’s repression. Even the most intensive efforts during the Petraeus-Crocker time could only constrain Maliki’s sectarianism, not promote reform. There was no negotiation with a senior insurgent leadership or external sponsor. However, discussions between US officials in Baghdad and Iranian Revolutionary Guards officials may have played a role in bringing about al-Sadr’s cease-fire. US military officials did engage with tribal elders allied with or in charge of Sunni Arab resistance forces and convinced many to join with US forces against AQI. Such agreements also served to protect Sunni Arabs from Iraqi government predation.
The Iraqi government’s sectarianism severely undermined the transition. It proved unable to win the battle of legitimacy among Sunni Arab populations. The first transition effort in 2005–2006 ended in near disaster. General Casey organized his military campaign plan around building Iraqi units and handing over security responsibility to them. Still, Iraqi security force readiness took a back seat to American military efforts to fight insurgents. The training mission was inadequately resourced and focused.
Meanwhile, little to no American efforts seem to have been applied toward good governance and addressing predatory sectarianism—problems that were undermining the legitimacy of the government and promoting resistance among Sunni Arabs. Even after the initial success of the 2007–2008 surge in lowering levels of violence and convincing Sunni Arabs to work with the US military against AQI, the United States failed to make political reconciliation a strategic priority. The Bush administration neglected to secure credible commitments on reconciliation in exchange for agreeing to a timeline. The Obama administration took the path of least resistance toward Maliki while staying focused on the withdrawal timeline.
ISIS was the biggest beneficiary, as alienated Sunni Arabs began to resist a new round of predation without the presence of US forces to keep sectarianism in check. Meanwhile, endemic corruption in the Iraqi security forces sapped the readiness of the army and police in Sunni Arab areas as Maliki sold positions and chose leaders based on personal loyalty and political reliability rather than performance. Their disastrous defeats at the hands of ISIS showed how even the best resourced and managed capacity-building efforts could have feet of clay. Obama deployed American forces back to Iraq to reverse the ISIS onslaught. Governance and political reconciliation remained back burner issues, even after ISIS’s so-called caliphate disintegrated in 2018.
Patron-client problems undermined the transition in Afghanistan, too. The disconnect between the transition policy and the operations on the ground by US officials was striking. The military command focused mainly on defeating the Taliban through kinetic operations, while the ANSF development effort was, in McCaffrey’s words, miserably under-resourced. The United States and NATO allies filled only a fraction of the required training teams before 2010. The ANSF was desperately short of critical equipment. Nearly six years after the overthrow of the Taliban, the Afghan Army was a paltry 34,000-strong force for a country of roughly 30 million people. The predatory kleptocracy formed beneath the noses of American civilian and military officials, who also failed to appreciate the impact of insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan. The Obama administration corrected many of the problems with the ANSF development effort. Still, it remained unwilling to fully understand or address the predatory corruption and the damage it was doing to the transition. The military command made some efforts to deal with corruption, but Afghan elites simply outmaneuvered them. The Obama administration failed to find a realistic Pakistan policy, so Taliban sanctuaries stayed intact, and Pakistan’s military continued getting American aid. Obama clung stubbornly to the timeline even though the so-called crossover point became impossible to reach. Figure 13 shows the trajectory of US troops in both conflicts.
The attempts to explore negotiations with the Taliban also failed. The announcement of withdrawal dates enabled the Taliban to play for time. The insurgency wanted exploratory talks to improve their international standing, to gain concessions, and to speed American withdrawal, but not to end the conflict. Their leverage, they calculated, would be higher after US forces left. When the United States appeared to them as negotiating in bad faith, the Taliban walked away from talks. Failure to coordinate on reconciliation amplified Karzai’s concerns about American intentions and credibility, which led him to undermine the effort. Karzai also refused American demands for reform. The Obama administration applied conditionality haphazardly, and Karzai calculated that the risks to internal stability far outweighed any benefits or penalties from the United States. He also figured that military presence in Afghanistan was a critical American interest that the United States would not risk. Karzai overestimated Afghanistan’s centrality, but his assessment that the United States would not enforce conditions or impose penalties was prescient. He used this leverage to avoid signing the bilateral security agreement, which improved his domestic bona fides.
Figure 13. Troop Numbers in Afghanistan and Iraq Compared
Notes: Reflects US troops in-country; excludes troops providing in-theater support or conducting counterterror operations outside the region.
Source: Reprinted from Amy Belasco, “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11,” Congressional Research Service, December 8, 2014, 9.
As the reconciliation effort met failure after failure, the kleptocratic nature of the Afghan government and its growing dependency on international advisors, support, and firepower undermined the transition. Positions in the government and security forces often went for sale at exorbitant prices. Corruption and poor leadership undermined ANSF readiness faster than international advisers could build it. By the end of 2014, the military command handed over responsibility for defeating a resilient insurgency to a government and security forces that were deeply corrupt and unable to win the battle of legitimacy in contested and Taliban-controlled areas. Although the ANSF, to date, have not experienced the same widespread collapses as the ISF, they have steadily lost ground to the insurgency. By 2015, Obama recognized that he had to slow and eventually stop the drawdown lest the Afghan government collapse. The latter has proven unable to win the battle of legitimacy in contested and Taliban-controlled areas.
Failure to include war outcomes into strategic considerations led to myopic strategies in both conflicts that presumed decisive military victory and ignored identified risks that were likely to materialize in the aftermath. These overly optimistic assumptions led Bush to conduct the invasion of Afghanistan with no plan for the result. His administration’s focus shifted to Iraq and would remain there for the years to come. But even though the Iraq War preoccupied (especially) the Bush administration’s minds and resources, they never questioned their strategic assumptions. More resources could not make up for a failing strategy.
As the critical risk factors put decisive victory out of reach, the United States was slow to modify the strategies in both conflicts due to cognitive obstacles, political and bureaucratic frictions, and patron-client problems. In neither case was the empathy-poor United States able to understand or address the inability of the host governments to win the battle of legitimacy in the contested and insurgent-controlled areas or the sustainability of the insurgencies.2 The Obama administration did shift the focus to Afghanistan, and the surge had some success in driving back insurgency attacks. But here, too, higher budget and troop numbers were no panacea for the misconceptions and numerous problems that were troubling the war effort. When the United States tired of the wars and decided to withdraw, the erosion of leverage undermined efforts to negotiate and transition.