Campaign disconnect: operational progress and strategic obstacles in Afghanistan, 2009–2011

Success in war depends on alignment between operations and strategy. Commonly, such alignment takes time as civilian and military leaders assess the effectiveness of operations and adjust them to ensure that strategic objectives are achieved. This article assesses prospects for the US‐led campaign in Afghanistan. Drawing on extensive field research, the authors find that significant progress has been made at the operational level in four key areas: the approach to counterinsurgency operations, development of Afghan security forces, growth of Afghan sub‐national governance and military momentum on the ground. However, the situation is bleak at the strategic level. The article identifies three strategic obstacles to campaign success: corruption in Afghan national government, war‐weariness in NATO countries and insurgent safe havens in Pakistan. These strategic problems require political developments that are beyond the capabilities of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). In other words, further progress at the operational level will not bring ‘victory’. It concludes, therefore, that there is an operational‐strategic disconnect at the heart of the ISAF campaign.     

British civil–military relations and the problem of risk

Drawing primarily on the experience of the UK since 2001, this article examines the increasing prevalence of risk as an organizing concept for western defence and security planning and its implications for civil–military relations and strategy‐making. It argues that there may be tensions between such approaches and the principles of good strategy‐making, which aim to link means and resources to ends in a coherent manner. Not only does risk potentially blur the relationship between means and ends in the strategy‐making process, it also exposes it to contestation, with multiple interpretations of what the risks actually are and the strategic priority (and commitment) which should be attached to them. The article examines these tensions at three levels of risk contestation for British defence: institutions, operations and military–society relations. In the case of the UK, it contends that the logic of risk has not been able to provide the same national motivation and sense of strategic purpose as the logic of threat. In this context, calls for a reinvigoration of traditional strategy‐making or a renewed conception of national interest may be missing a more fundamental dissonance between defence policy, civil–military relations and the wider security context. More widely, the strategic ennui that some western states have been accused of may not simply be a product of somehow falling out of the habit of strategy‐making or an absence of ‘political will’. Instead, it may reflect deeper social and geostrategic trends which constrain and complicate the use of military force and obscure its utility in the public imagination.     

Afghanistan: the reconstruction process

In this article the author focuses initially on the degree of support provided by the international community to the interim administration of Afghanistan and notes that the pledges made at the Tokyo Conference do not equate to the per capita levels of funding made available for other recent emergencies. He draws attention to the inter–relationship between security and funding for reconstruction and comments that the recent decision of the US government to join with others in agreeing to finance work to upgrade the major highway system is very timely in shoring up the regime in the wake of the recent assassination attempt on Hamid Karzai. He stresses that the international community needs to provide sustained support to the new government if it is to survive. He also analyses the complex relationship between the administration and the aid community and reports on the calls by the government to be given the major part of the resources allocated by international donors and to be supported to take the lead in determining policy and strategy.
The author notes the nature of the Afghan economy and the potential for reconstruction, taking account of the economic impact of the conflict, the progress made by the aid community since 1992, the humanitarian crisis arising from the drought of 1999–2001 and the large scale, mainly involuntary, return of refugees from Pakistan and Iran since March 2002. He comments on the fact that the agricultural economy cannot support its population, on the need for economic safety valves in the form of migration to Pakistan and Iran, on the availability of camps for internally displaced people, and on urbanization. In concluding the author is both optimistic and cautious, noting the fragility of the situation, but also acknowledging that the international community is taking timely action to address it through reconstruction assistance although it remains reluctant to give sufficient priority to security provision.     

Spain's and Poland's Road to NATO: the problem of continuity and change in the foreign policy of a democratising state

The aim of this article is to compare the Spanish and Polish road to NATO from the perspective of the shape of the foreign policy and its possible restructuring in states undergoing the process of democratic transformation. The study of both cases shows that the reorientation of the foreign policy of a democratising state results to a large extent from external conditions at the global and regional levels although the internal conditions may hinder or accelerate the reorientation. The example of Spain demonstrates that in a firm and stable international system (the bipolar system) it is extremely difficult to change the direction of foreign policy, even if there are internal premises such as democratisation, well-organised opposition supporting the change and social support. In the case of Poland, the flexible and unstable international system made it possible to radically change the direction of its foreign policy. The existing internal premises without the appropriate external context would not have been enough to generate the reorientation of foreign policy. The comparative study of Spanish and Polish cases should be treated as an introduction to the broader analysis on the subject of the restructuring of foreign policy in the democratising state. Democratic transformation processes which took place in Europe from the mid-1970s provide broad empirical material for further scientific work in this area.     

NATO expansion: ‘a policy error of historic importance’

European security depends on the effective collaboration of the five major powers; it will be undermined by the extension of NATO, a policy driven by US domestic politics. The main threats to security are: the breakdown of political and economic stability; unintended nuclear proliferation and/or failure of the START process; Russia's evolving political and territorial aspirations. All three will remain marginal as long as Russia is constructively engaged with the West. NATO expansion threatens that engagement. It is seen by all strands of Russian opinion as violating the bargain struck in 1990 and will likely lead to the withdrawal of cooperation. Invitations to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic cannot be rescinded, but the consequences can be mitigated by refraining from integrating them into NATO's military structure, by ceasing to insist that NATO membership is open to all, and by perpetuating the de facto nuclear‐weapons‐free zone that presently exists in Central and Eastern Europe. Britain's stance could be pivotal.     

NATO: the practice and politics of transformation

The Iraq crisis caused a deep rift in US–European relations and within Europe. NATO seemed sure at least to be damaged, if not fatally undermined. But to the dismay of those who have been waiting for many years for NATO finally to unravel, the Atlantic alliance spent 2003 proudly showing off its transformation project, and looking forward to its next enlargement in 2004. Yet these necessary improvements to NATO's political and military structures, and to its deployable capability, cannot alone secure the alliance's future. This article argues that what is needed, as ever, is a shared determination among governments that NATO can continue to serve their needs. There has been no better opportunity since the end of the Cold War to place the US-European security relationship on a firm footing through NATO. There has also been no moment when the penalties of failure have been higher. If NATO's transformation agenda, together with the NATO–EU 'Berlin Plus' arrangement, are not exploited to the full, then US-European security relations are unlikely to recover from Iraq.     

System failure: the underlying causes of US policy‐making errors in Afghanistan

The United States intervention in Afghanistan since 2001 has brought progress in some areas, but the conflict has expanded, the Taliban remains powerful, and misgovernance and predation are widespread. Afghan national security forces—the linchpin of the coalition's exit strategy—offer no guarantee of future stability. Many accounts describe the mistakes that led to this predicament. This article attempts to explain why these mistakes were made by examining their underlying or structural causes. Based on 51 interviews with officials and experts, it identifies major US policy‐making errors with respect to state‐building, military activities and diplomacy. It argues that there are four principal underlying causes of such errors, relating to organizations, leadership and strategic thinking, psychology, and domestic politics. It finds that there were severe shortcomings in the acquisition and processing of information and a lack of institutional self‐evaluation; civilian and military leaders made major strategic misjudgements in mistaking the strategy for the goal, overestimating the efficacy of military force or resources, and drawing false lessons from history or analogous cases such as Iraq; leaders were predisposed to overconfidence and oversimplification; and, at the highest level, policies were distorted by domestic politics. The article contends that the cumulative impact of these shortcomings was sufficient to seriously disrupt the functioning of the foreign policy‐making system. It argues that action is required to improve US information gathering and assessment, systematize institutional self‐evaluation, build regional expertise, establish mechanisms to understand the motivations and perceptions of other actors, and increase awareness of decision‐makers’ cognitive flaws and biases.     

The economic history of the regional problem in Britain, 1920–1938

This paper is intended to draw the attention of historical geographers to the regional problem of interwar Britain. Although unemployment measured at the aggregate national level is usually seen as the dominant characteristic of the period, the disparity in the experience of unemployment across different regions is equally striking. Yet the issue has received little attention from economic historians and virtually none from historical geographers, despite its being sufficiently important to promote the first attempts at regional policy. To consider why economic historians have neglected this matter the economic historiography is outlined using a classification that distinguishes between optimistic and pessimistic views of the period. This indicates that either the regional problem plays no part in such studies or it is considered only where it might cast doubt on, or lend support to, the hypothesis being proposed at the national level. The fascination of economic historians with the national experience, the relative shortage of complete and consistent data series and the mysteries of regional analysis make the study of regional issues uninviting for the economic historian. The historical geographer must have a role to play in giving us a better understanding of this important issue.     

On the identity of NATO

Although we may well be missing the point about NATO if we conceptualize it as just another military alliance, defining NATO as a community of liberal democratic values and norms is problematic. A distinction must be made between a community of values linked to particular experiences and a particular context and a community based on democratic principles. What has kept NATO together beyond the Cold War is a sense of shared history and fate. If such a 'value-hypothesis' about NATO is correct, the continued survival of the organization does not depend only on the marginal costs of maintaining it continuing to outweigh those of creating a new organization. The future of NATO will also depend on the extent to which it is possible to restore (or reestablish) a sense of shared fate and mutual confidence across the Atlantic.     

Talking the talk: Debating debate in northern Afghanistan

The ethnographic focus of this article is on the ways in which Afghan families who lived in northern Pakistan as refugees are currently reflecting upon to their complex experiences of return to their country through a rich and complex culture of debate, as well as the deployment of other verbal and peformative skills, especially imitation. More broadly, it argues that the comparative study of situated practices of debate offers unique insights for the anthropological analysis of Islam, which an expanding body of work on the ways in which piety minded Muslims embody and cultivate ethical and moral values has thus far overlooked.     

Style and Subversion: Postwar Poses and the Neo–Edwardian Suit in Mid–Twentieth–Century Britain

This essay examines the emergence of the Neo–Edwardian look in postwar London. It traces a network of styles which took their meanings from the immediate environment and from broader social, economic and cultural trends, and suggests that the arising connections between place, class and gender identities provided an important precedent for the reinvention of London as a centre of fashion innovation in the 1960s. Utilising contemporary sociological accounts and the content of trade periodicals, this reading challenges some of the more reactionary interpretations of Neo–Edwardianism which have dominated the established literature and refocuses the attention of the fashion historian on the sartorial activities of young men.