8/9/2019 The Eikenberry Cables and the Escalation in Afghanistan

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UntitledTurning Sun Tzu on His Head - The Eikenberry Cables and the Escalation in AfghanistanBy FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

In the opening line of Book 1 of Sun Tzu's classic, The Art of War (circa 400 BC), the first treatise ever written on thesubject, the Chinese master said,"War is a matter of vital importance to the State; the province of life and death; theroad to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied." He then goes on to describe a systematicmethod for assembling the information needed to make a rational decision to go to war.

Today, in Pentagonese, we would call his method a "net assessment," that is to say Sun Tzu described a verythoughtful way to perform a comparative analysis of one's own strengths and weaknesses with those of theadversary. Sun Tzu's strategic outlook is amazingly relevant to contemporary circumstances; indeed, it is timeless,and I submit it provides the gold standard for for evaluating our own efforts to grapple with the question of going towar or to escalate a war -- basically, his advice was simple: know your enemy and know yourself before plunginginto war.

When the wisdom of Sun Tzu's gold standard is compared to the crude domestic political machinations used tosteamroller President Obama into escalating the war in Afghanistan, a horrifying picture emerges at the most basicof level decision making. The public debate concentrated on only one side of that net assessment -- the sideadvocating escalation, and even the argument for that side was conceptually flawed in that it did not examine its

own strengths and weaknesses.

The recently leaked cables by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry bring this imbalance into sharp relief. Eikenberry raisedsome thoughtful objections to the McChrystal/Petraeus/Gates/Clinton escalation plan from the perspective of itslimitations on "knowing ourselves" (US, Karzai government, and the Afghan security forces). He did not reallyaddress the strengths and weaknesses on other side of the net assessment--i.e., those of our adversaries. But hisanalysis is damning enough. Eikenberry's objections were sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in secret cables.Presumably President Obama studied them prior to his decision to accede to the escalation pressures. Eikenberry'sanalyses are both an interesting and important counterpoints to what I still believe was an ill advised decision.

Bear in mind, as far as public awareness is concerned, the McChrystal plan, which was also secret, was leaked inredacted form to the Washington Post well before Mr. Obama caved into the domestic political pressures forescalation -- in fact, that leak was part of a carefully orchestrated public political steamroller to pressure Mr. Obamato accede to the escalation. Yet McChrystal's escalation plan was by no means a self evident winner. In fact, it wasconceptually flawed in its own terms -- -- namely that McChrystal failed to analyze the strengths and weaknesses ofthe Afghan National Security Forces, yet his whole strategy depended depended on a rapid increase in theeffectiveness of those forces. My discussion of this flaw, as well as the raw political character of the escalationsteamroller, can found here, here, and here. In short, there is very little evidence that the proponents of escalationon our side did the kind of systematic analysis advocated by Sun Tzu to really "know ourselves," let alone know theenemy.

On the other hand, Amb. Eikenberry's thoughtful objections to that escalation plan at least provided some first orderinformation to redress one side of this conceptual disaster. While his objections were reported in very general termsprior to the escalation decision, they were not leaked to the press (NYT) until well after Mr. Obama's decision. So,given the asymmetric leaking tactics in the bureaucratic war, the net result was that the public and the Congresswere presented with a one-sided picture of the debate over a vital question of state -- and this lopsided picture wasthen pounded into the people, the Congress, and the President by the thumping echo chamber of hysterical

warmongers in the mainstream electronic media and talk radio.

So, I pose a question: Read the Eikenberry cables and then ask yourself whether we the people and ourrepresentatives in Congress would have had a more constructive political debate over this most vital of questions ifthe details of Ambassador Eikenberry's objections were known and understood to the same extent as the details ofthe escalation plan were understood prior to Mr. Obama's decision.

Franklin Chuck Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon. He currently lives on a sailboat in theMediterranean and can be reached at chuck_spinney@mac.com

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