The Hearts-and-Minds Myth | Foreign Affairs
At the root of the counterinsurgency myth is a failure to understand the decision-making calculus of local governments. These governments do not and will not implement the reforms demanded by their great-power backer unless those changes serve their interests and that is a rare occurrence.
Any external power, even a great power, and even a superpower such as the United States, has limited influence over the domestic political choices of other governments. When a great power declares that a threatened government s survival is an important security interest of its own, the great power considerably reduces its leverage; the smaller state knows it has the clout to resist the intervening country s demands. Even after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when the United States was the ruling power, it had limited freedom to act as it wished. Instead, it had to consider the interests of some influential Iraqi military and political actors because of the power, influence, and sometimes even military strength they wielded.
Bringing an idealized version of American governance to another country may be appealing in theory. In practice, however, intervening in and then continuing a war in the hope that the government will ultimately see the need for reforms is a dangerous chimera. Again and again, doing so has compounded human suffering, required shocking moral choices, and sparked violence across regions. Nonetheless, this belief in reforms persists. In fact, it explains why the United States stayed in Afghanistan and Iraq for so long. For nearly 20 years, the United States and other powers have been urging Afghan and Iraqi leaders to make reforms intended to weaken or defeat the insurgency. Military leaders have pleaded for more time, more resources, and more effort to achieve good governance. But these reforms have not come.
The United States tendency to fight so-called small wars in distant lands where its interests are limited is part and parcel of the grand strategy the country has pursued since World War II. But these adventures do not serve American interests or values; they scatter U.S. attention, incur massive costs, and require ghastly moral compromises. A wiser grand strategy would be one of restraint. Under this approach, the United States would focus on its interactions with other great powers, particularly nuclear-armed ones. Outside that realm, in countries where there is a pressing humanitarian need, the United States should offer nonmilitary support for groups suffering from government repression. When it comes to counterinsurgency campaigns waged or supported by outside powers hoping for reforms, history suggests that the game is not worth the candl
I hope Prof. Hazelton has tenure because it looks like she’s going to need it for this dollop of truthiness.