A Policy of Protection

Brett McGurk on American Counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan
Brett McGurk is the former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan. He was also the Director for Iraq on the National Security Council. The HPR sat down with him at the Harvard University’s Institute of Politics where he is currently a Fellow.
Harvard Political Review: How has the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine evolved in recent years?
Brett McGurk: The first principle of [the COIN strategy] is: protect the population, and it rests on the assumption that human beings are human beings. They want to feel secure; and if they feel secure, they aren’t going to want gangs or drug networks controlling the neighborhood. I think this principle is applicable in modern war.
HPR: Should US troops go in and provide this population security?
BM: No. But like what we’re doing in Pakistan, training slowly and methodically, it’s going to take time to train an indigenous security force to take on the tactic of population security. … I don’t care whether it’s Somalia or Pakistan. Then, you have to think through the resources and how you go about doing it.  Our role is the training and clipping, and advising.
HPR: How did public opinion affect strategy?
BM: In the white house there’s always talk of, “could this be Vietnam?” How long can you actually fight a war without majority support in the country? Can you turn it around to the public if you get results? A lot of people who were against the surge said, the window has closed. The public will not support this.  It has to be taken into account. One of the things that General Petraeus understands is that it’s a constant force of warfare.  Because COIN is so labor intensive, time intensive … congress was ready to pull the plug. …  I think if Iraq succeeds, that will be one of the turning points.
HPR: How should we interpret the original call for 80 percent of the counterinsurgency effort to be political?  Is it still applicable in this new time and administration?
BM: If you don’t have the basis of a government, you won’t go into Somalia or Mogadishu and do what we did in Iraq. You have to have a government with legitimacy who can then come in and take over the population security mission from the US. That’s why the political is so critical. However, the theory behind the surge was that it was security first. We can’t do politics first.
HPR: What are the main issues that General Petraeus will likely be challenged on by American politicians and voters? Time? Money? Casualties?
BM: In Afghanistan, he’ll have to show empirically that this sort of strategy can show results.  The population will turn. The same thing can happen, and it will be lasting, with a resource commitment that is sustainable. If they can do that, they send up to the question: is it in our vital national security interest to do this? Does it matter if the Taliban controls Afghanistan? That’s actually the huge strategic question. And the answer is not clear. It’s up to General McChrystal to show that the national decision was made. …that’s what’s going on now in the internal debate.
You also need to know the people in the community; and that means with sitting with the people. There’s no substitute for sitting for hours and hours. …The underpinning of the counterinsurgency doctrine is knowing the population and protecting the population. You can’t know the population if you’re only talking to 50 percent of the population. There are some female politicians, but mostly men.  If a unit is trying to protect a population of a neighborhood and can only talk to the men, they’re missing an entire vantage point. So therefore to have women with that unit who have access to the neighborhood is a pretty critical point.  I assume that we are doing this, but I actually don’t know. If because of cultural norms in the neighborhood male soldiers aren’t going to talk to the women in the neighborhood, they’re not going to learn from them.
Photo Credit: Harvard Institute of Politics