Wargaming and wrapping minds around operational realities

ARTICLE: U.S. tested 2 Afghan scenarios in war game, By Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, October 26, 2009

Frankly, the limitations of a wargame in such scenario forecasting are immense.

Really, all something like that can show is a sense of logical sequencing and an associated "cone of plausibility"--as in, when we get to this point, this is possible.

Basic point that I made in a previous post about how even accepting the McChrystal plan meant you were going to focus first and foremost on cities: it's the sheer reality of a troop buildup occurring over months:

One of the exercise's key assumptions is that an increase of 10,000 to 15,000 troops would not in the near future give U.S. commanders the forces they need to take back havens from the Taliban commanders in southern and western Afghanistan, where shadow insurgent governors collect taxes and run court systems based on Islamic sharia law.

So call it McChrystal in the city, and Biden in the countryside, as the NYT did recently, but all that tells me is that it takes time to build up just the troops, so this emerging "consensus" is just the pols wrapping their minds about operational realities--not exactly a new dynamic in US leadership.

Comments

[Ted O'Connor]

How does sending in more American troops change Afghanistan? More soldiers and marines will just change our fighting force. The farmer trying to feed his family from a tiny patch of land or the small shop owner selling cheap chinese trinkets and counterfit DVDs does not care if 100 infantrymen walk past or 200 infantrymen walk past. The Taliban, the Arab fanatics, they care. If enough Americans show up then the enemy fighters leave. They hide and they wait. The Afghan "Army" we are training and arming is there for the paycheck. If we leave they will, to a man, return to their tribe, their village or their war lord. Work the war games, but read Kipling.

[Louis Heberlein]

Agree that Kipling provided valuable insights. I suspect he also understood that managed perceptions were sometimes as important as realities.