Chris Blattman

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The boots-on-the-ground pendulum swings back?

I recently criticized Robert Kaplan’s enthusiasm for mixing US miltary and humanitarian assistance in AFRICOM. I’ve just read another, unrelated, article by Kaplan in this month’s Atlantic Monthly that I think makes a very thoughtful point about conflict more generally.

History suggests that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be imperfect guideposts to conflicts ahead. The quaint Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 gave no intimation of World War I. Neither World War II nor Korea prepared us for Vietnam, which was more similar to the Philippine War of 1899–1902 than to its immediate predecessors. The ease of the Gulf War provided no hint of what an ordeal the Iraq War would be. Today, while we remain fixated on street fighting in Baghdad, the militaries of China, India, South Korea, and Japan are modernizing, and Russia has maintained and subsidized its military research-and-development base by selling weapons to China and others. Though counterinsurgency will remain a core part of our military doctrine, the Pentagon does not have the luxury of planning for one military future; it must plan for several.

Conflicts, especially civil wars, are such complex organisms that it makes it very difficult to apply lessons from one situation to the next. Military planners and social scientists are often so eager to promulgate a new pattern or point of view that we tend to deemphasize the sheer uniqueness of most conflicts.

Kaplan’s point also reminds me of what it takes to be a successful pundit: (1) identify an unmistakable trend, and (2) predict its imminent reversal. What is especially accomplished about Kaplan’s article is that he manages to predict the reversal of a trend he helped start.

Why We Fight - Book Cover
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