Lots of coins for COIN

By Fester

A few weeks ago, I wrote in response to Pat Lang's musings on the unwillingness of democracies to successfully fight/see to the end counter-insurgency fights with a couple of Clauswitzian comments in that COIN is an operational doctrine that may or may not be aligned with greater strategic and political ends.  And excellence, as he contends, in an operational realm that is at odds with political objectives and constraints will produce failure at the end.  The political constraint is COIN is costly in both positive expenditures, increasing negative constraints and opportunity cost.

COIN today promises the same type of inputs --- ten to twenty year wars, operational costs of one to two points of annual GDP at a time of structural deficits and domestic fiscal crisis --- with the same type of outcomes --- weak, client states in need of continual support in secondary or tertiary areas of interest.

And shockingly the public of democracies don't like COIN nor do they want to spend those resources for minimal real gains in security that operational and tactical successes may or may not generate.  

So if we assume that democracies are not likely to support doctrines, strategies and techniques that produce long term ongoing costs with minimal prospects of producing desired long term political benefits, the problem in the Clauswitzian perspective is not the grand strategic level, but at the strategic and operational levels where the COIN doctrine is implemented in disregard to the grand strategic appreciation of forces and reality. 

Today,  Steve, in his response to David Kilcullen's preferred policy outcome of a multi-decade, sustained, COIN campaign in Afghanistan has a very reasonable, back of the envelope, non-inflation adjusted, fifteen year cost estimate in non-inflated dollars:

Well, is say "gets real" but he's still not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The DoD actually spends $2.7 billion a month in Afghanistan right now, but what's a few hundred million either way, right? Over fifteen years that bill comes to $846 billion while "additional governance and development efforts will cost even more". Basing some conservative guesstimates on what the ratio of military to reconstruction and other spending has been, those efforts will cost somewhere in the region of $35 billion, with at least another $17.5 billion to pay VA benefits for the inevitable toll in blood. Add in the $173 billion already spent and the $285 billion or so in debt servicing all that deficit spending will cost and the grand total will come to a cool $1.3 trillion

Assuming constant real costs, the ten year figure is roughly $575 billion for direct military expenditures and another $35 billion or so in reconstruction/VA costs plus debt service costs which right now are fairly low. So over a ten year horizon, Kilcullen is advocating for a policy that has a non-inflation cost that could be guesstimated at $600,000,000,000 plus or minus a bit.

That is roughly (within 5%) of the budget set aside for health care reform over the next decade.   That fight will be an extremely tough political fight to find that particular $600 billion dollars or so.   Kilcullen's preferred policy alternative is running into political realities that austerity and the 'guns or butter' debate are solid constraints.

So where is the coin to pay for COIN and why is it a superior use of scarce resources to more limited strategies? I have not seen too many convincing answers on that front.