Little Platoons For Peace
How ResPublica's commitment to the associative society can foster transformative approaches to security studies
The ongoing well-publicised NATO offensive in Afghanistan, Operation Moshtarak, has been described by General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, as a show of force which is also about winning hearts and minds.
So how does a “show of force” win hearts and minds? A Times leader on 8 February claimed that a renewed offensive to defeat the Taliban is the right course, that military supremacy is attainable and that political reconciliation depends on it. But the Taliban were deposed nearly a decade ago, what makes the strategy of “Clear, hold and build” so viable now? How will the transfer of NATO-established military supremacy over the Taliban to what is a widely considered corrupt and ineffective Afghan government and police force play out in the minds of the Afghan people? This concept of concentrating on equipping the Afghan government and security forces to “protect” civilians appears to focus too much on building a powerful security-orientated state and shuns one incredibly important factor, particularly in the more rural and remote areas of Afghanistan, the role and potential of civil society to play a beneficial role.
It is interesting that representatives of the military are more reluctant to talk about “military supremacy”, and prefer reiterating that it is the Afghan people themselves who are the true bastion against the return of the Taliban. They realise that this is as much about wielding “soft power” as it is about destroying the Taliban. What form does soft power take? Consider, more than 80% of working-age males in Afghanistan are small-scale farmers. Consider, drug traders are often able to exploit the negative choice architecture which confronts these farmers, by frequently providing cash advances for poppies at the beginning of planting season, routinely committing to buy the crop at a set price, and on occasion even offering technical assistance to farmers. This is soft power as realised through civil society.
In September 2008, UK International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander was able to describe a situation in which a grocer in Jalalabad would need 40 signatures and 60 days to export his fruit across the Afghan border, by which time almost half of his produce would no longer be fit for sale.
Give those farmers a stake in a new Afghanistan - in which lawful enterprise is nurtured and supported, and in which they see a way out of their poverty - and you begin to win the “hearts and minds” of a significant tract of the population. ResPublica's Security Unit will be exploring how the influencing of behaviour in conflicts and during the stabilisation process through the establishment of positive choice frameworks which can be reinforced through civil society, can ultimately complement more traditional tools at the military's disposal.