Three years and you're out.

• Author: Metz, Steven
• Position: Future Force - Insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan - Critical essay

AS THE insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan fester and grow, we need to face facts. Americans are only prepared to support major counterinsurgency operations for about three years. Yet, when the United States enters a war, it doesn't base its strategy, on this inevitability. Instead, we tell ourselves that we're in for as long as it takes. That may be morally satisfying, but it's politically unrealistic. With this certain wane in public and congressional backing, we need to choose our confrontations wisely and rethink our tactics.

Multinational peacekeeping missions dominated at the close of the Cold War, and counterinsurgency began to look like a strategic relic. Yet after September 11, strategists correctly assumed that "irregular warfare" would be America's most pressing challenge in the coming years. But as the security community pulled the old playbook off the shelf, it turned out that much of what we thought we knew about insurgency was wrong, or at least desperately in need of revision. So there was a scramble to develop the first new counterinsurgency doctrine since the 1980s.

A flurry of conferences, seminars, symposia, war games, articles and studies ensued. Even though discussions included soft-power wielders like the State Department, the Agency for International Development and the intelligence community, the greatest effort--as in the past--came from the military. So, the current face of American strategy is General David Petraeus rather than Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Though the security establishment has dusted off and updated some old concepts, it hasn't gone far enough. By assuming that contemporary insurgencies are much like past ones, we underestimate the effort that successful campaigns require and overestimate the cost of simply leaving others to fight these battles. Counterinsurgency is still viewed as a variant of war. The objective is still the decisive defeat of the enemy. The risk is still that insurgents will seize control of the state.

As we begin to get involved, we should realize that, unlike decision-making processes in conventional war--where the president and his top advisors assess expected strategic costs, risks and benefits, and then decide whether war is the best option--in counterinsurgency there is seldom such a discrete decision point. Instead, the United States inches in, providing a bit of support to a regime, then a bit more, until it finds itself so deeply involved that the political and strategic costs of disengagement are seemingly overwhelming. Counterinsurgency support is simply an immense task.

The Nature of the Beast

CONTEMPORARY INSURGENCIES are just one dimension of deep, complex conflicts caused by flawed or ineffective political, security, social and cultural systems. Insurgency is intertwined with a range of other destabilizing phenomena: extensive...