Who Lost Afghanistan? Samuel Huntington and the Decline of Strategic Thinking

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221116129
• Author: Will Atkins
• Date: 01 October 2023
• Subject Matter: Commentaries

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221116129

Armed Forces & Society

2023, Vol. 49(4) 965 –981

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X221116129

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Commentary

Who Lost Afghanistan?

Samuel Huntington and

the Decline of Strategic

Thinking

Will Atkins1

Abstract

Numerous reflections exist regarding who should be held accountable and what

lessons should be learned from the military withdrawal and political collapse of

Afghanistan. This essay argues that the failures in Afghanistan are second- and

third-order effects of a failure of strategic thinking on behalf of civilian and military

leadership alike. I argue that this failure of strategic thinking is caused, in part, by the

overreliance on concepts of civil–military relations espoused by Samuel Huntington.

These concepts have been inculcated by a professional military education system

that has subsequently developed a generation of officers with an atrophied

appreciation for the political aspects of war, and an inability to link operational

prowess to the achievement of strategic objectives. This dilemma is aggravated by

a similar overreliance on systematic thinking, which further obscures the linkages

between the military and political aspects of strategy.

Keywords

civil–military relations, objective control, military professionalism, systemic thinking,

professional military education

Numerous reflections exist regarding who should be held accountable and what les-

sons should be learned from the military withdrawal and political collapse of

1U.S. Air Force Academy, USAFA, CO, USA

Corresponding Author:

Will Atkins, U.S. Air Force Academy, 2354 Fairchild Drive, USAFA, CO 80840, USA.

Email: william.atkins@afacademy.af.edu

1116129AFSXXX10.1177/0095327X221116129Armed Forces & SocietyAtkins

research-article2022

966 Armed Forces & Society 49(4)

Afghanistan. Most observers tend to agree on some topline lessons, such as a failure

to manage endemic corruption, weaknesses in the nonmilitary instruments of national

power, and misguided attempts to recreate Western institutions in Afghanistan.

However, each of these explanations address operational failures, and none address

that which prompted Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (CJCS) General Mark Milley to

call the mission in Afghanistan a “strategic failure” during Congressional testimony

(Forgey & Ward, 2021). As a result of this strategic failure, what began as one of the

“smallest, least expensive, shortest, most successful military campaigns in American

history morphed into a generation-long conflict” that claimed far more in blood and

treasure than necessary (Gates, 2021, p. 165).

Much like Desert Storm, the quick operational victory during the first 6 weeks of

American involvement in Afghanistan overshadowed numerous shortfalls in both

strategy and strategic thinking. This essay argues that the operational failures in

Afghanistan listed above are simply second- and third-order effects of a failure of

strategic thinking on behalf of civilian and military leadership alike. I argue that this

failure of strategic thinking is caused, in part, by the overreliance on concepts of

civil–military relations espoused by Samuel Huntington back in 1957. These con-

cepts have been inculcated by a professional military education (PME) system that

has subsequently developed a generation of officers with an atrophied appreciation

for the political aspects of war, and an inability to link operational prowess to the

achievement of strategic objectives. This dilemma is aggravated by a similar over-

reliance on systematic thinking, which further obscures the linkages between the

military and political aspects of strategy.

After a short primer on the Huntingtonian concepts of civil–military relations, this

essay illustrates how shortfalls in Huntington’s model may have exacerbated failures

in Afghanistan in four distinct ways, while being worsened by a decline in strategic

thought. To remedy the situation, this essay then argues that the PME system requires

a rebalancing of civil–military theory that emphasizes the political aspects of war-

fare, as well as an emphasis on systemic, as opposed to systematic, thinking on behalf

of military officers. In short, until adequate changes are made within the PME sys-

tem, military officers need to re-conceptualize their own roles in civil–military rela-

tions, and in their responsibilities during strategic assessment.

Huntington and PME

American military officers are taught throughout PME that the proper and “normal”

view of civil–military relations stems from the arguments of Samuel P. Huntington’s,

1957 book, The Soldier and the State. Over the course of the last 65 years,

Huntingtonian concepts of civil–military relations have defined generations of mili-

tary professionals, and have constituted the “bedrock of military professionalism”

within the U.S. military.

In his seminal work, Huntington proposed a model of objective control of the

military, characterized by a division of labor between political and military