Disjointed Ways, Disunified Means: Learning from America's Struggle to Build an Afghan Nation - Topics Include the Afghanistan War, Natural Resources and Drug Trade, Al-Qaeda and Terrorism

This unique book, which studies the efforts of the United States in Afghanistan, discusses potential corrective measures that can be applied to future irregular warfare and "nation-building" missions in particular and American national security affairs more generally. Part I, "The Challenge of Afghanistan" and its three chapters, offers an analysis of the scope and depth of the challenges confronting the coalition in the Afghan theater of operations, as well as an examination of...
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This unique book, which studies the efforts of the United States in Afghanistan, discusses potential corrective measures that can be applied to future irregular warfare and "nation-building" missions in particular and American national security affairs more generally. Part I, "The Challenge of Afghanistan" and its three chapters, offers an analysis of the scope and depth of the challenges confronting the coalition in the Afghan theater of operations, as well as an examination of relevant U.S. interests, options, and risks. Chapter 2 describes the broad scope and extraordinary complexity of irregular warfare and "nation-building" missions. Chapter 3 considers the shifting nature of U.S. national security interests in Afghanistan and the region, while also offering a sketch of the varied motives and interests of other key national and transnational actors holding their own stakes in the outcome.The second part of the book, "Disjointed Policies and Organizational Structures," consists of four chapters, which present an analysis of the root causes of our strategic and interagency difficulties in meeting the challenges described in Part I. While Chapter 4 critically examines and assesses the U.S. Government's national-level strategic guidance for Afghanistan, Chapter 5 analyzes the predominant organizational cultural norms, existing core competencies, and comparative resources of the key U.S. agencies charged with meeting the demands of that guidance. Chapter 6 looks directly at the shortfalls of the U.S. Government's interagency doctrine, structures, and processes for integrating agency effort as they apply to the case of Afghanistan. Building on these findings, Chapter 7 concludes this section of the book by cataloguing the corresponding unfavorable and largely unsurprising results of this strategic disjointedness and disunity of effort, all placed within the context of a truly challenging set of Afghan circumstances.The third part of the book, "Potential Solutions," considers commonly proposed potential remedies to our strategic and interagency problems, examines their prospects for success, and proposes an alternate set of organizational recommendations.Part I: The Challenge of Afghanistan * 1: Defining the Afghan Problem * 2: The Scope of Irregular Warfare and "Nation-Building" * 3: Evolving U.S. Strategic Interests, Options, and Risks * Part II: Disjointed Policies and Organizational Structures * 4: Disjointed Policies, Strategies, and Objectives. * 5: A Clash of Organizational Cultures and Resources * 6: Disunified Interagency Structures, Processes, and Effort * 7: The Unsurprising and Uneven Results. * Part III: Potential Solutions * 8: Commonly Proposed Solutions and Faulty Assumptions * 9: Essential Elements of Any Feasible and Effective Solution. * 10: A Way Ahead-The NSC, Combatant Commands, and USRADCOM * A Brief Epilogue: Contemplating the Context and Future of "Nation-Building" * Bibliography * Acronyms and Abbreviations