The Problems of Command:

Obama, McChrystal, and American Civil-Military Relations in Operation Enduring Freedom

Gene W. Giannotta

Thesis Master of Arts Department of Political Science University of Illinois Springfield 19 August 2011

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CONTENTS
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Introduction Theory Case One: McChrystal Takes Command, Summer 2009 Case Two: Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategy Review, Autumn 2009 Conclusion 2 6 21 47 65 73

References

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Chapter One

INTRODUCTION
The question of proper relationship between the guardians and the guarded has existed as long as there has been the need for security of one group provided by another. For those who study civil-military relations, the question is often framed as a matter of the soldier threatening the civilian government, assuming an ostensibly democratic government with a clear divide between civilians and the military. In the American context, the historical record is devoid of any coup attempts or overt power struggle between the civil and military sectors, so the majority of scholarship focuses on the relationship in non-Western and far-less-stable states. But, there has been an on-and-off fascination with civil-military relations in the United States since the Second World War, when the country underwent a massive militarization that proceeded apace throughout the Cold War period. Scholars became concerned about the implications of this, especially whether heightened militarism could undermine the civilian dominance that was assumed to be at the heart of American republicanism. The most noteworthy entry in this regard was that of Samuel Huntington in the mid-1950s. The Soldier and the State provided a historical overview of the evolution in civil-military dynamics over the Republics history, to the point of professionalism at which it stood in the first decade of the Cold War, as well as Huntingtons own theoretical framework for which to view the relationship going forward. In his formulation, the main issue was a divergence in the philosophical worldviews of the civilians and the military. The former was committed to a liberal vision of individual rights, while the latter had as its motivation security first and foremost. Only a few years after the publication of Huntingtons work, President Dwight D. Eisenhower would

Giannotta 3 warn of the dangers of an encroaching military-industrial complex, and the debacle of planning in the Vietnam War was the impetus for much hand-wringing in the scholarly, political, military, and popular communities concerned with national security and foreign policy for decades after the 1960s. The rise of the conservative movement in the late 1960s through the Reagan era of the 1980s called into question the efficacy of government while making a point to hold the military as a paragon. This served to further divide the civilian and military camps, and promote dissension by giving officers wary of the specter of Vietnam a political outlet for their distrust. Writing on the issues of decision-making and civil-military relations saw both sides defensive in terms of their roles and relationship with the other in Vietnam, and neither was willing to allow a repeat. So by the 1990s, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the apparent end of history1, it had become fashionable to cite a crisis of civil-military relations in the United States. Without a monolithic threat to focus civilian and military attention and energy, and with the growing tension since the 1960s, it appeared inevitable that the two were destined to conflict, perhaps even provoking an existential danger to the core of American government. The election of the draft-dodging Bill Clinton in 1992 seemed to stoke the fires of conflict, as did the seemingly single-minded determination of the Bush Administration to commit forces to a mission it was not willing to see through, but in all, the years since have not provided occasion for a coup and the worst predictions of the crisis have not been realized. That being said, civil-military relations still holds much relevance. As a field of scholarship, the dearth of focus in the case of the United States represents a glaring gap in our knowledge of a critical and long-worrisome aspect of American politics. Conflict between

In Francis Fukuyamas prematurely exuberant wording (1992).

Giannotta 4 members of the armed forces and civilian overseers, whether it be in the case of generals and presidents, or the oft-cited divide between the two sectors of the population in terms of partisan affiliation or general social outlook, represents a significant factor in political activity throughout American and human history. At the time of this writing, the United States is in its seventh decade of post-World War II history, a history which began with the build-up of the military industrial complex cited by Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address. And as the militarization of American politics and society has continued over the course of that history, new threats brought into the 21st century have both changed and cemented the tensions between the protectors and those they are sworn to serve. In 2011, the American armed forces find themselves tasked with keeping the peace and stabilizing Afghanistan and Iraq, holdovers from the controversial invasions of 2001 and 2003, while also joining in the effort to protect the population of Libya and weaken the hold of its leader, Moammar Ghaddafi. Controversy and tension also boiled to the surface as the Congress voted to repeal the Dont Ask, Dont Tell compromise and the ban on open service by homosexuals in the military. Debate over the budget has made defense spending, once a sacred cow, no longer as secure. Civil-military conflict is thus alive and well, as it ever was, and will most likely not abate in the near future. In this context, then, a study of the relationship between the civilian politicians and the military subordinates during the Obama Administration is a worthy endeavor. And no particular class of policy decisions makes a better first cut than those pertaining to Americas ongoing mission in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom. Hence, this study looks to provide that first step into analyzing the civil-military dynamics of contemporary American government as a view to the here-and-now politics of a salient policy issue, and also as a continuation of the civil-military relations literature, particularly the

Giannotta 5 (unfortunately sparse) scholarship of American civil-military relations. Taking Peter Feavers game theoretic model of that relationship, I will examine the empirical record from the point at which Stanley McChrystal was appointed commander of the American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, in May 2009 through the strategic review of fall 2009, which provides a look at the civil-military patterns that set the stage for McChrystals ultimate firing in the summer of 2010. From this period, I will test the theorys expectations against the reality and see how well of a fit Feavers day-to-day model is in terms of very recent and critical cases. As such, this paper proceeds as follows. It begins with a review of the civil-military relations literature, particularly that pertaining to the American context, from Lasswell and Huntington to Feaver and his contemporaries. Then, I will provide further fleshing out of Feavers agency theory and explicate the analytical framework for this studys analysis, followed by its application in case studies examining two crucial phases in civil-military relations during the Obama Administrations decision-making regarding Afghanistan: McChrystals appointment and assumption of command in summer of 2009 when he made his assessment and the strategic review in fall of 2009 that led to the decision to enact a modest surge in Afghanistan. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of the findings and their implications for the study of American politics, the presidency, and civil-military relations more broadly.

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Chapter Two

THEORY
The study of civil-military relations in political science has been largely relegated to the fields of international relations, comparative politics, and security studies, with a focus on developing states and non-democratic regimes. These states are ostensibly at greater risk of instability and the literature has mainly taken military coups, the ultimate breakdown in civilian control of the military, as the dependent variable, with an undue focus on description rather than causation, putting it out of the mainstream of political science (Feaver 1999). The United States has been a rare target of inquiry for most scholars in this area of study, but this has changed since the Cold Wars end. This chapter proceeds as follows: first, a brief overview of the history of civil-military relations literature relevant to this study, beginning with the seminal works of Carl von Clausewitz and Samuel Huntington and continuing on to the more recent theoretical constructs that take principal-agent and rational choice assumptions as their foundation; then, I will go further into Feavers agency theory (2003), developing an analytic framework which will be used to test the cases that follow.

The Old Schools

Any study of war, particularly of the intersection between the political and the military, must pay necessary deference to the dean of modern military theory, Carl von Clausewitz. His On War has been a constant of both academic study and officer education in the United States (Clausewitz 1976, 44), and provides a philosophical and practical description of warfare, strategy, and the inherent relationship between politics and violence. His most famous

Giannotta 7 dictum strikes at the very nature of war, saying war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means (1976, 87). While his work encouraged a professional military, he made no pretense of wars political nature and the militarys role in that process; simply put, there is no war without a preceding political impetus. The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose (Clausewitz 1976, 87). In this construction, the political seems dominant in the civil-military relationship. The use of violence is but an instrument of politics, not the end in itself. Professionalism in war-fighting is important for success, but the aims of the professional soldier must never be mistaken as being other than political in nature. Another stalwart classic of civil-military relations is Samuel Huntingtons seminal The Soldier and the State (1957). Huntington argued that at the root of civil-military conflict lies the inevitable tension between the liberal, individualistic civilian culture and the conservative, group-oriented, and anti-individualistic military ethic (1957, 64). The military mind is distinctive from the civilian mentality, and the professionalization of the military only served to widen this gap between the two groups. Professionalism creates a soldier who takes on a starkly realistic, Hobbesian view of the world, attentive not to ideal notions of individual liberty but rather to the terrible consequences of human nature that could threaten national security if decision-making was made through rose-colored glasses (62-65). Against this backdrop of ideological divergence, Huntington presented two types of civilian control of the military. First is the less-desirable subjective control, in which the civilian group currently in power essentially treats the military as a tool of their own particular goals, at the expense of a more abstract view of national security and detached, professional armed forces.

Giannotta 8 In essence, control over the military becomes one more example of competitive democratic politics - groups vie for influence and power, and the military does not escape their attention once they attain it. The concept of civilian control is thus advanced by one civilian group as a means to enhance its power at the expense of other civilian groups, ending up an instrumental slogan like states rights rather than an end in itself (Huntington 1957, 80). At the other pole lies Huntingtons own prescription: objective control. In this form, the civilians allow the military the maximum possible professional leeway in doing the jobs it assigns. Where subjective control achieves its end by civilianizing the military, making them the mirror of the state, objective control does the opposite, militarizing the military, making them the tool of the state (83). The fact of liberalism as the dominant ideology in the United States creates tension by virtue of civilian societys desire to advance liberal goals of maximizing individual rights and freedom, and inherent opposition to the kind of devotion to collective security that the military represents (143).2 Meanwhile, the American Constitution does not permit the objective civilian control compatible with a high level of military professionalism, mainly due to its divided civilian responsibilities and powers over military matters, which encourages subjective control (163). Concluding, Huntington betrays his own preference for the military ethic over the typical American liberalism, pointedly arguing that society at large should supplant individualism to prevail in the Cold War. He asks, is it possible to deny that the military values - loyalty, duty, restraint, dedication - are the ones America most needs today? That the disciplined order of West Point has more to offer than the garish individualism of Main Street? (465).

Its important to note that Huntingtons use of the terms liberal and conservative, and hence my own use of them here, is of the classical definitions. He refers to the Burkean conservatism, not the American type that is essentially one type of liberalism (1957, 93). American liberalism and conservatism are thus essentially just two different flavors of liberalism, in Huntingtons view.

Giannotta 9 As World War II embroiled Europe, Harold Lasswell predicted a garrison state as the future of global political order (1941). He saw the technological advancements that marked modern warfare as a precursor to a point where the lines between military and civilian were blurred perhaps beyond recognition. Lasswell predicted a move away from democracy, and toward government by plebiscite, in which the messy order-inhibiting democratic process became merely ceremonial (1941, 461-62). In a follow-up article on the garrison states relationship to civil liberties, Lasswell points to the continued relevance of his thesis, at that point over a decade past its first enunciation. He divides the military state from the militaristic state, explaining that in the latter, the military way of life is glorified in the shape of a limited caste that plans and commands, and looks down upon the nonofficer part of the population as in some deep sense of the word inferior (Lasswell 1951, 113). According to Huntington, Lasswells garrison state hypothesis became a dominant theory of civil-military relations in the postwar environment, adhered to by intellectuals and alluded to by mass media (1957, 347).

The New School

Taking a more sociological view, another stream of scholarship flowed from Janowitzs study of the connection between the professional military and the broader society (1971; Feaver 2003, 9; see also Feaver and Kohn 2001; Dempsey 2010). Feaver and Gelpi (2002; 2005) have examined the link between civil and military backgrounds at the elite level and decision-making in national security, but this work has largely avoided the political dynamics of the civil-military relationship. Since the end of the Cold War, however, theorizing and research to this end has increased, in large part founded upon the principal-agent conceptual foundation borrowed from economics and now a major part of the study of American politics.

Giannotta 10 Avant (1994) applied an institutional perspective to study changes in military doctrine. Comparing the responses of British and American governments in similar counterinsurgency operations, she finds evidence for her theory that the institutional structure makes a difference in how states handle the need for changes in military doctrine. Where the British parliamentary system and its unified executive-legislative power structure put more direct control over the military in the hands of the civilians, the separated American system fostered conflict between the executive and legislative branches, and allowed the different groups responsible for national security - the Army, Marines, and CIA, in her study - to pursue their own institutional interests rather than the broader strategic goals of the civilians. Brooks (2008) presented a distributional approach that explains the quality of a states strategic assessment process as being primarily a function of the civil-military relationship within the given state, and this is in turn determined by which (civilian or military) holds more influence, as well as the degree of divergence between each actors preferences. In both of these studies, the authors address the problem from the principal-agent, institutional perspective, showing how the structures within which decisions are made interact with the behavior of the actors in question to produce certain outcomes. Both, however, address specific policy concerns - Avant, the propensity of a state to respond to changing threats with doctrinal innovation, and Brooks, the ability of a state to engage in productive strategic review. Neither provides a general theory of civil-military relations. Desch (1999) aims to do so by presenting a structurally-based model, in which the threat environment provides the major causal impetus for the quality of a states civil-military relations. He argues that the levels of external and internal threats interact to produce variance in the effectiveness of civilian control of the military (Desch 1999, 11). He takes threats as his independent variable, and notes certain assumptions that underlie his theory - namely that his

Giannotta 11 structural threats variable acts on the various factors in play when determining the strength of civilian control, like the character of the civilian leadership, the nature of the military institution, the cohesiveness of state institutions (Desch 1999, 13). In examining the American case through and following the Cold War, Desch finds stronger civilian control in the high external-low internal threat environment than in the low-low post-Cold War reality (1999, 27). Comparing the presidencies of Truman and Clinton - both of whom faced some challenges to their legitimacy in terms of military command because of their lack of military credentials Desch notes that Truman was largely successful in dominating the civil-military relationship despite a number of challenges, because of the high external threat environment of the Cold War, while Clinton was thwarted by the military in his low threat environment (1999, 33-34). But this theory departs from the principal-agent mold and does not get to the deeper politics of how the civilians and military interact.

Feaver's Agency Theory

Building on the principal-agent, rationalist framework, Feaver (2003) develops an agency model of civil-military relations to analyze the relationship in the American context (2003). Departing from a majority of the earlier literatures focus on sociological and psychological forces, the model assumes rational civilian and military actors preoccupied with incentive structures and the costs of action. The model takes the relationship as between a principal, the civilian leaders in government, and an agent, the military (2003, 54-55), and considers the motivations and preferences underlying each actors decisions - namely that the principal desires his or her goals to be realized more efficiently by contracting out to the agent (the agent, in this case, works in standard principal-agent parlance) while the agent desires to pursue his or her

Giannotta 12 own interests (shirking), usually undertaking the work with a minimum of supervision (Feaver 2003, 55-58). This theory is based on the employer-employee relationship as studied in the economics literature (Feaver 2003, 55). Per Feaver, the primary claim of the principal-agent literature is that delegation need not be an abdication of responsibility, as the principal (here, the civilian government) can use incentives for good behavior and third-party monitoring mechanisms to ensure agent compliance (work) (2003, 55-56) In the civil-military context, a number of problems arise. First, there are differences in preferences between the two actor types. Civilians have two main goals - protection from external enemies and [they] want to remain in political control over their destiny (Feaver 2003, 61) - while the military has its own policy preferences , desire for honor, and the classic agent problem of desiring a maximum possible degree of independence (Feaver 2003, 63-64). Other complications Feaver addresses are the differences in available information to each actor (2003, 68-72) and the adverse selection (agent misrepresents himself at time of recruitment, so principal has an erroneous perception of his ability to perform the agent duties) and moral hazard (agent has incentive to do as little work as possible - as Feaver says, if you can get paid for doing less, why do more?) problems (2003, 72-75). The civilian authorities have a number of monitoring mechanisms to choose from: incentives built in to their work contract, the process by which they screen and select potential agents, fire alarms such as the news media and watchdog groups, institutional-based checks (interservice rivalry, interbranch constraints, etc.), police patrols ( budget process, civilian oversight and investigations, etc.), and finally, the most intrusive, revision of previously delegated decisions (i.e., micromanaging decisions ostensibly up to the agent) (Feaver 2003, 7587). Should monitoring turn up evidence of shirking, how can the principal punish the military

Giannotta 13 agent? Feaver identifies five options: tightened monitoring, short- and long-term material disincentives, the military justice system, and a catchall extralegal action category that includes any number of informal routes to punish the agent (2003, 87-94). Feaver notes that his theory represents a dramatically different way of thinking about civil-military relations that diverges from traditional conceptions in its focus on the microfoundations ...how the structure of choices an incentives facing the relevant actors shape their relations (2003, 113). But while this model offers a promising, generalizable theoretical construct rooted in the contemporary social science literature, it has not been extensively tested. Coletta and Feaver (2006) looked at the effects of changing monitoring technologies, comparing the cases of Jeffersons dealing with the Barbary Pirates in the early nineteenth century and Clintons relationship with the military in the Kosovo mission of the later 1990s. Feaver (2011) examines George W. Bushs decision regarding the surge in Iraq from the perspective of civilmilitary relations theory, but does not explicitly use his own model, opting for a more general discussion of the differing civilian supremacist or military supremacist theoretical camps. This study aims to provide a more rigorous test of the agency theory, examining the civilmilitary relationship in a very recent example of American national security decision-making: military policy during the tenure of General Stanley McChrystal as commander of the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. This period both begins and ends with the firing of a general, and in between are multiple decision points and opportunities for tension among the civilians and military elites. Its importance as a critical policy area in contemporary American politics is one factor in making it a good case for study. From the perspective of theory-testing, the fact of variance in the variables over this period, while the individual actors involved are held constant, offers a prime opportunity to examine the political dynamics involved in civil-military

Giannotta 14 interaction as the incentives faced by the actors evolve over time. Why, for example, did Barack Obama decide ultimately to remove McChrystal in June 2010 and not earlier, when other instances of shirking arose? Why did monitoring, working/shirking, and punishment decisions take the forms they did at various points during that year? And, did those decisions and the general interactive process play out as the agency theory expects? Those questions form the motivation for this study, the choice of this particular period, and the analytic thrust of each of the case studies that follow.

Analytical Framework
Feaver tests his model with the Cold War by first assessing the general civil-military outcome, and then working backward to determine the hypothesized values for the theorys input variables and checking to see if those did indeed obtain (2003, 152-159). I identify two phases of McChrystals tenure that are most pertinent to the civil-military relationship: McChrystals appointment and assumption of command and the strategic review of fall 2009. These periods are crucial cases to examine because they revolve around the major decision points that the civilians and military faced in the first year of the Obama Administration, and offer clear civilmilitary interactions to study: first, the decision to fully commit to Obamas renewed focus on Afghanistan by changing commanders and implementing a new strategy in the summer; second, the decision to re-assess that earlier plan and develop a firm, long-term strategy for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. The final phase of McChrystals tenure, as the second strategy decision was implemented in the winter and spring of 2010, does not involve major strategy decisions to serve as an analytic focus, nor does it exhibit much more than a continuation of earlier patterns and would thus be redundant rather than illuminative. While the ultimate

Giannotta 15 punishment occurs when Obama fires McChrystal in June 2010, the games pattern was established in the earlier conflict that arose over decision-making processes and it is these two cases that I use to test the theory. As Feaver did, I will first determine the general outcome via an overview analysis of each of the two cases, asking questions similar to those he asked of the Cold War: Whose preferences initially prevailed in the key policy decisions of those phases in Afghanistan, and whether military operations conformed to civilian preferences. For example, in the first case, summer of 2009, the primary concerns were implementing the new strategy that had been decided on in March and addressing the suddenly salient civilian casualty problem. In the second case, the key problem of the fall of 2009 was the decision over the way forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Once this assessment of the general civil-military outcome is complete, I will proceed to analyze the input variable measurements through the agency model lens. The game as presented in this theory unfolds as follows. First, the civilian decides how to monitor the military agent, either intrusively or not. This decision is a function of costs that are exogenous to the model - namely, electoral and policy costs. In the former type, more intrusive monitoring takes away from time and resources the civilian politician needs for electoral purposes, while in the latter, more intrusive monitoring may mean higher costs in terms of the end policy decided on and implemented - the political leaders, even if they have professional backgrounds in military affairs, are not solely experts in that field, and since their primary concern must be the holistic political picture, the deeper they become involved in micromanaging military policy, the greater the hit the quality of that policy may be expected to take. The kinds of changes that affect the monitoring decision include evolutions in communication technology and changes in the external threat environment (Feaver 2003, 101).

Giannotta 16 The cost perceptions can be measured with an examination of the journalistic sources of the period to gain an understanding of the context in which the decision is made. Once the decision has been made by the civilian on what kind of monitoring to engage in, the military agent will decide whether to work, defined as performing according to the civilians preferences, or shirk, performing according to its own preferences. This decision is a function of two things: the gap between the civilian and military preferences, exogenously defined; and the expected civilian response to shirking (Feaver 2003, 102). The former can be measured through an examination of public statements and military doctrine, as well as journalistic reporting of the actors preferences at the time under study. For military preferences, key items like the Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24) provide insight into the guiding doctrinal viewpoints regarding policy choices in Afghanistan. As far as measuring expectations of how the civilian will respond to shirking, earlier behavior will likely prove the most obvious cue, and so I will be especially attentive to how the players have behaved in earlier, similar situations. The final two steps in the game are contingent upon the military decision to work or shirk. If the military decides to shirk, then Nature determines whether the shirking is caught by the civilian principal or not. The probability of being detected is determined exogenously, by Nature, as a function of the level of intrusiveness of the monitoring regime decided upon by the civilian. The more intrusive the civilian monitors the military, the higher the probability that shirking will be detected. Should shirking be detected, then the final stage of the game is the decision by the civilian to punish the military. Once again, this is determined exogenously by the context in which the civilian must act. As Feaver explains, a unified civilian actor has more leeway to punish, and a popular president would have more ability to punish an unpopular general than an unpopular president would a popular general (Feaver 2003, 102). However, one must pay

Giannotta 17 attention to the various factors at play when assessing how the civilian decides here. Even when an unpopular president is faced with the prospect of challenging a popular general, as in the case of Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War, the president may decide that he has to act to save face and assert some control over the direction of policy. Popularity alone may not be the ultimate determining factor. Using this framework and the equilibrium conditions consistent with each of the four possible outcomes (see table 2.3), and referencing Feavers listing of civilian monitoring mechanisms and punishment options, I will analyze each case by assessing whether the expected values of the input variables indeed hold in the historical record. The key questions concern the costs faced by the civilian of intrusive monitoring, the reliability of the monitoring regimes available to the civilian, and the militarys expectation of punishment. Following Feaver, I will also be attentive to any incidents within the cases that noticeably diverge from agency theorys expectations, and look at them in the overall context of that particularly phase. Each case study will conclude with an overall assessment from the view of agency theory.

Giannotta 18 Table 2.1 Summary of oversight mechanisms in ascending order of intrusiveness

Monitoring mechanism from principal-agent literature Contract incentives Screening and selection Civil-military analog Offer by civilian to use less intrusive monitoring in exchange for obedience Skill requirements for entrance into military Loyalty oaths Other accession instruments Professionalism The news media Defense-oriented think tanks Interservice rivalry Militia system and National Guard Interservice rivalry (sometimes) Civilian staffs in Congress Atomic Energy Commission Confirmable civilian secretariat Planning, Programming, and Budget System and the budget process Civilian secretariat and Office of Secretary of Defense Restrictive rules of engagement Restrictive standing or mission orders Limits on delegated authority Audits and investigations Inspectors General Congressional Budget Office, General Accounting Office, Office of Technical Assessment

Fire alarms Institutional checks

Police patrols

Revising delegation decision

Intervening in a military operation to make a decision that was hitherto in the scope of delegated authority (e.g., picking bombing targets from the White House) NOTE: This table reproduced from Feaver 2003, 86, Table 3.1.

Giannotta 19 Table 2.2. Military punishments available to the civilian principal

General category Restrictive monitoring Examples Audits Mandatory remedial training (as in sexual harassment training) Material disincentives: current Budget cuts Restricting liberty Material disincentives: future Discharge prior to earning benefit Retirement below grade Loss of retirement privileges Other-than-honorable discharges Military justice system Nonjudicial punishment Courts-martial Extralegal action Verbal rebukes Purges NOTE: This table reproduced from Feaver 2003, 94, Table 3.2.

Giannotta 20 Table 2.3. Equilibrium conditions associated with monitoring/working outcomes

Monitoring and working outcome Monitoring intrusively/working Strategy pairs that would produce this outcome Civilians monitor intrusively and the military works if monitored but shirks if not monitored. Civilians monitor intrusively and military always shirks. Civilians do not monitor intrusively and the military always works. (1) Civilians do not monitor intrusively and the military always shirks (2) Civilians do not monitor intrusively and the military works if monitored but shirks if not monitored Equilibrium conditions associated with strategy pair C1 < W S2 ag(S1 S2) and w2 > s2 bgp and w1 < s1 agp C1 < (bg ag)(S1-S2) and w1 < s1 agp and w2 < s2 bgp C1 > 0 and w1 > s1 agp and w2 > s2 bgp (1) C1 > (bgp ag)(S1-S2) and w1 < s1 agp and w2 < s2 bgp (2) C1 > W S2 ag(S1-S2) and w2 > s2 bgp and w1 < s1 - agp

Monitoring intrusively/shirking Monitoring unintrusively/working

Monitoring unintrusively/shirking

Lexicon: W: Work done as the civilian principal wanted it S: Work done as the military agent wanted it (shirking) C1: Civilian costs of monitoring (time/effort costs and the policy costs of inexpert meddling) S1: The civilian payoff of military shirking if civilian punishes S2: The civilian payoff of military shirking if civilian does not punish p: Costs to military of punishment (makes shirking less valuable to the military) w1: The military payoff of working with nonintrusive monitoring w2: The military payoff of working with intrusive monitoring s1: The military payoff of shirking with nonintrusive monitoring s2: The military payoff of shirking with intrusive monitoring a: The probability of detecting shirking with nonintrusive monitoring b: The probability of detecting shirking with intrusive monitoring g: The probability of punishing shirking NOTE: This table reproduced from Feaver 2003, 153-54, Table 5.4.

Giannotta 21

Chapter Three

CASE ONE: MCCHRYSTAL TAKES COMMAND, SUMMER 2009

The summer of 2009 was a key moment in Operation Enduring Freedom. March had seen the announcement of a major shift in strategy and an increase in troop levels, and in August, Afghanistan would hold a critical presidential election. With the change in command in May, the pieces appeared to be in place for renewed charge. But the new strategy required an integrated civil-military effort, and the security situation on the ground would turn out to be much worse than the decision-makers apparently realized in the spring. This chapter examines the summer months through the lens of agency theory, first offering a brief review of the history up to this point, then assessing the overall civil-military outcome by answering the questions of whose preferences prevailed and whether the military followed civilian wishes, moving to an examination of the values for each of the key input variables of the game, and finally with a general discussion of the period and the theorys applicability for this case.

The Overall Civil-Military Picture

The key concerns for the summer of 2009 were the implementation of the new strategy decided upon by President Barack Obama in the spring, and the problem of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, made salient by an incident in early May and turned into a critical political issue as the Afghan presidential campaign gained traction over the course of the summer. From the

Giannotta 22 perspective of agency theory, we must first assess the civilian monitoring decision - did civilians choose intrusive or nonintrusive monitoring of the military? Then, we must determine whether the military agent worked according to the civilians preferences or its own (i.e., shirking). This will provide an overall understanding of the civil-military picture during the summer of 2009, from May through August, when General Stanley McChrystal was appointed commander of the American and NATO forces in Afghanistan until the countrys presidential election. From that review of civilian and military decisions, I will work backward and determine what values each of the input variables should have obtained to reach that outcome and whether they in fact did. Did civilians monitor intrusively? As the summer began, there was not much daylight between civilian and military preferences. I will review the preference ordering for each in more detail when measuring the input variables later in this chapter, but suffice to say that both sides of the civil-military coin were committed to a counterinsurgency and an increase in troop levels as the proper way forward in Afghanistan. At the same time, both civilians and military had an interest in minimizing civilian casualties, per counterinsurgency doctrine3 and civilian political concerns. Because preferences were largely the same as the summer began, the civilians did not have explicit reason to micromanage the implementation of the COIN strategy. This did not prevent intrusive monitoring, however. In the context of the agency theory, the principals monitoring, or oversight, of the agents performance, increases in intrusiveness as it becomes more restrictive on the agents freedom of action. Most of the civilian monitoring in this period took more nonintrusive forms, such as the fire alarm network of news media, think tanks, and blogs, which
3

See The U.S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, discussed in more detail in the Preferences section below. The doctrine requires a holistic approach to subduing insurgencies in a given state - undue casualties promote, rather than weaken, insurgencys political standing among the population.

Giannotta 23 provide a third party check on agent activity, alerting the principal when the possibility of shirking becomes apparent4. Despite this, a key part of the civilian monitoring regime was National Security Advisor Jim Jones own perceptiveness when it came to the militarys growing demand for more troops. As a former Marine Corps Commandant, Jones had his own expertise and experience in military affairs to go along with his service as a part of the civilian principal. Jones activity in checking on the agents work was a form of monitoring that the principal-agent literature calls a police patrol, which Feaver describes as regular investigations of the agent by the principal (2003, 84). Indeed, Jones experience likely made such monitoring more effective and thus more intrusive. In his history of the Obama Administrations handling of Afghanistan over the course of its first two years, Bob Woodward points to a growing campaign for more troops by McChrystal and Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Just three months after the Riedel review,5 the desire for more troops was becoming clear even though the Pentagon had officially committed to holding forces at the current level for a full year, at which point the new strategy - and the impact of 21,000 more troops - could be evaluated (Woodward 2010, 123). Jones was able to use his own background to his advantage both in terms of his relationship with the military and his own understanding of their evolving
4

See Feaver 2003, 80-84 for a more in-depth discussion of the fire alarms available in the civilmilitary context. These also include institutional checks and rivalries between the services. One complication of public fire alarms, which I will note throughout this study, is that they are not specifically intended to aid the civilian principal. As different interests jostle for influence, public reports could work to the advantage of a particular faction within the civilian or the military, as opposed to functioning as straightforward monitoring mechanisms for a unified civilian principal (see Feaver 2003, 84 on this point). 5 Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution with work experience in the CIA, Defense Department, and National Security Council, was tapped by Barack Obama in the spring of 2009 to undertake a review of the American strategy with regard to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The review led to the decision of spring 2009 to add 4,000 additional troops to the 17,000 Obama had already approved, and to commit to a counterinsurgency-centric strategy that also accepted the critical importance of Pakistans role in Afghan instability. See Woodward 2010, 88-114.

Giannotta 24 preferences and their decisions regarding working and shirking. In Jones view, the military would work so long as its actions conformed to the Presidents orders to implement the spring decision; so long as there was talk of needing more troops before the already-approved additions hit the ground, the agent was shirking by pursuing its own preferences at the expense of its civilian principals. In an incident that combines the fire alarm nature of journalism with the police patrols of a senior member of the presidents national security team, Woodward joined Jones on a six-day trip to Afghanistan later that June. There, Jones attempted to relate the Presidents perspective to the military. Woodward illustrates this in his description of a meeting with Brigadier General Lawrence Nicholson at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province. Nicholson, the bases C.O. and a Marine like Jones, reported that troop levels were not adequate to carry out the counterinsurgency strategy. But Jones tried to make the group understand the Presidents perspective, laying out the decision-making process from earlier in the year. First, the military requested more troops, and in Obamas first month in office, he approved it. Then, Jones told them that the President approved a follow-up request for 4,000 more troops for training of the Afghan National Army. The President had been told that if you do all that, we think we can turn this around. Jones asked the Marines in the room to put themselves in the Presidents shoes, and bluntly told them that, if he heard about new requests for more troops before the last increase had a chance, the President would have a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment6 (Woodward 2010, 132).

This phrase recurs in discussions of Jones reactions to the more troops movement. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is the military version of the common acronym WTF, which stands for what the f***, using the NATO phonetic alphabet.

Giannotta 25 Not long before this, Jones had also made clear to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, and Secretary Gates, that such a campaign for additional troops would not be looked kindly upon at the White House. He told Gates and Mullen, we just went through this. We told the president, we wont bother you for another year. The Secretary of Defense and JCS Chairman, however, made clear that this seemed inevitable - with McChrystal now on the ground, he was seeing things he hadnt anticipated. Jones continued to be concerned, and decided that one way to defuse the tension would be giving McChrystal sixty days to work up a commanders assessment...rather than campaign for more troops behind the presidents back. Gates agreed to this and McChrystal would have time to assess the situation before any changes were decided (Woodward 2010, 123-25). Jones involvement was a clear case of intrusive monitoring, intended to head off the growing possibility of shirking by the military and delay the apparently inevitable reassessment by a couple months so that the civilians preferences (and the militarys initial preferences) could be at least partially implemented. Most of the other civilian monitoring took the form of non-intrusive fire alarms. These mechanisms alert the civilian to the possibility of shirking, but are not as intrusive as police patrols or more direct alternatives like revising an earlier delegation decision. Their intrusiveness, and thus usefulness to the principal, is also mitigated by the fact that fire alarms are primarily the purview of third parties. News reports relating the situation on the ground in Afghanistan abounded, full of quotes from soldiers and Marines who were facing a difficult enterprise in turning around the countrys security situation. For example, Marine General Nicholson, who had made the case for more troops to Jones at the end of June, said, What I need is more Afghans. Marine Captain Brian Huysman called it their Achilles heel. This proved a possibly fundamental flaw in the mission - more Afghan soldiers were needed if it was

Giannotta 26 to have any chance at success at moving beyond hold and into the final stages of the counterinsurgency: We cant read these people; were different. Theyre not going to tell us the truth. Well never get to build and transition unless we have the Afghans.7 The difference between the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan was made clear by Marine Sergeant Jacob Tambungas description: They are two totally different worlds. In Iraq, theyd hit you and run. But these guys stick around and maneuver on you.8 The problems of fighting a counterinsurgency in such an environment were thus obviously magnified, and avoiding collateral damage made ever more difficult due to a savvy foe. Theyre not stupid, Lance Corporal Frank Hegel was quoted as saying. You can tell they catch on to things, and they dont make the same mistake twice.9 But, these were quotes from those on the ground, fighting the battles and confronting the challenges head-on, not the words of those higher up tasked with making decisions at the strategic level. This fire alarm monitoring provided insight into the difficulties faced by the Americans in Afghanistan, but did not prove very intrusive at the strategic level. If anything, it may have bolstered the military elites growing case for needing more troops. Jones involvement, however, did ensure that the President and his civilian advisors had their way for at least a few months, so on the whole, it was this intrusive monitoring that played the most important role in the context of the civil-military game. Did the military work? While the civilians and military were unified on overall policy preferences, agency theory requires us to look at the agents implementation to determine whether it worked or shirk. The

Oppel, Jr., Richard A. 2009. Allied Officers Concerned by Lack of Afghan Forces. The New York Times, July 8, page A8. 8 Oppel, Jr., Richard A. Iraq Veterans Find Afghan Enemy Even Bolder, The New York Times, July 26. Page A1. 9 Ibid.

Giannotta 27 question here is whether the military operations conducted in the summer of 2009 conformed to the civilian preferences, which, as shown in the previous section, where the same as the militarys. One would expect that the answer to this question would be obvious in this case. But, as the situation on the ground evolved over the summer, the militarys preferences began to diverge from the civilians - to a desire for more troops to secure the country. Further complicating our assessment is the fact that it was not solely the militarys job to implement the counterinsurgency strategy. COIN, by its very nature, combines civilian and military to combat an existential threat to a state. The military made clear that it was not solely responsible for success or failure in Afghanistan. General Wallace Gregson, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs, remarked on a question about whether the military was engaged in nation-building by reinforcing the jointness of the mission, saying that the military role in the counter-insurgency in a large respect is protection of the population and that the goal was to transition to the Afghans themselves, but that this transition required adequate protection and that was the militarys primary role. But, Gregson said, the entire process requires more than just armed troops. The Nation fights the Nations wars, not the military. But the goal of any conflict or any engagement of the military is profoundly political, and in this case, the war cant be won until the dual political goals of security and good governance are realized, and the Afghan people are able to reject the Taliban.10 The new strategy, for instance, called for clear-hold-build,11 and the first such operation began in early July, in the violent southern Helmand province that Jones had just visited12. The

10 11

Ibid, P. 150 Clear-hold-build is a key part of COIN. At the level of the locality, the counterinsurgent force first clears the area of insurgents, then works to hold the area, and finally, once secured, builds a base of support for the host nation government. See Counterinsurgency Field Manual, 174-184.

Giannotta 28 intention was to provide some security so tactical gains turned into strategic victories, by providing space for the Afghan locals and government to establish themselves. Reflecting this new goal, a spokesman, Captain Bill Pelletier, was quoted in The New York Times as saying, We are not worried about the Taliban, we are not focused on them. We are focused on the people. It is important to engage with the key leaders, hear what they need most and what are their priorities. A civilian in Helmand Province threw some cold water on this ambition by pointing out that for those in the area, it is very difficult to tell who is Taliban and who are civilians. They all have the same face, same beard and same turban. It is very difficult to defeat them.13 The Marines, on the other hand, stood out like a sore thumb, putting them at a steep disadvantage in a war for the populations support. We saw in the previous section that National Security Advisor Jim Jones provided monitoring intrusive enough to prevent shirking by the military, despite the apparently obvious need for a re-assessment of the American strategy in the region. But as the summer went on, the military did begin to make some key changes to address the needs created by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially as the latter ramped up. Gates announced on 20 July that the Army would be increasing in size by 22,000, albeit temporarily. He reiterated his complaints about Congressional deliberations over the defense budget, saying that some of the wheeling and dealing on the Hill of a few hundred million here and a few hundred million there for a pet project here and a pet project there confront us with ever more difficult choices when were trying to make trade-offs in terms of how do we help our soldiers out. He pointed to the anticipated cost of the troop increase, of less than a hundred million dollars, as being one such
12

Shanker, Thom and Richard A. Oppel, Jr. 2009. In Tactical Shift, Troops Will Hold Afghan Ground After Clearing It. The New York Times, July 3. Page A8. 13 Associated Press. 2009. Moving Into Afghan Villages, Marines Woo Residents. The New York Times, July 4.

Giannotta 29 instance where the DoD would be forced to make difficult cost-benefit calculations.14 And, facing a dearth of officers to oversee large numbers of newly enlisted men, the Army embarked on a new marketing mission, meant to stress the services potential appeal to ambitious young college graduates. Lt. Gen. Benjamin Freakley was quoted as saying that its a different era, and it requires a different kind of thinker, reinforcing the idea that the United States faced both new forms of warfare and the need to develop innovative strategies for dealing with them.15 Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, July would end with record casualty tallies. 75 American and NATO troop deaths, read the report in The New York Times, a number that surpassed the highest previous monthly casualty toll by almost two-thirds.16 In early August, NATO juggled its command structure, putting Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez in charge of the day-to-day war, with McChrystal still in overall command.17 The summer months thus saw the military work according to the original policy decisions, although the reality on the ground began to starkly diverge from the assumptions those decisions were based on. Or so the military perception appeared to be at the time. And with this change in perception, the militarys preferences began to shift toward a need for more troops. The military would work, while given the opportunity to re-assess its own preferences going forward. In sum, the military worked over the course of the summer. When shirking seemed to become a problem, in the growing push for more troops and a broader reconsideration of the American mission in Afghanistan (despite not having fully implemented the spring decision), Jones deal with Gates
14

Bumiller, Elisabeth. 2009. Gates Says Armys Size Will Grow By 22,000. The New York Times, July 21. Page A8. 15 Quenqua, Douglas. 2009. With Enough Soldiers, The Army Is Looking For a Few Good Officers. The New York Times. 3 August. Page B5. 16 Oppel, Richard A. 2009. Afghan War Hits Peak Toll For a Month. The New York Times. 3 August. Page A11. 17 Erlanger, Steven. 2009. NATO Reorganizes Afghan Command Structure. The New York Times on the Web, August 5.

Giannotta 30 and McChrystal appears to have put the agent back in line and given an incentive to work. The President was not willing to change the plan at the strategic level so soon after one major decision had been made, and so the kind of abrupt shifts that the military preferred given the realities on the ground were not forthcoming. Because of this, the military had little choice but to pursue the original policy as best it could. Shirking, in the form of subtly drumming up support for a troop increase in Congress and the wider public, was lessened by Jones deal with Gates and McChrystal, which held open the possibility of the militarys preferences being addressed in the future so long as the civilian preferences were followed for the time being. So, in all, the summer of 2009 saw American civil-military relations with respect to Afghanistan as essentially intrusive monitoring with working. In this outcome, the civilians would monitor intrusively and the military would work while this was the case, and shirk when not. As weve seen per the empirical record, the civilians chose a mix of intrusive and nonintrusive monitoring mechanisms, and the military conformed to the principals wishes when it was clear that intrusive monitoring was taking place (e.g., Jones involvement with Gates, Mullen, and the Helmand Marines), while being sure to voice its concerns at other times when nonintrusive mechanisms were employed.

Evidence for the Intrusive Monitoring/Working Outcome

The civilians and military began the summer with generally coincident preferences. Once a new policy had been decided upon by the civilians, the delegation ensued with a change in command, and a largely nonintrusive monitoring regime, with the exception of Jim Jones police patrols. While most of the monitoring involved fire alarms, like the newspaper accounts of what the troops were facing on the ground in Afghanistan, this case of police patrolling was a crucial part of the agency game in this period. Jones was constantly vigilant for instances of military shirking (Woodward 2010), and so a key member of the presidents inner circle, and one with his

Giannotta 31 own experience and expertise in the military, was engaged in intrusive monitoring during the summer. The end result of the game was thus intrusive monitoring with working, which arises when civilians choose to monitor intrusively - in this case, by Jones - and the military works when this is the case, and shirks when it is not (Feaver 2003, 152). In this case, per the models expectations, the civilian costs of monitoring are relatively low and the military has a high expectation of being caught shirking and being punished under intrusive monitoring and a low expectation under non-intrusive regimes. Table 2.3 gives us these equilibrium conditions in more detail. In the monitoring intrusively/working outcome, we can expect the costs of monitoring for the civilian (C1) to be lower than the difference between the civilians preferences and the utility derived from military shirking (W - S2) and there is a low expectation of being caught and punished (ag) or the civilians see the difference between punishing shirking and not punishing (S1-S2) as negligible. In addition, the military derives greater benefit from working under intrusive monitoring than it would from shirking in such an environment where the expectation of detection and punishment, and the attendant costs, are high (w2 > s2 - bgp), and in a nonintrusive monitoring regime, the militarys payoff for working is less than shirking, given a low probability of being caught and punished (w1 < s1 - agp). From this, we can thus develop certain expectations for the values of the key input variables. The preference gap should have been high (W - S2), the costs of monitoring (C1) should have been low, the efficacy of nonintrusive monitoring should have been fairly low (a), the expectation of punishment (g) should have been high, and the costs to the

Giannotta 32 military of that punishment (p) should have been fairly high. See Table 3.1 for a summary of these hypothesized input variable values, and their actual measured values.18

W - S2 C1 a g p

Large Low Low High High

Preferences The agency model predicts that in the intrusive-monitoring-with-working outcome, the preference gap between the civilians and the military (W - S2) is relatively wide (Feaver 2003, 155). A large divergence in the preferences of the civilians and military would mean that the agent had greater motivation to shirk, while the civilian had more incentive to monitor intrusively and keep the agent in line. Ultimately, the costs to the military of shirking would be higher than if it worked under the intrusive monitoring regime, and so it should work even if its own preferences were sharply different than those of its civilian principal. However, as the summer of 2009 began, there did not seem to be much of a preference gap. The major policy concerns regarding Afghanistan in the summer of 2009, as Stanley McChrystal took command of the American (USFOR-A) and allied forces (International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF) in Afghanistan, were implementing the new strategy President Obama decided upon in March and
18

See also Feaver 2003, 152-155 for a further explanation of the determinants of a monitoring intrusively/working outcome, in that case the Cold War.

Giannotta 33 how best to handle the increase in civilian casualties in the theater. The new strategy had committed the United States to a full counterinsurgency effort, akin to that which was utilized in Iraq beginning in 2007 under the auspices of General David Petraeus19. The question as May began was how best to implement that strategy, a strategy which was largely the militarys preferred course. In announcing his strategic decision in late March, the President made clear that the mission in Afghanistan could only be won with a joint civil-military effort along the lines of a classic COIN operation. Along with approval of 17,000 new troops to the theater, Obama committed to increase training of Afghan security forces as the presidential election approached in August, and pointed to the importance of international support. To that end, he also cited the instability in neighboring Pakistan as a key concern, one that threatened to undermine the mission in Afghanistan and unravel the stability of the entire region.20 Once the militarys preferred option, a fully resourced and comprehensive, joint civil-military COIN strategy, was approved by the President, the next step would be to ensure that the actors to whom the implementation was delegated were appropriate. So, in early May, the decision was made by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to remove General McKiernan from his position as commander of the American and allied forces in Afghanistan. Gates rested the decision on the fact of broader changes in how the United States related to Afghanistan: We have a new strategy, a new mission and a new ambassador. I believe

19

By summer of 2009, Petraeus was no longer in Iraq, but had been promoted to lead U.S. Central Command, headquartered in Tampa, FL, and from where he oversaw American military operations in the Middle East, including Iraq and Afghanistan. 20 Obama, Barack. Remarks on United States Military and Diplomatic Strategies for Afghanistan and Pakistan, March 27, 2009. In Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Barack Obama, 2009, Book One: January 20 - June 30, 2009, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. 2010. Pages 365-70.

Giannotta 34 that new military leadership is also needed.21 Andrew Exum, a veteran of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and fellow at the Center for a New American Security22, said in a blog post at the time that many policy-makers and journalists think that McChrystals work as the head of the supersecret Joint Special Operations Command was the untold success story of the Surge and the greater war on terror campaigns. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command23 at the time, apparently has a close working relationship in Iraq in 2007 with McChrystal, and essentially giving McKiernan a pink slip indicated that Obama, Gates, and Petraeus were as serious as a heart attack about a shift in strategy for the AfPak theater.24 Both Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen were convinced by early May that this new leadership was required. Bob Woodward quotes Mullen as saying that he cannot live when I know I have a better answer...when kids are dying every single day (2010, 118). And the better answer just happened to be the man who was essentially the chairmans deputy, the director of the Joint Staff, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal (Woodward 2010, 118). The problem was that McKiernan refused to exit quietly when given the opportunity by Mullen (Woodward 2010, 119), and so on 11 May, Gates announced that he was being replaced as commander of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan

21

Tyson, Ann Scott. 2009. Top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan is Fired. Washington Post, May 12. 22 CNAS, a relatively new organization founded in 2007. Exums bio can be found here: http://www.cnas.org/node/737. 23 Central Command, or CENTCOM, is the U.S. combatant command that oversees American forces in the Middle East. CENTCOM headquarters, however, is located in Tampa, Florida. 24 Exum, Andrew. 2009. McKiernan out, McChrystal in. The Argument blog at ForeignPolicy.com, May 12, 2009. http://experts.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/05/12/mckiernan_out_mcchrystal_in (Accessed 3 May 2011)

Giannotta 35 (USFOR-A).25 McKiernans apparent image as a warrior of the old, obsolete school of traditional warfare seems to have combined with the connection between the COIN-experienced McChrystal and both Petraeus and Mullen to force the change. McChrystals appointment thus presented another instance of civil and military actors operating in ostensible tandem on key policy decisions. The strategic and personnel decisions were in place, and the record does not show much clear divergence in civilian and military preferences up to this point. One particular aspect of COIN implementation and Afghanistan policy that became salient during this time was the rise in civilian casualties. Days before Presidents Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan were due to meet with Barack Obama in Washington, an attack in the Bala Baluk district of western Afghanistan went awry. The Afghan government initially reported that at least 30 civilians were killed, but this number was disputed by local residents, who put it closer to one hundred.26 The severity of the incident would cast a pall over the entire summer. For Karzai, it and other instances of civilian casualties served as a useful campaign talking point, while for the Americans, it presented a political and military concern, and another instance where there was little daylight between the preferences of the American civilians and military. The Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24) stresses the importance of winning the support of the population as the key to defeating an insurgency. To this end, civilian deaths in the course of firefights between COIN and insurgent forces are anathema to the mission objectives. As the manual states,
...COIN is war amongst the people. Combat operations must therefore be executed with an appropriate level of restraint to minimize or avoid injuring innocent people. Not only is there a moral basis for the use
25

Bumiller, Elisabeth and Thom Shanker. 2009. Pentagon Ousts Top Commander in Afghan War. The New York Times, May 12. See also: Woodward 2010, 119; Tyson, Ann Scott. 2009. Top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan is Fired. Washington Post, May 12. 26 Sha, Taimoor and Carlotta Gall. 2009. Afghans Say U.S. Raids Killed 30 Civilians. May 6, The New York Times.

Giannotta 36
of restraint or measured force; there are practical reasons as well. Needlessly harming innocents can turn the population against the COIN effort. Discriminating use of fires and calculated, disciplined response should characterize COIN operations. Kindness and compassion can often be as important as killing and capturing insurgents (2007, 167).

Later, in the chapter on ethics in counterinsurgency operations, the manual once again treats this explicitly, plainly stating that when conditions of civil security exist, Soldiers and Marines may not take any actions that might knowingly harm noncombatants (2007, 248). Collateral damage is often unavoidable in any military engagement, and especially so in the case of counterinsurgent operations, often conducted in residential areas, in which the fog of war is further complicated by that fact. FM 3-24 ties this issue to the principle of proportionality, namely that the extraneous damage inflicted by any operation cannot outweigh the intended military goal. In other words, destroying an entire village and killing scores of noncombatants to kill a few minor insurgents would be counterproductive and a waste of resources. That being said, COIN itself requires a heightened level of awareness as to the possibility of unintended consequences. Contrasting against the starkly utilitarian cost-benefit calculations that make up conventional war-fighting, FM 3-24 states
Soldiers and Marines require an innate understanding of the effects of their actions and weapons on all aspects of the operational environment. Leaders must consider not only the first-order, desired effects of a munition or action but also possible second- and third-order effects - including undesired ones (2007, 248).

The Armys 2009 Posture Statement, submitted to Congress in early May, reiterated this commitment to reducing potentially counterproductive, if unintended, violence against the civilian population in counterinsurgent operations:
Conflicts are increasingly waged among the people instead of around the people. Foes seeking to mitigate our conventional advantages operate among the people to avoid detection, deter counterstrikes, and secure

Giannotta 37
popular support or acquiescence. To secure lasting stability, the allegiance of indigenous populations becomes the very object of the conflict (2009, 7).

The statement also pointed to the necessity of the whole of government approach in contemporary warfare, stating that interagency partnerships are essential...Military forces alone cannot establish the conditions for lasting stability (2009, 8). The COIN doctrine had become a major part of the Armys readiness and strategic outlook. Additionally, the civilians expressed support for the same goals. President Obama responded to a question about the unintended consequences of military actions in early June by saying that theres no doubt that anytime you have civilian casualties that always complicates things, whether it was a Muslim or a nonMuslim country.27 The special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke was even more blunt in assessing the potential impact that civilian casualties could have on the American mission: The war could be lost over this issue.28 Democratic Representative Christopher Van Hollen touched on the civilian casualty issue, which Gregson took up, once again repeating the now-standard military line about the peculiar nature of their counterinsurgency struggle. I could not agree more on the potential for any use of close air support missions or any air support missions to be counterproductive, Gregson told Van Hollen. All the Commanders and all their air crews are very carefully attuned to the necessity to prevent civilian casualties.29 Holbrooke followed up:
On the bombing, let me add to what General Gregson just said, a personal comment just echoing what General McChrystal, Ambassador Eikenberry, and I have all said publicly in the past. The war could be lost

27

Interview with Michele Norris and Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio, Public Papers of the Presidents: Barack Obama, 2009, p. 751. 28 Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. 2009. Afghanistan and Pakistan: Oversight of a New Interagency Strategy. United States House of Representatives, 111th Congress, First Session. June 24. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Page 126. 29 Ibid, p. 167

Giannotta 38
over this issue. If the war turns from a war against the Taliban and to a war against the Pashtun people, we will lose. The Taliban propaganda is all designed to make that point. We were successful in the 1980s in turning the Soviet invasion along those lines. We cannot let that happen to us. That is why we are putting so much attention on what is called strategic communications, a phrase I am not comfortable with because it does not quite convey what we are talking about. We are talking about counter-propaganda. And the Taliban have been winning the propaganda struggle.30

As the summer began, and Stanley McChrystal took command in Afghanistan, the civilians and military were unified in terms of their policy preferences. The situation on the ground would force the military to reconsider the plan going forward, as we began to see in the earlier discussion of civilian monitoring, but there was little divergence as to preferences in the initial decisions and the overall policy perspectives. In fact, McChrystals testimony at his confirmation hearing supported the joint civil-military commitment to the COIN strategy:
There is no simple answer. We must conduct a holistic counterinsurgency campaign, and we must do it well. Success will not be quick or easy. Casualties will likely increase. We will make mistakes. Commitment and continued support of this committee, Congress, and the American people will be vital. With the appropriate resources, time, sacrifice, and patience, we can prevail.31

On the matter of civilian casualties, he again stressed that his own view was in lock step with those of the civilians and the military, stating that central to counterinsurgency is protecting the people. He continued:
In counterinsurgency, how you operate, the impact of civilian casualties, collateral damage, cultural insensitivity, and the inherent complexities involved in separating insurgents from the population often determine success or failure. If defeating an insurgent formation produces popular resentment, the victory is hollow and unsustainable.32

30 31

Ibid, p. 168. Ibid, page 10. 32 Ibid, page 11.

Giannotta 39 But the hearing also touched on the concern over whether the strategy and troop levels were adequate. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) raised an issue that would prove a prelude to the conflicts of the summer and fall months, asking McChrystal if he felt constrained by any political concerns as far as future troop requests. The general responded that Admiral Mullen said that - if I was confirmed, to ask for what I need, almost quote/unquote. He looked me in the eye and said that. So, I believe that, if I have a requirement, I can look Admiral Mullen in the eye and tell him, Thats what I need. When Graham asked if thats true of the administration as a whole, McChrystal said I dont know.33 Almost immediately after his appointment, it became clear to McChrystal that the situation on the ground was not as good as it had seemed. The troop levels approved only a few months earlier probably would not be adequate in succeeding to stabilize the country (Woodward 2010, 124). The last day of July saw a United Nations report state that 1,013 Afghan civilians had been killed in the fighting since the beginning of the year, an increase from 2008 of almost 200 deaths. And while the report blamed the Taliban for over half of those, that proved little solace with the crucial election only a few weeks away and the population remaining wary of NATOs presence. The report also indicated that insurgent activity had become more threatening to the country than in the past. This in turn required heightened counterinsurgent activity - necessitating the very missions in populated areas that risked collateral damage.34 Indeed, the report stated that as the conflict intensifies and spreads, it is taking an increasingly heavy toll on civilians.35 As the insurgency spreads into civilian residential areas and the counterinsurgent forces follow, a

33 34

Ibid, p. 45. Otterman, Sharon. 2009. Afghan Civilian Deaths Rise, With Militants Causing Most, U.N. Says. The New York Times, August 1. Page A7. 35 United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, Human Rights Unit. 2009. Afghanistan: Mid Year Bulletin on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, 2009. Page 1.

Giannotta 40 rising toll in terms of civilian deaths and injuries and destruction of infrastructure were threatening the populations survival and the maintenance of livelihoods.36 The uncertainty over the upcoming presidential election was another concern. In late July, Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative to the region, expressed such concerns. We are worried about voter registration fraud, he said, and we are worried about voters who will be unable to reach polling places because of insecurity. And we are worried about the accuracy of the vote count, and we are worried about the inability of women to vote. The major summer goal for the military was securing the country and providing some sense of stability ahead of the vote, a crucial step in the long-term counterinsurgency mission. But, as Helmand Provinces election commissioner said, The people are not that interested in the elections. They voted before, and they did not see any result from that. And they dont want to put their lives in jeopardy for one vote.37 Thus, while the broad strokes of the counterinsurgency strategy were agreed upon by both civilians and military in the spring, the best way to implement that strategy became the policy decision over which their preferences began to sharply diverge as the summer progressed and the military began feeling that it required greater resources to succeed in the mission it had been delegated. As the preference gap widened, military shirking became more likely and the need for intrusive monitoring increased. While the initial difference was negligible, it was the fact of its steady increase as the summer went on and the strategy was implemented that drove conflict between the civilians and military. Preferences in May might have been identical, but by August, that was not the case.

36 37

Ibid, pp. 1-2. Gall, Carlotta. 2009. Insecurity and Fears of Fraud Cast Pall Over Afghan Election. The New York Times, 4 August. Page A1.

Giannotta 41 Monitoring Costs Agency theory leads us to expect that in the intrusive monitoring/working outcome, the costs to the civilian of monitoring the military are relatively low. From the Presidents perspective, he had committed fully to a new course in Afghanistan and Pakistan, ordered more troops, and changed the field commander. All of this was quite public and signaled an important shift in American foreign policy. Obama had made a point of identifying Iraq as the war of choice, and Afghanistan as neglected yet more vital to U.S. interests and security.38 At the same time, the administration faced a myriad of other issues over the summer, from the recession (the top issue for the public), the health care reform debate that would intensify over the summer months, controversies over his policies with regard to the prison at Guantanamo Bay and the release of detainee abuse photos, and the uprising in Iran over what was perceived to be a fraudulent election. The costs of any intrusive monitoring were thus prohibitive. Having made a major decision which essentially gave the military what they asked for (as the President apparently understood it), the President did not think he would have to, and then could not afford to, micromanage the implementation of the policy. This was made clear in Jones interactions with the military during the summer. At the same time, the myriad of monitoring options, from non-intrusive fire alarms to the large number of staff members in the National Security Council and Department of Defense, made monitoring a relatively routine task. Jones background made him more perceptive as to the militarys changing preferences and the possibility of shirking, and combined with his attentiveness to the Presidents own political concerns, a key part of any intrusive monitoring. The President and Congress could not afford to meddle too deeply into the militarys implementation, from policy and electoral perspectives, but Jones had the military expertise to make policy costs negligible. As a non-elected official, he had enough distance to
38

Remarks in Cairo. Public Papers of the Presidents: Barack Obama, 2009. Page 763.

Giannotta 42 minimize the electoral costs while also appearing to keep the Presidents own cost-benefit calculations in mind. Since the civilian position was to stay the course and test the new strategy and impact of new troops prior to any major strategic shifts, the policy costs of intrusive civilian monitoring were probably negligible. The civilians were not convinced that the March decision had been given enough time, so intrusive monitoring was likely to work toward what did occur - buying more time for that plan to play out. While the military became concerned that this was a fools errand, the civilian position was to hold the line on the earlier decision. One complication here is in the fact of the integrated nature of the AfPak strategy. Since it required joint effort by both civilian and military agencies, there was constant interaction - or should have been. This resulted in the lines between civil and military being blurred out of necessity, and in a way that intertwined the different tracks of policy with regard to AfPak and the political and military objectives and interests. So, the nature of the new enterprise in Afghanistan makes it difficult to assess policy costs attributed to civilian monitoring. Separating the civil from the military requires a more fine-grained analysis that does away with the unitary actor assumption and begins to disaggregate the mission down to the ground level. As a rough measure, however, Jones intrusive monitoring was the key civilian monitoring action during the summer. Reliability of non-intrusive monitoring regimes The next question concerns the reliability of the available nonintrusive monitoring mechanisms. During the summer, journalistic reports, think tank work, and countless blogs kept track of Afghanistan policy, all serving as basic fire alarms. The earlier cited quotes from the troops on the ground and blog post from Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) are examples of such mechanisms. However, as expansive as the fire alarm

Giannotta 43 network might have been, this very fact may have diluted its effectiveness. Think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and CNAS were devoted to security issues, including Afghanistan, but they also had starkly different political backgrounds, and therefore potential biases. The sheer amount of possible information available in the form of fire alarms at this time call into question their reliability as a monitoring system. In the principal-agent context, it must also be recalled that the civilian government principals are actually the agents of the voters. In this way, fire alarms can create electoral pressure on the civilian leaders. And so it is no surprise that, as we saw earlier and will see again in the next chapter, the military used the media to project its own preferences. This is a further complication that the simple agency model, with unitary actors, fails to adequately capture. The political dynamics of the civilian and military decision to use connections in the fire alarm system to promote their own preferences to their respective principals make this monitoring systems efficacy as a means by which the civilian can keep the military in check questionable. The aforementioned instances of military use of media to express concerns with troop levels, strategy, and the tenor of the war call into question the medias use was it truly as a civilian monitoring mechanism or was it a medium through which the military could shirk, or at the very least, signal its preferences where it thought it was not being heard? At this point, interservice rivalry was also not a very effective check because Afghanistan was largely an Army and Marine enterprise. Mullen, the JCS Chairman and Navy Admiral, was firmly on the side of the theater commanders during the decision-making processes (Woodward 2010; Alter 2010), and the record contains no explicit conflict between the branches when it came to Afghanistan policy. With the wars in the Middle East the primary military policy concern of the time, and with those wars driven by Army and Marine ground forces with the Air Force and Navy having marginal roles, interservice rivalry did little from a civilian monitoring

Giannotta 44 perspective. In general, then, the non-intrusive monitoring mechanisms appear to have been relatively ineffective in providing the civilian with a reliable check on military working. The military worked largely because of Jones intervention in delaying shirking and securing more time for the agreed-upon policy to be implemented and tested. Military's expectation of punishment Multiple factors were at play in determining the militarys expectation of civilian response should it shirk: the status of David Petraeus as a prominent (and dominant) counterinsurgent intellectual force, the firing of McKiernan, and Secretary Gates history of no-nonsense management in his two-plus years in office. General Petraeus had achieved quite the stature in the military establishment and the public mind, owing to his development of the revised counterinsurgency doctrine and leadership of the surge in Iraq that appeared to turn Americas fortunes around in that theater. He was considered to be very intelligent and very ambitious. According to Jonathan Alters account of Barack Obamas first year as President, the ambition was not so much political (as some wishful Republicans hoped and the White House feared) but rather to be his eras Carl von Clausewitz or Alfred Thayer Mahan, the dominant military strategist of the twenty-first century (2011, 365). Alter reinforces the perception of the contemporary news reports - that McKiernan was fired for being a poor fit in the COIN strategy Obama had committed to in March. McKiernan was simply too conventional, with his background as an armor commander in Iraq, and couldnt adapt to the needs of his theater. However, Alter points to an unintended consequence of the generals sacking, and one which holds some interest from the civil-military relations view.
Because dismissals were so unusual in the military - and so disruptive to the culture of the armed forces McKiernans firing meant that all the other generals in the U.S. military were now fire-proof, safe in their jobs for the foreseeable future (2011, 367).

Giannotta 45 He goes on to say that this resulted in a situation where the military felt free to toy with the civilian leadership without fear of the consequences (2011, 367). But did the military truly receive the signal that they were safe? The argument is probably partly accurate, but we have to remember also that Robert Gates had built a no-nonsense reputation in his two-plus years as Secretary of Defense. In March 2007, a scandal over the conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center led to its commander, Major General George Weightman, being fired by Army Secretary Francis Harvey. Harvey chose a former Walter Reed commander, Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley, and the decision so angered Gates that both Harvey and Kiley ended up gone before the month was out.39 In the summer of 2008, the mishandling of nuclear material by the Air Force led to the forced resignations of the services secretary and chief of staff. Thom Shanker, in his report for The New York Times, remarked that in office 18 months, Mr. Gates has made accountability a central theme, firing senior Army officials after disclosures of shoddy conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and pushing into retirement other generals closely associated with a faltering strategy in Iraq.40 Gates history of being willing to make abrupt changes and the very recent fact of McKiernans removal make it likely that the military had a high expectation of shirking being caught and punishment being severe. Since preferences aligned fairly closely as the summer began, this may not have been a concern, but as the summer went on and the preference gap widened, the warnings by Jones and desire for increased troop levels made shirking a more costly decision. The civilians had shown a willingness to work with the militarys wishes, but also a clear willingness to enforce their own preferences. Shirking would most certainly be
39

Shanker, Thom and David Stout. 2007. Chief Army Medical Officer Ousted in Walter Reed Furor. The New York Times, March 13. Page A17. 40 Shanker, Thom. 2008. 2 Leaders Ousted From Air Force In Atomic Errors. The New York Times, June 6. Page A1.

Giannotta 46 caught, especially once Jones expressed his concerns, and the militarys own success in the counterinsurgency strategy, a centerpiece of its modern warfighting philosophy, could be at risk should leadership and resources be weakened through civilian punishment. The expectation that shirking would be detected was thus high, as was the expectation of punishment. Both are as the theory predicts.

Conclusion
The summer of 2009 thus largely follows the agency theorys model of civil-military relations. The civilians and military began with fairly close preferences, but once the policy was implemented and changes appeared to be necessary, those preferences diverged. Non-intrusive monitoring was largely ineffective, while intrusive monitoring was employed in a few instances to ensure military compliance. The military took advantage of some non-intrusive mechanisms, particularly fire alarms, using them to promote their own preferences as the situation on the ground deteriorated later in the summer, and making those fire alarms less effective as civilian monitoring tools. The main complication in this assessment is the fact that the unitary actor, civilian-military distinction blurs much of the depth involved in the political dynamics regarding Afghanistan policy. For example, as mentioned, the fire alarm system was not a straightforwardly civilian oversight mechanism but could also be a political tool for either the principal or the agent. And, neither the civilians nor the military were completely unified, as the theory assumes. This will become more of a factor in the fall during the strategic review. During the summer, though, the military was largely unified in its commitment to a counterinsurgency strategy and the civilian was largely unified to the same goal. But the general civil-military relationship follows the agency theory framework. In sum, the civilians monitored intrusively to achieve military working.

Giannotta 47

Chapter Four

CASE TWO: AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN STRATEGY REVIEW, AUTUMN 2009

The second major phase of McChrystals tenure was the strategic review that the civilians and military jointly undertook in the fall of 2009 when the generals assessment made clear that the current troop levels and existing strategy would need to be revised.41 The prior phase saw the civilians and military largely in agreement on policy preferences, but diverging as the summer wore on. Given the civil-military relationship as it developed over the fall months, the summer seems to have been signaling future discord. The strategic review would turn into a political conflict - not just in civil-military terms, but also in terms of civilian political dynamics. As in the previous chapter, I will assess the two key questions of the civilian monitoring and military working decisions, then develop hypotheses per the agency theory as to what the input variable values should be given that overall outcome. Finally, I will check these hypothesized values against the qualitative record to determine whether they in fact did obtain the expected values. One important limitation must be noted prior to beginning the analysis. For this particular period, the majority of pertinent data comes from Bob Woodwards Obamas Wars, information that is also corroborated by Jonathan Alters account in The Promise: President Obama, Year

41

McChrystal, Stanley. 2009. Commanders Initial Assessment. 30 August. Declassified copy accessed at http://media.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/politics/documents/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf

Giannotta 48 One, newspaper sources,42 and public statements by the key figures. The vast majority of these sources provide identical reporting of behind-the-scenes events that speak to the key civilmilitary interaction of this period - the strategic review. There is also scholarly precedent for using this sort of journalistic data. Peter Feaver relied heavily on Woodwards narrative accounts of the Bush Administration in applying civil-military relations theory broadly to the Iraq surge decision in late 2006 and early 2007 (2011). James Pfiffner also consults these same sources in his broad-gauged study of decision-making in the Bush Administration (2009). Both of these are initial assessments coming soon after the period under study, and confront the same limitations as I do, namely the fact that recency means a lack of official documentary sources providing a window into the deeper processes at work. But it also has to be acknowledged that Woodwards work is, ultimately, commercial in nature. He has made a living from writing highly-publicized books on the handling of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars under the Bush and now Obama administrations. His books also provide an account that is mostly narrative-focused and intent upon proving an interesting and engaging read, so there is the danger of bias in the fact that he may (and probably does) embellish certain points. Most importantly, the very fact of his job as a journalistic gate-keeper of the information he comes across means that what ends up in his account is necessarily filtered through his own perception of what is important for public consumption. This adds another bias to the data. The fact that much of what Woodward writes in his book is corroborated by other sources provides one check for validity, but it also could indicate that each of these reporters consulted similar sources, received similar or identical information, hold similar biases, or even

42

In particular, the accounts in Woodward and Alter, including the quotes of key decisionmakers, match the one given in Baker, Peter. 2009. Inside the Situation Room: How a War Plan Evolved. The New York Times, December 6, page A1.

Giannotta 49 referred to each others reporting in the course of their own. With these caveats in clear view, I proceed under the assumption that Woodward and the others who are cited herein have sufficient access to key decision-makers and are respected enough in both the worlds of journalism and academia, as noted above, to provide a worthwhile, if tentative, first cut at applying the theory and assessing its merit. Later analyses can draw on new sources, as they become available, and add greater analytical depth.

The Overall Civil-Military Outcome

Did civilians monitor intrusively? The first question that agency theory requires us to answer is whether the civilian principal engaged in intrusive monitoring of the military. Because this period involved multiple high-level meetings and constant interaction between civilian and military elites in attempting to forge a revised strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the civilians had a somewhat easier time of monitoring military work than when issuing an order and waiting for implementation in the field, overseas. The civil-military problem here was one of process; the President wanted a vigorous debate (Woodward 2010, 160), while the military, as it became clear, wished to recommit to a more fully resourced counterinsurgency mission, and so was not as interested in providing the multiple options the President wanted. This is but a broad sketch of the preference gap that will be detailed later in this chapter, but it provides us with a starting point to determine the civilians monitoring choice. The civilians were interested in an engaging process that would bring the different viewpoints in to the discussion and make both sides aware of what was being presented as strategic choices. The militarys decision to shirk, however, which will be addressed in the next section, made civilian oversight in the direct contact instances of the review meetings

Giannotta 50 difficult. There simply was not the airing of different options and blunt opinions that the President professed to want, and so when the military agents left the meetings to create new options for the President or otherwise bolster support for the Presidents preferred strategic review process, the civilians required other means of checking the agents work. One such way was to continue holding the strategic review meetings and attempt to force discussion. The review itself lasted for about three months, from the time McChrystals report was delivered until Obama announced the new strategy in early December. Obama encouraged debate as well he could, and when Vice President Joe Biden raised his own plan, dubbed counterterrorism plus and focused on pursuing Al Qaeda rather than stabilizing Afghanistan, the President encouraged him to push it as an option. Bob Woodward quotes Obama as saying that I said, Joe, I want you to say exactly what you think. And I want you to ask the toughest questions you can think of...I think Joe served an enormously useful function (2010, 160). Biden outlined his plan during the first meeting on 13 September, but according to Woodwards account, Richard Holbrooke, the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the vice presidents presentation may have been too long to be effective (2010, 170). The use of Biden as a counterweight to the militarys own preferences provided the President with a means of checking the military and ensuring they would work, at least in theory. But Holbrookes criticism of Bidens overlong presentation was reflective of the Vice Presidents well-known tendency of being verbose (Woodward 2010, 166), which made his effectiveness as a monitor questionable. In a later meeting, both Generals McChrystal and Petraeus contradicted Bidens assertion that a counterterrorism-focused plan would need fewer troops than the full counterinsurgency plan (Woodward 2010, 190). Resistance to the Biden counterterrorism-plus option was strong, but with the help of the National Security Councils Senior Advisor and

Giannotta 51 Coordinator for Afghanistan-Pakistan, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman, Marine General James Cartwright, Biden was able to see a hybrid plan developed. This plan combined aspects of both counterterrorism, by adding 10,000 Special Forces troops to directly combat the Taliban, and counterinsurgency, by adding 10,000 troops who would train Afghan forces in areas already secured by the Americans (Woodward 2010, 236). The plan was almost scuttled by Admiral Mullen, but President Obama requested to learn more about this option (Woodward 2010, 234-8). Thus, counterterrorism plus and Bidens eager advocacy of it were utilized by the President as a means of monitoring the militarys work. It provided Obama with the debate over multiple strategic options that he desired. It was also a fairly intrusive tool, given the fact that it had such a high level booster, in the Vice President, and also because it was raised directly with the military elite in the review meetings, and at the apparent request of the president as a means of raising debate. That was not the end of civilian intrusion during the review, however. The other major instance of intrusive monitoring was also a sort of punishment when the Presidents preferences went unmet by the military at the end of November. The day before Thanksgiving, Obama finally decided on a hard cap of 30,000 additional troops (Woodward 2010, 303) but when the plan was questioned by the Pentagon just two days later, the President reportedly said he was pissed and set about dictat[ing] precisely what he wanted (312-13). The President spent almost the entirety of that Friday crafting a detailed plan, according to Obamas own decision and intended to be absolutely clear as to his orders - Woodward quotes the President as saying, Maybe Im getting too far down in the weeds on this, but I feel like I have to (2010, 315; see also Alter 2011, 388-89). This meant that the civilian ultimately performed the work originally

Giannotta 52 delegated out to the agent, an example of both very intrusive monitoring and punishment (in that the militarys own preferences were checked and advice denied). Other examples in this period included the President making clear his dissatisfaction with McChrystals public remarks in a 1 October speech to the International Institute of Strategic Studies (Woodward 2010, 193-94) and White House staff relaying similar messages, including reprimanding David Petraeus spokesman regarding the generals use of the media to present his personal view points before the review had even begun (Woodward 2010, 158). Obamas willingness to bluntly acknowledge the militarys shirking during the strategy meetings was another example of direct, and intrusive, monitoring. At one point, Woodward quotes him as saying to the military representatives: So whats my option? You have essentially given me one option...Youre not really giving me any options (2010, 278). Even earlier, in October, the President directly confronted Gates and Mullen in the Oval Office in a way that his predecessors had failed to when faced with similar military intransigence, telling them that he was exceedingly unhappy in light of the militarys public statements (Alter 2011, 379). In sum, the civilians constantly engaged in intrusive monitoring during this period, showing a willingness to engage in police patrols like restrictive orders pertaining to the options the President wanted to see presented, and revisions of delegation decisions, ultimately leading to the civilians having to directly oversee the development of alternatives to the militarys preference. Did the military work? The next question to answer is whether the military worked in this period. The empirical record indicates an emphatic no, as evidence points instead to consistent military shirking in the pursuit of its preferences at the expense of the civilian principals. While the military agent did technically provide the civilians with the requested advice, it also pursued a course of action that

Giannotta 53 essentially undermined the thorough decision-making process the President demanded. Feaver notes that one complication in identifying shirking in cases of military advice is that fulfilling this agent role may require the military to object to civilian preferences. But he cites three indicators that the advisory role could be technically working but truly shirking:
(1) the advice consisted of elements that the military shaded or inflated so as to misstate the true anticipated cost of a course of action; (2) the military did not respect a civilian decision to overrule its advice and publicly or privately continued to seek to prevent civilians from taking the civilian-desired course of action; or (3) the advice was accompanied by bureaucratic foot-dragging and slow rolling that collectively shifted the policy off the civilian-preferred course. (2003, 138)

The fall of 2009 saw these methods utilized by the military as it attempted to push the civilian to its own preferences. The period began with an early September instance of shirking, in which General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command and godfather of the contemporary counterinsurgency school, reached out to Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson to provide a counter to a David Ignatius column that was heavily critical of the American mission in Afghanistan, to the point of raising the specter of Vietnam (Woodward 2010, 157-8). Gerson quoted Petraeus as rejecting the counterterrorist approaches that would later be advocated by Biden in his counterterrorism plus plan, and also states that the general was strongly behind McChrystals request for a fully resourced, comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign that would require an increased American commitment, including more troops.43 Not too long after, an op-ed appeared in The Wall Street Journal, by Senators Lindsey Graham, Joseph Lieberman, and John McCain, that called the American enterprise in Afghanistan a

43

Gerson, Michael. 2009. In Afghanistan, No Choice but to Try. Washington Post, September 4, A23.

Giannotta 54 must-win war in which a middle path would be a recipe for quagmire and ultimate failure.44 Woodward ties this to information that McChrystal had relayed to the senators regarding the number of troops he would require to succeed, and that the senators were Petraeus allies (2010, 171). Another instance of shirking, at least as seen from the civilian viewpoint, was Mullens confirmation hearing for a second two-year term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His opening statement declared his support for a properly resourced counterinsurgency strategy that probably means more forces and without question more time and more commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan in terms of both security and governance.45 This public support for an increase in troop levels angered the President and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, despite the fact that Mullens statement had been approved by NSC staffer Denis McDonough (Woodward 2010, 172-3). General McChrystals address to the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the question-and-answer session that followed was seen by the White House as another example of the public campaign for more troops and a recommitment to counterinsurgency being waged by the military (Woodward 2010, 193-5). When asked about a high-level meeting and the possibility of needing more manpower, McChrystal declined to speak to any details but praised the review process as incredibly important and incredibly healthy and necessary. He also declined an opportunity to criticize his civilian bosses, making clear that he was their agent and served at their pleasure, and welcomed debate and discussion. But when questioned about troop level requests, he also states that I dont think that if we align our goals and our resources that

44

Graham, Lindsey, Joseph I. Lieberman, and John McCain. 2009. Only Decisive Force Can Prevail in Afghanistan. The Wall Street Journal, September 14, page A15. 45 Committee on Armed Services. 2009. Nomination of Admiral Michael G. Mullen, USN, for Reappointment to the Grade of Admiral and Reappointment as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. United States Senate, 111th Congress, First Session. September 15, 2009. Page 8.

Giannotta 55 well have a significant problem.46 While the general did not plainly state his desire for more troops, the implication was obvious, both to journalists who reported on the event and apparently to the White House as noted above. Like Petraeus a month prior, McChrystal argued that counterterrorism instead of counterinsurgency would be a mistake, and likely produce a Chaosistan.47 McChrystal bluntly said that he would not support such a plan (Alter 2011, 378). Beyond public statements appearing to run at cross-purposes with the Presidents intentions regarding the strategic review, the military also shirked in fulfilling Obamas desire for multiple options. Despite adding the hybrid counterterrorist-focused plan led by Biden and Cartwright, the four options before the President were not really options. To Obama, two were at unrealistic extremes and the middle options were essentially the same - either 40,000 or 30,000 to 35,000 with a decision point for [a] fourth brigade that could get it to the militarys desired 40,000 number. Obama made clear to Gates that he wanted another, viable option, and Woodward quotes the Secretary of Defense as telling the President that I think we owe you that option, but also makes clear that it was never presented. Obama told Woodward that I was more involved in that process than it was probably typical (2010, 278-9). The President would ultimately have to create his own plan, getting far down in the weeds and dictating it to his advisers in the Oval Office over the course of the Friday after Thanksgiving. This ultimately came after an initial decision was agreed to by Gates two days earlier, but then appeared to be rolled by the Pentagon once again by Friday (Woodward 2010, 313-15).
46

General Stanley McChrystal Address - Listen to the Q & A Session video at the International Institute for Strategic Studies web site. http://www.iiss.org/recent-keyaddresses/general-stanley-mcchrystal-address/watch-the-qa-session/ 47 Burns, John F. 2009. Top U.S. Commander in Afghnaistan Rejects Scaling Down Military Objectives. The New York Times, October 2. A12. On the speech as promoting a fullyresourced COIN strategy, see also Woodward 2010, 193-95; Barnes, Julian E. 2009. McChrystal defends military goals in Afghanistan. Los Angeles Times, October 2. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/02/world/fg-afghan-mcchrystal2

Giannotta 56 Despite the help of Vice Chairman Cartwright in providing Obama with the advice he had requested, the other military elites were committed to a troop increase of 40,000 and used public stages, civilian allies, and bureaucratic slow-rolling to push their preferences at the expense of the Presidents. This was a clear case of consistent shirking over the course of the strategic review process during the fall of 2009, despite the civilians persistent intrusive monitoring.

Evidence for the Intrusive Monitoring/Shirking Outcome

The civil-military relationship during the fall strategic review decision-making process was a combination of intrusive monitoring by the civilian with shirking by the military. While the military may have technically worked in the sense that it provided the civilian with options, the empirical record makes clear that this was consistently not what the civilian actually wanted, and indeed the principal requested the agent to re-assess the options on more than one occasion and ultimately performed the delegated task himself. In terms of the agency theory, then, we arrive at the intrusive monitoring with shirking outcome and, as laid out in Table 2.3, we can determine the equilibrium conditions which the model leads us to expect given this outcome. The civilian costs of monitoring (C1) are low relative to the probability of being caught and punished under an intrusive regime versus a nonintrusive regime (bg - ag) and their is a larger payoff for punishment as compared to not punishing (S1 - S2). The military also perceives a larger payoff for shirking in any monitoring regime compared to working (w1 < s1 - agp; w2 < s2 - bgp). Thus, the input variables should take on the following values: the preference gap should be wide; the civilian costs of monitoring relatively low; the reliability of nonintrusive monitoring low; the militarys expectation of punishment low; and the costs to the military of being punished low.

W S2

High

Giannotta 57 C1 a g p Low Low Low Low

Preferences For the civil-military relationship to take on a shirking with intrusive monitoring outcome, one key expectation is that there exists a wide gap in the preferences of both civilians and military. This would lead to a situation in which both the costs of monitoring to the civilian and the costs of punishment to the military were bearable enough to be non-prohibitive in either decision to monitor or work/shirk. And in the fall of 2009, the preference gap was indeed wide. The beginning of the summer had seen coincident preferences in pursuing the counterinsurgency strategy decided upon in March, and the President had agreed to the militarys requests regarding troop levels. However, once that strategy and resource level was seen as inadequate, the military began to develop different preferences, desiring more troops to succeed in the counterinsurgency mission. McChrystals report at the end of August made clear that a change was necessary for the end goal of a stable Afghanistan to be met.48 At this point, there does not seem to be much division in terms of the need to re-assess the American strategy in Afghanistan. But, the problem centered around the decision-making process itself. The President requested a thorough review, to gain a full understanding of the problems in the region and develop a comprehensive approach that would reduce or eliminate the

48

McChrystal, Stanley. 2009. Commanders Initial Assessment. 30 August. Delivered to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Declassified version accessed at http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf

Giannotta 58 need to revisit the situation in the short term. To this end, Obama also requested multiple options be brought before him and for all parties to engage in a thorough review (Alter 2011, 372-74). Obama is quoted in Woodward (2010, 160) as saying of his preferences for the process:
...I think the American people are best served and our troops are best served by a vigorous debate on these kinds of life-or-death issues. I wanted every argument on every side to be poked hard. And if we felt a little give there, we wanted to keep on pushing until finally you hit up against something that was incontrovertible and something that we could all agree to.

But, the military had developed a clear preference as to the end policy decision by the time the review had begun. More troops were needed - the consistent military request would end up being 40,000 - and the policy options presented to the President made the military preference the clear winner against unrealistic alternatives. As touched on in the previous section, the military had ultimately provided the President with four options: the high end was an influx of 85,000 troops; the middle range options included the militarys preferred 40,000 and a slightly different plan that called for up to 35,000 troops with the option left open for an additional brigade that would essentially bring the total to 40,000; and, finally, the hybrid plan that would focus on counterterrorism operations and add 20,000 troops. As far as Obama was concerned, the two extremes were unworkable and the middle two were basically the same (Woodward 2010, 278). So, an obvious divergence was visible in terms of the views as to the process itself and the outcome desired by either party. But, this case also betrays one of the weaknesses of the agency theory, particularly in terms of its unitary actor assumption. The preferences noted above were not uniformly agreed upon among either the civilians or the military. The President preferred multiple options and a rigorous discussion of those options; other civilians, however, agreed with the militarys preferences, or placed their own political concerns ahead of the Presidents preferences. For

Giannotta 59 example, Woodwards narrative (2010) describes the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, as behind the militarys preference for more troops, while Vice President Biden had his own counterterrorism plus strategy on the table, and other, lowerlevel members of the military and civilians jostling for position between them. Jones, with his background in the Marines and position as a Presidential advisor, was attentive to the militarys divisions and proclivity to dig in and attempt to roll the President, as well as the Presidents own political concerns. But as attentive as he may have been to the Presidents preferences, he also found himself at odds with the Presidents own inner circle of advisors and detached from a cerebral and distant Obama (Woodward 2010, 344) as well as with the other civilian principals whose preferences diverged. In addition, the military was divided. As discussed earlier, General Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, worked on an alternative plan along the lines of the Presidents request, which brought him into conflict with Chairman Mullen, who supported McChrystal. There was also the conflict of interest between the two in terms of service backgrounds Cartwright, a Marine, questioned Mullens authority on matters of ground war strategy given the Chairmans service in the Navy and inexperience when it came to combat (Woodward 2010, 237). In addition, both the Alter (2011) and Woodward (2010) accounts portray Mullen as overly sensitive to his public image. He may not have had the necessary background to make decisions regarding ground war strategy, but his position as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and desire to maintain influence (despite the positions lack of statutory command authority) appeared to have incentivized his alliance with Petraeus and McChrystal on the AfPak strategy. He also had personally vouched for McChrystal, who had served as his chief of staff in Washington prior to

Giannotta 60 being assigned the Afghanistan command - Woodward says that Mullen revered McChrystal (2010, 154). Ultimately, preferences diverged a good deal in the strategic review process, and the divisions within the civilians and the military made this an even more pronounced problem. However, the agency theory does not capture this distinction, which may very well have had a substantial effect upon the policy-making process and the political dynamics at play. In broad terms, though, it is clear that the civilians had different preferences from the military, especially when the civilian is operationalized as the commander-in-chief ordering a strategy review with multiple options and the military as the top officers resisting the command to offer options and pushing their own preferences. So, its no surprise, in this context, that the civilians would decide to monitor more intrusively and the military would decide shirking may be in its interest. Monitoring Costs The theory predicts that monitoring costs should be relatively low, making intrusive monitoring a viable option for the civilian. And, it appears that the costs were low. The period is marked by frequent interaction between the civilian and military elites as the review progressed. Since Obama had made development of a comprehensive strategy for the AfPak region a key goal for the fall meetings, monitoring of the military to ensure compliance with civilian work preferences was not overly costly from an electoral perspective. The leaking of McChrystals report to the media in September reinforced the military narrative that the situation on the ground was not going as well as hoped and a change was required. By persisting in the review process and pressing the military for options, Obama was responding to this policy demand, initiated both by himself and the media reports of the worsening Afghanistan security problem. But he also found criticism for the length of time the review ended up taking. Former Vice President

Giannotta 61 Richard Cheney accused Obama of dithering on the strategy decision, a critique that appeared to draw some ire from administration officials, at least in the media.49 While this drew the current administration into a quarrel with the previous one, it also provided an opportunity for the White House and Administration supporters to portray Obama as willing to delve deeply into a responsible decision-making process. So the Presidents electoral costs were relatively low at this point - the deteriorating stability of Afghanistan threatened to unravel the American mission there, and from a long-term perspective, failure was an unacceptable option. Indeed, General Lute, the NSC advisor for Afghanistan and Pakistan, raised the issue of Obamas personal stake in the decision - the ostensible end point of the surge plan, 2011, would probably not see any of the three key military leaders - Petraeus, Mullen, and McChrystal - still in place. But the president would be (Woodward 2010, 318). The Presidents own electoral costs were thus colored by this long-term calculus, which necessitated an exit strategy and the understanding that this was not an openended mission. While there was a good degree of criticism from his political opponents over the intrusive handling of the policy decision, and a number of other salient issues shared the headlines in the fall, not least of which was the continuing recession and the debate over health insurance reform, Obamas commitment to addressing the AfPak problem before it spiraled out of control was also clear. The close contact between the civilians and military in the form of frequent meetings made the time and effort to monitor the military less of a concern, and the fact of the process itself as a fundamental part of Obamas political strategy regarding both Afghanistan and his own image as a careful decider and responsible commander-in-chief, meant that the electoral costs were minimized in this period.
49

Cooper, Helene. 2009. Afghan War is New Topic of Dispute with Cheney. New York Times, October 23, page 12.

Giannotta 62 The fact that several of the Presidents advisors in the National Security Council had extensive military experience also made the policy costs less of a concern for the civilians.50 The willingness of General Cartwright to develop a hybrid counterterrorism option also helped the civilians in term of having adequate policy expertise on their side as they tried to push for their own preferences and against the dominant military preferences. Policy costs were moderated by the perceptions of each actor as to what exactly the policy is - for the civilians, it was stability in Afghanistan to provide an environment in which the United States could exit, while for the military it was simply stability, the needs for which were conditioned by the evolving situation on the ground. The civilian was constantly aware of the electoral necessity of not engaging too deeply in Afghanistan, but also of the policy need for achieving stability there - but always conditioned by the political requirements of an eventual exit. The military was concerned not with ultimate exit, but with successful counterinsurgency. And, for the military, as per COIN doctrine and the words of the generals themselves, such a mission is a long-term, often openended process. Therefore, the perceptions differed, with the civilian including a vague yet definite end date as a strategic goal, and the military seeing its job as enduring so long as an insurgency exists. For the key military elites, success was tied to their own personal political interests in advancing their reputations tied to counterinsurgency (especially in light of the apparent success in Iraq). This made the civilian policy costs less because the President was concerned with a thorough, all-options-on-the-table assessment while the military leaders in the form of Petraeus, Mullen, and McChrystal were apparently not.

50

Specifically, former Marine Corps Commandant Jim Jones, Army Lieutenant General Douglas Lute (the War Czar and a holdover from the Bush Administration), and Army Colonel John Tien, a veteran of the Iraq War.

Giannotta 63 Reliability of nonintrusive monitoring mechanisms Agency theory also leads us to expect a low reliability for nonintrusive monitoring mechanisms. As discussed earlier, the military used the fire alarm system to its advantage, attempting to present its own preferences for public consumption. General Petraeus, head of Central Command at the time and a leading figure in the counterinsurgency school that was ascendant in military doctrine, was politically astute and reached out to his contacts in the media for this purpose, as we saw in the case of the Gerson column. In this way, the fire alarms became as much of a tool for military shirking as they were of civilian oversight, thus reducing their effectiveness as means of monitoring. Additionally, the criticism in the media over Obamas dithering became one prominent public narrative over the course of the fall, which compounded the problem for the civilians - the fire alarms that should have provided them with a means by which to monitor the militarys working behavior became a strong outlet for both military shirking and dissension among the civilians themselves. This weakened the effectiveness of nonintrusive monitoring as a civilian oversight tool. Military's Expectations of Punishment Agency theory also leads us to expect that the military had a low expectation of punishment at this time, and once again, the record would appear to bear this out. The military elite who supported the push for more troops had significant high-level support in the civilian ranks, most notably in the form of the Secretaries of State and Defense. But they also had support in the Congress and from other prominent figures who used the media fire alarms to advantage the military position. Since the civilians had just undertaken a major change in military leadership in May, and the military position had support among key civilian leaders, there seemed to have been little expectation of punishment. Additionally, as McChrystals public support for the strategy review process might imply, there appeared to have been a perception on

Giannotta 64 the part of the military that pushing hard for its own option was along the lines of what the President was requesting when he said he wanted a full debate. Petraeus, Mullen, and McChrystal do not come off as naive politically, but at the same time their own perception of Obamas orders may have made them see their actions as fully conforming to the Presidents request. And given the support they had in some congressional circles and their own unified front, the idea of extreme punishment (e.g., removal) was probably not considered realistic, especially if they were providing the President with a vigorous support of the option they were convinced was necessary, in accordance with their perceptions of his wishes.

Conclusion
The empirical record thus supports the agency theorys expectations as far as the determinants of a intrusive monitoring/shirking outcome. The civilians monitored intrusively to ensure military work, but the military persisted in shirking over the course of the fall, determined to achieve its own policy preferences in the strategic review. And, as the theory predicted, it was not only preference divergence, but also low monitoring costs, low reliability of non-intrusive monitoring mechanisms like the fire alarm network, and a low expectation of punishment by the military that contributed to this outcome.

Giannotta 65

Chapter Five

CONCLUSION
Almost seven months after President Obama made and announced his strategy decision, an article appeared in Rolling Stone51 that would undo the ISAF/USFOR-A command and see General McChrystal removed and replaced with General Petraeus. The article presented a field commander and staff that were highly critical of the civilian principals. Given the respect afforded McChrystal because of his background in counterinsurgency and the support he had among both the military elite and some in Congress, the article by itself may not have resulted in his firing. But the pattern of civil-military relations that had attended Afghanistan policy since Barack Obama was sworn in made the outcome appear all but inevitable. Tensions, in some cases because of clear preference gaps and in others due to apparent misunderstandings, persisted between the two camps into the summer of 2010. As the months drew on with few signs of any visible progress on the ground, and the military continued to insist that the success of COIN would require an enduring and perhaps open-ended commitment, these tensions were only heightened. The Rolling Stone article thus appeared to provide a critical moment in the ongoing civil-military game, one in which the military had finally shirked in a way that the President, cognizant of his own power stakes, could not ignore. Thus, Obama punished McChrystal by removing him from his command and effectively ending his Army career. This concluding chapter will review the findings from the two case studies, briefly touch on the methodological issues I confronted, and finally assess the agency theory as a model for American civil-military relations. In short, despite the valuable insight gained through
51

Hastings, Michael. 2010. The Runaway General. Rolling Stone, July 8-22. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-runaway-general-20100622

Giannotta 66 application of this framework to Afghanistan policy-making in the Obama Administration, the weaknesses in data availability and theoretical simplicity make this a necessarily tentative analysis. It provides a worthwhile first cut, but does not capture the political dynamics in their entirety.

Summary of Findings
The two case studies provide support for the agency theorys validity in modeling the civilmilitary relationship in terms of Afghanistan War decision-making. In general terms, the empirical record conforms to the theorys expectations. During the summer of 2009, after Obama had made his initial strategy decision and McChrystal had been appointed to the ISAF and USFOR-A command, civilian and military preferences were largely coincident. Once McChrystal arrived on the ground and the summer progressed, it was apparent to the military, even before the civilians preferences had been fully implemented, that a re-assessment was necessary. As this caused conflict between the civilian principals and the military elites, the Presidents National Security Advisor, with his own elite military background, moved to check the militarys potential shirking through intrusive monitoring. A bargain was essentially struck by securing time for the military to work according to the Presidents original orders while also ensuring that McChrystal would have the ability to offer his assessment at the end of the summer. In this period, the intrusive monitoring with working outcome matched the theorys equilibrium condition expectations. As preferences diverged, the need for intrusive monitoring was realized by the civilians. Under such a monitoring regime, and given the recent firing of General David McKiernan as ISAF/USFOR-A commander and Secretary Gates history of being willing to remove subordinates, the military worked.

Giannotta 67 Once the assessment was delivered, and the strategic review began in the fall, it was clear that the military had its own stark policy preferences regarding the way forward. Throughout the entire review process, the military insisted on a troop increase that was higher than the President was willing to approve. It also actively worked against Obamas preference for a thorough review of different strategic options. Instead, the military appeared to persist in providing a menu of options that was essentially their preference and other unrealistic choices. According to agency theory this was a case of intrusive monitoring with shirking, and once again the theorys expected equilibrium conditions matched the reality. The frequent meetings and high priority placed upon the process by the President reduced monitoring costs. Non-intrusive monitoring mechanisms like the fire alarm network of the media proved unreliable, and the military lacked an expectation of punishment. These conditions were aided by the fact of split preferences within both the civilian and military sides, as well as the militarys understanding that the President wanted vigorous advocacy of its preferences. In both of these cases, the theory accurately predicted the conditions that led to the given civil-military outcomes. In broad-brush terms, agency theory thus provides us with a useful framework for understanding the civil-military politics of strategic decision-making in an ongoing armed conflict. But there are crucial caveats that must be addressed. Next, I will briefly touch on the methodological issues inherent in this study, which have already been discussed earlier in more detail. Following that, I will touch on the crucial theoretical concern that became apparent in conducting this study and calls into question its utility in fully explaining these cases and American civil-military relations generally.

Giannotta 68

Methodological Issues
As discussed earlier, this study faced two major methodological limitations. First was the difficulty in testing a game theoretic model. There appear to be few attempts at testing such models with qualitative narratives beyond the analytic narrative project (Bates et al. 1998). Given the fact that game theory models reality through a step-by-step, process-based method, this is unfortunate. But when initially embarking upon my own study, I realized the difficulty inherent in this. The agency theory clearly attempts to model a daily, constant civil-military interaction, and barring an immensely detailed narrative account, this proved difficult. It was because of this that I opted to follow Feavers own example and focusing on analyzing the cases in terms of the models outcome typology and expectations as far as equilibrium conditions. This provided a more analytically-focused product. The second issue I faced is connected to the first. A true, day-to-day narrative analysis would require a far more thorough database than I was able to compile. It is not that there is not enough data to be found; I consulted hundreds of newspaper articles, and scores of other sources from books to blog postings, hearing transcripts and presidential statements. But, many of these sources fail to properly speak to the actual day-to-day civil-military interaction that the agency theory means to address. The journalistic accounts provided in Bob Woodwards book covering this period offer the kind of behind-the-scenes insight that such a model requires for a proper assessment. But, as discussed in the previous chapter, such sources have their own pitfalls as well. Ultimately, these weaknesses are significant, but do not preclude a first cut analysis that offers a foundation on which to build. The agency theory, by its very nature, is a general theory, and, as I will reflect on in the next section it does not capture completely the full political realities at work in the civil-military relationship. We have seen that such a model holds general applicability, which in turn indicates that a more detailed refinement of the theory itself and case

Giannotta 69 study methodology utilized in testing game theory models will provide even greater insight into the politics of civil-military relations. When the Obama Administration has ended, and key documentary evidence is declassified, this will allow for greater analytical depth. But, all of this is beyond the theoretical scope and practical limitations on data of this particular study. It has, however, demonstrated that further work is worthwhile and offers something on which it can build.

Assessing the Theory

Over the course of this study, it became very clear that the agency theory, while broadly applicable, was also quite limited in its ability to accurately model the political dynamics at work in American civil-military relations. Most problematic was the unitary actor assumption. As Feaver himself notes (2003, 294-95), the theory could profit from relaxing this assumption and accounting for the reality of a split principal. The American political system is not divided simply between the civilians and the military. The Constitution grants the Congress funding power, but makes the President commander-in-chief. In practice, confirmation and check-up hearings give Congress power to assert a measure of influence, especially in long, drawn-out conflicts like the Operation Enduring Freedom. This also allows presidential opponents in and out of Congress an outlet to challenge the White House on issues of military command. And this outlet is also open to dissenters in the military. As Feaver states, once differentiated, the constellation of civilian preferences could be aggregated...or perhaps be modeled as a prior game in a larger, nested principal-agent game (Feaver 2003, 295). As the case studies showed, these cleavages within both institutional actors provoked much of the actual conflict over the course of the decision-making process. The theory, however, failed to capture the finer distinctions that were present. To resolve this and bolster agency theorys

Giannotta 70 predictive power, it would probably do well to model the civil-military relationship as a multilevel game in which the President and Congress play as one agent-principal pair and then the President and the military. Existing theories of executive-legislative dynamics would help in modeling this game52. However, even this two-level game blurs much of the reality, especially with regard to the politics within the military and the militarys interaction with allies in Congress. Greater attention to the politics of military bureaucracies would thus aid in our understanding of this process and further refinement of a multi-tiered game. But it also became clear that both the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff served as a nexus of sorts for the civil-military conflict. The President was a civilian without a military background, but his National Security Council had experienced veterans. Jim Jones, the National Security Advisor and former Marine Corps Commandant was a retired threestar general, but others, like Lieutenant General Douglas Lute or Colonel John Tien, were not retired, but served as presidential advisors. In addition, the military itself was divided. On the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Vice Chairman, General Cartwright dissented from the party line held to by the JCS Chairman, Admiral Mullen, and Generals Petraeus and McChrystal. In fact, Woodward describes Cartwright, an Army soldier, as being unhappy with Mullens influence in the process, given his background in the Navy, with no experience in the kind of ground war the United States was facing in Afghanistan (2010, 237). To the point above on the need to examine intra-military politics, this also shows how interservice rivalry could play a key role in determining actor behavior.

52

If the President is assumed to have final command authority over the military in his capacity as commander-in-chief, then this can be considered a form of unilateral executive action. William G. Howells unilateral politics theory (2003), which models, as an executive-legislative game, the circumstances under which a President would be most likely to act unilaterally in a given policy domain, may thus be useful in developing the President-Congress game.

Giannotta 71 These two key presidential advisory bodies thus offered a microcosm of the macro civilmilitary dynamics. In addition to a more refined, multi-level game that accounts for the interests of the different civilian and military institutions generally, a more fine-grained understanding of the ways these groups function and interact would be profitable in further developing the agency theory to accurately model the true politics in civil-military relations. After all, while the agency theory as it exists speaks to institutional interests primarily, this study has made clear that individual actors within those institutions are motivated by their own incentive structure and perceptions of the payoffs of certain actions. To this end, it may also be prudent to modify the rational actor assumption by adding more psychologically realistic assumptions of human behavior. What seemed apparent in the micro-level politics was the possibility of conflict driven by misperceptions of other actors intentions, as in the tension between Petraeus and the Obama Administration or Jones and the Presidents civilian advisors. McChrystals public statements were also perceived differently by different actors, which draws into question the ability of an impartial observer to validly measure shirking in an objective way. Focusing on motives and actions at the individual level also allows us to examine the decision-making process among the civilian elites. Cabinet secretaries, like Gates and Clinton failed to do in the strategic review process, do not have to adhere to the Presidents preferences. Both of these individuals had their own standing and prominence as long-time public servants, creating their own power bases. Their actions thus also play a role in the way the military agent responds to the Presidents wishes. Ultimately, this study has shown that while the agency theory as currently construed holds value in offering a general guide for understanding the civil-military relationship, it also fails to accurately capture all of the actual interactions that make up the politics at work. Of course, one

Giannotta 72 important point of theory is to provide a parsimonious explanation of reality. The suggested avenues for further theoretical development deprive the theory of its current simplicity. But a theory that fails to adequately model reality is also less than useful. Building on the literature in political psychology, institutional dynamics, and bureaucratic politics might complicate the model, but would also deepen and strengthen its explanatory power.

Conclusion
In discussing the inherent difficulties of managing a war, Obama tells Bob Woodward that once the dogs of war are unleashed, you dont know where its going to lead. When I entered into office, we had two wars taking place. So once youre in, what youre trying to do is impose clarity on the chaos (2010, 375-76). In many ways, this statement reflects as much the job of a scholar attempting to study any political process. Theories must be simple enough to offer general explanations, but the subjects under study are often complex and full of interconnected parts. Agency theory has provided a valuable function here in accurately explaining the general processes at work in the Obama Administrations decision-making process on Afghanistan policy over the course of the summer and fall of 2009. But it also fails to fully capture the political dynamics at work in such a multifaceted process. Still, this study provides a foundation from which to work, and succeeds, if only modestly, in imposing some clarity on the chaos of American civil-military politics.

Giannotta 73

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