Lieutenant General (Retired) Robert Ashley joins host Tom Spahr to discuss the shifting landscape of global intelligence and the ongoing work of the Afghanistan War Commission. With the liberal world order facing unprecedented challenges, Ashley emphasizes that the intelligence community (IC) must prioritize relevance and trust to remain effective in an era of closing technological gaps. As a commissioner, Ashley is currently “unpacking” twenty years of strategic decisions in Afghanistan to provide an honest assessment for the American people—a project he likens to the “9/11 Report: Part 2.” He ends with a call for leaders to maintain intellectual rigor, stay curious, build diverse networks, and remain “voracious consumers of information” to navigate a complex future.
What’s the core reason that the IC exists? It’s to reduce uncertainty, right, for decision makers. And so one of the lessons I think that is part of this is you’re never going to really know everything.
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Robert Ashley is a retired Lieutenant General in the U.S. Army with 36 years of service. During his final three years in uniform he served as the 21st Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Before that, he served as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, G2, of the United States Army, and completed 6 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the Director of Intelligence, United States Central Command, and was the Senior Intelligence Officer for the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. He currently serves as one of the 16 bipartisan commissioners on the Afghanistan War Commission, established by the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act to examine the strategic, diplomatic, and operational decisions made during the war in Afghanistan.
Thomas W. Spahr is the DeSerio Chair of Strategic and Theater Intelligence at the U.S. Army War College. He is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army and holds a Ph.D. in History from The Ohio State University. He teaches courses at the Army War College on Military Campaigning and Intelligence.
The views expressed in this presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, or Department of Defense.
Photo Description: A briefer holds a briefing book prior to the Presidential Daily Briefing in the Outer Oval Office, March 10, 2009.
Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
From the written introduction to our podcast above:
“With the liberal world order facing unprecedented challenges, Ashley emphasizes that the intelligence community (IC) must prioritize relevance and trust to remain effective in an era of closing technological gaps.”
“What’s the core reason that the IC exists? It’s to reduce uncertainty, right, for decision makers. And so one of the lessons I think that is part of this is you’re never going to really know everything.”
Questions — Based on the Above:
If the intelligence community must prioritize relevance and trust to remain effective, how is this possible, in the highly politicized environment which we find ourselves in today?
In the highly politicized environment which we find ourselves in today, is it still true, that the core reason the IC community exists, this is to reduce uncertainty for decision makers?
Based on the matters that I present above, consider the following from AI:
“In a highly politicized environment, relevance and trust are largely determined by perceived alignment with existing political worldviews, shared values, and group identity, rather than by objective measures like evidence or factual accuracy alone.”
At about the 24:00 point in this podcast, the guest, retired LTG Ashley, a member of the current Afghan War Commission, stated that from Jan 2012 to Mar 2013 he was the senior intel officer in Afghanistan and, with a number of important officials leaving their assignments at about the end of that time, he and his people wanted to develop and give a “state of the insurgency” report. (Have I got that right?)
But can one really develop and/or give important information relating to an “insurgency;” this, if (a) one’s opponent really is not an insurgent and, thus, (b) an insurgency is really not what is going on? In this regard, consider the following from David Kilcullen and Robert Egnell:
Kilcullen:
“Similarly, in classical theory, the insurgent initiates. Thus, Galula asserts that ‘whereas in conventional war, either side can initiate the conflict, only one – the insurgent – can initiate a revolutionary war, for counter-insurgency is only an effect of insurgency’. Classical theorists therefore emphasise the problem of recognising insurgency early. Thompson observes that ‘at the first signs of an incipient insurgency … no one likes to admit that anything is going wrong. This automatically leads to a situation where government countermeasures are too little and too late.’ But, in several modern campaigns – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Chechnya, for example – the government or invading coalition forces initiated the campaign, whereas insurgents are strategically reactive (as in ‘resistance warfare’). Such patterns are readily recognisable in historical examples of resistance warfare, but less so in classical counter-insurgency theory.” (See David Kilcullen’s “Counterinsurgency Redux.”)
Egnell:
“Robert Egnell: Analysts like to talk about ‘indirect approaches’ or ‘limited interventions’, but the question is ‘approaches to what?’ What are we trying to achieve? What is our understanding of the end-state? In a recent article published in Joint Forces Quarterly, I sought to challenge the contemporary understanding of counterinsurgency by arguing that the term itself may lead us to faulty assumptions about nature of the problem, what it is we are trying to do, and how best to achieve it. When we label something a counterinsurgency campaign, it introduces certain assumptions from the past and from the contemporary era about the nature of the conflict. One problem is that counterinsurgency is by its nature conservative, or status-quo oriented – it is about preserving existing political systems, law and order. And that is not what we have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, we have been the revolutionary actors, the ones instigating revolutionary societal changes. Can we still call it counterinsurgency, when we are pushing for so much change?” (From the 2013 Small Wars Journal article “Learning From Today’s Crisis of Counterinsurgency” by Octavian Manea: An interview with Dr. David H. Ucko and Dr. Robert Egnell.”)
Question — Based on the Above:
Might (and indeed should not) the Afghan War Commission, and retired LTG Ashely, be willing to address the — seemingly important — “know the kind of war one is embarked upon, not mistaking it for something different” matters presented by David Kilcullen and Robert Egnell above?