Join SPP for this semester's series of research seminars.
Speaker: Risa Brooks, Marquette University
Abstract: This paper analyzes the causes of shortcomings in the U.S. military’s effectiveness in the war in Afghanistan, arguing that they were due to little understood organizational dynamics. These include an organizational culture that leads the institution to emphasize individual-level causes and solutions to failure, and the institution’s interests in insulating itself from uncertainty and protecting its autonomy. The paper uses this argument to explain three sets of problems in the Afghanistan war: the failure to resolve internal contradictions in the training effort, the failure to integrate political considerations with military activity, and poor strategic and operational/tactical integration.