Military Review English Edition January-February 2014 | Page 34

States, Societies,
Resistance, and COIN
Samuel Abrams

R

AJIV CHANDRASEKARAN’S LITTLE AMERICA:
THE WAR WITHIN THE WAR FOR AFGHANISTAN,
is about NATO’s counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan since 2009. Published in 2012, it is one of the few works
that links high-level policy to on-the-ground realities of a far
away war. As the United States determines a role for its military after 2014, it is worth looking back. Many have focused
on the book’s portrayal of personal infighting, bureaucratic
sclerosis, and parochialism.1 Perhaps more interesting is that
he shows how Western ideas about state-society relations led
NATO to conduct a campaign that has cost trillions of dollars, has had at best limited successes, and may have simply
armed an array of factions for civil war when NATO leaves.2

Samuel Abrams is a senior associate at Caerus Associates, a strategic
design irm. He leads the irm’s training and education programs,
which prepare civilian and military personnel for deployment to unstable environments, including Afghanistan. He is a graduate of the
Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
The views expressed here are his own.

(U.S. Army)