Dutch Mission in Afghanistan: Until Summer 2010
Since American so-called journalists pay little to no attention to the Dutch role in Afghanistan I thought it would be useful to publish a post about our mission.
Earlier this year we had some 2200 troops in Afghanistan who were part of the mission which would, initially, last until the summer of 2008. At this moment we’ve got some 1650 troops there (not sure about those numbers they seem to fluctuate quite a bit).
On 30 November the Dutch government (cabinet) decided to prolong the mission with two years. There’s some controversy going on in the Netherlands about this, with – for instance – military unions opposing it. Instead of forgetting that the Dutch are one of America’s main allies in this country formerly ruled by the Taliban, perhaps it would be wise for the American government to praise the Dutch government a bit and to stand beside it. This would greatly strengthen it.
The Dutch will withdraw 200-300 troops, but that would still mean we’ve got some 1400 troops there, which is basically what a country like the Netherlands can do. But, the gap will be filled by French and Australian troops (mostly). Our government had to negotiate with these countries itself.
The Dutch troops are in the province of Oruzgan. This is one of the two (or three) provinces where the Taliban is trying make a comeback and where the real fighting is going on. A while ago I reported about a major NATO offensive in this province led by the Dutch forces. We’re holding our own, but it’s one of the most instable provinces in Afghanistan.
Without the Dutch troops, Afghanistan and NATO would have a problem.
Perhaps Gates could take the time to thank the Netherlands. O, and perhaps American ‘journalists’ could point out that we’re fighting there as well.
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Micheal,
Gates did take the time to thank the Netherlands.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/12/12/gates_scolds_nato_europe_on_afghanistan/2272/
And I think its a shame that our country isnt able to bring more troops to afghanistan. We fought against the Indonesians with a 100.000+ army. And you cant blame the US press for not writhing about the Dutch, our own press hardly writes anything about our own troops. The french only bring 50 trainers with them to train the Afghan army, some eastern European countries brought in some troops ass well. But its time our big neighbour to the east starts to help in the south of Afghanistan, same goes for Italy, Spain, Turkey and France.
That’s bizarre: that appears to be the same quote that appeared in the WaPo article, but there the "Dutch" were left off of the list.
Maybe it’s the WaPo writers and editors that you should take your complaint to, Michael, if they misquoted Gates.
That’s awkward indeed, and please not that I criticized the american media christine.
O, I agree. The question is: are you willing to cut as much in the welfare state as is necessary to send more troops? I am.
One thing: back then, there was the obligation of young Dutchmen to serve in the army for one or two years (the draft). That’s one of the reason we were able to send many troops to Indonesia.
So am I micheal, we should definitely spend more money on our military, maybe we should re-allocate our development aid to our military to begin with. And you are right about the draft ( I wish we still had that system), it would solve a lot of problems in our modern day society.
Agreed: I’m in favor of the draft as well (better than the ridiculous ’social work draft’).
The draft is a terrible idea if one wants a military that can actually function at a high level of effectiveness. Conscript militaries dominate the ranks of the world’s worst militaries and volunteer militaries dominate the ranks of the best. Even Israel, the model of the highly effective conscript military, attenuates its draft extensively and even then ran into serious problems of effectiveness in Lebanon as the conscript soldiers proved inadequately trained and motivated to be as effective as Israel has grown to expect in the age of high-tech warfare.
If one wants a military that serves as nothing more than a symbol of national commitment and diversity, then a draft may be indispensable, but s the U.S. experience shows, it imposes crippling limits on the training and discipline of soldiers that make it unsuitable for any modern, technological military force.
As far as I know, the Dutch ‘experience’ didn’t show anything like that, nor was that a reason to get rid of it.
Perhaps it’s, in the US, a problem of numbers?
"Perhaps it’s, in the US, a problem of numbers?"
What do you mean?
No, it is a problem of training time. Training soldiers to maintain OR operate modern technological equipment and/or to function on the highly-complex modern battlefield requires at least a year of training to ensure mastery of the most fundamental concepts. In a conscript military, by the time that initial training is done, the soldier is more than halfway through their entire commitment. In short, training time and costs are enormous with a conscript military and effectiveness is extremely hard to establish or sustain. This analysis forms the core of the major economometric study on the comparative costs of the draft versus the AVF — the 1968 Gates Commission report. The Commission found that a draft was not just slightly, but grossly inefficient in economic terms, mostly due to the training costs. The factors that led to these findings have only strengthened since 1968.
Conscript militaries also suffer from serious discipline problems, as the threat of discharge can no longer be used as an effective disciplinary tool like it can in professional volunteer militaries. The American experience in Vietnam bore this out in spades.
I’ve been writing a dissertation chapter on the end of the draft in the United States and it is remarkable how the U.S. military leaders switched from preferring the draft to strongly preferring the volunteer force once they saw it operating.
Also, it is important to note that most of the theories that underlie recent calls for a return to the draft are based in inaccurate, romanticized notions of how the draft really worked.
In reality, the draft was highly unjust and unrepresentative in addition to being economically inefficient. It simply fails to achieve what it is supposed to, at that failure comes at massive cost and with substantially reduced effectiveness.
But, um, yeah? That’s two years, one of them training. What’s your point? This worked here, again, no bad news about that as far as I know.
Chris: you’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of people, we with tens of thousands.
Well, Michael, as you are a fiscal conservative, I thought that the econometric finding would be relevant to you. The “bad news” is that conscription is extremely costly in exchange for a net loss in military effectiveness.
It should go without saying that more troops does not necessarily mean a better army. Correct me if I’m wrong Jason, but weren’t drafted U.S. soldiers practically meat shields in Vietnam?
I just did a really quick look on the literature analyzing the end of Dutch conscription. It appears that the conscripted force was politically difficult to use and economically inefficient for both the institution and the individual conscripts (one study found that conscription permanently damaged their individual economic progress). The failure of the Dutch conscript force at Srebenicia appears to have been a defining experience, but I didn’t have time to research the issue thoroughly.
Based on what I saw, though, I am not even sure that the Dutch force would be deployed at all in Afghanistan if it was still made up of conscripts. If it was, I doubt that it would be performing as well as it is. Conscript militaries are simply not as flexible or effective as professional militaries.
Chris, that is dramatically overstated. The quality of U.S. troops left much to be desired in Vietnam but "meat shields" would be an insult to hundreds of thousands of Vietnam-era veterans. In standard terms (though Vietnam was a non-standard war), they were still on average far higher quality troops than the South Vietnamese Army and the North Vietnamese Army as well as the irregular (and overly romanticized) Viet Cong that self-destructed so spectacularly at Tet. Quality problems were due to a wide range of social and institutional problems, one of which was the way that conscription worked to undermine both objective recruit quality and individual soldiers’ morale.
The Vietnam experience was crucial to ending the draft in the United States, but also crucial was the economic argument in the Gates Commission. Ending the draft required a coalition of conservatives (driven by the economic argument) and liberals (driven by the Vietnam experience) in Congress. If anyone is really interested, there is a HUGE PDF book that you can download from the RAND website for free called "I Want You! The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force". at 800+ pages, it is beyond comprehensive and includes discussion of literally every single one of dozens of studies conducted on the draft and the AVF.
Russians have draft, and check the results in Afghanistan and Chechnya
"meat shields" would be an insult to hundreds of thousands of Vietnam-era veterans"
Perhaps this isn’t the time, but I’d like to rebel against the notion that negative characterizations of military personnel is taboo. Volunteering (or being drafted) for military service does not make one a saint. We should no more avoid generalizations of soldiers than we do lawyers or politicians or professors.
As for my comment in particular, you could take it as an insult if you believed that I meant that drafted soldiers we’re somehow lesser human beings than volunteers, but I was speaking to their level of training, something they wouldn’t have control over. If anything, I was insulting the army training staff
Of course not. You might notice that I have never peddled a "troops=heroes" meme. But I will and do object to broad, sweeping negative characterizations like "meat shields" or implications that they all love killing or raping (which I have run into, believe it or not). Soldiers are people who volunteer for a dangerous job with relatively low pay in public service and they deserve honor and benefits for that decision, but they aren’t all saints or heroes. Some of them are criminals. Most of them are just regular people. I don’t claim any special moral authority just because I was in the military, for example.
I think you can rebel all you want. Nobody has to agree with your rebelling. It’s not apples to apples comparison by any possible stretch of the imagination to compare Military Service to a Lawyer, Politician or Professors.