Afghanistan: "Test on the grandest scale"

Gates Seeks More Military And Civilian Support In Afghanistan
(New York Times)…Thom Shanker, Oct 15, 2008.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that the mission to stabilize Afghanistan had shown significant gaps in the ability of the United States and NATO to integrate their civilian and military efforts, and he warned that it “remains to be seen” whether the allies could better coordinate their work.

The defense secretary’s grim assessment came in an evening address to the United States Institute of Peace in which he described the Afghanistan security and stabilization mission as “the test, on the grandest scale, of what we are trying to achieve when it comes to integrating the military and civilian, the public and private, the national and international.”

Mr. Gates said the challenge of better integrating civilian and military missions was vital for more than just success in Afghanistan. “The security of the American people will depend increasingly on our ability to head off the next insurgency or arrest the collapse of another failing state,” he said. “These are the things that we must be able to do as a nation, as an alliance and as an international coalition.”

“That country has become the laboratory for what I’ve been talking about for the past year — how to apply and fully integrate the full range of instruments of national power and international cooperation to protect our security and our vital interests.”

Speech: Dean Acheson Lecture – U.S. Institute of Peace (Washington D.C.). As Prepared for Delivery by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Washington D.C., Wednesday, October 15, 2008