Exum is lauding Biddle’s SFRC testimony from last week.  It is actually a warmed over version of his poorly reasoned and sloppily argued American Interest essay from last month that I rebutted in depth.  Biddle read my response, and made a few minor changes — eschewing the silly “never again” line, but leaving in the incoherent stuff about safe havens and the threat posed by Afghanistan to Pakistan. I find this disheartening for many reason, but one is particularly close to my own heart.

As I’ve mentioned before, Biddle is something of an inspiration to a generation of defense analysts.  As the Cold War drew to a close, there was a significant decline in the field of “security studies” — the field drifted toward quasi-anthropological studies on ethnic conflict along with legalistic work on non-proliferation.  Biddle was one of the few people actively trying to promote rigor in the field of defense analysis, a field that he and I would often bemoan was dominated by “amateur hour” analysis and the use of dueling anecdotes rather than disciplined methodology.

Biddle was very active in promoting the SWAMOS program for instance.  I thought — and think — SWAMOS is a nice concept, but ultimately the vast majority of participants are doctoral student who are going to be going into tenure-track academic positions, where military analysis is still a poor bet for producing research that might lead to tenure (for all sorts of substantive and institutional reasons).  SWAMOS is a nice personal enrichment program for a handful some academics, but has little impact on the broader debate.  At the time, I was working at the Security Studies Program at Georgetown doing my small part in trying to help add rigor to the field — particular at the MA level — where actual policy analysts are trained.

I fear unfortunately, that these efforts have largely failed, and that unfortunately Biddle rather than being a voice for increased rigor has now become one of those “dueling anecdote” theorists we used to worry about.  While his historical work is superb, his current assessments are increasingly impressionistic.  His essay on the Afghan campaign in 2001-2002 — Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare — just doesn’t hold up well.  And oddly enough, its arguments are largely at odds with his current views on COIN.  Shouldn’t there be some effort on his part to reconcile the two?  Instead, his writing on Afghanistan seem to almost wholly ignore his previous work.

More broadly though, the issue isn’t Biddle per se.  The issue is supporters of escalation in Afghanistan actually think Biddle is a paragon to emulate.  And compared with the usual dross produced by the pop-centric COIN crowd, I guess it is.  But this is the ultimate tyranny of low expectations.

When arguments as poorly articulated as Biddle’s SFRC testimony are held up as the gold standard, it is a sign that the intellectual foundations of our Afghanistan policy are rotten to the core.  And that, I would argue, is due to a generational process where defense analysis has become increasingly watered down so that most people — including people like Exum who should know better — are not able to recognize poor reasoning when they see it.