Opinion | What Afghanistan Can Teach Us About Fighting Coronavirus

As worried Americans look for answers in the midst of a global pandemic, it is no surprise that many have turned to the symbols and language of war. Public officials from Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York to President Donald Trump have likened the coronavirus response to a war effort. It makes sense: The military is the most trusted of American institutions. But the desire to “militarize” our national response comes from a credulous faith in the capabilities of the U.S. military and a desire for simple solutions to complex challenges.

Just as the American military found, after nearly two decades at war, that it could not shoot its way to victory in Afghanistan, there will be no straightforward solution to the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, it is the failures of our strategy in Afghanistan that offer the most valuable lessons for our handling of the pandemic. Acknowledging and acting upon these lessons will be necessary to minimize the damage from this pandemic and put America on a quicker path to recovery.

The analogy of wartime mobilization is appropriate only if we also galvanize the nation behind a clear understanding of the threat and the means to defeat it. In the words of our political leaders, the virus has morphed from a nonthreat, to a foreign threat, to a seemingly existential threat, to one that would resolve itself very soon—often with multiple characterizations in the course of a single briefing.

The nation’s intervention of shutting down businesses, schools and most medical services has been among the most severe and expensive interventions in American history. However, many Americans remain confused about the purpose of these interventions. Our friends and neighbors ask: Are the shutdowns designed to protect me personally from illness? To eradicate the virus entirely? To buy time for hospitals to build capacity? The resulting dissonance is appalling: Millions of Americans are being laid off while others are at the beach.

We could have learned this lesson from Afghanistan. This military intervention turned out to be the longest in American history and yet most Americans, and sadly many politicians, could not give coherent justifications for our continued involvement. Indeed, there were times over the course of the conflict that many Americans did not even know we were at war. Here, too, the dissonance was glaring: Americans were told this was an existential struggle while millions were at the beach, their daily lives entirely uninterrupted.

‘Unity of Command’ is recognized by the military as one of the fundamental principles of warfare, yet was rarely achieved in our efforts in Afghanistan. Nearly 20 military commanders rotated through Afghanistan over the course of the war, robbing the effort of continuity and, more important, accountability. The situation below these commanders was even worse, as units from different nations and military services passed through Afghanistan for even shorter periods of time. The result was instability in the chain of command, with command hierarchies disrupted every few months. This allowed subordinate units to choose not only their own tactics but also different metrics for success, often at cross-purposes with the overall effort.

We are seeing the same dynamic at play in our response to the pandemic. There is not enough coordination between hospitals for flexing capacity, cross-credentialing doctors and transferring patients. Cities are often at odds with state governments. States are bidding against each other to secure protective equipment, driving up overall prices. Some states are encouraging businesses to reopen while neighboring states continue isolation strategies. Some experimentation is good and should be encouraged, yet a lack of unity, let alone coordination on key principles against a virus that does not recognize political boundaries, is a recipe for disaster.

If there is one advantage the government possesses in this crisis, it is the hard-earned expertise and longevity of professionals like Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. American military leaders had no direct experience with Afghanistan and created new doctrine for counterinsurgency in the midst of the conflict. Fortunately, in the case of this pandemic, we have experts who have both personally dealt with similar outbreaks and have spent years thinking about and evaluating possible containment strategies. The challenge is listening to these experts and acting on their advice.

Ultimately, in either a counterinsurgency effort or in the midst of a pandemic, it is important to stay focused on the main effort and not get distracted by supporting goals and short-term metrics. In the case of Afghanistan, America focused the vast majority of its efforts on either directly fighting the Taliban, or training Afghan security forces. Yet both efforts were doomed to failure so long as the central Afghan government was perceived not to represent the interests of the Afghan people. This meant that no matter how many members of the Taliban were killed, there was always a steady supply of young Afghans willing to sign up to fight with them. It also meant that the Afghan military would constantly struggle for legitimacy when viewed as the arm of a corrupt system.

After nearly 20 years of effort, the latest Afghan presidential election saw minimal turnout (less than 22 percent of eligible voters) and even then, the results were heavily contested, with two candidates declaring victory. Elections like these have rendered our efforts to build effective Afghan security forces largely moot—an effective military requires an effective and legitimate government.

We are unfortunately replicating this kind of misplaced effort by presenting a false choice between the economy and public health. They are intrinsically linked. We can pour trillions of dollars into propping up businesses, but these businesses will ultimately fail if people either continue to fall ill or are so afraid of falling ill that they keep their dollars at home. A healthy and vibrant economy is a goal shared by all Americans, but it is a goal that can be achieved only by adequately controlling this pandemic.

The best and most effective way to ensure our interventions are working is frequent and ubiquitous testing. With a population of more than 328 million and a need for regular testing (since a negative test will not rule out a future illness), our current supply is simply not enough. Without an order of magnitude increase in this production, we will not be able to identify and contain future outbreaks.

Such a testing regimen is the first and necessary step for all other efforts to return to “normal.” Without such a focus on testing, we will inevitably replicate the experience of Afghanistan, with small steps forward invariably followed by setbacks, and declarations of “turning the corner” once again reflecting only the misplaced optimism of leadership disconnected from reality.

While these lessons from our military failure in Afghanistan can seem daunting, drawing hope from the example of the American military is not entirely misplaced. Over nearly 20 years of grinding conflict, there was never a shortage of service members willing to step into the breach and serve in Afghanistan. Today, that same resilience is on display again as our medical community and first responders are unflagging in their struggle against the novel coronavirus. As our military engagement with Afghanistan winds down, falling far short of our initial hopes, we do no disservice to those who fought there to recognize the shortcomings of that effort. Not only do we owe it to them to learn from the mistakes of the past, but the future health and prosperity of the United States relies on avoiding similar leadership failures in the face of this pandemic.