brits and aussies wrestle with coin doctrine

These are two must-reads on the upcoming choices faced by Britain and Australia as dictated by the deterioration of Afghanistan:

On the state of Britain's armed forces, via the Economist:

David Kilcullen, until recently a counter-insurgency adviser to the American government, says both America and Britain misunderstood Iraq: America thought it was dealing with a terrorist problem rather than an insurgency; Britain thought its job was peacekeeping rather than imposing control. The subsequent bloodbath pushed the allies in opposite directions. Britain gave up the fight, cut a deal with militias terrorising Basra and got out of the city centre where soldiers were dying almost daily. As the junior allies, British officers felt they could do nothing in Basra to change the course of a war being lost, they thought, by American troops in Baghdad.

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Britain badly needs a wholesale review of its defence policy. Two questions must be answered. Should the British continue to aspire to a global military role? And what sort of wars is the future likely to bring? If it is long messy ones like the fight in Afghanistan, the structure and equipment of the armed forces must change. One general complains: “We are acting as if Afghanistan is just an aberration. We are in huge danger of preparing for the wrong war.”

On Australia's Afghanistan dilemma, via the Sydney Morning Herald:

After seven years of neglect by the Bush administration, the war in Afghanistan is taking a new direction - that of a carefully planned counter-insurgency campaign - and Australia must decide whether to join such a fight. Should Australia decide to do so it will mean accepting a much greater risk of military casualties than it has previously done in Iraq or Afghanistan.

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"People need to understand what is counter-insurgency, and in that to recognise that the narrative that we've had for a number of years in Afghanistan is potentially not the correct narrative for what is achievable - not taking in the history, traditions and tribal structures of the country."