美國在阿富汗的挫敗：從戰略缺席的角度分析

America's Failure in Afghanistan: Perspective of the Absence of Strategy

美國在阿富汗超過19年的軍事干預，雖然在作戰的層次上成果卓越，卻無法贏得這場戰爭。小布希信誓旦旦要重建的這個國家，至今依舊民不聊生，仍是恐怖主義滋生的溫床。美國政策的欠缺一貫性，官僚機構之間的隔閡，地區外交的無效率等實踐層次上的問題，部分地解釋了這場戰爭為何未能達成目標。從更深層的觀念層次來看，阿富汗戰爭之所以演變成曠日廢時的消耗戰，絕非因為美軍在作戰、戰術上技不如人，也不是阿富汗叛軍背後有強大的世界級強權撐腰，有能力長期與美軍周旋。歸根結底，問題出在戰略的缺席：政策與戰略混淆，作戰法越位取代戰略，戰略消融於政策與作戰層次的直接對話過程中。結果就是民主政治中尋常的政策變動，失去在戰略層次進行調整的機會，直接干擾了作戰層次中的軍事行動；而作戰層次必須向上反映的戰場實情，由於沒有戰略的轉譯與緩衝，反而造成文武關係的緊張，進一步限制了軍事行動的效果。

The United States military intervention in Afghanistan has dragged on for more than 19 years, despite the great operational performance, this war could not be won. This country, which President George W. Bush has committed to rebuild, still suffers from destitution and shelters radical terrorists. Problems on the pragmatic level such as American policy's lack of coherence, bureaucratical compartmentalization, and inefficient diplomacy, explain only partially why the war effort did not achieve its aim. On the conceptual level, however, the reasons why the war in Afghanistan has become a quagmire of attrition war, lie neither on the US military's operational or tactical inferiority, nor on the support to Afghan insurgents from the great powers which allowed for enduring resilience. In the final analysis, it was on the absence of strategy. Political leaders have conflated strategy with policy; military leaders, on the other hand, have substituted strategy with operational art, and finally strategy melted into the direct dialogue process between policy and operational levels. As a result, losing the opportunity to be adjusted in the strategic level, policy fluctuations which are ordinary in liberal democracy intervened directly in the military operations. Without translation and buffer effects created by strategy, the reality of battlefield supposed to be transmitted upward caused tensions in civil-military relationship and further reduced the effects of military operations.