Long War to Last 450 Years

Geopolitics: In reference to the Afghan war Gen. Petraeus often tells reporters that it is "The longest campaign in the Long War." The last two words of the quote are always printed in newspapers in small letters and the overall impression given by the media is that the general is using the term "long war" in a poetic manner. No, he is saying the Afghan war is not a war at all but a campaign within a global war and the Afghan campaign will probably last longer than the ones to follow.

There are already two separate campaigns in the Af/Pak region: the Afghan ground war and the CIA's drone campaign in the tribal belt of Pakistan. When and if the proposed reorganization of the CIA occurs (where it is given its own army in the form of US Special Forces soldiers), then there will be a dramatic escalation in the CIA's campaign in the tribal belt as it ramps up a ground war that will exist alongside its current air war for a long time. How long will the Afghan campaign last? If we scour media pronouncements from top US Army or Marine officers when they are asked this question a figure of 14 years tends to pop up.

Fourteen years is not only a number we hear from military officers, it is also the average length of a counter-insurgency campaign. So let's say that each one of the many campaigns in the Long War will last 14 years from the point where a full-fledged counter-insurgency campaign (COIN) is launched.

Currently only Afghanistan is experiencing a full-fledged COIN. The next one to go from a partial campaign to a COIN will be Pakistan's tribal belt, a few years from now. These partial campaigns are waiting in the wings to become full-fledged COINs: Yemen, Somalia, Philippines, and Russia's Caucasus region. And new campaigns will emerge over time. Eritrea will certainly join the queue at some point. So how long will the Long War last? An easy calculation will provide the answer.

It took two years for the term Cold War to gain popular usage from its first appearance in print. So all we have to do is measure the time it takes for the word Long War to gain popular usage and then put that number in front of the number two and create a ratio then multiply that by 45 years (the length of the Cold War). For instance if it takes 20 years for the word Long War to gain popular usage then the actual Long War will last 450 years, ten times longer than the Cold War because it took ten times longer for the war to acquire a name.