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Nine Years After 9/11:
Assessing the War on Terror
by Colonel Joseph J. Collins
Download the Full Article: Nine Years After 9/11
It has been nine years since terrorists struck the United States in New York, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 Americans. Few Americans, especially those of us who were in the Pentagon or near the World Trade Center that day will ever forget it. A modern day Pearl Harbor, 9/11 was a day that radically changed our national security strategy. The smoke, fire, and casualties were stark reminders that the United States had failed to deal adequately with an emerging threat. Nine years of war have followed those attacks. The lives of the agents, police officers, and members of the Armed Forces who fight the war on terrorism --- as well as their families --- have been changed forever.
The costs of this war have been high. Over 5,600 American service members have been killed, and 1,050 of our Western allies have perished. Over 38,000 Americans have been wounded; countless stress and brain trauma injuries must also be added to that human toll. The number of Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani dead --- mostly at the hands of terrorists or insurgents --- dwarfs the Western total. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone have directly cost the US taxpayer over a trillion dollars.
This anniversary is an appropriate time to think about where we have been and where we need to be headed in this epic struggle to accomplish the U.S. goal to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its allies.” Much good work has been done, but the nature of the war on terrorism --- the common euphemism for the war against Islamist extremism in its many varieties --- is changing, and the United States needs to chart a new course for the future. It will help any assessment to divide the war on terrorism into four interdependent campaigns: the worldwide campaign, the one on the home front, and the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Download the Full Article: Nine Years After 9/11
Colonel Joseph J. Collins, a retired Army officer, teaches national security courses at the National War College and Georgetown University. From 2001 to 2004, he was deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations. The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the Defense Department, the National Defense University, or any government agency.
The Summer 2010 issue of Parameters is now posted at the U.S. Army War College web site.
Here is the lineup:
War—Continuity in Change, and Change in Continuity by Colin S. Gray
An Appraisal of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategy to Counter Terrorism by Malik Zafar Iqbal
Time for a Strategic and Intellectual Pause in Afghanistan by Raymond A. Millen
Positive Perceptions to Sustain the US-Pakistan Relationships by Randall L. Koehlmoos
A Counter-WMD Strategy for the Future by Albert J. Mauroni
Soldiers and Politics: Exposing Some Myths by Phillip S. Meilinger
The North Caucasus: Russian Roulette on Europe's Borders by Constance A. Phlipot
Google Confronts China’s “Three Warfares” by Timothy L. Thomas
Book reviews and other departments can be found here.
Continue reading "Summer 2010 Issue of Parameters Now Posted" »
An editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post on the legality of targeted killings of terror suspects is an interesting pairing with my August 20 prediction in Foreign Policy that covert action, counterterrorism raiding, and proxy wars will be growth businesses for the U.S. government. America’s adversaries have continuously adapted to the tactics, techniques, and procedures the U.S. military and U.S. intelligence agencies have employed against them. The current position of this chess match of adaptation is illustrated with the legal case of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a U.S.-born cleric living in Yemen who has been designated a terrorist for his alleged role in the Fort Hood massacre, the foiled Christmas Day "underwear bomber" attack near Detroit, and the attempted car bombing of Times Square. Since Aulaqi is hiding out in Yemen’s badlands, inaccessible to either Yemeni or U.S. legal authorities, the U.S. government has ostensibly selected a Hellfire missile to close out his case, once it can confirm his position. In August, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to prevent the U.S. government from ever firing that missile.
The Aulaqi case is the latest, but certainly not the last, move on the adaptation chess board. The 9/11 attacks and others in Madrid, London, and elsewhere were maneuvers that bypassed Western conventional military power. The United States and some of its allies responded by attempting to bring governance to ungoverned territories where terror groups found sanctuary. Terror groups have in turn defended their sanctuaries by making deals with the locals and by displacing to new areas that the U.S., for either political or intelligence reasons, finds difficulty attacking.
As I explained in my August 20 essay, the U.S. government has also adapted its tactics. In the future it will strive mightily to avoid interventions involving the large-scale use of general purpose ground forces. Covert action, raids, and proxy battles will be preferred. Here “lawfare” has left its mark. In recent years the U.S. government has acquired few new terrorism prisoners. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s interventions into Guantanamo, targeted killing or custody by foreign governments are now the only options the U.S. government employs (prisoners the U.S. holds at Bagram or elsewhere in Afghanistan will surely go over to the Afghan government).
Intelligence-sharing, electronic surveillance, tough visa restrictions, and higher airline and border security have made it difficult for foreign terrorists to get into the United States. Adversaries like Aulaqi have responded by using electronic means to recruit other Americans (or visa-holders like the Christmas bomber).
Having found a sanctuary where he is nearly impossible to apprehend, the Obama administration appears content to simply kill Aulaqi with a missile. The ACLU and the CCR fear the bottom of a steep slippery slope where a U.S. president is ordering Predator hits against any U.S. citizen anywhere for any reason without legal restraint. These groups want a court to define the “recognized war zone” (Afghanistan in, Yemen not in) and to apply judicial process to the president’s war powers outside that zone. Adversaries like Aulaqi are not limited to the ACLU's view of the war zone; these adversaries would obviously take advantage of such a definitional system to establish new sanctuaries.
With techniques such as major combat operations and large ground force counterinsurgency campaigns in decline, covert action, counterterrorism raiding, and proxy wars will be in ascendance. The United States will make these adjustments to its tactics in response to its enemies’ previous adjustments. But as we have seen many times before in history, covert action, counterterrorism raiding, and proxy wars are vulnerable to legal and political attack, resulting in new opportunities for adversary adaptation. The adaptation chess match goes on.
Continue reading "Aulaqi lawfare case is an example of military adaptation" »
Department of Defense Special Branch:
An Organizational Proposal for Counter-threat Operations in Low Intensity Conflicts
by Matthew R. Modarelli
Download the Full Article: DoD Special Branch
The United States military must develop a single, enduring organization for gathering and acting upon threat information in low intensity conflicts. Around the globe, current and future strategic partners of the United States are mired in bloody and relentless internal wars for stability and legitimacy of government. Since the early 19th century, the US has played an important role in irregular warfare abroad and as the government continues to identify and pledge assistance to struggling nations, that role will expand and grow. With a growth in low intensity conflict missions comes an exponential need to adapt and apply successful information gathering methods from past conflicts. For the US, victory in today’s low intensity conflicts will depend largely on our capacity to enable partner nation counter-threat operations (CTO) conducted primarily by indigenous law enforcement agencies. To succeed in current and future low intensity conflicts, an enduring Department of Defense Special Branch dedicated to the complex mission of working with indigenous special police units and security agencies to gather and exploit threat information must be established.
Download the Full Article: DoD Special Branch
Major Matthew R. Modarelli is a special agent with the Department of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI). He has served as a major crimes investigator, joint drug enforcement team member, and counterintelligence field agent and team leader. He has held four separate OSI field command positions including two command tours in Iraq. He has served at Headquarters, United States Air Force, as the Air Staff Counterintelligence (CI) Policy representative. He currently serves as the Counterintelligence Branch Chief for U.S. Africa Command. He has a BA in History from VMI, a Master of Science in Management Information Systems from Bowie State University, MD, a Master of Military Studies from the United States Marine Corps University, Quantico, VA, and is a graduate of the Joint and Combined Warfighting School, Joint Forces Staff College, Norfolk, VA. His last article on Military Police Operations and Counterinsurgency is currently listed on the Army War College Bibliography for Irregular Warfare.
Khastan Tawanestan! – “We Can, We Will!”
Shaping the Battlefield in Afghanistan in Dari and Pashto – not English
by LT Sean “Shoe” Stevens
Download the Full Article: Khastan Tawanestan
How does a nation conduct a successful counterinsurgency (COIN) operation in a country in which it does not speak the local language? Can we facilitate the development of a transparent, corruption-free Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) without being able to communicate directly with its people? These are questions that I wrestled with time and time again during my deployment to Afghanistan. I witnessed first-hand a remarkable dearth in the ability of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) forces to communicate with Afghans. This lack of language abilities in both American military and civilian forces impedes our counterinsurgency campaign. As my tour in Afghanistan progressed, this realization motivated me to attempt—in some small way—to remedy this problem. As a result, I personally taught Dari to hundreds of military members and civilians, and created a six-lesson syllabus for future teachers to follow. While I experienced small successes as a result of my efforts, they were insufficient to overcome the dearth of language capability that threatens to undermine OEF.
Download the Full Article: Khastan Tawanestan
LT Sean “Shoe” Stevens is a Naval Aviator currently working on his Masters degree in Homeland Security and Defense at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.
Continue reading "Khastan Tawanestan! – “We Can, We Will!”" »
Continue on for today's SWJ news and opinion links.
Continue on for today's SWJ news and opinion links.
Went to work, got a bit of bad news
Went to work, got a bit of bad news
Ol' Bobby G said here's your fate, gonna shut you down, gonna lock the gate
Now we all have the Jiffy Com Blues...
Via Bill Sizemore at The Virginian-Pilot - "JFCOM contractor sings the blues over closure". Listen to Jiffy Com Blues here or at the previous link if your media player does not open automatically. Jiffy Com Blues written and sung by Bobby "BlackHat" Walters (listen here too), a civilian contractor at U.S. Joint Forces Command who moonlights as a blues musician.
The Art of “Campaigning” to Inform and Influence
by Brigadier General Huba Wass de Czege
Download the Full Article: The Art of “Campaigning” to Inform and Influence
The purpose of this article is to benefit Corps, Division, and Brigade commanders and their staffs who know through experience and education that the purpose of military action is, in every case, to affect the behavior of various groups of human beings in the mission environment toward some greater purpose. They also know that mission successes depend, among other things, on successfully “Informing” the decisions of those who are supporters (or potential supporters) of the aims of the command’s military operations, and on “Influencing” the decisions of those who are, or could be, implacable foes and irreconcilable adversaries. No human endeavor is more difficult than this. And no human endeavor this important is more worthy of careful study.
Download the Full Article: The Art of “Campaigning” to Inform and Influence
Huba Wass de Czege is a retired U.S. Army brigadier general. During his career as an infantry officer, he served two tours in Vietnam and gained staff experience at all levels up to assistant division commander. General Wass De Czege was a principal designer of the operational concept known as AirLand Battle. He also was the founder and first director of the Army’s School for Advanced Military Studies where he also taught applied military strategy. After retiring in 1993, General Wass De Czege became heavily involved in the Army After Next Project and served on several Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency v advisory panels. He is a 1964 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and holds an MPA from Harvard University.
Continue reading "The Art of “Campaigning” to Inform and Influence" »
Continue on for today's SWJ news and opinion links.
Improving in War: Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2006-2009 - Theo Farrella, Department of War Studies, King's College London, Journal of Strategic Studies.
War disciplines militaries: it forces them to refine, and sometimes revise, their tactics, techniques and technologies, or risk defeat in battle. Yet there is no theory of how militaries improve in war. This article develops a theory of military adaptation, which it applies to an analysis of the British campaign in Helmand from 2006 to 2009. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources (military plans, post operation reports and interviews), it shows how British brigades adapted different ways of using combat power to try and defeat the Taliban from 2006-07, and how from late 2007, British brigades have adapted a new population-centric approach that has focused more on influence operations and non-kinetic activities.
Read the entire article at Journal of Strategic Studies.
Here's the seventh edition of Small Wars Journal's Saturday Night Quote (SWJ SNQ). Kudos to Robert C. Jones. In the commentary section of SWJ Blog entry "Afghanistan: It’s Not Over" COL Jones had this to say:
“Those who dwell on ideology, those who dwell on sanctuary, and those who dwell on the thousands of perspectives as to how best engage the lower tier of the [Afghanistan] insurgency (from the "kill them" to the "develop them" to the "secure them" to the "govern them" and all shades in between) are all tilting at windmills in large degree. No amount of energy directed at the bottom can do more than suppress the insurgency for some small period of time. True victory, true stability, comes when the top tier issues are resolved. Focus there.”
Understanding Sri Lanka's Defeat of the Tamil Tigers by Major Niel A. Smith, Joint Force Quarterly.
After three decades of conflict, Sri Lanka's government defeated the ethnic separatist insurgent group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), popularly known as the Tamil Tigers, in May 2009. The violence and brutality employed by both sides in the final years of the conflict drew significant interest from the global civilian and military communities, especially when Sri Lanka credited its callousness to civilian casualties as a key to its success. The defeat of the LTTE added to the debates over U.S. counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine and the role of lethal force in counterinsurgency. Some have advocated that the United States consider employing such tactics as part of an effective COIN campaign, utilizing recent cases such as Sri Lanka and Chechnya to bolster their case...
Read the entire article at Joint Force Quarterly.
Continue reading "Understanding Sri Lanka's Defeat of the Tamil Tigers" »
The Allure of Quick Victory: Lessons from Peru’s Fight against Sendero Luminoso - Major Michael L. Burgoyne, Military Review.
The decapitation of Sendero Luminoso (SL) in conjunction with the use of local security forces and a whole-of-government approach allowed Peru to defeat SL in the 1990s. A failure to follow through with the benefits of government services and a lack of pressure by security forces has allowed SL to regroup. In order to achieve a lasting victory the Peruvian government must address the foundations of insurgency: the intransigent insurgent leadership and the welfare of the population. Peru’s current challenges provide an admonition to the US in its current efforts to consolidate gains in Iraq and in support of other allies facing insurgency...
Read the entire article at Military Review.
The latest issue of Joint Force Quarterly is now posted at National Defense University Press. Here's the lineup:
JFQ Dialogue
From the Chairman - Admiral Michael Mullen
Letters to the Editor - JFQ
Forum
Executive Summary - David H. Gurney
An Interview with General James T. Conway, 34th Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps - Dabid H. Gurney
Developing an Operational Reserve: A Policy and Historical Context and the Way Forward - John D. Winkler
Operational for What? The Future of the Guard and Reserves - John A. Nagl and Travis Sharp
Senior Officer Professional Military Education as an Equalizer - James T. Currie
Special Feature
The Security Trinity: Understanding the Role of Security Forces in COIN - Eric E. Greek
Understanding Sri Lanka's Defeat of the Tamil Tigers - Niel A. Smith
ISAF and Afghanistan: The Impact of Failure on NATO's Future - Tarn D. Warren
A QDR for All Seasons? The Pentagon Is Not Preparing for the Most Likely Conflicts - Roy Godson and Richard H. Shultz, Jr.
Is the Conduct of War a Business? - Milan Vego
Essay Contests
Winners of the 2010 Writing Competitions - Joint Force Quarterly
Harmonious Ocean? Chinese Aircraft Carriers and the Australia-U.S. Aliiance - John Frewen
U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan: Flawed Assumptions Will Lead to Ultimate Failure - Mark Schrecker
Information Strategy: The Missing Link - Hans F. Palaoro
Comentary
Ike Warned Us About This: The MICC Stranglehold on Responsible Procurement - Eric A. Hollister
Redress of Professional Military Education: The Clarion Call - Charles D. Allen
Breaking Ranks: Dissent and the Military Professional - Andrew R. Milburn
Building a Potemkin Village: A Taliban Strategy to Reclaim the Homeland - Jeff Donnithorne
Strategic Communication in the New Media Sphere - Timothy Cunningham
Features
What U.S. Cyber Command Must Do - Wesley R. Andrues
China's Ace in the Hole: Rare Earth Elements - Cindy A. Hurst
Responsible Drawdown: Synchromizing the Joint Vision - Paul C. Hurley and John J. Abbatiello
Force Planning in the 2010 QDR - Kathleen H. Hicks and Samuel J. Brannen
Force of Law
A Patchwork Strategy of Consensus: Establishing Rule of Law in Afghanistan - Mark R. Hagerott, Thomas J. Umberg, and Joseph A. Jackson
Recall
Operation Albion and Joint Amphibious Doctrine - Gregory A. Thiele
Book Reviews
The Art of Command: Military Leadership from George Washington to Colin Powell - Rizwan Ali
Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? - John D. Becker
Intelligence for an Age of Terror - Clark Capshaw
Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces - Todd M. Manyx
Joint Doctrine
Redefining the Center of Gravity - Dale C. Eikmeier
Increasing Warfighter Interoperability - Ray A. Zuniga
Joint Doctrine Update - JPs Revised or Under Review
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