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Australian Army Journal Special Edition: Counterinsurgency

This edition of the Australian Army Journal marks a departure from established practice in that it is a thematic edition dedicated exclusively to the issue of counterinsurgency warfare. Since the end of the Cold War military professionals, scholars and policy-makers alike have pondered the changing character of war. Consensus has proved elusive...

... The pressing importance of understanding counterinsurgency led the Chief of Army to direct the urgent rewriting of Australian Army doctrine for counterinsurgency. In February this year he convened a two-day seminar to frame an authors’ brief to inform the doctrine writing team. This task is now being undertaken against a tight schedule. That is the reason that this edition of the Australian Army Journal is a thematic special edition. It also explains why we have expedited its production, in an effort to stimulate thinking across the Army about this important issue.

Accordingly, a number of qualifications need to be expressed. This issue is built around a significant number of articles expressly reprinted from foreign military journals. This does not reflect a want of confidence in the calibre of our own officers and soldiers. Nor will it become the standard practice of the Australian Army Journal, which is committed to maintaining its authentic Australian voice. We hope that Australian readers will read these articles with a critical attitude and ponder their validity in the light of their own experiences of current operations, before writing their own opinions for this Journal.

It would, however, be parochial in the extreme not to acknowledge the vast experience that our allies have accumulated over the past few years. For that reason we have sought the views of some of the leading experts in this field from other nations. We are honoured to publish the views of General David Petraeus and Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszley, whose contributions in this area are without peer. Likewise, the expertise of Ian Beckett and Stephen Metz—highly esteemed scholars both—are valuable additions to this Journal.

Furthermore, there is a distinct land bias in this edition. As Major General Molan emphasises, successful counterinsurgency demands seamless orchestration of joint effects. And the Chief of Army stresses that the multi-agency, comprehensive approach is vital to counterinsurgency, which requires more intimate coordination of political effects than other forms of warfare. The absence of RAN, RAAF, AFP or NGO perspectives from this edition does not imply a lack of recognition of their fundamental importance to effective counterinsurgency operations. However, this edition has been compiled within the serious time constraints applicable to the doctrine writers. In the interests of publishing this contribution in time to be of any relevance to the Army, we necessarily focused on our primary audience...

Table of Contents:

Historical Context

Australia’s Counterinsurgencies: A Brief History by Jeff Grey

New Challenges and Old Concepts: Understanding 21st Century Insurgency by Steven Metz

Back to the Future: The Enduring Characteristics of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency by Lieutenant Colonel Mark O’Neill

Current Operations

Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq by Lieutenant General David H Petraeus

Anbar Awakens: The Tipping Point by Major Niel Smith and Colonel Sean Macfarland

Combating a Modern Insurgency: Combined Task Force Devil in Afghanistan by Colonel Patrick Donahue and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Fenzel

Joint/Combined Arms

Not Quite Counterinsurgency: A Cautionary Tale for US Forces Based on Israel’s Operation Change of Direction by Captain Daniel Helmer

Canadian Armour in Afghanistan by Major Trevor Cadieu, CD

Air Power’s Illusion? Israel’s 2006 Campaign in the Lebanon by Group Captain Neville Parton

Intellectual Challenges

On War: Lessons to be Learned by Colonel H R McMaster

Post-Modern Challenges for Modern Warriors by Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely

Doctrine

Defeating Insurgencies: Adaptive Campaigning and an Australian Way of War by Lieutenant Colonel Trent Scott

Thoughts of a Practitioner: A Contribution to Australia’s Counterinsurgency Doctrine Drafters by Major General Jim Molan

Task Force Ranger Vs. Urban Somali Guerrillas in Mogadishu: An Analysis of Guerrilla and Counterguerrilla Tactics and Techniques Used During Operation Gothic Serpent by Marshall V Ecklund

The Future

The Future of Insurgency by Ian Beckett

Continue reading "The Australian Army Journal Special Edition: Counterinsurgency" »

A Unified General Framework of Insurgency Using a Living Systems Approach by Ensign Shanece Kendall, Naval Post Graduate School, June 2008.

This thesis develops a unified general framework of insurgency. The framework is “unifying” in that it includes all the physical and social science formulations of insurgencies and both contemporary and historical insurgencies. It is “general” in that it describes all insurgencies rather than a specific one. This thesis first redefines the definition of insurgency in the context of the twenty-first century and addresses the military, political, social, and economic elements. Next, it adopts the view that an insurgency is a living system. This idea is based on the characteristic that every insurgency consists of a group of people embedded in a larger society. Using this concept, this thesis argues that James Grier Miller’s Living Systems Theory, from his book Living Systems, is the most fitting theory to study insurgency. To demonstrate the framework’s effectiveness, it is applied to the Iraq Sunni Insurgency.

The framework is used to describe the structure of the insurgency system using three levels - insurgency, Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Unit, and IED Cell—and the twenty critical subsystems that process information and matter-energy in the insurgency’s IED Cell. This framework should help clarify, focus, and support the current debates about policy, operations, and tactics for insurgencies.

A Unified General Framework of Insurgency Using a Living Systems Approach

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Expeditionary Law Enforcement

By John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus

Cross-posted at Defense and the National Interest where it was originally published on 29 June 2008.

Washington is overflowing with foreign policy proposals for the next administration. Think-tankers of all political stripes are looking for a big idea to revolutionize American foreign policy. Missing from the equation, however, are new solutions for America's problems with counterinsurgency (COIN) and stabilization operations. The goal of these military missions is the reconstruction of law and order and the pacification of enemies such as criminals and guerrillas. The vast majority of American military missions since World War II have been counterinsurgencies, and military experts agree that we will face many more in the coming decades.

Unfortunately, Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate the immense difficulties our conventional military faces in adapting to careful, intelligence-driven stabilization missions. A bipartisan chorus of critics argue that military force alone is insufficient for winning counterinsurgencies, which they often dub "police work." So how do we get COIN right? One solution wears blue, drives cars with flashing lights, and wrote you up yesterday for doing 56 in the 55 zone. Yes — police officers.

Why? Future battlegrounds increasingly blur the boundaries between war, crime, and terrorism. Lawlessness usually follows disorder and accelerates the process of state failure by eroding the state's monopoly of violence and preventing the growth of legitimate enterprise. In Afghanistan the Taliban uses the country's illegal opium trade to finance its operations and undermine government authority. Mobbed-up Iraqi insurgents muscle in on criminal enterprises. And the Colombian FARC, who lack mass public support, are sustained by their command of the coca fields. This highly volatile and complex kind of warfare cannot be waged by traditional military forces alone.

The fault lies not in the professionalism and courage of our fighting men and women, who have proven their mettle in fierce combat. But military forces are ill-suited for restoring basic law and order in societies ravaged by the reach of terrorists and organized crime. Investigation, community relations, and other complex tasks of preserving social order have never been part of the basic military mission and remain at best an acquired taste.

With a wealth of experience in combating gangs and organized crime, community policing, and dealing with complex conflicts in an increasingly multi-ethnic society, America's metropolitan police officers are well suited to overseas stabilization missions.

Yes, the average uniformed police officer doesn't have all of the range of skills necessary to operate effectively in failed states riven by insurgency. But building from community police skills, SWAT capabilities, gang suppression, and detective practices, they can be adapted and integrated into paramilitary, "formed" police units. These hybrid forces like France's Gendarmerie, Italy's Carabinieri, and Spain's Guardia Civil are a third option between the military and the police. These militarized internal security units are trained for both policing and fighting, and excel at international stability missions. These units handle specialized tasks like riot control, investigations, and disrupting criminal conspiracies, freeing up military forces for more general missions.

The European Union has pooled these military police into a 5,000-strong expeditionary police (EXPOL) force known as the European Gendarmerie Force (Eurogendfor), and Australian and Canadian national police departments regularly deploy police for stability operations worldwide.

Unfortunately, the US has no equivalent. With no national police force, few local police forces can contribute officers for peacekeeping abroad without straining their own resources. With no standing EXPOL force, international policing needs are filled on an ad hoc basis by military units and small civilian police forces that are ill-suited to the task. The United Nations has experimented with civilian police (CIVPOL) in peacekeeping forces, but uniformed military peacekeepers still predominate in peace operations.

The time has come for the development of standing constabulary forces that can draw talented and intelligent individuals for overseas policing. A US-specific EXPOL force could deploy in concert with standing NATO and UN expeditionary police units, although there's no reason why US EXPOL units couldn't be combined into mixed police units.

There are many remaining questions about such a force. Under whose authority would it fall–State Department, Defense Department, or Homeland Security? Would it be a US-centric standing force, or a composite force drawn from many alliance powers? A standing force would offer a clear continuity of command and control, but would be expensive in both money and political will to maintain. A composite force would be cheap and rapidly deployable, but would have uncertain lines of command and control and lack continuity and professionalized training. Constructing such a stability police force would pose many problems and difficulties. But going without it is infinitely more expensive.

In the military, the COIN process is often simplified as DIME (Diplomacy, Intelligence, Military, Economic). But without effective policing to guarantee basic law and order, diplomacy has no credibility, the military cannot effectively operate, and economic reconstruction is impossible. We need to add a "P" — Policing — to the mix.

John P. Sullivan is a senior research fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism. A career police officer, he is a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. He is also co-editor of Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating a global counter-terrorism network (Routledge, 2006).

Adam Elkus is a writer specializing in foreign policy, national security, and law enforcement issues. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, Military.com, DefenseWatch, Defense and the National Interest, SWAT Digest, and the Huffington Post. Adam blogs at Rethinking Security.

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We received an e-mail several days ago concerning the new American University of Iraq and getting an entry posted here has been at the top of our list… Our partner in the Afghanistan COIN Academy book-drive have done so and with the kind permission of Erin Simpson (aka Charlie) at Abu Muqawama we bring you the following – with a hearty SWJ endorsement of helping stock the University’s library.

Most readers of this blog are familiar with the American Universities of Beirut and Cairo (this blog's namesake is an alum of AUB). Some, like Charlie, may be unaware that there is an ongoing effort to build a similar institution in Sulaimaniya, Iraq.

It would be an ambitious project even in a Middle Eastern country not embroiled in war: build an American-style university where classes are taught in English, teachers come from around the world and graduates compete for lucrative jobs in fields like business and computer science.

Yet some of the leading lights of Iraq’s political and intellectual classes are doing exactly that, even as the bloodshed widens.

Their planned American University of Iraq is modeled after the famous private universities in Cairo and Beirut. The project’s managers have a board of trustees; a business plan recently completed by McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm; three candidates for university president; and $25 million, much of it in pledges from the American government and Kurdish sources. To fulfill their dream, they need much more: $200 million to $250 million over 15 years, said Azzam Alwash, the board’s executive secretary.

Our world famous blog is unlikely to make a dent in that $200 million price tag. But loyal readers may remember our efforts earlier this year to support the COIN Academy in Kabul. Now, via interminable contrarian Christopher Hitchens, we present a similar opportunity for the American University in Iraq:

However, I do believe that many people wish they could do something positive and make a contribution, however small, to the effort to build democracy in Iraq. And I have a suggestion. In the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniya, the American University of Iraq has just opened its doors. And it is appealing for people to donate books. [...]

We here at Abu M [and SWJ] aren't doing the coordinating this time... and there is no official reading list. But as Hitchens notes there's a need for social science and technical, engineering related books, among many others. We've all got books from college (and beyond) laying around our shelves: calc, organic chemistry, political theory, etc. If you have a minute, see that they find their way to Sulaimaniya.

Nathan Musselman
The American University of Iraq—Sulaimani
Building No. 7, Street 10
Quarter 410
Ablakh Area
Sulaimani, Iraq
(+964) (0)770-461-5099

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The Marine Corps of 2025 will fight and win our Nation’s battles with multicapable MAGTFs, either from the sea or in sustained operations ashore. Our unique role as the Nation’s force in readiness, along with our values, enduring ethos and core competencies, will ensure we remain highly responsive to the needs of combatant commanders in an uncertain environment and against irregular threats. Our future Corps will be increasingly reliant on naval deployment, preventative in approach, leaner in equipment, versatile in capabilities, and innovative in mindset. In an evolving and complex world, we will excel as the Nation’s expeditionary “force of choice.”

Bolded emphasis by SWJ.

The purpose of the vision and strategy document is to inform all Marines where we intend to take our Corps to give combatant commanders a concept of how we might best be employed, and to provide our civilian leadership a reference point as to how we see Marine Corps contributions to national defense in the coming years and decades. This document is grounded in the Marine Corps’ identity, ethos, values, and competencies. It serves as the principal strategic planning document for our Corps and reflects our legislated roles, functions, and composition. Derived from strategic guidance at the national and departmental level, it illustrates our utility and value within the joint warfighting community.

The vision section describes a Marine Corps adapting to fulfill our role in the Nation’s defense in an inherently unpredictable future. It is founded on our enduring characteristics and capabilities, but also reflects shifts in posture and practice designed to enhance today's Corps for tomorrow's challenges. The strategy section lays out a strategy statement as well as a set of institutional objectives to realize the vision and meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Our Service capstone concept and supporting operating concepts will flow from the vision and strategy, as will the more detailed plans of the deputy commandants and subordinate commanders. The development of these plans will be directed by the Implementation Planning Guidance which will be published in a subsequent document.

Enduring Principles

Every Marine a Rifleman. Every Marine - regardless of military occupational specialty - is first and foremost a disciplined warrior.

Expeditionary Naval Force. Marines are “soldiers of the sea,” an integral part of the naval Services - lean, versatile, flexible, and ready. We are organized, trained, and equipped to conduct naval campaigns and operate on and from naval platforms, or to fight in protracted campaigns ashore.

Combined Arms Organization. In 1952, Congress directed the Marine Corps’ composition as an air-ground combined arms force. This integrated force, known as the MAGTF, has unique and incomparable warfighting capabilities. Our MAGTF contains organic air, ground, and logistics elements under a single command element, making it an effective and integrated combined arms force.

Ready and Forward Deployed. Congress’ intent that the Marine Corps serve as the “force in readiness” was founded on a recognized national need for a force capable of rapid response to emerging crises. This requirement mandates high standards of readiness across the force. We are routinely forward deployed around the globe and stand prepared to respond quickly in times of crisis.

Agile and Adaptable. The Marine Corps’ agility is based on its expeditionary mindset and flexible structure, able to operate either from the sea or in sustained operations ashore. We can adapt quickly with unparalleled speed across an extraordinary range of military operations. Our organizational design and training facilitate a seamless transition between these operations, providing the necessary capability to operate effectively.

Marines Take Care of Their Own. We are stewards of the most important resource entrusted to us - our Nation’s sons and daughters. We make Marines, imbue them with our Core Values, and offer them the opportunity to serve a cause greater than themselves. Marines live up to the motto, Semper Fidelis. We are faithful to those who fall and we care for our wounded Marines and their families.

Objectives

1. Focus on the Individual Marine. The individual Marine will remain our most important warfighting asset...

2. Improve Training and Education for Fog, Friction, and Uncertainty. Our realistic training and education system will prepare Marines for complex conditions and to counter the unexpected...

3. Expand Persistent Forward Presence and Engagement. The Marine Corps will develop a plan to provide a tailored, persistently engaged, contingency-capable MAGTF in five prioritized regions...

4. Better Posture for Hybrid Threats in Complex Environments. Without sacrificing its conventional capabilities, the Corps will prepare to conduct operations against hybrid threats in complex environments; such as urbanized littorals, mountainous terrain, and dense jungles...

5. Reinforce Naval Relationships. We share with the Navy a remarkable heritage and a common perspective on the fundamental necessity of maintaining the ability to operate freely in the littorals...

6. Ensure Amphibious Force Levels Meet Strategic Requirements. We are resolved to maintain the requisite capacity of modern amphibious lift to support the Nation’s ability to execute forcible entry operations from the sea and other combatant commander missions...

7. Create Joint Seabasing Capabilities. We will improve our ability to cross wide expanses of ocean and remain persistently offshore at the place and time of our choosing...

8. Lead Joint/Multinational Operations and Enable Interagency Activities. A clear changing characteristic in the modern battlespace is the shift from a primarily military focus to one that achieves a greater degree of operational integration of all instruments of national power...

9. Maintain a Ready and Sustainable Reserve. We will employ a total force approach to meet the Marine Corps’ force generation requirements...

10. Build and Deploy Multicapable MAGTFs. Our MAGTFs will be decisive across the range of military operations with their capacity tailored to combatant commander’s requirements...

Continue reading "Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025 (Updated w/ Video)" »

--Signature line of Small Wars Council member William F. Owen

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Symbols of America - US Department of Defense
Bush, Mullen Send Independence Day Greetings - John Kruzel, AFPS
Independence Days - George Will, Washington Post
Vindicators of the Declaration - Rich Lowry, National Review
Civics Fireworks - Myrna Blyth, National Review
The Necessary Religion - Mark Goldblatt, National Review
Imperial Considerations - Thomas Madden, National Review
One New World, Two Big Ideas - David Hackett Fischer, New York Times
A Gift From France, to France - Edward Berenson, New York Times
No Room for Negativity - Ed Feulner, Washington Times
The Fourth of July - Washington Post
The Meaning of a Day - New York Times
1,100 Troops in Iraq to Reenlist in Independence Day Ceremony - AFPS

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Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH) asks the question: Is the American era in the Middle East over? The argument was first made by Richard Haass in a Foreign Affairs article published in 2006.

The American era in the Middle East… has ended…. It is one of history’s ironies that the first war in Iraq, a war of necessity, marked the beginning of the American era in the Middle East and the second Iraq war, a war of choice, has precipitated its end…. The United States will continue to enjoy more influence in the region than any other outside power, but its influence will be reduced from what it once was.

J. Scott Carpenter, Lawrence Freedman, Mark T. Kimmitt, Martin Kramer, Walter Laqueur, Robert J. Lieber, Michael Mandelbaum, Aaron David Miller, Joshua Muravchik, Robert Satloff and Harvey Sicherman all take a shot at the answer.

MESH is a project of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. The Olin Institute is part of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

MESH is a community of scholars and practitioners who are interested in the formulation of US strategic options for the Middle East. Since 9/11 and the Iraq war, the Middle East has occupied a place of primacy in debates over US global aims and strategies. MESH brings together the most original strategic thinkers in academe, research centers, and government, in a web-based forum for exchanging and disseminating ideas.

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Rethinking “IO:” Complex Operations in the Information Age

by BG Huba Wass de Czege, US Army, Retired, Small Wars Journal

Download interim version of article as PDF

We are in a period of unprecedented and rapid change, and this realization should make us skeptics of wisdoms revealed as recently as a decade and a half ago when the problems the military faced were very different. Paradigms that might have seemed sensible then confuse more than clarify today.

In the years just prior to September 11, 2001, a new American Way of War emerged to replace Cold War paradigms -- those underlying unthinking ways of thinking embedded in our doctrines. The April 2000 Defense Planning Guidance tasked U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) to develop “… new Joint warfighting concepts and capabilities that will improve the ability of future Joint force commanders to rapidly and decisively conduct particularly challenging and important operational missions, such as … coercing an adversary to undertake certain actions or denying the adversary the ability to coerce or attack its neighbors …” The object of these operations were to be rogue states such as Iraq, North Korea, Libya, and Panama were or had been. What emerged was dubbed the “Rapid Decisive Operations (RDO)” concept. It rested on four pillars. An Air Force and Navy capable of controlling air, space, and sea domains from which to coerce enemies with a hail of precise air and naval missile power; increasingly more capable special operating forces to penetrate enemy territory and provide targets; and a new core capability called “Information Operations” to “influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decisionmaking, while protecting our own.” In this “domain,” as in the others, the term most used in the late 1990’s to describe the product of American technological superiority was not just superiority, but dominance. RDO asserted that leveraging these asymmetric superiorities in the air, space, naval, and information domains would not only conserve scarce ground forces and reduce casualties, but they would also achieve rapid and decisive results. As we saw versions of RDO applied in Kosovo in 2000, in Afghanistan in 2002, and in Iraq in 2003, it became clear to most professionals that this new paradigm oversimplified complexities then not well understood. In fact the chief failing of RDO was an utter lack of respect for the difficulty of what it set out to do: either to achieve relevant dominance in any sense; or to coerce any determined adversary to undertake any actions what-so-ever. Even denying an adversary the ability to coerce or attack its neighbors has to be approached with humility today. However, thinking about the Information Operations component of this package has been most resistant to revision, especially two prized and related tenets. One is that “the integrated employment of the core capabilities of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception, and operations security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities” is the best way to gain the maximum benefit of so-called IO core, supporting, and related capabilities. Another is that when these capabilities are thus integrated, an independent IO “logical line of operations” can influence the behaviors of adversaries and the publics that support them with so-called “information effects” alone. This is an amateurish outlook, and not shared by all IO practitioners, especially those who have been in the trenches, and working closely with the Brigade Combat Teams most involved in the real challenges of trying to “influence” the behaviors of real people under stress. While progress is being made on other fronts of “Defense Transformation,” IO is stuck in a late 20th Century time warp. Future Shock author Alvin Toffler, in a passage from a 1996 book, makes this relevant point: "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." In this case a Pentagon bureaucracy, the tyranny of a slow-to- change, lowest-common-denominator and top-down-biased Joint Doctrine, plus engrained habits of thought stand in the way of learning, unlearning, and relearning.

Download interim version of article as PDF

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I thought I’d share with SWJ readership an article recently published in Army magazine (May 2008). In particular - I draw your attention to discussion of our infatuation with the term “Irregular Warfare” - US Forces Do Not Conduct "Irregular War".

What is it about the US Military that tends to produce sound, pragmatic, and common sense ideas about the concrete present, and tends toward illogic, faddish paradigms and hyperbole when dealing with the abstract future? Joint Operating Concepts for dealing with post cold war security problems have proven difficult to "get right." This is because they begin from the wrong logical starting point and thus define the problem incorrectly. It is also because of inattention to historical fact, definitional subtlety and the theoretical logic within which military forces must operate. This inattention overlooks key logical inconsistencies in such documents crafted more to "sell" to constituencies within the Washington "Beltway" the capabilities and programs championed by one military interest group or another rather than to inform current decisions in the field. For this reason those who nag about these things tend to be ignored by the practical people dealing with near term problems. When the future becomes the present, the consequences of illogic, faddish paradigms, and hyperbole in abstract concepts can pose insurmountable problems for pragmatic common sense. For one, "Beltway" constituencies have been educated to think according to the attractive new paradigms military professionals have used to buttress their budget arguments. The new "Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept" signed by the Commander, United States Special Operations Command, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of Defense on 11 September 2007 deals with the abstract future and exhibits the usual tendencies. We have been here before, and are still suffering the consequences.

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Since 1922, Military Review has provided a forum for the open exchange of ideas on military affairs. Subsequently, publications have proliferated throughout the Army education system that specialize either in tactical issues associated with particular Branches or on strategic issues at the Senior Service School level. Bridging these two levels of intellectual inquiry, Military Review focuses on research and analysis of the concepts, doctrine and principles of warfighting between the tactical and operational levels of war.

Military Review is a refereed journal that provides a forum for original thought and debate on the art and science of land warfare and other issues of current interest to the US Army and the Department of Defense. Military Review also supports the education, training, doctrine development and integration missions of the Combined Arms Center (CAC), Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Military Review is printed bimonthly in English, Spanish and Portuguese and is distributed to readers in more than 100 countries. It is also printed in Arabic on a quarterly basis. Widely quoted and reprinted throughout the world, it is a readily available reference at most military and civilian university libraries and research agencies.

Here is the July - August 2008 lineup:

Interagency Reform: The Congressional Perspective by Congressman Geoff Davis, speech given at PNSR/ROA Luncheon, 8 May 2008

Congressman Davis explains why we need to reform the interagency process in regard to national security and what must be considered in future legislation on this pressing issue.

Field Manual 3-07, Stability Operations: Upshifting the Engine of Change by Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell IV, U.S. Army, and Lieutenant Colonel Steven M. Leonard, U.S. Army

This FM will institutionalize a whole-of-government approach to combating insurgency and sustaining success in an era of persistent conflict.

Darfur and Peacekeeping Operations in Africa by Lieutenant Commander Patrick Paterson, U.S. Navy

The crisis in Darfur, which the United States has labeled “genocide” and the United Nations has called “the world’s gravest human rights abuse,” has revealed glaring weaknesses in the African Union’s ability to conduct peacekeeping operations.

Salvadoran Reconciliation by Major M. Chris Herrera, U.S. Army, and Major Michael G. Nelson, U.S. Air Force

A brutal 12-year civil war in El Salvador ended in 1992. The conflict killed more than 75,000 mostly innocent civilians and left 8,000 missing. Reconciliation has been difficult to achieve.

A Troubled Past: The Army and Security on the Mexican Border, 1915-1917 by Thomas A. Bruscino Jr.

The tempestuous historical border relationships between the United States and Mexico have always been complex.

Persuasion and Coercion in Counterinsurgency Warfare by Andrew J. Birtle, Ph.D.

Much confusion remains over the roles that persuasion and coercion play in rebellions and other internal conflicts. What is the relationship between force and politics?

After Iraq: The Politics of Blame and Civilian-Military Relations by George R. Mastroianni, Ph.D., and Wilbur J. Scott, Ph.D.

Competing post-Iraq narratives may lead to a broadening of sociological divisions between military professionals and the civil society they defend.

Legitimacy and Military Operations by Lieutenant Colonel James W. Hammond, Canadian Forces

In America’s rush to war it forgot that legitimacy, whether real or perceived, is everything. The author argues that to achieve success, the U.S. must conduct all military operations with legitimacy in mind.

Twelve Urgent Steps for the Advisor Mission in Afghanistan by Captain Daniel Helmer, U.S. Army

Without major and rapid changes to structure and execution, the advisory effort in Afghanistan will fail to arrest the growing insurgencies.

Burnout: Staff Exhaustion by Major Stephen H. Bales, U.S. Army

Commanders can proactively take initiative to mitigate conditions that cause their staffs to lose their peak effectiveness. Imaginative management can help prevent staff burnout.

Reaching Out: Partnering with Iraqi Media by Lieutenant Colonel Frank B. DeCarvalho, U.S. Army; Major Spring Kivett, U.S. Army; and Captain Matthew Lindsey, U.S. Army

Using Iraqi news reporters can the increase chances that good news stories will resonate favorably in Iraq. An expert lays out the particulars of an important dimension of the information war.

Why the U.S. Should Gender Its Counterterrorism Strategy by Lieutenant Colonel Miemie Winn Byrd, U.S. Army Reserve, and Major Gretchen Decker, U.S. Army Reserve

Gender prejudices and traditional assumptions belie an increasing threat from radicalized women. It is time to consider gender issues in designing counterterrorism strategies.

Knowledge Management by the Generating Force by Lieutenant Colonel (P) E.J. Degen, U.S. Army

The accelerated operational tempo of the War on Terrorism has forced us to take an honest, in-depth look at how we collect, analyze, debate, codify, write, and disseminate doctrine.

The Sole Superpower in Decline: The Rise of a Multipolar World by Shri Dilip Hiro

A widely published author asserts that we are witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of American hegemony.

Book Reviews by multiple authors

Contemporary readings for the professional.

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The Syria Card

By David J. Haimsky

The ongoing, peace talks between Israel and Syria have been relatively underreported in the news media, and are surprisingly seldom discussed in policy circles in Washington, despite the fact that their potential success will drastically change the political landscape in the Middle East in Washington’s favor. That is why the Bush Administration’s lack of involvement in this process is all the more puzzling.

President Bush is widely perceived as a “lame duck” president. His recent European tour failed to bring out crowds of protesters that have greeted him every time he stepped foot on the continent in the past, not because people have warmed up to his policies, but simply because they regard his tenure in office as effectively over. His popularity ratings at home and abroad remain at an all-time low and people on both sides of the political spectrum are waiting anxiously for January’s changing of the guard. Bush, however, is determined to go down in history as the president who had taken on terror networks and rogue states in defense of democracy worldwide. The prospect of an Israeli-Syrian peace provides an historic opportunity for him to at least partially meet that objective, while reversing some of the policy setbacks of his administration...

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Part I of selected excerpts from Small Wars II, an unpublished U.S. Marine Corps document written in 2003. Noel Williams is the primary author.

The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesmen and commander have to make is to establish … the kind of war on which they are embarking.

--Clausewitz

On October 23, 1983 the world turned upside down for the U.S. Marine Corps. The deaths of 241 sailors, soldiers, and Marines in a concrete slab building in Beirut, Lebanon at the hands of a suicide bomber marked the beginning of the end of an era - an era where the enemy was a Soviet motorized rifle regiment and where Marines stood guard duty without magazines inserted because the United States was not “at war.” In retrospect, the Beirut bombing was a seminal event, heavily influencing subsequent Marine Corps organization and culture and ushering in the kind of profound change that seldom takes place in large organizations without the stimulus of a significant emotional event.

Orders were quick to follow: All Marines will walk post armed; Marines will not starch their utilities; Marines will not spit shine their combat boots; Marines will read professionally. These changes did not occur overnight, but looking back from today’s vantage point, it is hard not to marvel at the profound changes that have transformed the Corps.

If there can be a silver lining to a tragedy as great as Beirut, it is that the Marine Corps began a great awakening to a new way of warfare fully two decades before her sister Services. There was recognition that Marines must prepare differently, both physically and mentally, for the new challenges posed by terrorism, transnational threats, and the more dynamic security requirements of the post-Cold War world. In attempting to discern the nature of this changing security environment and to develop appropriate courses of action, some were quick to say, harkening back to the Corps’ small wars legacy, “been there, done that.”

But is it just a question of back to the future? Or, is conflict in the new millennium fundamentally different? The short answer is yes to both. Meaning, while many small wars fundamentals remain unchanged, there are significant threats and challenges that are without precedent. It is the intent of this work to examine these emerging threats and convert the challenges they present into opportunities for improving our capabilities to provide for the national defense...

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Iraq’s Water Woes

By Captain Timothy Hsia

News today in Iraq is centered on contracts currently being negotiated between the Government of Iraq and major oil companies. This has occupied much of the attention of America and the rest of the world as the price of oil continues to skyrocket. However, Iraqis for the vast majority are not only interested in the future of their oil but also concentrated on another pressing natural resource problem, the scarcity of water.

Sandwiched between Baghdad and Mosul is the Diyala River Valley (DRV), and within the DRV is a region known as the Breadbasket of Iraq. Farmers have worked the land here since Biblical times. Baqubah, the capital of Diyala, is Arabic for Jacob’s house. The region historically has been so abundant agriculturally that the produce from this area has been able to not only sustain the local region but also vast parts of Iraq. Today however, the way of life of these farmers has become imperiled for one simple reason: there is simply not enough water for their crops. Drought like conditions now exist in many regions of the Diyala River Valley and potable water is scarce. When Iraqi kids encounter soldiers on patrols they not only ask for soccer balls but also water bottles...

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Visualizing Transition from the “Bottom Up”
Observations from Joint Urban Warrior 2008
by Dennis Burket, Small Wars Journal

Download interim version of article as PDF

Joint Urban Warrior 2008 (JUW 08) was a United States Marine Corps (USMC) and United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) cosponsored seminar wargame that was designed to objectively observe and capture operational insights during a forces drawdown from an Irregular Warfare operation/environment. Participants were presented with an “OIF-like” scenario and asked to drawdown current US and Coalition forces to an “advisory organization” in two years. Using the JUW 08 scenario, participants created many visualization tools to help them describe what a two-year drawdown of forces/event-driven transition would look like from their viewpoint. This paper discusses a doctrine-based visualization tool developed during JUW 08 that both military and non-military participants found to be especially useful. This particular model was successful because it allowed participants to look at transition from the viewpoint of a tactical commander, or from the “Bottom Up.”

The primary observation from using the “bottom up” approach was that functions were being transitioned to host nation or non-governmental organizations. From this key insight, participants developed several other insights. First, it was established that it is the timing of when functions are to be transitioned that should determine the future form (organization) of US forces; not the other way around. Second, an event-driven transition in an uncertain environment will require commanders to retain specific functions and capabilities to mitigate risks. And, third, by listing a function as transitioned on a chart doesn’t necessarily indicate a completed action. In many instances some form of “overwatch” will be needed until a “good enough” point is reached by the organization to which the function is transitioned.

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David McCullough has been widely acclaimed as a "master of the art of narrative history," "a matchless writer." He is twice winner of the National Book Award, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize. In December 2006 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.

His books have been praised for their scholarship, their understanding of American life, their "vibrant prose," and insight into individual character. Mr. McCullough's most recent book, 1776, the number one New York Times national bestseller in both hardcover and paperback, has been called, "brilliant...powerful," "a classic." There are three million copies in print, while Mr. McCullough's previous work, John Adams, remains one of the most critically acclaimed and widely read American biographies of all time. It is presently in its sixty-third printing.

John Adams, was filmed as a seven-part mini-series on HBO. Produced by Tom Hanks, it stars Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney.

In the words of the citation accompanying his honorary degree from Yale, "As an historian, he paints with words, giving us pictures of the American people that live, breathe, and above all, confront the fundamental issues of courage, achievement, and moral character."

Mr. McCullough's other books include The Johnstown Flood, The Great Bridge, The Path between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, Brave Companions, and Truman. His work has been published in ten languages and, in all, nearly 9,000,000 copies are in print. As may be said of few writers, none of his books has ever been out of print.

David McCullough is as well twice winner of the prestigious Francis Parkman Prize, and for his work overall he has been honored by the National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award and the National Humanities Medal. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received more than forty honorary degrees.

He has been an editor, essayist, teacher, lecturer, and familiar presence on public television -- as host of Smithsonian World, The American Experience, and narrator of numerous documentaries including The Civil War. His is also the narrator's voice in the movie Seabiscuit. He is also one of the few private citizens to speak before a joint session of Congress.

His current project is a book about Americans in Paris, from the 1830's to 1930's.

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... There is certainly a wide body of criticism of FM 3-24, to which most of the regulars here are familiar with. Many units who have employed the FM have found strengths and shortfalls in the manual when put into application.

Here's some starter questions, but don't limit yourself:

1) What was helpful/useful in FM 3-24?

2) What is missing in FM 3-24?

3) What needs amplification?

4) What needs de-emphasis?

5) What is flat wrong or needs removal?

6) Does the manual strike the balance between specific, applicable knowledge and theory of operations?

7) How does the manual hold up in application in Iraq/Afghanistan, and does its principles hold up outside of Iraq/Afghanistan?

Join the discussion at Small Wars Council - Revising FM 3-24: What needs to change?

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New MH-53M Helicopter Exhibit Opens

By Rob Bardua, National Museum of the US Air Force

Several high ranking officials from Air Force Special Operations Command, industry and the community recently joined personnel from the National Museum of the US Air Force for the official opening of the museum's new MH-53M Pave Low IV helicopter exhibit.

Air Force special operations forces used the Sikorsky MH-53M to covertly enter enemy territory. Capable of operating at day or night or in bad weather, these helicopters conducted long-range, low-level missions to insert, extract, and resupply special operations forces.

The museum's MH-53M Pave Low IV helicopter, serial number 68-10357, carried the command element during the mission to rescue American prisoners of war from the Son Tay prison camp near Hanoi, North Vietnam in 1970.

After Vietnam, it flew in many more combat engagements including Operation DESERT STORM and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. After 38 years of service, its final flight was a combat mission in Iraq on March 28, 2008...

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Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt
Remarks at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)
Future Land Warfare Conference
12 June 2008

The Land Environment – Moving Towards 2018

May I start this morning by adding my welcome to that of our Chairman, and in particular thank Professor Michael Clarke, the Director of RUSI and Lieutenant General Ted Stroupe, the Vice President of AUSA, for hosting and putting together this important Conference. May I also thank our many sponsors, too, for their generous support. I believe that our discussions and conclusions over the next two days could prove to be a significant turning point in the way that we address Land Warfare over the next decade or so. There are key questions to be addressed and I welcome this opportunity to exchange ideas and aspirations.

In that spirit I particularly welcome our contributors from overseas, and would like to formally welcome:

(US) Gen Hondo Campbell
(Kenya) Gen Jerry Kianga
(Canada) Lt Gen Andrew Leslie
(Pakistan) Lt Gen Masood Aslam
(France) Maj Gen Jacque Le Chevallier (representing Gen Cuche)

Now to get our proceedings under way in a substantive sense, my aim this morning, over the next 20 minutes is to give you an indication of the direction of travel for the British Army over the next ten years. Now I should caveat this by saying that I am only speaking on my vision for the Land Environment and that elements of wider Defence policy are still being discussed and formulated, but this is where I, and my senior Army colleagues, would like to see the Army moving within that Defence context. This direction has been formulated following what I would describe as a very lively and spirited debate across the Army as to what the force of the future should look like, particularly after our experience on current operations. We have recognised in recent months that we are at, what we could call a Question Four Moment, - that moment that occurs occasionally when the Mission hasn’t changed, but the situation and circumstances around it have – and so a new plan is needed. We believe that our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere have called us to question whether our previous assumptions regarding current practice and future development have been right – and we have looked at all the issues very carefully.

After what has been this very constructive debate I believe that we now have a wide understanding and consensus certainly at the top end of the Army about what we consider the likely shape of the land environment to be in ten years time and how we need to adapt to meet these new challenges. So our internal debate is over, and our conclusions will now hopefully better inform the overall defence discussion as we move towards the future...

Continue reading "General Sir Richard Dannatt on Moving Towards 2018" »

Worlds of Enemy Combatants

By Michael Innes - Cross-posted at CTLab

On 3 July, The New Republic's TNR Conversation with Josh Patashnik hosted the Brookings Institution's Benjamin Wittes, author of the recently released Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in an Age of Terror (Penguin Press, 2008), and the New America Foundation's Andrew McCarthy, author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).

There's a crisp transcript of the discussion that's nice and readable, but for the full flavor, listen to the audio, which is much longer and captures much more of the respective authors' responses and elaborations. It kicks off on the recent case of a Chinese Uighur Muslim held at Guantanamo, resolution of which revealed "no evidence that would qualify him as an enemy combatant."

Among other things, TNR's three-way gets into the political context of and for jus ad bellum after 2001, and the politicization of the recent Boumediene Case on habeas corpus rights. The most telling line in the encounter, from Andrew McCarthy: "Rather than having what is probably a not-very-useful argument over what the parameters of the battlefield are, we probably should be much more focused on who it is that we're fighting and under what circumstances they should be brought into the system."

Good on the complexity of battlespace parameters. Bad on suggesting that defining it's probably not useful. Tell it to those who get caught in the "middle", wherever that might be these days. There's a big difference between useless and difficult, the latter hardly a justification for not bothering. That's not what either author's arguing, but they miss an important implication of their own work: the spatial variables that shape and inform the physical disposition of insurgents and terrorists are central to battlespace regulatory regimes.

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National War Powers Commission - Miller Center of Public Affairs

The Miller Center's National War Powers Commission, co-chaired by former Secretaries of State James A. Baker, III and Warren Christopher, Tuesday recommended that Congress repeal the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and substitute a new statute that would provide for more meaningful consultation between the president and Congress on matters of war. In a report released Tuesday after 13 months of study, the Commission concluded that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 has failed to promote cooperation between the two branches of government and recommended that Congress pass a new statute – the War Powers Consultation Act of 2009 – that would establish a clear process on decisions to go to war. The Miller Center impaneled the National War Powers Commission in February 2007. This bipartisan commission met seven times, interviewing more than 40 witnesses about the respective war powers of the president and Congress.

Put War Powers Back Where They Belong - Baker and Christopher, NYT opinion

The most agonizing decision we make as a nation is whether to go to war. Our Constitution ambiguously divides war powers between the president (who is the commander in chief) and Congress (which has the power of the purse and the power to declare war). The founders hoped that the executive and legislative branches would work together, but in practice the two branches don’t always consult. And even when they do, they often dispute their respective powers. A bipartisan group that we led, the National War Powers Commission, has unanimously concluded after a year of study that the law purporting to govern the decision to engage in war — the 1973 War Powers Resolution — should be replaced by a new law that would, except for emergencies, require the president and Congressional leaders to discuss the matter before going to war. Seventy years of polls show that most Americans expect Congress and the president to talk before making that decision, and in most cases, they have done so.

Ex-Secretaries: New War Powers Policy - Karen DeYoung, Washington Post

The 1973 War Powers Resolution is ineffective, possibly unconstitutional and should be repealed, two former secretaries of state said yesterday in proposing new legislation to govern the war-making powers of the president and Congress. "The rule of law is undermined and is damaged when the main statute in this vital policy area is regularly questioned or ignored," former secretary James A. Baker III said of the existing law. Baker, along with former secretary Warren Christopher, headed an independent, bipartisan commission that spent the last year examining the issue.

Report Urges Overhaul of the War Powers Law - John Broder, New York Times

Two former secretaries of state, concluding that a 1973 measure limiting the president’s ability to wage war unilaterally had never worked as intended, proposed on Tuesday a new system of closer consultation between the White House and Congress before American forces go into battle. Their proposal would require the president to consult senior lawmakers before initiating combat expected to last longer than a week, except for covert operations or rare circumstances requiring emergency action, in which case consultation would have to be undertaken within three days.

Fixing How We Go to War - David Broder, Washington Post opinion

Just shy of eight years after they squared off in the Florida recount battle, James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher have joined forces to clean up one of the ugly legacies of Vietnam -- the misguided piece of legislation called the War Powers Act. Passed in 1973, when Congress was mightily frustrated with the undeclared war in Southeast Asia, that statute is proof of the adage that hard cases make bad law. Cases don't come any harder than Vietnam, and the War Powers Act has turned out to be one of the worst bills ever to reach the president's desk and be signed into law.

Repeal the War Powers Act - Michael Barone, US News & World Report opinion

I tend to be cynical about proposals advanced by bipartisan panels of the great and the good. But I'll make an exception for the National War Powers Commission sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. The commission was chaired by former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher and included former Democratic members of Congress Lee Hamilton, John Marsh, and Abner Mikva and former Republican Sen. Slade Gorton (Marsh presumably counts as a Republican, since he served in the Ford White House and was secretary of the Army in the Reagan administration). Other members: Republicans Carla Hills, Edwin Meese, and Brent Scowcroft; Democrats Anne-Marie Slaughter and Strobe Talbott; and retired Adm. J. Paul Reason. In its admirably brief and well-written report, the commission calls for repealing the War Powers Act of 1973 and replacing it with a War Powers Consultation Act that would require the president to consult with a new bipartisan, bicameral Joint Congressional Consultation Committee.

Commission Recommends War Powers Overhaul - National Public Radio

A bipartisan commission is recommending new legislation that would foster more consultation between the president and Congress before the nation goes to war. The proposed legislation would replace the War Powers Act, passed in 1973 by a Vietnam-weary Congress that wanted to check the president's ability to initiate an unpopular war. Observers of all political persuasions have called the 1973 resolution vague and impractical. The National War Powers Commission, led by former secretaries of state James Baker and Warren Christopher, recommends creating a joint congressional committee with whom the president would have to consult before sending troops into conflict. The full Congress would have 30 days to ratify any military action.

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Iran's Political, Demographic, and Economic Vulnerabilities by Keith Crane, Rollie Lal and Jeffrey Martini; Rand Corporation Monograph.

Iran is one of the United States' most important foreign policy concerns. It has also been an extraordinarily difficult country with which to engage. Ironically, while the leadership has been hostile to the United States, Iranian society has evolved in ways friendly to the United States and US interests. This monograph assesses current political, ethnic, demographic, and economic trends and vulnerabilities in Iran. For example, the numbers of young people entering the Iranian labor force are at an all-time high. The authors then provide recommendations for US policies that might foster trends beneficial to US interests. For example, greater use of markets and a more-vibrant private sector would contribute to the development of sources of political power independent from the current regime. The authors finally note a need for patience. Even if favorable trends take root, it will take time for them to come to fruition.

Rand Press Release:

The United States should pursue a mixed strategy toward Iran, using a variety of means to promote favorable social developments within the country and at the same time exploiting vulnerabilities in the nation's political, economic and demographic conditions, according to a study issued today by the Rand Corporation.

However, Iran's vulnerabilities are "not extraordinary" and have become less severe over the last decade as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders have consolidated their power.

"The United States can use Iran's vulnerabilities to advance US goals, but expectations should be kept low," said Keith Crane, the study's lead author and a senior economist at Rand, a nonprofit research organization. "This is going to be a long-term proposition. Although economic and social forces within Iran are pushing for liberalization, the current regime has been able to maintain its hold on power."

Despite hostile rhetoric expressed by Iranian leaders toward the United States, Iranian society has a generally favorable view of the United States, partly because there is a large population of Iranians living in America, Crane said. Although it faces many problems, the current Iranian regime is likely to resist external pressure for change. It may, however, become more democratic over time, as economic, political and demographic pressures from within force the government to respond to popular desires for a more democratic state.

The Rand report is based upon an assessment of the ethnographic, political and economic literature about Iran, in addition to official Iranian government statements and monitored blogs maintained by Iranians. Economic assessments from the Central Bank of Iran and the International Monetary Fund also were a part of the material assessed.

The study recommends that US policy should be crafted with the goals of fostering conditions for a more democratic Iranian society, weakening the ability of the Iranian government to crack down on dissenters, and penalizing the Iranian government for policies that harm the United States...

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Yesterday’s Inside the Pentagon had an excellent overview of current efforts underway in the Department of Defense to address issues associated with Irregular Warfare - Joint Panel Blesses New Concept for Defeating Terrorist Networks by Fawzia Sheikh (subscription required – visit Inside Defense News Stand for a special access offer).

Here are several highlights from the article:

(1) A new draft Defense Department Joint Integrating Concept (JIC) for Defeating Terrorist Networks, which is being drafted to help implement DOD's broad vision for irregular warfare, won a key endorsement from the Joint Capabilities Board (JCB).

(2) US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) will continue as the lead sponsor of the JIC.

(3) The idea behind the Defeating Terrorist Networks JIC is to take "a more holistic approach to tackling the root causes of these networks."

(4) USSOCOM is also leading the development of three other intertwined JICs: Counterinsurgency, Foreign Internal Defense and Unconventional Warfare.

(5) The Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept describes how future Joint Force Commanders may conduct protracted irregular wars to meet national strategic objectives in the 2014 to 2026 time frame. The latest JICs connected to Irregular Warfare are in their infancy and "don't have a lot of flesh on the bones yet."

(6) The Unconventional Warfare JIC describes destabilization of foreign nations that pose a threat to US forces. Foreign Internal Defense has to do with training and equipping foreign forces to battle an actual or threatened insurgency in a foreign state. While work has just begun on the Counterinsurgency, Foreign Internal Defense and Unconventional Warfare JICs, the next-most advanced concept following Defeating Terrorist Networks is Strategic Communications. US Joint Forces Command, in conjunction with US Strategic Command and USSOCOM, are leading the development of the Strategic Communications JIC.

(7) The Strategic Communications JIC will describe how a Joint Force will Conduct Strategic Communications activities in eight to 20 years.

Visit Inside Defense News Stand for a special access offer. Also see Inside Defense's The Insider, a twice-weekly report on the Defense Department, Congress and the defense industry.

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The United States Institute of Peace - Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations - posted a Metrics Framework today on the USIP web page.

USIP describes the framework as follows - USIP-developed methodologies for measurement of the transformation from war to peace were recently used at the Department of State's Foreign Service Institute (FSI) and the US Army War College (AWC). At FSI, classes in the Integrated Conflict Analysis Framework (ICAF) are part of courses that aim to build an interagency community of professionals trained to participate in reconstruction and stabilization operations. ICAF incorporates USIP’s conflict transformation framework, which tracks drivers of conflict and institutional performance. At the AWC, a recent workshop used USIP’s measurement framework for a hypothetical scenario on Chad.

Dennis Skocz, a specialist on strategic planning and professional development, lauded the USIP framework. "The concepts are clear, intuitive, and flexible. Aspects of a conflict that might be ignored using a stove-piped approach to lining up tasks come out through the analysis, allowing for a holistic response to situations that typically involve many 'moving pieces,'" he said. "As for the metric framework, it's an idea whose time has clearly come. It combines the sophistication that comes from almost two years of development along with a foundation in the conflict analysis that USIP has pioneered."

Also posted this month - Integrated Security Assistance: The 1207 Program by Robert M. Perito.

In January 2008, the US Departments of State and Defense requested that the United States Institute of Peace conduct an independent assessment of the process by which projects funded under Section 1207 of the National Defense Authorization Acts of FY 2006 and FY 2007 were developed, reviewed, and approved for funding. They asked that the study include recommendations for changes in the application and approval procedures to ensure that project proposals were reviewed through an efficient, transparent, and well-understood interagency process. The Institute agreed to conduct the study because the 1207 program is an example of the US military’s growing involvement in integrated “whole-of-government” approaches to US security assistance programs. The study is based on interviews with staff members of the Senate and House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees and representatives from the Office of Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Department of State, and the US Agency for International Development.

And on Iraq - USIP Dialogue on Media and Conflict in Iraq Spawns Call for Partnership. (Full text in English) (Full text in Arabic)

USIP convened a groundbreaking conference on media and conflict in Iraq in Istanbul May 14-16, 2008. The event was part of the Institute’s Iraq and its Neighbors project and was co-hosted by the Center for Sustainable Peace at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul.

Participants included media executives from Iraq and across the region. These executives, who represented entertainment, news, citizen media and new media technology, met with officials from the Iraqi government and international experts to explore media’s effect on the conflict and vice versa.

The participants called for "a partnership between a government committed to freedom of expression and media committed to responsible use of the means of communication" to enable both to weather the current conflict and look forward to a more peaceful future.

The meeting resulted in a two-page "Istanbul Declaration" featuring specific recommendations whose implementation should be feasible within the next five years.

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John Bennett of Defense News (subscription required) has reported “on DC talk” that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology and Logistics) John Young, and Assistant Secretary of Defense (Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict & Interdependent Capabilities) Michael Vickers may survive the transition from the Bush to a McCain or Obama administration.

"The next president will inherit the most daunting security environment" an incoming commander in chief has ever been handed, said Michèle Flournoy, a former top Pentagon strategic planner in President Bill Clinton's administration. "America has not had a grand strategy since the end of the Cold War." Not since the Vietnam War have so many US troops been involved in shooting wars during a presidential transition.

Either Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., will inherit the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a number of troubled weapon programs and other military challenges.

There is talk in Washington that the new president should consider keeping some Bush appointees on after he takes office, at least until his nominees are confirmed.

Good choices all - hopefully transition reality will turn this DC chatter into concrete action.

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Shortchanging the Joint Doctrine Fight
One Airman’s Assessment of the Airman’s Assessment
by LtCol Buck Elton, Small Wars Journal

Download interim version of article as PDF

The traditional, often bitter inter-service battle for resources has been taken to a new level in a senior Air Force officer’s recent assault on service doctrine. In late December, 2007, Air University published a 111-page monograph written by Air Force Deputy Judge Advocate Major General Charles J. Dunlap, Jr. entitled Shortchanging the Joint Fight? An Airman’s Assessment of FM 3-24 and the Case for Developing Truly Joint COIN Doctrine. The study analyzes the pitfalls of accepting Army and Marine tactical doctrine as the joint solution and offers an Airman’s perspective to deliver “fresh” alternatives for joint counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine development. This heavily referenced monograph (438 end notes) relentlessly attacks the Army and Marine Corps doctrine for its almost exclusively ground-centric perspective and failure to reconcile the full potential of today’s airpower capabilities. Although General Dunlap discusses several interesting ideas regarding how the Airman’s perspective can help shape joint COIN doctrine, his undue criticisms of Army philosophies, conventional approaches and dogmatic mindset distract from his argument and recommendations. Readers will likely focus exclusively on the unwarranted and erratically referenced land-power condemnations and accuse the Air Force of advocating a COIN solution that involves Airmen or airpower for their own sake, which the author half-heartedly adds as an imperative at the end of the essay. This Airman’s assessment of “an Airman’s Assessment” will provide an alternative perspective of Field Manual 3-24 and offer counter arguments to many of the monograph’s criticisms.

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We've all heard humorless America-haters promote themselves by announcing, As Thomas Jefferson said, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

The first problem with that self-righteous bull is that Jefferson never said it. On the contrary, he warned of the dangers of political dissension carried to extremes.

The earliest traceable provenance of the slogan goes back to an obscure 1960s lefty who just made it up.

Dissent can be patriotic - it's essential to have an ongoing public debate about the major issues confronting us. But that dissent must be based on facts, not sloppy emotions.

Instead, we get dissent worn as a fashion statement. And fanatic dissent (as Jefferson noted) is the enemy of a democratic system.

--Ralph Peters

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One could argue, quite reasonably, that there is much to improve in regards to civil-military relations within the US Government and, in particular, the US Department of Defense. For those who work for or with the Pentagon bureaucracy and despair at the seemingly endless red-tape and inane processes - take heart - things could be worse. This is evidenced in a recent Standpoint opinion piece entitled The MoD – Unfit for Purpose by Anonymous. Based on several e-mails received by SWJ we are quite confident that Anonymous is who he says he is – a military officer who has worked several years at the UK Ministry of Defence. Here are several excerpts – have a stiff drink before reading the entire article at the link and be sure to peruse the comments that follow…

… Most people still believe that the MOD is essentially a military organisation. It is not. It is an organisation dominated numerically, culturally and structurally by civil servants and consultants, many of whom are unsympathetic to its underlying purpose or even hostile to the military and its ethos. You just have to spend a few days at the MOD before you realise that the culture there is not just non-military, but anti-military…

The contrast with the US Department of Defense could not be greater. The Pentagon is a first-rate military organisation (at least in terms of status) where the MOD is not. At the Pentagon, every military person is expected to be in uniform; and it’s the civilians who feel and recognise that they are the supporting cast. Military officers are frequently loaned to other ministries such as the State Department and they continue to wear their uniforms there. The reverse is true in the UK where the Civil Service and its “unions” not only resist the wearing of uniforms but also any systematic secondments (as opposed to hand-picked placements) from the military.

The MOD has slipped from being one of the top five ministries to one of second or even third rank. Moreover, even if our top generals wanted to oppose some aspect of defence policy, they would find the MOD’s structure is now rigged so that civil servants increasingly come between them and the government…

Worse still, the civil servants who now dominate the MOD are a different breed from those who staffed it in the 1980s. In those days there were still many civil servants who had served in the Second World War or Korea, or who had at least done national service. They respected and understood the armed services; they believed an effective military was important and had usually learnt essential skills of leadership and management. They were loyal to the Queen (then the head of the Civil Service), to the Civil Service itself and to its code, and to the service arm they were working for. They have all gone.

Their successors tend to see the services as a tiresome anachronism, peopled by unsympathetic, old-fashioned social types. For many of them the MOD, with its part-time minister, is merely a stepping stone to greater things…

Because the services haven’t had the budget increases they need to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military is running out of everything. We’re running out of trucks, for instance. And when things break they aren’t being replaced. Increasingly one gets the impression that the civil servants don’t care if the forces are broken - their careers will not be affected. But it may also be that some civil servants and a body of politicians, from both Left and Right, would actually be happy for the military to be broken in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then they will have truly achieved the Europeanisation of Britain’s armed forces along the lines of a purely defensive “UK Defence Force”. War will somehow have been abolished - until, of course, it returns at a time of our enemies’ choosing.

Read the entire article at Standpoint.

Continue reading "Bad day at the Pentagon? It could be worse." »

... read this one - An Army That Learns by David Ignatius of The Washington Post. Here are the opening paragraphs:

The U.S. Army has done something remarkable in its new history of the disastrous first 18 months of the American occupation of Iraq: It has conducted a rigorous self-critique of how bad decisions were made, so that the Army won't make them again.

Civilian leaders are still mostly engaged in a blame game about Iraq, pointing fingers to explain what went wrong and to justify their own actions. That's certainly the tone of recent memoirs by Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense, and L. Paul Bremer, the onetime head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. These were the people making policy, yet they treat the key mistakes as other people's fault. Feith criticizes Bremer and the CIA, while Bremer chides former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the military for ignoring his advice that the United States didn't have enough troops.

The Army can't afford this sort of retroactive self-justification. Its commanders and soldiers are the ones who got stuck with the situation in Iraq and had to make it work as best they could. And this internal history, published last month under the title "On Point II," testifies to the Army's strength as a learning organization. (This study covers May 2003 to January 2005. An earlier volume, "On Point," chronicled the initial assault on Baghdad.)...

Key Quote

Politicians repeat, ad nauseam, the maxim that "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The U.S. Army is that rare institution in American life that is actually putting this precept into practice.

Links

On Point - Through 1 May 2003.

On Point II - May 2003 to January 2005.

Continue reading "If you read one Sunday op-ed..." »

Yesterday our Nation lost one of our finest leaders, Tony Snow, who passed away at age 53 after a long struggle with cancer. Tony was a man who was deeply committed to his faith, family, and to his fellow man. Tony also passionately supported our men and women serving in uniform and was deeply moved anytime he had the opportunity to speak with them and hear the stories of their bravery and sacrifice.

I had the honor of communicating with Tony on a weekly basis while I was assigned to the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) as the chief spokesman. During this extraordinarily challenging period of time Tony continually provided me, and everyone else, with a renewed sense of pride in our mission. As a personal friend and mentor, he was an adamant supporter of our efforts to communicate all that was being accomplished by the Coalition Force and the Iraqi people during a very tumultuous period in our Nation’s history. Even though his own health was failing, he provided us in Iraq with a renewed sense of purpose and enthusiasm every time we spoke.

Tony leaves behind a loving wife, Jill and three beautiful children, son Robbie and daughters, Kendall and Kristi. I would ask each of you to keep Jill and the children in your thoughts and prayers.

He also leaves behind a legacy of character in leadership, compassion for the hurting, and commitment to serving others. Each of us who had the honor of knowing him has been deeply enriched by his friendship.

George Washington once said “Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”

Tony Snow was one of those few men.

Bill Caldwell

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The Demise of Secretary Wynne

By J. Bernhard "Jon" Compton

Recently I was privileged to witness a small piece of history. While visiting a friend at the Pentagon, I stood next to the office door of Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne as he left the building for the last time. After he left, and while all the rooms were still empty, I was given a quick tour of the offices. Surrounded by giant paintings of airpower, it was difficult not to reflect upon the current situation and how he got there.

My friend is Special Assistant to Secretary Wynne, Dr. Richard Andres, and once the Secretary had left, we sat down and had a long discussion on current topics. Rick and I have discussed our opinions on air power and the military many times before, and while I consider myself to be service agnostic, Rick is very much biased toward the Air Force, and I think with good reason.

Something I’ve often heard Rick say, and I believe he is correct, is that the Army does not understand air power. Often their plans minimize its use, and their after action reports under report its effectiveness. Case in point, the surge in Iraq. While sitting in Ricks E ring office, he asked me point blank whether or not I believed a 20% increase (or “surge”) in troop strength could really make much difference to the situation. It was obviously a baited question, but it wasn’t one I had to think about much. To my mind, the increase could not have been that effective; there had to have been some fundamental doctrinal change in order for that small an increase to have had the dramatic effect that it’s had. Prior to this discussion, I’d already been pondering the issue for some time...

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Joint Publication (JP) 3-57, Civil-Military Operations, was revised and approved 8 July 2008 and supersedes JP 3-57, dated 8 February 2001; and JP 3-57.1, dated 14 April 2008.

Continue on for a summary of contents and changes...

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Got the following in an e-mail today - will follow up here as I hope to get a spot on a Thursday teleconference with the author of the report...

(Links and emphasis by SWJ)

Dear Dave,

In a post about AFRICOM last year, you wrote: “Regardless of where you might stand on the value of establishing this new command, it is happening and we need to get it right.” Refugees International is releasing a report this Thursday, July 17 that lays out recommendations for the US to get AFRICOM right, and much of it has to do with the interagency collaboration you proposed.

The report also analyzes the ways in which US foreign aid in Africa—and the world over—is becoming increasingly militarized, in some cases to the detriment of long-term security and humanitarian and development investment. On Thursday, July 17 at 12pm ET, there will be a phone briefing on the report with the report’s author, Mark Malan, and Ken Bacon, President of Refugees International.

In the report, Mark Malan (Peace Building Program Manager for Refugees International and former head of research for Kofi Annan’s International Peacekeeping Centre in Ghana) asserts that AFRICOM is enabling the Department of Defense to take over funds that were previously managed by the State Department and USAID. For example, the percentage of Official Development Assistance that the Pentagon controls has skyrocketed from 3.5% to nearly 22% in the past decade, while the percentage controlled by USAID has shrunk from 65% to 40%.

The report argues Pentagon programs in Africa fund immediate, short-term security programs rather than the broader US commitment to aid the growth of prosperous, stable countries. For example, more than half of the FY09 requested budget for Foreign Military Financing in Africa is for just two countries – Djibouti and Ethiopia – that are considered key partners in the continental War on Terror. As a result, 17 African Union member states have refused to host AFRICOM operations on their soil, viewing the US agency as an occupying force rather than a solution to long-term stability and security needs.

In spite of AFRICOM’s drawbacks, however, Refugees International contends that AFRICOM could have an extremely positive impact on the region. A meaningful collaboration among the State Department, USAID and the Defense Department could kill three birds with one stone: help the US and African nations to fight terrorism, assist African countries with sustainable economic development, and build goodwill on the ground among humanitarian agencies, African legislators and civilians.

The report will be available for download at 12 am, July 17 at www.refugeesinternational.org.

Continue reading "Report: AFRICOM Criticized by Refugees International " »

Heroes of Ramadi, Tal Afar to Get First Star by Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes.

Army Cols. Sean B. MacFarland and H.R. McMaster Jr. have been selected for brigadier general pending Senate confirmation, officials said.

MacFarland was commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division in May 2006 when the unit was sent to Ramadi, then one of the worst places in Iraq for US troops.

During his tenure in Ramadi, MacFarland’s troops worked with local tribes and established combat outposts to take the initiative away from the insurgents...

McMaster, then commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, ordered his troops to treat detainees humanely, reached out to local Sunni Arabs to separate them from the insurgents, and he established patrol bases throughout the city, The Washington Post reported in 2006.

In late 2005, he launched Operation Restore Rights to take back the city from insurgents.

By the time the unit left in early 2006, the mayor of Tal Afar wrote a letter to the commander of US troops in Iraq praising the regiment...

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The Frontline Country Team
A Model for Engagement

By Christopher Griffin and Thomas Donnelly, American Enterprise Institute

Foreward:

For over sixty years, the United States has sought to build the capabilities of its allies and security partners. This is a mission that has accelerated since the terrorist attacks of September 2001, and it is one that any administration, be it Democratic or Republican, will inherit in January 2009. As a longstanding strategic goal, building partnership capacity has also dredged up a series of contradictions and conundrums for American policymaking, as officials attempt to foster governance without fueling dictatorships, engage “frontline states” without becoming enmeshed in their internal feuds, and manage the details of convoluted international partnerships from the confines of Washington. Resolving these contradictions - or at least mitigating them - is the principal ongoing challenge of American security cooperation programs.

In this report, we provide a critique of the development and current practice of American security cooperation programs, as well as a modest proposal for how they may be improved in the future. We find that many of the authorities and instruments for engagement already exist, but that they may be more effectively harnessed if leadership is devolved from Washington to the “frontline country team,” in which the ambassador is responsible for coordinating and directing American policy. We argue that the country team is the point at which the rubber of American policy hits the road and where it will ultimately succeed or fail.

As we prepared this report, we benefited tremendously from the insight, advice, and support of several friends and colleagues. Our colleague Gary J. Schmitt both worked with us to develop the frontline country team concept and, in his capacity as director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Program on Advanced Strategic Studies, provided crucial support to get this project off the ground. Col. Robert Killebrew (USA, Ret.) was a key partner as we developed the “frontline country team” proposal, as well as the seminar game in which we tested it. A wide number of current and former U.S. diplomats, soldiers, and officials provided crucial input based upon their experiences in the field and in Washington. The Smith Richardson Foundation generously provided support for the Indonesia seminar game. This project could not have been completed without the tireless efforts of AEI research assistants Tim Sullivan and Catherine Hamilton. Needless to say, all errors and omissions in this report are those of the authors.

Continue reading "The Frontline Country Team" »

Shaping the Iraq Inheritance

By Colin Kahl, Michele A. Flournoy and Shawn Brimley, Center for a New American Security

Synopsis:

American policy in Iraq will undergo two critical transitions throughout the remainder of 2008 and into early 2009: movement to a new U.S. posture in Iraq; and a wartime transition to a new administration. It is vital that both are handled in a way that best advances U.S. interests in Iraq and the region. Yet neither is being paid sufficient attention. Shaping the Iraq Inheritance outlines America’s interests in Iraq and the region, analyzes recent security and political trends, presents a framework for understanding U.S. strategic options, and makes recommendations for how the Bush administration, the military, and Congress can best prepare for the dangerous period ahead.

The report places America’s interests in Iraq within a regional and global context, and suggests that the United States must simultaneously attempt to avoid a failed state in Iraq while not strategically over-committing to Iraq. The report examines current security and political trends, and suggests that success in Iraq requires additional steps toward political accommodation and improved governance. The report then outlines a policy of conditional engagement—a strategy that initiates a phased, negotiated redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq while conditioning residual support to the Iraqi government on continued political progress—and argues that it offers the best chance of achieving sustainable stability in Iraq while balancing U.S. commitments worldwide.

Finally, the report outlines steps that must be taken to smooth the handover of Iraq policy from this administration to the next. The Bush administration must prioritize preparation in three areas over the next six months: the development of an interagency transition plan; enhancing the situational awareness of both the Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates and their top national security advisers on Iraq; and hand-tooling personnel transitions for senior positions critical to Iraq policy and operations.

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Gates Highlights Role of Diplomacy, Development in U.S. Foreign Policy - John Kruzel, AFPS

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday said diplomacy and development should lead American efforts abroad, and he warned against a “creeping militarization” of U.S. foreign policy.

“Broadly speaking, when it comes to America’s engagement with the rest of the world, it is important that the military is -- and is clearly seen to be -- in a supporting role to civilian agencies,” he said.

In a speech interrupted several times by rousing applause, Gates told the audience at a dinner organized by the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign that America cannot simply “kill or capture our way to victory” over the long term.

“What the Pentagon calls ‘kinetic’ operations should be subordinate to measures to promote participation in government, economic programs to spur development, and efforts to address the grievances that often lie at the heart of insurgencies and among the discontented from which terrorists recruit,” he said.

In remarks imbued with a spirit of cooperation between the departments of Defense and State -- a relationship that in the past has been marked by contention, Gates said -- the defense secretary hailed his working relationship with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had presented him the group’s leadership award earlier in the evening...

As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Washington, D.C. , Tuesday, July 15, 2008 (Full Text)

Excerpts:

War on Terror

Over the long term, we cannot kill or capture our way to victory. What the Pentagon calls "kinetic" operations should be subordinate to measures to promote participation in government, economic programs to spur development, and efforts to address the grievances that often lie at the heart of insurgencies and among the discontented from which terrorists recruit. It will take the patient accumulation of quiet successes over time to discredit and defeat extremist movements and their ideology.

Failing States

I believe the most persistent and potentially dangerous threats will come less from emerging ambitious states, than from failing ones that cannot meet the basic needs - much less the aspirations - of their people.

U.S. Reputation Abroad

In my travels to foreign capitals, I have been struck by the eagerness of so many foreign governments to forge closer diplomatic and security ties with the United States - ranging from old enemies like Vietnam to new partners like India. Nonetheless, regard for the U.S. remains low amongst the populations of many key nations - especially those of our moderate Muslim allies.

This is important because much of our national security strategy depends on securing the cooperation of other nations, which will depend heavily on the extent to which our efforts abroad are viewed as legitimate by their publics. The solution is not to be found in some slick PR campaign or by trying to out propagandize al-Qaeda, but through the steady accumulation of actions and results that build trust and credibility over time.

Plus-up Civilian Agencies

It has become clear that America's civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long - relative to what we traditionally spend on the military, and more importantly, relative to the responsibilities and challenges our nation has around the world. Though I cannot pretend to know the right dollar amount - I do know it's a good deal more than the one percent of the federal budget that it is right now. Because the numbers we are talking about are relatively small compared to the rest of government, a steep increase in these capabilities is well within reach - as long as there is the political will and wisdom to do it.

Afghanistan Challenge

The vastly larger, more complex international effort in Afghanistan presents a different set of challenges. There are dozens of nations, hundreds of NGOs, universities, development banks, the United Nations, NATO, the EU - all working to help a nation beset by crushing poverty, a bumper opium crop, and a ruthless and resilient insurgency. Getting all these different elements to coordinate operations and share best practices has been a colossal - and so far an all too often unsuccessful - undertaking.

Shift to Building Capacity

Repeating an Afghanistan or Iraq - forced regime change followed by nation-building under fire - may be unlikely in the future. What is likely though, even a certainty, is the need to work with and through local governments to avoid the next insurgency, to rescue the next failing state, or to head off the next humanitarian disaster.

Militarization in Foreign Policy?

Overall, even outside Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has become more involved in a range of activities that in the past were perceived to be the exclusive province of civilian agencies and organizations. This has led to concern among many organizations - including probably many represented here tonight - about what's seen as a creeping "militarization" of some aspects of America's foreign policy.

This is not an entirely unreasonable sentiment. As a career CIA officer I watched with some dismay the increasing dominance of the defense 800 pound gorilla in the intelligence arena over years. But that scenario can be avoided if - as is the case with the intelligence community today - there is the right leadership, adequate funding of civilian agencies, effective coordination on the ground, and a clear understanding of the authorities, roles, and missions of military versus civilian efforts, and how they fit, or in some cases don't fit, together...

Civilian vs. Military Roles

Broadly speaking, when it comes to America's engagement with the rest of the world, it is important that the military is - and is clearly seen to be - in a supporting role to civilian agencies. Our diplomatic leaders - be they in ambassadors' suites or on the State Department's seventh floor - must have the resources and political support needed to fully exercise their statutory responsibilities in leading American foreign policy.

The challenge facing our institutions is to adapt to new realities while preserving those core competencies and institutional traits that have made them so successful in the past. The Foreign Service is not the Foreign Legion, and the U.S. military should never be mistaken for a Peace Corps with guns.

U.S. Leadership

In closing, I am convinced, irrespective of what is reported in global opinion surveys, or recounted in the latest speculation about American decline, that around the world, men and women seeking freedom from despotism, want, and fear will continue to look to the United States for leadership.

As a nation, we have, over more than two centuries, made our share of mistakes. From time to time, we have strayed from our values; and, on occasion, we have become arrogant in our dealings with others. But we have always corrected our course. And that is why today, as throughout our history, this country remains the world's most powerful force for good - the ultimate protector of what Vaclav Havel once called "civilization's thin veneer." A nation Abraham Lincoln described as mankind's "last, best hope." For any given cause or crisis, if America does not lead, then more often than not, what needs to get done simply won't get done.

Continue reading "Secretary Gates at the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign" »

Launch of the Civilian Response Corps of the United States of America (Links Added by SWJ)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice formally launched the interagency Civilian Response Corps in a ceremony held at the Department of State today.

The Civilian Response Corps will consist initially of Active and Standby components. Both are composed of full-time federal employees that are trained and equipped to deploy rapidly to countries in crisis or emerging from conflict, to provide reconstruction and stabilization assistance. They are diplomats, development specialists, public health officials, law enforcement and corrections officers, engineers, economists, lawyers, public administrators, agronomists and others – offering the full range of skills needed to help fragile states restore stability and the rule of law, and achieve economic recovery and sustainable growth as quickly as possible.

The primary responsibility of Active members is to be prepared to deploy within 48-72 hours to points of crisis. Standby members have other jobs within the federal government, but have volunteered to undertake additional training and to be available to serve in stabilization missions in case of need...

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Al Qaeda: Winning or Losing? - The Economist special report

These days in Peshawar, where al-Qaeda was founded 20 years ago, the only glimpse of Osama bin Laden comes on little green packets of safety matches strewn around town by American officials. They bear the portrait of the world’s most wanted man, along with the promise that America will pay up to $5 million for information leading to his capture.

It is an appropriate image. Like one of these matches, Mr bin Laden caused a flash with the September 11th attacks on America in 2001, then vanished into smoke, leaving a burning trail of militancy stretching from Indonesia to Afghanistan, Iraq, north Africa and Europe. And despite the reward offered for his capture, now $25m, nobody has yet betrayed the whereabouts of “the Sheikh”, who periodically emerges on the internet to deliver some doom-laden warning to the West.

Nearly seven years into America’s “global war on terror”, the result remains inconclusive. Al-Qaeda lost a safe haven in Afghanistan, but is rebuilding another one in Pakistan; Mr bin Laden is at large, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who masterminded September 11th, has gone on trial in Guantánamo Bay; many leaders have been captured or killed, but others have taken their place; al-Qaeda faces an ideological backlash, but young Muslims still volunteer to blow themselves up...

Al Qaeda: Winning or Losing? - The Economist special report

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US Marine Corps Cpl. Johathan R. Segovia, personnel security detail, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, a ground combat element attached to Multinational Force - West, relaxes with Iraqi children in Sha-ban, Iraq, July 9, 2008. US Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Taylor J. Schulz.

Merv: I think the Marines are a better example to emulate than al Qaeda so I am all for these kids learning how to hold up a wall from a Marine.

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Soldiers to Learn Nation-building - Chris Smyth, The Times

The head of the Army will today (Thursday) call for creation of a new class of soldier specialising in nation-building and development to reconstruct the Iraqs and Afghanistans of the future.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, will say that the Army should consider creating “permanent cadres of stabilisation specialists” so that soldiers can deliver “civil as well as military effects within areas as diverse as governance, town administration, finance and banking, law and order and sanitation”.

This could mean placing soldiers under the command of the Foreign Office or the Department for International Development, General Dannatt will tell the centre-left Progress pressure group in a speech in Westminster tonight. This would have a radical effect on military career-paths, which could see “an officer spending a tour with indigenous forces, followed perhaps by an attachment to DfiD overseas, or a local council at home or a police force in Africa or elsewhere”, he will suggest...

Troops Should be Trained as Nation-builders - James Kirkup, Telegraph

British soldiers should be trained to rebuild war-torn countries and not just fight conflicts, Britain's top soldier is expected to say. Military training should be broadened so that service personnel spend time working for local councils to learn how to establish democratic governments in developing countries. General Sir Richard Dannatt will say.

Sir Richard, the Chief of the General Staff, will use a Westminster speech to propose a shake-up of the way the Army trains its personnel and runs its operations, to put more focus on reconstruction and development work.

His suggestion comes amid concern in Whitehall about the way the British military mission in Afghanistan is fitting into the wider Western effort to develop that country's government and economy...

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The New Role of Air Strike in Small Wars
A response to Jon Compton

By Richard Andres

In a recent Small Wars Journal article entitled “The Demise of Secretary Wynne,” Jon Compton offered some observations about the role of airpower in counterinsurgency operations. The article has received a good deal of attention and spurred some debate. Like most other readers, I agree with some parts of the article and disagree with others. However, since Jon cited me and my name has been linked to his in what has become a contentious discussion, I would like to offer some thoughts of my own.

I should begin by saying that I have no intention of laying out a complete summary of counterinsurgency theory here. I will talk mainly about the role of airpower, and particularly airpower in an ISR and strike role. Except where these subjects are concerned, I am generally in agreement with John Nagl on transforming the Army for the COIN mission and with James Corum on the role of airpower. I will leave it to the reader to determine the delta.

I’ll begin with what I consider the two pillars of counterinsurgency. First, counterinsurgencies are not won by U.S. armed forces, ground or air; they are won by indigenous governments. Our goal must be to increase the strength and legitimacy of the indigenous regime. Anything we do that reduces the power of the government to develop legitimate and stable institutions moves us further from victory. Second, the most serious threat we face is strategic, not tactical. Insurgents generally win by wearing down an occupier’s political will to fight over a prolonged period, not by defeating them on the field...

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Counterinsurgency Principles for the Diplomat
by Kurt Amend, Small Wars Journal

Download interim version of article as PDF

The recent resurgence of interest in insurgency and counterinsurgency has revealed a deficit in material written by and for the diplomat, the actor ostensibly responsible for the political component of a counterinsurgency campaign. Classical theorists stress that progress along the political track is essential for ultimate success. Recent commentary, in shedding new light on the characteristics of modern insurgencies, reaffirms this principle. To make political headway the diplomat-counterinsurgent needs to develop a strategic narrative, build a political strategy around the narrative, acquire expertise, become a catalyst for political change, and maximize contact with the local population. In doing so, he will make important contributions to and help accelerate success in a counterinsurgency campaign.

Download interim version of article as PDF

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Is Counterinsurgency the Graduate Level of War?

Some Random Thoughts on COIN Today

I have to respectfully disagree with the assertion that “counterinsurgency is the graduate level of war.”

Despite being an avid believer in and advocate of COIN (and FID and UW) for most of my nearly 30 year career I still believe that that the graduate level of war has to be full spectrum and those that are practicing the graduate level of war are those that can shift between major combat operations and stability operations and when necessary assist a friend, partner, and ally in the conduct of COIN. Now that everyone is chasing the shiny (but not really) “new” thing (COIN) and calling it the graduate level of war I it think is disparaging to our great general purpose forces out there who are still going to be required to conduct major combat operations in some form or fashion and will have to be able to combine those operations with stability operations once the battle is won.

The graduate level of war is any form of war because war is as complex in major combat operations as it is in stability operations. The real “PhDs of war” are those that are able to recognize that the actions they take in the beginning of conflict (e.g., March-May 2003) are going to have effects on the outcome and the post conflict phases (e.g., May 2003 to the present). All war has to be people oriented – it is always war among the people (Clausewitz still holds true, war is a duel, it is to impose one’s will on another: that is just as true in major combat operations as it is in COIN – and in the end it is always about influencing human behavior whether it be the behavior of the enemy leadership (political and/or military), soldiers, and the people (whether enemy, friendly, or neutral)). Yes, I have always quoted T.E. Lawrence that “irregular warfare is far more intellectual than a bayonet charge” but I will always believe it is necessary for the US military to operate across the spectrum of conflict. We have always recognized the need to be able to conduct post-conflict operations (stability operations, Phase IV or V or VI operations or whatever we have to decided to call it as we are always sticking new names on old doctrine, e.g. Security Force Assistance for FID, etc) but in the past we have paid lip service to it and have always focused on the “maneuver phases”. Instead of letting the pendulum swing too far to one side (as we did post-Vietnam when we discarded everything we learned for the most part) we have to be able to strike the right balance...

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Via e-mail - 2HBCT, 1ID of Fort Riley returned from the National Training Center a month ago and the local news anchor from KTKA-49 Topeka was embedded with 1-18 Infantry Battalion and other brigade units... KTKA anchor Ben Bauman has been doing segments each night this week which have been really interesting.

Breakfast has not yet arrived by the time we roll out on our first mission of the day. Another foot patrol into the village Abar Layla. This time we are to provide security and muscle power for a civic project, building a barricade around the town's soccer field. A mounted (motorized) convoy provides security for the truck hauling plywood and steel posts, while we, the dismounted patrol, provide security for the captain to walk over to the site. He greets the mayor and soldiers start unloading and putting up the fence. While this goes on, it's the responsibility of our platoon to keep an eye on things in the village and surrounding area. We are also accompanied today by members of the Iraqi Army, who help secure the perimeter.

Things go fine until the mid-morning call to prayer, which is interrupted by someone taking over the PA system and inciting some members of the village to demonstrate. The interpreter with our group is the first to know something is wrong. He simply says to the platoon leader, "We should go." And so we do. The guys nearest the center of the village fall back to near the truck, which is quickly loaded up and moved out. Meanwhile, villagers march and chant. There is no violence, and we don't stick around to further provoke any. The fence around the soccer field will have to wait.

Nothing follows.

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Afghanistan: The Forgotten War - PBS NOW - Embedded with the Marines in Afghanistan: Can we defeat a resurgent Taliban?

America thought it had won the war in Afghanistan six years ago, but a recent escalation in violence and instability -- including the death of nine U.S. soldiers last weekend -- has given rise to the question: Have we allowed the Taliban to come back?

NOW Correspondent Bill Gentile reports from Afghanistan's southern Helmand Province, where he was embedded for nearly three weeks in May and June with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (24th MEU). The 24th MEU are among 60,000 foreign troops on the ground in Afghanistan -- more than half of them American. They face an ominous challenge as the Taliban attempts a return to power, in some cases merging with other insurgent groups, and potentially providing safe haven for Al-Qaeda and other anti-American terrorists.

Reporting from the front lines, NOW provides a soldier's-eye [Marine's-eye] look into what some consider America's "forgotten war." Are we still winning it?

Nothing follows.

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... I am hooked on Information Dissemination - enough said.

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A Battle Over 'the Next War' - By Julian Barnes and Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times

Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr. is not a fighter pilot, wing commander or war planner. But he is waging what many officers consider a crucial battle: ensuring that the U.S. military is ready for a major war.

Dunlap, like many officers across the military, believes the armed forces must prepare for a large-scale war against technologically sophisticated, well-equipped adversaries, rather than long-term ground conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan.

First, however, they face an adversary much closer to home -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates...

Many veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan side squarely with Gates. They believe future conflicts will look like the current wars, and argue that the U.S. must not lose its newfound expertise in counterinsurgency warfare.

"I think that nation-state and conventional war is in a state of hibernation," said Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, who commanded U.S. forces in Fallouja in 2004. "I don't think it's gone away, but the most likely threats probably today are not going to be conventional or from another state."

Mattis argues that the current fight is not an interlude.

"I recognize some people want to say: 'Let's hold our breath. The irregular world will go away, then we can get back to good old soldiering again,' " he said. "Unfortunately, in war, the enemy gets a vote."...

A Battle Over 'the Next War'

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The Summer 2008 issue of the US Army War College’s Parameters is posted.

Parameters, a refereed journal of ideas and issues, provides a forum for the expression of mature thought on the art and science of land warfare, joint and combined matters, national and international security affairs, military strategy, military leadership and management, military history, ethics, and other topics of significant and current interest to the US Army and Department of Defense.

Here is the line-up:

In This Issue - Parameters Editors

Since its inception more than 30 years ago our journal has provided a forum for the presentation of contemporary issues and contending ideas from within the defense community, academe, and the media. In this issue we are indeed fortunate to be able to present an eclectic array of articles supporting that tradition. The diversity of topics and subject matter experts provides an opportunity to address a number of pressing defense and security issues; chief among which are the principles supporting successful leadership of America’s military in the twenty-first century...

Reflections on Leadership by Robert Gates

Last year I read Partners in Command, a book by Mark Perry. It is an account of the unique relationship between General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General George Marshall, and how they played a significant role in the American victory in World War II and laid the foundations for future success in the earliest years of the Cold War. Eisenhower and Marshall are, of course, icons, legends etched in granite. Their portraits hang in my office.

One of the things I found compelling in Partners in Command is how they were both influenced by another senior Army officer who is not nearly as well-known and in fact, as a reader of history, I had never heard of. His name is General Fox Conner, a tutor and mentor to both Eisenhower and Marshall. Conner and Marshall first became friends when they served together on the staff of General “Black Jack” Pershing during World War I. In the 1920s, Eisenhower served as staff assistant under Brigadier General Conner in the Panama Canal Zone.

Aligning “Soft” with “Hard” Power by Henrietta Holsman Fore

Last November, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates gave a speech that was described as “groundbreaking” in the manner in which it addressed the role of development and defense in meeting the national security challenges facing the United States. “One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win,” Secretary Gates stated:

Economic development, institution-building, and the rule of law, promoting internal reconciliation, good governance, providing basic services to the people, training and equipping indigenous military and police forces, strategic communications, and more—these, along with security, are essential ingredients for long-term success.

This article will address the importance of collaboration between American development agencies and the US military, the new means of driving that collaboration deeper into the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the interagency process, and the ways USAID will evolve in its relationship with the Department of Defense in the twenty-first century; especially as related to the role of development in achieving national security imperatives. Few subjects could be timelier or more important.

Theory of Victory by J. Boone Bartholomees

The United States is developing a reputation much like Germany had in the twentieth century of being tactically and operationally superb but strategically inept. Often stated as a tendency to win the war but lose the peace, this problem has a huge theoretical component that the national security community has only recently begun to address. In fact, the concept of victory is the biggest theoretical challenge facing security professionals today.

The security profession needs a basic theoretical construct within which to think about winning wars. Gallons of ink have been expended over the centuries on how to win wars, but that effort has largely been uninformed by even a rudimentary theory of victory. Many existing theories pay little attention to what victory is and why one wins, going instead to the more difficult issue of how one wins. When theorists do address winning, it is usually in passing, as an assumption, or as an excursion from their primary topic. Clausewitz is an exception to this assertion, but his musings on winning are scattered and incomplete. There is a school of thought that claims theory is not necessary for competent performance. While that might explain how mankind has gone without a theory of victory for so long, it does not negate the utility of theory. Existing theories of war are not necessarily wrong; they simply might benefit from some supplemental thought specifically devoted to victory. Fortunately, the extant theoretical literature contains enough material to begin constructing a theory of victory.

Waging Communication War by Kenneth Payne

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is fighting wars in which the effective communication of ideas and information is vital. Strategists in both these conflicts increasingly share with classic counterinsurgency theorists a keen appreciation that they are fighting for the support of the population, and that communication is a key part of the struggle.

This article sets out to explore the ramifications of this feature of modern war. Communications may be vital, but how should the operational and tactical commander use them to best advantage? Why have US military and civilian authorities found effective communication so difficult in the current struggle against militant Islamism?

The US military has now formally incorporated what might be called communication war into doctrine, both in its dedicated counterinsurgency field manual and in its newly updated operational field manual, cornerstone of overall doctrine. Both manuals go into some detail about the importance of communication and related concepts, such as the media, public affairs, psychological operations, and information operations. While the manuals offer compelling advice on what should be achieved in the information domain, guidance on how to achieve it is somewhat lacking. This distinction reflects the complexity of communication in warfare, particularly in wars involving irregular forces engaged in insurgency. Many actors and variables are involved, and few of them are under the direct control of those in the operational chain of command.

Making Revolutionary Change: Airpower in COIN Today by Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.

What a difference a year makes. The idea that airpower would be playing a critical role in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would hardly have been predicted in December 2006, when the Army and Marine Corps issued a completely revised—but airpower “lite”—counterinsurgency (COIN) manual commonly known as Field Manual (FM) 3-24. Complimentary reviews appeared in unlikely venues such as The New York Times Book Review. What seems to have captured the imagination of many who might otherwise be hostile to any military doctrine were the manual’s much-discussed “Zen-like” characteristics, particularly its popular “Paradoxes” section. This part of the manual contained such trendy (if ultimately opaque) dictums as “sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is” and “some of the best weapons for counterinsurgents do not shoot.”

These maxims helped create the perception that the new doctrine was a “kinder and gentler” form of COIN that largely eschewed the concept of “killing or capturing” enemy fighters as a means of suppressing an insurgency. Supporting this interpretation is the fact that FM 3-24 favors deploying enormous numbers of forces—20 per 1,000 residents—each of whom, according to the manual, “must be prepared to become . . . a social worker, a civil engineer, a school teacher, a nurse, a boy scout.” Further, as popularly understood, the aim of this revamped force was not to confront the insurgents themselves, but rather to win “hearts and minds” of the indigenous population. To do so, the manual prefers a low-tech approach compatible with traditional Army culture that has individual soldiers engaging in close, personal contact with the “target.” In FM 3-24’s interpretation of COIN, that target is a country’s populace.

Collaborative Strategic Planning and Action: A New Approach by Fred T. Krawchuk

The complexity of the contemporary US security environment demands a new, comprehensive way of assessing and contending with the ongoing challenges. The current method can be characterized as a symptomatic rather than systemic approach. The present interagency and multinational mechanism consists of reacting to immediate threats and opportunities, dealing with the conditions of violent extremism, and responding to each crisis as it arises. Such actions are often slow, isolated, and wholly inadequate. Government planners and operators focus on immediate response to a crisis without considering the long-term implications. Academicians and members of think tanks focus on long-term solutions and potential policy changes, without means of testing their proposals or getting the information to those who would act on it. The private sector pays for forecasts and data-mining to understand and profile the same areas of concern, yet military planners do not benefit because they lack adequate access to academic endeavors or private-sector reports.

Combatant Commands (COCOMs) need to find methods of integrating the agility and innovation of the private sector with the foundational knowledge of academic efforts to meet the emergent needs of military commanders and planners. With the proper kind of creative thinkers and pragmatic project managers, COCOMs can forge helpful bonds with willing partners, while leveraging the knowledge and experience of the private and public sectors. This integration of resources and expertise will help foment and nurture the conditions for peace and stability in conflict-prone regions.

With Friends Like These: Grievance, Governance, and Capacity-Building in COIN by Robert M. Chamberlain

A consensus is emerging in the Army about the standard template for counterinsurgency: first clear an area of insurgent fighters; then implement population control measures to ensure the insurgents do not come back; and finally focus efforts on building governmental capacity so the population embraces the state and rejects the insurgents. This template makes a critical assumption about the government being restored—namely, that enhancing the power of the state will make the population less likely to support insurgents. This article questions that assumption by applying the doctrine outlined in Field Manual (FM) 3-24, Counterinsurgency, to the 1980-91 insurgency in El Salvador. While the Salvadoran insurgency ended 17 years ago, its lessons are a valuable guide for leaders attempting to make sense of the contradictions inherent in fighting the Long War.

To understand the war in El Salvador, it is necessary to explore the structure of Salvadoran society. The interwoven structures of economic, political, and military power and their human consequences are critical to understanding the motivations of the insurgents of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), the government response, and the overall progression of the war.

Retiring Hitler and “Appeasement” from the National Security Debate by Jeffrey Record

It is high time to retire Adolf Hitler and “appeasement” from the national security debate. The repeated analogizing of current threats to the menace of Hitler in the 1930s, and comparing diplomatic efforts to Anglo-French placating of the Nazi dictator, has spoiled the true meaning of appeasement, distorted sound thinking regarding national security challenges and responses, and falsified history. For the past six decades every President except Jimmy Carter has routinely invoked the Munich analogy as a means of inflating national security threats and demonizing dictators. Presidents and their spokespersons have not only believed the analogy but also used it to mobilize public opinion for war. After all, if the enemy really is another Hitler, then force becomes mandatory, and the sooner it is used the better. More recently, neoconservatives and their allies in government have branded as appeasers any and all proponents of using nonviolent conflict resolution to negotiate with hostile dictatorships. For neoconservatives, to appease is to be naïve, cowardly, and soft on the threat du jour, be it terrorism, a rogue state, or a rising great power. To appease is to be a Chamberlain rather than a Churchill, to comprise with evil rather than slay it.

Lost for Words: The Intelligence Community’s Struggle to Find its Voice by Josh Kerbel

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq intervention, most of the national security components of the US government have had some—mostly overdue—introspective moments. Such reviews can only be considered healthy. For as Sun Tzu, the Chinese military and intelligence theorist, said, “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.” The fact is, however, that many of those governmental components did not necessarily like what they saw looking back at them from the mirror. This result was particularly true of the intelligence community, which found its own self-identity issues staring back with an unnerving intensity.

To be blunt, the intelligence community, which for the purposes of this article refers mainly to the analytic component, still does not “know itself.” That is to say, 60-plus years after its creation as a “community”—making the point that this identity crisis is not solely the product of post-9/11 and Iraq soul-searching—America’s intelligence analysts still cannot agree on an answer to that most fundamental question of analytic identity: What exactly is intelligence analysis?

Quite possibly, this analytic identity crisis has been summarized best in writing by the intelligence community itself. In 2005, the Central Intelligence Agency’s Center for the Study of Intelligence published an unclassified ethnographic study of the community’s analytic component which, based on hundreds of interviews with analysts and countless hours watching them work, found that “heterogeneous descriptions and definitions of intelligence analysis as a professional discipline were consistent findings.” Consequently, the study went on to conclude, there still “needs to be a clear articulation and dissemination of the identity and epistemology of intelligence analysis.”

Editor’s Shelf

Book Reviews

Off the Press

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... combines the culinary mastery of "Iron Chef" with the biting and acerbic wit of Jon Stewart's "Daily Show".

Mess hall chow or MRE's got you down? Yes? Then you might want to go native - Chris Fair's Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations can certainly get you started. The SWJ editors plan on serving up Kabob Qabergha and Pullow at our next Small Wars Council non-virtual get-together.

From the Inside Flap: Chris Fair has dined with soldiers in the Khyber Pass and with prostitutes in Delhi, rummaged for fish in Jaffna city, the epicenter of Tamil Tiger violence in Sri Lanka; and sipped Taliban tea in Peshawar. Both gastronomically and geographically speaking, she has been there, done that—and, above all, eaten that.

Cuisines of the Axis of Evil is a lively, provocative, and highly entertaining cookbook with a twist: a whole host of delectable, easy-to-follow recipes straight out of the kitchens of America’s biggest foreign policy headaches, whether friends or foes—from Iraq, Israel, and Pakistan to Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. Fair takes us country by country across the globe and then back to the heart of the Good Ol’ U.S. of A. Recipes include Iranian chicken in a walnut pomegranate stew, Iraqi kibbe, and North Korean spicy cucumber, as well as special teas, mango salads, beverage suggestions, and more.

Sardonic, satiric, grouchy, and just plain funny, with a heaping scoop of hyperbole, this mouthwatering masterpiece shows us that the only way to defeat (or befriend) your enemies is to know precisely what they eat. What could be a more unique gift for an intrepid host or hostess, or a better resource for unforgettable dinner parties? Cuisines of the Axis of Evil is food for thought - and for the taste buds... Ladies and gentlemen, sharpen your knives and start your blenders!

Chris Fair is a Washington, DC-based analyst of South Asian political and military affairs. She has lived, studied, traveled, worked, and otherwise eaten her way through the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia. She lives bunkered down in an undisclosed location with her beloved spouse who now feels he must wear high-velocity bullet-repellent evening wear.

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The Council on Foreign Relations has posted an interview with Assistant Secretary of Defense (Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict & Interdependent Capabilities) Michael Vickers concerning current and future trends in special operations warfare.

CFR: Michael G. Vickers was among the key architects behind the paramilitary operation that drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Now, three decades later, he is the top civilian advisor in the Pentagon on the capabilities of US Special Operations forces, the fastest growing branch of the US military. That growth is likely to continue. In Iraq, for example, Vickers says he expects Special Operations Forces to "remain at their current levels for a significant period of time" after the majority of conventional US forces leave. He also expects a protracted Special Operations presence in Afghanistan.

Beyond the current war zones, Vickers says the Pentagon is watching "scores" of high-priority countries in the global fight against terror. And while Vickers says the battle against extremism "is fundamentally winnable," victory will take years. "Most irregular wars take time to win. They typically take a decade or more when they involve a single country," he says. "One that takes advantage of globalization and spans continents can be expected to take at least that amount of time, or more."

Current and Future Trends in Special Operations Warfare - CFR interview by Greg Bruno.

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Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy by Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bruce W. Jentleson, Ivo H. Daalder, Antony J. Blinken, Lael Brainard, Kurt M. Campbell, Michael A. McFaul, James C. O’Brien, Gayle E. Smith and James B. Steinberg - Center for a New American Security.

Synopsis: The next president of the United States must forge a new national security strategy in a world marked by enormous tumult and change and at a time when America’s international standing and strategic position are at an historic nadir. Many of our allies question our motives and methods; our enemies doubt American rhetoric and resolve. Now, more than at any time since the late 1940s, it is vital to chart a new direction for America’s global role.

About the Phoenix Initiative: The Phoenix Initiative is a collective effort to provide an intellectual and policy framework for the next administration. The group initially came together three years ago to discuss on a regular basis the state of the world, America’s place in it, and the best ways for advancing America’s interest and values. Our goal was to develop ideas and concepts that made sense from a policy—as opposed to a political—perspective and to make the case for them on that basis alone. That is also the basis of this first report—a manifesto meant to marshal the best practices and ideas of the progressive tradition in U.S. foreign policy and adapt them to a rapidly changing world.

Preface by Susan E. Rice: As one of the founders of the original Phoenix Initiative in early 2005, I felt strongly that it was time for a group of younger foreign policy thinkers to come together and work through common positions not only on a set of specific issues, but also on how America should define and pursue its interests in a post-Cold War world, a world still resistant to tidy categorization. The point was not to write a paper in support of a specific candidate or for a specific occasion or political purpose, but instead to consider a fresh strategic perspective. I regret that my responsibilities as a Senior Advisor to the Obama campaign prevented me from seeing this project to fruition.

Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy is the product of over three years of discussions and debate on everything from fundamental assumptions about the nature of the international order in the 21st century to US policy toward the Middle East. At a time when the United States truly must rise from the ashes of a failed foreign policy, this report breaks away from such traditional concepts as containment, engagement, and enlargement and rejects standard dichotomies of realist power politics versus liberal idealism. It starts from a set of US national interests as old as the nation itself and asks how we can safeguard and pursue those interests in this 21st century world. Without pretense of answering all questions and addressing all issues, the report offers bold and genuinely new thinking about America’s role in such a world.

Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy

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Posturing for the Durand Line - ‘We Can and Must do Better’?
by Paul Smyth, Small Wars Journal

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On 10 July 2008, the Pakistan Daily Times reported a political agent in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) as stating that the Pakistan-Afghanistan border had been ‘completely sealed’ to criminals. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation along the forbidding 2430km border is rather different, and the 24 coalition casualties suffered in the insurgent attack against a joint US/Afghan outpost in Eastern Afghanistan on 13 July, clearly illustrated the severe consequences of instability in the border zone. Unsurprisingly, when speaking about security in the border region at a Pentagon press briefing on 16 July, Admiral Michael Mullen (Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff) said ‘we can and must do better'. While this sound-bite has more application in Washington, Islamabad and other capitals than in-theatre, he was right, and with the significance of the border area indubitably set to increase, his public sentiment is a timely catalyst to consider the ‘border problem’ in a little more detail.

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The New York Times ran an article today; 4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images; concerning independent photojournalist Zoriah Miller. For those who have not been following this story, Miller was banned from his Marine Corps embed after posting images of Marines killed in a 26 June suicide attack on his blog. The Times reports that Major General John Kelly, Commanding General of Multi-National Force – West, made the call forbidding Miller from working in Marine Corps-controlled areas of Iraq.

While The Times article is generally sympathetic to Miller’s claim that General Kelly’s decision was “absolute censorship”

I took pictures of something they didn’t like, and they removed me. Deciding what I can and cannot document, I don’t see a clearer definition of censorship.

and evokes the now standard-issue Vietnam War comparison,

If the conflict in Vietnam was notable for open access given to journalists - too much, many critics said, as the war played out nightly in bloody newscasts - the Iraq war may mark an opposite extreme: after five years and more than 4,000 American combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half-dozen graphic photographs of dead American soldiers.

credit must be given to the authors, Michael Kamber and Tim Arango, for presenting the bottom-line concerning this dust-up (bolded emphasis by SWJ):

It is a complex issue, with competing claims often difficult to weigh in an age of instant communication around the globe via the Internet, in which such images can add to the immediate grief of families and the anger of comrades still in the field.

While the Bush administration faced criticism for overt political manipulation in not permitting photos of flag-draped coffins, the issue is more emotional on the battlefield: local military commanders worry about security in publishing images of the American dead as well as an affront to the dignity of fallen comrades. Most newspapers refuse to publish such pictures as a matter of policy.

But opponents of the war, civil liberties advocates and journalists argue that the public portrayal of the war is being sanitized and that Americans who choose to do so have the right to see - in whatever medium - the human cost of a war that polls consistently show is unpopular with Americans.

Those who know General Kelly will tell you – he is the consummate professional - and would not take such action lightly. As a commander in combat, responsible for the lives of thousands of US and Iraqi military personnel and civilians – as well as protecting the emotional well-being and privacy rights of the families of his Marines, he made a tough call – the right call.

Times have changed, this ain’t Vietnam, in this era of global instantaneous communication it would be foolish to cede the ‘war of ideas’ to our murderous adversaries by presenting them propaganda fodder, presenting those same murderers with near real-time “battlefield damage assessment” and assume away the notion that family members will never receive notification of a loved-ones death via an Internet image or blog post. This is just plain common sense as well as common decency.

Miller is a very talented photographer and should be admired for his courage to go in harm’s way in pursuit of his chosen profession. He should recognize that equally talented and courageous professionals are tasked with a responsibility well beyond that of an independent photojournalist – they make the day-to-day tough decisions and move on to other pressing matters. Miller and his cheerleaders should do likewise.

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Head on over to Abu Muqawama for boots-on-the-ground LL. Kip has just posted Notes from Anbar - A USMC LT on his way out of Anbar speaks to some of the amazing changes that have taken place there since the Awakening and offers some advice (including reading this blog) for those on their way. Good common sense stuff...

Of note - The Counterinsurgency Cliff Notes: Techniques for the Conventional Rifle Platoon, in Layman’s Terms by Captain Craig Coppock, Small Wars Journal, is cited as a very worthwhile resource.

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In today's Washington Independent Spencer Ackerman provides an update on the US Department of State's Counterinsurgency: A Guide for Policy-Makers (October 2007 version).

... "Counterinsurgency: A Guide for Policy-Makers" takes the lessons learned by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan and elevates them to the highest levels of national strategy. Counterinsurgency is defined in the text as "the politico-military techniques developed to neutralize... armed rebellion against constituted authority." The handbook is due to be published in November or December. A copy of its most recent draft was obtained by The Washington Independent.

The handbook seeks to provide a framework for considering whether Washington should intervene in foreign countries' counterinsurgency operations, raising difficult questions about whether such nations deserve US support; under what conditions that support should occur, and whether success is possible at acceptable cost. No systematic approach to strategic-level questions in counterinsurgency currently exists for senior US government officials...

The handbook instructs policy-makers about the necessity of using all elements of national power -- not just military force, but also diplomacy, development aid, the rule of law, academic disciplines and other specialties often considered peripheral to warfighting -- to triumph in counterinsurgency. Victory, as well, is defined as support for a foreign nation's ability to successfully govern, rather than a decisive US military effort...

Unlike the 2006 Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual. written principally by Petraeus and Marine Gen. James Mattis, this new handbook is not intended to be a guide for counterinsurgency practitioners, but rather to give Cabinet-level officials and their staffs a framework for viewing questions of intervention in combatting insurgencies...

More.

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Rethinking Smith-Mundt
by Matt Armstrong, Small Wars Journal

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The question asked repeatedly since 9/11 is how can a guy in cave out propagandize the country that created public relations and the Internet? An obscure group in 1998, Al-Qaeda increased their influence and reach with words, images, and actions. The United States responded with showcases of Americana that, not surprisingly, failed to resonate with the target audiences: our enemies’ base, moderates, “swing voters”, and even our friends and allies. Ignoring the importance of linking policy with the psychology of information to persuade and dissuade, American public diplomacy and strategic communication increasingly became an irrelevant whisper and beauty contest in stark contrast to the adversary’s propaganda of words and deeds. In the war of ideas, the United States is largely unarmed and has accordingly fallen in global influence and stature, increasing vulnerabilities not only in the military domain, but in economic, financial, and diplomatic realms too.

Sixty years ago, the elements of America’s national power – diplomacy, information, military, and economics – were retooled with the National Security Act of 1947 and the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. The former has received significant attention over the years and is currently the subject of an intense project to recommend updates. In contrast, the latter, a direct response to the global ideological threat posed by Communist propaganda, has been variously ignored, glossed over, or been subject to revisionism. Smith-Mundt was a largely successful bipartisan effort, establishing the foundation for the informational and cultural and educational engagement that became known as “public diplomacy.”

While today is unlike yesterday, it is worthwhile to look back on the purpose of Smith-Mundt and the debates surrounding the dissemination prohibition that has taken on mythical proportions. The modern interpretation of Smith-Mundt has given rise to an imaginary information environment bifurcated by a uniquely American “iron fence” separating the American media environment from the rest of the world. In 1948, the prohibition was a minor hurdle as the requirements for information and cultural and educational exchanges were debated.

However, modern analysis of Smith-Mundt tends to be informed by modern perceptions in disregard of the historical record. The prohibition was not intended to be prophylactic for sensitive American eyes and ears, but to be a non-compete agreement to protect private media. It was also to protect the Government from itself in the form of censoring the State Department, whose loyalties were suspect to many Congressmen.

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I had the opportunity (and good fortune) to attend the Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare panel discussion Tuesday, 22 July, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The Center for Naval Analysis and Osprey Publishing sponsored this discussion on counterinsurgency featuring Dr. John Nagl (Center for a New American Security), Dr. Daniel Marston (Australian National University), and Dr. Carter Malkasian (CNA). They recently collaborated on Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (Osprey, 2008), an edited book that examines 13 of the most important counterinsurgency campaigns of the past 100 years, including the current Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Dr. David Kilcullen (US State Department) moderated the discussion and provided critical commentary.

Speaking to a packed crowd in the main ballroom, the panel held court presenting a wide array of COIN theory, history and practice. I am about half through transcribing my notes from a recording I made of the event - but decided to go ahead and post this entry now as CNA was kind enough to provide an edited transcript.

As a partial introduction - here are my notes of Dr. John Nagl's opening statement on the importance of US Army Field Manual 3-24 / Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 33.3.5 - Counterinsurgency and how it filled a critical gap.

We were not prepared when the insurgency began in Iraq in 2003. We were trained and equipped to defeat a conventional enemy.

The Army’s unpreparedness dates back to its failure to internalize and learn the lessons of Vietnam. This led to a 40 year gap in counterinsurgency doctrine, education and doctrine. In 2003, US Army officers knew more about the American Civil War than they did about counterinsurgency.

The Army focused on winning short campaigns to topple unfriendly governments without considering the more difficult tasks required to rebuild friendly ones. Thus stunningly successful invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in early 2003 were triumphs without victory as stubborn insurgents stymied America's conventional military power.

As a result, we did not have all the equipment needed to protect our soldiers from time-honored insurgent tactics like roadside bombs, we had not trained our soldiers in understanding the key to success in counterinsurgency is protecting the population; nor had we empowered them with all the political, diplomatic, and linguistic skills they needed to accomplish that objective.

While there were many reasons why the Army was unprepared for the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, among the most important was the lack of current counterinsurgency doctrine when the campaigns began.

Doctrine is important to the American Army as it codifies both how the institution thinks about its role in the world and how it accomplishes that role on the battlefield. Doctrine drives decisions on how the Army should organize, what missions it should train to accomplish and what equipment it needs.

But then Lieutenant General David Petraeus became the Commander of the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas in late 2005. He and his Marine Corps counterpart, then Lieutenant General James Mattis (Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command), decided to remedy that particular part of the problem. They worked together based on their shared understanding of the cognitive counterinsurgency and the urgent need to reform their services to make them more capable of conducting this most difficult type of war. One of the tools they chose to drive change in the Army and the Marine Corps was the new Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency doctrine (FM 3- 24 / MCWP 3-33.5). In a sheer stroke of genius, General Petraeus asked his old West Point classmate Conrad Crane to be the lead ‘pen’ on the project that became 3-24. Con’s role in this project has been underreported and underappreciated.

In Vietnam the Army did not learn one of the principles of counterinsurgency in time – we didn’t get it figured until the American people lost faith in the war effort. This time, the learning process happened much quicker. The driver and the beneficiary of that change was FM 3-24.

The book was designed both to help the Army and Marine Corps prepare for the next counterinsurgency campaign and was also designed to make substantive contributions to our ongoing efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Additional Links:

Senior Scholars Advise Next Steps in COIN- Wall Street Journal Market Watch

More Troops May Not Solve Afghanistan - Andrew Gray, Reuters

Afghanistan Needs Iraq Strategy - United Press International

Adviser: Iraq Approach Likely in Afghanistan - Sean Naylor, Army Times

Majority of Afghan Insurgents Not Taliban - Khalid Hasan, Daily Times

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Spencer Ackerman, in yesterday’s Washington Independent, claims I told him the Iraq war was “f*cking stupid”. He did not seek to clear that quote with me, and I would not have approved it if he had. If he HAD sought a formal comment, I would have told him what I have said publicly before: in my view, the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was an extremely serious strategic error. But the task of the moment is not to cry over spilt milk, rather to help clean it up: a task in which the surge, the comprehensive counterinsurgency approach, and our troops on the ground are admirably succeeding.

Anyone who knows me has been w