Journal

by Morgan Sheeran

Download the Full Article: Approaching Doctrinal Training the Army Way

Our forces were exquisitely trained for the Gulf War. Everyone knew their roles in executing AirLand doctrine. The forces could move forward, backward, left, right and vertically. Each service was able to create the necessary effects at the proper time and place. Specific units trained for the breaching operations, with follow-on operations as their secondary responsibility. They created the breaches while other units passed through and exploited. The exploiting units knew how to breach, but their primary task was to expand and exploit the breach. They were using different tools drawn from the same bag; and they trained these tasks in the standard Army way. Recent history demonstrates that our bag of tricks is incomplete. Army units should have COIN and Stability capability as part of their repertoire. The secret to that is training. The Army can do anything that it properly trains Soldiers and leaders to do. We can look at our own history for guidance.

Download the Full Article: Approaching Doctrinal Training the Army Way

Morgan Sheeran is an Ohio National Guard Sergeant First Class with 28 years of experience, including a tour in 2007-2008 as an embedded advisor with the Afghan National Police as part of Task Force Phoenix. (Fort Riley Class 15) Since July, 2009 he has been assigned to the Counterinsurgency Training Center -- Afghanistan as a COIN instructor and has worked with Afghan National Security Forces , the forces of over 25 Coalition nations, governmental and non-governmental civilian implementation partners. An Infantryman and Cavalryman, his career has spanned assignments ranging from Rifleman to Operations NCO and Police Mentor Team NCOIC. He resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hezbollah in the Tri-Border Area of South America

by Cyrus Miryekta

Download the Full Article: Hezbollah in South America

Hezbollah, Lebanon's Iran-sponsored Shi'i Muslim terrorist organization, has established global networks in at least 40 countries. Its growing presence in South America is increasingly troublesome to U.S. policymakers, yet there are few experts on Hezbollah and fewer still on Hezbollah Latino America. Hezbollah's operatives have infiltrated the Western Hemisphere from Canada to Argentina, and its activity is increasing, particularly in the lawless Tri-Border Area (TBA) of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. This research was conducted to expose the actions and objectives of Hezbollah in the TBA. The majority of US officials and operators believe that Hezbollah's terrorist wing is separate from its political wing, but these are misconceptions from people who "mirror-image" the American experience when assessing Hezbollah. Unfamiliarity with the organization makes these assessors vulnerable to its propaganda, which is a severe problem that permeates the US government and its operatives. People who think Hezbollah is or could be compartmentalized or disunited are not familiar with the organization and perceive Hezbollah through the lens of the organization's extensive propaganda effort. Hezbollah has a large operational network in the TBA, which generates funds for the party, but its primary mission is to plan attacks and lie dormant, awaiting instructions to execute operations against Western targets. The following is a look at Hezbollah's modus operandi, an analysis of how operational its networks in the Tri-Border Area are, as well as some possible solutions to this threat. First, is an examination of how Hezbollah traditionally operates to establish the context.

Download the Full Article: Hezbollah in South America

Cyrus Miryekta is a veteran paratrooper of both Afghanistan and Iraq with the 82nd Airborne, who has fought Islamists from 9 different nations in 3 separate countries. He recently earned his M.A. in Statecraft and National Security from The Institute of World Politics.

by Javier Osorio and Christopher Sullivan

Download the Full Article: What the Afghan War Diary Really Tells Us About the Changing Dynamics of the Conflict

The major news headlines that followed the release of the Afghan War Diary, a collection of tens of thousands of leaked field memos from Afghanistan, describe how U.S. forces are battling an increasingly resilient and well-armed Taliban army. Coverage in the New York Times featured two major stories -- an intensive review of events at Combat Outpost Keating, where U.S. forces defended themselves against an ever-growing and more violent Taliban enemy, and the analysis of a half dozen significant incidents highlighting the changing dynamics of the conflict. Coverage in the Guardian, meanwhile, focused on 200 "key events" that documented significant increases in the Taliban's fighting capacity. Indeed, from these reports it appears as though U.S. efforts in Afghanistan are, at best, maintaining an uncomfortable status quo. At worst, the war is being lost to Taliban forces, whom we now know have been receiving aid from Pakistan.

But how can we draw inferences about a war involving more than 100,000 American soldiers and nearly 10 years of combat based solely on a smattering of documents hand selected by reporters? By purposefully choosing to report just a few hundred documents released as part of the War Diary, and ignoring the broad swaths of data contained in the rest of the records, the existing reportage has opened itself up to charges that the coverage is biased towards the perspective given off by those hand selected documents. A better strategy for understanding what the War Diary can tell us about how the war is faring would be to analyze all of the records and let the data speak for itself.

A statistical analysis of the more than 76,000 events so far released by Wikileaks reveals that the war is not faring as reported on in the major newspapers. The picture revealed is actually much worse.

Download the Full Article: What the Afghan War Diary Really Tells Us About the Changing Dynamics of the Conflict

Christopher Sullivan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, where he studies Comparative Politics and International Relations. Mr. Sullivan is also an International Dissertation Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Council, and serves as Managing Editor at The Journal of Conflict Resolution. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he will be conducting field research for his dissertation on state surveillance in Guatemala.

Javier Osorio is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame where he studies Comparative Politics in Latin America and American Politics. Mr. Osorio's dissertation research focuses on the spatio-temporal dynamics of organized crime Violence in Mexico. He currently serves as Statistical Consultant for the Department of Political Science at Notre Dame.

by Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Wall

Download the Full Article: A Rifleman's War

Afghanistan has become a rifleman's war.

Because we are fighting a counterinsurgency campaign against a tribal warrior society we have and increasingly continued to limit the use of supporting arms. Machineguns are even proscribed in villages and cities for fear of inflicting innocent civilian casualties.

The result is that we must rely more and more on our riflemen to engage and defeat the enemy. We know that 52% of the fights in Afghanistan begin at 500 meters and go out from there.

Recent publications by Dr. Lester Grau (Foreign Military Studies Office) indicate that a majority of the fights in Helmand Province are between 500 and 900 meters.

The problem is that we don't teach soldiers to engage with their rifles at those ranges anymore.

Download the Full Article: A Rifleman's War

Jeffrey Wall, now a Staff Sergeant in the California Army National Guard, is a 1976 graduate of VMI, and a former infantry officer in the Marine Corps who commanded infantry and weapons platoons, a rifle company and guard forces and other companies of up to 600 Marines. He retired as an independent business man in 2001and fought his way back into the service after 9/11. Since then he has served as an ETT in Afghanistan in the Eastern Operating Zone at company through brigade levels. At the California PTAE he has trained hundreds of Soldiers in rifle and pistol marksmanship as well as machinegun gunnery. A Distinguished Pistol Shot, he has "leg points" toward distinguished with the rifle and is a qualified sniper. He is the 2010 All Army Combat Marksmanship Open Champion.

Can the Hamlet Evaluation System Inform the Search for Metrics in Afghanistan?

by David Gayvert

Download the Full Article: Teaching New Dogs Old Tricks

After years of tracking and reporting various pacification metrics without a uniform methodology or purpose, in 1967 the US implemented the Hamlet Evaluation System (HES) as a critical element in a comprehensive reporting schema that came to include a number of US and Vietnamese metric reports. Although it went through a number of modifications, HES remained in force for the remainder of US active involvement in the conflict, and notwithstanding other meaningful data sources, came to be regarded by many as the single most reliable means of assessing trends in Vietnam pacification efforts. While it had short-comings and its share of detractors, a number of independent studies confirmed that HES was a well-designed and implemented system that met accepted tests of validity and reliability, and provided commanders and policy-makers solid data upon which to base decisions.

Nine years into fighting the Afghan insurgency, neither the US nor its coalition partners have developed a similar uniform means to measure counterinsurgency (COIN) progress. Notwithstanding the hundreds of post-9/11 analyses touting lessons learned, parallels and contrasts between US experiences in Vietnam and the current conflict in Afghanistan, none seems to have considered the development and implementation of HES as potentially instructive in the quest for developing useful measures of current COIN effectiveness. Meanwhile, debate continues over how to track improvement in Afghanistan—which metrics are valid and reliable, how to collect, normalize and interpret them, and how to get all relevant organizations to agree to a common standard.

This essay argues that a conceptually simple approach like HES may hold elements of solution to the vexing problem of metrics for COIN in Afghanistan. It does not suggest that a "HES for Afghanistan" should necessarily replace current data collection and analysis efforts, nor that the metrics and methodology employed in HES can be seamlessly overlain or incorporated into existing intelligence and reporting structures. It does suggest that a careful examination of the development, implementation, modification, and validation of HES may yield clues for those seeking to put in place meaningful measurements of COIN progress in Afghanistan.

Download the Full Article: Teaching New Dogs Old Tricks

David Gayvert is an avid reader of Small Wars Journal, and he currently works as a consultant for the Irregular Warfare Support Program. The views expressed in this essay are his own, and do not reflect the positions or policies of the US Department of Defense.

Design and the Prospects for Deviant Leadership

by Christopher R. Paparone

Download the Full Article: Design and the Prospects for Deviant Leadership

As a follow on to the short essay, "Design and the Prospects of a US Military Renaissance," (published in Small Wars Journal in May 2010 ), it is also important to pay some attention to the potential impact of design philosophy on the institutionalization of leadership -- rephrased, what is the "ideal" leadership model in the context of military design science? Several authors have attempted to reconceptualize organizational leadership to a postpositivist view (postpositivism is the underlying philosophical paradigm shift associated with "design"). The purpose here is to summarize postpositivist views of leadership by three noteworthy authors that are arguably very important to the design mindset: Ron Heifetz of Harvard University, USA; Donna Ladkin of Cranfield University, UK; and, Keith Grint of Warwick University (and formerly of the Defence Academy), UK. This essay will explore the impacts of postpositivist leadership defined by these authors in the context of military approaches to design.

Download the Full Article: Design and the Prospects for Deviant Leadership

Christopher R. Paparone, Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired, is an associate professor in the Army Command and General Staff College's Department of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations at Fort Lee, Virginia. He holds a B.A. from the University of South Florida; master's degrees from the Florida Institute of Technology, the U.S. Naval War College, and the Army War College; and a Ph.D. in public administration from Pennsylvania State University. On active duty he served in various command and staff positions in the continental United States, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Bosnia.

Assessing the War on Terror

by Colonel Joseph J. Collins

Download the Full Article: Nine Years After 9/11

It has been nine years since terrorists struck the United States in New York, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 Americans. Few Americans, especially those of us who were in the Pentagon or near the World Trade Center that day will ever forget it. A modern day Pearl Harbor, 9/11 was a day that radically changed our national security strategy. The smoke, fire, and casualties were stark reminders that the United States had failed to deal adequately with an emerging threat. Nine years of war have followed those attacks. The lives of the agents, police officers, and members of the Armed Forces who fight the war on terrorism --- as well as their families --- have been changed forever.

The costs of this war have been high. Over 5,600 American service members have been killed, and 1,050 of our Western allies have perished. Over 38,000 Americans have been wounded; countless stress and brain trauma injuries must also be added to that human toll. The number of Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani dead --- mostly at the hands of terrorists or insurgents --- dwarfs the Western total. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone have directly cost the US taxpayer over a trillion dollars.

This anniversary is an appropriate time to think about where we have been and where we need to be headed in this epic struggle to accomplish the U.S. goal to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its allies." Much good work has been done, but the nature of the war on terrorism --- the common euphemism for the war against Islamist extremism in its many varieties --- is changing, and the United States needs to chart a new course for the future. It will help any assessment to divide the war on terrorism into four interdependent campaigns: the worldwide campaign, the one on the home front, and the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Download the Full Article: Nine Years After 9/11

Colonel Joseph J. Collins, a retired Army officer, teaches national security courses at the National War College and Georgetown University. From 2001 to 2004, he was deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations. The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of the Defense Department, the National Defense University, or any government agency.

An Organizational Proposal for Counter-threat Operations in Low Intensity Conflicts

by Matthew R. Modarelli

Download the Full Article: DoD Special Branch

The United States military must develop a single, enduring organization for gathering and acting upon threat information in low intensity conflicts. Around the globe, current and future strategic partners of the United States are mired in bloody and relentless internal wars for stability and legitimacy of government. Since the early 19th century, the US has played an important role in irregular warfare abroad and as the government continues to identify and pledge assistance to struggling nations, that role will expand and grow. With a growth in low intensity conflict missions comes an exponential need to adapt and apply successful information gathering methods from past conflicts. For the US, victory in today's low intensity conflicts will depend largely on our capacity to enable partner nation counter-threat operations (CTO) conducted primarily by indigenous law enforcement agencies. To succeed in current and future low intensity conflicts, an enduring Department of Defense Special Branch dedicated to the complex mission of working with indigenous special police units and security agencies to gather and exploit threat information must be established.

Download the Full Article: DoD Special Branch

Major Matthew R. Modarelli is a special agent with the Department of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI). He has served as a major crimes investigator, joint drug enforcement team member, and counterintelligence field agent and team leader. He has held four separate OSI field command positions including two command tours in Iraq. He has served at Headquarters, United States Air Force, as the Air Staff Counterintelligence (CI) Policy representative. He currently serves as the Counterintelligence Branch Chief for U.S. Africa Command. He has a BA in History from VMI, a Master of Science in Management Information Systems from Bowie State University, MD, a Master of Military Studies from the United States Marine Corps University, Quantico, VA, and is a graduate of the Joint and Combined Warfighting School, Joint Forces Staff College, Norfolk, VA. His last article on Military Police Operations and Counterinsurgency is currently listed on the Army War College Bibliography for Irregular Warfare.

Shaping the Battlefield in Afghanistan in Dari and Pashto -- not English

by LT Sean "Shoe" Stevens

Download the Full Article: Khastan Tawanestan

How does a nation conduct a successful counterinsurgency (COIN) operation in a country in which it does not speak the local language? Can we facilitate the development of a transparent, corruption-free Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) without being able to communicate directly with its people? These are questions that I wrestled with time and time again during my deployment to Afghanistan. I witnessed first-hand a remarkable dearth in the ability of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) forces to communicate with Afghans. This lack of language abilities in both American military and civilian forces impedes our counterinsurgency campaign. As my tour in Afghanistan progressed, this realization motivated me to attempt—in some small way—to remedy this problem. As a result, I personally taught Dari to hundreds of military members and civilians, and created a six-lesson syllabus for future teachers to follow. While I experienced small successes as a result of my efforts, they were insufficient to overcome the dearth of language capability that threatens to undermine OEF.

Download the Full Article: Khastan Tawanestan

LT Sean "Shoe" Stevens is a Naval Aviator currently working on his Masters degree in Homeland Security and Defense at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.

by Lieutenant General James M. Dubik

Download the Full Article: Afghanistan: It's Not Over

In May, 2007 I deployed to Iraq to become the Commanding General responsible for accelerating the growth of the Iraqi Security Forces in size, capability, and confidence. Prior to deploying, I made a series of rounds in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. I was met with more condolences than congratulations. The general feeling, no pun intended, was that the war was lost and it was only a matter of time before we would admit our defeat and withdraw. I am getting the same "all is lost" attitude about Afghanistan from what I read and hear around the Washington, D.C. Beltway. We were too quick to declare defeat in Iraq then, and it's too soon to declare it in Afghanistan now.

We are at a crossroad in Afghanistan, no doubt about that, but the future—success or failure—is not predestined. Our enemy may have a vote, but so do we. What we do, primarily in Afghanistan but based upon decisions in Washington and other Capitols, in the next 12 months will determine our future direction.

Afghanistan is not a "war of choice" as some have recently declared it. It is a war of necessity derived from our self defense. The choice has been how we execute the war that came to us with the 9/11 attacks.

Unfortunately, the war was characterized as a "Global War on Terror." It was never that. The war that was thrust upon us is a war against Al Qaeda, their ideology, and their affiliates—one of whom had been, and may still be, the Afghan Taliban.

Download the Full Article: Afghanistan: It's Not Over

Lieutenant General James M. Dubik, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of War. LTG Dubik assumed command of Multi National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I) on June 10, 2007. During this final command, he oversaw the generation and training of the Iraqi Security Forces. Previously, he was the Commanding General of I Corps at Ft. Lewis and the Deputy Commanding General for Transformation, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. He also served as the Commanding General of the 25th Infantry Division. Dubik has held numerous leadership and command positions with airborne, ranger, light and mechanized infantry units around the world. He was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry from Gannon University as a Distinguished Military Graduate in 1971, and he retired from service on September 1, 2008.

Countering Corruption in Afghanistan

by Dan Rice and Guy Filippelli

Download the full article: One Cell Phone at a Time

American commanders are preparing for a major offensive in Afghanistan to attack one of the most formidable enemies we face in country: corruption. Despite sincere efforts to promote governance and accountability initiatives, Afghanistan has slipped from 112th to158th place on Transparency International's global corruption index. One reason the international community has been unable to effectively tackle corruption in Afghanistan is that our own reconstruction efforts perpetuate the problem. As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently acknowledged, "Corruption, frankly... is not all an Afghan problem." Money appropriated to secure and stabilize the country is too easily siphoned and redirected as it changes hands, inevitably making its way to local powerbrokers, insurgent networks, and offshore bank accounts, rather than the individuals who need it most. One solution to this problem lies in the palm of our hands: the mighty cell phone.

When Americans first entered Afghanistan in 2001 there was little infrastructure and no banking system in an entirely cash economy. Nine years later it is still a cash economy and 97% of the country remains "unbanked", but Afghanistan's thriving telecom industry offers a way to minimize graft. From a standing start, Afghanistan now boasts a cellular network of 12 million cell phones in country of 28 million. Mobile technology is the largest legal, taxpaying industry in Afghanistan and the single greatest economic success story in the country since the fall of the Taliban. The existing network also offers a proven way to help defeat corruption.

Download the full article: One Cell Phone at a Time

Dan Rice is the President of Sundial Capital Partners. Guy Filippelli is the CEO and President of Berico Technologies. Both are West Point graduates who have served as Army officers in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively.

by CDR Youssef Aboul-Enein, MSC, USN

Download the full article: Reflections on Algeria's Islamist Experiences, Past and Present

The revolutionary history of Algeria is inextricably linked to Islamist symbols and activism. It is important to comprehend that Islam tends to be exploited by Near East revolutionary movements as a means of exerting societal control. Upon its independence from France in August 1962, Algeria's religious clergy, who were long-suppressed by French colonial authorities, called for a rejection of secularism as practiced by the ideals of the French Revolution. The ideals of the French Revolution in its pure form, is a rigid secularism that has no place for God in government life. This form of French ultra-secularism, known as laí¯cité (laicism), rejects the mention of God in currency, and the invocation of God before and after public speeches. It is a battle being fought in France today pitting the rights of an individual to dress as they please, against attempts to pass legislation on the dress of practicing Muslim citizens. Of course, secularism is not monolithic, thus the attempt to apply laicism in the Muslim world has been met with natural aversion, and Islamist movements reacted strongly to such uncompromising interpretations of secularism.

Download the full article: Reflections on Algeria's Islamist Experiences, Past and Present

Commander Aboul-Enein is author of "Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat," recently published by Naval Institute Press. He recently graduated from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, and will be teaching there part-time as Adjunct Military Professor and Islamic Studies Chair. CDR Aboul-Enein wishes to thank Dr. William Knowlton and Dr. Christina Lafferty of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces for their patient advice that enhanced the piece. In addition, CDR Scott Olivolo, MSC, USN who is completing his graduate studies in International Relations with the American Military University for his edits and discussion that enhanced this essay. Finally, statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

by Bradford Burris

Download the Full Article: PME for USARSOF (Part Three)

One way to educate United States Army Special Operators is by allowing organizational design and individual competencies to form the nucleus of a professional military education curriculum routinely evaluated against assessment variables such as the emerging strategic context, the requests of Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOC) or other customer units, and the feedback of deployed operators. This essay recommends an Army Special Operations Command-focused educational development process applicable to the career-long education and utilization of Special Forces, Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations professionals.

To make these recommendations, I consider why the organizational structure of the Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) should differ from that of their General Purpose Forces counterparts and identify the expected ARSOF mission set for the next twenty years as well as the professional competencies required to execute this expected mission set. I then offer a series of suggestions for how the recommended changes could be implemented.

Unlike the majority of academic thought papers that analyze and present data in a dry and mechanistic fashion, this essay presents several ideas for consideration utilizing the literary medium of fiction. The characters used to convey the ideas herein are figments of my imagination; any relationship to any actual former or future special operator is purely unintentional. What you take away from the following pages will depend on your desire to infer practical concepts from the nascent thoughts presented by members of the USASOC PME working group that, while it does not exist in reality, you will nonetheless find hard at work in the following paragraphs.

Download the Full Article: PME for USARSOF (Part Three)

Major Bradford M. Burris is an active duty Military Information Support Operations (or Psychological Operations) officer. He has served in various command and staff positions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Major Burris earned a Master of Science in Defense Analysis at the United States Naval Postgraduate School. He currently serves as the Operations Officer of the 6th Military Information Support Operations Battalion at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Editor's Note: This essay is the final part of a thesis the author penned while assigned to the Naval Postgraduate School. Part one can be found here. Part two can be found here.

Undermining Taliban Legitimacy by Highlighting Their Own Hypocrisy

by Colonel Greg Kleponis

Download the Full Article: Throwing the Book at the Taliban

My language assistant, Hamid came to me just the other day to express a safety concern he had for both he and his family. I paid attention because in the five plus months I have known him he never seemed to worry about security. In fact, one of the first things I noticed when arriving in Afghanistan was the lack of fear our Language Assistants, Cultural Advisors and local partners showed when working with us. This is in marked contrast from my observations during three years in Iraq where we lost more than a few interpreters to assassination. Hamid and I have traveled to various provinces throughout the country with the Deputy Minister and we have walked the streets of Kabul, in relative safety. What suddenly changed this? What did I see in his eyes that day that I had seen in the faces of my Iraqi Interpreters? I recognized it as fear and at last the real possibility that the enemy could and would take reprisals on those Afghans who assist us whom they most loathe -- interpreters.

He brought to my attention a communiqué allegedly released by Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, issuing new orders to his commanders in Afghanistan, and obtained by NATO. A NATO spokesman stated that Omar issued the orders from Pakistan, calling on Taliban commanders to capture or kill Afghan civilians working for foreign forces or the Afghan government. This would represent a reversal of a previous order issued by Omar in 2009 directing the Taliban to avoid targeting civilians. In Hamid's words, "Sir they changed the rules!" I had no idea what he was talking about; rules for terrorists and insurgents? I then remembered that I had first heard about the Taliban's so called Rule Book from Dr. David Kilcullen, the noted Counterinsurgency theorist and adviser, over lunch at the Army Navy Club in Washington a few weeks prior. He also made mention of it in his book Counterinsurgency but only as a passing reference. The idea of a Rule Book for insurgents so intrigued me I decided to find out just what was in it, why it was issued, and how (knowing our experience with the Afghan National Security Force's [ANSF] habit of disregarding or selectively apply rules) how the Taliban was doing in the compliance arena. I also had to ask myself that if a 25 year old ethnic Tajik living and working in downtown Kabul "knew" the rules, how pervasive among the population was this knowledge and how could it be leveraged?

Download the Full Article: Throwing the Book at the Taliban

Colonel Greg Kleponis, U.S. Air Force, is currently assigned as the Senior Advisor to the Deputy Interior Minister/Security at NATO Training Mission Afghanistan / Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan. He was previously assigned as Division Chief, Policy, Requirements & Applications, Global Combat Support Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Installation, and Mission Support, Headquarters United States Air Force.

by James R. Van de Velde

Download the Full Article: Bring It On Worked

Through accident or design, mostly through accident and blunt trauma, the war in Iraq was brutal, costly in lives and money, and heavy-handed, but dealt al-Qa'ida a severe blow -- hopefully a fatal one and even better, a self-inflicted blow. By creating such a rallying cry for the West's alleged 'war against Islam,' thousands of al-Qa'ida fighters were directed to Iraq where they trained and committed terrorist acts. These acts killed the perpetrators, of course, and killed thousands of innocent Muslims and many American, and Coalition soldiers and civilians. But the attacks revealed al-Qa'ida's brutish nature, its willingness to kill Muslims, and its goal of achieving chaos and totalitarian rule in pursuit of deposing 'apostate regimes' and restoring a new Caliphate (under al-Qa'ida rule, of course) -- all of which undermined its legitimacy.

Download the Full Article: Bring It On Worked

James R. Van de Velde, Ph.D., a former Lecturer of Political Science at Yale University and a former Lieutenant Commander in the United States Naval Intelligence (Reserves), is a counter terrorism and WMD expert at the international consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

A Critique of Paul Davis' RAND Study

by Daniel R. DePetris

Download the Full Article: Deterring Al Qaeda after Iraq

Today marks the last day of Operation Iraqi Freedom. So what? At what cost? To what end? Ever since the successful conclusion of the Cold War, U.S. academics and policymakers have frequently championed deterrence as a military concept. This, of course, is not without substance. Through a combination of nuclear weapons, large bases overseas, and the potential for quick military action, Washington was able to change the Soviet Union's behavior from a force who aggressively tried to expand communist ideology in the 1960's to a reserved and degraded confederation by the time of its collapse.

Deterrence is not just about the past, however. Today, the White House uses deterrence throughout its foreign policy, both to keep adversaries in check and to prevent violence from spiraling out of control once conflict is initiated. After Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, deterrence worked on Iraq quite significantly until the collapse of his regime twelve years later. The threat of mutually assured destruction continues to prevent the North Koreans (however "crazy") from invading its southern neighbor, lest the US military be drawn into the fighting. The most contemporary example of deterrence at work is the containment of the Iranians, who have become isolated in terms of the international community and boxed-in by U.S. forces along its southern coast (via U.S. naval vessels) and its western border (U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan).

Paul Davis- a researcher at the RAND Corp. - is now taking the concept further than it has ever gone before. In a recent study that was just published by the RAND Corp's National Defense Research Institute, Davis tries to assess whether old-fashioned deterrence theory can work on one of America's most dangerous contemporary foes: Al'Qaeda (AQ). Is it possible for the United States to deter AQ from launching large-scale attacks on American targets? And if so, can deterrence apply to other terrorist groups as well, say the Pakistani Taliban or Lashkar e-Taiba in South Asia?

Download the Full Article: Deterring Al Qaeda after Iraq

Daniel R. DePetris is an M.A. candidate in the Political Science Department of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. He is pursuing a specialization in security studies from the Institute of National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT). The views expressed in this article are his own and do not reflect the views of any organization.

Overcoming the Current Flawed Strategy

by John Ubaldi

Download the Full Article: Another Way in Afghanistan

All too often, the United States tries to impart a Jeffersonian style democracy into regions of the world which have had no history of democracy or into a complex tribal region of similar circumstance. If the United States Government wishes to be successful in Afghanistan, then it needs to reexamine its current Afghan strategy, understand traditional Afghan governance, and pursue a federal system of governing. Both the Bush and Obama administrations implemented flawed strategies in Afghanistan by focusing U.S. efforts on establishing a strong central government in Kabul as a way to build a cohesive national government. Both administrations failed/fail to understand the complexities of the Afghan tribal structure that resent a strong central government. Ultimately, Afghanistan needs a central government built around a federal system with strong autonomous regions.

For the United States to pursue an effective counterinsurgency strategy the center of gravity needs to be on the civilian population. The focal point of U.S. strategy should be in establishing a federal system of governing in Afghanistan, by centering our focus of efforts on the tribal structure and building up governance at the local level. The Afghan people don't want the return of the Taliban, but they represent something the central government in Kabul has not brought them; security and the end of corruption. As brutal as the Taliban where they were fair and acted in a swift manner, unlike the corrupt governmental officials in Kabul. The tribal structure will act as the governing body in the local areas, they will provide the security. We just have to show that we have their best interests at hand and will not leave them to the chaos that we did before. If we are to be successful in Afghanistan, we as allies need to pursue a successful counterinsurgency strategy which focuses on the tribal level.

Download the Full Article: Another Way in Afghanistan

Master Gunnery Sergeant John Ubaldi is a non-commissioned officer in the Marine Corps Reserves who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently, he is assigned as the Operations Chief for 3D Civil Affairs Group at Camp Pendleton California, and he is CEO of Military Briefing Book, an online news & consulting service.

The Reoccurrence of International Terrorism in Somalia

by Joe Royo

Download the Full Article: Afghanistan Part II

Recent events in Somalia are slowly grabbing the world's attention. Is the world paying attention, though? In the 1990s another country followed a similarly dysfunctional pattern -- Afghanistan. There are lessons to be learned from the way Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in 1996 to how the al Shabaab terrorist network may be trying to seize Somalia. We should not only pay attention to the clues. We should act on those clues. The conditions are ripe to do something about it now. If something is not done now, we may be replaying what happened in Afghanistan with the Taliban all over again.

Download the Full Article: Afghanistan Part II

Major Joe Royo is a U.S. Army Special Forces Officer assigned to the Special Operations Training Detachment, part of the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, LA. He recently served with the 3rd Special Forces Group and has multiple combat rotations to Afghanistan and Iraq as well as experience in Pakistan. He holds a MA in Diplomacy from Norwich University.

A Rebuttal of the UN Commission of Inquiry

by Judy Mionki

Download the Full Article: Genocide in Darfur

The words 'Darfur' and 'Genocide' have been synonymous for quite some time now. The crisis in Darfur began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), composed mainly by the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit tribes, started accusing the Sudanese Government of oppressing the black Africans and being in favour of the Arab Africans. These two groups began attacks against the government and to counter this, the Sudanese Government military together with some African Arabs known as the Janjaweed militias, launched their own attacks. As in many conflicts, the civilians suffer the most. Whereas reports vary, the death toll is said to be about 300,000 people.

This essay aims to examine the findings of the Darfur Commission of Inquiry in relation to its approach to the crime of genocide. This will be done by analysing the purpose based approach used by the Commission to come to its conclusion. The essay will also attempt to prove genocidal intent in the Darfur case and it concludes by stating that the Commission erred in its findings and that Genocide was and is taking place in Darfur.

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Judy Mionki holds a B.A in International Relations (United States International University-Africa) and is currently an LL.M student in International Law with International Relations at the University of Kent in Brussels. She has completed internships at the International Criminal Court, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and has monitored the Charles Taylor trial for the Berkeley War Crimes Studies Center.

by Colonel Gary Anderson

Download Full Article: A Retrospective on Combat in Iraq

When bombs began to fall on Baghdad on March 19th, 2003, I was doing some commentary with NPR anchor Neal Conan who was broadcasting a description of the kick-off of the war. One observation that I made to him that night was that, once the first shots in a war are fired, the plans of the side that initiates the fighting are subject to a series of permutations that the planners could not have predicted. I went on to further observe that, the longer a war lasts, it becomes subject to more and more permutations. As we near the August 31, 2010 deadline for the end of combat operations in Iraq, this long war has seen more than its fair share of ironic twists.

No-one in his right mind sets out to start a long and bloody war. Most planners have visions of short and glorious affairs. In every major conflict of the Twentieth Century, the war plan of the nation that initiated the conflict called for a short campaign. In fully sixty percent of those cases the war lasted longer than a year; and in eighty percent of those the initiating nation lost the war. Of those nations that lost long wars that they started, one hundred percent experienced regime change.

Download Full Article: A Retrospective on Combat in Iraq

Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps officer. He teaches a course in Alternative Analysis and is a Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

by Deane-Peter Baker

Download the Full Article: Is the US intelligence community misreading the Shabaab-Qaeda relationship?

In a recent report at Long War Journal an unnamed senior US intelligence official is quoted as saying that "Al Qaeda's top leadership has instructed Shabaab to maintain a low profile on al Qaeda links." This, according to the same official, is because "al Qaeda is applying lessons learned from Iraq, that an overexposure of the links between al Qaeda central leadership and its affiliates can cause some unwanted attention." The official added that "al Qaeda is pleased with the double suicide attack in Uganda, but suggested Shabaab reserve future strikes at US interests in the region."

Perhaps access to the intelligence sources available to the unnamed official would make it obvious to any analyst that this interpretation is correct. From an outsider's perspective, however, there are reasons to suspect that the intelligence community might, perhaps, have misread matters in this case.

Download the Full Article: Is the US intelligence community misreading the Shabaab-Qaeda relationship

Deane-Peter Baker is Editor of the African Security Review, Journal of the Institute for Security Studies, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law at the US Naval Academy and a 2010-2011 Academic Fellow of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. All opinions expressed here are his own and should not be taken to reflect the official position of any organization.

Realpolitik on the Horn of Africa

by Vincent G. Heintz

Download Full Article: Eritrea and Al Shabaab

Eritrea and Ethiopia are neighbors on the Horn of Africa. They share common languages, ethnicities, tribal structures and religious traditions. By outward appearances, they should co-exist symbiotically, like Canada and the United States. Instead, they resemble the Koreas -- each at the other's throat with no prospect for reconciliation on the horizon. Eritrean political culture over the past fifty years has spawned a national psyche consumed with fear and hatred of all things Ethiopian. That same culture has isolated Eritrea from the African Union (AU), the UN and the United States, and has driven the country into alignment with destabilizing regional forces for which it has no pre-ordained cultural affinity. Principal among Eritrea's unlikely allies is Al Shabaab, the al Qaeda-affiliated militia prosecuting the Islamist insurgency in Somalia and an expanding terror campaign in greater Africa. This article reviews the genesis of this strange alliance and explores potential military solutions.

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Major Vincent G Heintz is an Infantry Officer in the New York National Guard who has served in command and military advisor positions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In civilian life, Major Heintz practices law in New York City.

by Bradford Burris

Download the Full Article: PME for USARSOF (Part Two)

One way to educate United States Army Special Operators is by allowing organizational design and individual competencies to form the nucleus of a professional military education curriculum routinely evaluated against assessment variables such as the emerging strategic context, the requests of Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOC) or other customer units, and the feedback of deployed operators. This essay recommends an Army Special Operations Command-focused educational development process applicable to the career-long education and utilization of Special Forces, Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations professionals.

To make these recommendations, I consider why the organizational structure of the Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) should differ from that of their General Purpose Forces counterparts and identify the expected ARSOF mission set for the next twenty years as well as the professional competencies required to execute this expected mission set. I then offer a series of suggestions for how the recommended changes could be implemented.

Unlike the majority of academic thought papers that analyze and present data in a dry and mechanistic fashion, this essay presents several ideas for consideration utilizing the literary medium of fiction. The characters used to convey the ideas herein are figments of my imagination; any relationship to any actual former or future special operator is purely unintentional. What you take away from the following pages will depend on your desire to infer practical concepts from the nascent thoughts presented by members of the USASOC PME working group that, while it does not exist in reality, you will nonetheless find hard at work in the following paragraphs.

Download the Full Article: PME for USARSOF (Part Two)

Major Bradford M. Burris is an active duty Military Information Support Operations (or Psychological Operations) officer. He has served in various command and staff positions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Major Burris earned a Master of Science in Defense Analysis at the United States Naval Postgraduate School. He currently serves as the Operations Officer of the 6th Military Information Support Operations Battalion at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Editor's Note: This essay comprises part two of a three-part thesis the author penned while assigned to the Naval Postgraduate School. Part one can be found here.

by G. Murphy Donovan

Download the Full Article: Signals and Noise in Intelligence

Media pundits have reduced the complex problems of tactical and strategic Intelligence to a kind of running joke. Failure to "connect the dots" is the common taunt. Such mindless euphemisms, when applied to national security analysis, reduce the signal/noise dilemma to a child's game. As a practical matter, conveying the correct signal to the correct receiver is the most difficult challenge in art, science, and especially, government. A signal is not singular. Indeed, signals are irrelevant without receivers. In similar veins; speakers require listeners, writers require readers, warnings require recognition, and analysis requires acceptance.

Many of the impediments to signals are internal to the Intelligence Community: this includes time honored vehicles like briefings and reports and less obvious barriers like structure, size, and politics. Intelligence collection and targeting systems operate efficiently today in real time. The strategic analysis process, however, does not provide a comparable return on investment.

Download the Full Article: Signals and Noise in Intelligence

G. Murphy Donovan is a Vietnam veteran, former senior USAF research fellow at the RAND Corp, and former Director for Research and Russian Studies for ACS/Intelligence, HQ USAF. Previous work has appeared in Studies in Intelligence, the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Parameters, and other national security publications.

by Lionel Beehner

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It has become a truism to say there are no military solutions to defeat an insurgency. That was the thrust of the U.S. military's 2006 counterinsurgency (COIN) manual as well as the mantras repeated by CENTCOM Commander David Petraeus, the manual's coauthor, and his "warrior intellectual" offspring. Conventional wisdom also holds that COIN takes years, if not decades, to complete and emphasizes a population-centric strategy to avoid civilian casualties and win locals' hearts and minds.

But Sri Lanka's successful victory one year ago stands all this conventional wisdom on its head. It was brute military force, not political dialogue or population control, which ended its brutal decades-long war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or Tamil Tigers, a separatist group perhaps most notorious for popularizing the suicide bomb. The final military campaign lasted months, not years or decades. It was a gruesome finale, to be sure. The Sri Lankan government paid little heed to outside calls for preventing collateral damage. While humanitarian workers and journalists were barred from entering the war zone, as many as 20,000 civilians were killed in the crossfire and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Tamils were corralled into camps after war ended . It was, as one journalist I spoke to in Colombo put it, "a war without witnesses." Hearts and minds took a backseat to shock and awe.

Still, the lesson from Sri Lanka's COIN experiment is that overwhelming force can defeat insurgents, terrorists and other irregular armed groups in relatively short order, but at a steep cost. Its model disproves the notion that counterinsurgencies must be drawn-out, Vietnam-like campaigns. With U.S. forces bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, it also provides states fighting small wars with a different counterinsurgency template. Not without reason did Pakistan and Thailand, which both face insurgencies on their peripheries, seek out Sri Lanka for military training and advice in recent months.

So do America's warrior intellectuals and COIN theorists have it all backwards? Should we be emphasizing military solutions over political compromises and accommodation, overwhelming force over clear-hold-and-build campaigns, defeating the enemy over winning locals' "hearts and minds"? Does Sri Lanka's COIN strategy provide any lessons for Washington as it escalates the war in Afghanistan, or for other countries facing violent insurgencies along their unruly peripheries?

Or does the fallout from the use of massive force—the high death toll, the lost hearts and minds, the accusations of war crimes, the unresolved grievances of ethnic minorities—negate whatever victory is achieved on the battlefield or goodwill that comes from a peaceful settlement? It is a perplexing question for military strategists. "The end of the Sri Lankan civil war," wrote Robert Haddick, a managing editor at the Small Wars Journal, "most especially the way it ended, with a clear military solution -- will cause many sleepless nights for Western counterinsurgency theorists."

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Lionel Beehner is a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University and formerly a senior writer at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is also a term member.

34th Commandant of the Marine Corps

Joint Force Quarterly Interview by David H. Gurney and Jeffrey D. Smotherman

publish this forthcoming JFQ article.

Download the Full Article: An Interview with General James T. Conway

JFQ: For several years, the Marine Corps has been operating very closely with the United States Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. To what degree have sea service skill sets atrophied, and do you sense that some increasingly see the Marine Corps as a second Army?

General Conway: I'll answer the second part first. The bottom line is that the Marine Corps, as we say, "does windows." That has prompted us in both Iraq and Afghanistan to operate 500 miles from the smell of salty sea air. But that's okay with us. If there's a fight to be engaged in, we're going to be there, and so we've made the necessary adjustments to make it all work. In 2003, we lined up alongside V Corps and 3d ID [Infantry Division], and did something that no MAGTF [Marine Air-Ground Task Force] has ever done—that is, to attack 500 miles from Kuwait to Baghdad and beyond. It really strained our capacity to do that, but we were pretty proud of ourselves that in the end we were able to make those kinds of adjustments. Going back to Iraq in 2004, and subsequently in Afghanistan, we've had to heavy-up, because of the threat, because of the employment methodologies, and so forth. So yes, we have in some ways become a second land Army.

I think we're able to morph in and out of those kinds of conditions and missions based on events, but we do not feel as though we are being properly employed as a second land Army. We have more to offer the Nation. When I go to meetings and I hear "Army and Marine Corps" talked about in the same breath, I get uncomfortable. It should be "Navy and Marine Corps." One day, again, it will be. But right now, we're simply doing what the Nation asks us to do. We're trying to keep current, and polish those Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard skills. My people get it, they buy into it, and as we see more dwell, 14 months at home between combat deployments, I think we're going to be able to return to our naval and amphibious roots on an increasingly incremental basis.

Download the Full Article: An Interview with General James T. Conway

Partnering with USAID and the Office of Reconstruction and Development

by Nicholas Dickson

Download the Full Article: Preventing Future Natural Disasters

On March 4, 2010, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ADM Mullen, discussed the future of the military in the 21st Century to the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth KS. ADM Mullen stressed that in our future conflicts, the United States military would need to be prepared for several eventualities. First, the Military should be the last resource used in the elements of national power at the President's disposal. Second, ADM Mullen stressed heavily that the Military must take care of the civilians. At one point, he mentioned that the military needed to focus on people and prevent strategic failures with tactical success. (Mullen, 2010) While this was an obvious nod to GEN McChrystal's new policies which attempt to limit civilian causalities in Afghanistan, it is easy to see this focus stretching out to almost all that the military encompasses. It is essential that we carry this focus to all aspects of our efforts. Most importantly, it is necessary to examine an unexplored crisis developing in our nation's efforts. The majority of our military led construction projects do not adequately address proper design or engineering standards commensurate with the level of geological risk in the development area. This is a failure which will damage our reputation, or relationships, and has the potential to kill innocent civilians in the future.

One of the key aspects of the military's efforts to reach out to civilians and local leaders is the Civil Affairs team. These teams, as part of the Special Operations Forces missions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, have unique access to the populace. With this access comes an unparallel chance to build trust with the local civilians and government organizations. It is through this trust that the majority of the efforts to legitimize the host nation occur. ADM Mullen highlighted this during his speech when he said, "trust is the coin of the realm." (Mullen, 2010) GEN McChrystal's new strategy in Afghanistan attempts to earn the trust of the populace by separating the population from the insurgency and attempting to limit events which could harm this trust. However, our current policies on Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP) projects, and especially our implementation of these projects, do not currently show the planning or execution to keep the trust of the populace. The mutual support, or lack thereof, between the Department of Defense (CERP) and Department of State projects has already been explored at length in many Congressional studies. What has not been explored is how CERP projects for infrastructure and buildings are potentially setting the stage for future failures in this trust with our host nation partners and citizens and how Civil Affairs forces can work to prevent this from happening.

Download the Full Article: Preventing Future Natural Disasters

Major Nicholas Dickson is an active duty civil affairs officer who has served in various team leader and staff positions in tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. As a professional civil engineer, his experience in his tours highlighted issues which formed the basis of this article. He is currently serving with the 97th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne) at Fort Bragg NC.

Continuing the Discussion on the Reported Death of the Armor Corps

by Thomas Weiss

Download the Full Article: Mostly Dead

In mid-April, COL Gian Gentile offered what amounted to an Armor Corps post-mortem in a piece for Small Wars Journal called The Death of the Armor Corps. Recently in the same pages, Major James Smith and Major James Harbridge wrote a rebuttal entitled A Combined Arms Response to Death of the Armor Corps. The first question which came to mind after reading the latter piece was: if two Jacks beat a lone King in poker, do two Majors trump a Colonel in a doctrinal argument?

COL Gentile, in many important respects, echoes the arguments made by three former BCT commanders in a white paper diagnosing the Field Artillery with a similar disease, entitled The King and I (which was, ironically, forwarded to me by a gleeful Armor officer some two years ago). In essence, both arguments state that the capability of the maneuver, fires and effects elements of the Army to prosecute a high intensity conflict has been drastically reduced by our commitment to the counterinsurgency competencies employed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, COL Gentile plainly declares that the Armor corps "is no more."

In their rebuttal, Majors Smith and Harbridge seem to be saying, like the old man about to be put onto a meat wagon in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "We're not dead yet." They offer examples of units transitioning the spectrum of conflict and proffer that as an Army, our strength "is our ability to adapt and innovate while still retaining the ability to relearn our core competencies."

Three fundamental questions arise from these two articles. First, is the Army truly at a place where its combined arms competencies have degraded almost to the point of non-existence? Second, if these competencies have degraded, does it constitute a crisis or a point from which we may never return? And third, looking beyond our current conflicts, how should we best organize and train our forces?

Download the Full Article: Mostly Dead

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Weiss is an active duty Field Artillery Officer with served in various command and staff positions in multiple tours to Iraq. Currently, he is rehabilitating at Fort Sam Houston, TX, following injuries received in Iraq last year.

An Analysis of the Bushehr Nuclear Plant and Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks

by Renanah Miles

Download the Full Article: Iran Goes Nuclear

Iran won't swerve first and Russia will do as Russia pleases are, perhaps, the intended takeaways from Sunday's ceremony opening the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The event itself was uncharacteristically subdued, factual, just one more tick on the clock counting down to Iran going nuclear. But in light of Bushehr, it's a very different announcement made two days prior that is most worth considering: Resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks next month. Progress in the talks is critical to buying Israel, America and wary Arab states strategic room to maneuver with Iran.

With impeccable timing, the news preempted the spotlight from Bushehr, and will likely do so again in September. The planned start date for the talks -- September 2 -- is purportedly linked to the expiration date of the Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank at the end of September, an incendiary issue that if resumed would likely burn bridges to negotiation yet again. If talks start on time though, it will handily refocus attention off another Iranian milestone the same weekend -- Bushehr is scheduled to become operational Sunday, September 5.

Download the Full Article: Iran Goes Nuclear

Renanah Miles is a student in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. From 2007-2008, she deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The views in this article are her own. They do not reflect the official views of the United States Government.

New Threats and New Methods

by Stephane Dosse

Download the Full Article: The Rise of Intrastate Wars

Ultimately, the war among the people rising is really one of the "symptoms" of a temporary global decline of the concept of "State" and of the interstate warfare. An evolution of the political organizations and practices involves a change of the methods to make war. Nobody can really say what will be the face of war during the next decades even if for the next years, the hybrid threats may probably entail new types of operations which will combine counter insurgency, stabilization and interstate war knowledge. A large share of information and the understanding of the environment, the opponents and the populations should be the keys of the future warfare. The greatest armed forces in the world will thus have to train both for interstate and intrastate wars. What seems to be the most important is to adapt all aspects of these forces to intrastate warfare: command and control systems, organization, equipment, and mentalities. Those who dare not to adapt will run the risk of defeat. To paraphrase Charles Darwin, it is neither the strongest nor the most intelligent competitor that survives, but rather the most adaptive to change.

Download the Full Article: The Rise of Intrastate Wars

Major Stéphane Dosse is a French Army Officer who currently is a student at the Collí¨ge Interarmées de Defense (French joint staff college), promotion Maréchal Lyautey. He is a graduate of the French Military Academy at Saint-Cyr and also holds a Master of Arts in defense and international security from Grenoble University in France. He has deployed to the former Yugoslavia, Africa, and Lebanon.

Past the Motorcycle Diaries towards understanding Che Gueverra

by Hugues Esquerre

Download the Full Article: Deep Into the Insurgent's Mind

The second half of the 20th century was dominated by the Cold War; however, partisan warfare, guerrilla warfare, brush-fire wars, civil wars, rebellions and insurgencies -- what British Major General Charles Callwell summarizes as "small wars" -- continued to proliferate throughout the world. Western militaries focused almost exclusively on preparing for high intensity, technologically advanced warfare. Meanwhile, the study of insurgencies and the development of counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine essentially came to a halt. Since 2001, the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have once again brought the study and development of counter-insurgency principles and doctrine back to the forefront of Western military thought . For the most part, these "new counter-insurgency doctrines " have been based on the works of theorists like the Frenchmen Bernard Fall , David Galula and Roger Trinquier , the American John J. McCuen , or the Englishmen Frank Kitson and Robert Thompson . Although these works are valuable resources, they focus primarily on the American, English, French and even sometimes the Soviet counter-insurgency experiences and perspectives . The shortfall of these works is that they fail to examine the insurgency from the point of view of the insurgent.

As every soldier or strategist knows, one must "turn the map around" and view the situation from the enemy's perspective. One must understand and anticipate his opponent's most likely courses of action in order to defeat him. As such, it is very interesting to try to enter into the mind of an insurgent to understand how an insurgency is conceived, developed, and led on "the other side". Of even greater interest and value, given the insurgencies currently being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, is to choose to study insurgents who won their fights within the last six decades. The number of insurgents that fit this criteria are relatively small, with the most famous being Mao Zedong, who defeated the Chinese nationalists to seize power (1949), Ví´ N'Guyen Giap, who served as Hí´ Chi Minh's strategist against the French (1954) and the Americans (1975), and finally Che Guevara, who took a prominent role in the rise to power of Fidel Castro in Cuba (1959).

In analysing the publications produced by each of these insurgents, the works of Che Guevara, and particularly his book Guerrilla Warfare , stand-out as an excellent "guidebook" to the mind of an insurgent. Indeed, after the victorious Cuban campaign of the late 1950's led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, it was Guevara's goal to publish and widely disseminate what he considered to be the best rules and practices to ensure victory to any insurgency. Due to the influence and impact of Guevara's book, it is now considered by counter-insurgency theorists to have an equal place of importance next to the revolutionary doctrines of Mao . As a result, the study of Che Guevara's Guerrilla Warfare is extremely pertinent because it clearly lays out the keys to weaken, discredit, and ultimately defeat - sometimes before it has really even started - an insurgency.

Before delving into Guevara's insurgency theories found in Guerrilla Warfare in the second part of this article and before identifying in a third and last part what are the weaknesses of his theories and what can be useful for a counter-insurgency force to defeat an insurgency, one must first put this book into context by remembering, without any political or ideological blindness, who Che Guevara was and what he did. This will allow the reader to avoid any preconceptions and to concentrate only on his theories and their usefulness in modern counter-insurgency warfare. That's the aim of the first part of this article.

Download the Full Article: Deep Into the Insurgent's Mind

Major (FRA MC) Hugues Esquerre is an officer in the French Marine Corps who served in tours to Kosovo, Gaboon, the Horn of Africa, and Afghanistan. He is a graduate of the Collí¨ge Interarmées de Défense in Paris.

The Necessity of Targeted Killing

by E. Walker Nordan Jr.

Download the Full Article: The Best Defense is a Good Offense

Over the last four decades, terrorism has grown to be recognized as not only the popular, but openly-accepted method among Islamic extremist factions in making a political statement. Through the practice of airline hijackings and bombings through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, to the astonishing blow to the United States on September 11th, 2001, radical Islamists have ultimately been successful in striking fear into the hearts and minds of people world-wide, innocents and combatants alike. Though most democratic nations of today have the standard policy of not accepting, sponsoring, or even negotiating with terrorists; very few have a policy of eradicating them. Israel, however, has maintained a practice of openly engaging terrorists through "targeted killings". Israel has raised a great deal of controversy in the international community as to whether or not targeted killing is an acceptable form of warfare, and more specifically, whether or not targeted killing is identical to "assassination".

I shall assert that targeted killing is distinctly different from assassination and fits within the guidelines of international law -- though some changes should be made; additionally, with the changing face of the battlefields of today, I shall argue that targeted killing should be supported by the international community and embraced by the United States as not only an acceptable form of warfare, but the form of warfare against terrorism for the future.

Download the Full Article: The Best Defense is a Good Offense

Major E. Walker Nordan is an active duty Psychological Operations officer that has served in the USASOC community for over eight years, with experiences in combat in Iraq serving at the Joint Task Force level and in leading a Military Information Support Team for Ambassador Crocker in support of the Department of State and USSOCOM.

Targeting Violent Extremists While Developing Rule of Law Capacity

by Steve D. Berlin

Download the Full Article: Conviction Focused Targeting

Stability operations present unique, simultaneous challenges to traditional intelligence-driven operations and rule of law (ROL) development. As units expand from purely offensive operations into increasing stability operations, host nation entities must concomitantly become increasingly responsible to suppress violent extremist networks (VEN) and other criminals within their borders. However, even though the host nation authorities are to assume more responsibility for VENs and other criminal activities as stability operations evolve, the conundrum is that these extremists often remain the primary focus of U.S. Forces (USF) because they pose the largest threats to host nation, and hence regional, stability. In order to be effective, intelligence-driven targeting within stability operations must operate in conjunction with the host nation legal systems. During the shift to increasing stability operations, commanders must also shift their targeting philosophy to combat violent extremism by means of the host nation criminal justice institutions. The host nation systems in turn become stronger; thus, USF will target VENs while simultaneously strengthening the host nation ROL systems.

Perhaps the greatest impediment that many commanders face in combating violent extremists during full spectrum operations is that they operate solely on intelligence-based targeting. They rely on intelligence to find, fix, and capture violent extremists. These violent extremists then become security or criminal detainees and some commanders then hope that they will one day be punished for their actions. To ensure these violent extremists are properly punished for their crimes, commanders should instead leverage the host nation legal system. In order to use the host nation criminal legal system, commanders should not look at facts they gather only as intelligence, but also as evidence. Intelligence, in turn, becomes evidence for use in host nation criminal prosecution and this evidence, in turn, also feeds into intelligence.

As USF conduct stability operations; or, more importantly, shift from offense focused operations to increasing stability operations, units must find practical methods to simultaneously support ROL development while targeting violent extremists. This article posits a model when USF and the host nation conduct stability operations by working as true partners. While this article is Iraq-centric, its methodology applies to any host nation legal system. Commanders should work alongside host nation legal systems however they are aligned. Thus, when units then plan to target violent extremists, they should do so using a law enforcement partnership model that focuses on convictions rather than stopping at the warrant threshold. Doing so moves us past a catch-and-release program while simultaneously strengthening host nation institutions and removing violent extremists from the operating environment.

Commanders should therefore create prosecution support teams. These teams pull together a brigade combat team's organic Soldiers, Department of State personnel, and contractors to team with host nation security forces. The combined forces then create a task force that targets VENs. The USF will deliver evidence and evidentiary leads to their host nation partners. Together they will develop criminal cases to eliminate the VENs using the local judicial system. The ultimate goal of the organization is not simply kill or capture, but for the local courts to convict the violent extremists and for them to face punishment. This method not only targets VENs and eliminates them from the community, but also simultaneously builds rule of law institutions. Thus, the U.S. will leave the host nation more capable of controlling its own security.

Download the Full Article: Conviction Focused Targeting

Major Steve Berlin is an active duty U.S. Army Judge Advocate presently assigned as Brigade Judge Advocate, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82d Division (Airborne). He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, University of Florida, and the Judge Advocate General's School. He wrote this article while deployed to Iraq.

The Impact on US Military Advisory Efforts

by Ben Williams

Download the Full Article: Transition to Iraq Sovereignty

ODA (Operational Detachment Alpha) 5122 and its principal partner force, the 7th RCB (Regional Commando Battalion) were instrumental in disrupting the activities of Sunni Insurgent Groups in northern Iraq throughout late 2009. In less than six months, this combined force conducted over 50 operations, attained an 85% capture rate, and detained five of the ODA's top ten HVIs (High Value Individuals). These successes were not simply a direct result of our own diligence and professionalism, but also a reflection of the professionalism and high level of ability of our Iraqi counterparts.

Simultaneously, our combined, aggressive, precise, and counter-terrorism efforts were complemented by an equally aggressive and robust array of shaping efforts. Relationships with local civic, religious, and military leaders were cultivated and networks of influence expanded. The ODA also orchestrated no fewer than ten carefully developed and successful Psychological Operations. These were implemented using multiple forms of media and were intended to shape the perception of local nationals, incite violence between rival threat groups, and discredit specific HVIs. This paper explores a representative cross section of the ODA's activities during the latter half of 2009. This is the story of a small group of men who thought and acted unconventionally, and were able to leverage their capabilities to obtain maximum effects within their area of operation.

Download the Full Article: Transition to Iraq Sovereignty

Captain Ben Williams is a U.S. Army Special Forces Officer with multiple deployments to Iraq. He currently commands an ODA in 1/5th Special Forces Group (A). Prior to his assignment to 5th SFG (A) he served as a MiTT advisor to the 4/6th Iraqi Army and as a Task Force Engineer with the 101st Airborne Division (AASLT). CPT Williams is a graduate of both the University of Michigan and Princeton University. His military education includes Officer Candidate School, Engineer Officer Basic Course, Maneuver Captains Career Course, and Special Forces Detachment Officer Qualification Course

The Social Psychological Development of Radical Spiritual Leaders

by John Ty Grubbs

Download the Full Article: Constructing the Revolution

Sayyid Qutb is widely acknowledged as the unchallenged Islamist ideologue of the past century. Virtually every piece of contemporary literature about Islamic terrorism makes at least a perfunctory reference to the radical spiritual leader. The dawn of the 20th century gave birth to several movements in the Middle East. Zionism, Arab Nationalism, and Radical Islamism, all came to the world stage in varying degrees, and it was Qutb that became the godfather of Islamist thought. Due to his role as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), he was executed by the Egyptian government in 1966. Nevertheless, his legacy lives on.

Since the British occupation in 1882, modernity, secularism, and Western-style education were becoming more prevalent in Egyptian society. The rapid infusion of commerce, political diversity, and progressive culture created friction with Egypt's Islamic traditionalists. Perceived oppression under British rule was further exacerbated by the British Mandate of Palestine, the United Nations Partition of Palestine, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Israelis know it as The War of Independence, while Arabs know it as al-Nakba (the catastrophe). Calls for reform could be heard in Egypt long before 1948. However, the events that unfolded after the British Mandate of Palestine engendered an unforeseen level of discontent in the Arab world. Sayyid Qutb and the MB capitalized on this anger.

Qutb was born in 1906, in the northern Egyptian farming village of Musha. His family was caring, religious, and well-respected in the community. While he may have been considered a pious child, nothing indicates his views were ever radical. Rather, the popularly-held belief is that his radicalization occurred over time. Several historical events are usually cited: the British occupation, al-Nakba, Qutb's experiences in the U.S., and the events he endured during imprisonment in Egypt. There is no doubt that all of these events played a major factor in his intellectual maturation. However, looking at these events alone reveals little about the social psychological reasons behind radicalization.

Download the Full Article: Constructing the Revolution

John Ty Grubbs is a recent graduate of Kansas State University's Security Studies M.A. program. As a Department of Defense contractor, he previously worked for the Joint IED Defeat Organization and the Multi-National Force - Iraq Strategic Communications Division. His essay "The Mongol Intelligence Apparatus" recently received an award from The International Institute for Intelligence Education

by Dianna Wuagneux

See Full Article: Identity, Insurgency & Healing

A constant challenge faced by the Coalition Forces in Afghanistan is the ability of the Anti-Coalition Forces (ACF) to steadily reinforce its ranks through the recruitment of a seemingly unending supply of fresh human reserves. Though the Taliban , et al are known to recruit from a variety of sources (e.g. particular madrassas and more fundamentalist villages on both sides of the Durand Line), among the most lucrative hunting grounds are those places where refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) languish in political and geographic limbo.

While the numbers vary from one agency to the next, Refugees International estimates that at present over 3 million Afghans remain refugees. Nearly all reside in decaying, ramshackle camps lacking basic health, education, or food facilities and over 300,000 are approximated to be suffering from the effects of contaminated water and substandard food today. The overcrowded shelters provided most often consist of makeshift tents which cannot protect the inhabitants from the extreme environment, or provide women and their children with basic privacy and protection.

The needs of these Afghans are for the most part neglected by the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (IROA), CFS, and donors alike. In recent months many refugees and IPDs have made efforts return to their former homes. They are largely undocumented, disenfranchised, and unwanted where ever they go, leaving them, like their counterparts remaining in the camps, particularly susceptible to the attentions and motivations of ACF. Like any predator, Taliban and other ACF recruiting scouts are seeking the prey most vulnerable to their intentions. This includes individuals who, because of their experiences and circumstances, are both angry and malleable, such as young and impressionable males without much in the way of resources or future prospects and who lack sufficient mature patriarchical guidance. These landless, disenfranchised populations offer the ACF an abundance of low-hanging fruit.

See Full Article: Identity, Insurgency & Healing

Dr. Dianna Wuagneux holds an earned doctorate in international relations with a MBA in cultural studies. She is currently an independent international advisor for Fragile States and Nations in Transition in the former Soviet Union, N. Africa, the Middle East, India, and Central Asia with more than 18 years experience as an international adviser for international humanitarian organizations, the US military, government agencies around the world. In 2009- early 2010, Dr. Wuagneux worked border stabilization issues for the UN between Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan for UN Central Asia out of Dushanbe. During 2008, Dr. Wuagneux provide expertise as executive advisor the DOD (JIEDDO) relevant to nation-building, cross-border negotiations, governance, conflict mitigation, civil-society, capacity building, reconstruction and development for the nation of Iraq. Throughout 2006 and early 2007, Dr. Wuagneux served as the Senior Policy Advisor for reconstruction and development in Afghanistan for both the Department of State and Department of Defense.

Progress Made and Future Challenges

by Robert M. Guido

Download the Full Article: U.S. Efforts to Combat Terrorism Financing

The United States and the international community have made great strides against al Qaeda since September 11, and counter-terrorist financing policies will remain a vital component of future efforts. The successes in tightening and shoring up the international financial system in the post-September 11 era, however, cannot be taken for granted. Al Qaeda and its affiliates have shown remarkable resilience and an ability to structurally evolve to survive the best efforts of the international community. To maintain progress in squeezing al Qaeda's finance, governments will need to continually adapt counter-terrorist financing policies to address the simpler but untraceable methods of moving cash and assets such as hawala, and work collaboratively to combat alternative methods of finance that capitalize on the ever-present and growing field of international criminal activity.

Download the Full Article: U.S. Efforts to Combat Terrorism Financing

Robert M. Guido has served for the past four years as military legislative assistant to a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He received a M.A. in Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College, a M.A. in International Relations from American University's School of International Service, and a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh.

by Bradford Burris

Download the Full Article: PME for USARSOF

One way to educate United States Army Special Operators is by allowing organizational design and individual competencies to form the nucleus of a professional military education curriculum routinely evaluated against assessment variables such as the emerging strategic context, the requests of Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOC) or other customer units, and the feedback of deployed operators. This essay recommends an Army Special Operations Command-focused educational development process applicable to the career-long education and utilization of Special Forces, Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations professionals.

To make these recommendations, I consider why the organizational structure of the Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) should differ from that of their General Purpose Forces counterparts and identify the expected ARSOF mission set for the next twenty years as well as the professional competencies required to execute this expected mission set. I then offer a series of suggestions for how the recommended changes could be implemented.

Unlike the majority of academic thought papers that analyze and present data in a dry and mechanistic fashion, this essay presents several ideas for consideration utilizing the literary medium of fiction. The characters used to convey the ideas herein are figments of my imagination; any relationship to any actual former or future special operator is purely unintentional. What you take away from the following pages will depend on your desire to infer practical concepts from the nascent thoughts presented by members of the USASOC PME working group that, while it does not exist in reality, you will nonetheless find hard at work in the following paragraphs.

Download the Full Article: PME for USARSOF

Major Bradford M. Burris is an active duty Military Information Support Operations (or Psychological Operations) officer. He has served in various command and staff positions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Major Burris earned a Master of Science in Defense Analysis at the United States Naval Postgraduate School. He currently serves as the Operations Officer of the 6th Military Information Support Operations Battalion at Fort Bragg, N.C.

by Phillip S. Meilinger

Download the Full Article: Primitive Violence, Culture, and the Path to Peace

There is an old saw among political scientists that democracies seldom fight other democracies. Although the accuracy of that statement often hinges on definitions—was 1914 Germany an autocracy because of the Kaiser, or a budding democracy because of an elected Reichstag—it is nonetheless largely valid. It has thus been a tenet of US diplomacy to urge the spread of democracy worldwide. Richard L. Armitage, the former Deputy Secretary of State, said recently in an interview: "every President except John Quincy Adams has been involved in the belief that the world is made better by a U.S that is involved in the protection of human freedoms and human rights across the board." He went on to assert that "every postwar President has believed we have a duty to spread democracy."

At times, as with Presidents Ronald Reagan and both Bushes, that quest has been a major factor in foreign policy. Ironically, when President Barack Obama accepted his Nobel Peace Prize, he stated that negotiations would not force terrorists to lay down their arms; rather, "force is sometimes necessary [and that] is not a call to cynicism—it is a recognition of history." He went on to argue that "the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace" and that "force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace." These are interesting words coming from a man not viewed as a hawk; yet, implementing such a vision is problematic.

Wishing for peace and the growth of democracy will not produce them. Although the fall of the Soviet empire has spawned nascent democracies in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Russia itself seems to be backsliding into its traditional form of Oriental despotism. The democratic experiment in tribal Afghanistan is certainly an advance over the dismal situation that had existed under the Taliban, but the future of freedom in that unhappy nation is not assured. As for Iraq, time will tell if elections are truly inclusive and credible enough to bring all parties to the negotiating table of democratic government, much less whether the government can defend itself against hostile neighbors and internal rebels.

When looking ahead to the prospects of democracy spreading in dark corners of the globe, it may be useful to look backwards first. The tribal, fractional, culturally driven, and in some ways primitive nations we are trying to influence today are not unlike those we have confronted in the past.

Download the Full Article: Primitive Violence, Culture, and the Path to Peace

Phillip S. Meilinger is a retired Air Force colonel with a PhD in military history from the University of Michigan. He is the author of eight books and over eighty articles on military theory and practice.

by Thomas Bundt

Download the Full Article: Reexamination of a Quintessential Joint Force Operation Case Study: Urgent Fury

Although Operation Urgent Fury, the 1983 American-led intervention in Grenada, was a successful operation from a public approval standpoint, significant concerns developed over the performance of the joint command structure charged with the conduct of the mission. Examination and reassessment of relevant literature reveals the overall operation as a textbook case study of the intricacies of joint forces command. In an effort to continue to capture historical lessons learned, further introspection of Operation Urgent Fury, if only to reexamine the primary shortfalls of a joint command experience, is necessary. Reviews of literature mixed with current updates to this operation delineate significant components and recommendations for consideration in future joint doctrine reviews. This analysis narrows the components and recommendations into three mutually 'inclusive' categories as they relate to three key joint force doctrine tenets: command and control, operational techniques, and equipment interoperability (joint procurement/acquisition).

Operation Urgent Fury was the U.S. response to the growing destabilization in Grenada that climaxed with the assassination of Maurice Bishop, Grenada's president. Following the Iranian crisis and expansion of communist presence in the region, this operation proved critical to America's prestige and commitment to national security. Because of the nature of the crisis, the time in our nation's history, and the prior military fiasco demonstrated by Operation Desert One, diplomatic and military bodies seriously considered the measures necessary to ensure success. The primary mission imperatives included the neutralization of the Grenada forces, protection and evacuation of US and designated foreign nationals, stabilization of the internal situation, and transition to peacekeeping. To complete these mission imperatives, the US deployed nearly 6,000 soldiers, marines, airman, and sailors to the region under the command and control of a single joint force commander.

Although this vast force complied with the mission imperatives, significant incidents and unintended casualties resulted from deficient command and control relationships, unfamiliarity with operational designs, and the lack of interoperability of key equipment. Some of these same themes likewise resonate with current challenges in present day joint operations such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Specific to Operation Urgent Fury case study these issues raised great concern for Department of Defense planners, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary of Defense in the mission's aftermath. Aside from specific lessons learned annotated in after-action reviews, the single greatest commitment to amend these shortcomings was the enactment of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act legislation.

Download the Full Article: Reexamination of a Quintessential Joint Force Operation Case Study: Urgent Fury

LTC Thomas S. Bundt is a Medical Service Corps Officer and the Commander of the 187th Medical Battalion, 32nd Medical Brigade, at Fort Sam Houston Texas. LTC Bundt has served in a variety of command and staff positions from Mechanized Infantry to fixed Army Hospitals. His latest overseas tour was to Iraq where he served as the Deputy Health Attaché to the US Embassy in Baghdad working directly with the Minister of Health on the first implemented health policy since Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is published in several journals to include Military Medicine, AHIMA, and Military Review. LTC Bundt holds a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Washington, a Masters in History and International Relations from Louisiana State University, a Masters in Healthcare Administration, a Masters in Business Administration and a Doctorate in Health Services Research from the University of Florida and a M.A. in Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College Class of 2009.

by Adam Elkus

Download the Full Article: The Hezbollah Myth and Asymmetric Warfare

Since the early 1990s, military theorists examined ways that a rogue state, substate, or nonstate actor could frustrate a conventional force. The 2006 Israeli clash with Hezbollah came to be seen as the harbinger of an era of cheap missiles, stronger defenses, and danger to conventional forces. Hezbollah's supposed success furthered a growing notion that a strong high-end asymmetric warfare defense could make a country a poison pill for foreign intervention.

But this narrative does not capture the conflict's ambivalent results, exaggerating Israeli difficulties while overplaying Hezbollah's performance. The Hezbollah myth also masks the ability of a sufficiently driven and equipped state to use conventional military power to annihilate a weaker state or substate group. While the operational challenges of high-end asymmetric threats do pose dangers for conventional forces that deserve sustained analysis, the strategic question of whether high-end asymmetric warfare can effectively deter a conventional force hinges instead on the political context of the conflict and the adversaries who fight it.

Download the Full Article: The Hezbollah Myth and Asymmetric Warfare

Adam Elkus is an analyst specializing on foreign policy and security. He has published on defense issues in Small Wars Journal, West Point Combating Terrorism Center Sentinel, Defense Concepts, and other publications. He is currently the Associate Editor of Red Team Journal.

The Pentagon is Not Preparing for the Most Likely Conflicts

by Dr. Roy Godson and Dr. Richard H. Shultz, Jr.

Joint Force Quarterly has kindly granted Small Wars Journal permission to publish this forthcoming JFQ article.

Download the Full Article: A QDR for All Seasons?

The end of the Cold War and the massive changes in the conflict environment that ensued launched the United States on a transformational path in military force planning. In 1996, the first Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) set out a vision of the two regional contingencies model, with the Nation equipped and able to dominate in two major conventional wars at the same time. But the outlines of a different kind of conflict setting began to emerge as the United States attempted to protect its interests in several different regions. The first decade of the 21st century has shown clearly that the way the Nation thought about and prepared for war in most of the 20th century requires a major overhaul. But change comes slowly.

The years following the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq were filled with adversity and indecision among the military leadership about how to overcome a different type of foe. The 2006 QDR appeared to be an attempt to refocus the Pentagon's warfighting approach to meet the challenge. In that assessment, the Department of Defense (DOD) acknowledged that a serious gap existed between the changed nature of conflict and the doctrine and means it had available for fighting it. DOD stipulated that irregular warfare (IW) had become a vital mission area for which the Services needed to prepare. Post-9/11 combat was depicted as "irregular in its nature." Enemies in those fights were "not conventional military forces." Rather, they employed indirect and asymmetric means. Adaptation was the way forward.

The 2006 QDR also set in motion IW initiatives inside DOD leading up to the December 2008 release of DOD Directive 3000.07, "Irregular Warfare." That directive was unambiguous about 21st-century conflict, declaring: "Irregular warfare is as strategically important as traditional warfare," and it is essential to "maintain capabilities . . . so that the DOD is as effective in IW as it is in traditional [conventional] warfare." Moreover, according to Directive 3000.07, the capabilities required for each type of fight were different.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had been among the most vociferous advocates, reinforcing the message in numerous statements, lectures, congressional testimony, and popular articles. Gates was by no means alone in the Pentagon and administration. But despite direction at the top, consensus was elusive. Many within the Joint Chiefs organization, Defense bureaucracy and industry, and Services viewed post-9/11 irregular fights as anomalies—ephemeral trends generated by particular circumstances. Furthermore, they held that conventional or general purpose forces could handle them.

Download the Full Article: A QDR for All Seasons?

Dr. Roy Godson is President of the National Strategy Information Center, a Washington, DC--based nongovernmental, nonpartisan educational organization. Dr. Richard H. Shultz, Jr., is Professor and Director of the International Security Studies Program in the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

The Clarion Call

by Colonel Charles D. Allen

Joint Force Quarterly has kindly granted Small Wars Journal permission to publish this forthcoming JFQ article.

Download the Full Article: Redress of Professional Military Education

In 1908, the American short story writer O. Henry penned "The Clarion Call." This title has become synonymous with a powerful request for action or an irresistible mandate. As the Nation looks to the institution of the U.S. Army during an era of persistent conflict and after 9 years of war, it is time to recapture professional military education (PME) as part of our profession.

The Army is arguably the largest and best educational and training institution in the United States. It has a strong, established educational program that seeks to provide the right Soldier with the right education at the right time. Without doubt, even as we have fought two wars, there have been laudable advances to include an expanded graduate school program, increased numbers of international fellows at our schools, and an effort led by the Chief of Staff of the Army to broaden the experiences of the officer corps with more opportunities to serve in think tanks, interagency positions, and world-class universities.

For the officer corps, this PME program is ingrained from pre-commissioning through promotion to general officer. Unfortunately, even with the advances mentioned above, what is presented in official policy as an espoused value does not always translate into what is valued within the Army in the real world. More importantly, the gap between espoused and enacted values is significant and growing. Without action to arrest this trend, the Army risks the professional development of its senior leaders as well as its competency as a force to meet the Nation's needs in the years ahead.

Developing promising senior and strategic leaders is an obligation of the military profession. At a recent Military Education Coordination Council meeting in Washington, DC, several uniformed members asked questions about the types of conflict that we should prepare our senior officers for. In the contemporary operating environment, the focus has understandably been on the curriculum within the colleges: what is taught, how it is delivered, and by whom (faculty) in order to provide relevant education to senior officers. Two essays from the National War College and Naval War College, respectively, captured the discussion of the joint PME and Service-specific senior PME content and methodology in a recent issue of this journal. As important as curriculum and faculty are, they are moot issues if those officers who have the greatest potential to serve as strategic leaders deem attendance at one of our war colleges unnecessary and are allowed to bypass it.

Download the Full Article: Redress of Professional Military Education

Colonel Charles D. Allen, USA (Ret.), is Professor of Cultural Science in the Department of Command, Leadership, and Management at the U.S. Army War College.

The Ugly Truth: Insurgencies are Brutal

by Dr. Robert Bunker

Download the Full Article: The Ugly Truth: Insurgencies are Brutal

The recent release by WikiLeaks.org of over seventy thousand classified U.S. Military documents pertaining to the insurgency in Afghanistan has generated immense media and public interest and is being compared in scale to the release of the 'Pentagon Papers' in 1965 by Daniel Ellsberg. Immediate U.S. governmental condemnations concerning unnecessarily placing troops in harm's way, on the one hand, combined with war crimes accusations, on the other, have only served to heighten the rhetoric surrounding the posting of these documents on the Web. The criminal and unauthorized manner in which this massive volume of documents was leaked has only helped to further politicize and emotionally galvanize commentators taking sides on this issue.

The intent of this short essay is to move past the hype, rhetoric, and passions of the moment and get to the core of the issue at hand. The ugly truth has nothing to do with who released the documents, why they were released, or even what political outcomes and potential policy fallout will occur after the dust settles. The core issue at hand is that insurgencies, by their very nature, are inherently brutal. This point was recently driven home after doing a considerable amount of research and reflection on issues pertaining to insurgent use of targeted killing, via both the techniques of assassination and political execution, and engaging in subsequent discourse on this topic with insurgency warfare scholars and practitioners. Further sensitizing me to this truth is that, prior to the insurgent analysis, I was recently involved in an edited book project on Mexican drug cartels and the criminal insurgencies taking place within the lands of our Southern neighbor with over twenty-five thousand dead since December 2006.

Download the Full Article: The Ugly Truth: Insurgencies are Brutal

Dr. Robert J. Bunker holds degrees in political science, government, behavioral science, social science, anthropology-geography, and history. Training taken includes that provided by DHS, FLETC, DIA, Cal DOJ, Cal POST, LA JRIC, NTOA, and private security entities in counter-terrorism, counter-surveillance, incident-response, force protection, and intelligence. Dr. Bunker has been involved in red teaming and counter-terrorism exercises and has provided operations support within Los Angeles County. Past associations have included Futurist in Residence, FBI Academy, Quantico, VA; Counter-OPFOR Program Consultant (Staff Member), National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center—West, El Segundo, CA; Fellow, Institute of Law Warfare, Association of the US Army, Arlington, VA; Lecturer-Adjunct Professor, National Security Studies Program, California State University San Bernardino, San Bernardino, CA; instructor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; and founding member, Los Angeles County Terrorism Early Warning Group. Dr. Bunker has over 200 publications including short essays, articles, chapters, papers and book length documents. These include Non-State Threats and Future Wars (editor); Networks, Terrorism and Global Insurgency (editor); Criminal-States and Criminal-Soldiers (editor); Narcos Over the Border (editor); and Red Teams and Counter-Terrorism Training (co-author— forthcoming). He has provided over 200 briefings, papers, and presentations to US LE, MIL, GOV, and other groups in the US and overseas. He can be reached at bunker@usc.edu.

al-Qaeda's Newest Jihad Zone?

by Malcolm Nance

Download the Full Article: The Strait of Hormuz: al-Qaeda's Newest Jihad Zone?

After the July 28 explosion alongside the Japanese oil tanker M. Star in the Strait of Hormuz initial speculation was that it had struck a derelict sea mine from the 1991 Iraq war, encountered a rogue wave from an earthquake in Iran or had a collision with a whale or submarine. Pundits and even some counter-terror observers, particularly those in the Gulf States, spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to explain it away with any possibility except the most obvious one - terrorism. That can no longer be ignored.

When news of the incident broke caution was called for in the region as to assigning a specific cause and terrorism was specifically rejected as likely.

Here in the UAE, skepticism is the preferred form of denial and critics of the suicide boat theory are being given strong voice. The very mention of the possibility of terrorism originating in or near the United Arab Emirates is met with hushes and alternative explanations, hence the whale, wave and submarine theories. The "T" word (Terrorism) is not welcome in public or political discourse. Some political pundits claim that conventional war with Iran is a greater threat to the Strait. That may be true solely in relation to Iran's nuclear ambitions, but a wave of successful al-Qaeda suicide attacks could destabilize the markets in a way that rising tensions with Iran cannot.

Download the Full Article: The Strait of Hormuz: al-Qaeda's Newest Jihad Zone?

Malcolm W. Nance is a counter-terrorism and terrorism intelligence consultant for the U.S. government's Special Operations, Homeland Security and Intelligence agencies. A 20-year veteran of the US intelligence community's Combating Terrorism program and a six year veteran of the Global War on Terrorism he has extensive field and combat experience as an field intelligence collections operator, an Arabic speaking interrogator and a master Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) instructor.

Right Doctrine, Wrong War

by Jason Thomas

Download the Full Article: The Cognitive Dissonance of COIN

The psychological investment in COIN is now so deep that the cognitive dissonance would be too great to change course or admit COIN is the right doctrine for the wrong war. Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that despite contrary evidence, people are biased to think of their choices as correct. Like climate change, so much has been invested in counterinsurgency with huge reputations at stake, that anyone who challenges COIN in Afghanistan could be labeled a COIN skeptic.

No matter how much we try to win the hearts and minds, no matter how many millions of dollars is spent on development and regardless of attempts to improve governance and eliminate corruption, the socio-cultural ecosystem of Afghanistan does not respond to the doctrine of counterinsurgency. While the pockets can be won the heart and minds in Afghanistan will always remain notoriously capricious.

There are many reasons to continually question COIN from every angle, but the two this paper is concerned with are i) whether COIN could be the right military doctrine being applied in the wrong campaign; and ii) preparing for the next major unconventional war -- as is often the case in political campaigns and war, we tend to find ourselves fighting on the issues, theories or practices in the last campaign.

This paper will attempt to "play the ball and not the man" by pointing to the range of reasons unique to Afghanistan on top of self-imposed obstacles that reinforce the hypothesis of right doctrine, wrong war.

Download the Full Article: The Cognitive Dissonance of COIN

Jason Thomas has completed an eight month mission in Afghanistan as the Regional Manager for a USAID implementing partner. The role involved delivering counterinsurgency operations with US and Coalition Forces in three Provinces in Afghanistan - Ghazni, Wardak and Logar. Before Afghanistan Jason had worked in the civil war area in Sri Lanka after establishing one of the largest private responses to the Boxing Day Tsunami in Victoria, Australia. This also involved negotiating with the Tamil Tigers and being the first Westerner allowed by the GOSL into the high security zones following the end of the civil war last year. Jason implemented the Kokoda Track Project in Boroondara in 2008 taking disadvantage youth up the Kokoda track with the support of the Victorian Police, Hawthorn Football Club and the Kokoda Veterans from the 39th Infantry Battalion - this has now been adopted by the YMCA as an annual event. He has worked as Director of Research in the New Zealand Parliament for ACT New Zealand, political advisor in the House of Commons and House of Lords, London and as well as being political strategist for CEOs and Boards of Australian ASX 100 companies. He was Queen's Relay Baton Runner for the 2006 Commonwealth Games, nominated for Citizen of the Year in 2005 and awarded a Paul Harris Fellow in 2006.

by Cora Sol Goldstein

Download the Full Article: President Obama: Look for a New Massoud

It is often said that foreign powers are condemned to fail in Afghanistan. This is an over-simplification -- the ancient history of Afghanistan is the history of successive and successful foreign occupations that radically changed the country and its prevailing ideologies. It is true that in modern times imperial powers have systematically lost their Afghan adventures. In all cases, the invading armies tried to deploy a reduced number of troops and attempted to keep their casualties low. They relied on their technological superiority in their efforts to impose a central government that could be controlled from afar. The U.S. is losing Afghanistan because it is adhering blindly to this model.

It is imperative to free American policy from the straitjacket of misconceptions that shapes U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

Download the Full Article: President Obama: Look for a New Massoud

Cora Sol Goldstein is an Associate Professor of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach. Goldstein received her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago in 2002. Her book, Capturing the German Eye: American Visual Propaganda in Occupied Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) discusses the U.S. experience in postwar Germany. Her recent publications include  "2003 Iraq, 1945 Germany, and 1940 France: Success and Failure in Military Occupations," Military Review, July 2010 and "A Strategic Failure: American Information Control Policy in Occupied Iraq," Military Review, March-April 2008.

Down at the District

A Look at the

District Delivery Program

by MAJ Gail Fisher

Download the full PDF

In foothills of eastern Afghanistan on a brilliant

spring day, district elders from Sayyidibad crowd into a cold, sunlit room in

the cinderblock district center.  They listen to speeches from men smartly

dressed in western style just arrived from Kabul.  

An enormous wooden table sits squarely in the middle

of the room.   The district center was built only three years ago, but a

florescent light already dangles precariously from the ceiling, one end free of

its anchor.  Burnt-orange curtains, stained and torn, hang on the windows. 

Brightly colored plastic-wrapped snacks are brought in with tea, and the

Provincial Governor gives his speech over the rattle of opening snacks and

sipping of tea.

The Provincial Governor speaks of endless disappointments, the Afghan central

government's broken promises, and proposes a way forward in the district. 

Promise and caution comingle in the morning's remarks.

Download the full PDF

MAJ Gail Fisher is a U.S.  Army Reserve Civil Affairs

officer serving in the Future Operations Section of ISAF Joint Command, Kabul,

Afghanistan as a stability operations planner.

Strategic Communication &

Influence Operations

Do We Really Get 'It'?

by Dr Lee Rowland  & Cdr

Steve Tatham RN

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The last 2-3 years have seen an explosion in interest in the application of influence

as a tool for achieving military objectives.  This is not new, the military

have always sought to exert influence -- albeit at times unwittingly.  However,

two significant events have brought the issue to further prominence - the publication

of JDP3-40 and the deployment of 52 Brigade to Helmand Province in 2007/8. 

This article does not intend to debate either in any detail -- a quick search of

inter and intra nets will provide plenty of information for the curious

reader -- but there are two issues worthy of slightly more discussion. 

The first concerns 52 Brigade's deployment.  When Brigadier Andrew Mackay

led 52 Brigade to Helmand Province he did so having examined previous kinetic based

deployments and concluded that these, for various reasons, had not achieved the

effects that he envisaged for his mission.  For him the consent of the population

was utterly key and would not, nor could it, be achieved by hard power alone or

even with hard power primacy; as he developed his operational design he felt frustrated

that existing doctrine did not adequately prepare him to operate within the influence

arena.  The second is that Andrew Mackay subsequently became one of the driving

forces behind JDP3-40 and in particular the forceful articulation of the 'centrality'

of influence.  However, the 'how to do it' guidance still lags behind the emphasis

on and enthusiasm for, its use.....

This paper seeks to provide greater clarity in two key areas -- Target

Audience Analysis (TAA) and Measurements of Effectiveness (MOE).

Download the full article

Lee Rowland is a former Royal Marines Commando. He holds a Ph.D. in Experimental

Psychology and was co-director for the M.SC. in Psychological Research in the Department

of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. He now directs the Behavioural

Dynamics Institute.

Cdr Steve Tatham is completing a PhD in Strategic Communication and was formerly

Director of Advanced Communication Research at the Defence Academy.