Win, Learn, Focus, Adapt, Win Again
Win, Learn, Focus, Adapt, Win Again
The scrimmage should be as hard as the game.
By General Martin E. Dempsey, US Army
“This compilation of writings by General Dempsey—six articles published in ARMY magazine from October 2010 to March 2011, plus the speech he delivered at AUSA’s 2011 Winter Symposium in February—captures the mutual focus of the Chief and his TRADOC commander on what our Army must do to shape itself for the future. There is recognition that our Army is always a force in transition, that it will expand and contract, train and deploy, and perpetually modify its Tables of Organization and Equipment. But the primary imperative for our leaders must be to care for the Soldiers and families who have endured so much for the country they love.”
“That said, the Army and its leadership must win, learn, focus, adapt and win again—win the conflicts they face, learn better and faster than their enemies, focus on the fundamentals, adapt as an institutional imperative and, when called upon, win again.”
General Gordon R. Sullivan, US Army Retired
President, Association of the United States Army
Win, Learn, Focus, Adapt, Win Again
Here is one simple lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan: Counterinsurgency doesn’t work. That is Counterinsurgency that aims to win the trust of local populations to turn against the enemy through programs of state building combined with military presence to “protect” the population. It failed in Iraq and is currently failing in afghanistan. When as an army are we going to learn and adapt ourselves out of this failed doctrine?
Gian:
Maybe counterinsurgency didn’t work in Iraq, nor in Malaya, nor in the Philippines, nor in Vietnam, nor in El Salvador, nor in many other places. But something worked by whatever name one chooses to call it. I don’t see what is wrong with figuring the broad outlines of what worked in those places and then adapting to whatever the new place will be. And there is always a new place. It is better to go into that new place with at least some idea of what might be needed rather than starting from scratch every single time.
Agree and neither do I.
I simply stated that a specific kind of counterinsurgency doesn’t work (and I defined the type)
Gian
The real test is that of enduring results, not nirvana, but a populace and government that are able to move forward together without the populace feeling compelled to continually resort to illegal means to affect substantive change.
Often, it is simply opening the aperture of what is considered legal for the populaces to be able to adequately express their legitimate concerns short of becoming outlaws and insurgents. The Tea Party in America would be disbanded and the leadership arrested in most of the Arab states currently facing growing unrest by their respective populaces across North Africa and the Middle East. The best “COIN” those governments could implement now would be to adopt reasonable measures within their cultural construct and expectation to give the people greater legal means to express discontent and legally pursue solutions to real problems.
The Philippines often gets listed as an example of past COIN success, yet insurgency has been continuous in that land since first colonized by Spain. Insurgencies ebb and flow, emerge among various groups and locations, adopt various ideologies and causes. This is the response to governmental causation. Certainly the Philippine government has gone through changes as well, but in critical ways is little evolved from the Spanish Colonial perspective of over 100 years ago.
Historians tend to use too short of a ruler in measuring COIN success; and the metrics applied are far too biased to the western historic perspective of our colonial predecessors. We have to learn to step away from that heritage to gain a new, clearer, and more appropriate perspective.
Examples of successful COIN?
1. US abolishment of the Articles of Confederation to put a check on the ravages of pure democracy; and the subsequent design, adoption and implementation of the Declaration of Independence to defuse the growing air of insurgency across the country.
(And no, the Civil War was not an insurgency, as it was legal conflict under the constitution between sovereign governments.)
2. The Malay Emergency. Great Britain began by employing the old model of seeking to defeat the challenger to the colonial government they had carefully shaped and controlled through their High Commissioner in country, and the Colonial Office back home. Ultimately they realized they were clinging to a model that was no longer cost effective. Ethnic Chinese were granted Suffrage and Great Britain relinquished their control over the government. When the surviving communist insurgents came back in from where they had been chased, they found that the populace that has supported them had no further need for their services.
3. The American Civil Rights movement. Attaining greater freedom and rights during WWII, African Americans were unwilling to return to an antebellum status quo that left them outside the rights and protections offered to other Americans by the Constitution. Efforts at the local level were to suppress such illegal challenges through the rule of law, but at the Federal level President Johnson pressed for three landmark bills that ultimately extended the benefits of the Constitution to all Americans and returned the country to stability (like all COIN, it is a work and action and never “won”, but must always be tended to in a continuous effort by civil leaders).
By and large our expeditionary interventions are not, and have never been, “COIN.” To flippantly pass that off as mere semantics is very dangerous indeed.
Bob
Oops. Major brianwave disconnect. I meant ” design, adoption and implementation of the CONSTITUTION”,( not the equally wonderful Declaration of Independence which served and continues to serve a very special purpose in the true American COIN perspective).
Thinking way faster than I can type…and yes, I realize I am a slow typer. Just doing spell check is not enough… 🙂
One more time with Malaya; the defeat of the insurgents had little to do with the granting of “suffrage” to the ethnic Chinese and everything to do with physical resettlement of them and military operations that severed the links between them and the insurgents. To be sure the political accommodations and adjustments that the British made mattered, but only really in terms of locking in the support of the native Malays of which they had all along anyway.
Winning the war against the insurgents was never really in question, just how long it would take.
Still Malaya is an example of successful Counterinsurgency, just not of the hearts and minds persuasion. That kind of coin has simply not worked.
Yet that is exactly the kind of Coin we are trying to make work in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan the purpose of the American military is to turn the population against the Taliban by winning their trust and allegiance. That is pure hearts and minds stuff.
gian
Gian,
My conventional brother in arms, the point is, that the defeat of the insurgent has little to do with the defeat of the insurgency.
One can defeat insurgent movements over and over and over again, and never address the insurgency itself. This is the Philippines. This is Algeria.
Malaya was different, everyone fixates on the success with the insurgent, and those were the lessons we attempted to apply in Vietnam and elsewhere. What is lost is that they only worked because the actual factors of governance driving the insurgency itself were addressed.
Now, some argue that one had to defeat the insurgent first before one could move on to addressing the causes of insurgency. They make that argument in Afghanistan today. I don’t buy it.
The truth, I believe, is that the insurgency really has very little to do with the insurgent. Insurgents are like surfers riding the wave of insurgency. If the insurgency surf is up, insurgent surfers will come to ride it. By addressing the causal aspacts of governane one calms the seas of the populace. With no more waves of insurgency to ride, the insurgents of every flavor are rendered moot and fade away.
This has nothing to do with “hearts and minds” nor is it pure counterguerrilla. This is not an either or, and infact both of those approaches merely swipe at the symptoms; it is pure good governance. Governance that is perceived to be legitimate, just, and respectful over a populace that percieves itself to live in liberty.
Robert C. Jones, the quote below from Gian used to be basic “Green Beret Stuff” at least as I learned it. You have to deal with the guerrila force or nothing much will matter. They are killing people….and you have to stop that or good governance dosen’t have a chance. Why is that not still valid or what has changed exactly?
gian p gentile:
One more time with Malaya; the defeat of the insurgents had little to do with the granting of “suffrage” to the ethnic Chinese and everything to do with physical resettlement of them and military operations that severed the links between them and the insurgents.
Gian, that is very,very good systems analysis stuff!!
Robert C. Jones:
With respect to the Philippines, Algeria and such places, you could look at them as being places where rebellion or insurgency are a strong part of the culture. They happen over and over again. If that is so, a successful effort against the insurgency would be one that damps things down for a while, just a while, and not one that brings bucolic peace for all time after. That kind of success would have to wait for a cultural/economic change, a type of change that would be beyond one particular gov or military’s ability to effectuate. That is an observation Walter Laqueur made and it seemed a good one. With that in mind you might even look on the troubles in Mexico as being sort of in the category of the latest in Mexico’s long list of rebellions and insurgencies.
Gian:
You are right and I typed before giving your comment careful thought. Which leads me to a question.
Two books I liked a lot that I thought were filled with good small wars practices (as far as an interested civilian can judge) were The Village by West and Galula’s book about his experiences in Algeria. In neither of those accounts did popularity projects play a very prominent role. They were both characterized by things like staying the night, lots and lots of patrols and ambushes, getting to know the local people, their names and faces, not gratuitously pissing them off, selective and careful use of heavy weapons, use of local forces etc. They were really mostly about fighting-who, when and how.
Do you think the small wars experiences of the past as represented by those two works have been mischaracterized (sic) to de-emphasize the fighting part? (How’s that for awkward sentence structure, an ize followed by an ize.)
Slap,
I know what the doctrine says. I know what the history books say. Both were written by the counterinsurgent at a time when we believed that evil communists were brainwashing the people of South East Asia to rise up against their kind hearted colonial and neo-colonial patrons. We apply that same thinking to our perspectives on the Middle East today. We cast it in terms of “Good Vs. Evil” with us in the role of “Good.” One has to strip away that bias to get to a clearer perspective.
Now, I have no problem with counterguerrialla operations. My point is that the defeat of the gurrilla is not a prerequisite to addressing the causal factors of governance; nor does the defeat of the guerrilla need to be complete in order to move to the next “phase” of addressing governance. The main effort is addressing governance, set that as your main effort from the very start, and only apply what supporting effort necessary to distractors such as the guerrilla, in order to make those changes. Most governance changes can be made with the stroke of a pen, so I’m just not buying the “guerrilla firat” mantra.
Guerrialla first came from an era where the colonial power’s endstate was to sustain in local governance the very factors that also drive the insurgency. That is why we addopted TTPs aimed at managing the symptoms instead.
As to Carl, you really suggest that some people just have a culture of insurgency? Maybe I misunderstand your point. People do not wage insurgnency because they don’t know what else to do any more than they do so becuse someone laid some sexy ideology on them. That’s just not how it works.
As to resettlement as a cure, how did that work in the Philippnines when we sent the Huks down to Mindano? How did it work in the US when we moved the Natives from the SE out to Oklahoma? Resettlement is one of those issues where we have credited an effect to the wrong cause.
Robert C. Jones:
Mr. Laqueur called it a “guerrilla tradition”. I take that to mean some peoples are just more prickly than others. An example might be some people of Mindanao vs. some peoples of other islands. Or you might expect more trouble from the Vietnamese than from the Japanese. That kind of thing. My examples might not be precisely correct but I hope it conveys the general idea.
Hmmm. Not saying that some cultures are not more warlike than other, I think history bears out the existance of warrior cultures emerging now and again.
But insurgency is not about being “prickly” so much as it is about not liking being pricked. Warrior culutures tend to take their war making on the road. When they turn it inward onto their own leadership there is a problem in that leadership that supercedes any culture of conflict. I would chalk this theory of Mr. Laqueur as one more of many examples of governmental “blame-shifting” when it comes to insurgency. Whereas I believe virtually every true insurgency is a response to causation that radiates outward in the nature and the policies of the governance, I cannot think of many instances where any government every said “This is our fault and we need to change how we government to make this go away.”
So, blame it on ideology, poverty, internal or eternal malign actors, or blame it on culture. At the end of the day, responsibility cannot be delegated, and it rests with the government. The nature of the colonial master/colonial government/colonial populace dynamic really skews clear perspectives.
I don’t know if you can call Mr. Laqueur’s observation a theory or an argument about who is responsible ultimately for the trouble. It is just an observation that these things tend to happen in places where they have happened before. That seems sensible.
Carl: Agree about both of your book choices. Galula’s extended essay on his experience in Algeria is much better than his book. And West’s Village is a classic (although I like his new book “The Wrong War” much better!)
Bob, saying that defeating the “insurgents” doesnt defeat the “insurgency” reads like Orwellian double speak. Of course it does. The insurgents in Malaya were crushed through physical relocation and military destruction which is what ended the insurgency. You can juice up the thing with theories of state building, constitutions, governments etc, but you cant get away from the basic fact that in the historical case of Malaya–and accepting as a good historian its uniqueness and contingencies–that the insurgency ended when the insurgents were defeated.
Brother Slap, are you calling me a “political scientist”? 😉
gian
Gian,
Not at all. Until one can separate in their mind the various organizations over time that emerge from a popualce, employing a range of ideologies and causes to challenge a single government from the conditions of insurgency that exist across those populaces as created by the government, one is really just managing symptoms.
Governments and the external powers that support governments more often than not hold themselves harmless and engage in an endless series of “whack-a-mole” dealing one one insurgency after another, as in the Philippines and Algeria; or a constant program of breaking up groups by arresting without warrant and holding without charge an endless stream of citizens who dare to complain, as in many Arabe countries today.
It is only when governments take responsibility and address their own problems that true healing occurs across a populace. This was a particular blind spot for Galula as a man who grew up a French Colonist in Africa, and spent his adult life suppressing challenges to colonial governments around the globe. He pointedly noted that it was never the Colonial power’s fault, but rather that the populace was being stirred up to challenge the (puppet) local national government; and that when revolutions such as the ones that are erupting across the Middle East today occurred they were “accidents” and unpredictable. He could not see outside his pardagim; and we built current US doctrine shaped by that same pardigm.
Until one can see how causation for insurgency radiates out from government, rather than in from some malign source or harsh condition, one really cannot begin to design an effective COIN campaign. I like Galula, but he was a man of his times and his experiences. So are American leaders tasked with sustaining foreign governments we count on to manage our interests for us today as well.
If a government has, for example, a modernization agenda (which the government believes will cure many ills of the state and society), and if this government then acts to implement this modernization program, then this effort often runs afoul of those conservative elements of the society — and much of the population generally — who disagree with (for various reasons) this undertaking.
One overarching reason for this disagreement — and the often resulting insurgency(ies) — is that “modernization” often means that the state and society will need to be adapted and opened up for better access to, interaction with and utilization by foreign entities (example: the “Modern Silk Road” concept endorsed by Pres. Karzai and GEN. Petraeus re: Afghanistan). http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/docs/silkroadpapers/1005Afghan.pdf (See page 5.)
Herein, one can see, as COL Jones suggests, a classic — and extremely familiar — example of how “causation for insurgency radiates out from the government” (to wit: government policy [modernization], critical aspects thereof [adapting the state and society and opening these up for better use by foreign entities], alienates and infuriates significant numbers and important elements of the population, who revolt).
Thereafter, as COL Jones suggests, these non-representative governments and the foreign powers who support them — “hold themselves harmless and engage in an endless series of “whack-a-mole” dealing with one insurgency after another.”
COL Jones: As relates to present circumstances — and to many of those in the past — did I get this fairly right?
A principal point that has been made in this and other blogs: “Classic Counter-Insurgency,” by whatever label, is designed for governments whose members are part of the country population, and who are trying to keep their jobs and are not going anywhere. We can help a government learn and do this type of COIN, but we can’t do it for them — especially when their culture is not compatible with what we are trying to offer.
Further, even classical COIN emphasizes that security must exist before you can do the nation-building; but we seem to ignore that — or at least can’t seem to achieve it.
We need a COIN doctrine suited to a “great-power” with no CLASSICAL imperial ambitions, and therefore has no desire to stay where they are at, but who wants to leave as soon as possible — meaning (hopefully) as soon as appropriate objectives have been accomplished. Such a doctrine must account for the anomalies of the local government and culture. That means that we may have to push aside the preferred approach of the State Dept. and empower local villages, tribes, or whatever (when central governments aren’t up to the task). Funding made available to Battalion commanders for use in their area for projects important to local leaders would go much further than the centralized chaos currently in practice.
Such doctrine must also capture the necessity of forcefully holding accountable governments that support insurgents arrayed aginst us. In almost every case, insurgencies are fueled by outside powers; and that is the current case also.
Finally, it must address the issue of when and why to get involved. Some conflicts can and should be ignored; others, if ignored for very long, end up as something that looks like WWII (or WWIII, WWIV, …etc.).
Brother Slap, are you calling me a “political scientist”? 😉
gian
Ahhh, no Sir…it just kinda slipped out (digital smiley face would go here if we had one).
Continuing my Apr 10, 8:39 PM comment above.
Thus, a possible explanation as to the central and most critical problem with the “hearts and minds approach” — and why it consistently fails:
What the conservative elements, and much of the population generally, are rebelling against are modernization policies radiating out from the government which are significantly focused on adapting the state and society — and opening these up — to foreigners and their government, business and other interests. (Thus, the omnipresent and essential assistance provided by interested foreign powers.)
THIS, is what the population is rebelling against — with their hearts, minds and their bodies.
Herein, a massive security force is needed to try to hold the population at bay while this bitter pill of modernization/foreignerization is shoved down the societies throat.
Accordingly, how can one expect, under the circumstances described above, to win hearts and minds — and to secure the trust of the population — when the security forces enlargements, the state/nation-building initiatives and the other projects that are undertaken by the government (with enormous assistance from interested foreign powers) are — in all actuality — seen by the population as being designed to bring about a specific form of state and societal transformation (modernization/foreignization) that the population does not desire and is willing to fight against?
We need a COIN doctrine suited to a “great-power” with no CLASSICAL imperial ambitions, and therefore has no desire to stay where they are at, but who wants to leave as soon as possible — meaning (hopefully) as soon as appropriate objectives have been accomplished. Such a doctrine must account for the anomalies of the local government and culture. That means that we may have to push aside the preferred approach of the State Dept. and empower local villages, tribes, or whatever (when central governments aren’t up to the task). Funding made available to Battalion commanders for use in their area for projects important to local leaders would go much further than the centralized chaos currently in practice.
Great point! Our COIN doctrine doesn’t take into account our strengths, weaknesses, or limitations. Instead of trying to fit our unbending structure/SOPs into this generic out-of-context doctrine, maybe we need to write the doctrine to fit our unbending structure and SOPs! Much more pragmatic-sounding IMO.
Gian:
The two books I mentioned represent to me what so called classical small war fighting is about, mostly fighting. Do you think that modern interpretations have missed the fighting part and overstress the other parts? That is what I think and I wonder what your opinion is.
A COIN doctrine suited to a “great power” with no CLASSICAL imperial ambitions would have to be one that abandoned the central, underlying premise that the “root cause” of insurgencies — and other outlier state and societal difficulties generally — were countries having political and economic foundations/underpinnings which were dissimilar from their (the great power’s) own.
If such a concept (to wit: political and economic order of other societies IS NOT the central underlying cause of difficulties) then:
a. There would be no constant and compelling need for the great power to intervene — so as to address and fix these problems worldwide and
b. One could then move on to consider other reasons and fixes as to various state and societal difficulties.
Signficant problem with this approach: It would seem to drastically reduce the great power’s justification for/freedom of action.
Carl:
I agree again with your characterization of The Village and Galula’s essay on Algeria, and i think common to both is the idea of control of a civilian population rather than trying to win hearts and minds through persuasion. Too, after just re-reading Galula’s book last week I think it too was essentially about establishing physical control over a population which then, as he argues, can allow for the subsequent winning of hearts and minds (yet Galula’s problem like so many other Coin tacticians is the elevation of the coin tactical principle of long term occupation over strategy and policy).
Phsyical control over the Malayan Chinese population and destruction of the links between them and the insurgents in the jungle was what produced the defeat of the insurgency there.
And in Vietnam, whatever success there was in the countryside after Tet was produced through physical control of the population as a result of mass population relocation into government controlled areas caused by the fighting between the two sides.
But the idea that a population can be controlled through turning them away from the insurgents and to the government by the provision of state sponsored services–thus their hearts and minds are won–is what i am saying doesnt work, and has not in the past.
But this is the theory and practice that underpins current coin operations in Afghanistan. Why else would we have left the Pech River Valley in order to create more forces to live in and amongst the people in populated areas? Like I said the operationalized hearts and minds coin idea in Afghanistan is not primarily to kill the enemy (that is secondary) but to turn the population away from the Taliban enemy. This is why on nearly every power point briefing slide that has to do with operations, the people are the “center of gravity” or the “prize”.
gian
For what it is worth, I believe a couple of things that are material to this conversation:
1. That America is very much an imperial power. The historic difference, and it is a significant one, is that we are an “Empire without Colonies.” Sometimes that leads to a muddy bit of mixed measures and expectations; and sadly we are applying the tactics developed by empires WITH colonies, which we have learned very well. On the other hand, we have not done so well on accepting that we too are an empire, or on grasping the strategic nuances that Great Britain learned as she backed off (under popular pressure) from her own colonial ambitions. My take is that countries learn tactics on the way up, but they only truly learn strategy on the way back down… Humble students are better listeners, and failure is a superior teacher to success.
But yes, we do need to address this unique role in this unique information fueled age of globalization and come to grips with both our colonial past and how to best proceed in a non-colonial way as an empire without colonies.
2. I strongly disagree with Gains assessment of both Malaya and Vietnam. Both applied similar tactics, yet Vietnam failed miserably. Other than the geography of Malaya being a peninsula; and the fact that we jumped into a liberation insurgency that was only half complete (both significant facts); the big difference is that Great Britain liberated the Malayan people from their illegitimate foreign control of their governance and ensured the insurgent segment of the populace was included in the new independent country of Malaysia. In Vietnam the US did the opposite, and blocked nationalist efforts to unify peacefully in ’56 and then dedicated ourselves to the creation and preservation of a series of puppet regimes designed to answer to US national interests rather than to those of the nation-state of Vietnam. Again, we applied the tactics, but missed the strategic lesson of Great Britain’s approach.
I believe, Gian, that you and many of our peers continue to miss this critical lesson. I may be wrong, of course, but even if I am it is a critical point I would love to discuss with you some day. I think it is a lynchpin to a breakthrough in our strategic understanding that helps take us to the next level of effectiveness in this post-Cold War world.
Cheers!
Bob
Gian wrote:
Bob wrote:
I’m certainly no expert on the Malayan Emergency, but it feels like there is something missing from both of these statements, neither of which seems incorrect or mutually exclusive. The apparent oversimplification may, however, be both necessary and to some extent desirable.
Lee Kuan Yew’s new book offers his view on some of the local contexts. I haven’t read “Malaysian Maverick” by Barry Wain about Mahathir Mohamed, but even more context is likely available therein.
The general trend in Classic, Diet or New COIN, however, seems to be either to discount or denigrate the views of the native (or ‘gone native’) market when they diverge or disagree with the overall Mission. Not a criticism, just an impression.
Backwards Observer:
Very astute observations. Gian and Bob both have things for sale and couch their statements accordingly. The truth, as you note, is likely between the two and they are not at all mutually exclusive.
You are also regrettably — even embarrassingly — correct in noting that discounting and denigrating of ‘native’ views is indeed generally endemic in the west.
Robert C. Jones:
That wasn’t the big difference, it was one of many. Anyone comparing Viet Nam to Malaya is simply eliding facts — the real “big difference” was that the British were the government; they were doing COIN in Malaya. Our attempt to transport that methodology to Viet Nam was as flawed as you say but the issue was far more than not capturing the nuances of the UK approach. We could not have done that had we wished to do so. We were meddling where we didn’t need to do so.
Also note that your use of the word “illegitimate” is not correct, Counselor. It may have been morally wrong to you and others, it may have been undesirable in the eyes of many — but it wasn’t illegitimate; it was in accordance with law, accepted standards of the day and thus your sales tag has deceptive advertising. 🙂
You are IMO also mistaken in saying the US is an Imperial Power without Colonies (not least because many Puerto Ricans and some others in the Caribbean and Pacific would vehemently disagree :D); we are in fact merely a major power with assumed (unnecessarily so, I might add…) worldwide responsibilities. That does not an empire make and those foolish souls who wish to think we are that create a number of problems around the world to no good end — an that remains true regardless of their sensings and methodology; meddling is meddling.
James Harris, Jr and Grant Martin:
I agree we need a different ‘doctrine’ (though I’d rather go after the policy folks that think we have to fix ‘broken states’ — they’re the real problem…), I agree that we need to make that doctrine fit or adapt to our sadly bureaucratic tendencies but I’m not at all sure we should contemplate having to account for the anomalies of the local government and culture other than tangentially.
Quick in, wreak havoc, depart. That can be done and is far preferable to the inevitable bog down entailed with lengthy stays. Fewer casualties of all sorts and less damage accrue from horrific but quick, sharp actions than do from low key, long term engagements…
Such a policy and doctrine to support it would make many unhappy but most of those folks, in the US and elsewhere are unhappy with us anyway.
That saving humanity foolishness gets us in much trouble, worldwide and we do not do it at all well.
To paraphrase what you say, Grant, we are really foolish to keep playing our weaknesses to the opponents strengths…
Sixty years of it and we’ve learned nothing…
It is somewhat ironic that John Nagle’s book “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife”, which influenced the new COIN crowd actually focused on our inability to learn and adapt during the Vietnam Conflict.
Of course Vietnam was much more than an insurgency, something many historical reviews of the Vietnam conflict fail to mention, and we finally did learn and adapt, but it was too late for the American audience.
What is ironic in all this is I think an argument could be made now that John’s think tank CNAS is promoting old ideas that supported the surge (because it sort of worked in Iraq) although there is no indication it is working in Afghanistan we continue to surge and blindly this “hearts and minds” doctrine regardless of the results. Does this really differ from the argument made his book?
Ken,
When I use “legitimate government” in speaking or writing on insurgency, I mean a defacto recognition in the eyes of the segement of the populace most supportive of the insurgency of the right of the government to govern. You correctly speak of the “de jure” or legal recognition of a government by outside parties. For purpose of insurgency, such proclamations (typically established by the very colonial or neo-colonial power intervening to sustain said government in power) are moot. It is a legal fiction.
I understand why the US rationalized our position in Vietnam, but that does not change the nature of our position in Vietnam. We threw the Vietnamese people under a French bus following WWII; and then following Korea we felt that it was our vital national interest to run over them once again in our own US bus. I’m not judging those decisions, but nor will I sugar coat them or take them out of context in some sense of “my country right or wrong, my country.”
There are consequences for such actions, and the consequence was a long war protecting a series of illegitimate governments against a nationalist insurgency operating out of the formal sanctuary of North Vietnam that we graciously helped create upon the defeat of France. Just because two states were created by Western governments in mid stream it did not change the nature of the conflict to one of State Vs. State. That is a fiction we wrote and then bought into.
No, I stand by my assessment. The big strategic lesson we ignored from Great Britain’s experience from folding up its tent all around the globe as we rolled our own out in the name of Containment, was that governments that do not draw their legitimacy from souces the governed populace recognizes, or just as bad, governments that grow to treat their populaces with impunity under the protection of a strong external power, fuel internal subversion and insurgency. We created an unsustainable framework in Vietnam, and true to form it failed. We are doing the same thing today in Afghanistan, because as I mentioned to Gian, we still refuse to recognize the strategic lessons of these conflicts.
We can argue tactics of threat centric vs population centric until the cows come home, it really does not much matter. What matters is the strategic framework, and our colonial-derived model of governmetnal manipulation is a failed strategic framework.
This is the elephant in the room.
Cheers,
Bob
(BTW, this has developed into a great discussion)
My 11:40 comment above re-done:
A COIN doctrine suited to a great power with no classical imperial ambitions would seem to have to be one that abandoned:
a. The classic premise of imperialism, to wit: that the “root cause” of insurgencies — and other outlier state and societal difficulties generally — is that the problem countries have different political and economic foundations/underpinnings/connections than that of the subject great power.
b. The classic “fix” of imperialism, to wit: to require that the problem countries adopt some variation of the political and economic order of the subject great power and, thereafter, connect to its system.
If, however, this classically imperial “root cause” concept was abandoned, then this might present certain severe difficulties for the great power concerned, such as:
a. The great power might then have to acknowledge that there are other reasons for these lesser state/societal difficulties (such as: great power interference and need).
b. Lastly, abandonment of the “root cause” concept might significantly reduce the great power’s justification for and freedom of action — and its ability to profit from same — which today, as in the past, would seem to largely be derived from novel explanations and representations of this “not like us = problems that we must fix — by making like us and connecting to our system” classic imperial theme.
Oh, and I realize “Empire” is a 4-letter word to many Americans, so to clarify, I largely agree with the perspective on this topic that George Friedman lays on the American Empire beginning on page 14 of “the Next Decade.” Not one of conquest or design, more one of accident, but one all the same.
And I agree with Ken that we have quietly but diligently clung to most of the critical ports we stole from a fading Spain. I can’t imagine a sitaution where we would give them up unless forced to, but then people smarter than me thought the same about Clark and our naval facilities in Luzon, or the Panama canal. Pragmatically we should probably take those back as well, but treat them much as we do Gitmo in Cuba, and stay out of the governance manipulation business. Sometimes being rude may well be less disruptive than being nice in such matters. Still consequences, but ones that are more easily managed in the short term.
Bill M:
Just as an aside (and in agreement with RCJ that this is an excellent discussion which is why SWJ rules)at least from my reading of the operational record on Vietnam and Malaya through archival research none of it supports Nagl’s conclusion that in Malaya the Brits did learn and adapt (but only after the arrival of Templer) and in Vietnam the US Army did not. Shoot the archives are full of examples of the US Army learning and adapting in Vietnam. And in Malaya the British field army pretty much got it from the start, nobody really had any worries about them, it was the Malayan police where concern rested.
And to make qualitative comparisons between the two and draw straight lines between them saying that the British got it and the US didnt is really quite unrealistic. The two wars were not really even comparable in scope and context. In Vietnam the Americans had 58,000 killed and in Malaya the British had no more than 270 regular soldiers killed (from the British iles, and another 200 from common wealth countries). The British could not have lost the war, it was simply a problem of how long it would take them to defeat the insurgency. If it had not been for America’s loss in the Vietnam War the British Coin campaign in Malaya would have been an unrecognized blip on the radar screen and cast into the dustbin of the past, never making it into the pages of prominent history.
gian
Robert C. Jones:
Lawyers are fascinating. Lewis Carroll must be proud. “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ 😉
Um, no, it is a legal fact. Whatever the de facto recognition of the disaffected, minority or majority, is, it remains broadly irrelevant to that fact. That fact, however, is similarly irrelevant to the desire of that segment of the populace which is not fictional — and often, not legal. 😉
My point in bringing that up at all, Bob, is that it is one of the many ways you undercut your own message. Words are important and misused they can provoke erroneous beliefs and perceptions.
You are certainly entitled to your assessment — others differ. There is no arbiter or right or wrong; we all just have opinions, not de facto or de jure positions which can be certified as gospel. While what you wrote there is often correct, those two rationales are not the only things that fuel insurgencies. No sense in breaking out the other causes here, been done elsewhere. I’d merely suggest that target fixation can be deadly…
However, we can as always agree on this:
Not sure it’s an elephant but I strongly agree that ANY model of governmental manipulation is a failed strategic framework — including the Jones Model. It’s meddling. It’s unnecessary — there are better ways to achieve the aims.
George Friedman is a smart guy but he’s no more infallible or authoritative than you or I. I’ve read excerpts of “The Next Decade” and have a copy enroute to read completely. I understand where you and he — plus many others — get the Empire idea. It’s a valid premise. I just happen to believe you’re all wrong for one simple reason: Running an Empire, with or without subservient nations, colonies or dependencies requires ruthlessness. Barring extreme provocation, we are not ruthless.
Anyone with delusions of the American Empire (sans Satrapies) should really give that quite dangerous fact a lot of thought. IOW, there are imperial attributes, no question — but they should be suppressed and other models sought because we have not and will not do the Empire thing at all well. Why set ourselves up for failure?
gian p. gentile:
I very much agree that the British did really “learn and adapt” in Malaya. A bit. Having talked to a number of Australian, British and New Zealand officers and men who were there, the British Army just did its thing with few changes. The adaptations, as you say, were in the civil area — and they took time.
I also agree that the US Army and Marines did pretty well in adapting in Viet Nam. The problem was, again as in Malaya, on the civil side exacerbated significantly by our indirect, not the local government, role — one we will always have in such operations. Note the same problems in Iraq and Afghanistan to this day — ten and eight-plus years later…
As you say, lacking Viet Nam, Malaya would have been another Konfrontasi, barely recalled by many who were not involved.
Bill M:
It is ironic, isn’t it? What’s that line; “Physician, heal thyself…” 😀
Interesting what happens to hard held contrarian theories and ‘known truths’ when one becomes part of the establishment.
Ken wrote:
…in noting that discounting and denigrating of ‘native’ views is indeed generally endemic in the west.
In my limited experience, professional soldiers seem barely able to stand listening to their own civilians, let alone a bunch of filthy heathens. But as far as going to distant lands and heeding the ignorant babblings of the unsaved, the US military is probably ahead of the curve. At some point, however, the effort probably seems like a thankless and counterproductive charade, especially if you’re losing friends while doing it. F***king humans.
Uh, just wanna apologise for the tone of my last post; it was by no means directed at anyone here. Ken White, thanks for expressing that sentiment. The point I was trying to make is that people from the same family don’t even listen to each other at times. I think the US makes a greater effort than it is sometimes given credit for, especially on the individual level. Thanks.
In insurgency, the perception of the insurgent populace is everything. That is an unavoidable reality, and throughout history the counterinsurgent has argued “facts” and “law” and “rationality”; and all have been frustrated that none of that really matters.
I use American examples often as I am attempting to help an American audience understand this. We see our engagement in the world from our own perspective; that is natural. We must expect that even those who largely appreciate our engagement would see it from a different perspective; and that those who do not appreciate it see it from another perspective still. When a UW actor travels to, or a nationalist insurgent rises from, a dissatisfied populace and begins putting their own “radical” spin on the situation, those perspectives diverge even more.
Sam Adams was a nationalist insurgent who put a “radical” spin on the situation in Massachusetts Colony. Arguably the majority of the populace was largely satisfied with British governance. We don’t talk about them much, and our history labels loyal citizens as “Tories” and relegates them to the shadows of our history. They were the silent majority.
The government agents in the colony, and certainly the government in England was confused, shocked, and angered by the words, and then actions of that dissatisfied minority rallied to action by the strong words and leadership of men such as Adams. From their perspective it was completely irrational, and an affront to the legitimate government in England and forward in the colony. It was certainly illegal. So the crown logically set out to enforce the rule of law and to defeat the insurgent.
Now we know how history played out, but who among us believe this issue would have gone away if the military had successfully suppressed the rebellion in Massachusetts, while leaving the issues of governance, respect, justice and liberty unresolved??
Similarly, who among us believes that the government could not have made small, but important changes along those lines of operation and never had to suppress the insurgents at all. Such changes would have robbed the rebels of much of their base of support, swelling the ranks of the Tories (those loyal to their legitimate government and controlled by the rule of law) and left Sam Adams blustering in a tavern to a handful of malcontents.
Governments too often confuse “legal” with “proper”; and “right” with “righteous”. Being within ones legal rights means very little when a significant segment of the populace perceives ones governance to be improper and unrighteous. This is the very essence of insurgency. A strategic framework that ignores this essence and instead employs bold tactical actions at the symptoms of the problem has never (that I am aware of) produced more than a temporary suppression of the current insurgent, as such engagement does nothing to address the underlying conditions of insurgency upon which the insurgent feeds.
I agree that Malaya and Vietnam and Afghanistan are all wildly different in hundreds of ways. But insurgency is ruled by human nature, and human nature has a common thread running through it that gives us a basis to build upon.
In Malaya, the Brits had to learn new tactics for that environment, that populace, that threat. But strategically they had been evolving for nearly 200 years, from Yorktown to Cape Town, to Delhi to Kuala Lumpur. We do well to elevate our sights from the study of battles, campaigns and wars from time to time to think about the strategic context in which they occur.
In court it may be all about the facts and the law, but the only opinion on those topics that matters is that of the jury. The same is true of insurgency, except that it is the insurgent segment of the populace that is the jury. Counterinsurgents tend to ignore that jury. We can argue rule of law, facts, and how we were in the right to the court and get up and down nods from everyone all day long. But it only takes a minority on the jury to disagree lose the case. If there is a Sam Adams in that jury pool who disagrees, there may be no amount of law and fact that can help you.
Again, law and facts are interesting, but perception is everything, and the perception of the counterinsurgent is largely immaterial.
Robert C. Jones:
Selected American examples? 😉
Or too corrupt, not corrupt enough, ideologically incorrect, not controlled by the proper ‘party’ or family, supportive of laws that impede the making of profits by some — any of dozens of other reasons (many of which played in the American Revolution which, as you know, was far from being only about issues of governance, respect, justice and liberty…).
The insurgents in that case were indeed a minority group as is often the case. You often seem to gloss over the fact that minority ‘won’ not by swaying the majority to join them, not by a more powerful message but mostly due to the overall military ineptitude of the nominal counterinsurgent and his other problems and expenses elsewhere to include at home. A troubling and regrettable factual counterpart to our experience in Viet Nam among other places BTW.
I hear you Bob — and I agree with many of your conclusions and your main point that COIN is a poor idea and should be avoided. We simply have a minor contretemps on the causes of insurgency in some cases and a major disagreement on the degree of meddling in other nations in which the US should in future participate.
You end with:
That may be correct — is certainly in some cases, perhaps not in others but in telling tales or establishing a position for consideration, eliding facts and / or modifying them and misusing words can potentially get one perceived as a Con artist — the perceptions of such an artist are accorded little respect and thus can become immaterial.
Your main point — that we need to change our policies and strenuously avoid the heavy COIN bit — is too important to be badly made and thus possibly ill considered…
For BillM, RCJones, Ken White, Gian Gentile and Grant Martin:
Slap’s One Minute Guerrilla Warfare Course. I new this film existed and have been looking for it a couple of years. In 1973 I participated in a similar exercise and is pretty much the basis of whatever knowledge of what Special Warfare is. Although because of how course turned out I ended being in the AO for an extra few days after the problem and got to receive a lot of up close and personal attention of the SF types. And to think it all started when I went from SF HQ’s to SF HQ’s looking for the Billy Jack Green Beret Karate stuff manual. If you watch the film you will see why I believe we already know how to fight these kinds of wars we just seem to have forgotten. And yes in 1973 there was a very real concern that the USA could be taken over internally by a foreign communist or some type of terrorist guerrilla organization. And now without further delay Guerrilla,USA courtesy of the US Army Big Picture Series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuBRetRHXxI&feature=related
Ken,
Certainly not the con man here, though you raise an excellent point. In many ways we have been conning ourselves in regard to the nature of our engagement and the conflicts it has drawn us into over the years.
My intended role is much more that of voice from the crowd that points out the indelicate observation: “But he hasn’t got anything on.”
The con had been perpertrated by others. It is also well to remember the selling point of those mythical con men selling magical cloth:
“the most magnificent cloth that one could imagine; cloth of most beautiful colours and elaborate patterns. Not only was the material so beautiful, but the clothes made from it had the special power of being invisible to everyone who was stupid or not fit. for his post.”
Our COIN Doctrine is made of such magical cloth, and few dare to challenge that “fact.” to avoid being labled in such a way. I’ve never worried about such labels so sometimes make uncomfortable observations.
cheers,
Bob
Robert C. Jones:
I know you aren’t trying to con anyone, I’m merely pointing out that you appear to be occasionally careless with your words and can thus inadvertently give some the impression that what you say is unimportant or incorrect. I provide that only FWIW, obviously you can ignore it totally…
While I agree the COIN doctrine is flawed, I do not agree that it is a con as somewhat implied or that few challenge it, rather I think that few challenge it as vehemently and as often as do you. Nor do I think your opinions are uncomfortable observations or that many would see them as such.
Opinions forthrightly expressed as such, nothing wrong and many things right with that approach. I have no problem with it at all, encourage it in fact in all I meet though I do think that if one has an important message, it is quite critical that the message not be polluted or skewed either purposely or carelessly. YMMV.
An attempt to address the critical issue of “change:”
The perception of many potential insurgents — yesterday and today — is that the programs/policies being pushed on the population by the local government are designed by “outside” powers, and are being implemented with the assistance of same, to bring about certain unwanted state, societal and/or governing changes.
Specifically, these potential insurgents perceive that these unwanted changes are being made so as to better accommodate and provide for — not the local population — but, rather the “outside” power, its society and its way of life.
As in the case of the American Revolution, when such unwanted “change” policies are implemented by the outside power — through the local government — and when significant security forces are brought in/developed by the outside power to hold the population at bay, then this only reinforces these perceptions (to wit: that the changes are designed with outside power, not the local population, in mind).
Same-Same today.
Bottom line:
a. Whereas, the outside power, its host government and certain of the more-liberal elements of the population might want, welcome and/or be more-tolerant of significant and fundamental change,
b. The more-conservative elements of the population, and the guardians of the present order, these elements are very likely to believe that it is their duty — and a matter of their honor — to fight and die so as to preclude/prevent such unwanted (and in their view unjust or unhealty) change.
Nice thread going here, folks, and I don’t think anyone here is a con man. I do, however, lean in the Jones direction: yes, I think this nation and its military has been conning itself for some years now. Our national mythology just won’t quit. Result: we’re broke and we’re discredited in much of the world.
Marty Dempsey says Win, Learn, Focus, Adapt, Win Again. We win little and we learn nothing. We adapt–we are forever adapting–but we learn nothing. COIN is not about the client nation. COIN is about us. And we just never learn that lesson about not putting our willies into the grinder. If he could somehow come back, a guy who actually survived that war that began 150 years ago today would be amazed at how little we learned from that war and all of the others.
As a result, here we are fighting over the entrails of a once-great nation.
Posted by Gian,
“And to make qualitative comparisons between the two and draw straight lines between them saying that the British got it and the US didnt is really quite unrealistic. The two wars were not really even comparable in scope and context.””
Sir we are in complete agreement on this, and I have posted many times throughout SWJ questioning the relevance of John’s comparison between the two conflicts. Although I still enjoyed the book, I disagree with many of his findings. His focus was on the U.S. military failing to learn, which isn’t true, but I agree we could have and should have learned quicker.
Vietnam was more complex than either Afghanistan or Iraq. We were fighting a hybrid war there, where both we and the enemy were waging both conventional and unconventional fights simultaneously for an extended period (no phase III decisive actions, than phase IV stability operations). While some don’t like the phrase and its definition, it definitely fell into the category of a “wicked problem”. When we applied adequate fire power to deal with the NVA we created a lot of unintended consequences that isolated us from the populace, but if we focused solely on COIN efforts we would set ourselves up for a decisive defeat by NVA conventional forces. None the less, we eventually managed to defeat to both the communist conventional and unconventional forces by adapting from the tactical (village security) to the strategic (Nixon’s expansion of the war into Cambodia), even if it took longer than it should have.
S. Vietnam only fell after we left and only when North Vietnamese conventional forces rolled into Saigan on their tanks. They didn’t fall due to poor governance. That argument is taken to the extreme too many times.
Furthermore, while some historians dismiss the domino theory, lets not forget there were successful communist insurgencies in both Laos and Cambodia and a robust communist insurgency in Thailand that was eventually defeated, so it sure as heck looked like dominos falling if one wanted to use that analogy.
My original point is we have been Afghanistan longer than we were in Vietnam, and in Afghanistan we have adapted less and have been less successful than we were in Vietnam for a lot reasons.
What lessons have we learned? I’m not confident I have seen any critical thinking addressing what works and what doesn’t, instead there are simply two prevailing schools of thought. One school promotes the FM 31-20 approach to COIN, and the other school claims we can’t and shouldn’t do COIN/nation building period (instead we should do CT only). Neither school in my view has the answer, they are both simply schools based on faith, not learning.
Publius: Win, Learn, Focus, Adapt, Win Again
I agree with your sentiment. I submit many think we’ve “won” already (“win” and “win again”- and are “winning”; kind of hard to “learn” if you start in a biased and arguably invalid mode. I wonder if this is mainly describing what we do at the tactical level?
Reminds me of something Bob says a lot: “doesn’t matter how much you “win” at the tactical and operational level if your strategy is all wrong.”
Bill M: What lessons have we learned? I’m not confident I have seen any critical thinking addressing what works and what doesn’t
Great point. While I don’t necessarily agree with you that Vietnam was “more” complex than Afghanistan is (I think you could argue the opposite and I also think you could make the case it is just “different” as opposed to more or less complex), I wholeheartedly agree with your conclusions.
I submit that the lessons we’ve learned in Afghanistan have been short-term lessons at the tactical level that are unsustainable and non-transferable, and at the operational and strategic lessons we’ve learned nada. I am working on a paper that argues just that with examples at all levels- but suffice it to say that your comment on critical thinking is spot-on IMO.
In order to win, learn, focus, adapt, and win again, I believe that we must first come to better know ourselves and our enemy:
a. Ourselves: We seem exist for — and are actually in the business of — doing outlier (not like us) state and societal change (to make more like us and to incorporate into our system). Believing that we have, in the past 60 or so years, successfully transformed such great powers as Germany, Japan, Russia and China, we now believe that we must move on to transform the rest of the world; so as to adequately provide for this new world order (all great powers substantially transformed and incorporated) which we have created. Thus, we must acknowledge our role as the aggressors; who seek to complete the job of state and societal change and incorporation into our system; which we intend to do by exploiting insurgencies, natural disasters, humanitarian crises, other state and societal difficulties, and declaring that these as reasons to intervene/reason to protect — so as to adequately deal with these “root cause” problems (state and society not like us and not part of our system).
b. Our enemy: Our enemy is anyone or anything that would tend stand in our way re: this agenda to bring about and complete the job of achieving universal state and societal change. Thus, anyone who is not like us — and who would wish to remain so — or who, in order to defend their present way of life, might become radicalized or seek to achieve their own, distinctly different order/system; these entites are our sworn enemy.
BillM, is right what have we learned or rather my point what have we forgotten and don’t seem to want to remember. If you watch the clip I posted the start point was the Government in exile! In other words SF soldiers used to know and be taught that the end was the installation of a legitimate Government. Fighing better, Winning better, Learning how to do that better is not going to get us anywhere, it is always remembering that what follows the War is what really matters. Like I keep we seem to have forgotten that.
Would I be wrong to suggest, in light of my “know oneself and one’s enemies” comment above, that if one really wanted to understand Western involvement in Malaysia and Vietnam back-in-the-day — and present-day Western involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, etc. — then one need only look to the Western “transformation/incorporation” agenda that I have outlined in my comment above? The thing would seem to have an easily seen and understood pedigree. (To wit: Great Britain, France, et al, simply having lateraled this transformation/incorporation mission-football off to us when they made the mistake of fighting among and nearly destroying themselves in the first half of the 20th Century.)
Likewise, could radical Islam and its lure presently, much like Communism and its appeal back-in-the-day, be better understood in light of this continuing Western “transformation/incorporation of outlier states and societies” agenda? (To wit: radical Islam presently, much like Communism back-in-the-day, is/was a desparate attempt to defend against/avoid transformation and incorporation into the Western world; in both cases, by suggesting a completely opposed/opposite state and societal order and sending out fighters in this opposed order’s behalf?)
The major difference between those who fight against us today and those we opposed us back-in-the-day: Today’s enemies would seem to have no great power champion with nuclear weapons. (Thus, the problem and emphasis re: Iran?)
Bill C.
It appears that you look at the U.S. as a leader of a coalition united in ideology, and leading the charge to transform the undeveloped world (integrate them in our economic system and value system). While this may be true, we sure as heck are not the only nation to engage in this type of activity.
Islam has historically been an aggressive religion/political system that imposed change with the sword first, then forcefully converting those they conquered to Islam, which in turn greatly transformed the existing indigious culture. This was a bad idea that went viral on horseback and camel back.
Communism as an ideology may have been a response to capitalism; however, it is hard to see the subsequent worldwide communist subversive movement led by the USSR and a lesser extent PRC as “defensive” in nature. It was very aggressive and relatively ruthless. Where they did win they implemented much deeper political and social reforms than any non-communism Western country did. It was basically submit or die. Go to the re-education camps, if you fail go to one of the many mass graves with your buddies. Admittedly the Catholic Church was guilty of similiar behavior at times, but not to the extent of the communists, and definitely not in the modern era.
Of course Greece, Rome, and France (under Napolean) all conquered territories and implemented reforms to various degrees. I don’t think this is unique to the U.S., but it is simply the nature of man. What we need to ask ourselves is the relevance of pushing our ideology to national security.
@ Bill C –
I tend to agree with Bill M..
Or rather, I think you have do have a point but I don’t think that there is any kind of official one-world conspiracy. Eisenhower stated in his famous “military-industrial” speech that we had to be wary of a “technocratic-scientific elite” and its idea-making. Official bureaucratic Washington has its ideological assumptions regardless the elected officials – that’s my outsider read of it. So we have Grand Strategy by default: “helping allies” modernize or democratize or whatever the latest big idea.
I’ve linked the following extract in the comments section at Abu Muqawama and I want to stress that I don’t endorse all of it – mainly because I’m too badly educated on the subjects to know what I am talking about. And yet, I insist on commenting. Hubris!
– from Pundita blog
I know the language is a bit rougher than the SWJED care for, but I hope you keep this up for discussion purposes.
I do think there is a cultural hubris within our government- and especially our military- that holds that one can bring a nation (whether it is a “nation” in name only or not) to an economic and governmental level that we understand and are familiar with almost overnight. We seem to have little appreciation for how long it took us to build our own institutions and infrastructure to support our system and how much of it “emerged” and would have been impossible to predict and centrally control. This “emergence” concept would hold that Afghan- or any other system- institutions and infrastructure would necessarily turn out much differently if allowed to mature over time and at a sustainable pace. Democracy doesn’t look the same everywhere- and some functioning societies don’t even look democratic to many of us.
While I think our democracy functions very well in some areas, one of the areas I think we are not suited well for performing is “nation-building”. If you buy-off on the concept as a possibility (someone performing nation-building well), then I would argue that our nation isn’t built to do it for several reasons: but the biggest one in my opinion is that we are so divorced from the realities of most of the rest of the world that we don’t understand what is required to affect change. We have so little empathy with others- not because we don’t try- but because we can’t. We have big hearts but ineffective heads.