Small Wars Journal

The US in Afghanistan: Follow Sun Tzu rather than Clausewitz to Victory

Sat, 12/11/2010 - 10:53am

The US in Afghanistan: Follow Sun Tzu rather than Clausewitz to Victory

by Ben Zweibelson

Download the Full Article: The US in Afghanistan: Follow Sun Tzu rather than Clausewitz to Victory

Over the past nine years United States counterinsurgency strategy reflected a reliance on Clausewitzian industrial-era tenets with a faulty emphasis on superior western technology, doctrine fixated on lethal operations, and a western skewed perspective on jus ad bellum (just cause for war). American military culture is largely responsible for the first two contextual biases, while western society is liable for the third in response to September 11, 2001. To turn this operational failure around, the U.S. military instrument of power should replace the teachings of 19th century German military strategist Carl Von Clausewitz with Ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu and abandon the aforementioned contextual factors in favor of more appropriate counterinsurgency alternatives. These include an increased emphasis on civil-military relations, jus in bello (just conduct during war) through non-lethal operations, and quantifiable conflict resolution that includes negotiating with moderate Taliban militia groups, as unpalatable as that sounds to military purists. This paper stresses that moderates do not include radical Islamic terrorists or non-native fighters.

Download the Full Article: The US in Afghanistan: Follow Sun Tzu rather than Clausewitz to Victory

Major Ben Zweibelson is an active duty Infantry Officer currently attending the School for Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He has a Masters in Liberal Arts from Louisiana State University and a Masters in Military Arts and Science from the Air Force. He participated in two deployments to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Previously, he published Penny Packets Revisited: How the USAF Should Adapt to 21st Century Irregular Warfare.

About the Author(s)

Comments

Backwards Observer

Wed, 12/22/2010 - 6:41am

Anonymous:

Here's something to consider from "How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility Of Human Reason In Everyday Life" by Thomas Gilovich:

<em><blockquote>Our desire to believe comforting things about ourselves and about the world does not mean we believe willy-nilly what we want to believe; such flights of fancy are reined in by the existence of a real world and the need to perceive it accurately. Rather, our motivations have their effects more subtly through the ways in which we cognitively process information relevant to a given belief. What evidence do we consider? How much of it do we consider? What criteria do we use as sufficient evidence for a belief? Cognition and motivation collude to allow our preferences to exert influence over what we believe.

Essentially the same point has been articulated by social psychologist Ziva Kunda, who argues that people are more likely to believe things they want to believe, but that their capacity to do so is constrained by objective evidence and by their ability "...to construct a justification of their desired conclusion that would persuade a dispassionate observer. They draw the desired conclusion only if they can muster up the evidence to support it." It is informative in this respect that people generally think of themselves as objective. People rarely think that they hold a particular belief simply because they want to hold it, the evidence be damned. This sense of objectivity can nevertheless be illusory: Although people consider their beliefs to be closely tied to relevant evidence, they are generally unaware that the same evidence could be looked at differently, or that there is other, equally pertinent evidence to consider. As Kunda describes it, "...people do not realize that the [inferential] process is biased by goals, that they are only accessing a subset of their relevant knowledge, that they would probably access different beliefs and [inferential] rules in the presence of different goals, and that they might even be capable of justifying opposite conclusions on different occasions.</em></blockquote>(locations 1466-1467 on kindle for mac)

Backwards Observer

Wed, 12/22/2010 - 5:01am

Anonymous:

Here's one possible problem that "open source warfare" seems to underestimate. Even well-intentioned "osw" ascribes to a target audience an ability or even a desire to think critically about information in context. As far as I can tell, clear thinking these days is about as common as getting a reach-around from an air force chaplain.

Anonymous (not verified)

Wed, 12/22/2010 - 8:15am

Backwards Observer;

Great quote--have to give it some thought though.

Back to the Chinese---they have been involved far deeper than the IC wants us to believe.

Was on the receiving end of Chinese made proximity fuzes w/air burst ability that were clearly not in Saddam's inventory in 2003 and it was 2005/06 when they rained in on us.

There was the feeling that the fuzes had come from the black market and had been smuggled in but this DoS Cable indicates to me that the Chineses are going head to head indirectly via surrogates and the US government is not so sure how to respond politically to the challenge--nor does it want the public well informed about the indirect/direct challenge.

Backwards Observer

Wed, 12/22/2010 - 9:38am

Although going head to head indirectly sounds a little confusing, I think I understand what you mean. The article you linked starts off by saying the Chinese are advising the Taliban and are possibly in the process of supplying them with manpads. Then it walks back a little and says the advisors are probably just observers, possibly keeping tabs on the Taliban. Whichever one it is, threat analysis will pick the advisor role as the most likely. The scenario then chosen will be that the PLA is attempting to do the US what the US did to Soviets. History suggests that this'll work out just great for everyone involved.

You would know better than me, but there are many possible ways of reading it, I guess. To pick just two: the US is projecting and the Chinese advisors are just observing, or ; the Chinese think they can control and disguise their involvement with the Taliban better than the US did. My guess would be that they are more interested in fostering future economic ties with a potential local power-broker. If they're smart, they'll avoid any mil-mil assistance that the Taliban may request. Pissing off the US military is generally not a good idea.

Other possibilities besides unofficial official involvement could include military black market, government black market, local military black market, local government black market, private industry black market, private investor black market, foreign proxy thru private investor etc etc. I dunno. I only know what I read and the only thing I've read about this is the article you linked. Again, as the excerpt I quoted above suggests, any analysis could say as much about the analyst as about the situation being analysed.

DAS (not verified)

Thu, 12/23/2010 - 8:42am

Back to the topic: Clausewitz is inferior from Boyd's Pattern of Conflict, slides 41 and 42

Critique
•Clausewitz overemphasized decisive battle and underemphasized strategic maneuver.

•Clausewitz emphasized method and routine at the tactical level.

Clausewitz incorrectly stated: "A center of gravity is always found where the mass is concentrated most densely"--then argued that this is the place where the blows must be aimed and where the decision should be reached. He failed to develop idea of generating many non-cooperative centers of gravity by striking at those vulnerable, yet critical, tendons, connections, and activities that permit a larger system to exist.

•Clausewitz did not see that many non-cooperative, or conflicting, centers of gravity paralyze adversary by denying him the opportunity to operate in a directed fashion, hence they impede vigorous activity and magnify friction.

Likely result

•Operations end in a "bloodbath"--via the well regulated stereotyped tactics and unimaginative battles of attrition suggested by Clausewitz.

"MAC" McCallister (not verified)

Thu, 12/23/2010 - 1:21pm

WOW...

I've been contemplating Clausewitz as well as the Seven Chinese Military Classics for about 25 years now (Sun Tzu is not the only one!)... Major General Clausewitz makes your head hurt, especially when you read him in German... "Vom Kriege" is a bitch... Don't agree that he overemphazises decisive battles and underemphasized strategic maneuver (people who read or don't read Clausewitz do that)... I guess there are folks who think that Napoleon's center position is not a strategic maneuver if it wins you the campaign and the war.

What I've learned is that in order to get Karl, you might also have to gain a rudimentary understanding of the state of the scientific and philosophical animus of his time, an appreciation for Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis approach and notions of the "ideal type". Vom Kriege is an expression of the Hegelian dialectic; how opposing factors interact and how unexpected new developments emerge from within the fog of war. His conclusions just don't mesh with the notion of method and routine ueber alles.

Without MG Clausewitz we would not have this intelligent conversation about where "blows must be aimed and where the decision should be reached". Without MG Clausewitz's concept of a center of gravity we would not be discussing "non-cooperative, or conflicting, centers of gravity" or magnified "friction"... Friction is also a Clausewitzian concept...

I personally see no reason why we should hold MG Clausewitz responsibility for not developing the idea of non-cooperative centers of gravity and their vulnerabilities... These should be developed by modern theorists. On the other hand, we may not want to use the terms center of gravity and friction... God forbid that we'd give the old man more credit for his insights into the interactions of factors in warfare than he deserves...

Clausewitz and Sun Tzu should be read as complementary rather than opposing texts.

... but what the hell... I also believe that Clausewitz didn't advocate "bloodbaths"... or attrition warfare as the end-all... Maybe MG Clausewitz is only attempting to explain the factors and interactions during attrition... Now apply what you might have learned from MG Clausewitz to maneuver warfare... or network centric warfare or population-centric warfare... if you are able. How do these factors and interactions play themselves out over time? A Clausewitzian question indeed.

Maybe a deeper appreciation for Moltke the Elder and the younger, Alfred von Schlieffen and the German General Staff's fascination with the Battle of Cannae; as well as French, English and German General Staff prejudices and stylized forms or warfare that helped shape popular military opinion about the man and his work might be a good thing at this point of the conversation...

... or maybe this conversation has reached its culminating point...

r/
MAC

slapout9 (not verified)

Thu, 12/23/2010 - 2:59pm

"What I've learned is that in order to get Karl" by MAC

Or be a Cop. "The use of force to impose your will"(against people or property)CvC definition of War and it is also the definition of a crime, from Robbery to Rape to stealing their stuff. Strategy is nothing but "Criminal Behavior" that is why most people don't understand it, because most people are not criminals (fortunately). Just my opinion. CvC was the first criminal profiler...(imagianry smiley face icon should go here!)

Anonymous (not verified)

Thu, 12/23/2010 - 10:01pm

The war is widening as we speak---so what is next-EFPs against the MRAPs? We escalated from up-armored HUMWWVs to MRAPS they have raised the stakes by now killing MRAPs---moving to EFPs is the next step in the escalation process. This would have been predicted using open source warfare and conflict ecosystem as the analysis tool for OSW.

Exclusive: ISAF captures Qods Force operative in Kandahar
By Bill Roggio December 23, 2010

Coalition and Afghan special operations teams have captured a Taliban commander who doubles as an Iranian Qods Force operative and helped ship weapons from Iran into Afghanistan.

The Taliban/Qods Force operative, who was not named, was detained during a Dec. 18 raid in the Zhari district in Kandahar province, the International Security Assistance Force reported in a press release. ISAF and Afghan forces are currently working to secure Zhari and the neighboring districts of Panjwai and Arghandab from the Taliban.

"The joint security team specifically targeted the individual for facilitating the movement of weapons between Iran and Kandahar through Nimroz province," ISAF stated. "The now-detained man was considered a Kandahar-based weapons facilitator with direct ties to other Taliban leaders in the province."

In the initial press release, ISAF did not identify the Taliban commander as a Qods Force operative. But, in response to an inquiry by The Long War Journal, ISAF confirmed that the target of the raid was indeed a member of the Qods Force, the special operations branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

"According to intelligence reports, the targeted insurgent is a member of the Qods Force," a public affairs official at the ISAF Joint Command press desk told The Long War Journal.

This is the first reported instance of the capture of a Qods Force operative in Afghanistan. US forces in Iraq captured several senior Qods Force commanders and operatives during operations in that country from 2006 to 2008.

Background on Iran's covert support for the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan

The Qods Force has tasked the Ansar Corps, a subcommand, with aiding the Taliban and other terror groups in Afghanistan. Based in Mashad in northeastern Iran, the Ansar Corps operates much like the Ramazan Corps, which supports and directs Shia terror groups in Iraq. [See LWJ report, Iran's Ramazan Corps and the ratlines into Iraq.]

On Aug. 6, 2010, General Hossein Musavi, the commander of the Ansar Corps, was one of two Qods Force commanders added to the US Treasury's list of specially designated global terrorists, for directly providing support to the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.

ISAF and Afghan forces have targeted several Taliban commanders with known links to Iran's Qods Force - Ansar Corps. [See LWJ report, Taliban commander linked to Iran, al Qaeda targeted in western Afghanistan.]

In addition to Taliban fighters entering from Iran, Al Qaeda is known to facilitate travel for its operatives moving into Afghanistan from Mashad. Al Qaeda additionally uses the eastern cities of Tayyebat and Zahedan to move its operatives into Afghanistan. [See LWJ report, Return to Jihad.]

A Qods Force-supported al Qaeda network is currently operating in the western province of Farah, according to an investigation by The Long War Journal.

ISAF and Afghan special operations teams have been active in the remote province of Farah since early October. There have been five reported raids in Farah since the beginning of October, and 10 raids total since March 2010. In the course of the 10 raids, ISAF has killed three al Qaeda-linked commanders (Mullah Aktar, Sabayer Sahib, and Mullah Janan), and captured another. All of these commanders have been linked to Iran's Ansar Corps.

ISAF has refused to comment to inquiries about this network. "Due to operation security concerns we are not able to go into further detail at this time," an ISAF public affairs official told The Long War Journal at the end of November.

For years, ISAF has stated that the Qods Force has helped Taliban fighters conduct training inside Iran. As recently as May 30, 2010, former ISAF commander General Stanley McChrystal said that Iran is training Taliban fighters and providing them with weapons.

"The training that we have seen occurs inside Iran with fighters moving inside Iran," McChrystal said at a press conference. "The weapons that we have received come from Iran into Afghanistan."

In March of 2010, General David Petraeus, then the CENTCOM commander and now the ISAF commander, discussed al Qaeda's presence in Iran in written testimony delivered to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Al Qaeda "continues to use Iran as a key facilitation hub, where facilitators connect al Qaeda's senior leadership to regional affiliates," Petraeus explained. "And although Iranian authorities do periodically disrupt this network by detaining select al Qaeda facilitators and operational planners, Tehran's policy in this regard is often unpredictable."

Iran has recently released several top al Qaeda leaders from protective custody, including Saif al Adel, al Qaeda's top military commander and strategist; Sa'ad bin Laden, Osama's son; and Sulaiman Abu Gaith, a top al Qaeda spokesman. [See LWJ report, Osama bin Laden's spokesman freed by Iran.]

In March 2010, a Taliban commander admitted that Iran has been training teams of Taliban fighters in small unit tactics. "Our religions and our histories are different, but our target is the same - we both want to kill Americans," the commander told The Sunday Times, rebutting the common analysis that Shia Iran and Sunni al Qaeda could not cooperate due to ideological differences.

Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/12/exclusive_isaf_captu.php…

Anonymous (not verified)

Thu, 12/23/2010 - 10:11pm

This is the core to open source warfare---when will we finally get it?

In March 2010, a Taliban commander admitted that Iran has been training teams of Taliban fighters in small unit tactics. "Our religions and our histories are different, but our target is the same - we both want to kill Americans," the commander told The Sunday Times, rebutting the common analysis that Shia Iran and Sunni al Qaeda could not cooperate due to ideological differences.

My definition:
Ecology of an Insurgency:

The scientific study of the way that living "organisms" in this case "organism" is defined as an insurgency cell, group, or organization interact with their environment and predators (the counter insurgent).

Ecosystem of an Insurgency:

An insurgent ecosystem is a system whose members (members defined as being either an insurgent group or groups) benefit from each other's participation via symbiotic (mutually beneficial and self-sustaining) relationships.

The main goal of an insurgency ecosystem is to generate common ventures. It forms when many small and potentially diverse (origin, tribe, religious belief, etc.) insurgent groups join together to fight a common predator (the counter-insurgent or state).

Insurgent ecosystems attract and retain members (groups) due to network effects:

• The benefits of the ecosystem (shared ventures) are so great that groups wont leave it (although temporary departures to avoid targeted pressure from counter-insurgents are possible).
• The ecosystems features (i.e. immediate access to shared resources) make it easy for new groups to form and participate.
• The growth of the ecosystem results in an exponential increase in benefits (i.e. more segmentation and specialization) for all of the member groups. IE Attacks by one group creates opportunities for other groups. The buying of resources (ie small arms, explosives) creates a market for groups to sell into and makes it easier for other groups to get access to the resources.
• An ecosystem can have groups directly fighting each other through direct battles - but it can also have indirect fighting (or competition) between groups for access to resources (people, money, strategy etc).

Once an ecosystem is established in a particular region/area, it becomes very difficult for the counter insurgent to eliminate it. The presence of multiple groups means that the counter insurgent must divide its efforts. Operationally, a focus on one group leaves other groups to operate freely and success against one group yields very little overall benefit. Removing leadership does not mean that the group will cease to exist. The leadership may be replaced by other parts from the same group or other groups. Or a new group will move into the space left open by old group. Strategically, the diversity of the groups in the ecosystem (different reasons for fighting) means that it isnt possible to address a single set of issues or grievances at the national level that would reverse the insurgency (via negotiated settlement, repatriation, etc.).

John Robb's early writings on open source warfare---have we in fact reached critical mass?

Friday, 24 March 2006
STARTING AN OPEN SOURCE WAR
Open source war is a byproduct of globalization. It different than conventional guerrilla warfare in that the guerrillas don't have a center of gravity (a unifying ideology). In open source war, the guerrillas aren't loyal to a single group but rather dozens of different groups, each with their own motivations for fighting. The benefits of this organizational type, once it reaches critical mass, are numerous (and once it is entrenched, it is almost impossible to defeat). The good thing is that it is difficult to initiate, cross the chasm in adoption, and reach critical mass.

slapout9 (not verified)

Fri, 12/24/2010 - 2:11am

Bill M:
Anon, I'm actually a fan of John Robb's writing and some of his theories, but the reality is open source warfare in various forms has existed for many years.

Thank You Bill, it is textbook special warfare. This is basic Green beret stuff I learned over 30 years ago, yea they got cell phones and laptops, and they can google and tweedier and facelook sh*t up on the internet but the theory is the same. They ain't 10 feet tall and they ain't bullet proof. What the Hell happened? The text book answer is to Counter-Organize the population around some type of an Afghan "Puff Daddy" and go kick their ass. Forget about this clear-hold-build stuff you do that after you win or rather they win (the indigenous counter-guerrilla force). If you can't find somebody to fill that role and rally the population.....old school says if you are an intervening foreign power/occupier you ain't gonna win. You guys are starting to make me think there is some kind of a loser conspiracy going on(little smiley face icon goes here)Billy Jack is pissed!

Anon, I'm actually a fan of John Robb's writing and some of his theories, but the reality is open source warfare in various forms has existed for many years. I developed some interest in the Spanish Civil War which happened in the 1930s after visiting a Salvador Dali museum in Florida where they displayed a few of his paintings about the war.

If people are looking for a parallel to Afghanistan they won't find one, but this conflict does offer some parallels to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Although the Spanish Civil conflict was mostly confined to Spain and its territories, it involved the participation and support of many nations, if not most world powers at the time, and non-state actors.

The Nationalists were supported by Germany, Italy and several other nations, and by large businesses and indidivuals who believed in their cause.

The Republicans were supported by the USSR, other countries, the international Marxist movement, and several non-state actors. They even formed an International Brigade for all their foreign fighters. Around 2,000 communists from the U.S. alone joined their ranks, with thousands of others from other nations around the globe. It was a commi jihad.

Furthermore the Republicans and Nationalists were each somewhat loose coalitions of several factions that sometimes cooperated and sometimes not so much, and in addition to the nationalists and Republicans there were other groups in the fray with their own agendas.

One could say it was a complex situation, but I don't recall anyone back then saying it was more complex than other wars, because back then military professionals understood all conflicts were complex.

Dayuhan

Thu, 12/23/2010 - 11:18pm

<i>During 2007, they were able to take out one million barrels a day of oil production. This shortfall was the reason oil prices rose to $147 a barrel. </i>

That's an astonishingly inaccurate statement, to the point of being laughable. The oil price spike was a result of a complex interaction among numerous causes, and the removal of 1mbpd of Nigerian oil was one of the least important among them.

The conclusions about the global economy and the future of democratic states sound like something that could be read on any number of loony-tune conspiracy theory websites, and are clearly not supported by any meaningful evidence. I wouldn't be paying much attention to this guy, unless moonshine is your cup of tea.

If you need constructs like "open source warfare" and "conflict ecosystems" to predict that improvements in defensive armor will produce improvements in offensive ordnance (and vice versa), you've not been paying attention to the last few millenia of military history. This has been going on a while, and then some.

Anonymous (not verified)

Thu, 12/23/2010 - 10:24pm

Taken from a John Robb interview Jun 2010---that does in fact point to a major shift in theories and I still do not get why the IC has heartburn over open source warfare?

Just how many examples on a daily basis do we need and how many qunatum physics research projects validating the theory do we need to have in order to finally accept the concept?

How often do we need AQ using the same terminology to finally admit the theory is valid?

The new theories of warfare I developed on the blog proved both predictive and very popular. As a result, I spent a lot of time on the speaking circuit in Washington DC (DoD, CIA, NSA, etc.). Of course, since my work was on a blog everyone could read it, even the guerrillas themselves.So, it was a little surprising although not unexpected when I got an e-mail in 2009 from Henry Okah, a leader of MEND (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta). He invited me to Nigeria and stated that he was an avid reader of my blog.

It was a moment out of history, as if the UK's General Liddell Hart (the originator of blitzkrieg armored warfare) got a note from Germany's tank General Heinz Guderian in 1939, thanking him for his work. Here's why: MEND's campaign against Shell (the oil company) and the Nigerian government between 2006 and 2008 was a great example of how I thought 21st Century warfare would be fought. The organization structure was loose and organized along the lines of an open source movement. Lots of small autonomous groups joined together to take down the country's oil infrastructure by targeting vulnerable points in the network (Nigeria is a major global oil exporter). During 2007, they were able to take out one million barrels a day of oil production. This shortfall was the reason oil prices rose to $147 a barrel. Those high prices had a negative global economic impact: the start of a global recession and a spike in default rates in US sub-prime mortgages (due to higher driving and food costs). That spike in sub-prime mortgage default rates radically accelerated the demise of our grossly over leveraged global financial sector, which in turn led to the financial panic of 2008.

In short, MEND's disruption campaign, yielded tens of trillions of dollars in global economic damage for tens of thousands of dollars spent on making the attacks. That's a return on investment (ROI) of 1,000,000,000%. How do nation-states survive when an unknown guerrilla group in a remote corner of the world can generate returns on that magnitude? They don't.

The United States is suffering both the economic decline of its industry and the ongoing dismantling of the social welfare apparatus supporting the citizenry. In your opinion, will this inevitably lead to some form of armed insurgency in America?

Yes. The establishment of a predatory and deeply unstable global economic system - beyond the control of any group of nations - is in the process of gutting developed democracies. Think in terms of the 2008 crisis, over and over again. Most of what we consider normal in the developed world, from the middle class lifestyle to government social safety nets, will be nearly gone in less than a decade. Most developed governments will be in and out of financial insolvency. Democracy, as we knew it, will wither and the nation-state bureaucracy will increasingly become an enforcer for the global bond market and kleptocratic transnational corporations. Think Argentina, Greece, Spain, Iceland, etc. As a result, the legitimacy of the developed democracies will fade and the sense of betrayal will be pervasive (think in terms of the collapse of the Soviet Union). People will begin to shift their loyalties to any local group that can provide for their daily needs. Many of these groups will be crime fueled local insurgencies and militias. In short, the developed democracies will hollow out.

How big of a domestic threat is there from the narco-insurgency in Mexico and the growing power of Latin American gangs in America?

Very big. A threat that dwarfs anything we face in Afghanistan (a useless money pit of a war). It's not a threat that can be solved by conventional military means, since the problem is that Mexico is a hollow state. Unlike a failed state like Somalia (utter chaos), a hollow state still retains the facade of a nation (borders, bureaucracy, etc.). However, a hollow state doesn't exert any meaningful control over the countryside. It's not only that the state can't do it militarily, they don't have anything they can offer people. So, instead, control is ceded to local groups that can provide basic levels of opt-in security, minimal services, and jobs via new connections to the global economy - think in terms of La Familia in Michoacana.

The real danger to the US is that not only will these groups expand into the US (they already have), it is that these groups will accelerate the development of similar homegrown groups in the US as our middle class evaporates.

Slap, I agree with you, and I'll leave it at that :-).

Note while waiting for the family to wake up on Christmas morning...

One of the problems with much of the prevailing buzzword-laced shallow analyses of modern insurgency is that it places too much emphasis on the insurgent, and on the undemonstrated hypothesis that today's insurgents are somehow different. This distracts from more important factors.

For example... the Niger Delta was discussed briefly above. The problem there is not that some 47G super-empowered openly sourced global guerrillas are threatening to shake the foundations of the global oil industry. The problem is that Nigeria has one of the worst governments on the planet, and really bad governments, now as ever, are likely to produce insurgency and likely to be unable to manage it. Any realistic medium-term oil supply assessment has to factor in the likelihood that the Nigerian government will implode, not because the insurgents facing it are exceptional (they aren't) but because it deserves to implode. The problem isn't the insurgents, it's the government.

Similarly, we don't have problems in Iraq and Afghanistan because of some quantum leap in insurgent capacity, we have them because of old fashioned bad policy decisions on our part.

It's completely backwards to say that Mexico's narcotics gangs (insurgency is a stretch) threaten US security. More accurate to say that a completely failed US drug policy has created an existential threat to Mexico's security. The problem - and the solution - are not in Mexico but in the US.

None of these pictures involves anything really new or revolutionary. We don't need to "get" 92G warfare or apply the tools of quantum physics to manage them. A little bit of clear thinking would go a long way: as always, we need to know our enemies, know the environment, know ourselves. We need to realistically assess our own capacities, including political will and financial resources. We need to realistically assess the probable outcomes of our actions. We need to stop listening to people who tell us what we want to hear. None of these things are new. We do them all badly. That's not new either.

Merry Christmas.

Anonymous (not verified)

Sun, 12/26/2010 - 12:38pm

Dayuhan;

Based on your thinking nothing is ever new---if that is the case then why do we take so long to relearn everything when in fact we should have already known about it.

That is the thinking that a number of people are rasing lately--if in fact evey BCT reserve or active duty has an average of 3-5 rotations in Iraq or Afghanistan and or in both then they should be sleepwalking COIN--but that is not occurring so the idea that one learns from the past is not necessarily correct.

The following is a good example---of what one could call exactly what is predicted to happen in open source warfare and was also predicted to happen in the two recent quantum research projects. But why should we pay attention to this as we have based on your statemments seen this countless times in the past.

While regular readers know all about my lack of advocacy for the HVT campaign, I dont want to read too much into this report. Mujahids account isnt reason enough to abandon the HVT campaign if its working. My claim isnt (and has never been) that we are replacing bad actors with worse actors, or that the SOF operators arent highly qualified and useful warriors, or that it wouldnt be a good thing to have more Taliban commanders dead. My claim has heretofore been that it is a mostly ineffective strategy and misuse of highly skilled operators who should be matrixed to infantry Battalions (as in the Marine Corps, i.e., Force Recon and Scout Sniper).

Nor have I been a proponent of the ridiculous reconciliation program. There is absolutely no point of similarity between the Sons of Iraq program - implemented when the Iraqi insurgents were losing badly - and the supposed Taliban reconciliation program.

However, there is an interesting revelation that comports with a theme I have been following, that is, the increased religious radicalization of the Afghan Taliban given the protracted nature of the campaign and the prolonged exposure to foreign (Arabic) religious influences. The longer this thing draws out, the more we are facing (what was once) a national insurgency that has now become a transnational insurgency.

Think about it long enough and one hears Kilcullen's footsteps of "conflict ecosystem" getting closer to the truth than many want to accept.

Yes and while one can argue it is nothing new then who else has provided some form of explanation for what is being seen in Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, in the various "stans', and to a degree even in China.

Anonymous (not verified)

Sun, 12/26/2010 - 12:41pm

Dayuhan;

Based on your thinking nothing is ever new---if that is the case then why do we take so long to relearn everything when in fact we should have already known about it.

That is the thinking that a number of people are rasing lately--if in fact evey BCT reserve or active duty has an average of 3-5 rotations in Iraq or Afghanistan and or in both then they should be sleepwalking COIN--but that is not occurring so the idea that one learns from the past is not necessarily correct.

The following is a good example---of what one could call exactly what is predicted to happen in open source warfare and was also predicted to happen in the two recent quantum research projects. But why should we pay attention to this as we have based on your statemments seen this countless times in the past.

While regular readers know all about my lack of advocacy for the HVT campaign, I dont want to read too much into this report. Mujahids account isnt reason enough to abandon the HVT campaign if its working. My claim isnt (and has never been) that we are replacing bad actors with worse actors, or that the SOF operators arent highly qualified and useful warriors, or that it wouldnt be a good thing to have more Taliban commanders dead. My claim has heretofore been that it is a mostly ineffective strategy and misuse of highly skilled operators who should be matrixed to infantry Battalions (as in the Marine Corps, i.e., Force Recon and Scout Sniper).

Nor have I been a proponent of the ridiculous reconciliation program. There is absolutely no point of similarity between the Sons of Iraq program - implemented when the Iraqi insurgents were losing badly - and the supposed Taliban reconciliation program.

However, there is an interesting revelation that comports with a theme I have been following, that is, the increased religious radicalization of the Afghan Taliban given the protracted nature of the campaign and the prolonged exposure to foreign (Arabic) religious influences. The longer this thing draws out, the more we are facing (what was once) a national insurgency that has now become a transnational insurgency.

Think about it long enough and one hears Kilcullen's footsteps of "conflict ecosystem" getting closer to the truth than many want to accept.

Yes and while one can argue it is nothing new then who else has provided some form of explanation for what is being seen in Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, in the various "stans', and to a degree even in China.

Sometimes new things come up... not all that often, but it happens. Sometimes people wrap old ideas in shiny new paper and try to sell them as new ideas. That happens rather more frequently.

We forget a lot of stuff, and there's stuff we never learned very well. At the end of the day our problems in Afghanistan aren't about how well we "do COIN", they're about bad policy decisions, for which no amount of tactical, strategic, or doctrinal wizardry will compensate.

The resilience and regenerative capacity of the Taliban are in no way surprising, nor does one require any special theory to explain them. Insurgencies may be suppressed, but typically regenerate unless the conditions that produced them are altered. Thus it has always been. Where I live we'd had a rural insurgency regenerating in various forms since the late 1930s. This is explained not by any abstract open sourced 23G global theory, it's explained by the specific social context from which that insurgency arises.

The Taliban have been religious radicals for a long time (remember the meaning of the word "Taliban"), and they've been in contact with Arab religious influences for a long time. Nothing really new there. Understanding of the phenomena ongoing in the Muslim world does not require snappy buzzwords and arcane theories, it requires study of history and culture. There are plenty of explanations around, many of them conflicting, all of the credible ones extensive; gradually understanding emerges from synthesis. Obviously to some extent any given individual's "understanding" is to some extend conditioned by their pre-existing biases. I don't see that the type of abstract theorizing being tossed about here is particularly useful.

Understanding of any given segment of that broad sphere requires specific study of the historic, cultural, linguistic, and other contexts specific to that region. Area specialists have been treating conflicted regions as "ecosystems" for a long time, even if they haven't used the word. It's not a bad description (even if it's often abused) but it's not a great leap forward either.

What is a "quantum" research project, and how does it differ from any other research?