While some of the material may seem like "basic stuff" to SWJ old-timers, the page is intended to do just that - provide COIN basics (+) to new ISAF joins and other interested parties. The page contains links to relevant COIN articles and news items as well as videos related to COIN best practices. Also check out ISAF's COIN page on YouTube. Hat tip to Claudia-Tatjana Strebel for the heads up on this resource.
Topics include:
1) The crack along the U.S.-Mexican border widens,
2) Gates and China practice finger-pointing.
The crack along the U.S.-Mexican border widens
On June 7, during a scuffle with some rock-throwing Mexican teenagers in a concrete drainage canal near El Paso, Texas, a U.S. Border Patrol officer shot Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, 15, in the head, killing him. Mexican security forces brandishing their weapons, assisted by Mexican bystanders throwing rocks and firecrackers, later chased off FBI agents investigating the shooting. Mexican authorities say Hernandez was shot on the Mexican side of the border and claim to have recovered a .40-caliber shell casing as proof. A U.S. official asserted the action occurred on the U.S. side -- and displayed a Border Patrol videotape that allegedly showed four Mexican officers crossing to the U.S. side and possibly repositioning the shell casing to the Mexican side.
We can hope that time and a proper investigation will resolve the dispute over this tragedy. Meanwhile, border tensions seem unlikely to abate. According to the New York Times, rock-throwing incidents against Border Patrol officers along the Mexican border average about two per day. For its part, the Mexican government claims that U.S. immigration officers have killed 17 Mexican migrants so far this year.
Although government authorities on both sides have incentives to cooperate on border problems, popular passions on both sides might increasingly make such cooperation more difficult to sustain. The daily rock-throwing incidents are most likely the acts of bored teenagers, but also probably reflect underlying Mexican hostility. On the U.S. side, the recent Arizona immigration statute is the result of grassroots anxiety. Whatever the merits of this law, Mexican President Felipe Calderón's repeated condemnations of it have not aided the cause of cross-border cooperation. The law remains popular with a large slice of the U.S. population and Calderon's criticism only intensifies this group's suspicions and anxiety.
The White House staff apparently understands the acrimonious public mood regarding the border. According to the New York Times, Obama administration officials have suppressed the release of a report on methamphetamine production in Mexico, earlier versions of which were routinely released to the public. In addition, the article alleges that the White House staff wishes to classify as secret future editions of the U.S. government's national drug threat assessment. This year's version contained alarming conclusions about Mexico's drug cartels and resulted in complaints from the Mexican government. Suppressing the future public release of these reports would seem to be an effort by the administration to remove catalysts for public anger against Mexico.
Fixing the border doesn't seem likely without cross-border police cooperation. But rising public suspicion and hostility on both sides could overwhelm any plans for greater law enforcement collaboration. Diplomats on both sides should return to first principles and figure out the common public interests on both sides of the line. Without an agreement on common objectives, sustained cooperation seems unlikely. In the meantime, the fissure seems to be widening.
Gates and China practice finger-pointing
For the fourth year in a row, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke at the International Institute for Strategic Studies annual Asia Security Summit in Singapore on June 5, an event that consistently gathers the region's top defense and political officials. The big story from Gates's speech to the forum was his criticism of the Chinese government for its shutdown of contacts between U.S. and Chinese military officials over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Gates expressed concern that the lack of military-to-military contact could lead to "miscommunication, misunderstanding, and miscalculation," but vowed that "interruptions in our military relationship with China will not change United States policy toward Taiwan."
Gates reasoned that because U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are "nothing new," China's leadership should simply drop its obsession with this issue. That may be true, but the perception that Asia's balance of power is shifting is new. Gates's reasoning on Taiwan clashes with the widely held view that China's influence is ascending while the financial panic and subsequent economic slump has permanently scarred the Western politico-economic model and called into question the Pentagon's ability to sustain its security commitments in East Asia.
Gates labored to dispel any such impression. Hitting the notes U.S. allies in the audience wanted to hear, Gates emphasized his department's plans for missile defense, nuclear-weapons modernization, the continued forward basing of U.S. forces in the region, and the deepening of U.S. defense relationships with regional allies. In a shot across China's bow, Gates specifically noted the U.S. military's commitment to defending freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
In a recent Washington Post article, one angry Chinese admiral revealed the mainstream view inside the Chinese Communist Party when he accused the United States of being a "hegemon," encircling China with hostile alliances and keeping China divided with its continued military support of Taiwan. The conclusion Chinese officials seem to have drawn is that the United States views China as an enemy that must be confronted and contained. Viewed from Beijing, China's rapid military expansion is merely self-defense. In both his speech and the following question-and-answer session, Gates strenuously denied that the U.S. government views China as an enemy.
Neither the arrival of the Obama administration, nor increased diplomatic contact, nor the passage of time seems to be easing the sense of suspicion between the two governments. If anything, distrust seems to be increasing. In a June 9 speech to the Asia Society in Washington, Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Michael Mullen, said, "a gap as wide as what seems to be forming between China's stated intent and its military programs leaves me more than curious about the end result ... Indeed, I have moved from being curious to being genuinely concerned."
One likely result of this mutual mistrust will be a continued buildup of military power in the region. In his recent speech to the Navy League, Gates warned the Navy not to expect any budget increases for the foreseeable future. But if the U.S. government doesn't achieve some diplomatic breakthrough with China over the suspicions both sides embrace, the Pentagon will be forced to provide more naval and air forces to the region to back up its commitments. How will Gates (or his successor) do that with the defense budget under pressure, with Gates's vow to maintain ground-force head counts, and with his promise to "reset" ground-force readiness? The fiscal math for that formula doesn't add up. We will soon see how highly the Obama administration values the U.S. strategic position in Asia.
I graduated from West Point in 1998, served several combat tours, then received a master's degree from the Harvard Kennedy School so that I could instruct the cadets in politics, policy, and strategy. I have worked on the West Point faculty for two years, and this summer I'll return to the operational Army in Afghanistan. From my own limited perspective, I can say that the Academy is falling heartbreakingly short of its potential to prepare young officers...
... First, cadets have very little experience adapting to unfamiliar environments. After all, what happens when the regulations don't describe what's going on around you? Second, cadets devote zero attention to activities that "don't count." If it's not on the syllabus, and it's not for a grade, the cadets aren't learning it. Ask a cadet to spend a few minutes writing up a list of the skills, traits, and knowledge that he wishes he'd have when he finally takes over his first platoon in combat. Then compare this to his four-year curriculum and summer training plans. There will be surprisingly little overlap between the two lists, and the cadet has neither the time nor the incentive to learn what's missing. In the end, we graduate far too many cadets that are more bureaucrat than professional, lacking the expert knowledge of their trade and the flexibility to be effective in the complex environments they'll soon encounter.
Unfortunately, wars -- particularly the types of wars we're currently involved in -- are very unforgiving of bureaucrats. In Iraq, I commonly ran across young officers who were convinced that if they answered their reports on time, followed the unit operating procedures to the letter, and strove to make their casualty numbers look ever better, that they would "win" the war. These bureaucrats might keep the proverbial machine running, but it took mentally agile professionals with expert knowledge to realize that the rulebooks needed to be thrown out, that the old routine wasn't working...
Much more at Best Defense.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon released a 152-page report outlining the increasingly grim situation in Afghanistan. The paper highlighted the Afghan government (and its security services) lack of capability; the enduring challenge of endemic corruption and poor governance; and the Taliban insurgency's ability to maintain influence—often via intimidation—across broad swaths of the country. These challenges have already undermined U.S. military operations in Marjah, and could threaten the upcoming summer offensive planned for Kandahar, the heart of the Taliban insurgency.
The entire U.S. mission in Afghanistan, which is predicated on extending the legitimacy of a flawed Afghan government, bringing good governance to the country's most insecure regions, and degrading the Taliban insurgency militarily to smooth the path for political negotiations is becoming eerily reminiscent of the flawed American strategy in Vietnam four decades ago.
While no one can be sure how escalation in Afghanistan will turn out, the warning signs are blinking red. Yet the reaction from many of the president's liberal and left-of-center supporters has been acquiescence and even silence. The Pentagon report—like much of the recent bad news out of Afghanistan—caused barely a ripple on the left. It's a familiar pattern. The American Prospect, along with Salon, has devoted enormous and laudable energy to covering civil liberties issues related to the U.S. war on terror, but has run only one major article on Afghanistan since Obama's December speech at West Point...
More at The New Republic.
HSRP has launched its new website. It can be accessed at www.hsrgroup.org.
The new website, which replaces four separate sites, is easy-to-navigate and provides access to all HSRP publications, research and data, as well as the eNewletter archive. The new site delivers improved usability, additional features, and significantly more content than the previous sites.
New Features
The new Security Stats section presents current and historical data on organized violence around the world and the related death tolls. It also provides data on the number of conflict onsets and terminations each year. Data are presented graphically, and in downloadable Microsoft Excel format, and are drawn from the same datasets used in the HSRP's flagship publication, the Human Security Report, and the related Human Security Brief series. Security Stats will be expanded considerably in future.
Access to the HSRP's eNewsletters, Human Security Research and Human Security News, has been greatly improved. In response to requests from subscribers, you can now search content in the News and Research Archive by country, topic, or date. Our new email subscription system should reduce the likelihood of newsletters being caught in email spam filters.
The new website has a page devoted to the debate generated by the release of the HSRP's report on the "Shrinking Costs of War". This page contains an overview of the debate, as well as the HSRP's response to critiques from the International Rescue Committee and Les Roberts.
In the coming weeks, Russian and Japanese translations of the miniAtlas of Human Security will be available and will complement the existing English, French, and Spanish editions of this publication.
Additional HSRP Websites
The Afghanistan Conflict Monitor, Pakistan Conflict Monitor, and Human Security Gateway, which continue to grow in popularity, remain as separate websites.
McChrystal: 'Governance Is Not Enough' - 10 June 2010 (full Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty interview transcript at the link)
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is finding himself squeezed between a ticking clock and an enemy that won't go away. On Thursday, during a visit to NATO headquarters here, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal admitted that preparations for perhaps the most critical operation of the war - the campaign to take control of Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace - weren't going as planned. He said winning support from local leaders, some of whom see the Taliban fighters not as oppressors but as their Muslim brothers, was proving tougher than expected. The military side of the campaign, originally scheduled to surge in June and finish by August, is now likely to extend into the fall.
"I don't intend to hurry it," McChrystal told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. "It will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's more important we get it right than we get it fast." But McChrystal does not have time on his side. The day before he revealed the Kandahar delay, his boss, Gates, said that the U.S.-led coalition has until the end of the year to show progress in the war and prove to the United States and its allies that their forces have broken a stalemate with the Taliban...
More at The Washington Post.
General Forecasts Slower Pace in Afghan War - James Kanter, New York Times.
The top United States and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, acknowledged Thursday that efforts in Kandahar to drive back Taliban insurgents were likely to take significantly longer than planned, raising new questions about what can be achieved in southern Afghanistan before the end of the year. During a visit here to NATO headquarters, General McChrystal used a briefing with reporters to outline what he saw as progress on a number of fronts since last year. But operations in the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban heartland, "will happen more slowly than we originally anticipated," he said, even while acknowledging the need to show progress before the end of year to maintain political support in Washington.
"But it's my personal assessment that it will be more deliberate than we probably communicated or than we thought earlier and communicated," he said, referring to the Kandahar operation. "And so I think it will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think it is more important we get it right than we get it fast." The general's remarks seemed to recognize what other American and NATO officials had previously played down: that military operations in Kandahar were getting under way more slowly than previously envisioned...
More at The New York Times.
What Marja Tells Us of Battles Yet to Come - New York Times.
Each day, American foot patrols move through farmers' fields and irrigated villages. And each day some are ambushed or encounter hidden bombs. The patrols turn into gunfights in withering heat, or efforts to dismantle the bombs or treat the wounded. Casualties accumulate with the passing weeks, for Americans and Afghans alike. A few months ago, Marja was the focus of a highly publicized assault to push the Taliban from a stronghold and bring Afghanistan's densest area of opium production under government control. The fighting remains raw. What does it mean?
Is the violence a predictable summer fight for an area the Taliban and those who profit from the drug economy do not want to lose; in other words, an unsurprising flare-up that can be turned around? Or will Marja remain bloody for a long time, allowing insurgents to inflict sustained losses on American units and win merely by keeping the fight alive? As NATO and Afghan forces flow into neighboring Kandahar Province, where for the next many months the latest high-profile effort to undo the Taliban's hold will unroll, the continuing fighting in Marja can be read as a sign of problems in the American-led surge. It can also be read as something less worrisome: a difficult period in a campaign always expected to be hard...
More at The New York Times.
The New York Times runs a story today from reporter Rod Nordland in Kandahar about the shift in strategy there away from a military headlined offensive to more aid and reconstruction efforts, with a gradual increase in coalition constables walking the streets...
These are surprising statements coming from somebody as well versed in counterinsurgency as McChrystal. Insurgents don't typically "raise the flag," except perhaps in the final stages of an insurgency when they've won the political contest. As far as Kandahar is concerned, the fact that Kandahar city is "functioning" doesn't mean the insurgents don't control Kandahar.
One of the many fatal flaws in U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine is the failure to understand the "lone guerrilla paradox," a concept that has vexed counterinsurgents from Algeria to Vietnam to now Afghanistan...
More at Defense Tech.
