Washington's approach to rebuilding economies devastated by conflicts and natural disasters is flawed. It assumes that strong economies cannot emerge in poor countries when it should be encouraging U.S.-style entrepreneurism and allow the U.S. military to help...

More at Foreign Affairs.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that "the defining principle of the Pentagon's new National Defense Strategy is balance" - between winning today's wars and preparing for future ones and between investing in new, irregular capabilities while retaining conventional ones.

With the sense that the post-9/11 years of budget increases are over and leaner years are ahead, a debate has exploded between those who believe that the military is overinvested in capabilities for one form of conflict or the other. On one end are the counterinsurgency (COIN) advocates who believe the services, particularly the Army and Marine Corps, must continue their shift toward preparing for protracted, irregular wars - the most likely threat on the horizon. Opposing them are the "traditionalists" who believe the military should remain focused on nation-states and that irregular wars against insurgents or terrorists should be avoided or can be adequately managed by a conventional force. The Army's official position is that it is currently overly focused on COIN and must be rebalanced to a "full-spectrum" force in the future, which presumably would entail shifting resources back toward conventional capabilities. Before one can assess whether the force is out of balance, however, one must have a sense of what a balanced force looks like. Rather than endlessly debate whether the future will hold conventional, irregular or hybrid adversaries, this article proposes a force-planning construct for ground forces that balances irregular and conventional capabilities based on a holistic view of land warfare...

More at Armed Forces Journal.

Unblinking Eyes: Managing the Strategic Consequences of Persistent Surveillance - Timothy J. Junio and Jonathan Protz, Armed Forces Journal.

The tactical use of a new set of intelligence collection systems known as persistent surveillance (PS) is well-known. Sometimes colloquially referred to an "unblinking eye," a PS system is designed to maintain a constant watch over a target of interest. The primary beneficiaries of PS systems have been U.S. armed forces waging counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, where long-duration tracking of individuals has enabled many capture/kill operations.

Few, however, have sought to analyze the strategic implications of PS technologies. Yet new surveillance systems that combine PS with large-scale data retention and advanced algorithms have strong potential for social disruption. Recent technological trends indicate that, within the next five to 10 years, states will begin to field capabilities to monitor their citizens - and the citizens of other states - with sufficient detail to empower new forms of coercion. The potential created by these new technologies will lead states to compete over a redefined notion of influence in international politics. The U.S. military could gain significant first-mover advantages by hastening development of these technologies while simultaneously working to defend the populations of the U.S. and its allies from the information-gathering efforts of other, authoritarian, states...

More at Armed Forces Journal.

Improving Capstone: Change Course Focus to Challenge Participants - Brigadier General Paula G. Thornhill, Armed Forces Journal.

... The six-week Capstone course is mandatory for all line officers promoted to brigadier general or rear admiral (lower half) to help prepare them for service in the most senior military ranks. During the course, the newly minted one-stars attend myriad briefings on topics including national military strategy, joint operations and intelligence. They also travel extensively to meet with senior officials in the U.S. and overseas.

But Capstone lacks some key components found in civilian executive education. There is no mandatory reading, little quality control of external speakers and no peer discussion opportunities. In short, the course gives new general officers impressive professional exposure, but it lacks intellectual content. Moreover, in every meeting, whether in the U.S. or overseas, at least one retired four-star officer sits in as a "senior fellow." These fellows have no responsibility other than to comment as they see appropriate. While all of these retired four-stars have served with distinction, their presence leads to two unintended - and unfortunate - consequences...

More at Armed Forces Journal.

Fall of Saigon Revisited - Editorial

Slow Going on the Path Toward Democracy - Baoky N. Vu

Culture Clash and Communication Failure - Nguyen Ngoc Linh

Ignoring Lessons From the Ground - Rufus Phillips

It has been over a year since President Obama announced the outline of a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and well over half a year since the appoint of General McChrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry has led to newefforts to define and implement that strategy in practical terms. However, the Obama Administration has yet to address most of the key issues that now shape the ability to implement that strategy.

The Administration has failed to address the most critical aspect of "strategic communications:" Providing the American people and the Congress with a clear picture of progress in the war, the broad structure of US plans, and some picture of the timelines involved and the future costs of the conflict. There has been no meaningful transparency, and the Administration's credibility depends almost exclusively on a leap of faith...

Much more at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

All transcripts from the 21 April Emerald Express Strategic Symposium are now posted at the Marine Corps University web page.

This latest EE entitled, Afghanistan: The Way Ahead, was a one-day symposium held at the Gray Research Center, Quantico, Virginia. The purpose of this symposium was to improve understanding of the United States Marine Corps area of operations, to focus on the multidimensional and multinational approaches to enable the USMC and partners to succeed in the historical and ideological birthplace of the Taliban Movement; the current stronghold of the insurgency of Afghanistan; and the epicenter of opium cultivation in the world.

Topics covered at the symposium included a geographical, cultural and historical overview of southern Afghanistan; transition of military authority to the ANSF; governing Afghanistan to include district councils, development, and judicial reform; and defining, dealing and defeating the neo-Taliban and their message.

Transcripts for each of these subjects as well as the opening remarks, keynote address, keynote luncheon address, and closing remarks can be found at the MCU EE site.

You'd think all the criticism from left-wing websites like the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Salon would royally piss off the Army. But at least one Army report finds the sites' posts to be consistently "balanced."

Every week, the defense contractor MPRI prepares for the brass a "Blogosphere and Social Media Report," rounding up sites' posts on military matters. It's meant to be a single source for top officers to catch up on what's being said online and in leading social media outlets. Items from about two dozen national security and political blogs are excerpted, and classified as "balanced," "critical," or "supportive." The vast majority of the posts are considered "balanced" - even when they rip the Army a new one...

Included in the post are links to three of these reports: week of March 20th, week of April 3rd, and week of April 10th. More at Danger Room.

Over the last few days I've written about the delusional nature of US/NATO efforts around the impending military operations in Kandahar. Today in the Washington Post we have another excellent example of this phenomenon...

This article is reflective of what seems to be an increasingly significant issue in US efforts in Afghanistan - the desire to bring short-term results that will lead to a more immediate US exit and the long-term need to create some level of stability in the country...

But as Josh Foust said to me offline,"it took eight years of construction, culminating in a specific and hard-wrought electricity-sharing agreement with Uzbekistan, to supply Kabul. ISAF now wants to supply all of Kandahar in three months." Of course, this is at pace with the military's increasingly delusional public and private declarations of how quickly they can provide governance, security and extend state legitimacy in Southern Afghanistan. Even if the US is able to buy enough diesel fuel and generators to meet the goal of powering Kandahar what exactly is the point if it's not sustainable? ...

More at Democracy Arsenal.

On the 21st of April, the COIN Center hosted a delegation of the Pakistani Army in support of US Army Central Command and Office of Defense Representative Pakistan (ODRP). The Focus of their US trip, which included visits to Joint Readiness Training Center, National Training Center, 4/10 Mountain Division, 1/1 and 2/1 Infantry Division, was on learning how the US Army prepares soldiers for duty in foreign cultures during home station training and at the Combat Training Centers. Pakistan's Army Director of Military Training, Brigadier Raashid Wali Janjua was the senior representative. Also present were seven field grade officers from the Pakistani Army and Pakistan's Frontier Corps...

More at Small Wars Journal.