Topics include:

1) Is this what defeat looks like?

2) Reining in rogues? Or stifling initiative?

Is this what defeat looks like?

On March 13, in two separate but seemingly coordinated attacks, gunmen in Juárez, Mexico, killed two employees of the U.S. Consulate, along with the husband of one of the employees. They were gunned down in their cars while returning from a children's party. Although in recent years U.S. citizens and government employees have died in the crossfire of Mexico's drug wars, this deliberate attack on U.S. government employees in Mexico signals a further escalation in the conflict. FBI agents investigating the murders guessed that the murders were meant to "send a message" to both the Mexican and U.S. governments.

The vast majority of the killings in Juárez and elsewhere in Mexico are the result of gangs battling for control of drug distribution markets. But the escalation of Mexico's violence began in December 2006 when President Felipe Calderón decided to attack the drug cartels which in his view were challenging the state's authority. The government's offensive has resulted in a complex, multisided, and violent scramble for markets, coercive power, and political influence.

What message did the gunmen intend to send with the murder of the consulate workers? It is a message easily recognized by students of irregular warfare. Insurgents competing with the government for influence over the population have pain as one of the principal tools in their toolbox. Apply the pain in a terrifying manner against even the most imposing symbols of authority -- in this case the U.S. government -- and political results may follow.

In Juárez, this tactic might be working. Despite Calderón's addition of 10,000 federal troops, Juárez has already suffered 500 murders in 2010. According to articles in both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, many residents of Juárez have had enough of Calderón's war on the cartels. The president arrived for his third visit in a month, promising a list of social programs in addition to the military campaign. But, according to the Los Angeles Times, Calderón was met with nervous and angry protesters, calling for a return to the more peaceful days before he became president.

Three years into Calderón's escalation, an increasing number of Mexicans may now conclude that the only path to greater peace may be accommodation with the cartels. With their ability to apply intense pain and also distribute their massive revenues within some of Mexico's neighborhoods, the cartels are in a good position to sway public opinion toward a truce. Calderón sought to establish the state's authority as supreme. Juárez could instead show him what defeat looks like.

Reining in rogues? Or stifling initiative?

Over the past week, the news from Afghanistan brought three stories with a common theme -- in each case, headquarters had to rein in rogue operators who were either exceeding their authority or were breaking the law. That's one view, but maybe not the correct one. Another perspective is less sympathetic: nervous "control freaks" at the top of the chain of command are punishing creative field officers for daring to take the initiative. If this view is more correct, it is a worrisome trend for the U.S. mission.

In the first story, the Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran reported the anonymous grumblings of U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington who object to aspects of Marine Corps operations in Helmand province. According to Chandrasekaran, Marine commanders are not waiting for permission from higher headquarters to expand their territory and apply their own solutions to problems in their area of responsibility. The response from U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry was to regard the Marines as a "42nd nation" in the coalition. A senior Obama administration official complained about the Marine Corps approach damaging "operational coherence."

Next was a report that Gen. Stanley McChrystal has seized direct command over all special operations forces in Afghanistan. This implies that units that worked for another command or were in direct support of local commanders no longer will be. According to the New York Times, McChrystal took this action in response to some recent direct action raids that went awry, resulting in the killing of Afghan civilians.

Finally, there is the murky case of Michael Furlong, a civilian employee of U.S. Strategic Command. Furlong stands accused of using funds within the Pentagon's anti-roadside-bomb program to establish an informal intelligence-gathering network in Afghanistan using civilian contractors. According to the Washington Post, the CIA and the special operations community complained about Furlong, whose activities are now under investigation.

Are these three cases examples of rogue operations that needed to be reined in? Or of nervous commanders and staff officers punishing subordinates for taking the initiative?

In isolation, each of these cases of greater central control may be justifiable. Freeing Kandahar from the Taliban may require more cooperation from the Marines. Special operations forces may make fewer errors if under McChrystal's command. And midlevel bureaucrats should not be able to exceed their authority and spend taxpayer money in violation of the law (if that is in fact what Furlong did).

However justifiable each of these cases may be, the resulting appearance in the field might be that initiative, creativity, and risk-taking doesn't pay -- it only results in disapproving scrutiny and possible punishment. Field Manual 3-24, the Pentagon's guide to counterinsurgency, states that "effective COIN operations are decentralized, and higher commanders owe it to their subordinates to push as many capabilities as possible down to their level. Mission command encourages the initiative of subordinates and facilitates the learning that must occur at every level." Is FM 3-24 now passé in Kabul and Washington?

McChrystal's staff (and the White House staff) does not have all the answers on how to prevail in Afghanistan. The answers are out in the field, to be discovered by the soldiers out there. That is something the top of the chain of command should ponder the next time it feels the urge to tighten its grip.

The current USSOCOM- and USASOC approved UW definition is significant for several reasons. First and foremost, it provides instant clarity to decisionmakers. With clarity come credibility, confidence, and trust, all of which are essential in the relationship between the special operations community and senior decisionmakers. Secondly, this definition brings a degree of accountability previously absent from this topic. Specifically, it ensures that individuals and organizations possess the associated professional knowledge and operational capabilities to claim proficiency in UW.

Developing a Common Understanding of Unconventional Warfare at JFQ.

*Hat tip to Colonel Dave Maxwell

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Curmudgeons, ask your grandkids about this stuff.

The US Army conducted its own, secret inquiry into the massacre of civilians in Son My, South Vietnam on March 16th 1968, The My Lai Massacre. Tape-recordings were made of the more than 400 witnesses. Now, for the first time, these recordings can be heard along with the photographic evidence compiled by Lt General Peers and his inquiry team.

It is inevitable that observers will have their gripes with a few parts of JOE. Here are mine:

1) JOE's discussion of the U.S. government's disastrous budget trends is spot-on and I would not change a word of it. The discussion of global trade and financial imbalances is, however, off the mark and could have been much more useful, especially as they relate to emerging international tensions.

JOE says,"Furthermore, chronic trade and currency exchange imbalances in the global economic system (see graphic below) have exacerbated both U.S. current account deficits and overall government indebtedness such that the amount of U.S. government debt held by foreigners has grown from 1.3 trillion to 3.5 trillion dollars representing some 40% of total U.S. debt. Large exporting nations accept U.S. dollars for their goods and use them both to build foreign exchange reserves and to purchase U.S. treasuries (which then finance ongoing U.S. federal operations)." JOE implies that because U.S. households consume too much (like the federal budget deficit, evidence of a moral failing), mountains of U.S. dollars, in the form of U.S. Treasuries, have thus ended up in the hands of the Chinese government and others around the world.

This makes for a good morality tale. But JOE gets the economics on this point mostly wrong and in doing so misses the real security issue. The actual direction of causation is in the opposite direction to what JOE implies. Following a path proven over many decades by its Asian neighbors, China has grown its economy through export promotion. A key to promoting its exports has been to keep the yuan-dollar exchange rate low, which makes Chinese products cheap for U.S. consumers. It does this by printing yuan and buying dollars, investing the proceeds in U.S. Treasuries. This is the same economic strategy nearly all Asian economies have used since the 1950s to gain access to the U.S. market. Thus the buildup of Chinese (and others) foreign exchange reserves is a partial cause, and not a consequence, of U.S. trade deficits.

What should JOE have said instead about global capital flows? Something like, "National governments that use exchange rate manipulation strategies to promote their exports can create large and destabilizing imbalances in the global financial system. These imbalances, the result of explicit policy decisions, can have harmful secondary effects in interest rate and equity markets, exacerbating boom and bust cycles. In addition they can disrupt labor markets, creating social tensions which could heighten trade and diplomatic tensions between countries." There is the straight line between economics and international political friction JOE should have discussed.

2) JOE said (p. 40), "In the year 2000, the PLA had more students in America's graduate schools than the U.S. military, giving the Chinese a growing understanding of America and its military." Citation please?

3) In its discussion of China (pp. 39-42), JOE spends much space discussing China's possible intentions. This is important and worth discussing. But why is there almost no space given to discussing trends in China's military capabilities? It would have been useful for a JOE written in 1995 or 2000 to discuss the trends in China's short and medium range ballistic missiles and tactical aircraft. As a result of those trends, Taiwan may no longer be able to defend its airspace, meaning that it may now have to switch to an irregular warfare defense. Similarly, try to imagine a British Admiralty JOE written in 1890 or 1900 that avoided discussing trends in German warship construction. One would wonder what the purpose of the document was.

4) Finally, I believe JFCOM should have used Part V to more aggressively promote the concept of experimentation. JOE does mention experimentation in the Concluding Thoughts (p 72). But a major theme of JOE is to expose the shortcomings of forecasting and to address the need for more effective adaptation. One of the best ways to hedge forecasting risk and to enhance adaptation is to expand the use of experimentation. Experimentation is a major focus of JFCOM. JOE was an opportunity to highlight this aspect of JFCOM's mission and to explain how the government could make greater use of experimentation to cope with an uncertain future. JOE missed this opportunity.

In sum, JOE is a worthy survey of global trends. I think it bypasses a few sensitive issues and misses a chance to promote experimentation. But it is well worth reading.

Foreword

While U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Operating Environment (JOE) in no way constitutes U.S. Government policy and must necessarily be speculative in nature, it seeks to provide the Joint Force an intellectual foundation upon which we will construct the concepts to guide our future force development. We will likely not call the future exactly right, but we must think through the nature of continuity and change in strategic trends to discern their military implications to avoid being completely wrong. These implications serve to influence the concepts that drive our services' adaptations to the environments within which they will operate, adaptations that are essential if our leaders are to have the fewest regrets when future crises strike.

In our guardian role for our nation, it is natural that we in the military focus more on possible security challenges and threats than we do on emerging opportunities. From economic trends to climate change and vulnerability to cyber attack, we outline those trends that remind us we must stay alert to what is changing in the world if we intend to create a military as relevant and capable as we possess today. There is a strong note of urgency in our efforts to balance the force for the uncertainties that lie ahead. The JOE gives focus to those efforts which must also embrace the opportunities that are inherent in the world we imperfectly foresee.

Every military force in history that has successfully adapted to the changing character of war and the evolving threats it faced did so by sharply defining the operational problems it had to solve. With the JOE helping to frame future security problems and highlighting their military implications, the Chairman's companion document, Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO), answers the problems we have defined, stating how the Joint Force will operate. Taken together, these documents will drive the concept development and experimentation that will, in turn, drive our evolutionary adaptation, while guarding against any single preclusive view of future war. None of us have a sufficiently clear crystal ball to predict fully the changing kaleidoscope of future conflicts that hover over the horizon, even as current fights, possible adversaries' nascent capabilities, and other factors intersect.

We will update the JOE in a year or two, once we have a sufficiently different understanding to make a new edition worthwhile. If you have ideas for improving our assessment of the future security environment and the problems our military must solve to provide relevant defense for our country and like-minded nations, please forward them to J-5 (Strategy), Joint Forces Command.

J.N. Mattis

General, U.S. Marines

Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command

-----

Joint Operating Environment 2010 -- Full Document

... The Marines are pushing into previously ignored Taliban enclaves. They have set up a first-of-its-kind school to train police officers. They have brought in a Muslim chaplain to pray with local mullahs and deployed teams of female Marines to reach out to Afghan women.

The Marine approach - creative, aggressive and, at times, unorthodox - has won many admirers within the military. The Marine emphasis on patrolling by foot and interacting with the population, which has helped to turn former insurgent strongholds along the Helmand River valley into reasonably stable communities with thriving bazaars and functioning schools, is hailed as a model of how U.S. forces should implement counterinsurgency strategy.

But the Marines' methods, and their insistence that they be given a degree of autonomy not afforded to U.S. Army units, also have riled many up the chain of command in Kabul and Washington, prompting some to refer to their area of operations in the south as "Marineistan." They regard the expansion in Delaram and beyond as contrary to the population-centric approach embraced by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, and they are seeking to impose more control over the Marines...

More at The Washington Post.

Topics include:

1) Could "repetitive raiding" replace counterinsurgency?

2) A painful decade has improved civil-military relations.

Could "repetitive raiding" replace counterinsurgency?

After the last decade's costly experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, future U.S. leaders will very likely wish to avoid another nation-building effort that requires the suppression of a stubborn insurgency.

But wishing rarely makes problems go away. There might, hypothetically, be another occasion when a "rogue" regime needs to be removed in the interests of either regional stability or basic human rights. Is there an alternative to post-removal counterinsurgency and nation-building? And what about Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn rule" -- "you break it, you own it" -- referring to the United States' moral obligations to Iraq after the 2003 invasion?

Writing in Armed Forces Journal, Bernard Finel, a senior fellow at the American Security Project, rejects the Pottery Barn rule and offers an alternative to counterinsurgency, namely "repetitive raiding." Finel explains his proposal this way:

[T]he vast majority of goals can be accomplished through quick, decisive military operations. Not all political goals are achievable this way, but most are and those that cannot be achieved through conventional operations likely cannot be achieved by the application of even the most sophisticated counterinsurgency doctrine either.

As a consequence, I believe the U.S. should adopt a national military strategy that heavily leverages the core capability to break states and target and destroy fixed assets, iteratively if necessary. Such a strategy -- which might loosely be termed "repetitive raiding" -- could defeat and disrupt most potential threats the U.S. faces. While America's adversaries may prefer to engage the U.S. using asymmetric strategies, there is no reason that the U.S. should agree to fight on these terms.

After explaining why the United States should fight on its own terms rather than those that favor the adversary, Finel then applies the economic concept of marginal benefit versus marginal cost to discuss the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan. Finel argues that in both cases, the United States achieved most of its war objectives very early on. Cumulative costs at those points in the campaigns were trivial compared with what they would eventually become. In both wars, the United States stayed on in an attempt to achieve the remaining war objectives, paying massive marginal costs for the last few marginal benefits.

It seems easy to dismiss Finel's argument by noting the risks and costs the United States would have borne had it left Iraq and Afghanistan as broken and chaotic places. Finel explains how these risks and costs were minor, unlikely, or could have been mitigated without open-ended military occupations.

But Finel is right to bring up the point about marginal benefits versus marginal costs. The United States will leave Iraq and Afghanistan at some point. When it does, there will still be some degree of trouble and uncertainty about the future in both places. Even then, no one will be able to say that all the broken dishes were repaired. Accepting that, Finel's argument for "repetitive raiding" as an alternative to counterinsurgency may find some appeal.

A painful decade has improved civil-military relations

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have forced civil-military relations in the United States to grow up and leave behind a naive adolescence that prevailed at the start of the last decade. Before the wars began, the "normal" theory of civil-military relations, (described in Eliot Cohen's book Supreme Command) still ruled. Under the "normal" theory, civilian leadership determines war policy and then leaves the generals and admirals alone to run the war. Thankfully those days are gone; hardly a month passes without the secretary of defense or some other senior figure heading out to the field, questioning not just generals, but also colonels and sergeants about their tactics. Likewise, soldiers now deeply immerse themselves in questions about the connections between policy objectives and military strategy, the evidence for which can be found every day at websites such as Small Wars Journal. By dropping the normal theory and letting policymakers and military officers into each other's "lanes," the result has been a generally smarter use of military power.

Although U.S. civil-military relations are more mature, Mackubin Owens, a professor at the Naval War College and editor of Orbis, thinks further improvement is needed. In an essay written for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Owens argues that several persistent problems are inhibiting the country's ability to formulate better strategy.

First, Owens thinks that residual traces of the normal theory live on, and not without good reason. The theory's exclusion of the military leadership from policy formulation was designed to maintain civilian control over the military and keep the military out of politics. Likewise, military officers viewed the execution of war plans as closely resembling an engineering project, to be performed only by highly trained professionals -- civilian amateurs should not meddle. But the theory created barriers between policy objectives and the military actions that should be designed to achieve those objectives.

Second, Owens asserts that the enduring culture of the normal theory has created organizational cultures in each of the military services that resist interference and calls for change from civilian political leaders. Yet when those civilian political leaders formulate a national security policy that requires military force, who will be held responsible for ensuring that the proper military tools are ready to implement the policy? If the "normal" theory walls off the institutional military from close political supervision, the country may find itself unprepared for new eras of conflict (as happened at the start of the last decade).

Finally, Owens blames the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 for further raising the wall between policy formulation and military strategy. The disastrous attempt in 1980 to rescue U.S. Embassy employees from Tehran and the 1983 invasion of Grenada revealed serious problems in interservice cooperation. The solution was Goldwater-Nichols, which reduced the authority of the Washington-based service chiefs and increased the power of regional field commanders, who are responsible for executing joint-service military operations. Many have applauded the act for improving interservice military efficiency. But Owens claims the price has been the creation of further distance between civilian policymakers and warfighters, resulting in a greater disconnection between policy objectives and military strategy.

The solution, according to Owens, is twofold. First, military leaders must reassert a voice in strategy and, presumably, engage their civilian masters on the integration of military actions with policy objectives. On the other side, civilian leaders should closely probe and supervise the services' plans for force structure, acquisition programs, training, and doctrine to ensure that the services are creating military capabilities that will support national policies. On these measures, civil-military relations have improved. But it has taken a decade of painful wars to bring about this improvement.

When you are a stranger in a strange land, you need to be aware of, and hold on to, and be proud of your culture. In my experience you can become susceptible to myth and unfounded fears of a super warrior that you have not yet engaged. I was chatting with a young Afghan who, full of Pashtun bravado said to me "westerners were from a feminine culture," because we spent the majority of our economic activity on goods and services and not on weapons of war and the military. Being one half Irish and one half Yugoslavian culturally speaking, I am not inclined to walk away from a fight and "them sounded like fighting words to me." I asked my Pashtun buddy to show me how westerners greet each other. He extended his hand in a wave. I pointed out the open hand and said, "do you know why we do that? The open hand shows the other westerner that 'I have no weapons;' so, I won't try to kill you, this time." It seems we are not such an effete culture after all, my Pashtun friend!

In our ninth year of insurgency in Afghanistan it seems that we are turning to romantic notions and silver bullets to extricate ourselves from what seems like an unending conflict. The latest great hope is the tribes. The idea being that if only we could mobilize them, we would be halfway to a solution to this insurgency.

I think that this approach smacks too much of military orientalism. We seem to be looking for the Jean Jacque Rousseau "noble savage." Or in modern terms, I would call it the "Avatar Effect" or "Last Samurai last hope." In the search to find a way out we are pinning our hopes on the weakest link in the Afghan conflict chain.

I will not look at this problem from an anthropological point of view but rather from a strictly military point of view. There are limitations to the tribal style of warfare that have always limited their effectiveness and always will.

Tribes fight within the limitations of a complicated honor code that requires the respect of both sides to work. Pashtun culture sees the fight as being a matter of honor, worth fighting only if it is an affair between men taking equal risk i.e. it has to be a fair fight. The targeting of women and non-combatants to gain an advantage is out of the question. Once you do that, the Pashtun leaves the fight. Historically, this has been a very effective method of defeating them. British Aerial Policing did this, Taraki's bombing of revolting villages did this, and the Taliban fanatics are not above targeting non-combatants either.

The Pashtun fight for booty or land not ideals. This limits their zeal because once the objective is taken, the spoils are distributed and the fighting stops. After that comes the squabbling between tribes as to who gets what from the spoils. So, motivating them to expel the Taliban from their midst is really a non-starter because there is no money in it.

Real soldiers know that it is all about logistics. Start running out of ammo in a firefight and you know what I mean. Afghan tribal fighting style and honour code demand that Pashtuns should all fight all the time. That is a great line for Star Ship Troopers, but not militarily practical for the Pashtuns. Because they will not take less honourable duties like logistics, their style of fighting is best suited to the advance where they can live off the land like armies of old. They cannot support themselves outside their immediate area, or Kehl.

Getting tribes and clans and different communities to fight side by side is problematic. Disputes over spoils or disputes over perceived slights can quickly turn allies against one another. King Ammanullah was able to use the mullahs as interlocuters between the tribes and as logisticians in order to keep them fighting the enemy not each other. This time, the enemy is the mullah. Who will keep the tribes on side? P.S. This week, two Shinwari sub-tribes took up arms to fight each other over an ancient land dispute, leaving at least 13 people dead. This is the same tribe who were supposed to work with Coalition forces for a cool million.

Tribes cannot call jihad, thus their dead cannot be shaheed (martyrs). This limits their enthusiasm for the fight. We want them, in fact, to fight against those that have called for jihad. How do we cross that bridge?

Jirga/Tribal structure makes planning too slow. It is easily infiltrated and the supporters are too easily identified and targeted with night letters and murder, and of course their plans can be communicated to the enemy quite easily.

Tribal war is all about the survival of the tribe and the protection of the status and possessions of the elders who are reluctant combatants because they have the most to lose. The elders that we put our faith in are the least —to fight because they take the greatest risk. They have land, women and houses that are not easy to walk away from. It is the young who have the most zeal because they have the least to lose. The tribes are most likely to join you only when you are winning and the can get in on the booty.

They are first to quit. In fact, the Taliban never took all of Afghanistan. They merely built up a head of steam and the tribes/warlords flipped over on their backs like submissive dogs in order to preserve their status. After 911, they flipped back against the Taliban, because momentum was with us and we would preserve their status. The mistake we make is that in our culture, changing sides is seen as the worst kind of evil, but in Pashtun culture it is seen merely as clever because it is all about survival of the tribe.

Let's look at the recent history of the tribes. The tribes tell us they hate the Taliban, the Taliban are trumped up school teachers who have stepped above their station in life, the tribes are full of mighty warriors, and it is the Elders who should be in power. If this were the case, the Taliban would have been chased out a long time ago. It seems to me, the tribes are either not capable or not —to take on the Taliban and are content to maintain the status-quo and their position within it.

Which is it?

LCol JJ Malevich, Canadian Exchange Officer, COIN Branch Chief, US Army/ USMC Counter Insurgency Center. This statement is my own and does not constitute an endorsement by or opinion of the Department of Defense.