The U.S. military officer corps faces an ever-increasing array of challenges. With current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and a complex global environment, the United States is relying on its armed forces to perform an ever-widening variety of functions. CNAS's latest report, Keeping the Edge: Revitalizing America's Military Officer Corps, analyzes the changing nature of military officership and provides recommendations for how the U.S. military officer corps can keep its edge in a new strategic environment.

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) will launch Keeping the Edge at an event today from 5:00-6:30 p.m. at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel followed by a reception. The event will feature a keynote address by U.S. Joint Forces Commander General James Mattis, USMC, and a panel discussion with top experts including: Vice Admiral Ann E. Rondeau, USN, President of National Defense University; Lieutenant General David Barno, USA, (Ret.), Director of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at National Defense University; Major General Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., USAF, Deputy Judge Advocate General at U.S. Air Force Headquarters; and Dr. John A. Nagl, CNAS President. Find out more about the event here and RSVP for the event here.

In Keeping the Edge, the authors -- Dr. John Nagl, Brian M. Burton, Dr. Don M. Snider, Frank G. Hoffman, Captain Mark R. Hagerott, USN, and Colonel Roderick C. Zastrow, USAF -- argue that the military must provide a broader range of educational and professional experiences to military officers, essential components of training agile minds how to think rather than what to think, and cultivate new skill sets that are more relevant to 21st-century challenges.

"The profession of officership will continue to require physical, moral, and mental excellence, but the rapidly changing strategic environment of the 21st century will place an increasing premium on agility and flexibility," write Nagl and Burton. "The emerging strategic environment will provide both challenges and opportunities to those who have the tools necessary to handle the unexpected, and to do so with honor and integrity."

Download the full report here.

Malcolm Nance has a new book out, An End to al-Qaeda: Destroying Bin Laden's Jihad and Restoring America's Honor.

He discussed the book yesterday in

this clip on the

Rachel Maddow show.  If you suffer through the wacky "security briefing"

intro, you'll get a chance to hear him nicely frame our loss of initiative to Al

Qaeda in defining the IO battlefield.  As far as the how and what

we can do to change that and defeat them in the next 24 months?  I

guess we'll have to buy the book and read quickly.  :)   The

clock is ticking.

Speaking of ticking, Maddow's site links in to Malcolm's

earlier appearance

on the show as it took on the "ticking time bomb" argument for torture. 

Each time he hits the headlines, a few more people connect the dots and run into

his Fall 2007 post here stating

Waterboarding is Torture, Period.  We continue to appreciate that

clarity.

Now, dejected opposition supporters are re-examining their tactics and struggling to find a new catalyst for a movement that emerged with astonishing power just eight months ago, after the disputed presidential election.

"I think a failure has triggered debates and tactical analyses that have been needed for a long time now," said a 26-year-old woman in Tehran, who attended last Thursday's protest and many earlier ones, and who, out of fear for her safety, asked to be identified only as Saina. After the last major protest, around the Ashura holiday in late December, turned violent, she said, "It seemed like a lot of people were tired of being brutalized and continuing to go out into the streets."

If Iran's Green Movement follows the pattern of earlier opposition movements, two scenarios seem likely. The movement will fade away after the government decapitates its leadership and successfully intimidates its foot soldiers. Or a hardened and professional core group will take over a vastly smaller movement and lead it into a violent urban insurgency.

It is one thing for idealistic students and office workers to throw rocks at riot police and put up with tear gas. It is something else for the mass of momentarily enthusiastic but unhardened activist-trainees to watch heads be broken, endure interrogation at Evin Prison, or learn about gruesome threats from Basij militiamen directed at their sisters and mothers.

The Green Movement faces the same day of reckoning that other revolutionary movements squaring off against authoritarian regimes have faced. At this moment, Darwinian logic usually works its power. Those not cut out to be revolutionaries against a ruthless dictatorship simply revert to their former lives. Under this scenario, a small core of grim, determined, and perhaps equally ruthless revolutionaries would survive. This core group would welcome the resulting boost to the movement's internal security -- the regime will find it more difficult to infiltrate the shrunken core group. Will the hardened survivors miss the mass popular enthusiasm they previously enjoyed? Perhaps, but February 11 showed the limits of that model.

Should the Green Movement shrink to small, professional revolutionary elite, what would be its theory of success? What would it do for a living?

The standard answer is urban terrorism. What would be the point of that? From the perspective of a professional revolutionary, bombing attacks against the police, Basij members, the IRGC, and government leaders serve several purposes. First, the revolutionary is attempting to show the public that the regime is vulnerable. Second, the revolutionary is hoping that the government over-reacts against the neutral public. Both of these are attempts to recruit new foot soldiers to the underground army. Finally, for many revolutionaries terror is simply a form of revenge. Such violence is not a problem for many who have made a commitment to a life outside the law.

Will the Green Movement turn into an urban terror campaign? The best bet is that the IRGC and others responsible for Iran's internal security will successfully dominate the Greens. Authoritarian regimes, when they have the will to survive, have an excellent record against internal rebellions. Iran's governing structure suffers from its own internal divisions, which the Greens hope to exploit. But the regime has its own hard core that possesses a ruthless will to survive. It remains to be seen whether the Green Movement contains any of its own ruthless types. And whether last week's failure will now put them in charge.

General Martin E. Dempsey is the Commanding General of the U.S. Army

Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). This is a

repost from TRADOC live.

Two months ago, TRADOC published a major revision to the Army's capstone

concept under the title,

The Army

Capstone Concept: Operational Adaptability: Operating under Conditions of

Uncertainty and Complexity in an Era of Persistent Conflict 2016-2028. This

landmark document describes the broad capabilities the Army will require in the

operational environment to defend America and help secure our interests in the

world.

The writing and publication of this concept was a significant undertaking,

and it will have major implications and ramifications across our Army for years

to come. I intend to use the capstone concept to provide the common language and

conceptual foundation for an ongoing campaign of learning and analysis that will

allow the Army to evaluate, refine, and improve all of its core competencies.

This is not a document that just gets put on a shelf to collect dust. Rather,

the prioritized capabilities that emerge from it and other, more detailed

subordinate concepts, will guide changes in doctrine, organization, training,

materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy. The Army

of the future will learn differently, build leaders differently, train

differently and redesign itself more quickly. And, the capstone concept serves

as our "line of departure" for building that Army.

We held our Army Capstone Concept Summit at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. on Jan 21

to explore the document's implications - on our warfighting challenges, our Army

Concept Framework and the foundation it sets for ensuring sound modernization

strategies and warfighting effectiveness. Our way forward is to continue to work

within TRADOC and outside stakeholders to implement the real and positive change

the Army Capstone Concept demands for the future - this will be a team effort.

To respond to a rapidly changing strategic environment and an ever-growing array of demands, the U.S. military must develop and maintain a high degree of adaptability within its officer corps. Indeed, America relies on its armed forces to perform a wider variety of functions than any other nation in history, and existing methods of training and education may not be sufficient to cultivate the officer corps America will need in the future. In addition to demonstrating a high degree of proficiency in conventional military operations, officers should also develop broader skill sets and knowledge to cope with a more complicated and rapidly evolving international environment.

On Thursday, February 18, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) will release a major report at an event on how the United States can revitalize its military officer corps to meet current national security challenges, and those that lie ahead. General James N. Mattis, USMC, Commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, will deliver the keynote address, in addition to distinguished panel of experts who will offer their perspective on this important issue, including: Vice Admiral Ann E. Rondeau, USN, President of National Defense University; Lieutenant General David Barno, USA (Ret.), Director, Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at National Defense University; Major General Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., USAF, Deputy Judge Advocate General at U.S. Air Force Headquarters; and Dr. John A. Nagl, President of CNAS.

Keeping the Edge: Revitalizing America's Military Officer Corps

Date and Time:

February 18, 2010

4:30-5:00 p.m.: Event registration

5:00-6:30 p.m.: Event

6:30-7:30 p.m.: Reception

This event was originally scheduled for February 9 but was postponed due to inclement weather.

Topics include:

1) Is the Green Revolution an insurgency?

2) A Green Beret's advice: Think COIN, but don't do COIN.

Is the Green Revolution an insurgency?

Feb. 11 was the 31st anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked the occasion by declaring to hundreds of thousands gathered at Tehran's Azadi Square that Iran was a "nuclear state." Meanwhile, a heavy presence of security forces in Tehran appeared to have successfully suppressed counterdemonstrations by regime opponents. In an essay for Small Wars Journal, Dan Cox, an associate professor at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College, wonders whether Iran's rulers are battling an embryonic insurgency. And if so, is the regime successfully implementing Western-designed counterinsurgency (COIN) theory to snuff out the opposition?

Cox refers back to the French military commander David Galula, one of the original COIN gurus, and others to analyze the Iranian government's actions against the protesters. In response to well-developed insurgencies, Galula and other Western COIN theorists have recommended a gentle hand -- counterinsurgents should limit the use of force, protect the population, and stress economic development in order to isolate the insurgents. However, Cox points out the lesser-known advice Galula and other COIN theorists have for embryonic insurgencies. The COIN gurus recommend early recognition of the problem and a harsh decisive response. Cox concludes that the Iranian government, taking advantage of its authoritarian position, is employing the recommendations of these Western theorists and to good effect.

First, the regime appears to have developed good intelligence on the opposition. The opposition movement appears broad, but scattered, disorganized, and probably lacking many internal security measures. The security services have likely had an easy time penetrating the movement's leadership network and monitoring its electronic communications.

Second, Cox's research of the Western COIN theorists suggests the importance of early coercive countermeasures against the opposition. According to the New York Times, the security services have arrested more than a thousand people over the past two months, including scores of journalists, a variety of activists, relatives of opposition leaders, and others. Since June, eleven regime opponents have been sentenced to death, two have been hanged, and five more are on trial for their lives.

Finally, Galula and other Western COIN theorists stress the importance of controlling the media and information. Modern technology would presumably favor the insurgent's efforts to distribute anti-government propaganda and expose the regime's coercive countermeasures to scrutiny. In Iran, the government has corralled or expelled Western journalists and arrested domestic journalists not sympathetic to the regime. The government also seems to have effectively strangled the new media; Internet bandwidth available to the protesters seems minimal, and the government has shut down Google's Gmail service and other social networking services.

Cox concludes that the Iranian government, in accordance with Western COIN theorists, has rapidly and efficiently responded to the embryonic insurgency. It has penetrated the protest movement, arrested the movement's organizers and propagandists, and achieved dominance over information and communications. Naturally, there are more chapters to this story. But thus far, the Iranian government is showing how to stop an insurgency before it gets started.

A Green Beret's advice: Think COIN, but don't do COIN

After more than eight years of war in Afghanistan and nearly seven in Iraq, the conventional wisdom is that the United States will face more troublesome insurgencies. Even as the U.S. military's involvement in Iraq winds down and as it tries to tame the Taliban in Afghanistan, new insurgency troubles have emerged in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Thus, counterinsurgency will remain the focus of the U.S. military for the foreseeable future.

According to Lt. Col. Brian Petit, commander of the U.S. Army's 2nd Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, that conventional wisdom is not quite right. Writing in the journal Special Warfare, Petit, whose battalion served in the Sulu Archipelago in the southern Philippines, argues that the U.S. military should "think COIN" but actually stop doing COIN itself. Petit reminds his readers that counterinsurgency is the proper job for the indigenous security forces, and not for an outsider third party to a conflict, such as the U.S. Army. Petit's advice to the U.S. military? "Think COIN, but practice FID [foreign internal defense]."

Similar to successful ongoing U.S. foreign internal defense missions in Colombia and Africa's Sahel region, the U.S. assistance effort in the Philippines strictly employs the "indirect approach." U.S. soldiers train, advise, and support the local army and police. They remain out of sight and do not participate in direct combat. Even medical assistance visits to remote Philippine villages push Filipino medics and nurses to the foreground with Americans remaining behind the scenes. Petit writes that these visits are planned in consultation with former insurgents who are now reintegrated into society.

If the indirect FID method is so obviously superior to the campaigns that pushed more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers into Iraq and Afghanistan, why hasn't the FID approach been used in those two places? Although at one time broken and corrupt, the Philippines and Colombia at least had a government and army; in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. forces had to start from zero.

Perhaps as important is how impatient U.S. policymakers frequently are for results, especially for projects they have made into top priorities. But this doesn't work for COIN, as Petit explains:

Tactically, the indirect approach requires clear-eyed recognition that U.S. capacity will be applied through -- and not around -- the host nation. This paradigm seems simple, but it runs counter to U.S. military "can-doism" and requires a long-term view and immense operational patience. The indirect approach does not satisfy appetites for quick, measurable results. By building capacity with host nation security forces and simultaneously applying population-focused, civil-military programs, the indirect approach rarely produces singularly spectacular results in tactical engagements. Measures of effectiveness are often best assessed over time and anecdotally.

President Barack Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal are counting on quick, measurable results in Afghanistan, with a withdrawal slated to begin in 17 months. That is not the way Petit and his soldiers made progress in the Philippines.

"The significance of this operation, lead by U.S. Marines in coordination with coalition and Afghan partners, cannot be underestimated as it is the largest joint operation in Afghanistan since 2001 and the first major test of the additional U.S. forces President Obama ordered last December," explained Jeffrey Dressler. Prior to their deployment, Mr. Dressler briefed Marines at Camp Lejeune on his comprehensive work on Helmand province published last fall by ISW.

Key facts from this backgrounder include:

- Operation Moshtarak (Dari for "Together") is largest joint offensive involving Afghan forces to date. Unlike previous operations, one battalion of Afghan troops will be paired with one battalion of U.S. Marines.

- Marjah is a major Taliban stronghold in Helmand province and remains the command and control hub for the insurgency. Marjah is also considered to be one of the main narcotics centers in Helmand.

- The Taliban has formed or forced an alliance with local opium farmers, taxing each factory at a rate of $1,200 per month. The Taliban has also installed an elaborate shadow government in Marjah including judges, a mayor and a tax collecting committee.

- British Special Forces and U.S. Navy SEALs have commenced shaping operations, killing and capturing top Taliban commanders and dropping leaflets "warning the [insurgent] fighters to leave the area or be killed."

- In preparation for Operation Moshtarak, insurgents have constructed tunnels and bunkers, brought in heavy weapons, set booby traps and strewn landmines around Marjah. It is reported that 90% of the population remain in the town, trapped by IED belts that ring navigable terrain.

Operation Moshtarak: Preparing for the Battle of Marjah.

... Islam, piety, and the power of the mullah are important aspects of life and culture in Afghanistan and may have more to do with fueling and driving the insurgency than we have acknowledged to date. Our failure to recognize this and address this dynamic will ensure our failure in Afghanistan and the region. We are not facing a mere political power struggle which is fueled by poverty, but rather a social and religious struggle that is powered by nothing less than jihad. This jihad has the potential to be more powerful than any Afghan government or tribe. In fact, jihad is the hail-Mary play that could prove to be the game changer in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a pretty ordered and structured society. Power is divided between the government, landholders/tribes, and the mullahs, and there is a constant power struggle between these three entities. The government wants to tax the landowners/tribes. The tribes want to avoid taxes and government control and the Mullahs want to control the other two and establish an Islamic Emirate and eradicate Pashtun-wali traits of music and dancing...

More at The COIN Center.

Tribe and Prejudice: America's 'New Hope' in Afghanistan - Joshua Foust, The National.

... In the 48 months since the return of the Taliban, American planners have announced a series of new plans intended to reverse their momentum, without much evident success.

The latest of these initiatives - what the New York Times grandly called "America's New Hope" in Afghanistan - is an attempt to bribe local tribes into battling the insurgency alongside American forces. Despite public declarations that they are doing no such thing, the U.S. policy establishment clearly hopes to duplicate the Sunni Awakening in Afghanistan.

In an effort to showcase the Afghan version of an Iraqi grassroots rebellion, U.S. military commanders in far eastern Nangarhar province announced at the end of January that they would support one tribe, the Shinwari, in its fight against the Taliban, pledging $1 million in development aid for tribal leaders in exchange for their allegiance. Unlike the Iraqis in Anbar, however, the Shinwari do not support the central government - suggesting that this "tribal engagement" and others like it may have detrimental effects on the legitimacy and stability of the administration in Kabul...

More at The National.

All, this article was recently published in The Washington Post, written by Greg Jaffe.

I think this has the potential of engendering tremendous discussion across the Army. I ask that you take the time to read it and am very interested in hearing your thoughts on its implications. Reflecting back on your time as former company grade leaders, both as commanders and staff officers, and looking forward as you assume positions as field grade officers including battalion command, this article articulates several topics that are important to discuss as part of our profession.

V/r BG Ed Cardon

Share your views with BG Cardon at the CAC Blog.

If you're a British Army Review reader you may have seen this review of John Mackinlay's The Insurgent Archipelago already. However, as the BAR is not published electronically (why??!!) I'm posting it here on KOW for those of you who don't receive a hard copy.

First, go buy the book.

Now read why.

John Mackinlay has been thinking about insurgency and counterinsurgency in one way or another for the better part of a lifetime, from 1964 when he first reported for duty in Borneo as a junior officer in the 6th Gurkha Rifles, and then after a twenty-year military career as a research academic during which time he has written many highly regarded scholarly articles and monographs on the subject. This book, The Insurgent Archipelago, is the product of those many years of observation and thought. It is an important book because unusually for the insurgency and counterinsurgency literature which, as I shall describe below, is relatively slow-moving, and repetitive (even static), it has something new to say. It is a timely book because eight years into the inaptly named 'Global War on Terror', about which Mackinlay says insightful and needful things, with the cost in blood and treasure of the two major expeditionary campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan far exceeding the hopes and expectations of those who launched them, and with meaningful success still elusive, it is past time for a strategic rethink. This elegantly written book, without jargon and largely unburdened by academic hokum, provides an essential guide to the 'when the rubber hits the road' issues of global insurgency, what it is, how to understand it, and, possibly, how to deal with it...

Much more at KOW.