There's been a lot of talk lately about opening negotiations with the Taliban—or at least trying to pull in the "reconcilables" while continuing to kill the "unreconcilables"—which has created a lot of back and forth in hotbeds for debate about counterinsurgency tactics and procedures, like the Small Wars Journal and Abu Muquwama blogs...

I recently spoke with Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught at the counterinsurgency school in Kabul, and who is currently a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, who thinks that negotiating with the Taliban right now is a bad idea. "If we open negotiations with the Taliban right now, we will be doing so from a position of weakness," he says. "The trick for the next administration is to take the tactical and operational and strategic steps to get us into a position of strength where negotiation is an option."

John Nagl, a former army Lieutenant Colonel also at the Center for a New American Security, told me that in the near term, what he sees as most crucial for finding a solution to the Afghan mess is the need for "confidence-building measures between India and Pakistan" that could be very useful in allowing Pakistan to focus more exclusively "on the Taliban insurgency in its midst and the continuing problem of al Qaeda. None of these things by itself is going to turn the tide. A combination of all of them with additional resources has the potential to be enormously helpful."...

Much more at Ares.

Somali pirates strike again, this time hijacking a Saudi-owned tanker off the coast of Kenya. The running stand off with the hijacked ship carrying arms and a Ukrainian crew continues; Russia announces that it repelled an attack on a different Saudi vessel...

Might piracy be a relatively easy place for the Obama administration to demonstrate its approach to use of force, multilateralism, and international law? No use of force question is ever truly easy - law of unintended consequences always in effect - but clearly this is a rising issue, and one in which the vessels of many nations have been attacked and continue at risk....

Much more at Opinio Juris - Kenneth poses some good questions at this post and is seeking those with operational experience to comment.

... Today we hear from John P. Sullivan, the co-founder of the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group. He's a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, focusing on emerging threats. Sullivan co-edited Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating a Global Counter-Terrorism Network.

While the public and media are occupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential conflict with Iran, the downward spiral in Pakistan, and a global economic meltdown, a new, rapidly-evolving danger - narco-cartels and gangs - has been developing in Mexico and Latin America. And it has the potential to trump global terrorism as a threat to the United States...

Much more at Danger Room.

The Center for a New American Security, a small think tank here with generally middle-of-the-road policy views, is rapidly emerging as a top farm team for the incoming Obama administration.

When President-elect Barack Obama released a roster of his transition advisers last week, many of the national-security appointments came from the ranks of the center, which was founded by a pair of former Clinton administration officials in February 2007.

The think tank's central role in the transition effort suggests that its positions -- which include rejecting a fixed timeline for a withdrawal from Iraq -- will get a warm reception within the new administration.

Michele Flournoy, who co-founded the center with Kurt Campbell, a former Clinton National Security Council and Pentagon official, now serves as its president. She is one of two top members of Mr. Obama's defense transition team and is likely to be offered a high-ranking position at the Pentagon. Some Obama advisers say she could eventually be tapped as the nation's first female defense secretary...

Much more at The Wall Street Journal.

Colonel David Gurney (USMC Ret.), Editor of Joint Force Quarterly and Director of National Defense University Press, has again kindly permitted SWJ to post an item that will appear in the January 2009 issue of JFQ.

Colonel Gurney and Dr. Jeffrey D. Smotherman of Joint Force Quarterly interviewed Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army General George Casey at his Pentagon office -- get an early read of this interview here at SWJ.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is approaching the presidential transition unlike any of his predecessors.

He has ordered hundreds of political appointees at the Pentagon canvassed to see whether they wish to stay on in the new administration, has streamlined policy briefings and has set up suites for President-elect Barack Obama's transition team just down the hall from his own E-ring office.

Gates's efforts to ensure a smooth changeover during the first wartime presidential transition in 40 years mark a consensus-oriented style that has won him strong support inside and outside the Pentagon.

More at The Washington Post.

A Military for a Dangerous New World - New York Times editorial

As president, Barack Obama will face the most daunting and complicated national security challenges in more than a generation - and he will inherit a military that is critically ill-equipped for the task.

Troops and equipment are so overtaxed by President Bush's disastrous Iraq war that the Pentagon does not have enough of either for the fight in Afghanistan, the war on terror's front line, let alone to confront the next threats.

This is intolerable, especially when the Pentagon's budget, including spending on the two wars, reached $685 billion in 2008. That is an increase of 85 percent in real dollars since 2000 and nearly equal to all of the rest of the world's defense budgets combined. It is also the highest level in real dollars since World War II.

To protect the nation, the Obama administration will have to rebuild and significantly reshape the military. We do not minimize the difficulty of this task. Even if money were limitless, planning is extraordinarily difficult in a world with no single enemy and many dangers.

More at The New York Times.

Unsettling Times for Jihadists - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion

Let's try for a moment to read the mind of an al-Qaeda operative in the remote mountains of Waziristan as he listens to the news on the radio. His worldview has been roiled recently by two events -- one confounding his image of the West and the other confirming it.

The upsetting news for our imaginary jihadist is the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. This wasn't supposed to happen, in al-Qaeda's playbook. Its aim was to draw the "far enemy" (meaning America) ever deeper onto the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Instead, the jihadists must cope with a president-elect who promises to get out of Iraq and whose advisers are talking about negotiating with the Taliban. And to top it off, the guy's middle name is Hussein.

Before the election, the radical Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradhawi even issued a fatwa supporting John McCain: "Personally, I would prefer for the Republican candidate, McCain, to be elected. This is because I prefer the obvious enemy who does not hypocritically [conceal] his hostility toward you . . . to the enemy who wears a mask [of friendliness]."

More at The Washington Post.

The bottom line here is that the War on Terror is far from over. Whether we are, as Churchill once said, not at the beginning of the end, but at least at the end of the beginning ultimately depends on whether there is a consensus in the West that can sustain the long campaign that Kilcullen describes. The limp response from NATO and the desire for quick fixes suggests that while the road to ultimate victory may be known, we may not want to go there. Where we will go on the road of quick fixes is another story.

More at Belmont Club.

And from Max Boot at Commentary's Contentions - Kilcullen on Afghanistan.

He also pours some cold water on the dream of negotiating with an undefeated Taliban - that "is totally not in the cards," as he puts it. As an alternative he suggests "community engagement" to win over local areas that are "tacitly supporting the Taliban by default (because of lack of an alternative)."

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

More at Contentions.

Also - Dave Kilcullen will be a guest of CNN this Sunday (1 PM ET) on Fareed Zakaria's show GPS - the subject - counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

I wrote about David Kilcullen two years ago, in a piece called Knowing the Enemy. Few experts understand counterinsurgency and counterterrorism better than this former Australian army officer and anthropology Ph.D, who has advised the American, British, and Australian governments, was one of General Petraeus's strategic whizzes at the start of the surge, in early 2007, and writes so well that you'd never imagine he's spent his whole career in government, the military, and academia. Kilcullen is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, which has provided Obama with foreign-policy advisers and advice.

This week, Kilcullen agreed to do an e-mail Q. & A. on Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he's spent a lot of time, and where the most pressing foreign crisis awaits the new Administration. Though Kilcullen is still an adviser to the State Department, he emphasized that his views are his own. And they are characteristically blunt...

Read the Q&A at The New Yorker.

Also - Dave will be a guest of CNN this Sunday (1 PM ET) on Fareed Zakaria's show GPS - the subject - counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

The war in Afghanistan is not going well, and the critical problem is the same one that dogged our efforts in Iraq for years: grossly inadequate troop levels. Western troop totals there have just inched over 60,000, while Afghan security forces total some 140,000. Let's put this into perspective: We are trying to do with 200,000 personnel what it took 700,000 soldiers and police (plus 100,000 "volunteers") to accomplish in Iraq. But Afghanistan is even larger than Iraq, and more populous.

President-elect Barack Obama has wisely promised an increase in US forces for Afghanistan. But his proposed minisurge of perhaps 15,000 more troops, on top of the 30,000 Americans and 30,000 NATO personnel now there, will not suffice as a strategy. More is needed.

To be sure, it is not all about numbers. As Gen. David Petraeus has already underscored, Afghanistan is not Iraq, and what worked in one place may not succeed in another. Among other things, the Pakistan sanctuary enjoyed by Taliban fighters, as well as partisans supporting Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other warlords, complicates the Afghan situation enormously. That said, basic principles of counterinsurgency and stabilization do have a general applicability across missions. The size of security forces always matters.

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Colonel David Gurney (USMC Ret.), Editor of Joint Force Quarterly and Director of National Defense University Press, when not closely following the debate between John Nagl and Gian Gentile, seeks out the best and brightest for their views on the potential threats we may face in the not so distant future -- and of course any such search leads to Frank Hoffman.

Colonel Gurney has, again, kindly -- and we, again, greatly appreciate this -- granted SWJ permission to post Frank's Hybrid Warfare and Challenges that will appear in the January 2009 issue of JFQ.

The U.S. military faces an era of enormous complexity. This complexity has been extended by globalization, the proliferation of advanced technology, violent transnational extremists, and resurgent powers. America's vaunted military might stand atop all others but is tested in many ways. Trying to understand the possible perturbations the future poses to our interests is a daunting challenge. But, as usual, a familiarity with history is our best aid to interpretation. In particular, that great and timeless illuminator of conflict, chance, and human nature Thucydides—is as relevant and revealing as ever.

In his classic history, Thucydides detailed the savage 27-year conflict between Sparta and Athens. Sparta was the overwhelming land power of its day, and its hoplites were drilled to perfection. The Athenians, led by Pericles, were the supreme maritime power, supported by a walled capital, a fleet of powerful triremes, and tributary allies. The Spartan leader, Archidamius, warned his kinsmen about Athens' relative power, but the Spartans and their supporters would not heed their king. In 431 BCE, the Spartans marched through Attica and ravaged the Athenian country estates and surrounding farms. They encamped and awaited the Athenian heralds and army for what they hoped would be a decisive battle and a short war.

The scarlet-clad Spartans learned the first lesson of military history—the enemy gets a vote. The Athenians elected to remain behind their walls and fight a protracted campaign that played to their strengths and worked against their enemies. Thucydides' ponderous tome on the carnage of the Peloponnesian War is an extended history of the operational adaptation of each side as they strove to gain a sustainable advantage over their enemy. These key lessons are, as he intended, a valuable "possession for all time."

In the midst of an ongoing inter-Service roles and missions review, and an upcoming defense review, these lessons need to be underlined. As we begin to debate the scale and shape of the Armed Forces, an acute appreciation of history's hard-earned lessons will remain useful. Tomorrow's enemies will still get a vote, and they will remain as cunning and elusive as today's foes. They may be more lethal and more implacable. We should plan accordingly.

One should normally eschew simplistic metanarratives, especially in dynamic and nonlinear times. However, the evolving character of conflict that we currently face is best characterized by convergence. This includes the convergence of the physical and psychological, the kinetic and nonkinetic, and combatants and noncombatants. So, too, we see the convergence of military force and the interagency community, of states and nonstate actors, and of the capabilities they are armed with. Of greatest relevance are the converging modes of war. What once might have been distinct operational types or categorizations among terrorism and conventional, criminal, and irregular warfare have less utility today.

Lieutenant Colonel Frank G. Hoffman, USMCR (Ret.), is a retired Marine infantryman who serves as a research fellow in the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command.. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Phila, PA.