The best global strategy for the US may be the one that won the Cold War.

By Commander Philip Kapusta and Captain Donovan Campbell

This article originally appeared in the 27 July edition of the Boston Globe and is posted here with permission of the authors and Globe.

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, brutally announced the presence of an enemy seemingly distinct from any our country had faced before. Unlike previous adversaries, such as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Spanish monarchy, this new enemy was difficult to define, let alone understand. It was not motivated by causes that an avowedly secular government could easily comprehend, and it took an amorphous yet terrifying form with little historical precedent.

Our leaders responded to this new threat with dramatic changes. In the largest government reorganization of the past 50 years, the Department of Homeland Security lumbered into existence. A new director of national intelligence was named to oversee America's vast intelligence apparatus, and the defense of the homeland was made the military's top priority. Most dramatically, the United States announced - and then implemented - an aggressive new policy of preemptive war.

Yet, with the seventh anniversary of 9/11 approaching, it seems clear that policy makers have not responded particularly well. Islamic extremists are gaining strength, while America finds itself increasingly isolated in the world. The coalition of the willing, never overly robust, is now on life support. In the Middle East, the Islamist parties Hezbollah and Hamas have enough popular support to prosper in free and fair elections, and Al Qaeda is adding franchise chapters in North Africa, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and elsewhere. Our most prominent post- 9/11 action remains the Iraq war, which has arguably failed to improve America's national security even as it has strengthened the position of our sworn enemies in the government of Iran.

Underlying these global setbacks is a core problem: The United States has yet to formulate a holistic strategy to guide the prosecution of our new war. We have not articulated a clear set of mutually reinforcing goals, and we have not undertaken a consistent set of actions designed to achieve our aims even as they demonstrate our national values. Indeed, we have not even managed to properly identify our enemies; despite the rhetoric of the past seven years, America is not at war with terror, because terror is not a foe but a tactic.

Blundering forward, we have squandered the swell of global good will after 9/11, punished our friends, and rewarded our enemies with shortsighted, even self-destructive, tactics.

Yet what we face today is not wholly novel: It is a war of ideas, mirroring the Cold War. Like the Communists, violent Islamic extremists are trying to spread a worldview that denigrates personal liberty and demands submission to a narrow ideology. And, as with the Cold War, it must be our goal to stop them. The United States should therefore adopt a new version of the policy that served us so well during that last long war: containment.

A policy of "neocontainment" would avoid self-defeating military confrontations in favor of an aggressive campaign to isolate our enemies. The modern equivalent of the Soviet Bloc, that geographic haven for a hostile ideology, is the arc of instability that extends from Central Asia west through Iran and the Arabian Peninsula and south across North Africa. We should build a virtual wall of stable, moderate nations on the periphery of that arc, literally containing the spread of the hostile belief system. More broadly, we must enter into - and prevail in - the war of ideas, winning the hearts and minds of both domestic and foreign audiences. We must pursue this goal not only in the mental arena - in what has been variously describe as political warfare, propaganda, or psychological operations - but also in the practical one, by consistently demonstrating our belief system in action. Our deeds are more important than anything we say, and in the aggressive prosecution of our war on terror, we have strayed from our core value of individual freedom.

Of course, neocontainment will have to address the important differences between the conflicts of today and yesterday. Today's threat emanates not from a hypergoverned nation-state but from a loosely networked group of radicals based primarily in undergoverned areas of the world - which makes carefully defining and targeting our true foes all the more important. Just as we strove to separate the Soviet elites from the people they repressively ruled, now we must separate the Islamic radicals from the vast majority of Muslims. We cannot, and should not, target an entire religion.

There is also a crucial difference in the danger's scale. For four decades, the USSR and its massive nuclear arsenal posed a clear existential threat to the United States. In contrast, today's extremists cannot eliminate our nation. We need to ratchet down the doomsday rhetoric and the military-driven response. Our primary ideological export should not be fear; it should be hope. We are at war with people and their belief systems, and ideas cannot be killed by bullets. They can only be killed by better ideas.

Without a coherent strategy, America's "war on terror" has been tragically inconsistent. We say that our mandate is to spread freedom and democracy, yet we try to do so at the point of a gun. We say that our battle must be fought by a coalition of like-minded allies, but we eschew diplomacy and browbeat our friends when they disagree with us. We say that we stand for the highest human ideals, but the world harbors deep suspicions of our indefinite detentions at Guantanamo.

Our contradictory words and actions have alienated virtually the entire Arab world. NATO remains fractured and largely ineffectual against the resurgent Taliban, and the Washington clock has run out on the Iraq war. We have elevated Al Qaeda's importance to nearly our own, and we are moving into a deadly no-man's-land where America is neither respected nor feared. It is almost inconceivable, and yet it has come to this: We are losing the global influence war to people who blow up women and children at kebab stands.

But if we can retool and take the long view, as the architects of Cold War containment did, we will watch Islamic extremism collapse under the weight of its own contradictions - witness the recent grass-roots uprising against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Like Marxism, militant Islam is long on promising the violent overthrow of the materialistic West and short on fashioning actual utopias.

The original doctrine of containment had its roots in a time of uncertainty much like our own. By the end of World War II, the United States was the dominant global power, and for a brief period there was hope that the world might fashion a lasting peace under the fledgling United Nations.

By 1949, however, it was clear that the world was bifurcating, and that this constituted a serious challenge to our security. The Soviet Union became the second nuclear-armed superpower, China fell to Communism, and the proliferation of ballistic missiles threatened the American homeland. Coming on the heels of the decisive triumph of the war, the new Communist threat generated the same feelings of vulnerability and confusion that the 9/11 attacks would foster decades later.

To respond to this changing world, senior national security officials writing for President Harry Truman articulated a new kind of policy. Drawing heavily from articles written by the American diplomat George Kennan, the landmark National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) outlined a strategy of containment that served as the core of American foreign policy for every president from Truman to Reagan.

Presciently, NSC-68 identified the essential clash between the United States and the Soviet Union as one between diametrically opposed ideologies. On the Soviet side was a dogmatic belief system that demanded absolute submission of individual freedom and sought to impose its authority over the rest of the world. On the American side was an ideology premised on the overriding value of freedom, a system founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual. This ideology relied upon its inherent appeal, and did not aim to bring other societies into conformity through force of arms.

The policy of containment represented a tectonic shift from the military-centric, unconditional-surrender mentality of World War II. War was now the option of last resort. Coercion through violence represented a contradiction for any free people, and, used improperly, it could undermine the global appeal of the American belief system. Thus, containment did not define success as the military defeat and unconditional surrender of the Soviet regime. It had more modest ambitions: geographic isolation of the communist belief system and slow change over time. By fighting a global struggle for influence, the thinking went, America could avoid a costly full-scale war against the Soviets.

Of course, force was employed on a number of occasions in proxy wars across the globe, such as Vietnam and Korea. They had serious costs, but compared with a potential all-out war against the USSR, these conflicts remained limited efforts to contain the geographic footprint of the Soviet ideology. And though the American defense budget increased over time, it never became the same drain on our economy that military spending was for the Soviets.

The path dictated by NSC-68 was not a straight line to the collapse of the USSR, but the strategy proved remarkably effective. Communism expanded outside of its containment zone in a few instances, but, for the most part, the United States and its allies successfully implemented the indirect approach recommended by NSC-68. When the once mighty Soviet empire imploded in 1991, it was almost precisely as NSC-68 had predicted.

Strikingly, if one replaces "communism" with "Islamic extremism" and "the Kremlin" with "Al-Qaeda," NSC-68 could have been written in 2002, not 1950. Like communism, Islamic extremism lusts for political power, in this case through the restoration of the caliphate and the imposition of Sharia law on all peoples. Indeed, language from NSC-68 rings eerily true today - it described the Soviets as "animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own." Al Qaeda and its ilk are the latest in a long line of narrow ideologies that claim to provide the only true answer to life's existential questions. And as with Soviet communism, the idea has a geographic nucleus.

Our task now is to envelop this nucleus with prosperous, stable countries whose inhabitants are free to choose their own beliefs. Working from the outside in, the United States must partner with nations on the periphery to help them build a stronger middle class, enhance their education systems, improve basic health, and lower government corruption. We must help elected and unelected governments to allow greater empowerment of their citizens, whether through a slow march toward representative government or expanded economic opportunity for all classes.

Lebanon in the Middle East and Pakistan in Central Asia are some of the best countries in which to begin and expand this work. In Lebanon's complex political landscape, Iran and Syria support the Islamist Hezbollah party-cum-militia, while the United States backs the secular Lebanese government. Another Islamist movement, Fatah al Islam, enjoys a nebulous connection to Al Qaeda. We should be using our country's massive financial resources to allow the Lebanese government to outspend its competitors by a factor of 10, showering much-needed aid on the Lebanese people, and thus de-legitimizing their opponents and debunking their ideology. Instead, the government cannot meet its basic responsibilities, and extremist movements are increasingly seen as the only institutions capable of bettering lives.

In Pakistan, the extremist cancer in the northwestern provinces continues to grow despite $5.5 billion in direct US military aid. Pakistan's dangerously unstable new civilian government lacks the capability and will to challenge Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the region. Instead of focusing exclusively on military operations along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, America must broaden its scope to encompass other priorities: tension with India over Kashmir and education reform. Only after a comprehensive Indo/Pakistani border settlement will Pakistan shift its military energy from south to north. In the interim, it will placate us with occasional forays into the frontier provinces, but such adventures will never be decisive. We must also help Pakistan provide a counterweight to the hundreds of Wahabi madrassas spreading virulent extremism. As long as these fundamentalist institutions remain the only option for much of the country's poor, Islamic extremists in the tribal areas will enjoy a virtually inexhaustible manpower pool. In the long run, 5,000 secular teachers for Pakistan's middle schools will do more for America's national security than will 50,000 AK-47s for the country's army.

A clear new containment strategy will help us recognize the importance of engaging with such nations at pivotal points before they slide into repressive autocracy (Pakistan in 2001) or all-out chaos (Afghanistan in 1989).

It is popular to blame these failings on the attention and resource deficits created by the Iraq war. But they are just as much the result of the black-and-white mentality that governs our approach to foreign affairs - liberal democracy or nothing. In working with periphery states, we must be —to accept outcomes that are less than perfect. Indeed, we must be —to accept ruling regimes that may not like us at all. We are not trying to create mini-Americas scattered across the globe; we are looking to foster stable, free countries whose people will have little interest in the repressive ideology of our enemies.

On occasion, extremist governments hostile to the existence of the United States (Hamas in the Gaza Strip) will enjoy broad popular support, but preemptive wars must become a thing of the past. We cannot say that we value freedom and then seek political change through force when the choice of the people produces regimes not to our liking. However, the military can, and must, be used to target individuals bent on terror aimed at American interests. Furthermore, if a nation enables attacks on our homeland, as Afghanistan did under the Taliban, then we must use all necessary means to defend ourselves. On rare occasions, this will require full-out war and post-invasion reconstruction.

Retrospectively, the neocontainment framework would have supported operations in Afghanistan. It is a country near the edge of the arc, and its then-rulers harbored extremists who had demonstrated the motive and means to substantially damage our nation. Compared with our original plan, though, neocontainment would have stressed the importance of dominating the postcombat phase by committing all implements of national power to the years of sustained effort required to rebuild Afghanistan.

In contrast, neocontainment would have argued against the invasion of Iraq. Allocating the same amount of effort and resources to bolstering nations ringing the region would have produced far more beneficial results than invading a country at its heart. By doing so, our actions strengthened the extremist narrative that there is a Western crusade against Islam, and Iran's Shia theocracy has been the biggest beneficiary of the power vacuum left by Saddam's demise.

Going forward, adopting a strategy of neocontainment will entail checking Iran's expansion efforts through proxies rather than direct strikes against the country itself. Just as we limited Soviet expansion without using overt force against the Warsaw Pact, so too can we contain the Iranian regime without flying B-2s over Tehran.

Furthermore, we must institutionalize the lessons learned so painfully over seven years of war. The military must dramatically improve its nation-building doctrine, capacity, and will, acknowledging that postwar stability is much more important in the long run than is dominating the active combat phase. We remain unchallenged in our ability to win conventional military conflicts, but we must develop the language skills, cultural awareness, and civil-affairs specialists necessary to prevail in unconventional campaigns and in fighting's messy aftermath.

Our next president will inherit a nation weary of war, a world skeptical of American motives and actions, and undecided conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the energy and excitement of a government transition offer both the outgoing and incoming administrations the opportunity to take bold steps.

On the battlefield, it is at least as important to articulate what you are for as it is to define what you are against. In a war of ideas, this is even more critical. To do this across the world, nation by nation, will take time, and that does not come naturally to our fast paced, results-oriented society. But we need to muster the requisite patience. Untold numbers of lives hinge on it.

Navy Commander Philip Kapusta is currently serving as chief of strategic plans at Special Operations Command Central, in Tampa. Marine Captain Donovan Campbell recently returned from his third combat deployment. His book, "Joker One," will be published by Random House in March. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the US government.

All terrorist groups eventually end. But how do they end? The evidence since 1968 indicates that most groups have ended because (1) they joined the political process (43 percent) or (2) local police and intelligence agencies arrested or killed key members (40 percent). Military force has rarely been the primary reason for the end of terrorist groups, and few groups within this time frame have achieved victory. This has significant implications for dealing with al Qa'ida and suggests fundamentally rethinking post-9/11 US counterterrorism strategy: Policymakers need to understand where to prioritize their efforts with limited resources and attention. The authors report that religious terrorist groups take longer to eliminate than other groups and rarely achieve their objectives. The largest groups achieve their goals more often and last longer than the smallest ones do. Finally, groups from upper-income countries are more likely to be left-wing or nationalist and less likely to have religion as their motivation. The authors conclude that policing and intelligence, rather than military force, should form the backbone of US efforts against al Qa'ida. And US policymakers should end the use of the phrase "war on terrorism" since there is no battlefield solution to defeating al Qa'ida.

How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida

Anyone who knows me has been well aware of my position on Iraq for years. When I went to Iraq in 2007 (and on both previous occasions) it was to end the war, by suppressing the violence and defeating the insurgency. (Note: I said END the war, not abandon it half-way through, leaving the Iraqis to be slaughtered. When we invaded Iraq, we took on a moral and legal responsibility for its people's wellbeing. Regardless of anyone's position on the decision to invade, those obligations still stand and cannot be wished away merely because they have proven inconvenient).

Like every other counterinsurgency professional, I warned against the war in 2002-3 on the grounds that it was likely to be extremely difficult, demand far more resources than our leaders seemed —to commit, inflame world Muslim opinion making our counterterrorism tasks harder, and entail a significant opportunity cost in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This was hardly an original or brilliant insight. Nor was it particularly newsworthy: it was a view shared with the rest of my community, and you would be hard-pressed to find any professional counterinsurgent who thought the 2003/4 strategy was sensible.

The question of whether we were right to invade Iraq is a fascinating debate for historians and politicians, and a valid issue for the American people to consider in an election year. As it happens, I think it was a mistake. But that is not my key concern. The issue for practitioners in the field is not to second-guess a decision from six years ago, but to get on with the job at hand which, I believe, is what both Americans and Iraqis expect of us. In that respect, the new strategy and tactics implemented in 2007, and which relied for their effectiveness on the extra troop numbers of the Surge, ARE succeeding and need to be supported. In 2006, a normal night in Baghdad involved 120 to 150 dead Iraqi civilians, and each month we lost dozens of Americans killed or maimed. This year, a bad night involves one or two dead civilians, U.S. losses are dramatically down, and security is restored. Therefore, even on the most conservative estimate, in the eighteen months of the surge to date we have saved 12 to 16 thousand Iraqis and hundreds of American lives. And we are now in a position to pursue a political strategy that will ultimately see Iraq stable, our forces withdrawn, and this whole sorry adventure tidied up to the maximum extent possible so that we can get on with the fight in other theaters -- most pressingly, Afghanistan.

On the ground, in both Iraq and Afghanistan over several years, I have fought and worked beside brave and dedicated military and civilian colleagues who are making an enormous difference in an incredibly tough environment. I salute their dedication -- Americans, Iraqis and Afghans alike -- and I hold all of them in the highest possible regard. These quiet professionals deserve our unstinting support. Besides having the courage to close with and finish the enemy, (an enemy capable of literally unbelievable depravity and cruelty towards its own people) they have proven capable of great compassion and kindness toward the people they protect. The new tactics and tools they are now applying -- protecting the people 24/7, building alliances of trust with local communities, putting political reconciliation and engagement first, connecting the people to the government, co-opting anyone —to be reconciled and simultaneously eliminating the irreconcilables with precision and discrimination -- these techniques are the best way out of a situation we should never have gotten ourselves into.

These are not the policy positions of any party -- I am not politically partisan, just a professional expressing my professional opinion. I was against the war on professional grounds but (also on professional grounds) I support the surge as the best means to end it favorably and humanely. I thought the initial plan was flawed, but my duty is to help fix it, not wash my hands of it. I thought the decision to invade was a mistake, but I put my life on the line to save the Iraqi people from the terrorists who tore their society apart after we failed in our obligation to stabilize it. And if you find those positions hard to understand, you probably haven't been to Iraq.

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SWJ Editors' Notes:

Spencer Ackerman asks that we post a link to his reply - Sources Holler Back: Kilcullen Edition.

In the course of a piece I'm proud of about David Kilcullen's forthcoming strategy-level counterinsurgency handbook, I included a profanity-laden quote from him about the wisdom of the Iraq war. This was a mistake on my part and I take full responsibility for the fact that it overshadowed what I consider Kilcullen's valuable, serious, and hard-learned counterinsurgency insights.

In the course of our conversation about his handbook, Dave made these and other points about the war, which are included lower down in the piece. I included the profanity because I thought it underscored the depth of his commitment to try to dig American strategy out of the morass of Iraq, which I and many others view as uncomplicatedly admirable. What I should have realized is that the profanity overwhelms the broader points presented in the handbook and about Dave's personality and professional vision. For that, I apologize, not only to Dave, but to my readers, who I hope will pay attention to those broader points despite my error in judgment...

Grim at Blackfive.

... We can all be completely certain that his contribution to the efforts to stabilize Iraq and protect the Iraqi population have been tremendous. Dr. Kilcullen is a model of the honorable disgreement that best characterizes a free society. Good for him. Good for us, to have him as a companion.

And more by Erin Simpson (aka Charlie) at Abu Muqawama.

It is now, as Kiclullen wrote Charlie, "case closed, hatchet buried."

I had the opportunity (and good fortune) to attend the Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare panel discussion Tuesday, 22 July, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The Center for Naval Analysis and Osprey Publishing sponsored this discussion on counterinsurgency featuring Dr. John Nagl (Center for a New American Security), Dr. Daniel Marston (Australian National University), and Dr. Carter Malkasian (CNA). They recently collaborated on Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (Osprey, 2008), an edited book that examines 13 of the most important counterinsurgency campaigns of the past 100 years, including the current Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Dr. David Kilcullen (US State Department) moderated the discussion and provided critical commentary.

Speaking to a packed crowd in the main ballroom, the panel held court presenting a wide array of COIN theory, history and practice. I am about half through transcribing my notes from a recording I made of the event - but decided to go ahead and post this entry now as CNA was kind enough to provide an edited transcript.

As a partial introduction - here are my notes of Dr. John Nagl's opening statement on the importance of US Army Field Manual 3-24 / Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 33.3.5 - Counterinsurgency and how it filled a critical gap.

We were not prepared when the insurgency began in Iraq in 2003. We were trained and equipped to defeat a conventional enemy.

The Army's unpreparedness dates back to its failure to internalize and learn the lessons of Vietnam. This led to a 40 year gap in counterinsurgency doctrine, education and doctrine. In 2003, US Army officers knew more about the American Civil War than they did about counterinsurgency.

The Army focused on winning short campaigns to topple unfriendly governments without considering the more difficult tasks required to rebuild friendly ones. Thus stunningly successful invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in early 2003 were triumphs without victory as stubborn insurgents stymied America's conventional military power.

As a result, we did not have all the equipment needed to protect our soldiers from time-honored insurgent tactics like roadside bombs, we had not trained our soldiers in understanding the key to success in counterinsurgency is protecting the population; nor had we empowered them with all the political, diplomatic, and linguistic skills they needed to accomplish that objective.

While there were many reasons why the Army was unprepared for the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, among the most important was the lack of current counterinsurgency doctrine when the campaigns began.

Doctrine is important to the American Army as it codifies both how the institution thinks about its role in the world and how it accomplishes that role on the battlefield. Doctrine drives decisions on how the Army should organize, what missions it should train to accomplish and what equipment it needs.

But then Lieutenant General David Petraeus became the Commander of the Army's Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas in late 2005. He and his Marine Corps counterpart, then Lieutenant General James Mattis (Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command), decided to remedy that particular part of the problem. They worked together based on their shared understanding of the cognitive counterinsurgency and the urgent need to reform their services to make them more capable of conducting this most difficult type of war. One of the tools they chose to drive change in the Army and the Marine Corps was the new Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency doctrine (FM 3- 24 / MCWP 3-33.5). In a sheer stroke of genius, General Petraeus asked his old West Point classmate Conrad Crane to be the lead 'pen' on the project that became 3-24. Con's role in this project has been underreported and underappreciated.

In Vietnam the Army did not learn one of the principles of counterinsurgency in time -- we didn't get it figured until the American people lost faith in the war effort. This time, the learning process happened much quicker. The driver and the beneficiary of that change was FM 3-24.

The book was designed both to help the Army and Marine Corps prepare for the next counterinsurgency campaign and was also designed to make substantive contributions to our ongoing efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Additional Links:

Senior Scholars Advise Next Steps in COIN- Wall Street Journal Market Watch

More Troops May Not Solve Afghanistan - Andrew Gray, Reuters

Afghanistan Needs Iraq Strategy - United Press International

Adviser: Iraq Approach Likely in Afghanistan - Sean Naylor, Army Times

Majority of Afghan Insurgents Not Taliban - Khalid Hasan, Daily Times

... "Counterinsurgency: A Guide for Policy-Makers" takes the lessons learned by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan and elevates them to the highest levels of national strategy. Counterinsurgency is defined in the text as "the politico-military techniques developed to neutralize... armed rebellion against constituted authority." The handbook is due to be published in November or December. A copy of its most recent draft was obtained by The Washington Independent.

The handbook seeks to provide a framework for considering whether Washington should intervene in foreign countries' counterinsurgency operations, raising difficult questions about whether such nations deserve US support; under what conditions that support should occur, and whether success is possible at acceptable cost. No systematic approach to strategic-level questions in counterinsurgency currently exists for senior US government officials...

The handbook instructs policy-makers about the necessity of using all elements of national power -- not just military force, but also diplomacy, development aid, the rule of law, academic disciplines and other specialties often considered peripheral to warfighting -- to triumph in counterinsurgency. Victory, as well, is defined as support for a foreign nation's ability to successfully govern, rather than a decisive US military effort...

Unlike the 2006 Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual. written principally by Petraeus and Marine Gen. James Mattis, this new handbook is not intended to be a guide for counterinsurgency practitioners, but rather to give Cabinet-level officials and their staffs a framework for viewing questions of intervention in combatting insurgencies...

More.

Of note - The Counterinsurgency Cliff Notes: Techniques for the Conventional Rifle Platoon, in Layman's Terms by Captain Craig Coppock, Small Wars Journal, is cited as a very worthwhile resource.