Men of Harlech stop your dreaming

Can't you see their spear points gleaming

See their warrior pennants streaming

To this battlefield

Men of Harlech stand ye steady

It cannot be ever said ye

For the battle were not ready

Welshmen never yield

From the hills rebounding

Let this song be sounding

Summon all at Cambria's call

The mighty force surrounding

Men of Harlech on to glory

This will ever be your story

Keep these burning words before ye

Welshmen will not yield

Hat Tip to Council Member 120mm

I have accused the Classicists of focusing "perhaps myopically" on the glorious heyday of Mao and revolutionary warfare. Furthermore, I also accuse the Classicists of ignoring the uniqueness of Maoist or colonial wars of national liberation, and over-generalizing the principles that have been drawn from them. Today's insurgent is not the Maoist of yesterday, as many have noted. Our understanding of COIN is really a synthesis of the best of the classical practitioners, including General Kitson (see chart below). While I accept the general teachings of Robert Thompson and David Galula, I suspect that they might be bewildered by the distinctly different nature and scale of today's global insurgency.

Galula:

Primacy of political over military actions

Single direction

Isolate insurgents, use minimal force

Population is critical

Adaptation (tactics and structure)

Kitson:

Coordinating machinery

Rule of law

Fused intelligence

Unconditional support of the people

Qualities required for COIN different

Thompson:

Clear political aim

Overall plan, coordinating structure

Priority against political subversion not insurgents

Secure Base

Dr. David Betz, from King's College London made a similar assessment, concluding

While the new counterinsurgency field manual is thorough, serious and stands in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric concerning the "War on Terror" of the last few years, it is not without failings, chief among them that it is pervaded by concepts drawn from Maoist-style People's Revolutionary Warfare, which is not the sort of insurgency now being faced.

Environmental Conditions

My essay examined the influence of four environmental factors and their incorporation during the development of the COIN manual. I suggest that the impact of trans-dimensional actors, urbanization, information technologies, and the rise of religious extremism augur for new or neo-classical approaches to COIN in this century. These emergent factors should, as Dave Kilcullen has suggested, require us to "Rebuild our mental model of this conflict, redesign our classical counterinsurgency and counterterrorism methods and continually develop innovative and culturally effective approaches."

Potential Implications

The convergence of networked cells, operating in dense urban environs, passionately inspired by their faith, exploiting the connectivity and real time intelligence of modern IT, generates a very different context for COIN. Galula and the classicists are certainly not irrelevant because of this change in context, but there is enough change to suggest that a fundamental reappraisal of conventional wisdom is required. The collective impact of these environmental factors complicates the three major and interrelated competitions that are inherent to insurgency. This section will address how these major competitions are altered.

The Competition for Political Legitimacy.

The rise of religious identity may substantially influence our COIN approach. In many cases, ethnic identity or religious affiliation are the basis for belonging and for legitimacy, and our historical approaches are hard pressed to win the political competition unless we operate in the most indirect manner. How do we compete with a Hamas or Hezbollah-like entity? In Iraq, the American military is being exposed to identity or religious-based militias, another form of alternative community formed to meet community needs. Some of these entities, like Hezbollah, are being very trans-dimensional, meeting their respective community's security and social needs. Rather than employ our traditional "market-based" approach, we have to work more indirectly via a moderate representative of the same collective identity group. Naturally, the adversary works to discredit and de-legitimize any candidate as a puppet of the external intervening force. Hence, this competition will continue to prove harder as long as identity politics or ethnic-based conflict remains central to complex insurgency.

The Competition for Perceptions.

Perceptions may trump or displace reality within the information dimension of counter-insurgency. In the Information Age, perceptual isolation will be even harder if not impossible. There are too many sources and means of transmitting ideas and images in real time today. The battle of ideas has always been a central competition within an insurgency, but in the past governments had some advantages. Now, the IT revolution magnifies the ability of the modern insurgent to exploit his limited success. A sophisticated insurgent can exploit the communications revolution to extend his influence and maximize his credibility by continuously flaunting his tactical successes all out of proportion to their accumulative operational effect. This is where a true competition exists, best captured by General Rupert Smith's analogy of rival commanders as film producers, competing with each other for the best narrative and the imagery to support it in order to influence people. Instead of Clausewitz's duel, it's a contest between producers with stories. Combat and casualties are no longer the key cash transaction of war; it's an exchange of carefully choreographed images and stories to produce an effect. Rather than physical effects, the psychological impact of all actions has to be considered. As Kilcullen has noted "In the battlefield, popular perceptions and rumor are more important than a hundred tanks."

We need to fully exploit the cognitive terrain of conflict and "maneuver" in the minds of our allies, friends, neutrals and the enemy. But how does one "clear, hold and build" in the virtual dimension?

The Security versus "System Disruption" Competition.

Urbanization increases the difficulty of winning the security competition. It will be extremely difficult for the counter-insurgent force to establish a credible perception of a monopoly over lethal violence in dense urban complexes. The urban guerrilla has too many tactical advantages, and our efforts to impose control on large populations are replete with opportunities to create resentment or provoke a disproportionate response. Technological profusion and urban complexity produce too many opportunities for the urban guerilla today to strike repeatedly and effectively at the sinews of municipal order. The degree of systemic perturbation that this can cause may not be significant in real terms, but it will undermine the local government and breed instability. The urban guerilla may not be able to mass enough force to take over territory, or to regularly overcome state forces. But he can disrupt communications, services, transportation and energy distribution networks at will. Readers are strongly encouraged to look at John Robb's new book, Brave New War, about the nature of this competition.

The Security-Disruption competition mismatch can impose heavy costs on the government, resources better spent on other counter-insurgency programs. But until security can be provided, and met unequivocally, then the other initiatives will stagnate. It is axiomatic to classical COIN that we should seek to isolate the insurgent from the population. Physical isolation may be possible but has always proven hard to do, without draconian population control measures and significant investments in barriers lines and posts. The imposition of such control measures today, thanks to the media, could weaken our position and extend any conflicts. Dr. Kilcullen's comments about the "urban tourniquet" are spot on.

Conclusions

The new FM is a long step forward, reflecting our current understanding of this increasingly complex mode of conflict. Yet it is true that "the 1960s theorists cast a long shadow" in FM 3-24. This era is necessary but not sufficient. We must do more than simply relearn classical COIN, we need to adapt old doctrine to new and increasingly more complex circumstances. We also need to pay more than lip service to the notion that every insurgency is unique and that war evolves. Victory against the fervent and fanatical who find "the notion of transcendence through death enticing rather than forbidding," will not be gained by "outgoverning" those that do not seek to govern. In short, the solution to today's so-called "irregular" challenges will not be found by laminating yesterday's frameworks on to our current context.

In short, I think we need to draw upon the classical COIN principles and update them to reflect changed conditions, to produce what could be called "neo-classical insurgency" for the lack of a better term. The COIN manual, despite its critics, actually made some headway in this regard. But not enough. Additionally, we should urgently place a greater emphasis on human capital and greater institutional adaptability, as T.X. Hammes has argued. The proposed ground force expansion provides resources for this proposal. Finally, inasmuch as there is universal agreement on the critical contributions from nonmilitary agencies, interagency shortfalls which have hamstrung our performance in OEF and OIF must be resolved. As Steve Metz from the Army's Strategic Studies Institute has stressed:

...if Iraq is a portent of the future—if protracted, ambiguous, irregular, cross-cultural, and psychologically complex conflicts are to be the primary mission of the future American military (and the other, equally important parts of the U.S. security organization)—then serious change must begin.

NOTES

David Betz, "Land Forces and Future Warfare: Learning to Fight Wars Amongst the People," Contemporary Security Policy, 2007, p. 9.

David J. Kilcullen, "Countering Global Insurgency," Journal of Strategic Studies, August 2005, p. 615.

Kilcullen, "Counter-insurgency Redux," Survival, Spring 2007, p. 112.

Dr. Andrew Krepinevich and his work at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments are thanked for employing this analytical construct about the nature of competitions within conflict or within domains of military combat.

Steve Metz, Learning from Iraq, Carlisle, PA: Army War College, 2007 pp. 83-84. Metz puts it simply: "Applying existing counterinsurgency strategy and doctrine, derived from 20th century ideological conflict, to Iraq thus was pounding a round peg in a square hole. This hamstrung the effort from the beginning."

General Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, New York: Knopf, 2006, pp. 286-287.

David Kilcullen, "Twenty Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency," Military Review, May-June 2006, p. 106.

Kilcullen, "Counter-insurgency Redux," pp. 112-113.

Ralph Peters, "When Devils Walk the Earth: The Mentality and Roots of Terrorism," Quantico, VA: Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities, Dec. 2001, p. 24.

Metz, p. 91.

SWJ Book Review by Terry Daly

Bing West's superb book on the loss and retaking of Fallujah in al-Anbar Province, western Iraq, in 2004 excels on several levels. For the general reader it tells a heroic story in the tradition of American combat writing of Richard Tregaskis on Guadalcanal, Robert Sherrod on Tarawa, and Samuel Lyman Atwood ("SLAM") Marshal on World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Second, its dependence on first hand knowledge from participants at every level among U.S. military and civilian participants, while the action was taking place, guarantees it will be one of the basic historical reference works for future writers on the Iraq war.

For the specialist, though, its greatest value will be in its detailed description, perhaps unintentional, of how and why conventional military tactics concentrating on the enemy -- simply killing insurgents -- fail, even when those tactics are used skillfully and bravely by well trained, well led, elite forces. Time and again West describes Marine and Army units sweeping through areas, using the conventional firepower and maneuver at which they excel, only to have the insurgents move right back in behind them again to retain control of the population living in those areas.

People-centered classic counterinsurgency doctrine requires that military forces stay to protect the population until effective policing can defend the people from the insurgents; it is on another planet from the Marines and their commanders on the ground in al-Anbar, in the Green Zone in Baghdad, and in Washington. Rather than complementing the military efforts, economic development funds are treated as bribes for local sheiks whom, despite all evidence to the contrary, senior commanders persist in hoping might spare the US military the job of cleaning out the insurgents. The Marine generals treat governance of Fallujah as an afterthought, to be left to whatever Iraqis show up rather than part of a structured plan with US staff, money and a charter to monitor and guide its development.

The only Americans who come out well in NO TRUE GLORY are the Marines and soldiers who do the sweating and the dying, and their immediate tactical commanders; despite West's attempt to show they are acting for intelligently and good reasons, no one who wore stars or suits will be comfortable reading the description of his efforts. French counterinsurgency expert David Galula's stricture against negotiating with insurgents is proven again here -- not for the reason that Galula intended, that it gives encouragement, hope and relief to the insurgents, but rather because the incompetence of EVERYONE involved on the American side is beyond belief. The Marx Brothers on a bad day couldn't emulate the vacillation, chaos and confusion caused by the disconnection from reality, and lack of skill, purpose and communication among US senior Marine and Army generals, civilian officials and policy makers.

Finally, for students of national security West's book provides inescapable evidence that our system for command in wartime is broken. Communications flow in one direction -- downwards in the form of orders, directives, regulations, etc. Information never goes upward or laterally in a way that causes or even influences review and rethinking of a course of action to be taken. By the first battle of Fallujah it was obvious to the fighters on the ground and their tactical commanders up to the regimental and brigade level that the strategy of the "light footprint" handed down from CENTCOM, by which contact with the Iraqis by US military forces was to be minimized, was not working. Yet it was as if there was some impenetrable membrane sealing the generals and their staffs from the fighters at regiment or brigade and their staffs and below. The horse Light Footprint was dead but the generals kept demanding, ordering, cajoling and pleading to make Light Footprint horse run. But Light Footprint was lying dead out there on the track in front of the world and the only people who didn't realize it were the four-stars, getting their reality from classified daily Power Point briefings.

So once again, as it usually does, in Fallujah it came down to the Lance Corporals, Sergeants, and Company and Field Grade officers to compensate with their skill, courage and blood for the failures of the Generals, Ambassadors and policy makers. Here West is outstanding in letting them tell their own stories. At least here someone got something right.

Lieutenant Colonel Terry Daly is a retired U.S. government national security and foreign policy official. After training in counterinsurgency he served in Vietnam as a civilian advisor.

New Paradigms for 21st Century Conflict

By David J. Kilcullen

Despite our rather rosy hindsight view of World War II, there was considerable dissent at the time about the war's aims, conduct, and strategy. But virtually no one disagreed that it was indeed a war or that the Axis powers were the enemy/aggressors.

Contrast this with the war on terrorism. Some dispute the notion that the conflict can be defined as a war; others question the reality of the threat. Far-left critics blame American industrial interests, while a lunatic fringe sees September 11, 2001, as a massive self-inflicted conspiracy. More seriously, people disagree about the enemy. Is al-Qaida a real threat or a creature of Western paranoia and overreaction? Is it even a real organization? Is al-Qaida a mass movement or simply a philosophy, a state of mind? Is the enemy all terrorism? Is it extremism? Or is Islam itself in some way a threat? Is this primarily a military, political, or civilizational problem? What would "victory" look like? These fundamentals are disputed, as those of previous conflicts (except possibly the Cold War) were not.

In truth, the al-Qaida threat is all too real. But ambiguity arises because this conflict breaks existing paradigms—including notions of "warfare," "diplomacy," "intelligence," and even "terrorism." How, for example, do we wage war on nonstate actors who hide in states with which we are at peace? How do we work with allies whose territory provides safe haven for nonstate opponents? How do we defeat enemies who exploit the tools of globalization and open societies, without destroying the very things we seek to protect?

A New Paradigm

British General Rupert Smith argues that war—defined as industrial, interstate warfare between armies, where the clash of arms decides the outcome—no longer exists, that we are instead in an era of "war amongst the people," where the utility of military forces depends on their ability to adapt to complex political contexts and engage nonstate opponents under the critical gaze of global public opinion.(1) Certainly, in complex, multisided, irregular conflicts such as Iraq, conventional warfare has failed to produce decisive outcomes. We have instead adopted policing, nation-building, and counterinsurgency approaches—and developed new interagency tools "on the fly."

Similarly, we traditionally conduct state-based diplomacy through engagement with elites of other societies: governments, intelligentsia, and business leaders, among others. The theory is that problems can be resolved when elites agree, cooler heads prevail, and governments negotiate and then enforce agreements. Notions of sovereignty, the nation-state, treaty regimes, and international institutions all build on this paradigm. Yet the enemy organizes at the nonelite level, exploiting discontent and alienation across numerous countries, to aggregate the effects of multiple grassroots actors into a mass movement with global reach. How do elite models of diplomacy address that challenge? This is not a new problem—various programs were established in U.S. embassies in the Cold War to engage with nongovernmental elements of civil societies at risk from Communist subversion. But many such programs lapsed after 1992, and problems of religious extremism or political violence require subtly different approaches.

Likewise, traditional intelligence services are not primarily designed to find out what is happening but to acquire secrets from other nation-states. They are well-adapted to state-based targets but less suited to nonstate actors—where the problem is to acquire information that is unclassified but located in denied, hostile, or inaccessible physical or human terrain. Even against state actors, traditional intelligence cannot tell us what is happening, only what other governments believe is happening. Why, for example, did Western intelligence miss the imminent fall of the Soviet Union in 1992? In part, because we were reading the Soviet leaders' mail—and they themselves failed to understand the depth of grassroots disillusionment with Communism.(2) Why did most countries (including those that opposed the Iraq war) believe in 2002 that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction? Because they were intercepting the regime's communications, and many senior Iraqi regime members believed Iraq had them.(3)

Long-standing trends underpin this environment. Drivers include globalization and the backlash against it, the rise of nonstate actors with capabilities comparable to some nation-states, U.S. conventional military superiority that forces all opponents to avoid its strengths and migrate toward unconventional approaches, and a global information environment based on the Internet and satellite communications. All these trends would endure even if al-Qaida disappeared tomorrow, and until we demonstrate an ability to defeat this type of threat, any smart adversary will adopt a similar approach. Far from being a one-off challenge, we may look back on al-Qaida as the harbinger of a new era of conflict.

Adapting to the New Environment

Thus, as former U.S. Counterterrorism Ambassador Hank Crumpton observed, we seem to be on the threshold of a new era of warfare, one that demands an adaptive response. Like dinosaurs outcompeted by smaller, weaker, but more adaptive mammals, in this new era, nation-states are more powerful but less agile and flexible than nonstate opponents. As in all conflict, success will depend on our ability to adapt, evolve new responses, and get ahead of a rapidly changing threat environment.

The enemy adapts with great speed. Consider al-Qaida's evolution since the mid-1990s. Early attacks (the East African embassy bombings, the USS Cole, and 9/11 itself) were "expeditionary": Al-Qaida formed a team in Country A, prepared it in Country B, and clandestinely infiltrated it into Country C to attack a target. In response, we improved transportation security, infrastructure protection, and immigration controls. In turn, terrorists developed a "guerrilla" approach where, instead of building a team remotely and inserting it secretly to attack, they grew the team close to the target using nationals of the host country. The Madrid and London bombings, and attacks in Casablanca, Istanbul, and Jeddah, followed this pattern, as did the foiled London airline plot of summer 2006.

These attacks are often described as "home grown," yet they were inspired, exploited, and to some extent directed by al-Qaida. For example, Mohammed Siddeque Khan, leader of the July 7, 2005, London attack, flew to Pakistan and probably met al-Qaida representatives for guidance and training well before the bombing.(4) But the new approach temporarily invalidated our countermeasures—instead of smuggling 19 people in, the terrorists brought one man out—side-stepping our new security procedures. The terrorists had adapted to our new approach by evolving new techniques of their own.

We are now, of course, alert to this "guerrilla" method, as the failure of the August 2006 plots in the United Kingdom and other recent potential attacks showed. But terrorists are undoubtedly already developing new adaptive measures. In counterterrorism, methods that work are almost by definition already obsolete: Our opponents evolve as soon as we master their current approach. There is no "silver bullet." Similar to malaria, terrorism constantly morphs into new mutations that require a continuously updated battery of responses.

Five Practical Steps

In responding to this counterintuitive form of warfare, the United States has done two basic things so far. First, we improved existing institutions (through processes like intelligence reform, creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and additional capacity for "irregular"—that is, nontraditional—warfare within the Department of Defense). Second, we have begun developing new paradigms to fit the new reality. These are yet to fully emerge, though some—such as the idea of treating the conflict as a very large-scale counterinsurgency problem, requiring primarily nonmilitary responses coupled with measures to protect at-risk populations from enemy influence—have gained traction.(5)

But in a sense, policy makers today are a little like the "Chateau Generals" of the First World War—confronting a form of conflict that invalidates received wisdom, just as the generals faced the "riddle of the trenches" in 1914-1918. Like them, we face a conflict environment transformed by new technological and social conditions, for which existing organizations and concepts are ill-suited. Like them, we have "work-arounds," but have yet to develop the breakthrough concepts, technologies, and organizations—equivalent to blitzkrieg in the 1930s—that would solve the riddle of this new threat environment.

There is no easy answer (if there were, we would have found it by now), but it is possible to suggest a way forward. This involves three conceptual steps to develop new models and, simultaneously, two organizational steps to create a capability for this form of conflict. This is not meant to be prescriptive, but is simply one possible approach. And the ideas put forward are not particularly original—rather, this proposal musters existing ideas and integrates them into a policy approach.

1. Develop a new lexicon: Professor Michael Vlahos has pointed out that the language we use to describe the new threats actively hinders innovative thought.(6) Our terms draw on negative formulations; they say what the environment is not, rather than what it is. These terms include descriptors like unconventional, nonstate, nontraditional, unorthodox, and irregular. Terminology undoubtedly influences our ability to think clearly. One reason why planners in Iraq may have treated "major combat operations" (Phase III) as decisive, not realizing that in this case the post-conflict phase would actually be critical, is that Phase III is decisive by definition. Its full doctrinal name is "Phase III—Decisive Operations." To think clearly about new threats, we need a new lexicon based on the actual, observed characteristics of real enemies who:

a. Integrate terrorism, subversion, humanitarian work, and insurgency to support propaganda designed to manipulate the perceptions of local and global audiences.

b. Aggregate the effects of a very large number of grassroots actors, scattered across many countries, into a mass movement greater than the sum of its parts, with dispersed leadership and planning functions that deny us detectable targets.

c. Exploit the speed and ubiquity of modern communications media to mobilize supporters and sympathizers, at speeds far greater than governments can muster.

d. Exploit deep-seated belief systems founded in religious, ethnic, tribal, or cultural identity, to create extremely lethal, nonrational reactions among social groups.

e. Exploit safe havens such as ungoverned or undergoverned areas (in physical or cyber space); ideological, religious, or cultural blind spots; or legal loopholes.

f. Use high-profile symbolic attacks that provoke nation-states into overreactions that damage their long-term interests.

g. Mount numerous, cheap, small-scale challenges to exhaust us by provoking expensive containment, prevention, and response efforts in dozens of remote areas.

These features of the new environment could generate a lexicon to better describe the threat. Since the new threats are not state-based, the basis for our approach should not be international relations (the study of how nation-states interact in elite state-based frameworks) but anthropology (the study of social roles, groups, status, institutions, and relations within human population groups, in nonelite, nonstate-based frameworks).

2. Get the grand strategy right: If this confrontation is based on long-standing trends, it follows that it may be a protracted, generational, or multigenerational struggle. This means we need both a "long view" and a "broad view".(7) that consider how best to interweave all strands of national power, including the private sector and the wider community. Thus we need a grand strategy that can be sustained by the American people, successive U.S. administrations, key allies, and partners worldwide. Formulating such a long-term grand strategy would involve four crucial judgments:

a. Deciding whether our interests are best served by intervening in and trying to mitigate the process of political and religious ferment in the Muslim world, or by seeking instead to contain any spillover of violence or unrest into Western communities. This choice is akin to that between "rollback" and "containment" in the Cold War and is a key element in framing a long-term response.

b. Deciding how to allocate resources among military and nonmilitary elements of national power. Our present spending and effort are predominantly military; by contrast, a "global counterinsurgency" approach would suggest that about 80 percent of effort should go toward political, diplomatic, development, intelligence, and informational activity, and about 20 percent to military activity. Whether this is appropriate depends on our judgment about intervention versus containment.

c. Deciding how much to spend (in resources and lives) on this problem. This will require a risk judgment taking into account the likelihood and consequences of future terrorist attacks. Such a judgment must also consider how much can be spent on security without imposing an unsustainable cost burden on our societies.

d. Deciding how to prioritize effort geographically. At present most effort goes to Iraq, a much smaller portion to Afghanistan, and less again to all other areas. Partly this is because our spending is predominantly military and because we have chosen to intervene in the heart of the Muslim world. Different choices on the military/nonmilitary and intervention/containment judgments might produce significantly different regional priorities over time.

Clearly, the specifics of any administration's strategy would vary in response to a developing situation. Indeed, such agility is critical. But achieving a sustainable consensus, nationally and internationally, on the four grand judgments listed above, would provide a long-term basis for policy across successive administrations.

3. Remedy the imbalance in government capability: At present, the U.S. defense budget accounts for approximately half of total global defense spending, while the U.S. armed forces employ about 1.68 million uniformed members.(8) By comparison, the State Department employs about 6,000 foreign service officers, while the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has about 2,000.(9) In other words, the Department of Defense is about 210 times larger than USAID and State combined—there are substantially more people employed as musicians in Defense bands than in the entire foreign service.(10)

This is not to criticize Defense—armed services are labor- and capital-intensive and are always larger than diplomatic or aid agencies. But considering the importance, in this form of conflict, of development, diplomacy, and information (the U.S. Information Agency was abolished in 1999 and the State Department figures given include its successor bureau), a clear imbalance exists between military and nonmilitary elements of capacity. This distorts policy and is unusual by global standards. For example, Australia's military is approximately nine times larger than its diplomatic and aid agencies combined: The military arm is larger, but not 210 times larger, than the other elements of national power.

To its credit, the Department of Defense recognizes the problems inherent in such an imbalance, and said so in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review.(11) And the Bush administration has programs in train to increase nonmilitary capacity. But to succeed over the long haul, we need a sustained commitment to build nonmilitary elements of national power. So-called soft powers, such as private-sector economic strength, national reputation, and cultural confidence, are crucial, because military power alone cannot compensate for their loss.

These three conceptual steps will take time (which is, incidentally, a good reason to start on them). But in the interim, two organizational steps could prepare the way:

4. Identify the new "strategic services": A leading role in the war on terrorism has fallen to Special Operations Forces (SOF) because of their direct action capabilities against targets in remote or denied areas. Meanwhile, Max Boot(12) has argued that we again need something like the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which included analysis, intelligence, anthropology, special operations, information, psychological operations, and technology capabilities.

Adjectives matter: Special Forces versus Strategic Services. SOF are special. They are defined by internal comparison to the rest of the military—SOF undertake tasks "beyond the capabilities" of general-purpose forces. By contrast, OSS was strategic. It was defined against an external environment and undertook tasks of strategic importance, rapidly acquiring and divesting capabilities as needed. SOF are almost entirely military; OSS was an interagency body with a sizeable civilian component, and almost all its military personnel were emergency war enlistees (talented civilians with strategically relevant skills, enlisted for the duration of the war).(13) SOF trace their origin to OSS; yet whereas today's SOF are elite military forces with highly specialized capabilities optimized for seven standard missions,(14) OSS was a mixed civil-military organization that took whatever mission the environment demanded, building capabilities as needed.

Identifying which capabilities are strategic services today would be a key step in prioritizing interagency efforts. Capabilities for dealing with nonelite, grassroots threats include cultural and ethnographic intelligence, social systems analysis, information operations (see below), early-entry or high-threat humanitarian and governance teams, field negotiation and mediation teams, biometric reconnaissance, and a variety of other strategically relevant capabilities. The relevance of these capabilities changes over time—some that are strategically relevant now would cease to be, while others would emerge. The key is the creation of an interagency capability to rapidly acquire and apply techniques and technologies in a fast-changing situation.

5. Develop a capacity for strategic information warfare: Al-Qaida is highly skilled at exploiting multiple, diverse actions by individuals and groups, by framing them in a propaganda narrative to manipulate local and global audiences. Al-Qaida maintains a network that collects information about the debate in the West and feeds this, along with an assessment of the effectiveness of al-Qaida's propaganda, to its leaders. They use physical operations (bombings, insurgent activity, beheadings) as supporting material for an integrated "armed propaganda" campaign. The "information" side of al-Qaida's operation is primary; the physical is merely the tool to achieve a propaganda result. The Taliban, GSPC (previously, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, now known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb), and some other al-Qaida-aligned groups, as well as Hezbollah, adopt similar approaches.

Contrast this with our approach: We typically design physical operations first, then craft supporting information operations to explain our actions. This is the reverse of al-Qaida's approach. For all our professionalism, compared to the enemy's, our public information is an afterthought. In military terms, for al-Qaida the "main effort" is information; for us, information is a "supporting effort." As noted, there are 1.68 million people in the U.S. military, and what they do speaks louder than what our public information professionals (who number in the hundreds) say. Thus, to combat extremist propaganda, we need a capacity for strategic information warfare—an integrating function that draws together all components of what we say and what we do to send strategic messages that support our overall policy.

At present, the military has a well-developed information operations doctrine, but other agencies do not, and they are often rightly wary of military methods. Militarizing information operations would be a severe mistake that would confuse a part (military operations) with the whole (U.S. national strategy) and so undermine our overall policy. Lacking a whole-of-government doctrine and the capability to fight strategic information warfare limits our effectiveness and creates message dissonance, in which different elements of the U.S. government send out different messages or work to differing information agendas.

We need an interagency effort, with leadership from the very top in the executive and legislative branches of government, to create capabilities, organizations, and doctrine for a national-level strategic information campaign. Building such a capability is perhaps the most important of our many capability challenges in this new era of information-driven conflict.

Tentative Conclusions

These notions—a new lexicon, grand strategy, balanced capability, strategic services, and strategic information warfare—are merely speculative ideas that suggest what might emerge from a comprehensive effort to find new paradigms for this new era of conflict. Different ideas may well emerge from such an effort, and, in any case, rapid changes in the environment due to enemy adaptation will demand constant innovation. But it is crystal clear that our traditional paradigms of industrial interstate war, elite-based diplomacy, and state-focused intelligence can no longer explain the environment or provide conceptual keys to overcome today's threats.

The Cold War is a limited analogy for today's conflict: There are many differences between today's threats and those of the Cold War era. Yet in at least one dimension, that of time, the enduring trends that drive the current confrontation may mean that the conflict will indeed resemble the Cold War, which lasted in one form or another for the 75 years between the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Many of its consequences—especially the "legacy conflicts" arising from the Soviet-Afghan War—are with us still. Even if this confrontation lasts only half as long as the Cold War, we are at the beginning of a very long road indeed, whether we choose to recognize it or not.

The new threats, which invalidate received wisdom on so many issues, may indicate that we are on the brink of a new era of conflict. Finding new, breakthrough ideas to understand and defeat these threats may prove to be the most important challenge we face.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.

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Endnotes

(1) See Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), especially pp. 3-28 and 269-335.

(2) See Gerald K. Haines and Robert E. Leggett, Watching the Bear: Essays on CIA's Analysis of the Soviet Union (Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2003), especially chapters VI and VII.

(3) See Kevin M. Woods et. al, Iraqi Perspectives Project: A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam's Senior Leadership (Joint Forces Command, Joint Center for Operational Analysis), p. 92.

(4) Intelligence and Security Committee, Report Into the London Terrorist Attacks on 7 July 2005 (London: The Stationery Office, May 2006), p. 12.

(5) See David Kilcullen, "Countering Global Insurgency," Small Wars Journal (November 2004) and available at http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/kilcullen.pdf ; Williamson Murray (ed.), Strategic Challenges for Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terrorism (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2006); and Bruce Hoffman, "From War on Terror to Global Counterinsurgency," Current History (December 2006): pp. 423-429.

(6) Professor Michael Vlahos, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, personal communication, December 2006.

(7) I am indebted to Mr. Steve Eames for this conceptual formulation.

(8) Compiled from figures in International Institute for Strategic Studies, Military Balance 2007, pp. 15-50.

(9) Compiled from U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, Congressional Budget Justification 2007, table 9.

(10) The U.S. Army alone employs well over 5,000 band musicians, according to a March 2007 job advertisement; see http://bands.army.mil/jobs/default.asp.

(11) Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (2 February 2006): pp. 83-91.

(12) See Max Boot, Congressional Testimony Before the House Armed Services Committee, 29 June 2006, at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2006_hr/060629-boot.pdf.

(13) See Central Intelligence Agency, The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency at https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/oss/index.htm.

(14) The seven standard SOF missions are Direct Action (DA), Special Reconnaissance (SR), Unconventional Warfare (UW), Foreign Internal Defence (FID), Counter-Terrorism (CT), Psychological Operations (PSYOP), and Civil Affairs (CA).

On Dec. 19, 2006, President George W. Bush said for the first time that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq. It was a dramatic admission from a president who had insisted since the start of the war that things were under control.

Now, as the U.S. begins what the administration hopes is the final effort to secure victory through a "surge" of troops, Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.), Col. William Hix, Col. H.R. McMaster, Maj. Thomas Mowle, State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow and other military and government officials talk to FRONTLINE about both the military and political events that have led up to the current "surge" strategy. Endgame is the fifth film in a series of Iraq war stories from FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk, including Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question, The Dark Side and The Lost Year in Iraq...

Watch the full program online.

Endgame Interviews: Michael Gordon, Col. William Hix, Frederick Kagan, Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.), Lt. Col. Andrew Krepinevich (Ret.), Col. H.R. McMaster, Thomas Ricks, Col. Kalev Sepp (Ret.) and Philip Zelikow.

McMaster:

It's important to understand that forces can't be withdrawn prematurely from an area. I think sometimes you're trapped by the initial success of an operation: Insurgents are defeated in a certain area; a life returns to that area; the markets are back open; people are happy again. And you think, wow, things are better now; I can leave, and I can leave behind police forces and maybe some Army and support.

But what's important to understand is that the forces left behind [have] to be just not capable of sustaining the current situation, but they have to be capable of dealing with an intensified effort on the part of the enemy, which is certain to follow a successful operation.

It's also important to understand that the standard for success for these Iraqi security forces is very high. They have to secure a population against an enemy who is —to conduct mass murder against innocent people. The standard for success for the terrorist is very low, because they're —to murder women and children in a marketplace.

And it's very difficult to defend everywhere in a very dense, urban area, so it's important not only that these security forces have the physical capability, but also that they develop very strong informant and source networks so they can have access to good intelligence. It's also important that they develop good relationships in the community so that people are —to come to them for assistance when suspicious people move into the neighborhood.

There are a lot of dimensions to the capability of Iraqi security forces that don't really appear on paper that we have to focus on developing over time.

Timeline: Struggling to find a strategy for success in Iraq.

Endgame "Themes": Bottom Line, What Went Wrong?, Rumsfeld and the Generals, Gen. George Casey, Gen. Petraeus and the New Team, Can the Surge Work?, Misreading History? and The Colonels' War.

Discuss at Small Wars Council.

Discuss at PBS.

The Political Officer as Counter-Insurgent

By Dan Green

Politics and Insurgencies

Counter-insurgency efforts have taken on an increasingly important and vital role in the U.S. strategy to defeat global terrorism since the attacks of September 11th. A key aspect of today's conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and, historically speaking, a fundamental difference between fighting conventional wars and insurgencies is the role of politics and diplomacy. Unlike conventional warfare where "military action . . . is generally the principal way to achieve the goal" and "politics as an instrument of war tends to take a back seat", in unconventional warfare, "politics becomes an active instrument of operation" and "every military move has to be weighed with regard to its political effects, and vice versa." At their core, insurgencies are about political power struggles, usually between a central government and those who reject its authority, where the objective of the conflict is the population itself and the political right to lead it. Thus, the center of gravity in this type of warfare is not the enemy's forces per se, but the population where "the exercise of political power depends on the tacit or explicit agreement of the population or, at worst, on its submissiveness."

Due to the centrality of politics to this type of warfare, counter-insurgent forces must craft a political strategy that is sensitive to the needs of the population, seeks to secure their loyalty to the government, will mobilize the community to identify, expel, or fight the insurgent, and extends the authority and reach of the central government. To achieve these goals, a government must have "a political program designed to take as much wind as possible out of the insurgent's sails." If done effectively, the political strategy will have succeeded in "separating the insurgents from popular support" so they can be killed or imprisoned by the government's security forces. If a political plan is implemented poorly, or not at all, insurgent forces will capitalize on the grievances and frustrated hopes of a community to entice them away from the government and to the political program of the insurgent. The community may then actively assist the insurgent, providing him with a safe haven to rest, re-arm, re-equip, recuperate, and re-deploy to fight another day. In the long run, because this conflict is not about how many causalities counter-insurgent forces can impose upon the insurgents, but upon the will to stay in the fight, foreign counter-insurgents tend to grow weary of the amount of blood and treasure they must expend to defeat the insurgent. Though the insurgent could conceivably lose every military engagement he has with counter-insurgent security forces, he can still win the war if the political program of the government does not win the population over to its policies, plans, and initiatives.

Politics and the Global War on Terror

Any political strategy to defeat al Qaeda, its affiliates, and the insurgencies we face in Afghanistan and Iraq has at least three levels to it: strategic, operational, and tactical. While large parts of any national strategy are well beyond the scope of this essay and are often, unfortunately, quite contentious, my primary focus in this paper is on how we conduct tactical diplomacy and politics and on those aspects of operational plans that are integral to a province or city-level counter-insurgency strategy. My goal is to empower political officers, whether they are members of the U.S. Department of State (DOS) working at a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) or a member of the U.S. military designated to handle political matters, with the conceptual tools, practical knowledge, and "tricks of the trade" they will need to perform the incredibly important role they will play in a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy. The responsibilities of a Political Officer in an insurgency environment are enormous, challenging, and absolutely vital to our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the U.S. military has quite ably adapted itself to the insurgency challenge, those of us at the U.S. Department of State need to follow their example and adapt to the challenge of unconventional warfare. We need to make politics and diplomacy central to a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy at the tactical level.

Learning and Adapting

When an operation is executed, commanders may develop the situation to gain a more thorough situational understanding. This increased environmental understanding represents a form of operational learning and applies across all Logical Lines of Operations. Commanders and staffs adjust the operation's design and plan based on what they learn. The result is an ongoing design-learn-redesign cycle.

COIN operations involve complex, changing relations among all the direct and peripheral participants. These participants adapt and respond to each other throughout an operation. A cycle of adaptation usually develops between insurgents and counterinsurgents; both sides continually adapt to neutralize existing adversary advantages and develop new (usually short-lived) advantages of their own. Victory is gained through a tempo or rhythm of adaptation that is beyond the other side's ability to achieve or sustain. Therefore, counterinsurgents should seek to gain and sustain advantages over insurgents by emphasizing the learning and adaptation that this manual stresses throughout.

Learning and adapting in COIN is very difficult due to the complexity of the problems commanders must solve. Generally, there is not a single adversary that can be singularly classified as the enemy. Many insurgencies include multiple competing groups. Success requires the HN government and counterinsurgents to adapt based on understanding this very intricate environment. But the key to effective COIN design and execution remains the ability to adjust better and faster than the insurgents.

Both of the following linked articles by Major Don Vandergriff (USA, Ret.) address US Army training, education and culture and its relative importance in producing the adaptive leaders we require. Vandergriff retired August 30, 2005 following 24 years of active duty as a Marine enlisted and Army officer. He has served in numerous troop, staff and education assignments in the United States and overseas. Vandergriff is a recognized authority on the U.S. Army personnel system, Army culture, leadership development, soldier training and the emergence in the early 21st century of asymmetric warfare.

Adaptive Leaders Course (ALC): Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks (May 2006)

Abstract

The Secretary of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff explicitly state that the U.S. Army is going to adapt its culture to encourage develop and teach Adaptive Leadership.

The Army is learning and leaders admit it must reshape its leader educational and training programs as part of a new leader paradigm into what a recent Army magazine article identified as "Learning Organizations."

U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) has identified a need to move from the current Industrial-Age leader development paradigm, and as a result has published a number of papers from TRADOC Areas of Interest (TAIs) to support its Campaign Plan objective "Reshape the fundamental Army Learning Process for a dynamic Operating Environment." "TAI 2 Learning for Adaptation" provided the ingredients for the paper "Learning for Adaptation: U.S. Army Training and Leader Development in the Early 21st Century." This paper lays the foundation to "discovering possible solutions as the Army continues to adapt to new settings and environments."

One of the twelve study objectives of this paper is "Integration of recent leader development initiatives and a comprehensive leader education model with emphasis on human, cultural and cognitive understanding." "Adaptive Leader's Course (ALC) Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks" is an approach to evolving U.S. Army leader-centric institutions to ones that not only can teach and evaluate adaptability in leaders, but also become adaptive leader-centric institutions.

Cultural evolution within leader development is the optimal start point as Army leaders tackle the complex issues of addressing laws, regulations and beliefs that deal with today's leader paradigm. The Adaptive Leader's Course (ALC) offers examples of viable education and training solutions as sought and asked for in "Learning for adaptation: U.S. Army Training and Leader Development in the Early 21st Century." Specifically the first recommendation in "Learning for Adaptation" is "Change the Professional Military Education (PME) model to adapt to the contemporary operational environment (COE) and the Army Forces Generation (ARFORGEN) model, and leverage Army Distributed Learning (ADL)." This paper supports the specific action of recommendation number 1's "Direct the development of an overarching conceptual framework for adaptability that captures emerging research and will guide the implementation of related adaptability education and training concepts throughout TRADOC."

Future Leader: The Journey of Developing (and Nurturing) Adaptability -- The Future is Now (December 2005)

Abstract

"Adaptability" has become a buzzword throughout the Army. The system in place today evolved from one that worked to support the nation's mobilization doctrine. Several factors have combined to force the Army to think about the way it develops and nurtures its leaders. Continual modifications to today's paradigm may not be enough.

The U.S. Army still "thinks" and "acts" from an industrial-age, mobilization doctrine-based leader development paradigm more than 16 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The industrial age approach continues to shape the way the Army approaches its training and education, often confusing the two terms. The Army has to do more than post rhetoric about "adaptability" on briefing slides and in literature. The Army's personnel system designed for an earlier era are so intimately tied to the maintenance of Army culture that they form a self-perpetuating cycle that will diminish and even prevent the Army from becoming an adaptive organization unless it accepts rapid evolutionary change as the norm of the new era.

One cannot divorce how the Army accesses, promotes and selects its leaders from its leader development paradigm. The Army cannot expect to create leaders that grasp and practice adaptability and then after graduation enter an Army that is not adaptive or nurtures innovation.

The Army culture must become adaptive and the personnel system evolves into one that nurtures adaptability in its policies, practices and beliefs.

Viable education and training solutions exist alongside an evolution into a new personnel management system centered on flexibility. This is what the paper and follow-on papers will recommend.

Ten Key Points:

Secure the people where they sleep.

Population security is our primary mission, one that will take time, and one we must carry out deliberately. Most extra-judicial killings occur at night and in people's homes...

Give the people justice and honor.

Iraqis value justice and honor. In the counterinsurgency fight, we want the hands that bring security to be the hands that help bring justice and honor as well...

Integrate civilian and military efforts -- this is an interagency, combined arms fight.

Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams now operate directly alongside many military units, bringing cultural, political, and economic expertise to the tactical commander's overall counterinsurgency effort...

Get out and walk -- move mounted, work dismounted.

Vehicles like the up-armored HMMWV limit our situational awareness and insulate us from the Iraqi people we intend to secure. They also make us predicatble, often obliging us to move slowly on established routes. These vehicles offer protection, but they do so at the cost of a great deal of effectiveness...

We are in a fight for intelligence -- all the time.

Intelligence is not a "product" provided by higher headquarters, but something we gather ourselves through our own operations. Tactical reporting, from civilian and military agencies, is essential...

Every unit must advise their Iraqi partners.

Developing a capable, credible ISF remains central to establishing sustainable security, and partnership is the key to this effort...

Include Iraqi Security Forces in your operations at the lowest possible level.

When it comes to language capacity, cultural awareness, and having a "feel" for what is normal in the local environment, Coalition forces are at a natural disadvantage. In contrast, ISF units possess all these capabilities but lack our combat power. Working together with the ISF and the local populace, we are a quite powerful combination; working unilaterally, we can be defeated piecemeal...

Look beyond the IED -- get the network that placed it.

Every IED provides a window into the network that placed it. If properly exploited, this window can be used to damage and "roll up" that network...

Be first with the truth.

Since Soldier actions speak louder than what PAOs say, we must be mindful of the impact our daily interactions with the Iraqis have on global audiences via the news media. Commanders should communicate key messages down to the individual level, but, in general, leaders and Soldiers should be able to tell their stories unconstrained by overly prescriptive themes...

Make the people choose.

Some in the Iraqi civilian population want to "sit on the fence" and avoid having to choose between the insurgents and the government. We must get the Iraqi populace off the fence -- and on the side of the GOI...

The Laptop Is Mightier Than the Sword

By Owen West and Bing West

While waiting to see if the Iraq surge strategy pays off, President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have shown Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the door and brought in Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute as the new White House "war czar." Well, they can shift senior leadership all they want, but unless they give our troops patrolling the streets the tools they need, our leaders are going to see this strategy fizzle.

Part of the problem was that when the military surge was announced, it became commonplace for officials to assert that political compromise, not military force, would determine the outcome of the war. This vacuous idea would startle George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, to mention only a few unlikely bedfellows who forged success during an insurgency.

Buying time with American lives is not a military mission. No platoon commander tells his soldiers to go out and tread water so the politicians can talk. The goal of American soldiers is to identify and kill or capture the Shiite death squads and Sunni insurgents.

What is keeping them from doing so? The war in Iraq would be over in a week if the insurgents wore uniforms. Instead, they hide in plain sight, and Iraqi and American soldiers have no means of checking the true identity and history of anyone they stop.

This is inexcusable. In Vietnam, the mobility of the Vietcong guerrilla forces was eventually crippled by a laborious hamlet-level census completed by hand in 1968. Biometric tracking and databases have since made extraordinary advances, yet our vaunted technical experts have failed at this elementary task in Iraq....

More at the New York Times...

This article originally appeared in Democracy, and is reposted here with their kind permission at the author's request.

Iraqization is a dead-end strategy. But there is still some hope of saving the country, and it lies in an unlikely place: local Sunni militias and police.

For more than two years, the heart of U.S. military strategy in Iraq has been "Iraqization," the creation of an effective Iraqi security force that can take the place of U.S. Marines and soldiers. Thereby, the United States can eventually withdraw without leaving behind a terrorist safe haven and fractured Iraq. A wide range of military officers, policymakers, and scholars argue that through re-invigorated American efforts at training, equipping, and advising the Iraqi Army, any shortcomings in the Iraqi security forces can be overcome. Even Democrats who oppose the surge strategy support Iraqization, contending that Iraqi security forces are perfectly capable of suppressing violence now but that only when the United States "stands down" will they truly "stand up."

Between February 2004 and February 2005, and later from February to August

2006, I served as an advisor to the I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) in Al Anbar province. During that time I interviewed members of the Iraqi Army and police, held discussions with American advisers, and directly observed Iraqi Army and police operations. Al Anbar is overwhelmingly Sunni and infamously a center of insurgent activity. Therefore, it is critical to the success of the Iraqization strategy. Failure there means a U.S. withdrawal would leave hard-core insurgent groups, specifically Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), free to operate and possibly organize terrorist operations outside the province. Even if it is successful everywhere else in Iraq, Iraqization will have failed if it cannot work in Al Anbar.

My research in Al Anbar province suggests that Iraqization can never lead to a stable or unified Iraq. The Iraqi Army, the focal point of Iraqization, has been unable to win the support of the Sunni population, who view it as a Shia occupation force. Without the local population's help, the Iraqi Army cannot suppress insurgent activity, no matter how much advising, training, or equipping is invested into it. As long as it is ethnically integrated (and therefore predominantly Shia), the army will not succeed. If the United States draws down and tasks the keeping of the peace to the army, Al Anbar could very well become a safe haven for AQI and a breeding ground for international terrorism. Neither the recent surge nor the current Iraqization policy will alter that fate. Thus, continuing to advise, train, and equip the Iraqi Army only delays such a fate and sacrifices more American lives.

Fortunately, this outcome is not inevitable. A strategy of "grassroots Iraqization" - one that places greater resources and authority in the hands of local Sunni police units - could, based on my experiences in Al Anbar, create islands of stability and significantly constrain AQI's influence in a long Iraqi civil war. Because of close connections to the Sunni community, local Sunni police units, the other arm of the security forces in Al Anbar, enjoy stronger popular support and experience greater success against the insurgents than the Iraqi Army. The thing holding them back is their alignment with the United States and the Shia government, thus denying them the breadth of popular support necessary to secure more than two or three towns or neighborhoods. The police may never entirely overcome this constraint, but they can progress, and expand beyond Al Anbar, if the United States and the Iraqi government give Sunni sheiks, imams, former military, and other local leaders money, access to jobs, political positions, and control over military formations so that they have the authority to convince more of their followers to join the police and give the police information. Thereby, over time, local police can gain greater popular support, expand secure areas, and become a long-term constraint on AQI - America's number-one enemy in Iraq.

This is hardly an ideal course. By giving non-elected Sunni groups economic, political, and military power, Sunni autonomy would be increased and the movement toward a unified democratic state would be weakened. The United States would be creating nothing less than Sunni militias and turning to them for security, rather than to the legitimate arm of the state, the Iraqi Army. The United States obviously would prefer to avoid this scenario and hope that political reconciliation efforts and military operations - such as the ongoing surge - would allow the Iraqi Army to succeed. Yet, experts argue, the surge and political reconciliation efforts are not likely to prevent civil war from being the long-term reality. At this point in the conflict, strategy must be about choosing the least-worst options so that we can salvage U.S. interests in what is likely to be a divided and war-torn Iraq.

The Origins and Early Development of Iraqization

The United States and its coalition in Iraq began building Iraqi security forces as early as 2003, but it did not become the focal point of U.S. military strategy until General George Casey, commander of Multi-National Forces Iraq (MNF-I), ordered a review of his military strategy at the end of 2004. The review concluded that the formation of the Iraqi Army was lagging and needed to be accelerated so that it could shoulder counterinsurgency operations and allow U.S. forces to eventually withdraw. Even if insurgent activity could not be entirely eliminated, Casey hoped the Iraqi Army could suppress it to a level that would not fracture the Iraqi state and would keep AQI from operating freely. Accordingly, Casey directed the Coalition forces to shift their focus from fighting insurgents to training Iraqis.

The Coalition designed the Iraqi Army to be a national force that integrated Kurds, Shia, and Sunni. Some degree of integration in fact occurred - I encountered a number of Sunni officers - but overall the Sunnis were always underrepresented throughout the country. In all, 10 divisions (recently raised to 13) were planned. In order to accelerate Iraqi Army development, MNF-I created the transition team concept - 10 to 12 advisers embedded into every Iraqi Army unit, from battalion to brigade to division. Additionally, each Iraqi battalion was partnered with a Marine or U.S. Army battalion, which would assist in their operations and training. Usually, the partnership process began with an Iraqi company working with a U.S. company. Eventually, the company would operate independently, followed by the battalion, then the brigade, and ultimately the entire division. To be sure, the Coalition also developed local police forces, recruited from the areas where they would serve and organized into city and district stations. But they received fewer advisers and resources than the army.

The Iraqi Army in Al Anbar

By March 2006, the Iraqi Army in Al Anbar numbered two divisions (about 10,000 personnel) and provided 40 to 50 percent of the infantry for counterinsurgency. Three brigades operated independently. Despite this growth in numbers and capability, the army faced incessant attacks and, as of early 2007, after two years of operations, it could not suppress the insurgency even with U.S. forces present, which made it highly unlikely it would be able to do so absent U.S. forces - the primary goal of Iraqization. Most disturbing for American interests, AQI continued to maintain a presence throughout the province. In a leaked intelligence report in September 2006, Colonel Peter Devlin, the I MEF intelligence officer, wrote, "AQI is the dominant organization of influence in Al Anbar, surpassing the nationalist insurgents, the Iraqi Government, and MNF [the Coalition] in its ability to control the day-to-day life of the average Sunni." The inability of the Iraqi Army to suppress insurgent activity was mirrored throughout the Sunni areas.

Nevertheless, the difficulties experienced by the Iraqi Army in Al Anbar and elsewhere have not altered the consensus among top policymakers and U.S. military officers that Iraqization can eventually enable the United States to withdraw. In fact, there has been near-unanimity that the United States needs to invest more resources into training, advising, equipping, and manning the Iraqi Army. As General John Abizaid, commander of Central Command, told the Senate in November 2006, "In discussions with our commanders and Iraqi leaders, it is clear that they believe Iraqi forces can take more control faster, provided we invest more manpower and resources into the Coalition military transition teams, speed the delivery of logistics and mobility enablers, and embrace an aggressive Iraqi-led effort to disarm illegal militias." Abizaid concluded that U.S. forces might thereby be able to hand over security to Iraqi forces within one year. Similarly, the Iraq Study Group emphasized, in its report, "the urgent near-term need for significant additional trained Army brigades, since this is the key to Iraqis taking over full responsibility for their own security." The report implied that a shortcoming in "real combat capability" prevented the Iraqi Army from handling the insurgency.

In his January 2007 speech on the surge strategy, President George W. Bush reaffirmed the importance of the Iraqi Army to the U.S. mission in Iraq and promised to increase its numbers, training, equipping, and advisory support. The surge may place greater emphasis on American military operations than previous efforts, but the expectation that Iraqi security forces will eventually be able to shoulder the burden of counterinsurgency remains the same. And though Democrats in the House and Senate disagreed with the surge and argued that the United States must stand down so that the Iraqis would be forced to stand up, they have never questioned that Iraqization itself could work.

True, myriad training, advising, equipping, and manning problems have afflicted the Iraqi Army. Formal training varies from zero to 16 weeks, with most battalions receiving just three weeks of instruction in basic soldiering before being sent to Al Anbar. In terms of equipment, the Coalition initially left the Iraqis more lightly armed than the insurgents; they are transported in unarmored pick-ups and lack essential items such as boots and cold-weather jackets. While equipment improved over time, the Marines found that 12 advisers were not enough to train, administer, and operate alongside a battalion. Between 20 and 33 percent of the 750 men in a battalion are on leave at any time, while desertions and combat losses - because of poor living conditions, irregular pay, distance from home, and constant exposure to combat - reduce on-hand strength to between 150 and 600 men per battalion. In the worst cases, personnel attrition has forced certain Iraqi units to drastically cut back on operations.

But while undoubtedly weakening its performance, shortcomings in training, advising, and equipping are not at the root of the Iraqi Army's inability to suppress the insurgency. As noted by the Iraq Study Group, the purpose of training, advising, and equipping is to create "a real combat capability." Yet the Iraqi Army actually performed adequately in combat. On no occasion in Al Anbar since April 2004 did insurgents rout or overwhelm an Iraqi Army unit. Several could perform advanced tasks such as combining movement with suppressive fire, maneuvering, and assaulting insurgent positions. For example, the 3rd Brigade, 1st Iraqi Division won battles against as many as 50 insurgents. In fact, because of its aggressiveness, many Coalition officers candidly rated the brigade as better than certain U.S. units. Similarly, Coalition officers considered the 1st Brigade, 1st Iraqi Division, fighting in eastern Ramadi (the largest city and scene of the worst violence in Al Anbar), to be highly competent, especially at urban warfare. Its commander was sometimes upheld as the equivalent of the average U.S. brigade commander. Major Lloyd Freeman, the operations officer with the 1st Iraqi Division military transition team, summed up the Iraqi Army's combat performance well: "It might be ugly, but the job would get done."

The Sunni-shia Dilemma

Unfortunately, just like the Coalition, the Iraqi Army could fight well and understand counterinsurgency tactics, yet have little effect on the vibrant insurgency. Clearly, better training, advising, equipping, and manning will accelerate the pace of operations and enable more units to conduct advanced tasks. Doing so may even allow certain units outside Al Anbar (sometimes described as losing battles to insurgents or Shia militia) to stand and fight. However, the fact that good units like the 1st and 3rd brigades still faced heavy attacks suggests that improving the performance of the Iraqi Army is not likely to make much of a difference in suppressing insurgent activity.

The real problem facing the Iraqi Army, and Iraqization itself, is that Sunnis too often sympathize with the insurgency. They generally do not provide intelligence on the identity and location of insurgents, and without good intelligence, counterinsurgent forces cannot identify and remove insurgents. In Al Anbar, insurgents could mass freely, because local residents would not inform the Iraqi Army. Worse, some locals have hidden insurgents or even joined the insurgency as fighters; one Iraqi officer estimated that 25 to 30 percent of locals were insurgents. Consequently, the Iraqi Army could win every firefight and patrol diligently without ever rooting out the insurgents.

Different people have different reasons for supporting the insurgents, but the majority opposes the Iraqi Army primarily because of its Shia identity. The Shia dominated

Iraqi government's insistence on denying Sunnis political power and economic wealth upsets them and raises fears of oppression. Sectarian violence in Baghdad only magnifies this perception.

Polling in 2006 found that 77 to 90percent of people in Al Anbar viewed the government as illegitimate, while 80 percent considered civil war likely. Further polls confirmed that the majority of Iraqis in Al Anbar view the Iraqi Army as a threat, not as a stabilizing force.

Such numbers are reflected in the Iraqi Army's experience in Al Anbar. For example, in Falluja, the second-largest city in Al Anbar, Iraqi Army officers believed that people perceived them as occupiers and allowed the insurgents to attack them. They heard imams call the people to attack the Iraqi Army. Indeed, at one city council meeting, city officials laughed derisively at an Iraqi officer when he noted his men received no cooperation from locals. City leaders regularly accused the Iraqi Army of being members of Shia extremist groups. Once, a prominent imam said that the people of Fallujah were fighting a Persian occupation.

Unfounded tales of atrocities often accompany such accusations. To be sure, the Iraqi Army occasionally feeds fears by treating the population harshly. Iraqi soldiers have cursed at Sunnis, stolen from homes, and occupied residences as observation posts. Iraqi soldiers also could be physically brutal; however, Iraqi officers usually intervened. Some soldiers whom I encountered had militia connections and many admired Moqtada Sadr. But no entire brigade or battalion in Al Anbar pursued a sectarian agenda as other Iraqi divisions, most notably the 5th Division in Diyala, reportedly have done. The absence of such sectarianism in Al Anbar, though, did little to win the support of locals against the insurgents.

The Habbaniyah Mutiny

If Shia identity inhibited the effectiveness of the Iraqi Army, then the obvious answer would seem to be to recruit more Sunnis. Accordingly, the Marines made recruiting Sunnis, particularly in early 2006, a priority. Unfortunately, recruiting Sunnis has proved quite difficult. In early 2006, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense permitted 6,500 Sunnis from Al Anbar to be recruited to serve throughout the country. The first recruiting effort took place at the end of March, when the Marines enlisted 1,017 men, largely from Falluja. Unfortunately, the Sunni recruits were led to believe they would be serving near their homes, and were given further assurance by the mayor; by all accounts, his assurances had induced many to volunteer.

On April 30, the new soldiers graduated from training at Camp Habbaniyah. During the ceremony, replete with Coalition and Iraqi generals, it was announced that many would be deployed outside Al Anbar. Yelling and throwing their uniforms to the ground, 600 of the newly trained soldiers refused to deploy. Not only did they feel cheated, but they also feared sectarian retribution if they joined predominantly Shia units outside the Sunni Triangle; many told U.S. officers they would be attacked if they left Al Anbar. The mayor of Falluja supported the recruits, telling Coalition officers, "As long as I am receiving corpses from Baghdad, I will not send soldiers there." In the end, more than 600 of the 1,017 recruits deserted. If Sunnis refuse to serve, there is no way we can expect the Iraqi Army to bridge sectarian differences and handle the insurgency. Indeed, the only way Sunnis will ever support the army is if it loses its structure as an integrated and national force and becomes a set of locally recruited brigades - no different from the police or a militia.

Police and Local Sunni Forces

As the Iraqi Army faced continuing difficulties in 2006, the Coalition and the Iraqi government increasingly turned to local Sunni police forces, which proved to be remarkably more effective in countering foreign terrorists and keeping some semblance of law and order. By the end of 2006, roughly 20 percent of the infantry conducting counterinsurgency operations in Al Anbar were police. Although they had no love for the Iraqi government, certain Sunni sheiks, imams, and former military officers were upset with AQI's heavy-handed tactics and domination of the black market. Sunnis particularly disliked foreign fighters, who were often affiliated with AQI; in fact, 65 to 47 percent favored killing them (unfortunately, foreign fighters were a very small minority within AQI). This rivalry compelled these Sunni leaders to back the formation of locally based police forces, which, in contrast to the army, provided them a legitimate avenue to secure their own territory and power.

In Falluja, a set of local tribes, civic leaders, and imams supported the creation of a police force of 1,200 following the clearing of the city at the end of 2004. In Ramadi, a group of tribes under the leadership of the fearless Sheik Abd al Sit-tar created a police force of more than 1,000. In September 2006, Sittar openly announced the opposition of those tribes to AQI. In Al Qa'im, a city on the Syrian border, the powerful Albu Mahal tribe formed the majority of the local security forces, which number over 2,000. AQI had upset members of the tribe by disturbing their control over the black market and infringing on their territory in 2005. Police forces equally committed to fighting AQI formed in other towns along the Euphrates. And there are examples in other Sunni provinces of Sunni tribes battling AQI directly or as part of the local forces; In Mosul, the Iraqi government granted the Jabburi tribe influence over the police forces in order to counter AQI.

In return for backing the police, the Iraqi government gave local Sunni leaders greater military, economic, and political power. Doing so was a necessary step in inducing Sunni leaders to support the police, and it enabled those leaders to get more members of their community to join the police and stand against AQI. In Ramadi, Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki backed Sittar and openly met with the leaders of his tribal movement. The government effectively granted Sittar economic power by turning a blind eye when he regained control of criminal activity along the highways near Ramadi, which AQI had disturbed. At the end of October 2006, the Ministry of the Interior granted Sittar authority over security in Al Anbar and permitted his movement to create three "emergency" battalions, totaling 2,250 men. This was a huge concession. For all intents and purposes, the government was permitting Sittar and his movement to have their own militia.

In Al Qa'im, the Ministry of Defense gave the Albu Mahal tribe control over the resident army brigade by putting aside the standard rule that brigades in Al Anbar could not be composed of Sunnis. Albu Mahal tribesmen rapidly filled its ranks. The brigade's commander, two battalion commanders, and several staff officers were all Albu Mahal. The Albu Mahal received other forms of power as well, including freedom to retake control of the black market and run smuggling operations into Syria. Control over the black market meant the Albu Mahal had deep interests in ensuring AQI never returned to Al Qa'im.

Despite less training, fewer advisers, and lighter equipment, police proved far more effective in dealing with the insurgency than the army. In Al Qa'im, the Albu Mahal cut off insurgent infiltration, and as a result incident levels were by far the lowest per capita in the entire province and less than one-tenth of those in Falluja.

The police were too few in Falluja to match the success in Al Qa'im, but they were still able to reduce violence. The support of imams, sheiks, and former military officers enabled them to lock down the city for the October 2005 referendum, the December 2005 election, and the March 2006 Army recruiting drive. In Ramadi, the police suppressed insurgent activity in their own tribal areas and neighborhoods (and by March 2007, many U.S. Marines were "cautiously optimistic" that the police had suppressed insurgent activity throughout most of the city). By the end of 2006, police were killing and capturing more insurgents than the Iraqi Army, even though the army outnumbered the police. One policeman told a Marine adviser, "What makes an insurgent's heart turn cold is to see an Iraqi policeman in uniform. It is as if he has been stabbed in the chest with a cold knife."

These police forces were so effective because, as Sunnis and members of their local community, they were able to collect actionable human intelligence. In Al Qa'im, the Albu Mahal aggressively pursued leads and regularly captured insurgents. In Falluja, most tips on insurgent activity came from the police. Marines patrolling or standing post with the police were impressed with their knowledge of insurgent activity, insurgent tactics, and the allegiances of the local population. At least five insurgent cells were taken out in July and August alone. In Ramadi, on one patrol into a neighborhood controlled by AQI, the residents were in tears at the sight of police. When asked in a poll if tribes were a good source of security, 69 percent of respondents in Ramadi strongly agreed; when asked the same question about the Iraqi Army, 81 percent strongly disagreed.

Nonetheless, the Sunni police have not been an unqualified success. Insurgents constantly targeted the police and their supporters with sniper attacks, assassinations, and suicide car bombs (sometimes laden with chlorine gas). Casualties in Falluja included the deputy police chief, the traffic police chief, two capable senior officers, a senior imam, and two chairmen of the Falluja city council. The Coalition counted more than 30 assassinations in July and August 2006 alone. In Ramadi, AQI killed off-duty police and members of their tribes almost daily, including the sheik of one of the key tribes.

Ultimately, the police have faced the same problem as the army, albeit to a lesser extent: Sectarian violence and disaffection with the government prevents popular support from reaching levels necessary to suppress the insurgency. In turn, the local police have been too small in number to eradicate AQI through out Al Anbar. Plenty of Sunni leaders have either stayed neutral or supported the insurgents, and public support for armed resistance remains high. For many Sunnis, I observed, the insurgency represented a form of protection against persistent sectarian violence. Some Sunnis in Falluja hold a favorable view of AQI because of its role in fighting the Shia militias in Baghdad. This continuing violence in the capital has made many imams in Falluja resistant to moderation. With the imams not on their side, the police have lost their best means of securing popular sympathy and discouraging insurgents from attacking them. In Ramadi, Sittar has now built support among most of the tribes, but many insurgent fighters and certain key tribes are still aligned with AQI elsewhere in Al Anbar. As long as sectarian violence and disaffection with the government continue, the likelihood that police will ever enjoy sufficient support is doubtful. Yet, with the right resources, the local police can turn more locals to their side and reduce, though not eliminate, the strength of AQI. That is something that Iraqi Army is incapable of doing, and why local Sunni police forces must be the focus of Iraqization.

Grassroots Iraqization

Neither the insurgency nor AQI can be defeated if Al Anbar is not secured.

Unfortunately, the Iraqi Army appears unlikely to do so. The widely accepted recommendation to invest more advisers, training, or equipment will not change the ethnicity of the Iraqi Army, lessen sectarian tensions, or reverse popular disaffection with the government. Even more preposterous is the idea that expediting U.S. withdrawal will somehow enable the army to provide security. Perhaps the Iraqi government could massively reinforce the Iraqi Army and crush the Sunnis but, considering the strength of the insurgency, this could only be accomplished through wanton brutality, which would have prohibitive domestic and international political ramifications for the United States, as well as destabilizing repercussions throughout the region.

Given the likelihood of continued ethnic conflict, the United States needs to look to limited means of protecting its interests in Iraq. First and foremost, that means constraining AQI's influence. Pursuing a grassroots Iraqization in which greater effort is placed on developing local police forces - throughout the Sunni provinces - could allow the areas that enjoy relatively restricted insurgent activity to be expanded, thereby constraining AQI's influence. In contrast to the Iraqi Army, local Sunni forces can control territory, collect intelligence, and cripple AQI - precisely what the United States needs as it looks to draw down its forces. To start, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior must expand police recruitment and, as training capacity permits, lift caps on personnel numbers. Additionally, the United States needs to put as much effort into training, advising, and equipping the police as the army. In particular, the quality of the advisory teams working with the police should be improved. Like the army, the best active-duty Marines and soldiers ought to be embedded with the police.

But these are the simple actions. The U.S. and Iraqi governments need to go further and empower local Sunni leaders, as they did with the Albu Mahal and Sittar in Al Anbar province. Local Sunni leaders should be given the power and authority to motivate their communities to join and support the police. Imams, sheiks, and other local leaders need to be lavished with political and economic rewards, to be distributed to their communities, for supporting the police: political positions, command of military formations, civil affairs projects, economic compensation packages, salaries, and permission to run black-market activities. There will, of course, be corruption as local leaders take money and profits for themselves. In Iraq, that is the cost of doing business.

Such a policy may sound like a minor technical change, but it would actually be a fundamental shift in U.S. strategy. It would undermine America's key strategic goals of forming a democracy and a unified state. The United States would be tacitly permitting Sunnis to field militias and defend themselves. This would be one more step toward the fragmentation of Iraq into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish areas. Indeed, a real possibility exists that Sunni police would clash with Shia militias in defense of their neighborhoods. Additionally, the government would be devolving power from democratically elected officials to traditional non-elected authority figures, such as imams and sheiks, which could further undermine the democratization effort.

These downsides are undeniable, but they should not be exaggerated. National unity would probably be no more weakened than it is now, and fighting between the government and Sunni police outside Baghdad is unlikely. In fact, Sunni police forces have a better relationship with the Iraqi government than any other element of Sunni society, and there are no cases of Sunni police from Al Anbar attacking Shia areas. The Iraqi Army and local Sunni police regularly conduct combined operations against AQI. Sittar has even openly proposed cooperation with Shia tribes. Similarly, the Iraqi government is not set against working with Sunnis; the fact that Maliki has backed local Sunni forces suggests that he does not view them as a threat. The risk of clashes with Shia militias could be mitigated by not forming Sunni police within Baghdad.

Ultimately, the United States faces a choice. It can continue to push a national and unified state, and risk letting hardcore insurgents and terrorists go unchallenged. Or the ties that bind the state can be loosened to counter AQI with local police forces, but at the cost of formalizing sectarian divisions and weakening democratization. The latter is hardly optimal, but optimal is no longer a luxury the United States can afford. Right now, we must focus on avoiding the worst possible outcome, and that means doing what we can to prevent AQI from having uncontested control over the Sunni provinces. Grassroots Iraqization would accomplish that goal, and hopefully, the local forces that are empowered through this strategy one day could contribute to producing a peaceful and stable Iraq.

Carter Malkasian directs the Stability and Development program at the Center for Naval Analyses. From 2004 to 2006, he served as an adviser on counterinsurgency to the I Marine Expeditionary Force. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Center for Naval Analyses or the U.S. Marine Corps.