Posted to the Small Wars Council by Jedburgh...

Headquarters

Multi-National Force - Iraq

Baghdad, Iraq

APO AE 09342-1400

February 10, 2007

Office of the Commanding General

To the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Civilians of Multi-National Force-Iraq:

We serve in Iraq at a critical time. The war here will soon enter its fifth year. A decisive moment approaches. Shoulder-to-shoulder with our Iraqi comrades, we will conduct a pivotal campaign to improve security for the Iraqi people. The stakes could not be higher.

Our task is crucial. Security is essential for Iraq to build its future. Only with security can the Iraqi government come to grips with the tough issues it confronts and develop the capacity to serve its citizens. The hopes of the Iraqi people and the coalition countries are with us.

The enemies of Iraq will shrink at no act, however barbaric. They will do all that they can to shake the confidence of the people and to convince the world that this effort is doomed. We must not underestimate them.

Together with our Iraqi partners, we must defeat those who oppose the new Iraq. We cannot allow mass murderers to hold the initiative. We must strike them relentlessly. We and our Iraqi partners must set the terms of the struggle, not our enemies. And together we must prevail.

The way ahead will not be easy. There will be difficult times in the months to come. But hard is not hopeless, and we must remain steadfast in our effort to help improve security for the Iraqi people. I am confident that each of you will fight with skill and courage, and that you will remain loyal to your comrades-in-arms and to the values our nations hold so dear.

In the end, Iraqis will decide the outcome of this struggle. Our task is to help them gain the time they need to save their country. To do that, many of us will live and fight alongside them. Together, we will face down the terrorists, insurgents, and criminals who slaughter the innocent. Success will require discipline, fortitude, and initiative--qualities that you have in abundance.

I appreciate your sacrifices and those of your families. Now, more than ever, your commitment to service and your skill can make the difference between victory and defeat in a very tough mission.

It is an honor to soldier again with the members of the Multi-National Force-Iraq. I know that wherever you serve in this undertaking you will give your all. In turn, I pledge my commitment to our mission and every effort to achieve success as we help the Iraqis chart a course to a brighter future.

Godspeed to each of you and to our Iraqi comrades in this crucial endeavor.

//Signed//

DAVID H. PATRAEUS

General, United States Army

Commanding

All organizations must be concerned with the growth, retention, and utilization of their best and brightest. Call them what you will -- the Iron Majors, the Strategic Corporals, the go-to desk officers and field operators -- they are the backbone and future of all of our organizations, and our aces-in-the-hole for the Long War.

Our bright and dedicated professionals have a passion to fight to win. Unfortunately, their enthusiasm, flexibility, and innovation often collides with the inertia of the status quo, which is frequently manifest in legacy attitudes, organizational rice bowls, and careerism and bureaucracy that linger amongst the establishment. Today's personnel systems at best fail to support employing all of our manpower in ways that our missions require, and at worst impair our up-and-comers who somehow find a way to contribute anyway in the arena where needed, rushing to the action while others stay comfortable.

In times of great organizational stress like we have today, there is increased tension between the old and the new. It is a fine line between over-indulging the new breed, and resting too comfortably or defensively on our old laurels. Sometimes we mature the next generation, sometimes we squash its innovation and drive it under a rock or out the door in either acquiescence or frustration. When the latter happens, we lose our most valuable assets, our skilled and dedicated people, just at the time when they are most needed. Wake up calls are never easy for organizations.

That brings us to the following e-mail we received from one of those young Turks, someone who is well known to us and has a history of serious professional contributions. This is professional hope and frustration, not idle gossip or whining. We publish it here at the author's request under the pseudonym Epictetus, but only after verifying that Epictetus was in a position to experience first-hand the issues commented upon, and that there is an issue to raise here rather than just an axe to grind. This case involves the DIA, but it could be any of many of our organizations struggling with their new realities.

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"Interest in supporting the warfighter stops at the Lieutenant Colonel level"

-- Former DIA Iraq Analyst

If the outcome of the mid term elections were a wake up call for the Bush administration, the Iraq Survey Group report was a wake up call for the Defense Intelligence Agency. The report singled out the agency's Iraq office as an example of what was wrong with the intelligence effort in Iraq. Sadly, it is not the first such wake up call for this troubled agency.

The first wake up call came in the fall of 2005. For the first time since the Vietnam era, the agency was forced to resort to an internal draft system to fill its deployment requirements to Iraq and Afghanistan. This draft prompted another policy change that allowed personnel to bypass their supervisors to volunteer for deployments. Supervisors, reticent to lose personnel to these deployments, respond with threats of retaliation against volunteers. To stop their offices from losing personnel, mid level managers threatened their subordinates with poor evaluations if they volunteered to deploy. Amazingly, analysts volunteered anyway. DIA's lukewarm support for deploying its personnel is not surprising. The last few heads of the Iraq office had never been to Iraq before being given the job.

The second wake up call came the following spring when the results of the annual Human Capital Survey were released. Less than a quarter of all employees agreed with the statement "Morale is high at DIA." Most disturbingly, the most dissatisfied employees were "Class of 9/11" analysts, the crop of entry level intelligence officers hired in the wake of 9/11. These analysts, some working full time with high level security clearance before they could buy beer, were often sent to Iraq at the first opportunity with less than a month of training. Analysts who had never fired a rifle before were given loaded machine guns and told to look for Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The next wake up call came in October of 2006, when the online journal On Point published an editorial detailing the continuing problems in the Iraq office, including a shortage of computers that reduced analysts to reading newspapers in Pentagon coffee shops . While the ISG lamented that only 30 out of the 1,000 personnel at the US Embassy in Baghdad spoke any Arabic, DIA's Iraq office was employing its Arabic linguists vacuuming offices. While it was quietly passed around some of DIA's corridors, the article went largely unnoticed by the agency's leadership.

The coup de grace came when the ISG reported that DIA had less than ten analysts who had more than two years studying the insurgency. "Agencies must have a better personnel system to keep analytic expertise focused on the insurgency. They are not doing enough to map the insurgency, dissect it, and understand it on a national and provincial level." This was the wake up call the agency's leadership could not ignore.

DIA's official response to the report was as depressing as it was predictable. They "clarified" that instead of the 10 analysts who had studied the Iraq insurgency for more than two years, the number was closer to 20. It also mentioned the "300 dedicated analysts" they had focusing on Iraq. This response was met with cynicism and disbelief by some of the Iraq office's analysts. As one Iraq analyst lamented in an online forum shortly after the ISG report was published "If there are 300 analysts, I never saw them." He had worked in the Iraq office for six months. Another echoed the words of the tragic Vietnam figure, John Paul Vann; describing DIA's response as "one of the bright shining lies."

Morale has become bad enough in the Iraq office that DIA has had to drop the requirement for analysts who deploy to Iraq work in the office after they return. In the last several months, the office has experienced an exodus of many of its veteran analysts. The office remains critically undermanned and short of computers. Analysts have begun to apply for jobs with local county police departments.

DIA's current director, Major General Michael Maples, was the head of the Army's artillery school at Fort Sill when the school was rocked by a cheating scandal exposed by the late Col David Hackworth. General Maples' response was a witch hunt to find out who had leaked the damning information to the press. DIA's situation, however, is much direr. As the war enters its fourth year and with American causalities over three thousand, now is not the time for bureaucratic damage control. It is time for bold and decisive action.

If General Maples cannot overhaul this troubled agency, the administration must find someone who can. Anything less would be a disservice, not only to DIA's many brave and dedicated personnel, but to the military that it serves.

Odom, Thomas P. Journey Into Darkness: Genocide in Rwanda. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. (Price - $18.96 Paperback on Amazon.com)

Review by Council member Major Adam Strickland, USMC.

Marine officers are taught that the two most important components of any operations order are the commander's intent and mission statement. Above all else, each statement should be clear and concise so as to leave the recipient with no doubt as to what must be accomplished. In 1994, at the height of a humanitarian crisis in Goma, Zaire, US Army LTC Thomas Odom, an Africa Foreign Area Officer, was told by his superiors -- "We must stop the dying," and thus tasked to "stop the dying." Though clear and concise, these provided little true guidance as he tried to assess the needs of over one million Rwandan refugees escaping violent retribution in front of the steadily advancing Rwandan Patriotic Front as it consolidated its victory in the Rwandan Civil War. Did his superiors really want him to provide humanitarian assistance to the former Rwandan Army that had just been defeated, yet was still heavily armed? Was he to provide relief to the Interhamwe or Impuzamugambi militias and their collaborators who had just raped and murdered in excess of 800,000 Rwandans? Was he required to disarm the groups as a precondition to assistance? And finally, how was he to complete his mission without creating the perception of providing aide and comfort to thousands who just committed genocide? In his book Journey Into Darkness: Genocide in Rwanda, Thomas Odom provides a first-person account of the planning difficulties and selected courses of actions associated with Operation Support Hope (Goma, Zaire 1994) and follow-on operations associated with the Rwandan Genocide.

Over the past several years, we in the military have witnessed what some have labeled "a new-type" or "irregular" warfare, one in which there are multiple non-state competitors on the battlefield, the environment and root causes of grievance poorly defined and understood, and one in which religious, ethnic, and tribal affiliations matter more and more. However, Odom demonstrates that all of these and other problems that confront us today in Iraq or Afghanistan, whether interagency difficulties, the presence of militias, or the absence of necessary infrastructure, were present in Rwanda and Zaire in 1993-1994. By detailing the efforts that reconciled the limited means at his disposal with the policy goals or ends of Operation Support Hope, Odom makes this book a must read for all attempting to better understand operational art, planning, and the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Not only is Journey Into Darkness an easy and compelling read, but at 277 pages, one can finish it over a weekend. For a more complete understanding of operational art in the context of the Rwanda Genocide and United Nations Assistance Mission Rwanda (UNAMIR), Odom's book is a wonderful complement to Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire's Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Journey Into Darkness: Genocide in Rwanda is a must read for all planners, foreign area officers, and those attempting to better understand the Great Lakes Region of Africa.

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You can read Chapter Five: Operation Support Hope in the Small Wars Journal online magazine, Volume 3 - October 2005.

This is the second installment of "posts of note" from the Small Wars Journal's discussion board - the Small Wars Council. Poster JCustis, a long-time Council member, is a Marine infantry officer with two tours in Iraq under his belt. Where a military acronym is used I have inserted an explanation. For starters, the 'battle captains': the S-3 is the Operations Officer and the 'A' or Alpha is his assistant, the AirO is the Air Officer, the FSC is the Fire Support Coordination Officer, the FAC is the Forward Air Controller, the TF IO is the Task Force Information Operations Officer, and the SJA is the Staff Judge Advocate (legal).

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RTK has written on his experiences using the framework of Dave Kilcullen's Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency and I felt that same framework could be used to offer some lessons learned on the battle captain system that my unit applied during its 2004-2005 rotation.

I can't lay claim to any degree of enlightenment, but I'd like to think that towards the end of our deployment, our "council of captains" (S-3A, AirO, FSC, FAC, and SJA) had gotten into a sustainable groove.

Article 1: Know your turf -- LtCol Kilcullen makes reference to developing a mental model of your area of operations. Try as we might to study imagery, review the maps and gain situational awareness, it took us in excess of three months to realize that battle captains need to physically see the battlespace with the naked eye. We eventually caught helos which flew over the turf, or went out when the battalion commander went forward to check on the companies.

Article 2: Diagnose the problem -- A battle captain's problem is not the same tactical problem a company or platoon faces. He needs to move information (reporting) as quickly as possible, have a clear understanding of what needs to happen when a CCIR (Commanders Critical Intelligence Requirement) is tripped, when he must roust the QRF (Quick Reaction Force) out of the ready room, and which means of communication to use in order to expedite a CASEVAC (Casualty Evacuation) request. Battle captains have to share lessons learned and offer ideas, and get the rest of the COC (Combat Operations Center) staff in synch so that they do not add to the friction when troops are in contact.

Article 3: Organize for intelligence -- The critical detail here is that COC staff needs to be organized to maximize the capture of information for analysis. Do not let the S-2 (Intelligence) staff stray out of reach of your daily battle rhythm. Because current operations and intelligence sections often report what should be the same information, up two separate paths, patrol, raid, and contact debriefs must be conducted with S-3 and S-2 representation. The patrol leader may conduct a more detailed debrief later with the intelligence rep, but ops has to reserve the right to final review of follow-on reporting offered up by the S-2. I've been queried by the night Regimental-level battle captain on significant events tidbits that the Regt S-2 briefed, but Regt Ops did not know. It is an unnecessarily painful experience.

Article 4: Organize for interagency operations -- Even if the battle captain doesn't organize anything regarding interagency ops, he should know where these folks live, and stop by for a chat when they are on the FOB (Forward Operating Base). A fellow battle captain and TF IO officer introduced me to the civil affairs HQ responsible for our AO. A couple of visits helped us explain matters to the company commander who was justifiably frustrated that his recommended pump house project hadn't seen movement for several weeks.

Article 5: Travel light and harden CSS (Combat Service Support) -- All I can speak to is the travel light piece, and you've got to maintain the ability to revert to pens, maps, and acetate to fight the fight. For hardening, don't let digital communications rest on a single point of failure. Test back-up systems regularly.

Article 6: Find a political / cultural advisor -- I found that the contract linguists are a remarkable source of ground-truth information, if you only listen to them. A lot of what they say has to be taken with a grain of salt, because they love rumors, but after you're done with the shaker, they still provide a lot of context. You'd be surprised what you can pick up over a cigarette and cup of tea.

Article 7: Train the squad leaders, then trust them -- Get your COC people to as much formal and informal training as possible, even if it means foregoing multiple COC exercises. The Battle NCOs may think that steady state ops are mind-numbing, but when you have rockets impacting around the COC, troops in contact, and a developing CASEVAC situation, a properly trained NCO truly shines. My battalion had an ops idiot savant who amazed me daily with his ability to pull in COP feeds, re-wire the COC after displacement, and sense when things needed to happen. He was a graduate of an operations specialist course, and it paid off during both deployments.

Article 8: Rank is nothing, talent is everything -- See article 7. If the square peg won't fit into the round hole, keep searching until you find a fit.

Article 9: Have a game plan -- Treat the deployment as a marathon, not a sprint. Rehearse your actions in garrison and develop a rough plan to support ops in the AO (Area of Operations), but don't become enamored with that plan. Don't be afraid to employ tricks you pick up during the RIP/TOA (Relief in Place / Transfer of Authority). It wasn't until we'd been in country for over four months and had fought Fallujah v.2.0 that our battle captain system really started to click and run smoothly. During a RIP in Ramadi, we even stole some TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) from the Army.

Article 10: Be there -- As a battle captain, you can't be there if you are exhausted. Those days will come for sure, but the companies outside the wire deserve better, and if you are starting a 12 hour watch after only fours hours of sleep because you were playing Xbox, then you are simply negligent. Build a duty rotation like Marine Security Guard duty. Try to give the battle staff time off, if possible. At one point when we were in Ramadi for a few months, our rotation had it where the battle captain and his NCO could have 36 hours off, after a 3-day duty period. It keeps everyone rested and maintains their sanity. You will need it when the worst days come. Another component to "being there" is to have a semblance of depth. My TF had to split to support the Fallujah fight, and we learned the hard lesson that we did not have enough well-trained battle captains to do so without incurring more risk than we needed to. The senior personnel went forward and the junior guys did a stellar job, but they had to violate the first point in this paragraph.

Article 11: Avoid knee jerk responses to first impressions -- I'll trump RTK a bit and say that initial reports are wrong 99% of the time. Every time you press an RTO for more details, the urge to embellish creeps in and reporting morphs into speculation. Give the unit 30 minutes to submit a follow-up report, and preferably after the senior man on the scene has made his assessment of just what the hell happened. In a running gunfight, remember that silence on the net probably means the commander has a helmet fire going on. He is busy...give him some space.

Article 12: Prepare for handover from day 1 -- Not much to add here.

Article 13: Build trusted networks -- This goes back to Article 4. You are nothing more than a one-trick pony if you don't know what the current IO theme is, where CAG (Civil Affairs Group) elements are operating, or don't go down to the company areas every now and then to break bread. When you get the chance to go forward to "see" the battlespace, try to discuss current ops with a squad leader. It's a little thing, but it goes toward building trust that you can get the dust-off bird in because you are not just another Fobbit.

Articles 14 and 15: Start easy and seek early victories -- The RIP/TOA will be the first challenge, but if you can hit a homerun there, you should be okay. There are really no easy and early victories, but rehearse your staff's actions so they flow like water when a casualty requires evacuation to a higher echelon of care. Be the smooth operator when you pick up the handset, and if you can handle the stress of a troops-in-contact situation like a radio DJ, you will instill confidence in the guys on the ground.

Article 16: Practice deterrent patrolling -- Deterrent patrolling is high-level math, in terms of the battle tracking and coordination required. Check and double-check to make sure that adjacent units know what is going on. Sit down with the patrol leaders whenever possible, and don't just know what the route looks like, but ask him where he expects to make contact. Know what his SOP (Standing Operating Procedure) is for breaking contact or going firm, and how he would prefer to make link-up with the QRF. You owe him that much, so don't be the distant voice in a box that has to develop situation awareness through multiple radio calls.

Article 17: Be prepared for setbacks -- Bad things do happen, but the battle captain needs to internalize his emotions until he is off watch. It doesn't matter if you have a KIA who was your number one NCO when you were a company commander. You've got to help the company clear the contact. Take a deep breath, throw in a dip or light up a Marlboro... Do anything to stay focused until the patrol is back inside the wire.

Article 18: Engage the women; beware the children -- When it's 2 am and you get a call from a company, reporting that their attached HET (HUMINT [Human Intelligence] Exploitation Team) has an informer who is ready to give the 411 on a local and active IED cell, but she wants to be relocated or placed into protective custody with her four children, you need to have a script/plan or the moment will slip away.

Article 19: Take stock regularly -- Regardless of what the battle captains and NCOs are doing, pull them in for a daily update brief. Too much gets lost between multiple change-over briefs. Ask the S-3 to attend and give his take on the current and future ops picture. Even better, invite the CO. You may be surprised how much information he can confirm or deny based on his rounds outside the wire

Article 20: Remember the global audience -- Nothing to add here, other than that this should be common sense. If you have greater access to the NIPRNET (Internet) in the COC, keep your peers informed.

Article 21: Exploit single narrative -- Although you won't have a narrative to worry about, you will be expected to be in the know, based on your proximity to the unit's planners. Provide context on ops to your peers when appropriate, but if you simply don't know anything more that what you heard in the OPORD (Operations Order), don't embellish.

Article 22: Local forces should mirror enemy, not ourselves -- If you don't know what coalition partners are doing within your AO or in adjacent battlespace, you've violated Article 16. Fire yourself and seek a position monitoring the clearing barrel at the entry control point.

Article 23: Practice armed civil affairs -- Even if your unit doesn't have a supporting CA (Civil Affairs) element, or the one you do have is over-tasked, work the interagency theme and appreciate what the CA folks like to know. Try to glean relevant information during the debriefs, and make sure it gets to the people who can act on it. If you aren't sure if that's within your lane, clear it with the S-3, but don't sit on your thumbs and expect it to occur by magic.

Article 24: Small is beautiful -- For the battle captain, small details are beautiful. Be the duty expert at conducting a good debrief.

Article 25: Fight the enemy's strategy, not his forces -- The enemy's strategy is to wear you down. If you can implement elements of the points listed above, you will help the companies to get inside of his loop.

Article 26: Build your own solution, attack only when he gets in the way --

"Combat operations do not win COIN. For a company, since combat operations are what we've trained for, they're our comfort zone. CMO (Civil-Military Operations), IO, economic development, and the sustainment of security forces are all bigger moneymakers in COIN than combat operations. It's tough to get to work, but more productive once you do." -- RTK.

If you don't understand some of the finer points of non-kinetic ops, you may actually be a hindrance to the guys outside the wire. This should be part of your continuous PME (Professsional Military Education), and actually long before you stepped in country.

Article 27: Keep extraction plan secret -- Self-explanatory and nothing to add here.

Article 28: Keep the initiative -- Collaborate with your counterparts, battle NCOs, and the Ops Chief to get better every day. If you think you've developed the smoothest COC going, remember that the day may come where all previous watch rotations pale in comparison to the hell that breaks loose. Do your best to be prepared for it.

The following excerpt is from a draft 'think piece' -- work in progress -- on an issue that is a recurring theme in much of the work I've been involved in over the last several years. I am not the author -- but did participate in many of the discussions concerning Strategic Compression and its implications for coalition forces that fed the content of the paper. It is presented to provoke thought, help frame a debate, and be a catalyst for further discussion.

What is Strategic Compression?

Strategic Compression is the forming of unexpected causal relationships and breaking of expected causal relationships among the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of conflict. Furthermore, Strategic Compression occurs due to the rapidity of information transmission and Blue actors' lack of understanding of pre-existing and emergent trends and social appetites both within the local area of operations and within the world-wide audience. As such, the levels of war seem to compress in time and in causal linkages.

The chain of command system is an example of a pre-existing organizational scheme that is intended to aid in command and the distribution of information and allow for purposeful and coordinated operations in attaining strategic objectives. Mechanisms such as lines of operations formed in the campaign planning phase are tailored to accomplish strategic and operational objectives through a collection of tactical and operational actions. Strategic level guidance requires crafting a suitable response that is tempered by the forces available. While contingency planning can aid in advance preparations each event demands a fresh look at situations and objectives as every crisis or event has its own unique characteristics that need to be acknowledged and accounted for. In both cases, military planners rely on assumptions of pre-existing and developed causal relationships in dealing with new situations.

In Strategic Compression, there are two major types of changes to causal relationships. The first is where an entirely new, unexpected causal relationship forms at any level of war that causes a change in another level of war. The second is one that breaks or negates an otherwise existing and expected causal relationship. Both result in changes in the operational approaches in the levels of conflict. The formation of a new causal relationship or the destruction of an existing causal relationship can be either top-down (strategic ---> operational ---> tactical) or bottom up (tactical ---> operational ---> strategic).

How Does Strategic Compression Work in the Current Security Environment?

In dealing with conflict in the current world system, the number of actors and factors one has to account for is overwhelming. The dense overlay and dynamic interweaving of social, political, and economic interactions produce the situation on the ground. Pulling the layers apart in order to find critical nodes or mechanisms that can be leveraged to accomplish strategic and operational objectives is a daunting task. The complexity of the environment is such that all actors are continuously interacting, reacting, and adapting to each other in a fluid and evolving setting. If one group of insurgents is dismantled, another takes its place. If one social problem is alleviated, such as food distribution, another can appear, such as sanitation. Obvious solutions to problems do not always work. Even if a problem has been largely solved, other problems or difficult situations appear which diminish or negate positive effects already created. Furthermore, the uniqueness of each problem due to the complex interaction of social factors is such that lessons learned are not transferable to the next problem. Each attempt to solve the problem changes the underlying nature of the problem. In such complex interactive systems, it is impossible to predict -- and also to repeat -- effects and results.

One of the great paradoxes of Small Wars is that terrorists are regularly able to leverage Strategic Compression -- use tactical actions to create strategic effects -- yet great powers seem unable to. Terrorists and insurgents regularly fight through using asymmetric engagement: using tactics, equipment, and resources that generate disproportionate effects. While asymmetric engagement is the method in which asymmetric actors wage war against the U.S., it is a term distinct from Strategic Compression. Strategic Compression is specifically leveraged by insurgents and terrorists when actions are undertaken with the intent to influence public opinion through the media (traditional and non-traditional) towards specific aims. The tactical actions of killing a few U.S. soldiers or destroying U.S. vehicles are just a means of achieving the greater goal of eroding support or enraging the domestic and local AO populations, respectively.

In Iraq, this has happened in instances where insurgents have taken positions in hospitals and mosques. By drawing the U.S. into fights in these areas, the insurgents are specifically trying to leverage Strategic Compression against the U.S. Any battle with insurgent forces in a sensitive area would cast the U.S. in a bad light as uncaring or worse, disrespectful of Islam. The goal of the insurgents is not so much to kill soldiers or destroy vehicles but rather to affect the perceptions of the local and global public audience. Media, if involved would likely capture brutal images of death and destruction of Iraqis and religious buildings respectively. If media was not present to capture images, other images would likely appear through non-traditional sources showing the effects or for example the collapsed roof of a mosque. The underlying message would presumably be that the U.S. was responsible. Furthermore, regardless of traditional or non-traditional media action, the local population would have a visible reminder and it would possibly be portrayed as an example of how the U.S. does not care about the people of Iraq, is an occupier, etc.

The wide-spread presence of photo and video cameras, the proliferation of communications devices and technology, and the availability of new web services (blogs, Youtube, etc.) has opened the doors to the global instantaneous "rumor mill." True or not -- pictures, video footage, and reports of incidents can be rapidly transmitted around the world. Even if this data is 'true' in the loosest sense, it is not necessarily grounded in its proper context. Images of soldiers firing on a crowd might not show insurgent perpetrators in the crowd. In the current environment, news is as likely to be carried by mainstream media as it is to be propagated by new and non-traditional means (i.e. camera phones and the aforementioned Youtube). In leveraging public opinion through Strategic Compression, America's enemies will make use of both new and old modes of communication. However, it is important to point out that technology is an enabler and an accelerator of Strategic Compression, but it is not the cause. Strategic Compression is rooted in the unpredictable interaction of complex systems and is not dependent on technology per se.

The proliferation of images, videos, and reports filtered through traditional and non-traditional media allows terrorists, insurgents, and unsympathetic members of the public to convey a story is either false or selective with the truth. An alarming characteristic of current information technology is that images, pictures, and quotes can be sent to the worldwide audience without any contextual information. This allows actions or results of actions -- real or perceived to be --used in information warfare by insurgents against the United States. Images of soldiers firing into a crowd could in reality be coordinated shots at insurgent snipers. Regardless of reality these images could give the impression that American forces kill indiscriminately. Al-Sadr's staging of rallies next to the hotels in which foreign journalist stay can give the impression that the entire city of Baghdad is falling rapidly into anarchy.

While they give the viewer an impression of understanding the reality on the ground, these previously mentioned images are in fact just raw data. This raw data can be easily spun in a certain way to espouse a certain view point. Even worse, in an age where images are easily manipulated they could be also be completely false and have no basis in any real event. Furthermore, in the absence of context, those watching the images tend to superimpose their own opinions and beliefs on them. If there is a natural predisposition towards one view point or another, the raw data can become further 'fuel for the fire'.

Some Thoughts on the Future of Strategic Compression

The unexpected linkages created amongst the levels of war are unlikely to diminish. Inexpensive, readily available cameras and the ability to post images and video on the internet by amateur reporters will increasingly contribute to this phenomenon. Sources of news will likely proliferate and instances of media responding to tactical mistakes are likely to grow. Other causal linkages are likely to become more apparent or emerge. All of these factors will result in placing greater emphasis on General Krulak's strategic corporal idea as tactical actions should be expected to receive hyper-scrutiny in the future. The CNN effect will play an increasingly important role in Small Wars relative to major combat operations (MCO), because unlike the enemy in MCO, the two major centers of gravity in small wars -- the occupied population and the American public -- depend upon news media to gain information and formulate opinions about military actions. Ensuring that tactical actions are well understood by both audiences is essential. Small wars are also likely to be increasingly fought in urban environments. The likelihood that collateral damage will occur during operations and be documented by international and non-traditional media is dramatically increased. As such, Strategic Compression is exacerbated when American forces are operating amongst urban civilian population centers.

Discussion of the new Iraq strategy, and General Petraeus's recent Congressional testimony have raised the somewhat obvious point that the word "counterinsurgency" means very different things to different people. So it may be worth sketching in brief outline the two basic philosophical approaches to counterinsurgency that developed over the 20th century (a period which I have written about elsewhere as "Classical Counterinsurgency"). These two contrasting schools of thought about counterinsurgency might be labeled as "enemy-centric" and "population-centric".

The enemy-centric approach basically understands counter-insurgency as a variant of conventional warfare. It sees counterinsurgency as a contest with an organized enemy, and believes that we must defeat that enemy as our primary task. There are many variants within this approach, including "soft line" and "hard line" approaches, kinetic and non-kinetic methods of defeating the enemy, decapitation versus marginalization strategies, and so on. Many of these strategic concepts are shared with the population-centric school of counterinsurgency, but the philosophy differs. In a nut-shell, it could be summarized as "first defeat the enemy, and all else will follow".

The population-centric approach understands counter-insurgency as fundamentally a control problem, or even an armed variant of government administration. It believes that establishing control over the population, and the environment (physical, human and informational) in which that population lives, is the essential task. Again, there are many variants within this approach, including some very hard-line methods and some softer approaches, but the underlying philosophy is "first control the population, and all else will follow".

(Note that we're talking about classical counter-insurgency theory here, not modern counter-insurgency practice, so much. Also, I'm not suggesting one school is always right and the other always wrong -- both can be well-done, and both can be hopelessly counterproductive if done badly. The key to "good counterinsurgency practice" is the agile integration of civil and military measures across security, economic, political and information tracks -- and this is something that has to be done regardless of which approach you adopt, and is just as necessary in both).

Now, some people are quite committed to one or the other school of thought (Galula, for example, flatly states that the population-centric approach is always correct, and the new FM 3-24 takes a similar but less absolute stance). But my experience has been that both are applicable in varying degrees in most insurgencies, and at different times in the life of any one insurgency - since, over time, the nature of insurgencies shifts.

The real art is to "read the battle" and understand how it is developing, fast enough to adapt. Neither the enemy-centric nor the population-centric approaches are always or universally appropriate -- there is no cookie-cutter, and no substitute for situation-specific analysis informed by extremely deep local area and cultural knowledge.

As an example of the need to read the battle and adapt, I hope you will forgive a brief personal anecdote. In Timor in 1999 I worked closely with village elders in the border districts. I sat down with several of them one afternoon to discuss their perception of how the campaign was progressing, and they complained that the Australians weren't securing them in the fields and villages, that they felt unsafe because of the militia (the local term for cross-border guerrillas) and that we needed to do more to protect them. In actual fact, we were out in large numbers, securing the border against infiltration, patrolling by night, conducting 14 to 21-day patrols in the jungle to deny the militias a chance to build sanctuaries, and working in close in the villages to maintain popular support. There had not been a single successful attack by the insurgents on the population for more than two months. So, "objectively", they were secure. But -- and this is the critical point -- because our troops were sneaking around in the jungle and at night, staying out of the villagers' way and focusing on defeating enemy attempts to target the population, they did not see us about, and hence did not feel "subjectively" secure. This was exacerbated by the fact that they had just experienced a major psychological trauma (occupation, insurgency, mass destruction and international intervention) and as a society they needed time and support for a degree of "mental reconstruction". Based on their feedback (and that of lots of other meetings and observations) we changed our operational approach, became a bit more visible to the population and focused on giving them the feeling, as well as the reality, of safety. Once we did that, it was fine.

In other words, we had to shift from a more enemy-centric approach to a more population-centric approach to adjust to the developing situation. My personal lesson from this experience was that the correct approach is situation-dependent, and the situation changes over time. Therefore the key is to develop mechanisms that allow you to read the environment, to be agile and to adapt, as John Nagl showed so brilliantly in Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife.

So, in summary, two broad philosophical approaches in classical counterinsurgency (and remember it's classical 20th century counterinsurgency we're discussing here) -- population-centric, and enemy-centric. Both have merit, but the key is to first diagnose the environment, then design a tailor-made approach to counter the insurgency, and - most critically - have a system for generating continuous, real-time feedback from the environment that allows you to know what effect you are having, and adapt as needed.

If I were a snooty European intellectual, I would blame the inability of many Americans to recognize the multi-sided nature of the current war in Iraq on American culture. "Americans," I would write, "can only think in terms of black and white, of absolute good and absolute evil. If you doubt this, just look at the films they watch, the games they play and the politicians they elect."

Fortunately, I'm a snooty American intellectual. As such, I realise that three-sided conflicts have been a staple plot device in American films for more than thirty years, that games like Monopoly, Risk and poker provide America with lots of people who are familiar with the dynamics of multi-sided competition, and that nobody gets very far in American politics without being able to handle more shades of grey than a high-end laser printer. Moreover, as a snooty American intellectual who has spent a lot of time studying the military history of Europe, I also realize that the chief cause of our strategic myopia is an idea that we borrowed from European intellectuals, and that is the notion that war is necessarily a two-sided affair.

The great irony here is that the writers who gave us the idea that war had to be two-sided - Carl von Clausewitz, Antoine Jomini and a host of lesser lights who popularized their ideas - were products of an age when international conflict was anything but two-sided. Both Clausewitz and Jomini, for example, were veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, a series of struggles in which each participant switched partners with a frequency that would put a present-day movie star to shame. Both, moreover, based their theories on the wars and campaigns of a century (1680-1780) in which each of the five or six "great powers" that dominated the Continent saw itself as competing with every other "great power". Indeed, the struggle among the "great powers" in eighteenth century Europe is probably the best documented case study of sustained multi-sided conflict that we can find.

Why, then, did Clausewitz, Jomini and their second-rate immitators base their theories of war on the axiom that war was necessarily a two-sided affair? The reason, quite simply, was that they were soldiers rather than statesmen and, as such, looked at war from a bottom-up perspective. As befits a man who first went to war at the tender age of twelve, Clausewitz devoted most of his energies to matters that we would now categorize as "operational". This was even more true of the other theorists of the day. When mentioned at all, politics was treated as something my old economics teacher called an "exogenous variable", a phenomenon that, while might intrude into military calculations in a powerful way, was nonetheless alien to the subject at hand.

The relationship between multi-sided politics and two-sided war thought is nicely illustrated by an episode from the First Balkan War (1912-1913). Crown Prince Constantine, who commanded the Greek army in the field, wanted to use his forces to help the much-larger Bulgarian army defeat the main Turkish army. Bulgaria and Greece, after all, were allies, and shared the common goal of expelling the Turks from the Balkan peninsula. King George of Greece, however, had a different idea. While just as eager as anyone else to gain territory at the expense of the Turks, he was also worried about the territorial ambitions of his allies. The king therefore ordered his son to let the Bulgarians worry about the main Turkish army while the Greek field army took the shortest possible route to the choicest bit of real estate at issue, the city of Salonika.

Constantine made all sorts of noise about the necessity of keeping faith with allies and how the main Turkish army was the center of gravity of the campaign. In the end, however, he obeyed his orders. As a result, the relatively small detachments that the field armies of Bulgaria and Serbia (which was also taking part in the war against Turkey) sent to Salonika found themselves marching into in a city that was already occupied by a much larger Greek force.

As might be imagined, the Bulgarians, who were fighting alone against the main Turkish army, were not happy about this turn of events. They were even less happy when they discovered that the Serbian army had done something similar in central Macedonia, using forces that would have been very welcome in the bloody battles against the main Turkish army to occupy territory that Bulgaria had claimed as its own. Indeed, the Bulgarians, who had done the lion's share of the work of driving the Turks out of the Balkans, and who had consequently taken the lion's share of the casualties, were greatly annoyed. Thus, when it became clear that neither the Greeks nor the Serbs were —to give up the territory they had snatched while Bulgaria had been distracted, Bulgaria declared war on its former allies. (This was the start of the Second Balkan War, but that is a different story ...)

While the relationships among the countries that took part in the First Balkan War were extremely complex, the moral of the tale of Bulgaria's great blunder is painfully simple. A power that gets involved in a multi-sided conflict needs to follow the logic of multi-sided "political" conflict. If it doesn't, and persists in acting as if it is in a two-sided "military" conflict, then it will end up being the patsy of actors who, while far less powerful, understand the dynamics of the situation at hand.

I thought I understood something about counterinsurgency until I started doing it. In this interview conducted by the Army's Combat Studies Institute, I discuss what I learned the first time I practiced counterinsurgency, in Al Anbar province from 2003-2004. An excerpt follows:

The key to success in a counterinsurgency environment is not to create more

insurgents than you capture or kill. A stray tank round that kills a family could create dozens of insurgents for a generation. Thus, it is essential to use force as carefully and with as much discrimination as is possible. This is especially important at situations like checkpoints when soldiers must be given the non-lethal tools to protect themselves from possible car bombers without relying upon deadly force. Always consider the long-term effects of operations in a counterinsurgency environment. Killing an insurgent today may be satisfying, but if in doing so you convince all the members of his clan to fight you to the death, you've actually taken three steps backwards.

I'd be happy to discuss the interview, the new Army/Marine Corps "Counterinsurgency" Field Manual, or other topics of interest via this blog when my day job commanding the 1st Battalion 34th Armor allows. Duty First!

Two items to pass along from my day job working Joint Urban Warrior (USMC / USJFCOM wargaming program) and Emerald Express (operational insights and observations seminars). Good products if I say so myself...

The New Challenges for Military Operations in the 21st Century: Emerald Express Insights and Observations from Operation Iraqi Freedom:

This documentary video was produced as part of the annual Joint Urban Warrior (JUW) program and provides insights and observations from Emerald Express seminars in support of JUW 04, 05, and 06.

The video is divided into seven sections - Introduction, Winning the People, Strategic Compression, Filling the Gap, Becoming an Agile Force, Improving Civil-Military Unity of Effort, and Enhancing Coalition Operations. It runs 55 minutes, combines video, still images and interviews, and is professionally narrated and produced.

Distribution of this project is authorized to U.S. Government agencies and their contractors; lead representatives of multinational participants in the Joint Urban Warrior and Emerald Express programs; and for administrative and operational use. To request a copy, please send an email to wargaming@usmc.mil. Please include organization name, organization mailing address, phone number, and point of contact in your request.

Joint Urban Warrior 2006 Small Wars Battlebook:

This multimedia product, consisting of 3 interactive DVDs, was produced as part of the Joint Urban Warrior 06 Program. It synthesizes and integrates a multifaceted range of products developed throughout the entire nine-month pathway into a user-friendly format, and addresses a broad spectrum of key issues central to the conduct of complex urban operations.

The Battlebook contains white papers addressing critical urban operations and small wars issues, video interviews and background reference material to include doctrinal publications and an extensive collection of insurgency and counterinsurgency articles.

The JUW 2006 Small Wars Battlebook is a FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY product. It is authorized for distribution to US Department of Defense organizations and other organizations participating in JUW 06 Small Wars to include US Government Agencies, and representatives of: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Israel, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, NATO, Poland, Singapore, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

To request a copy, send an email to wargaming@usmc.mil. Include rank / title, name, organization / agency name and mailing address, official e-mail address and phone number.

Much discussion of the new Iraq strategy centers on the "surge" to increase forces in-theater by 21,500 troops. I offer no comment on administration policy here. But as counterinsurgency professionals, it should be clear to us that focusing on the "surge" misses what is actually new in the strategy -- its population-centric approach.

Here are the two core paragraphs from the President's speech, outlining the strategy (emphasis added):

"Now let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations -- conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.

This is a strong commitment. But for it to succeed, our commanders say the Iraqis will need our help. So America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels. So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them -- five brigades -- will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs."

What matters here is not the size of forces (though the strategy will not work without a certain minimum force size), but rather their tasks. The key element of the plan, as outlined in the President's speech, is to concentrate security forces within Baghdad, to secure the local people where they live. Troops will operate in small, local groups closely partnered with Iraqi military and police units, with each unit permanently assigned to an area and working its "beat".

This is different from early strategies which were enemy-centric (focusing on killing insurgents), or more recent approaches that relied on training and supporting Iraqi forces and expected them to secure the population.

The new strategy reflects counterinsurgency best practice as demonstrated over dozens of campaigns in the last several decades: enemy-centric approaches that focus on the enemy, assuming that killing insurgents is the key task, rarely succeed. Population-centric approaches, that center on protecting local people and gaining their support, succeed more often.

The extra forces are needed because a residential, population-centric strategy demands enough troops per city block to provide real and immediate security. It demands the ability to "flood" areas, and so deter enemy interference with the population. This is less like conventional warfare, and more like a cop patrolling a beat to prevent violent crime.

This does not mean there will be less fighting -- indeed, there will probably be more in the short-term, as security forces get in at the grass-roots level and compete for influence with insurgents, sectarian militias and terrorist gangs. But the aim is different: in the new strategy what matters is providing security and order for the population, rather than directly targeting the enemy -- though this strategy will effectively marginalize them.

Why the focus on Baghdad? Because about 50% of the war in Iraq happens inside Baghdad city limits. Improving security in the capital therefore makes a major difference. (Not that the enemy will meekly roll over and accept this -- hence the need for more troops and a reserve to deal with the inevitable enemy response, which will probably see spikes of activity outside Baghdad even as security in the city improves.)

There are no guarantees in war, and there is no guarantee that the new strategy will work, or that success will happen overnight if it does work. Iraq is an extremely complex and difficult problem, as all of us know -- if there was a "silver bullet" solution we would have found it by now. All that the new strategy can do is give us a fighting chance of success, and it certainly does give us that.

All of this represents a true departure from previous strategy, but the "surge" is not the strategy -- the switch to population security and a residential, high-force-density, long-term approach is what matters here.