For academics, the end of marking the year’s essays and exams brings a brief sigh of joy, followed by a moment in which it is possible to sit down and read a book or two, uninterrupted. Luckily for me, this moment coincided with Mark Mazzetti’s The Way of the Knife and Jeremy Scahill’s Dirty Wars landing on my desk. What is interesting in part is that both essentially belong to the same genre (‘War on Terror journalism’ of the ilk of David Sanger or Stephen Grey) but they are remarkably different books in some respects. The first is size: Scahill’s book weighs in at over five hundred pages, excluding footnotes, Mazzetti’s at a respectable 300-odd. That being said, Scahill’s book appears to have almost 50% extra words per page due to the leading of the text. In short, it’s a beast. The second key difference is the particular focus – Mazzetti’s work has a lot more Bob Woodward-esque material on the Washington movers-and-shakers (as well as some of the colourful characters that popped up along the way) while Scahill’s book is relentlessly focused on the effects America’s ‘third war’ has on the ground. But there are similarities, both are studies of bureaucracies that appear to be dangerously out of control (Scahill takes particular umbrage with JSOC, Mazzetti is more focused on the CIA). More importantly, I think both end up making points that they didn’t mean to: Mazzetti’s account of American policy formation in the War on Terror reads less like the precise way of warfare alluded to in the title, and more like a headbutting contest between Washington bigwigs and bureaucracies; Scahill’s account of JSOC-unleashed is meant to scare us but at times points out quite how limited the power of the United States actually is.

The real ‘joy’ of Scahill’s book for me were the chapters on Somalia. Here, Scahill points out, America shot itself in the foot. It is, in all honesty, an unrelenting history of screw-ups that de-stabilised the country, ended up with al-Shabaab almost taking over, and America getting its hands dirty via supporting warlords, and then Ethiopia, and then the recognised government. Oh, and with JSOC and the CIA killing people in the mix, too. Of the many dimensions of Scahill’s book, in my opinion, it is the strongest. One is, I think, meant to read these chapters while umm-ing and ah-ing about the foul deeds of the US government. I read them while thinking back to the Project for a New American Century’s vision of American power in it’s 2000 report. The divergence between the American state that can fight two major theatre wars simultaneously in PNAC’s vision, and the one that cocked up in Somalia is quite considerable. Again, returning to Mazzetti’s book, this lean, mean, empire-sustaining machine is quite absent. The surgical way of warfare gives way to bureaucratic infighting and shouting matches between a bunch of dudes in suits. And that’s just the Americans. In many senses, war is almost entirely absent from sections of this book, its place taken by slanging matches in DC. Furthermore, I think Mazzetti makes the point quite well that the outsourcing and franchising of violence (be it to Blackwater, or men in Mogadishu) is an implicit component of this way of fighting – America can’t fight this type of war without resorting to those type of people. Though Scahill never actually defines what a dirty war is in his book (pro-tip, check out our dept’s own on the matter) Mazzetti’s focus on the internal convulsions in the CIA demonstrate that at least the CIA understands it is fighting one. One could say “but that’s what the CIA does” but I think Mazzetti makes a pretty good point towards the end of his book that the opportunity costs of doing so (missing the Arab spring, for instance) are quite considerable.

One substantial disagreement I have with Scahill’s general narrative is his treatment of the death of Abdulrahman Awlaki. Scahill’s narrative is encapsulated in the chapter title in which his death is detailed: “Paying for the sins of the father”. Scahill does his level best to construct a narrative in which the US government targets and kills a 16 year old US citizen. This, of course, is the denouement to the more famous killing of his father, Anwar. I understand exactly why Scahill wants to make this connection: if the world is a battlefield, then the government will kill its own citizens anywhere. It is quite a scary thought for American citizens. Prima facie, the problem with this narrative and Abdulrahman is that the evidence for this is drawn from very tenuous material. Scahill’s book is constructed of copious quotes, and the suspicions of a bereaved family isn’t exactly balance. Also, trying to nail Peter King on ‘false accusations’ for incorrect statements made while obviously trying to avoid talking to a reporter is grasping at straws. It is a point where Scahill steers perilously close to conspiracy theory where another, quite often stated, explanation exists: Abdulrahman was killed in a strike that targeted Ibrahim al Banna, a senior AQAP figure. Scahill veers away from this explanation, because it doesn’t fit with the “Government assassinating Americans without due process, etc” narrative that he builds throughout the book. I think he’s wrong to do so, if only because engaging with the prospect that the American government accidentally killed one of its own citizens while trying to kill a terrorist is far more worrying for the average American. After all, most Americans don’t ‘fit the profile’ of a terrorist, however widely it is drawn by the American government. But quite a few Americans do go abroad from time to time (I have, I’ll admit, met a Texan who grew up 2 hours from the border and had never left the state). In the type of war that Mazzetti and Scahill are describing, how would an American citizen know where to stand in a border-less war, in order to prevent getting blown to pieces by their own government? Most people would be sane enough not to go near a traditional battlefield, and they’d have all sorts of warnings that they were approaching one, but in the conflict Scahill is outlining, if Abdulrahman was in fact an innocent young man, attempting to find his dad (on the basis of Scahill’s evidence, it’s hard to disagree), what warning could he have had that he was in imminent danger? Okay, stay away from Yemen, perhaps. But if the US government seriously considers targeted killings as a way of taking out terrorists in ‘lawless’ spaces (aka places that either don’t come under state authority, or do to the extent that politics constrains the use of ground forces), then a considerable amount of the Earth’s surface is affected. The prospect of being mis-identified for targeted killing is a reasonable fear for a section of the American population. The prospect of being killed for standing near someone that you had no idea your own government had defined a terrorist now applies to all American citizens, everywhere the US the government reserves the right to use force. Maybe it’s a good time to be a Texan, or cancel any future vacations.

If anything, I wanted to nerd him up a bit.

I originally received the now famous email in the autumn of 2003. I have shared it with colleagues on every appropriate occasion because it truly is a nifty bit of writing on a subject dear to our (military historians and similar) hearts, the pursuit of knowledge through wide reading. It is the sort of thing to inspire scholarly giddiness.

The decision to publish it came only recently, after a discussion with my King’s colleague, Pablo de Orellana. I shared it with him under the same circumstances as above, and he was as surprised as impressed – it was not the sort of thing that made the Euro academic press. He wanted it on Strife, he was adamant that it was a necessary corrective to usual depictions of American officers.

As for me, I saw two points of interest. The first is that in general the concept of commanding historiographies is fascinating to me - I can see the book, What Generals Read, a collection of essays on the subject by leading historians. Super nerdy and geeky stuff. Lots of footnotes. Sigh. And second, with respect to the emails particularly, my feeling was that while his original message was impressive, his willingness to engage critique was the real gem, what I thought made the whole thing valuable. He’s quite certain he doesn’t have all the answers, doesn’t just want to hear from people that he’s smart and right, and is open to new ideas, corrections, different interpretations, and so forth. And that, my friends, is the result and purpose of wide reading – humility and the unflagging zeal to continue seeking more knowledge.

I would point out, as well, that my decision to publish was premised on obtaining the General’s permission. Not only was it necessary – they were his words, after all – but I also knew that it would reign in any inclinations to get too reverential and lose the scholarly perspective. I’ll admit I got a bit carried away with Clio and Hegel (no, not SecDef), but that was in reference to the idea of General’s entry into the historical process, was a by-product of his action but not his intention. I also specifically eschewed the Mad Dog, in the title or the text. [1]

Bottom line, the purpose was to put to the world an important primary source that had some real meat for discourse. The better conversation about his email – and the one I think General Mattis would enjoy seeing – than an elegy to his greatness would be a scholarly review of his reading. If he read Bell, what did he miss by not reading someone else? Who has the latest and most authoritative work on Lawrence? He cites so many works, it’s a gold mine. Or a discussion of the issue of how historiographies influence the conduct of war.

But if you want to sum it all up with a famous General Mattis quote, I think the admonition against triangulation by bumper sticker – or tweet, or meme for that matter - is particularly apt in this case.

Notes

[1] Ok, in my mind I may have toyed with “Professor Mad Dog” for the title, but that was only for fun. And by the way, the original title was important, a play on a military history of the Boer War, With Rifle and Bayonet.

Reflecting upon the decade of conflict that has been unleashed in Iraq at the instigation of the military operations to end the regime of Saddam Hussein, there are so many issues. Most fundamentally for me I never believed it was a good idea. Breaking states should only be a strategy choice of last possible resort, and even then it is probably best avoided.

But my professional and intellectual opposition was challenged by personal obligation. In 2004, when I attended their Summer Seminar in Military History, I remember watching the veterans among the West Point faculty experiencing both cognitive dissonance as well as resonance as they confronted their intellectual material. I could tell that they were comparing their experiences with their scholarship, but I did not understand what that meant at the time. Humbled by my own small experience, I have a sense of how they must have felt. My hope is that this glimpse into the wider experience of war and conflict will offer a similar bit of enlightenment for others.

My former husband was a Marine. In 2007, as a Major, he deployed to Iraq in command of a Military Training Team (MTT). I was the unit Key Volunteer, which made me the point of contact between the unit/Marine Corps and the families of the serving Marines and Sailor. For the most part my job was to provide official and correct information to the families on a timely basis. Secondarily, as possible, I tried to offer some measure of support and coordinate any assistance the unit or the families might require. [2] It is the sort of responsibility that anyone not afflicted with terrific arrogance will feel that they have done inadequately.

By way of background on the deployment, Fallujah in the first half of 2007 was roiling. At the time of these events the Marines and the Iraqi Army battalion they were training had already seen significant and regular combat action. Their AOR, an area known as the “Pizza Slice,” was particularly dangerous, with regular and daily insurgent activity. The commanding officer of the Iraqi battalion was a professional officer who had served during the Hussein regime. [3] Pragmatic and hopeful, he was a willing and able partner in the rebuilding of Iraq. The battalion and its training team would endure several months of sustained attacks until the insurgency broke – of its own stupidity and the civilian population’s shifted allegiance – early in the summer.

Before that break, on 29 April, in the afternoon, towards the end of a day’s activity a sniper ambush which led to the casualties occurred. An element of the battalion and its trainers had been conducting a dismounted patrol of Marines and Iraqi soldiers with vehicles in support. As the last task of the patrol, they had stopped to conduct a search. With the units’ vehicles deployed along narrow and twisted streets, the dismounted elements cleared a building which had been identified as a potential insurgent base. Finding nothing in the building, as the Marines made their way to their vehicles the attack opened with precision sniper and general supporting fire.

Within short order, no more than five minutes of fighting, the three casualties had been taken. The remaining 15 to 20 of minutes combat was fought as the dismounted Marines struggled to safely remove the fallen to the vehicles and those in the vehicles provided cover for them. Fighting to hold the ground, the timely arrival of the QRF (quick reaction force) ended the engagement. It was a close run thing, as the Marines engaged on the ground were running out of ammunition to continue their fight.

I think I was munching bagels and driving with my son and dog from NY to Newport, RI, while these events were occurring. (Yes, you do stop to note the surreal aspects of such moments.) I remember this period clearly. I had just returned from the annual Society for Military History conference and was energized for my research. [4]

It was later that night when the Major sent me the following email:

Do NOT say anything/tell anyone.  The worst happened.  Notifications are being made.  I’m still alive.

 [Continues on page 2]

Concerns over the potential for disorder, as well as the regular requirements for such events had the MPS out in force on Wednesday for Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. Should I feel guilty that I experience a bit of intellectual giddiness when life presents a research opportunity? Clearly I spent several hours observing the deployments as well as the interactions between police and public.

Here’s the thing – I lingered, loitered and studied. How were different officers kitted out? [1] How many officers were deployed to cover a piece of territory? What was their demeanor? [2] What were the visible specifications of the vehicles used for the public order detail kept on standby in the event of violence? By all standards this behavior ought to have sparked some mildly suspicious curiosity by the police. If I were a male I’m certain there would have been a conversation, some officer sent to ascertain my intentions. But who is going to worry about a woman with an Hermès scarf? (Let’s be clear, I own only one and I had to ask a friend to give me lessons in what to do with it.) And you can be quite certain I don my camouflage intentionally – I don’t need to be making law enforcement nervous, thank you very much.

More important than musings on my field research, there are two issues that come to mind. The first concerns expectations regarding who is a threat. The second has to do with how culture is used in war. And finally, a cautionary comment on our reliance upon technology in war. (Or, if you prefer the imagery of comic superheroes and Hollywood, we have here the Hermès Insurgent and the Burqa Commando taking down SkyNet. [3])

With respect to identifying threats, be they at the tactical or national security level, we tend to operate according to expectations. Obviously, it is not my intention to warn against the dangers of scarf-clad insurgents. But 9/11 is not that far in the past, and that event proved that things which we take for granted as safe or normal can in fact become part of the calculus of war. When we become too comfortable about what is threatening we risk being caught looking in the wrong direction when the next threat arrives. This is not to promote paranoia or silly security regulations, but simply to act as a reminder to question these assumptions from time to time.

Turning to culture and war, there is often a lot of hand wringing that our (the West) freedoms, laws, ways of life – that is our very culture – allow our enemies to take advantage of us in our own countries. I’m not sure I can even agree with this (Gitmo), but  if it were the case, we should simultaneously recognize that culture is a strength and weak point for all parties.

To wit, you could get a lot of mileage out of weaponising the Burqa.

Okay, weaponise might give the wrong impression. I do not propose the deployment of veiled suicide bombers. But I could see an intelligence gathering value in neighborhoods and regions where this practice is expected. Like me to the London police, a veiled figure is assumed to be non-threatening. And it might not be too far to contemplate the stealthy deployment opportunities this camouflage provides. Rotary wing aircraft are an obvious insertion platform for Western forces. And before you scoff, can you really argue there is much difference between this and learning the woodland skills necessary to move unnoticed in that environment? I certainly cannot.

Better still the particular upside to such a practice is that it would likely spell the end of the garment’s use. Quite frankly I can’t think of a better or more fitting end to this bit of barbarity.

In anticipation of a critique of my cultural insensitivities, I have two responses. First, I will remind that terrorists and insurgents have used this cultural dress to tactical advantage. The sanctity of the outfit has already been sullied from within its own community. Second, the demeaned place in society for women that this garb represents gives me a certain license. There is historical precedent for one to be adamant and mildly aggressive in the face of wrongs. William Lloyd Garrison provides the model, in his fight against slavery: “I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard.” [4] So, with my apologies to the women who might choose this garment, I cannot get behind you on this. Full face coverage is a bridge too far.

Finally, I would like to point out that with very little investment I have proposed to thwart or replace billions of dollars worth of technologically based military and security equipment and training. The recent “tipsheet” found in Mali suggests that Al Qaeda’s thinking is not dissimilar. Clearly we are spending too much for what technology can realistically do. More worryingly, I fear many overlook the shortcomings and rely too much upon technology and the quantification it demands. These are dangerous blinders to choose given that our preferences are so obvious.

As for me, I’m just going to keep on looking innocuous.

Notes:

[1] On The Strand, none were in high-visibility jackets. It made for a more pleasant view, which must have assisted to keep the tone of things low key.

[2] Afterwards, in front of the King’s Strand Campus -which was beautifully quiet and peaceful without the usual traffic – the mood as they continued to police the route for the occasional vehicle returning from St. Paul’s was light. I watched one constable from the Bromley area (if I read the identification correctly) chat with two women, one younger the other grandmotherly. They had a grand old time, joking, laughing and exchanging pleasant views on the events of the day and life. His supervisors would pass by and smile, offering no indication they thought he should stop. As I will discuss in my next piece for the riots as military history on the British Model of Policing, those sorts of interactions can be seen as bulwarks in a model dependent upon the consent of the public.

[3] Yes, I was channeling Doctrine Man!! as I wrote this bit.

[4] I feel honoured to quote a famous Bostonian in this week that my fair New England city has taken such a beating. And by using Garrison’s words in this matter of injustice, I too “lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill and in the birthplace of liberty.” Although from New York, I have many roots in New England, of which Boston is in many ways the central city. I have always felt an affinity for it. [The Inaugural Editorial, William Lloyd Garrison, “The Liberator,” 1831.]

In March 2012, I wrote a blog post for Security Center, the blog of my former home – the Center for National Policy.  In it, I criticize “loose talk on intervention in Syria” as represented by Anne Marie Slaughter, Stephen Hadley, and Max Boot – all of whom were calling for some sort of American intervention on behalf of the armed Syrian opposition.

What has changed in the last 13 months? The death toll went from less than 10,000 to over 70,000.  The number of Syrian refugees went from about 34,000 to about 1 million.  As predicted by many, the jihadist faction of the armed opposition has increased enormously in size and power.  The Assad regime has lost control over much of Syria, but remains entrenched and committed to survival.

What is America doing? The Obama Administration has called Assad’s fall inevitable and has sought to work with the Syrian political opposition.  Various American intelligence and military assets are said to be coordinating with Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia – all of whom are arming and financing the Syrian resistance – while not conducting (to the best of my knowledge) any military operations on Syrian soil or over Syrian airspace with or in support the Free Syrian Army.  In the words of a White House spokesman, there is no U.S. “lethal aid” going to the Syrian opposition, but there are rumors (denied by the Pentagon) of Syrian rebels being trained by U.S. military personnel in Jordan. The U.S. is supplying humanitarian aid – covertly and overtly – in Syria, Jordan, Turkey and perhaps elsewhere.

But what has changed strategically?  Should those who – like me – professed intervention skepticism on realist grounds change their assessment?  Has the rising human cost in and of itself over-powered realist arguments?  Should Europe and the U.S. join Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia and openly arm the rebels?  Should we get on “the right side of history” (if there is such a thing)? Should Western states intervene militarily?  Should the United States lead such an intervention?  I have no easy answer for you, loyal KoW readers.  I know what I think, but I am more interested in what you think and why.  I especially encourage current War Studies M.A. students to chime in, immersed as they (surely) are in the literature.  Maybe some of them are even writing their dissertations on the Syrian civil war.

So, I ask you to read my 13-month old blog post, see how it holds up, consider the hard questions it asks (from a U.S. perspective if possible), and tell us in the comments section what you think.

Loose Talk on Intervention in Syria

13 March 2012

There is a lot of loose talk on intervention in Syria. Various commentators, government officials – former and current, and analysts are calling for some sort of US military involvement in the blooming civil war between the Alawite Assad regime and the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Recommendations range from arming the opposition to providing special operations and air support. Many of their arguments make a compelling moral case for intervention. Some even provide an operational framework for what military support for the FSA might look like. The trouble is, very few advocates of intervention have taken the time to:

(a) Provide a strategic rationale for intervention based on US interests,
(b) Identify what circumstances would merit a commitment that would place American military lives at risk,
(c) Explain the criteria for disengagement if the conflict endures beyond our expectations,
(d) Explain how the likely alternatives to Assad will be better for the United States.
(e) Explain what success looks like and what comes next .

Important questions like these were laid out in 1995 when Col. John Collins (ret.) penned a useful tool for policymakers and military planners for Parameters called “Military Intervention: A Checklist of Key Considerations.” It proposes a list of key considerations and questions for whether, where, when, and how the US should or should not intervene militarily. My proposition is it would be irresponsible to commit American blood and treasure without ticking every box on Col. Collins’ checklist.

The gauntlet has been thrown.

There have been three prominent advocates of military intervention: Anne Marie Slaughter, former Director of Policy Planning for President Obama’s US State Department; Stephen Hadley, President Bush’s National Security Advisor; and Max Boot, a well-regarded commentator and military analyst.

Dr. Slaughter, the champion of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, focuses on the “how” and not the “why.” She argues, “Foreign military intervention in Syria offers the best hope for curtailing a long, bloody and destabilizing civil war.” Due to Syria’s strategic significance due to its location, a long civil war would be dangerous to American interests. This is an important point and one that Dr. Slaughter should have spent a few more convincing sentences on. She goes on to advocate arming the opposition, but notes that doing this alone runs the risk of fueling “a proxy war that would spill into Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan and fracture Syria along sectarian lines.” In order to avoid this, she proposes the supplementary measures of establishing “no-kill zones” with the FSA near the Turkish, Lebanese, and Jordanian borders, as well as sending in special forces from Qatar, Turkey, and possibly Britain and France. Collectively, these efforts will somehow keep this war contained and force the Assad regime into a truce.

Aside from the minefields involved in building the coalition, implementing this campaign, and creating the safe zones (among other things, how would we protect these safe zones without soldiers on the ground?), the biggest weakness of Dr. Slaughter’s argument is its lack of a defined end-state, or some criteria that would merit either further U.S. involvement or a withdrawal. This truce is entirely aspirational. What if it does not happen and the war drags on? It is also far from clear how Dr. Slaughter’s proposals would forestall a larger sectarian war.

Mr. Hadley rests his argument firmly on moral grounds: The Syrian non-violent protestors and armed rebels are displaying remarkable courage in their quest for freedom. The US must provide support, in the form of arms, in order to create “a stable, democratic Syria in which all sectarian communities feel secure and strive together to build a common future.” America should take the lead in rallying the international community to provide political and support and a concrete plan for the reconstruction of a post-Assad Syria. If the US waits too long, al Qaeda will be more likely to subvert the rebellion and thrive on chaos and violence in Syria.

Of all people, a former US National Security Advisor should be able to present a cogent case for intervention based on strategy and American interests. Instead, Mr. Hadley does not stray far from a morality play and playing on familiar themes that failed to translate into an effective foreign policy during the Bush Administration. When dreaming of a democratic Syria with inter-sectarian harmony, he betrays amnesia of the last nine years of conflict in Iraq. During his most recent time in the White House, Hadley and his colleagues expressed the same dreams – dreams that evaporated in the face of poor planning and sectarian death squads. If Iraq and the Balkans have taught us anything, it is that while dictatorships are intolerably repressive, morally repugnant systems, they tend to keep a lid on simmering sectarian tensions. And when that lid is lifted, the stability of the dictator doesn’t look quite so terrible by comparison.

Mr. Boot accuses President Obama of making a “strategic blunder” for refusing to order air strikes in Syria and arm the FSA. He is clearly an advocate of military operations, but does not explain how this would serve American interests, what the targeting criteria should be for airstrikes, how and under what circumstances the US should end military operations if a brutal civil war continues without a decisive end, etc. According to recent intelligence assessments, the Syrian regime is more resilient than many observers have argued.

Boot does, however, provide one strategic explanation: toppling the Assad regime would cut off Iran’s primary avenue for projecting its malign influence into the Levant. Perhaps, but Iran does not only give arms to Hizballah through and over Syria. There are sea and air routes that avoid Syria. Moreover, Hizballah has a strong base of support in Southern Lebanon and is already flush with arms. And is it worth risking enduring civil war, instability, or an unpredictable future government to possibly weaken Hizballah? Would removing Iran’s only ally in the region strengthen or weaken their resolve to get a nuclear weapon?

For the sake of argument, let’s say that all of these advocates of military intervention are right: we should take active military steps to topple Assad and we should do it now. But what happens if we succeed? The U.S. military estimates that it would take 75,000 troops just to secure Syrian chemical weapons facilities. How many would it take to stabilize the country?

We need to think this through.

The people of Syria have my strongest sympathies, but the United States remains over-stretched and completely uncertain as to how the “Arab Spring” is transforming the Middle East and America’s place in it. When examining who is likely to take control of Syria if Assad is overthrown, I cannot help but worry that a democratic and stable Syria is just a dream. A nice one, but still a dream.

Until advocates of intervention are able to provide cogent answers to Col. Collins’ questions, I remain unconvinced.

Now sound off in the comments section.

The great sage Roy Rogers once said ‘There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.’  I have to confess I am no expert on Korea. My bona fides, such as they are:

1. I lived in Seoul for three months in the summer of 1994 when Kim ‘The Zombie King’ Il Sung (he’s the ‘Eternal President’ of the DPRK, as you may know) shuffled off his mortal coil. It was a very fraught time. The agreed framework for winding down North Korea’s  nuclear weapons programme was being negotiated. And there was a lot of concern that Kim ‘The Zombie Prince’ Jong Il (he’s the ‘Eternal General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, don’t you know–natch) did not have full control of the country’s ruling apparatus. War was a very distinct concern then but, you know, we stayed cool and we got through it. Let’s try that again, maybe?
2. One of my students, an avid hiker and climber like me, happened to be a South Korean Army engineer. We spent a lot of time together walking the hills and paths along the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) which runs to the north and east of Seoul along the 38th parallel. It’s a funny old thing the DMZ. Bit of a misnomer really seeing as it is really, really, very, very militarised. It’s not easy to miss but a good way to understand how militarised it is is to walk along it with an engineer pointing out how pretty much every road, path, bridge, water crossing, defile, high point, low point, ditch, culvert, etc has been rigged to be blown up, blocked, mined, plastered with indirect fire, turned into a killing zone etc. Oh, and there are bunkers everywhere and incursion tunnels (who knows how many, four have been found) as big as small highways dug through it jammed full of weapons, vehicles and kit. It’s the very definition of a powder keg–a very big keg.
3. I’ve read a bunch of books on the politics and history of the peninsula. Not enough to make me expert but enough that I feel that, more or less, on the basics, I know what’s what. One thing which seems to me very pertinent is that Kim Jong Un’s army may be an antique but it’s been well-tended and unlike, say, Saddam Hussein’s army, it’s probably prepared to fight quite hard, at least for a while. I’m not sure it’s worth even talking much about nuclear weapons. A couple of points to consider: population of Seoul 10.5 million; population of greater Tokyo 35.5 million. That’s going to take a lot of bandaids and potassium iodide tablets to clear up.

I mention this mostly because I agree with Robert Kelly (who is way more  expert than me) over at the Asian Security blog that punditry on the issue basically stinks bad. Commenting on the sort of people one sees on the news, he says:

I can think of so many well-qualified, well-published NK experts in the US, vastly better than I’ll ever be: Lankov, Cha, Kang, Cumings, Anderson, just to name a few. But you never see these guys on CNN. It’s the just same generalists again and again – Zakaria, Amanpour, ex-generals, and so on. And Fox is even worse where its just Bolton, Hannity, and Jennifer Rubin. Yikes. And don’t forget the guy who blamed gay marriage on the Norks.

Anyway, I don’t want to get lumped in with these guys even though I really am a generalist. The thing is, though, that even for a generalist some of the things we’re hearing about what to do about North Korea are completely mental. A case in point, from yesterday’s New York Times an op-ed advising ‘Bomb North Korea, Before its too Late‘:

Since a missile on the ground is an obvious and largely undefended target, we can be reasonably sure that a strike would destroy it and preserve regional stability and the safety of our allies. An American pre-emptive strike would also re-establish necessary red lines for North Korea and other countries in similar circumstances.

As President Xi Jinping of China stated earlier this month, “No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains.” By eliminating the most recent North Korean missile threat, the United States will reduce the threat posed by the North’s arsenal. The United States would also reassure everyone in the region, and those watching from other parts of the world, that although it is not seeking regime change, America and its allies will not be blackmailed by threatened missile launches.

The North Korean government would certainly view the American strike as a provocation, but it is unlikely that Mr. Kim would retaliate by attacking South Korea, as many fear. First, the Chinese government would do everything it could to prevent such a reaction. Even if they oppose an American strike, China’s leaders understand that a full-scale war would be far worse. Second, Mr. Kim would see in the American strike a renewed commitment to the defense of South Korea. Any attack on Seoul would be an act of suicide for him, and he knows that.

A war on the Korean Peninsula is unlikely after an American strike, but it is not inconceivable. The North Koreans might continue to escalate, and Mr. Kim might feel obligated to start a war to save face. Under these unfortunate circumstances, the United States and its allies would still be better off fighting a war with North Korea today, when the conflict could still be confined largely to the Korean Peninsula. As North Korea’s actions over the last two months have shown, Mr. Kim’s government is willing to escalate its threats much more rapidly than his father’s regime did. An unending crisis would merely postpone war to a later date, when the damage caused by North Korea would be even greater.

I find this unconvincing, to say the least. It’s a gigantic gamble for a limited pay-off against excellent odds of a massive loss. Strategists and world-watchers, can I get a shout out for an old-fashioned ideal called masterly inactivity? It used to a very well respected principle in military thought. It’s why Kurt Von Hammerstein reckoned it was the ‘clever & lazy’ who were most suited to the highest command positions whereas the ‘industrious & stupid’ must never be given responsibility for anything. But it has fallen out of favour in recent decades with politicians and the military also, both of whom have become obsessed with speed and struck with the urgency to always do something awful and dangerous in order to forestall some conjectured even more awful and dangerous eventuality. Can we just cool it? ‘Mr President, Mrs Prime Minister, what are you going to do about X?’ ‘Well, that’s a good question. First, I’m going to sit here and smoke some cigarettes. Then we’ll see. Maybe smoke some more.’ Good answer.

The UK Parliament’s Commons Select Committee released a report on wednesday entitled “Securing the Future of Afghanistan” because, apparently, UK “PLC” is still interested in doing so. One wonders how much, given that point 6 of the Conclusions and Recommendations notes:

We have received very little information from the MoD and the FCO as to how they plan to be involved in Afghanistan beyond 2014. Given there are less than two years before the end of 2014, the Government should inform us how it sees its future role in Afghanistan. (Paragraph 156)

But before sub-editors spill ink about the difference between how a government “sees” its future role and what a government might see its future role as being, there’s another doozy. Well, at first I thought it was an error, but in actual fact, it might be the CSC trying to drive home the importance of a single issue:

8. Finally, we recommend that, in 2015, the Government undertake a comprehensive and detailed lessons learned process which looks forward to how these lessons will influence the future decision making processes of the MoD, DFID and the FCO and other Government Departments, as well as a major review of what the UK has achieved and not achieved in Afghanistan in the period 2001 to 2014. (Paragraph 158)

9. Finally, we recommend that, in 2015, the Government undertake a comprehensive and detailed lessons learned process which looks forward to how these lessons will influence the future decision making processes of the MoD, DFID and the FCO and other Government Departments, as well as a major review of what the UK has achieved and not achieved in Afghanistan in the period 2001 to 2014. (Paragraph 158)

The only way they could make this clearer to the bureaucrats that be is perhaps by scrawling “How the hell did we get into this mess, and how do we make sure this never happens again?” in crayon on the front of the report. That would, perhaps, be slightly more professional than managing to double up a conclusion in a Parliamentary report. At the moment the outlook for Afghanistan is negative, and most observers appear to be using the phrase “civil war” more often than NATO governments would like.

Still, we should not forget that last, final ditch, hail mary pass scenario of a peace deal with the Taliban. This would, apparently, lead to a successful UK withdrawal. Never mind the fact that “success” is redefined in these circumstances to indicate a period of unstable armed peace to coincide with western militaries tucking their Strykers between their legs and hightailing it into the sunset. Never mind the possibly insane logic that defines success in reference to the following:

 Afghans are now in a better position to take charge of their own affairs than they were when the Nato mission got underway in the summer of 2006. More to the point, the terrorist infrastucture that led to the September 11 attacks and the July 7 bombings in London in 2005 has been destroyed, and the country – for the time being – poses no direct threat to our national security.

One should note that Western intervention started (in this round) in 2001, not 2006, the terrorist infrastructure in the country was already destroyed in Afghanistan by 2006 and the July 7th bombing connection is spurious at best. Others, like Lucy Morgan Edwards in the Guardian, think different: “In reality, the west is using the talks to give itself a chance both to get out of Afghanistan and to claim that the state is stable.” There is a laundry list of complaints in Lucy’s article which are all quite important, but I think she’s wrong on quite a few issues, in part, because the “Afghan democracy” myth floats over it all like a funeral pall. I don’t mean that to indicate Afghanistan can never be democratic, which is a stupid statement usually made by the same types who proclaim “Oh Africa isn’t suited for democracy” and other quasi/outright racist statements. Instead, there’s a myth that by flying in and bombing the place after 9/11, we somehow opened up a magical dream space for a democracy, which was subsequently squandered.

One of the key planks of this myth is warlord engagement. AKA: “If only we hadn’t worked with the warlords then…” and so on and so forth to Arcadia. The main problem I have with this is that there was no other way to intervene, really. What was America going to do? Drop the 101st Airborne onto Kabul and cross its fingers? For big land invasions, one needs space to build up troops, and, well, the surrounding terrain isn’t exactly conducive to that. Iran? Ahem. China? Probably not. Pakistan? Yeah, right. Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan? Russia wouldn’t be too happy with that. Conventional military hammers require logistics and bases. Without those, the only options for land-locked countries come in the form of air power and special forces. In life, states often have to play the hand they are dealt, and, given the time frame, America didn’t have enough time to cut or stack the deck in its favour. What would those warlords have done had America flooded their country with soldiers and cut them out of the peace settlement after 2001? Maybe exactly what the Taliban are doing right now. Yes, America and NATO did a lot of dumb things in Afghanistan, but excluding warlords from the outset wasn’t exactly an option. If anything, the last decade and a bit demonstrated the clear limitations on state power and authority, even of “big” states like America.

What does all this have to do with lessons learned processes? As the anonymous saying goes: “The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.”

Robert Egnell (MA and PhD KCL War Studies) is Visiting Professor and Director of Teaching in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is the author (with David Ucko) of Counterinsurgency in Crisis: Britain and Challenges of Modern War (CUP forthcoming 2013) and Complex Peace Operations and Civil-Military Relations (Routledge 2009)

On Friday last week the Obama White House released a new policy on U.S. Security Sector Assistance. The goals of the new policy are to “help partner nations build the sustainable capacity to address common security challenges; promote partner support for the policies and interests of the United States; strengthen collective security and multinational defense arrangements and organizations; and promote universal values.” The policy is nevertheless released in the midst of an increasingly intense debate regarding the impact of training and assisting activities in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali. Then the New York Times published a debate on the topic with the title “A Lesson in Futility for the Pentagon?” However, rather than dismissing these activities, a more interesting discussion should involve the effectiveness of these missions in relation to the conduct and approaches employed, as well as how train and assist activities serve the broader U.S. national security agenda.

The United States has an ambitious and truly global security strategy. This is reflected not only in the deep global deployment of U.S. troops, but also in the vast number of military training and assistance missions globally. Arguing that the efforts to train and assist foreign forces abroad are futile is the wrong approach as there are no viable alternatives without a complete revision of U.S. grand strategy. However, the current conduct of these activities, involving limited political judgment and inappropriate military self-replication, tends to produce results that contradict the main purposes of these activities – to maintain global order at a low cost. Instead, vast sums of money and resources are spent for ineffective foreign forces that in the end reduce the power and legitimacy of America in the international system.

Let us not delude ourselves by thinking this is a particularly new problem. Great powers have sought to build the capacity of friendly foreign security forces for all of recorded history, from Sun Tzu and Thucydides to western trainers in Afghanistan and Africa today. While comparisons between the great powers of today and the empires of the past have clear limits, the key challenges they face are the same – maintaining a functional level of order and stability in vast overseas areas but with a limited enough level of investment to avoid crippling the homeland. Indeed, the reliance on local military and police forces were instrumental in holding the British Empire together.

The United States military, although incredibly impressive and already verging on cripplingly costly to its citizens, still do not have close to enough power and resources to maintain global order without allies, cooperating partners, proxies, and most importantly – political legitimacy. American military assistance and training abroad are therefore necessary features of U.S. policy to maintain global order to serve its purpose. What is true, though, is that the train and assist activities are currently poorly conducted and need a thorough rethink. This text focuses on three main problems:

First, willfully or not, the training and assistance focuses on replicating our own image abroad. The structure, training and equipment look like comfortably familiar, but are often culturally or strategically inappropriate for the local context. Afghanistan is not well served by, and certainly cannot sustain, a vast motorized army with modern equipment. It is the inappropriate tool for internal security and risks being perceived as a source of instability in the region. Moreover, the input is always coopted by the local structures and political forces that maintain the traditional structures of patrimony beneath the recognizable surface. The end results are therefore not what we had in mind, not what is needed and sustainable for the local context, but “hybrid organizations” that no one knows how they will behave and respond to different challenges, but that often disappoint or work against us in the end.

Second, these operations are too often taking place with little regard for the all-important Having friends among officers and ministries of defense around the world really is not useful if they are not accountable to responsible governments. Instead, the local and global populations perceive the training and support activities as support of corrupt or violent regimes, which reflects poorly on the U.S. as a legitimate actor in international politics.

Third, while lip service is paid to long-term commitments and sustainability, there seems to be a clear preference for quick and dirty – clear “accomplishments” and withdrawal.

A more promising approach would involve deep understanding of local socio-political dynamics and work outwards to security force assistance projects that could primarily serve the security interests of the local populations and their governments, and then by extension also serve western interests in that context. Moreover, these activities should be characterized by slow and deliberate employment through long duration activities, by building relationships, ensuring political legitimacy and sustainability. In short, rethink but do not abort.

I enjoyed “Si Syphs’s” post today over at Tom Ricks’s The Best Defense. Syphus weighs in on the debate playing out elsewhere on Foreign Policy between Lieutenant General (Ret.) David Barno and Lieutenant General Frederick “Ben” Hodges on whether or not the U.S. Army is retaining its most talented officers. This is a conversation I’ve been having with my peers a lot lately, so thought this was as good a time as any to emerge from my woefully long hiatus posting on KoW.

Despite my enduring pseudonym, I’ve left Syphus’s “cheap seats” of the junior officer ranks in recent years and joined the Army’s middle management, so I have a slightly different take on the retention issue. While I have a vested interest in agreeing with Hodges (I stayed in, so the Army must be keeping the best and brightest, right?), I tend to agree more with Barno about the dangers of getting this wrong. (Disclaimer: I know Barno personally, but haven’t ever met Hodges.)

I have vivid memories of the 1990s as Private Half-Hyphen when Command Sergeants Major with nothing better to do yelled at Soldiers for walking on the “grass” of some barren parade field in the American Southwest or ordered us to pick up sticks in the woods and paint rocks to decorate the battalion headquarters. The joke I learned later was that the Sergeant Major Academy had a “HUG” leadership philosophy with three tracks for what you could prioritize as a Sergeant Major: Hair, Uniforms, or Grass. The lack of autonomy that comes with a garrison Army is going to be a culture shock for the junior leaders accustomed to near-complete discretion in combat – on that everyone seems to at least somewhat agree.

Hodges holds up the “broadening” opportunities such as the Army’s Congressional Fellowship, but where Syphus doesn’t take Hodges to task enough is the way in which “Big Army” punishes those who take such broadening experiences rather than celebrating them. I am in one of those broadening positions now and have seen many of my peers punished by their branch managers with the least desirable assignments after time away from the operational Army at the senior Captain or junior Major years. Rather than jumping back on the path toward battalion and higher command, many end up in jobs both irrelevant to promotion and unlikely to use the skills the officers gained away from the Army. The basic branches of the Army (infantry, armor, artillery, intelligence, etc.) tend to view anything “off the line” as disloyal, rather than an infusion of new perspectives from time interacting with civilians. Even the most intellectually demanding broadening assignments, from think tank fellowships to teaching at West Point, are viewed derisively as “taking a knee,” rather than a time to synthesize the experiences of the last decade and grow the intellectual capital of the institution. The latest concerning trend is that many who pursue those broadening assignments then self-select out of competing for senior leadership positions in the Army, instead going into the Army’s “functional areas” as strategists, foreign area officers (defense attaches), etc., which have few opportunities to rise above the rank of Colonel and are guaranteed not to become 3- and 4-star generals.

In my own case, the two years studying for an advanced degree at King’s College London on the Army’s dime was an opportunity I sought out, fully recognizing that the Army would get back it’s pound of flesh per year for six years afterward. I am fortunate to be on a path where the three years following KCL allow me to directly use the degree I earned, after which I’ll head back out to whatever unit in which the Army wants me to serve out my next three years in my basic branch as a military intelligence officer. That obligation was the indentured servitude I willingly signed up for, suggesting the incentives for advanced education do keep some in uniform beyond what they might have otherwise served.

What worries me is that the budgetary demands could mean that the Army starts waiving these “active duty service obligations” in order to cut the size of the force quickly enough. While my career has been unorthodox enough (read: enjoyable) that I’m unlikely to look “successful” to most promotion boards, I hope the Army would see the value in getting its return on investment from my education, rather than letting me and others like me out early solely to make targets for cutting the force in the looming drawdown. My experience with our personnel management system thus far, however, suggests an inability to make such precise personnel decisions, instead treating every officer as an interchangeable widget, much as Max Boot suggests we’ve done even with our most senior officers.

I don’t have the stats on hand (add them to the comments, if you do), but one that’s been bouncing around my office in recent weeks’ conversations is the precipitous decline in the percentage of senior officers in the US Army with advanced degrees from civilian universities, rather than from the military’s own system of higher education at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and the War College at Carlisle Barracks. In the Army’s general officer corps, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey is apparently becoming the exception, rather than the rule, with his masters in English from Duke, which he earned before teaching English at West Point for a few years mid-career. With the operational tempo of the last decade, I don’t expect the trend to get better in the next decade of generals, but it will only get worse if broadening opportunities are one of the first things likely to get cut in an austere financial climate.

Syphus is right to argue that Hodges needs to spend less time focus grouping his own general officer peers serving at “echelons above reality” and more time asking every junior officer that leaves why they chose not to stay in (and then doing something to keep those they Army considers “the best). I expect they wouldn’t like what they heard, so won’t ask the question. There’s lots more I could say on this topic, but I’ll leave that for later posts.

As always, the views expressed are my own and do not represent those of the United States Army or Department of Defense.

The author is King’s War Studies Alumni, a former British army Captain and former Afghan analyst for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly

I was in Oxford last week for a very interesting conference on military cohesion and was lucky enough to have a brief chat with a senior British army officer on the sides. I was surprised to learn that he had heard about, if not read, my piece on the micro-metrics of COIN and – as usual for him – he was very gracious and friendly in explaining his side of the story, and in doing so he has enabled me to clarify and expand on the arguments made in the previous piece.

Firstly, I would like to say that I apologise if any offence was caused in the previous piece; it was the last thing I intended to do with an article that was substantially about the mismatch between operational progress and strategic failure.

The piece was written out of frustration though. Frustration at losing comrades in Afghanistan who appear to have died for little in the long run. Frustration at being so badly under-resourced in terms of boots on the ground (this was 2008) that it undermined our best efforts to improve the locals’ lives. But the article was also written from a frustration borne out of a year spent carefully analysing official data of the COIN campaign in Afghanistan for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. In this data, especially the U.S. Department of Defense’s biannual Progress Report, the changes to the metrics used to assess strategic progress, the failure to provide long-term contextual data to triangulate some of the presented data and the emphasis on small positive gains over larger negative scores (and I can provide examples of all these in much greater depth if need be) may have worrying implications for the transparency military operations and therefore, for civil-military relations. Namely, how do we, as citizens in developed democracies, actually know the results of these campaigns if the metrics being used are questionable and perhaps politically influenced? In short, reports of strategic progress in Afghanistan, and the strategic narrative crafted by strategic communications experts, may not be entirely accurate. Thus, when I hear commanders stating their ‘cautious optimism’ about Afghanistan, I find it very frustrating. I am not the only one who is worried; other people who watch the campaign closely have aired the same concerns: Professor Cordesman, BBC File on 4 and journalist Ben Anderson to name but a few.

Within that context, hearing an operational-level commander espouse ‘cautious optimism’ whilst not mentioning the strategic problems of the campaign added to my worries about the reality of current strategic narrative. However, the officer gently pointed out in our conversation that, because he is a serving soldier, he is curtailed as to what he can say about the wider campaign, and that as an operational commander the strategic issues I highlighted are actually the responsibility of his commanders. It was abundantly clear just how capable, intelligent and decent this officer is – like many other operational and strategic commanders. In short, he gets the bigger picture, he just can’t talk about it publicly because he is duty bound to be apolitical and follow his mission. His points were good and they got me thinking…

What appears to be happening at present is that in the absence of solid evidence of strategic progress in Afghanistan, the metrics of operational progress, perhaps unintentionally, are being used to fill the void to support the strategic narrative. For me, the real crux of the problem concerns the effect of the well-documented campaign disconnect between operational success and strategic failure in Afghanistan is having on civil-military relations. Operational commanders are quite right to portray their operational successes with whatever evidence they have to back such claims up, but in the absence of transparency on the strategic trajectory of the campaign, these operational successes are often being reported – by both higher command and the media – out of context and as indicating strategic success. If governments and the top military commanders, who do have the remit to comment candidly on the strategic situation, remain reluctant to divert from the strategic narrative when ‘discrepant information’ contradicts it (and the reasons for this are myriad, but include politics to careerism to institutional positivism) then are those operational commanders’ beneath them who remain silent – whilst just doing their job – unwittingly contributing to this lack of transparency?

The ground-up nature of COIN and the campaign disconnect in Afghanistan may have combined to create a situation where the soldierly qualities of being apolitical, media-averse and remaining committed to the mission are themselves distorted into becoming political acts, precisely because those above them are playing politics about the reality of progress. In a way, following Clausewitz, this shouldn’t surprise anyone, but perhaps the devolved level to which war is becoming a political act is something new, as Emile Simpson has noted. This raises some interesting questions for modern civil-military relations in democracies.

Firstly, as public opinion is inherently related to the fighting power of democracies, the public does need to be shielded from the realities of war if support for, or at least the acceptance of, wars is to continue: David Lloyd George’s remark in 1917 that ‘if people knew the truth… the war would be stopped tomorrow’ still holds true. Moreover, governments need to be both patient and resolute in the face of the public’s understandable lack of appetite for modern conflicts that are often perceived as abstract wars of choice. The question, though, is to what degree? Is it acceptable to pick statistics that better reflect your goals, al la Osborne, than those that don’t? Is that politicising the conduct of war to a greater extent than in the past? Is it only acceptable in wars of national survival? What about lines-to-take and strategic communications management? How much is too much? When is it right for soldiers to speak out if the mission will not deliver the success the politicians are promising?

These questions are also related to the second point: the impact of both the Vietnam and Iraq wars on the public psyches of the American and British populations. I’m not an expert on this, but the long-term impact of the deep divisions in American public life wrought by the Vietnam War may have made future generations more reluctant to engage with the realities of modern conflict. In many respects our professional militaries are the most detached from our societies than they have ever been and, despite the welcome signs of support for the forces, it would be accurate to say most soldiers feel the public are not interested in the conflicts that they fight in their name. Closer to home, the anti-Iraq invasion protests of 2003 may come to be seen as a crucial turning point in British civil-military relations, not because the military did anything wrong – they just followed orders (many albeit with deep reservations; one Brigadier told me he was planning the invasion in the MoD building in Whitehall as his wife marched below his window) – but because the British government did not listen to the people. This has created a sense of apathy about politicians’ use of our armed forces that still lingers today in many respects. While Chomsky’s democratic deficit arguments may take things too far, the decline in the population’s confidence that they are the ultimate controller of their armed forces, coupled with these forces’ repeated deployment over the past 12 years in unpopular wars, may have profoundly altered British civil-military relations.

I’m not sure how unique the current disconnect between the reality of progress in Afghanistan and the strategic narrative is, but I am pretty certain it is creating an uneasy paradox for operational commanders who cannot speak candidly on the strategic situation. Of course, there was censorship in previous wars, but our standards of transparency are higher today, especially in wars that are not fought for national survival (as much as previous narratives have tried to convince us otherwise). Ultimately, it comes back to the military’s relations with the population. Today, most of these occur through the media and are controlled to a large degree by the ban on members of the armed forces speaking freely to the media and the need to stick to lines-to-take that support the dominant strategic narrative. Yet, in an era of social media where any member of the public can express their opinions in almost any forum, is such a ban really reflective of the society we live in? Does it actually keep the military from the people it is meant to serve? And is it fair – commanders can’t exactly defend themselves on a blog can they? At a personal level, members of the armed forces have no qualms about expressing their views of the war, but why do commanders feel that they can’t publicly express their views on the strategic situation in Afghanistan, whether they are in line with the strategic narrative or not? It just feels to me like something may be wrong here.

I don’t have the answers to many of these questions, but that doesn’t mean they are not worth asking. As conflict and the media has changed in the last decade, so too it is valid to question the reality of the old military virtues of being apolitical and unable to comment candidly in public.