Foreign Policy In Focus

The United States military is its own worst enemy, "witch" burning, healthcare overseas, and other assorted errata.

Emphasis, as always, added.

A "fundamental problem with COIN."

Where foreign forces go, violence follows.

. . . a wave of “insider-attacks,” perpetrated by members of the Afghan security forces, has killed 60 coalition troops this year (compared with 35 last year). Leon Panetta has described these killings as “kind of a last-gasp effort” of the Taliban to resist their inevitable demise. He also remarked, “It’s near the end of their effort to really fully fight back.” It’s hard to say which is worse: our president and defense secretary deliberately misrepresenting the situation in Afghanistan to such a degree, or our president and defense secretary genuinely misunderstanding it to such a degree.

The Last Men, Luke Mogelson, The New Republic

"Milicrats"

The promotion system reinforces professional ignorance. Above the company grades, military ability does not count in determining who gets promoted. At the rank of major, officers are supposed to accept that the “real world” is the internal world of budget and promotion politics, not war. Those who “don’t get it” have ever smaller chances of making general. … Its result is generals and admirals who are in effect Soviet industrial managers in ever worse-looking suits. They know little and care less about their intended product, military victory. Their expertise is in acquiring resources and playing the military courtier.

Rank Incompetence, William S. Lind, The American Conservative

The UK's National Health Service: "a benevolent deity"

By now I am convinced that the NHS – and I hyperbolise, but only slightly – is the greatest achievement of humankind, the nearest we get to a benevolent deity, a goddamn superhero. It is an imperfect manifestation of a beautiful ideal – free care based on need, free care for all, without judgement, without reservation.

However long this [the author's father dying] goes on for, they'll continue throwing resources at this individual and never show a single sheet of figures to any of his relatives.

This Is How You Healthcare: American Death in London, Sarah C. R. Bee, NSFWCorp

To Netanyahu, Syria Just Another "reason to blow Iran to smithereens"

Netanyahu can't unring the bell in Syria either, but there's little doubt that he'd like to. The Israeli prime minister remained suspiciously silent during the Syrian uprising's first 90 days but then, as if testing the wind, began to cautiously support the rebels. By July of last year he was all in, but only after his silence bordered on the embarrassing. Even then, he characterised the May 2011 Houla Massacre (in which a reported 108 Syrians were slaughtered by Assad's henchmen), as being carried out primarily with the help of Iran and Hezbollah. It was almost as if the Syrian military was a bystander. 

This was all part of the same sad drumbeat, as if Netanyahu feared that (in the midst of the Arab Spring), we'd lose sight of the real agenda -- which was finding a reason to blow Iran to smithereens. It wasn't so important that the Houla Massacre was evidence of the Syrian government's hate of its own people, (you see), it was important that it was carried out by people who hate Israel.

Israel's democracy myth, Mark Perry, Al Jazeera

Protecting Papua New Guinea's "Witches"

Even assuming the political will emerges to invest in stronger policing and community protection, it will be years before the terrorism fades in communities like Simbu, an epicentre for violence.…

Bishop Anton Bal, the Catholic bishop of Kundiawa, the capital of Simbu … argues that the catch-22 with sorcery is that the more it’s talked about, the greater its power and allure. So his programs include training up networks of local parish volunteers as a kind of resistance movement. Operatives deflect and douse conversations about blame as soon as a death in the community occurs. They go to the funeral and when someone brings up the question of sanguma they shift the topic — talk about the weather, shut it down. Or raise the alarm.

It’s 2013, And They’re Burning 'Witches', Jo Chandler, The Global Mail

"It is time for a change of mission in Afghanistan," write Lieutenant General David W. Barno, USA (Ret.), Dr. Andrew Exum, and Matthew Irvine in a policy brief for the Center for a New American Security. For those unfamiliar with CNAS, IPS Special Project Right Web describes it as:

… one of the Barack Obama administration’s key outside think tanks on national security and defense policy. … John Nagl … CNAS president, is a retired army officer who specializes in counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy. The Inter Press Service described Nagl as “a poster boy for COIN enthusiasts, including influential neoconservatives."

The CNAS trio continue.

U.S. and coalition forces must shift away from  directly conducting counterinsurgency operations and toward … advising and enabling Afghan forces to take the lead in the counterinsurgency fight. … Since 2009, coalition forces have achieved significant operational successes in Afghanistan, reversing the Taliban’s momentum in many areas and greatly expanding the size and capability of the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces]. … Yet these gains, achieved at significant cost in blood and treasure, must ultimately be sustained by the ANSF.

Based on interviews with field commanders in Afghanistan conducted over the past 12 months, we are not confident that most U.S. and NATO commanders have come to grips with the reality of the impending U.S. and allied transition. U.S. commanders are focused less on partnering with their Afghan allies and more on fighting the Taliban. … While there is an energetic program in place to recruit, train, organize and equip Afghan forces, there is no similarly focused and adequate program to advise these same ANSF forces in combat operations and to thus maximize their effectiveness. … Afghan military forces have not played a leading role in Afghanistan since the war began. The vast majority of military operations in Afghanistan today are conducted by U.S. forces. … Conventional Afghan security forces tend to perform only ancillary missions such as holding areas that have been cleared and partnering with coalition units to put an “Afghan face” on counterinsurgency tasks.

In other words, the coalition won't let the ANSF take off its training wheels. Repudiating, or, more accurately, shedding, counterinsurgency is a big deal for "COIN-dinistas" CNAS, Nagl, and Exum. Before we continue, here's a working definition from the Counterinsurgency Army Training Manual (2006) of counterinsurgency, one of those words that has become part of the zeitgeist without many of us understanding exactly what it entails.

A counterinsurgency campaign is … a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations conducted along multiple lines of operations. It requires Soldiers and Marines to employ a mix of familiar combat tasks and skills more often associated with nonmilitary agencies. The balance between them depends on the local situation. Achieving this balance is not easy. It requires leaders at all levels to adjust their approach constantly. They must ensure that their Soldiers and Marines are ready to be greeted with either a handshake or a hand grenade while taking on missions only infrequently practiced until recently at our combat training centers. Soldiers and Marines are expected to be nation builders as well as warriors.

As you can see, one can be forgiven for failing to understand exactly what counterinsurgency is, both because it covers a lot of ground and because in practice its requirements keep shifting.

Meanwhile, for those COIN-dinistas who feel betrayed, Exum wrote a post at his popular blog Abu Muqawama titled Just to be clear, COIN isn't going away.

As the United States draws down in Iraq and Afghanistan, you can cut some of those ground forces … that you need for large-scale, resource-instensive [sp.] counterinsurgency. … But it is a mistake to assume the U.S. military will never fight these wars again. We've done that before, with disastrous results. Ignatius [the Washington Post columnist]:

There’s a consensus in the country that the big expeditionary ground wars of the past decade should end, and Panetta has his budget priorities right. But it would be wrong to repeat the mistake that followed the Vietnam War, when hard-learned counterinsurgency tactics were jettisoned in favor of conventional weapons for fighting quick “winnable” wars. During the COIN years, the Army and Marines learned how to adapt and fight in the most difficult environments. What a waste if those skills, acquired at such cost, were discarded and lost. 

Defense budget eventually permitting, Somalia and Yemen, here we come!

(Pictured: Generals McChrystal and Petraeus.)

A woman named Paula Broadwell, whose book about Gen. David Petraeus will be published shortly, touched some tender nerves with a couple of posts at Thomas Ricks's Best Defense at Foreign Policy. Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal summed it up.

There's been a lot of back and forth between Paula Broadwell and Josh Foust about the issue of village razing in Afghanistan. . . . I won't bother to summarize the entire discussion, but it began with what I think can be charitably described as Paula's less than empathetic response to an Afghan village being destroyed. What I find most striking [besides] the rather bloodless manner in which Broadwell describes the incident [is the] unintentional, insight into how dramatically the war in Afghanistan has shifted in opposition to the population-centric policies being espoused a year ago.

A lot of COIN advocates will tell you that . . . even though airstrikes are up 300% and targeted killings are on the rise and more homes are being destroyed since General David Petraeus took over command . . . it's still just counter-insurgency. But for those with long memories the operational approach . . . under General McChrystal was to avoid civilian casualties and even property destruction at all costs, even at the risk of putting US troops in harm's way. (Some even argued that protecting civilians was actually more important than killing insurgents).

Cohen reminds us that the all-merciful McChrystal even wrote: "Destroying a home or property jeopardizes the livelihood of an entire family -- and creates more insurgents. We sow the seeds of our demise." 

The irony, of course, is that Petraeus was supposed to be the picture of moderation in contrast to Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Not only was the latter let go for indiscretions to Rolling Stone on the part of him and his staff, but, while in Iraq before his Afghanistan command, he helped with the cover-up of Cpl. Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire. Also, as Commander of Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq from 2003 to 2008, McChrystal acquired a reputation for ruthlessness. Along with killing al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his unit killed or captured many other al-Qaeda leaders. It was also accused of abusing detainees.

Has Petraeus, then, bent and twisted counterinsurgency beyond all recognition? Near as I can tell, a main feature of COIN is that it's supposed to protect civilians. At this point, in Afghanistan, does anybody really know what counterinsurgency is anymore?

"We have now cleared and held a great deal of insurgent-held territory that the insurgents have never lost in."
-- Col. Art Kandarian, a brigade commander with the 101st Airborne Division

So . . . let me get this straight. The new metric for success in a COIN environment is to clear and hold ground? 

Gosh, what’s next? Strategic hamlets? The Maginot Line? Pikes and crossbows? 

And this is what secdef describes as progress that has exceeded his expectations?

A friend of mine has a T shirt I love. It says

Southeast Asia War Games
1959 – 1975 

SECOND PLACE

Drop 'east', change the date, and you have a franchise.

Anybody got a screen printer I can borrow?

(Pictured, wildfire reaches a main road in Ein Hod, Israel on December 4.)

Someone asked me after an earlier FPIF post (Fireground Rules, Part 1) why I use so many firefighting analogies to explore foreign policy / security issues. The answer is simple.

It was wildland firefighting that started me studying complexity science. Because other than global weather (and bipedal hominid groups!) I think wildfire is the most complex natural phenomenon around. Like Mongol cavalry, it's fast, mobile, dynamic and fierce. The interplay of dozens of factors, and millions of variations in each, can generate manifestly different outcomes.

Also, to a fire, you and your crew are just another fuel type. It's not personal, but given the opportunity, it will kill you. So dancing with it calls for some serious agility and adaptiveness, and a different way of thinking – which I would hope someday to see in US foreign policy.

Long before David Petraeus and the FM 3-24 COIN manual called for teaching warfighters how to think, rather than what to think, fireground commanders were developing algorithms to keep their crews alive while taking down the beast. To be effective, they had to be relatively simple, allow wide latitude in behaviors and responses of leadership and crews, and continuously update. 

Here's another example. We called it the ICG – Incident Commander's Guidelines. It's a simple decision tree that works in a variety of emergency response situations, whether wildland, structure, mass casualty, hazmat or rescue. In my experience, it works pretty well in non-emergency situations, too, not least organizational leadership. 

1. Visualize Desired Future State
2. Gather Companions (no 'freelancing'– you always go as a team!)
3. Identify Objectives
4. Prioritize Objectives
5. Base Assignments on Priorities
6. Allocate Resources based on Assignments
7. Ensure Communications
8. Follow Up

Now, in the fire biz, some of this is pretty simple. The vision is typically not much more complex than, 'No one gets hurt and the fire goes out with minimal damage to the environment.' But it does drive all the other decisions on down the line.

So when we wonder how, for example, Iraq or Afghanistan got to be the total clusters they are, the fireground analysis is pretty simple – No one knew what the desired future state was! And if you don't know what it is, you can't bring it forward. Or as songwriter Bruce Cockburn put it so well, 'In the absence of a vision there are nightmares.'

The rest of the list is simply a handy way to prosecute the effort of achieving that desired outcome / future state. But do you notice any other major gaps when it's applied to IrAfPak? I would argue pretty much all of them.

Because the US didn't know – and so couldn't articulate – what it envisioned, it couldn't

• gain the wholehearted participation and support of allies
• determine or prioritize intelligent, achievable objectives
• commit appropriate force levels
• allocate personnel properly
• provide adequate equipment
• get all the appropriate people talking to each other
• or even decide if what they were doing was working

That, sports fans, is how you get 'burned over'.

If the US hopes to accomplish anything positive with its foreign (and domestic) policy, it needs to start every proposed endeavor at Number 1 on the ICG, and genuinely answer that question – what do we envision as our Desired Future State?

If the answer is a good one – such as liberty and justice for all – it won't have trouble selling the idea to congress, the American people, and even those citizens at the receiving end.

If the answer is a bad one – such as greater hegemony or another Halliburton contract – don't even start. It's gonna end ugly.

And thanks to singer / songwriter Leonard Cohen for the line, 'A scheme is not a vision.'