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Two Documents of Note: The Ridiculous and the Sublime
I really need to do some editing today and have spent too much of the workday instead reading two documents. The first is the charge sheet of Capt. Mark Hamilton, USCG, which you can read here and which is totally NSFW (.pdf). (h/t Ricks) Officers carrying on sexually with subordinates is normally abhorent, given the obviously unequal nature of the relationships, which can lead to any number of abuses. But some of the things the U.S. Coast Guard considers to have "dishonored and disgraced [Capt. Hamilton's] position as an officer" are quite hilarious when read in the bureaucratic language of a DD Form 458.
The second document is the one you should actually spend your time reading this afternoon. I was tipped off to Jenna Jordan's "When Heads Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation" (.pdf) by an item on a NYT blog. (I made the mistake of googling "Jenna Jordan". Google, instead, "Jenna Jordan uchicago".) Jordan's findings support a lot of the conclusions that Matt Frankel has reached and which I blogged on a few weeks back. Some of her findings are not particularly surprising: Jordan demonstrates, for example, that smaller and younger organizations are more vulnerable to decapitation campaigns. But what I found interesting was her finding that decapitation campaigns often had a counterproductive effect. (Jordan measures the degredation of groups targeted by decapitation campaigns against groups not targeted by such campaigns.) Her really important and very serious and please-someone-in-the-Obama-Administration-read-this conclusion:
Decapitation is not ineffective merely against religious, old, or large groups, it is actually counterproductive for many of the terrorist groups currently being targeted. In many cases, targeting a group’s leadership actually lowers its rate of decline. Compared to a baseline rate of decline for certain terrorist groups, the marginal value of decapitation is negative. Moreover, going after the leader may strengthen a group’s resolve, result in retaliatory attacks, increase public sympathy for the organization, or produce more lethal attacks.
If I could make some constructive suggestions, I would ask Jordan to both a) increase her sample size, which is smallish and probably why she labels her findings "initial" and b) do some research demonstrating the effect of decapitation strategies when paired with broader, more comprehensive counterinsurgency or counter-terror strategies and the effect of decapitation strategies when conducted in isolation from other initiatives.
After reading the Charge
After reading the Charge Sheet, sounds like he might have a second career as an analyst at ESPN.
Jordan's piece was helpful
Jordan's piece was helpful as part of my HVT research, which has been picked up by Studies in Conflict and Terrorism so hopefully there will be a published version sometime in the next month or so. I promise to forward it along after it hits the street.
Excellent! I just
Excellent! I just recommended your work to Jordan over email.Wouldn't there be a strong
Wouldn't there be a strong selection bias in decapitation efforts? I doubt that decapitated organizations are a fair sampling of total otherwise-targeted organizations.
Is there some reason the
Is there some reason the military spells it "divers"?
I have doubts about drawing
I have doubts about drawing conclusions about one very specific type of outcome -- the collapse of an organization engaged in terrorism following decapitation -- based on a sample set with so many variables.
Look at the three organizations Jordan looks at in detail: ETA, FARC, and Hamas. One represents a cause espoused by an ethnic minority, and has a well-defined objective (Basque autonomy). The second represents a much more complicated political movement with a long and violent history; its conduct is also heavily influenced by a lucrative trade in narcotics. The third represents the cause of Palestinians against Israel, while also representing the cause of some Palestinians against other Palestinians, and a conservative branch of Sunni Islam as well. Wouldn't one expect groups with multiple motivations to respond differently to the removal of their leadership, in whole or in part?
The other question I had, specifically relevant to the Obama administration's counter-terrorism policy, is this: is causing the targeted organization's collapse really the objective? I don't mean is it something we'd like to see happen, but rather is it what we need to have happen. If decimating al Qaeda's leadership means the organization is less able to plan and carry out attacks against the United States, or even against American interests around the world, that certainly represents success even if it can't be called victory. If decimating al Qaeda's leadership leads the people that replace it to adjust their objectives -- reducing their commitment to Iraq, say, or to planning terrorist actions in North America -- that too represents success (for us, anyway. Al Qaeda types fleeing from Iraq to Yemen or Somalia may not represent much of a success for the Yemenis or Somalis).
The question of objectives brings us within range of situations with which we have much more experience than we do with terrorism. Decapitation, accidental with a few notable exceptions, has a long history, for example, in American wars; it has also long been a staple of American law enforcement against organized criminal organizations. Removal of effective combat leaders (deliberate or not) has rarely led to the end of the conflicts in which they participated, but it has often altered the course of such conflicts. The combat leaders who replaced Jackson, Yamamoto and Rommel were less effective; therefore, the removal of these men from the leadership of combat troops benefited the American war effort. So, too, some criminal leaders are more effective than others, and their incarceration a benefit to public order. Does the same principal apply to terrorist organizations? Why would it not?
It's certainly worthwhile to ask whether the Obama administration's policy of striking at terrorist leaders is doing any good. The question, though, needs to be considered not only with regard to the available alternatives but also in the context of objectives that are realistic. Causing terrorist organizations to collapse may not be one of them.
Rubber Ducky said.... Life's
Rubber Ducky said....
Life's Rules
#1. Never get your honey where you get your money?
Wow...USCG has back door men? Who' -whould-a figured it was not only full time Navy..
Go USCG! First week in June, will this Captain will be marching around DuPont Circle?
Damn the Devil....
Interesting article by
Interesting article by Jordan. Looks to me that she limits the utility of her conclusions by making some poor assumptions, and citing other scholars who make similar bad assumptions.
Why are we discussing "organizational collapse"? And the assumption that we are targeting charismatic leaders is not valid, either.
If we target organizational leaders for their skill set, proficiency, and facets of leadership that are not necessarily "charismatic" then it is obvious we can make an organization less effective. Organizations select their own leaders based on their internal cultures. Get a vote by killing/capturing and you are decreasing their effectiveness.
Some simple examples:
Attrition of Lee's generals over the course of the civil war. The death of Jackson did not produce a more effective replacement.
The targeting of Yamamoto. The death of Rommel. The attrition of "100 kill" German fighter aces in the Jan 1944 bomber offensives over Berlin. Targeted killings of certain government officials that could not be coerced or coopted by the Viet Cong--conversely, the Phoenix program.
I guess if you narrow the scope of your analysis and make general conclusions based on that you can say anything.
If I allowed Al Qaeda, right now, to pick any tn US leaders and eliminate them, can we guarantee ten superior subordinates would rise to the fore? If you believe in the incompetence of our personnel system, maybe. I happen not to.
And now for something
And now for something completely different (and ridiculous)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3iwHJEd92I&feature=player_embedded
There's a COIN lesson in that video.
Or maybe not.
Reference: the Jordan
Reference: the Jordan article tends to validate the research released in Nature magazine in Dec 2009.
http://blog.ted.com/2009/12/ted_fellow_sean.php
Based of their findings even if the leading heads are decapitated-- the cell or organization tends to fight on---reference the following list of characteristics from that research--as this has been also the core problem faced by the theories of "Attack the Network" pushed by JIEDDO/COIC;
Quote: "What are some of the specific features of modern insurgent ecosystems as defined by your model?
If we look at the results from our model we find that there are 14 key characteristics that that define a successful insurgent ecosystem; these are listed below with a short name to describe the feature.
•Many body: There are many more autonomous insurgent groups operating within conflicts than we had previously thought. For example there are 100+ autonomous groups operating in Iraq (as of 2006).
•Fluidity: The insurgents are loosely grouped together to form fluid networks with short half-lives. This is very different from the rigid hierarchical networks that have been proposed for insurgent groups.
•Redundancy: If we remove the strongest group from the system another group will rise to replace the previous strongest group
•Splinter: When a group is broken it does not generally split in half but instead shatters into multiple pieces
•Redistribute: When a group is broken the components are redistributed amongst the other groups in the system. The redistribution is biased towards the most successful remaining groups.
•Snowball: The strongest groups grow fastest
•Tall poppy: The strongest groups are the predominant targets for opposition forces
•Internal competition: There is direct competition amongst insurgent groups for both resources and media exposure. They are competing with each other in addition to fighting the stronger counterinsurgent forces.
•Independent co-ordination: Autonomous groups act in a coordinated fashion as a result of the competition that exists between them.
•Emergent structure: Attacks in both Iraq and Colombia become 'less random' and more coordinated over time
•Evolution: The strategies employed by the groups evolve over time where successful groups/strategies survive and unsuccessful strategies/groups are replaced.
•High dimensional: Connection occurs over high dimensions (i.e. Internet, cell phone etc) and is not dominated by geographic connections.
•Non-linear: It is approximately 316* times harder to kill 100 people in an attack than it is to kill 10 people. (*Results for a conflict with alpha=2.5).
•Independent clones: the fundamental structure and dynamics of insurgent groups is largely independent of religious, political, ideological or geographic differences." Unquote
I'm sorry, but from here it
I'm sorry, but from here it looks rather like an attempt to force the data to confirm to your ideology, while defying common sense. I always laugh when in that context people pull an example of a very, very unsuccessful "decapitation" - the killing of Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi by Israel. Musawi was replaced by Hassan Nasrallah, who went on to cause Israel lots of grief. But this argument is unsound - if anything, it proves that decapitation strategy needs to be permanent and ruthless, not sporadic. Let me steal an argument from the debate in the NYT -
"- first, people are not interchangeable. It takes time to find another suitable "terror executive", who possesses all necessary qualities - leadership, smarts, street cred, ruthlessness, organizational and conspiratorial skills, propaganda skills and so on. As Ian Kershaw had pointed out, without Hitler there would be no Third Reich.
- second, terrorists aren't trained troops. Being exposed to "terror from the sky" doesn't harden their resolve - in fact, they tend to scatter and become more passive. I give more credit to fighting skills of Pathans over Palestinians, but overall the effect remains the same. Even mujahiddin during Soviet occupation were easily defeated and demoralized by the Soviet air power until the Stingers came. There's an obvious correlation between destruction of leadership and the readiness of the rank-and-file Fatah gunmen to use an offering of "amnesty" to quit the "armed struggle". Moreover, instead of planning new operations, the enemy is forced to spend time and energy at hiding and conspiracy.
- Third, since the enemy is partially or fully motivated by religion, killing the preachers of terror makes an enormous sense, since their "special skills" are even harder to replace. Elimination of Hamas sheikh Ahmad Yassin was a great loss for Palestinian Islamists.
- Fourth, targeted killings send a clear message - there's no "immunity" for terrorist leaders. Being "a name and a face" of the terrorist group shouldn't bring recognition and prestige, but a speedy death. No one doubts that by not killing Osama bin Laden at the first opportunity America had made him a legend.
- Fifth, I would argue that it's not the "outrage" that drives new recruits towards the militant groups, but rather impunity. Knowing that if you join some "kill-the-infidels" movement and pick up a weapon, you will almost certainly die a horrible speedy death in the unequal combat doesn't exactly makes a great recruiting poster. The experience shows that, after the IDF had switched to targeted killings instead of blanket operations, the local attitude towards the militants became less supportive and more demanding (in the sense of "we support your battle with the Jews, but take it somewhere else").
Targeted killings aren't the magical solution. They will not make the terrorist organization to go away - you need a political alternative for that. They can't be the "only" strategy, and it's obvious that US must operate differently in Afghanistan then Israel in OPT. But they work, they degrade the war-making abilities of the enemy with a minimal danger to your troops, and they are inherently moral - no one who tries to actively kill you should enjoy the benefit of the doubt".
Haven't seen a new post in
Haven't seen a new post in 10 days...
Must be the war brewing in Beirut....is about to?
2006, it happened about this same time...
AE Your technical people
AE
Your technical people must have "fixed the glitch". I can post once again. Thx.
Get a chance, check out this link.
http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/03/18/captured-blog-the-pacifi...
There are terrific photos here, some quite famous from WWII, but most I've never seen before.
Hope you and your readers enjoy them. Have a great Sunday.
Snake
good topic. any one who
good topic. any one who experienced war will not forget the misery. numerous innocent citizens lost their life in the war. i think there is nobody will love war.
navy nurse
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