Center for a New American Security

Wow, I just saw this post by Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress at Marc Lynch's blog:

There are several must-read blogs out there - the COIN nerds have some interesting insights, but let's face it, their musings tend to be a bit blinkered by self-referential navel gazing with an overemphasis on the U.S. military and what U.S. boots on the ground do. That's a limited perspective and doesn't lend itself to a complete analysis of the political, social, and economic trends happening out in the real world. Juan Cole's Informed Comment is great, but sometimes doesn't provide the widespread coverage of the region that Abu Aardvark does. And as a progressive, of course I'd be remiss in not mentioning the POMED blog (because democracy and human rights should still matter in U.S. policy) and my own organization's family of Think Progress blogs for a view on all that is just and righteous.

I don't really know what to do with that. I think I agree with most everything Brian says, actually.

1. We are nerds.
2. The COIN community is too self-referential
3. And because most of us have military backgrounds, we do tend to militarize our solutions.

What we are not, though, is a Middle East policy blog. I have a regional studies background, that is true, but this blog focuses more on security studies and defense policy. I thought that was clear. Aside from the occasional foray into Lebanese or Iraqi politics (and Scottish rugby and the Red Sox, etc.), we here at the blog like to keep things focused on contemporary insurgencies and counter-insurgency strategies.

This does not explain, though, the tenor of Brian's post. Did I pee on his rug or something? I mean, I know it held the room together, but seriously...

From the National Journal:

As the Pentagon's internal budget negotiations begin to wind down, the future looks bleak for the Army's Future Combat Systems, the service's ambitious $160 billion modernization effort that is widely expected to become a casualty of the FY10 budget.

Defense Secretary Gates is weighing everything from dramatically scaling back FCS ground vehicles to canceling the program, according to several sources closely tracking the budget negotiations. He has said he will withhold making any final decisions until the end of the internal budget process.

Josh Foust got stuck in Kapisa Province and, with nothing better to do, started asking around about COIN efforts there. The result was this piece in World Politics Review that digs down deep on what counter-insurgency looks like from the perspective of one province near the Afghan capital:

Examining the past and current failures of coalition operations in this tiny province near the Afghan capital shows that effective counterinsurgency does not have to be overly complicated. For short periods of time in Kapisa, special operations forces and even conventional units have been hugely successful, but none have been able to properly capitalize on those gains and to make them permanent. As the pendulum of power in Kapisa continues to swing back and forth between the coalition and the insurgency, war fatigue is in danger of setting in. Before that happens, the coalition should begin to pay attention to the lessons it has already learned and avoid repeating its past mistakes . With minor changes to current operations, the coalition could permanently improve the security, political, and economic situation in Kapisa.

The same principles that would make permanent these halting and temporary security gains in this tiny province need to be applied to the country as a whole. Holding territory, incorporating domestic security forces, and having an understanding of the social and political fabric of the local population are all tenets of counterinsurgency theory. Unfortunately, these ideas are only being applied by U.S. and coalition militaries sporadically, without regularity and follow-up. Until the effort is concerted and systematic, the United States and its allies should dramatically lower their expectations of success in Afghanistan.

Well, kids, here it is. You knew it was coming.

Well, call me old-fashioned if you will, but I have always taken the view that swastika symbols exist for one purpose only—to be defaced. Telling my two companions to hold on for a second, I flourish my trusty felt-tip and begin to write some offensive words on the offending poster. I say “begin” because I have barely gotten to the letter k in a well-known transitive verb when I am grabbed by my shirt collar by a venomous little thug, his face glittering with hysterical malice. With his other hand, he is speed-dialing for backup on his cell phone. As always with episodes of violence, things seem to slow down and quicken up at the same time: the eruption of mayhem in broad daylight happening with the speed of lightning yet somehow held in freeze-frame. It becomes evident, as the backup arrives, that this gang wants to take me away.

I am as determined as I can be that I am not going to be stuffed into the trunk of some car and borne off to a private dungeon (as has happened to friends of mine in Beirut in the past). With my two staunch comrades I approach a policeman whose indifference seems well-nigh perfect. We hail a cab and start to get in, but one of our assailants gets in also, and the driver seems to know intimidation only too well when he sees it. We retreat to a stretch of sidewalk outside a Costa café, and suddenly I am sprawled on the ground, having been hit from behind, and someone is putting the leather into my legs and flanks. At this point the crowd in the café begins to shout at the hoodlums, which unnerves them long enough for us to stop another cab and pull away. My shirt is spattered with blood, but I’m in no pain yet: the nastiest moment is just ahead of me. As the taxi accelerates, a face looms at the open window and a fist crashes through and connects with my cheekbone. The blow isn’t so hard, but the contorted, glaring, fanatical face is a horror show, a vision from hell. It’s like looking down a wobbling gun barrel, or into the eyes of a torturer. I can see it still.

I still think Totten should have kicked his ass out of principle once they had returned to the hotel. (Thanks, SNLII)

I'm not trying to get all partisan on a Monday morning, but Dick Cheney says President Obama's changes in certain policies are making America less safe. Here is the response.



General P understands the way a military organization conducts itself operationally has direct relevance in this day and age on its ability to achieve strategic objectives. Everyone who has served in Iraq understands that Lynndie freaking England has had a bigger impact on our mission there than the average battalion S-3.

Furthermore, yesterday's excellent front-page article in the Post highlighted the lunacy of torture, which is that it causes people to say whatever it is they think you want them to say. Check out the wild goose chases on which Abu Zubaida sent intelligence officers and operators after he started saying anything and everything to make people stop torturing him.

Remember, this is not the FATA or the Swat Valley:

MANAWAN, Pakistan — Elite police forces overwhelmed more than a dozen gunmen eight hours after they stormed a police training school Monday, ending a siege in which at least 27 policemen were killed and more than 90 people were wounded near Lahore.

After a day of confused explosions and gunfire as security forces battled to retake control of the building, rescue workers began evacuating the wounded in ambulances.

Fahim Jahan Zeb, an official with the Punjab rescue service, said at least four attackers were arrested and four others had blown themselves up.

Television footage showed Pakistani security forces on the roof of the building. Black-clad commandos shouted in jubilation and fired into the air from the roof of the three-story structure.

Announcing the end of the operation to retake the school, the senior official at the Pakistani Ministry of Interior, Rehman Malik, said the attack was designed to destabilize Pakistan and illustrated how far "our enemies" had penetrated the country.

It was the second brazen terrorist attack this year in the tense Pakistani province of Punjab. In early March, a dozen gunmen in Lahore opened fire on a bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team and its police escort, killing six police officers and a driver. That assault in the center of the busy provincial capital, a city of nine million people, led to the suspension of international cricket tours to Pakistan, a severe psychological blow.

The police academy appeared to have been chosen carefully as well -- the gunmen struck a security institution while hundreds of young recruits were on the parade ground.

Sharing a car back from the wilds of Virginia yesterday, I had a long conversation with Dave Kilcullen that improbably ranged from Herodotus to William of Ockham to, finally, appropriate metrics in Afghanistan. (Fun fact: Dave's medievalist father is one of the world's leading experts on William of Ockham. Who knew?) As I joked on the blog a few weeks ago, the Marines used rice production as a metric in Vietnam in place of enemy body count, but we can't very well use poppy production as our metric in Afghanistan.

Still, evident in the administration's mindset going forward is some way to measure success -- or to determine whether or not the U.S. and its allies are failing. President Obama:

Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course. Instead, we will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable. We’ll consistently assess our efforts to train Afghan security forces and our progress in combating insurgents. We will measure the growth of Afghanistan’s economy, and its illicit narcotics production. And we will review whether we are using the right tools and tactics to make progress towards accomplishing our goals.

And Riedel:

The President feels very strongly that this strategy needs to be flexible and adaptable, and that to the extent possible, we develop metrics -- and you heard him use that word in the speech -- that give you an idea of our success rate. He wants to reevaluate periodically how we're doing, what's working, what's not working, make mid-course corrections and adjustments.

But what metrics to use? One we should not use, at least not in the next twelve months, is violence. As most commentators have noted, the U.S. and its allies are going to be marching into Taliban-controlled territory over the next year. Casualties -- U.S., allied, civilian, Taliban -- will go up.

That does not help, though, in determining which positive metrics to use. Training of Afghan police and soldiers? Civilian casualties? Decrease in air strikes requested? Dave mentioned a unit that had begun to catalogue the variety of vegetables on sale in the local markets as evidence that farmers were growing more than poppy.

Let me ask the readership to help us -- and the administration -- come up with creative ways to measure success and failure in Afghanistan.

In the meantime, it has been heartening to see Republicans and Democrats get behind the president's plan. There is an understanding, I think, that we're all in this one together and that now that the plan is in place, it's time to roll up our sleeves. In the same way, Marisa Katz (C '99) has assembled a good group of thinkers for the Post's Outlook section tomorrow weighing in on the president's plan: Ricks, Nagl, Bacevich, O'Sullivan, Chayes, and the man whose opinion you have all been waiting for, Dennis Kucinich.

Here's why American TV news is pretty much the worst thing since National Socialism. The below clip is from the Onion, a satirical "news" site which just hired a real live news anchor from CNN, an allegedly serious news organization. The second clip is from that same allegedly serious news organization. Oy. No wonder we can't get the American people to pay attention to Iraq and Afghanistan...


Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport

Israeli officers, realizing this hasn't been the best few weeks for their institution, are pushing back on stories of abuse and indiscipline in Operation Cast Lead. In the same way, Jeff White -- a longtime (and highly respected) DIA analyst who now writes for the Washington Institute -- has written a largely apologetic* consideration of Israeli operational behavior in Gaza. We've debated IDF performance in Gaza, and some of the threads were so intense that I almost re-instituted the (in)famous "No Israel and Palestine" rule for the blog. But I might as well instead link to two pieces offering interpretations of events contrary to those printed in Ha'aretz.

*I use "apologetic" in the Greek sense of the word.

And now for a CNAS New Boy...

Fred Kaplan's piece in Slate got me thinking. In this op-ed (.pdf), published by the grown-ups at Small Wars Journal, I write on the differences -- and similarities -- between COIN and CT:

My experience in Iraq, though, had led me to the false conclusion that CT perhaps had no role in population-centric COIN. In London last year, I had dinner with a former and widely respect allied commander in Afghanistan and asked him whether or not direct action special operations forces – or “SOF”, the kind of forces best suited for CT missions – had a place in COIN.

The retired U.S. general looked at me quizzically and replied that of course they did. “SOF is how you play offense in COIN. It’s how you keep the enemy off balance.”

CT tactics and operations, then, are part of many effective COIN campaigns. Such operations, though, must be tied into the greater strategy. One thing the U.S. military did very poorly in the early years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was to coordinate operations between the “general purpose” units and “vanilla” special operations forces on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and the secretive counter-terror task force that was also active in both countries. By some accounts, only the close personal relationship between Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus led to greater cooperation between the Joint Special Operations Command and the theater commander in Iraq in 2007.

One thing most policy-makers seem to understand, though, is that a population-centric COIN campaign in Afghanistan would be long, messy, and expensive. Our NATO allies would no doubt tire of the inevitable rise in casualties before we do, and with the global economy in dire straits, it is worth noting that – largely due to issues of re-supply – an infantry brigade costs twice as much to operate in Afghanistan as it does to operate in Iraq. For this and many other reasons, there exists far less enthusiasm in the community of COIN theorists and practitioners about a possible COIN campaign in Afghanistan than there was for a COIN campaign in Iraq.

At the same, time, though, an orthodox CT campaign is almost certainly destined to fail spectacularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Kinetic raids – whether by special operators or rocket-carrying drones – are universally unpopular in Pakistan and further alienate the very people in whose hands Afghanistan’s fate lies. What Pakistan needs to become an effective partner in the struggle against violent extremists is the subject of much debate. What is certain, though, is that Predator strikes – even when they kill militants – make the Pakistanis less likely to accept U.S. and allied support or advice.

Success, then, means getting past the COIN versus CT paradigm and thinking about which best practices can be imported from each discipline – and how the two mentalities can be fused with the realities on the ground in Afghanistan to offer policy-makers solutions beyond the usual models.

I didn't really take exception with anything Fred wrote but at the same time have offered him space to respond...

Update:

Thanks to Andrew for his excellent commentary, but I should note that my column did make this point about the CT vs COIN clash: "Obviously," I wrote, "any plan will wind up doing at least a bit of both; the debate is over priorities and emphasis." -- Fred Kaplan

I never got a chance to work with Jim Miller at CNAS before he was nominated to work as Michèle Flournoy's deputy at the Pentagon. And though this blog does not exist to scratch the backs of the people who work or worked at CNAS (honest!), it does follow defense policy issues in a pretty nerdish way. Thus CNAS Old Boy Jim's Senate confirmation hearing today is news as far as we are concerned. Here are the pre-packaged responses to written inquiries, which are mostly boilerplate until he gets into the weeds on specific countries and briefs. And here is the archived webcast of the hearing itself. (Note: Ashton Carter was also before the Senate today.)

I was just on NPR talking about Afghanistan. I am afraid I did not make as much sense as I normally do. Not on my "A" game today for some reason, but if you heard me, let me know what you think.

Update: Oh, never mind. They allowed me to say something else and I went all "theoretical" on the hapless NPR listeners, talking about "control" and "collaboration" and "lines of operation" and such. How long until Stathis Kalyvas sues me for copyright infringement?