Center for a New American Security

I have written a little about the utility of quantitative analysis in the field of security studies here and here. Last week, though, I finished Wall Street Journal reporter Scott Patterson's book on how quantitative hedge funds -- as opposed to "fundamental" investors like Warren Buffett -- contributed to the Wall Street collapse of 2008. Patterson ends his book with the efforts of some quants to get their analysis to abide by a code of conduct. The resulting manifesto -- written by Paul Wilmott and Emanuel Derman -- can be read here. There are some useful passages, highlighted below, which address the uncomfortable reality that elegant mathmatical formulae don't always describe messy human endeavors like the behavior of the markets -- or war, for that matter.

Physics, because of its astonishing success at predicting the future behavior of material objects from their present state, has inspired most financial modeling. Physicists study the world by repeating the same experiments over and over again to discover forces and their almost magical mathematical laws. Galileo dropped balls off the leaning tower, giant teams in Geneva collide protons on protons, over and over again. If a law is proposed and its predictions contradict experiments, it's back to the drawing board. The method works. The laws of atomic physics are accurate to more than ten decimal places.

 

It's a different story with finance and economics, which are concerned with the mental world of monetary value. Financial theory has tried hard to emulate the style and elegance of physics in order to discover its own laws. But markets are made of people, who are influenced by events, by their ephemeral feelings about events and by their expectations of other people's feelings. The truth is that there are no fundamental laws in finance. And even if there were, there is no way to run repeatable experiments to verify them. ...

 

The Modelers' Hippocratic Oath

 

~ I will remember that I didn't make the world, and it doesn't satisfy my equations.

 

~ Though I will use models boldly to estimate value, I will not be overly impressed by mathematics.

 

~ I will never sacrifice reality for elegance without explaining why I have done so.

 

~ Nor will I give the people who use my model false comfort about its accuracy. Instead, I will make explicit its assumptions and oversights.

 

~ I understand that my work may have enormous effects on society and the economy, many of them beyond my comprehension.

I found the humility in this manifesto to be really refreshing. What might a similar manifesto look like for those using quantitative analysis to study war? And should the U.S. graduate programs in political science (and subsets of the field, like international relations and security studies) pushing their students toward quantitative analysis be more up-front about the explanatory limits of such analysis? Anyway, borrowing liberally (read: plagiarizing) from Wilmott and Derman, here is what I think a Hippocratic Oath for Quantitative Analysis in Security Studies should look like:

• War is a human endeavor. I recognize that it is a phenomenon that does not conform to neat mathematical equations.
• I will use quantitative analysis in conjunction with theory and qualitative analysis to describe what I see as phenomena in war and peace. I will be honest about the limits of both my theory and my analysis.
• In war and peace, the variables are infinite, and not everything can be measured or assigned a numerical value.
• I will not use numbers to signify what are fundamentally qualitative assessments without acknowledging to my reader that I have done so in order to satisfy a departmental requirement, gain tenure, or get published in the APSR. Or because I have been in graduate school for so long that I have forgotten how to effectively write in prose.
• I recognize there are no mathematical equations in Vom Kriege and that it is nonetheless unlikely that my legacy will transcend that of Clausewitz.
• I recognize that very few squad leaders in the 10th Mountain Division have ever taken a course in statistics yet probably know more about the conduct and realities of war than I do. 

Anand Gopal, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and now with the Christian Science Monitor, has a scoop.

Pakistan has arrested nearly half of the Afghanistan Taliban’s leadership in recent days, Pakistani officials told the Monitor Wednesday, dealing what could be a crucial blow to the insurgent movement.

In total, seven of the insurgent group’s 15-member leadership council, thought to be based in Quetta, Pakistan, including the head of military operations, have been apprehended in the past week, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.

Western and Pakistani media had previously reported the arrest of three of the 15, but this is the first confirmation of the wider scale of the Pakistan crackdown on the Taliban leadership, something the US has sought.

“This really hurts the Taliban in the short run,” says Wahid Muzjda, a former Taliban official turned political analyst, based in Kabul. Whether it will have an effect in the long run will depend on what kind of new leaders take the reins, he says.

News of the sweep emerged over the past week, with reports that Pakistani authorities had netted Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the movement’s second in command, as well as Maulavi Abdul Kabir, a prominent commander in charge of insurgent operations in eastern Afghanistan, and Mullah Muhammad Younis.

Pakistan has also captured several other Afghan members of the leadership council, called the Quetta Shura, two officials with the Pakistani Intelligence Bureau, and a United Nations official in Kabul told the Monitor.

These include: Mullah Abdul Qayoum Zakir, who oversees the movement’s military affairs, Mullah Muhammad Hassan, Mullah Ahmed Jan Akhunzada, , and Mullah Abdul Raouf.

At least two Taliban shadow provincial governors, who are part of the movement’s parallel government in Afghanistan, have also been captured.

A Taliban spokesman denied the arrests, saying that they were meant to hide the difficulties that United States and NATO forces were having in Afghanistan.

Why Pakistan’s sudden crackdown?

The crackdown may to be related to efforts by some Taliban leaders to explore talks with Western and Afghan authorities independently of Pakistan, the UN official said. Pakistan is widely suspected of backing the Afghan Taliban in a bid to maintain influence in Afghanistan, a charge Islamabad has long denied. But Pakistan may also be wary of Taliban attempts to initiate talks without its involvement or sanction.

Yes, this is in fact World Bank honcho Robert Zoellick. And Shakira. No, this is not photoshopped.

Una loba en el armario
Tiene ganas de salir (Zoellick: A-ooooh!)
Deja que se coma el barrio
Antes de irte a dormir

Col. (Ret.) Bob Killebrew just told me that Col. Bob Howard was interred today in Arlington. Who was Bob Howard? Maybe the finest warrior ever produced by the U.S. military. 

From Mark Helprin in today's Wall Street Journal:

Cancelling the F-22 Raptor, the most capable fighter plane ever produced, is yet another act in the tragedy of a nation that, bankrupting itself, embracing moral decline, and apologizing to its enemies, is losing the will to prevail.

I mean, I do not even know where to begin with this one aside from laugh at how over-the-top that sentence is. I guess I could point out that the Department of Defense's base budget grew, in a time of tremendous financial pressure, 2.8% last year. (1.4% if you adjust for inflation.) I could also point out that since 2001, even if you do not include spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the DOD base budget has increased 40%. (And 70% if you include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan.) You and Mark Helprin can both read about this in Travis Sharp's helpful primer on the QDR and FY11 defense budget.

Lamenting a reduced U.S. Air Force presence in Europe, Helprin writes that "while it declined but before it burned, Rome kept only a shadow of legions upon the Rhine and the Danube." He actually wrote that sentence. In a newspaper. A quick Wikipedia search tells me the U.S. military currently has 369,000 military personnel deployed in 150 countries. Hardly a shadow, those 369,000 troops. And maybe -- just maybe -- we have a reduced presence in Europe because it makes sense to stage elsewhere. Or does Helprin think the Visigoths might mount a comeback and threaten Rome anew?

Helprin points out that three successive U.S. administrations before Obama have down-sized the F-22 program, which, come to think of it, should have told Helprin something. Instead he cites the late Sen. Kennedy's support for the F-22, ignoring the fact that the F-22 was manufactured in 48 different states, meaning Helprin could have found a quote from 95 other senators if he had wanted to do so. 

Oh, and he never mentions the word "drones". Not once. He never once takes on the inconvenient reality that the era of manned flight may be reaching its terminus and that remotely piloted aircraft might render manned aircraft irrelevant in the next generation. You would have thought he would have wanted to have at least challenged that idea as he mounted a lusty defense for the F-22, no?

The pity of all this is that I was talking with Fick just a few weeks ago about what a great book A Soldier of the Great War is. You should read that, and Helprin should stick to writing novels.

...this video, released by the police in Dubai, of the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is just amazing. Like watching Munich. But for real.

I'm at work, unable to endure watching the rest of France v. Ireland after this epic collapse. It's a good time to read some of the analysis of the ongoing offensive in Marja, though, here, here and here. The analysis I have highlighted comes from three guys who I think have done some of the best English-language reporting thus far on Helmand and the NATO/ISAF operations there: Dexter Filkins, Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Tom Coughlan. Filkins and Chand -- whatever, Rajiv -- have reported from inside NATO/ISAF operations particularly well, and Coughlan of the Times of London really knows Helmand. He has a very good chapter on the Taliban there, in fact, in this Antonio Giustozzi volume. That chapter makes for great background reading to NATO/ISAF operations this weekend.

Update: A little cheer to cut through the Six Nations gloom.

Update II: I may not be blogging, but I am posting good accounts I have read on the Abu Muqawama Twitter feed.

What a life.

Tom Friedman's column today about how we can build more schools and defeat terrorism is one of those things that sounds right but probably isn't. Leave aside the fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- by Friedman's own admission, the only reason he is in Yemen right now -- is a graduate of University College London and the product of a superb secondary education before that. Alan B. Krueger and others have shown that the causal relationship between education and terrorism is weak. Very well-educated men and women can fall under the sway of extremist ideologies and go on to do evil things -- like blow up airliners and buy Coldplay albums.

This is no reason not to build schools. Building schools is a lovely thing, and as the great Greg Mortenson pointed out to me in Kabul once, when you teach little girls to read, you teach entire villages to read. (Because the girls teach their mothers.) And female literacy then leads to a healthy drop in birth rates and less poverty. That's all wonderful. Education transforms societies. But education only has a place in counterinsurgency -- most naturally a subfield of stabilization operations -- if you can prove that a lack of schools is a driver of conflict. And as far as counter-terrorism is concerned, well, the idea that more schools will lead to a drop in terrorism remains one of those things that sounds good when discussed at dinner parties but has yet to be proven and is, if we are to trust our research thus far, most likely false.

[All that having been said, allow me to stress once again that building schools in underdeveloped societies is something we should all support. Maybe not for reasons of counter-terrorism or counterinsurgency but for more altruistic reasons. So everyone buy Greg Mortenson's new book to help the cause, okay?]

Elizabeth Bumiller, you are in the penalty box of the English language. Describing the many great memoirs that have been written about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, she writes these books "explore the timeless theme of the futility of war."* If that hackneyed phrase was even accurate to describe the books she profiles, we would forgive her, but since almost all of the books she describes deal with war at its tactical levels divorced from the question of whether or not the violence is realizing political objectives, it makes no sense. Here's a question: whatever happened to the authors of The Unforgiving Minute and One Bullet Away? Because it seems to me the career choices they made after writing their books endorse the utility of war.

As the author of a quickly forgotten memoir myself**, allow me to identify what I see as the theme that emerges from the memoirs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have been published thus far. And because Bumiller interestingly includes a think tank report in her list, we'll add to our corpus the many journal articles and reports we have read from serving officers. The theme that emerges from this generation of veteran-authors is:

War is necessary if reprehensible. Because it's so awful, war should be waged well. It should be fought by well-trained men and women, managed by the most talented and creative young officers, and executed by adaptive, nimble fighting organizations supported by empathetic, resolute publics.

*"Futility of war" aside, the article is actually quite good, as are most of the books profiled.

**I have, like, three times as many followers on Twitter than Craig, though. Boo-yah!

A week ago, I spent some time on the blog whining about Quants and their work on counterinsurgency. Since then, two scholars -- distinguished veterans of the war in Iraq -- have told me that while they share some of my frustrations, I should make some exceptions -- especially for the work being done by Jason Lyall, Eli Berman and Jacob Shapiro. My friends are right, of course -- too often, when we don't back things up with hard quantitative analysis, we end up with faith-based policies. And I have spent the morning reading the latest article in International Security by Christine Fair and Shapiro and it is ... well, quite excellent.

I'm listening to Sec. Gates and Adm. Mullen talk about repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell on C-SPAN, and they're a breath of fresh air given the commentary that has recently surrounded the decision to repeal DADT. So far, I've been reading a lot of assumptions and assertions amidst a conspicuous absence of hard data and research. On the one hand, Bill Kristol is saying the repeal of DADT will lead to military ineffectiveness. Now, the assumption that a repeal of DADT will lead to at least a short-term drop in unit cohesiveness or effectiveness sounds like a pretty reasonable assumption, but that assumption needs to be tested. On the other hand, Sen. Levin (who, as chairman of the SASC, knows a lot more about the U.S. military than Bill Kristol) is claiming a repeal of DADT will lead to greater unit effectiveness. That actually strikes me as being a bit of a stretch, but if by that he means more Arabic/Dari/Pashto linguists, yeah, okay, that makes sense. In the same way, supporters of the repeal claim that the younger generation of military servicemen could in general care less about serving with homosexuals. And that seems like a reasonable assumption as well given the fact that all American focus groups -- Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, church-goers, atheists -- are in favor of gays being allowed to openly serve in uniform, and the younger generation of Americans is generally more comfortable with the societal normalization of homosexuality than older generations.

Gates and Mullen, though, are calling for RAND to update their 1993 study on gays in the military (.pdf), and this is the right idea. (Mullen's remarks, in particular, have been laced with much-needed humility.) We need some hard research to support or challenge everyone's assumptions. Sen. McCain -- a man I greatly admire -- is sounding a more like a senator in a tough Republican primary race here than a guy listening to the policy preference of the American people. But he is fundamentally correct when he says that a review of DADT and gays in the military should have preceded any announced shift in the policy. He is also correct when he points out that -- unlike in the 1990s -- a repeal of the ban on homosexuals in the military would now demand a change in the law by Congress. (This I learned by reading this excellent article in Joint Forces Quarterly (.pdf) that you'll be hearing senators on both sides of this debate reference.)

But this leads me to my biggest gripe about this policy shift. I don't blame the Obama Administration nearly as much as I blame foot-dragging flag officers. Last year, I sat in on an on-the-record lunchtime talk with Gen. Casey, and the chief of staff of the U.S. Army was asked a point-blank question about the repeal of DADT. Gen. Casey kinda shrugged and said the U.S. Army would study the issue if and when the administration notified it of a change in policy.

No.

I cannot describe how upset I was by this incident -- not because I particularly care about DADT as an issue but because this kind of uniformed foot-dragging makes me angry. Anyone in defense policy circles -- and most especially the chief of staff of the Army -- could and should have anticipated a proposed change in DADT. The time, then, to have tasked RAND or IDA or CNA or whoever to analyze the policy and the greater issue of homosexuals in uniform should have been when Pres. Obama took office. I remember sitting at the table thinking, "Oh, give me a break, sir -- take some freaking initiative!"

Anyway, I do not intend to wade into the full morass that is DADT and homosexuals in the military. But I will say this: Congressmen and members of the public should pay less attention to the many retired flag officers (average date of commission: 1835) who oppose homosexuals openly serving in the U.S. military and should instead poll serving U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. That's who Laura Miller and RAND will be polling. Their opinions, when combined with the desired policy preferences of the greater U.S. public, should be what matters. I could care less what some dude who garrisoned Shanghai in 1932 thinks.

More reading:

Owen West on DADT.

The 1993 RAND study.

Om Prakash in Joint Forces Quarterly.