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Abu Muqawama: August 2012

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  • Social Media and the Policy Researcher
    August 31, 2012 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 11:16am | 17 Comments

    This will be my last post on this blog for at least a year. I am about to start a fellowship program with the Council on Foreign Relations that will place me in the U.S. government for the next 12 months. Because this blog has become such a big part of my idenity, I want to use this last opportunity to explain why I blog and how social media has both amplified and enriched my policy work.

    A few years ago, Steve Biddle, arguably the finest defense policy analyst of his generation and a valued mentor, gave me some particularly good advice. When you write a policy paper, he told me, you should always be thinking of the scholarly journal article version of the policy paper you are writing as well as the op-ed version of the article you are writing. The idea, of course, is to make sure you reach the widest audience possible and get the most out of the research you have done. 

    While subscribing to all of Steve's wise counsel, my approach to research is a bit different, and I have, since arriving at CNAS in 2009, encouraged our junior research staff to broaden the approach Steve first offered me. In addition to thinking about the ways in which one can turn one's policy paper into an op-ed for the New York Times or article in International Security, one should also think several layers down: how can one blog about one's research? How can one tweet, in real time, about the research one is doing?

    The limitations of the old approach -- and of most research produced by think tanks and academia -- is the communication is largely one-way. The scholar in the ivory tower thinks deep thoughts, consults with his or her colleagues, locks the door and then emerges months later with a paper or book that he or she delivers to the masses. A "response" to a journal article might be published a year later. This is not an altogether bad thing. And if it's a choice between tweeting about college football and producing great books like this, by all means do the latter.

    But an approach that incorporates social media into the research process has greater potential than the old approach. Note, quickly, that I am talking about the research process and not the marketing process. Lots of scholars, myself included, want to harness social media to publicize their latest reports and books. I get books from publishers in the mail on a weekly basis addressed not to "Andrew Exum" but to "Abu Muqawama" in the apparent hope that I will blog about a new book on the Middle East or Afghanistan. But I am writing here about using social media during the research itself.

    The first great advantage that social media has over traditional media is that it is a two-way conversation. Although this can be quite scary for some policy scholars, social media requires one to climb down from the ivory tower and expose one's self to the slings and arrows of the unwashed masses. Once down among hoi polloi, one quickly discovers something: there is a rich and diverse community of amateur and professional scholars out there with interests and educations that complement one's own. Tweeting or blogging about a book you are reading on Afghanistan? Prepare for a barrage of tweets and comments telling you how good or bad that book is while offering other recommendations -- recommendations for books or articles that you, despite your fancy education, might not yet have discovered. Social media, then, exposes the policy researcher to immediate feedback on his or her bibliography and research methods. It can serve as a quick external validator -- or tell you where you're going wrong. 

    Second, policy research is also very much about a world of competing ideas. Whether you are opining about air-sea battle or health care, you must recognize that other scholars out there might have also been researching your issue and have reached different conclusions with regard to policy preferences. One of the most effective -- and without a doubt quickest -- ways I have discovered to identify weaknesses in my own arguments has been through social media. I am constantly wrestling with the comments on my blog or the tweets people send back in my direction. Some of them are silly, and others are ugly, but many more are valuable. I can also observe how other policy proposals are received. Filtering out the sarcasm and snark, one gets a sense for where other scholarship falls short.

    Third, we at CNAS believe that one of our core missions as a think tank is to identify the next generation of policy professionals. In my short and young career, I have already benefitted from many great mentors, and like the Army officer I once was, I consider it my duty to seek out and mentor others younger than me. Social media -- especially Twitter -- has been a great way to identify and meet some of the most promising young people writing on issues related to defense policy. I "met" both of this blog's caretaker bloggers -- Adam Elkus and Dan Trombly -- over social media. Many others have made the jump from tweeting back and forth with me to having coffee in my office shooting the bull about jobs and careers. This is how it should be, because Lord knows, I have spent plenty of time in other people's offices seeking advice about my career.

    The key ingredient to engaging with social media as a part of the research process is humility. You must be prepared, for example, for some 20-year old senior at George Washington University <cough> Trombly </cough> to systematically destroy your initial argument, thereby making your second draft better. You must be prepared to accept that you are not the "expert" your think tank homepage says you are. You are merely a student. And you can thus learn from the many other amateur and professional students around you. And you must be prepared to laugh at yourself. There is a reason the mascot of this blog -- and the avatar for my Twitter account -- is a Lego militant. It says, "I'm going to talk about serious things, but I'll be damned if I am going to lose my sense of humor in the process." The moment one loses one's sense of humor, an officer in the Special Air Service once told me before a mission in Iraq, is the moment one starts thinking of one's self as too good -- too cool -- to get killed. Researchers shouldn't take themselves too seriously either, for that's the road to embarassment. We are unbelievably privileged to be doing this for a living, and we should remember that as we engage as broadly as possible with the people that both consume and inform our work.

    Blogs

  • Setting the Record Straight on Obama and Iraq
    August 30, 2012 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 9:23am | 10 Comments

    A few months ago, it was still fashionable on the American Right to blame President Obama for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq and thus squandering any residual U.S. leverage over events there. I pressed back on this narrative, pointing out that it was the Bush Administration that, to its credit, successfully negotiated the Status of Forces Agreement in the fall of 2008 that established the terms for the U.S. withdrawal. It was not logical, I argued, for critics of the Democratic Obama Administration to blame it for faithfully executing a course of action established by the Republican Bush Administration.

    The American Left, though, is increasingly giving the president credit for the withdrawal from Iraq. Here is former New York Times editor Jospeh Lelyveld writing in the New York Review of Books:

    Barack Obama can claim two big foreign policy accomplishments: getting American forces out of Iraq and compressing his predecessor’s expansive, grandiose-sounding “Global War on Terror” into a narrowly focused, unremitting campaign against the remnants of the al-Qaeda network, relying largely on high-tech intelligence gathering and pilotless drones.

    The Left needs to be reminded, today, of what we reminded the Right yesterday. The Bush Administration started the disastrous war in Iraq, but it also ended it. I remember the debates on Iraq in the 2008 presidential campaign, and what neither campaign was quick to acknowledge was that the U.S. mandate in Iraq expired on 1 January 2009 and that it would thus be the Bush Administration -- and neither a McCain or Obama Administration -- that would negotiate a withdrawal with the government in Baghdad. Campaign debates over Iraq policy were thus of little consequence. Any administration would inherit a policy largely dictated by the parameters established by the one that preceded it.

    The Right wants to blame the Obama Administration for withdrawing from Iraq without recognizing the role played by the Bush Administration in 2008. The Left, by contrast, wants to give the president credit for withdrawing from Iraq -- again without recognizing the role played by the Bush Administration. Neither should be allowed to both have their cake and eat it too. 

    Iraq

  • Monopoly in Farce: Militias and State-Building
    August 29, 2012 | Posted by dtrombly - 4:27am | 3 Comments

    State formation and regime consolidation, as any astute reader of Charles Tilly could tell you, is an ugly business. Just as ugly, though, can be what its absence brings. Since foreign aircraft, foreign arms, and local manpower toppled the Gaddafi regime in Libya, a debate simmered between skeptics, who feared the infiltration of al Qaeda, jihadists, and widespread instability, and optimists, who saw potential in a new Arab-formed democracy forming in the wake of a low-cost intervention against a brutal regime. Both sides have sought to wring evidence for their positions out of a muddled state of affairs. While jihadist groups appeared to increase their presence in Libya, relatively secular, even so-called liberal and independent politicians and coalitions dominate the Libyan government. Though Libya’s patchwork of legal and extralegal armed groups remains, these myriad militias have not reduced the country into a new Somalia on the Mediterranean shore.

    The Weberian monopoly on force is a hallmark of political science and a historical analysis, but it is also an ideal-type. No state has a total monopoly on force, and many eke out a form of status quo where coercive instruments remain outside the state’s hands. In the U.S., militias were intended to be the last line of defense against the overlong extension of federal power, but when paramilitary groups overstepped an acceptable political threshold, as they did during the Reconstruction era, federal troops would intervene.

    Libya’s recent shrine bulldozing crisis similarly reveals a tenuous equilibrium between Libya’s various coercive agents. Groups many suspect adhere to Salafist teachings demolished two shrines last weekend, prompting Interior Minister Fawzi Abdel A'al to resign, and then reverse his resignation. Yet in doing so, he defended his refusal to use security forces to stop extremist groups demolishing shrines, claiming:

    "If we deal with this using security we will be forced to use weapons, and these groups have huge amounts of weapons. We can't be blind to this. These groups are large in power and number in Libya. I can't enter a losing battle (with them), to kill people over a grave," he told reporters.

    It was up to the country's religious bodies to stop the desecration, he said.

    "If all shrines in Libya are destroyed so we can avoid the death of one person (in clashes with security), then that is a price we are ready to pay," the minister added.

    What is going on here is certainly more complicated than simply state failure, but it also underlines the difficulties for policymakers trying to navigate the interplay of paramilitary groups and state-formation. Despite vigorous Western intervention, support for favored NTC militias, and a government at least theoretically opposed to violent extremist groups, Libya’s security forces remain incapable or (perhaps worse) unwilling to exercise the political prerogative of a sovereign government and prevent armed groups from acting unimpeded in Libya. It may be that the Libyan government will not concern itself with the destruction of religious property (though the assumption that desecration and death are alternatives, rather than potential bedfellows, seems quite naive).

    In many cases, states or political elites allow violent non-state groups to flourish so long as they pursue narrowed aims that do not threaten the sovereign government’s ideological, power-political or rentier interests. In some cases, sympathy, sanction, or outright support for these groups is a viable means for supplementing a political community’s capacity beyond conventional limits. Rightist paramilitary and terrorist groups performed this function in Latin America, while white supremacist paramilitaries and terrorists served much the same function for the parties, classes and interests opposed to Reconstruction in the U.S.

    While the sheer volume of arms and weakness of state security forces in Libya suggest incapacity plays a significant role in this crisis, the Interior Minister’s acknowledgment that some members of the security forces (which arguably amount to the integrated, approved militia groups in Libya) may be sympathetic or active participants in the attacks suggests a lack of will is also at play. After all, if unfettered desecration is preferable to risking the lives of the state’s security forces, and then left to religious institutions to check, that is a tacit political sanction or concession in the evolving negotiations between Libya’s armed entities.

    Such stories should make us skeptical, too, about the ability of arms provision to paramilitaries and proxy forces to reliably advance foreign political interests. In Syria, many arguments assert that a more vigorous role in arming the relatively secular or moderate opposition will undermine the position of al Qaeda and jihadist groups. Yet arms provision in Libya, and indeed the consolidation of the most favorable government the West could ask for, failed to create a force organized and coherent enough to actually stamp out local extremists. Aaron Zelin and Andrew Lebovich, in their earlier analysis, make a persuasive case that jihadist groups did not dominate the Libyan rebels. Nor, of course, do jihadist groups need to totally dominate a country’s territory or the composition of its militia groups to pose a significant concern. Yet today the new government supposedly faces groups better armed and organized than their own, or at least well enough such that the state forces cannot effectively suppress them. How could this come to pass?

    Asessing combat power, political cohesion, and other factors vital to understanding the sorting-out that occurs of armed groups in a multi-faceted rebellion, requires recognizing qualitative elements. Radical groups are not always the largest or best-armed group initially, but they may be more organizationally coherent thanks to shared ideology. Additionally, unlike militias primarily focused on overthrowing a tyrannical regime, success at that aim does not lead to their dissolution. They may also have superior access to foreign advisors that allow them to tap into a well of experience and superior tactics, techniques, and procedures.

    Further, arms remain instruments, and do not reliably alter the political agency of their users. In Syria, the fact that many rebels buy their arms from regime troops, or from Iraqi soldiers reselling U.S.-provided arms, should suggest that any foreign power that floods Syria with arms is likely to see those weapons used for undesired purposes in unexpected places. Not only that, but as Libya demonstrated, merely providing arms to rival groups does not preclude the existence of others.

    Many Libyan militias appear to be seeking primarily to extract political and economic rent from access to state revenues and local control. Creating a monopoly on force could actually severely disrupt this process, and what benefits does it offer the militias? Similarly, in Syria, while foreign patrons can arm friendly militias, how can they exclude the wrong militias from being armed by other actors, their own proxies, or as a result of regime caches entering the market? The more likely scenario than undesirable groups fading away is a multiplicity of armed groups existing simultaneously. As Libya should now demonstrate, supporting a rebel group and new government does not guarantee it will be ready, willing, or even able to stamp out the armed undesirables. More extreme groups may choose to focus more on preserving and expanding their combat power and revolutionary agenda, while groups whose political aims mainly sought overthrow of a regime may, with their ideological objectives satisfied and primary threat extinguished, may face fewer incentives to enhance their combat readiness or mobilize politically.

    The result, then, is that groups that may be a popular or political minority, and even outside the bounds of a new government’s security infrastructure, maintain a share of combat capability large enough to pursue their aims or at least hinder or deter the new regime’s attempts to extinguish it or curtail its influence. They may do this in spite of relative disfavor in foreign political ties and arms trade, and in spite of a failure to contest or undermine the popularity or non-coercive operations of the new regime. Warlords’ games are not so easily or durably won, which is why states approximating the Weberian ideal type will not play by their rules in the first place, and refuse to tolerate such groups’ existence.

    State formation and the maintenance of state power involves tacit deals with potentially dangerous and undoubtedly unsavory actors as often as it does, whether by might or right, the imposition of a monopoly on force. Whether through a corrupt bargain that tolerates or legitimizes racial violence and disenfranchisement, a stable arrangement between a government and powerful narcotics traffickers, or the integration of gruesome paramilitary and its allies into an expanding state, we should be wary about letting Hobbesian anarchy color our metrics for success or failure. We should be even more wary about pursuing policies that seek to tame the complex and ugly business of finding a working distribution of political and violent power in a transitioning political community. Ultimately, the covert remedies so popular today must grapple with many of the problems of nation-building and state formation that supposedly belonged to the failed policies of the past.

    Arab Spring, Libya, Pol-Mil, Syria

  • Monday Morning Mini-Rants
    August 27, 2012 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 8:19am | 16 Comments

    If I wrote a blog post each time something I read annoyed me, I would obviously blog more frequently. Two things that I have noticed over the past few days, though, deserve especial mention this morning.

    1. If you study conflict and conflicts long enough, you will either gain invaluable perspective over your peers or lose your perspective entirely. By the end of his career, for example, the late John Keegan, who once wrote this masterpiece which forever changed the way military historians write history, was writing silly things like, "Politics played no part in the conduct of the First World War worth mentioning." (Step forward, Hew Strachan.)

    Robert Fisk has his defenders and his detractors. I have never been accused of being the former, though I re-read a lot of his reporting for The Times in the 1980s as part of my doctoral work and came away impressed by his earlier work. Fisk has been accused by his peers of being a fabulist, and today he writes columns for the Independent. He once bragged to me, after I questioned the veracity of one particular column, that his editors never question what he writes. I'll let you decide whether or not that is a good thing. Of late, meanwhile, Fisk has been the target of some pretty withering satire.

    Fisk's column today is the result of what happens when an observer of conflict loses all moral perspective. Fisk does not excuse any atrocities or crimes. No, he does the opposite. For Fisk, all crimes of war are now for all intents and purposes equal, and all armies at war are criminal. This is a valid perspective, I guess, in that one could make a moral argument in its favor. But unlike this, it doesn't tell me anything useful about what is taking place in Syria. If all acts of wars are crimes and they are all equal, I don't need Robert Fisk's first-hand observations, do I? They don't tell me anything of substance. 

    Among his peers, Fisk is arguably the least popular journalist covering either conflict or the Middle East today. That's probably because in addition to the alleged fabulism and lack of any useful perspective, in Fisk's narrative of conflict and conflicts, there is only room for one truly good man: and that man's name is always "Robert Fisk."

    2. I finished Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War this weekend -- yes, I realize that reads exactly how Robert Fisk might begin one of his columns -- and a few things struck me:

    a. The successful Roman counterinsurgency campaign in Gaul took eight years.

    b. The enemies against which Rome fought were not a unitary actor, and neither were Rome's allies. 

    c. Rome's allies one summer were often Rome's enemies by winter. And visa versa.

    But the two things that made the biggest impression on me were the following:

    d. Caesar was the commander for eight full years, and he enjoyed similar continuity among his subordinate commanders.

    e. Caesar very rarely sent green units into the offensive. By the fourth and fifth year of the campaign, he is still making those legions which were the last to be raised in Italy responsible for guarding the freaking baggage. He relies over and over again on those legions -- most especially the Tenth -- that have proven themselves in combat in Gaul.

    With Caesar's commentaries in mind, I read Doug Ollivant's lament about Gen. Joe Dunford. Gen. Dunford will be the fifteenth commander of NATO-ISAF in eleven years of combat in Afghanistan and the ninth U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Each of his subordinate commanders have rotated on an annual basis. Gen. Dunford -- who is, by all accounts, an excellent officer and highly respected by his peers -- has never served in Afghanistan. 

    The cultures, politics, tribes and peoples of Afghanistan are at least as complex as those of ancient Gaul, yet we Americans are so arrogant to think that we can send officers there with no experience and, owing to our superior knowledge of combat operations, watch them succeed. We will then send units which have never deployed to Afghanistan to partner with Afghan forces and wonder why they do not get along.

    This is madness. The casual arrogance with which the U.S. military has approached the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan has a direct relation to the difficulty with which we have fought each war. That we think we can send a commander to Afghanistan with no prior knowledge of Afghanistan and watch him be successful in the eleventh year of the conflict shows that after eleven years of conflict, we really don't know too much about Afghanistan. And we might not know too much about conflict either.

    Afghanistan, Journalism, Syria

  • No-Fly Zones and Dangerous Labels
    August 24, 2012 | Posted by dtrombly - 1:41am | 13 Comments

    The French Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, recently stated that France is willing to help impose a “partial” no-fly zone in Syria, pending international legitimacy and participation, and so long as it was not a full no-fly zone, since that would be “tantamount to war.” There are several curiosities to unravel here, and they are not exactly unique to this case.

    The modern obsession with finding forms of military intervention short of war is a quixotic enterprise. As Micah Zenko has extensively studied, and co-blogger Adam has written about elsewhere, Discrete Military Operations such as no-fly zones are tantamount to wars in many respects. They are, if not sanctioned internationally, acts of aggression. They will often be treated by the target actor as an act of war. The dynamics of conflict and military action still apply.

    What is particularly revealing here is that a “partial” no-fly zone is floated as some sort of non-war action, but a nationwide no-fly zone in Syria would be “tantamount to war.” But of course, imposing a no-fly zone over part of Syria or the whole of it is a matter of quantitative degree rather than qualitative difference. As I explored in a piece for the United States Naval Institute, imposing a no-fly zone in Syria would likely mean conducting intensive Suppression of Enemy Air Defense to destroy Syria’s air defenses and air force. Even a partial no-fly zone would likely require some strikes outside its limits in order to degrade Syrian airfields, early-warning radars and mobile or semi-mobile air defense systems.

    Imposing even a partial no-fly zone would be tantamount to war, just as arming Syria’s rebels would be an act of war, and constitute foreign engagement in the Syrian civil war, and their success would rely on the combustible cocktail of passion, reason, and chance that all wars do. The difference between these “time-limited, scope-limited kinetic military actions” and war is ultimately an arbitrary distinction of political language which gives away when either the target or the intervening force, in order to achieve its objectives, escalates force to the point where the label is no longer tenable or useful.

    In Iraq, the case is instructive on the dangers and shortcomings of such short-of-war thinking. In the wake of Desert Storm, despite the battlefield defeat of the Iraqi army and widespread desertion or imprisonment of Iraqi conscripts, Iraq maintained the will to suppress revolts in its north and south, resulting in the imposition of no-fly zones under Operations Northern and Southern Watch. The result was continued U.S. engagement in warfare against Iraqi air defenses and air forces and Iraqi warfare against rebelling forces in both no-fly zones. Saddam repeatedly violated America’s imposed standards despite the experience of 1990-91, which occasionally required the threatened reinsertion of Western ground forces or, in the wake of Saddam’s intervention in the Kurdish Civil War, and ended pretenses of respecting them due to strikes nominally aimed at his WMD program (but in practice, at many other critical political and military facilities). Ultimately, America’s political goals in Iraq, as codified in the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, required a military action everybody rightfully identified as a war.

    Ultimately, although using labels such as “humanitarian intervention,” “kinetic military action,” or, to get really old school, “Quasi-War” may be politically or historically sensible, particularly in retrospect, they remain, from the perspective of military analysis grappling with prospective scenarios, frequently misleading. It is only the result of an equilibrium between the preferences of the belligerents engaged, and frequently devolve into war because each side retains the capacity to frustrate the political objectives of the other without an unmistakable increase in willpower or commitment. In Iraq, that increase ultimately came in the form of an invasion force. In Libya, luckily enough, it was a combination of NATO airstrikes and a weak government military which allowed escalation to proceed on much more favorable terms. Any application of concerted military force against a sovereign state is “tantamount to war.” Being vague or conflicted about its ends and obscure about its ways and means just makes it more politically convenient to discuss openly, but less convenient to discuss effectively.

    Air Power, France, Intervention, Syria

  • Green-on-Blue
    August 22, 2012 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 12:43pm | 21 Comments

    Not to be confused with the Miles Davis song or dearly departed Philly eatery, green-on-blue violence is confounding U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and -- together with the 2,000th U.S. casualty -- has thrust the war back into the headlines here in the United States. I spoke about the killings this morning on public radio and wrote my final column for World Politics Review on the subject.*

    These attacks are similar to the epidemic of military suicides in that we can discern an obvious pattern, but it remains difficult to determine what, precisely, is causing the problem. Once you dig deeply into each incident, they begin to seem sui generis -- each prompted by a unique set of circumstances. That makes them arguably more difficult to address than Taliban infiltration, which is a counter-intelligence problem for which we have some precedent. If these attacks instead represent a structural erosion in the relationship between coalition and Afghan forces, that's a lot tougher to fix.

    A few things worth noting in addition to what I argued today in my column:

    1. The United States may be in its eleventh year in Afghanistan, but a lot of soldiers and officers are fighting Year One. What I mean by that is that many of those serving in Afghanistan may have combat experience in Iraq but are new to Afghanistan. Contrast those folks, few of whom have any linguistic training or real cultural education, with Afghan forces who, in some cases, have been fighting in the same corner of the country for six or seven years. You could see how each could rub the other the wrong way. The Afghan might think the American arrogant and aloof, while the American might see the Afghan as lazy -- when in actuality he's just a little tired for having fought this war, in the same place, watching Americans come and go each year, for the better half of a decade.

    2. I have said it before, but I will say it again. A "Green Beret" from the U.S. Army's Special Forces gets over a year of training before he ever steps foot in a foreign country. He receives specialized skills training and both language and cultural education. And he joins a small team that likely has decades of experience already. Contrast that soldier's training and selection process with the one we use for trainers and advisors recruited from the general purpose forces. The training we afford to the former is no guarantee of success. But you can never eliminate risk in war. What you can do is take measures to reduce and mitigate it.

    *Also, since I am apparently the only analyst in Washington working this August, I was interviewed for earlier articles on the subject here, here, and here.

    UPDATE: In the comments, my cousin -- who served as a combat advisor in Iraq with the U.S. Marine Corps BECAUSE HE EMBARASSED HIS FAMILY BY JOINING THE BLEEPING MARINE CORPS SERIOUSLYHOWCOULDYOU -- points me toward what he wrote a few days ago on his iPhone instead of spending quality time with his grandmother.

    Afghanistan

  • The Price of Great Journalism
    August 21, 2012 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 9:48am | 2 Comments

    I just subscribed to the New York Times. Just now. My actions were entirely prompted by this article and video by C.J. "Chris" Chivers and the accompanying photographs by Bryan Denton. In the interests of full disclosure, both Chris and Bryan are friends of mine, but I had never before been moved to shell out my own money for the right to enjoy their journalism. I was today, overwhelmed with appreciation for the quality of the work these men have done over the past week.

    I grew up working at my family newspaper in Tennessee and have made a lot of friends through my work over the past decade who are paid to report on both the greater Middle East and the world's conflicts. I have a real appreciation and some small understanding for what these men and women do, but I also know that the logistics and costs associated with sending men like Chris and Bryan to Syria are considerable. Last month, in fact, the New York Times Co. posted an $88 million second-quarter loss.

    I am not inclined to treat for-profit companies like charity cases, and the New York Times Co. has made a lot of poor business decisions that have nothing to do with the work its journalists produce. I also realize that I am now helping to pay the salaries of some reporters and columnists who shall remain nameless but whose work I respect less than that of Chris and Bryan. (Or any of the many other men and women on the staff of the Times whose work I admire.)

    But if I have to underwrite some columnist's misguided thought experiment to help pay for Bryan's life insurance or the college tuition for Chris's kids, I'm okay with that. If you are too, click here. 

    Journalism

  • Firepower and Dispersal
    August 16, 2012 | Posted by dtrombly - 10:31pm | 14 Comments

    Andrew Davies at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute recently highlighted a fascinating work taking the long view of weapons technology development. The argument essentially goes that, as weapon power has increased exponentially in past millennia, so too has the density of combatants in the field appeared to decrease substantially. The relationship here is obvious, but also obviously not one-sided. The increased lethality of weapons raises the risk of concentrated formations, but additionally, technological advances in logistics, battlefield mobility and communications enable more dispersed formations as well.

    Take, for example, this report from the Colombian think-tank CNAI (Esp.), which, among many, many other things, explains the shift in FARC tactics in response to Colombia’s use of light attack aircraft such as A-37s and Super Tucanos. FARC, for much of the late 1990s and early 2000s, was able to operate in quasi-conventional formations and challenge Colombian forces for territorial supremacy in a number of provinces, as well as to construct large encampments. In certain terrain environments, the Colombian military was long impaired in bringing indirect fires to bear against FARC concentrations.

    Contrary to the caricature of irregular war and COIN that rejects a role for heavy weapons and airpower, Colombia has not only exploited airpower quite effectively in destroying FARC force concentrations, but also made significant gains in putting it towards campaigns of high-value targeting, including (across borders when necessary). FARC, consequently, was forced to re-disperse its forces and adopt a series of newer techniques, tactics, and procedures in order to mitigate its vulnerability to Colombian fires. This all came at relatively insignificant political cost (perhaps excepting the 2008 Andean crisis), as Colombian public opinion appears to largely support or at least accept Colombia’s aerial campaign, though there is much more criticism of Colombia’s use of proxy forces and ambiguous ties with paramilitaries, or the human rights conduct of Colombian ground troops and intelligence services.

    The pattern of counteracting concentrated firepower with forms of dispersal, then, demonstrates a significant degree of continuity between regular and irregular wars. In Kosovo and Iraq, target governments responded to air power by dispersing and camouflaging their forces to wage a protracted defense against Western military might. The response of Serbian Integrated Air Defense System to American air power was in many ways similar to FARC’s - the dispersal of forces, the decreased reliance on fixed rather than mobile combat assets, and a focus on attrition and harassment rather than outright contestation of the battlespace.

    In irregular war, the “political” aspects of the war appear more salient because, in addition to geographic dispersal of the battlefield, there is also a social dispersal by the irregular force by adopting ruses and perfidy to disrupt the enemy’s ability to present concentrated targets. This includes not simply the disguising of combatants as noncombatants, but the integration of noncombatants more directly into logistical and other supporting functions - using unarmed noncombatants to courier information, provide intelligence, transport and procure supplies, et cetera. For countries obeying modern laws of armed conflict and especially those with modern liberal norms, dealing with that kind of dispersal requires non-military means by virtue of the counterinsurgent forces’ own political standards. The Lieber Code and other customary laws of war which sanctioned summary executions and reprisal measures through a wide variety of means and a wide spectrum of persons and properties, were ultimately political measures rather than reflections of the nature of the conflict per se.

    Nevertheless, regularized or conventional forces frequently blurred these arbitrary lines in the past as counteractions to hostile combat power. Sherman and Sheridan were contributors to the American traditions of total conventional war and counterinsurgency both. That the application of massive conventional force to problems of insurgency does not simply reflect arbitrary political decisions, but also the military circumstances that limit the overwhelming application of superior firepower generally. The most powerful fires are not always the easiest to bring to bear, if geography, intelligence, and the logistical tail do not permit it easy introduction to the theater or a leading role in its operations. The sort of limitations that initially prevented Colombia from making good use of fires in its counterinsurgency operations also occur in conventional battlefields, albeit under different circumstances, and the response of dispersal will continue to frustrate firepower. The dispersal of a combatant in response to superior firepower can involve a transmutation in organizational form is a reminder that, in part, the configuration of a foe is, ultimately, a strategic choice bound by capability, rather than essence.

    Air Power, Colombia

  • What We Owe A Professional Army
    August 16, 2012 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 10:43am | 30 Comments

    I temporarily lose my ability to speak and write freely in about two weeks, so I am using what time I have left to stir up as much controversy as possible. Over Twitter two days ago and in my World Politics Review column yesterday, I broached a subject that might anger some of my fellow veterans.  

    When we talk about what we owe veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, we immediately begin to talk about entitlements. The intellectual space devoted to veterans issues, in fact, is almost entirely filled by advocates. (Our research program at CNAS, I am happy to note, is exceptional in this regard.) But as much as I respect organizations like Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and Veterans of Foreign Wars -- I am a member, in fact, of both -- we rarely take a step back and ask the hard philosophical questions about service and entitlements.

    The fact is that the military that has fought in Iraq and Afghanistan is not a military of conscripts like the ones that fought in our nation's previous wars. Each man and woman who has served in Iraq has volunteered and signed a labor contract to provide a service in exchange for compensation. Compensation is not the only thing that motivates servicemen, of course -- far from it -- but the terms of the initial contract are clear.

    We Americans, I argue, need to decide whether or not military service is truly a service or whether, in the era of the all-volunteer force, it is a profession like many others in the federal government. Our decades-long inability to decide between these two poles has lead to an ambiguous situation in which we have lifted up our professional military onto a ridiculous praetorian pedestal. The example I always use is that of the uniformed military serviceman in peak physical condition being allowed to board an airplane before a mother with two small children. Every veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan that I meet thinks this is ridiculous. But those kinds of no-cost perks are delivered along with a lot of very real and costly veterans benefits -- such as the new G.I. Bill -- given at a time when the rest of the country is making tremendous sacrifices. I write:

    If the military is a service, then we can and should expect those who serve to do so humbly and for little reward, in exchange for the grateful thanks of their nation. We might provide compensatory benefits on the back end for the families of those killed and for those wounded or injured while serving. If the military is a profession, by contrast, then we should expect those who choose this profession to provide a contractually obligated service in exchange for pay and benefits. 

    Either way, the policy implications are the same. If veterans of a professional all-volunteer force have simply provided services to the public in exchange for compensation, then we veterans deserve the same benefits provided to other public servants -- no more, no less. If the military, by contrast, is a truly selfless service, than veterans should be among the first in these times of austerity to lead by example and accept fewer public benefits. At the very least, we should be helping that mother with kids onto the airplane ahead of us.

    Anyway, read the whole thing. What I don't want to see is my fellow veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan become like the baby boomers -- spoiled and entitled, unwilling to either give up benefits or accept new taxes, and putting our own selfish desires over those of the greater good. That's not what I want my military service to be about.

    Speaking of World Politics Review, subscribe here. My column ends next week, but if you've enjoyed my column, you'll likely be really excited to see who my replacement is.

    P.S. Steve Walt wrote a post on Tuesday asking why no one was talking about Afghanistan. It's a question worth asking, and absent any real guidance from the campaign, I spent last week's WPR column trying to imagine what a Romney Administration's Afghanistan policy would look like.

    Afghanistan, CMR, Veterans

  • Those Other West Bank Terrorists
    August 15, 2012 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 7:26am | 11 Comments

    Dan Byman and Natan Sachs have a great article in the new Foreign Affairs on the rise of settler terrorism in the West Bank. I suspect that some will argue Byman and Sachs are "brave" to tackle such a "controversial" issue, but reading the article last weekend, one of the things that struck me was how much the article makes sense in the context of Byman's other research. Byman has basically spent the past decade studying the threats posed by violent non-state actors to the state of Israel and then evaluating Israel's response to those threats. If Byman was to follow an honest definition of terrorism, it was only going to be a matter of time before he dealt with the violent Jewish extremists who have both terrorized the Palestinian population of the West Bank and posed a real challenge to the authority of the Israeli state. Regional specialists have been sounding the alarm about the changing character of the Israeli settler movement for quite some time, so again, it makes sense to see security studies specialists now paying attention to the issue.

    Byman and Sachs have contributed a valuable service by sketching out the way in which the settler movement has changed, why it has resorted to violence (spoiler: it's working!), and why both the Israeli and U.S. governments should be more concerned than they are. A few ironies that struck me while reading the report:

    1. This will be awkward for all parties involved, but Palestinians are the new Israelis:

    The situation recalls the bitterness Israelis felt when dealing with former Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat as Palestinian suicide bombings continued: either he could stop the violence and chose not to or he was unable to end it, in which case there was little reason to talk. As settler violence increases, the Palestinians will begin to say the same about Israel's leadership.

    2. The recommendations Byman and Sachs put forward often echo the recommendations so often put forward regarding Islamist terrorism. Specifically...

    ...mainstream rabbis should denounce their radical brethren and demonstrate how their views contradict centuries of religious tradition. When extremist rabbis incite violence, they must face prosecution.

    Now where have we heard something remarkably similar to that before!

    I had never visited Israel or the Palestinian territories prior to 2006 but have been four times since. I am a very amateur student, then, of both Israeli society as well as the debates on Israel and the U.S. relationship with Israel that take place here in the United States. (I am better versed in the theological debates within my own faith tradition regarding the state of Israel, but theology is not a subject I wish to blog on anytime soon!) I have to tell you, though, that I have never once heard anyone from any of the Jewish organizations that support the U.S.-Israeli relationship condone settler violence or speak about it with anything other than condemnation. So I do not think the problem is with the often maligned American Israel Public Affairs Committee or the American Jewish Congress or any other similar group. I wonder, though, what many evangelical Christian groups like John Hagee's Christians United for Israel think about settler violence -- if they think about it at all. And I wonder also if those groups will be an obstacle to some of the recommendations Byman and Sachs make regarding cracking down on funding for extremist groups in the settlements. Because sadly, we American Christians have a history of turning a blind eye toward terrorism when we approve of the ends.

    Israel, Palestine, terrorism

  • Clash of Cultures or Concept Failure?
    August 14, 2012 | Posted by aelkus - 3:08pm | 6 Comments

    I've followed Rosa Brooks' excellent articles on the civil-military planning gap with great interest. In her follow-up, Brooks speculates whether or not civilian education in the culture of the military will help bridge the gap. While this might--under the right circumstances--be useful, I can't help but wonder if the gap that Brooks describes is really one of misunderstanding. While lack of familiarity with the military is certainly a problem, the fault most likely lies in divergent ideas about war.

    Certainly, there are a lot of things that civilian foreign policy and national security analysts do not understand about the military, and vice versa. But the conflict described in Brooks' article sounded like a chapter from Micah Zenko's work on civilian perceptions of "discrete military operations." As Zenko points out, some political executives are powerfully attracted to the idea that limited (he uses the word "discrete," which is probably more appropriate) amounts of force can create strategic outcomes. A unmanned aerial system here and no-fly zone there and events will sort themselves out.

    What's missing? The reality that we are attempting to violently impose our will on an adversary who will do his utmost to thwart us. Moreover, our efforts are always judged by other actors that have the power to interfere should it benefit them. The Iranians and the Pakistanis certainly interfered to the detriment of our warfighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. We also cannot underrate the role of chance on the battlefield and the effect that passion can have on sterile statecraft. The chaotic end of the Gulf War created a decade's worth of policy problems, and the painting of Saddam Hussein as a Hitler-in-waiting constrained American postwar diplomatic options and fueled calls for his overthrow.

    Military leadership are encultured through professional military education, study of military history, and command experience to view war in a more instrumental fashion. Moreover, they also have had personal experience of what it means to violently execute foreign policy at the tip of the spear. However, the military can also sometimes become too inwardly focused on its own professional-technical sphere to the detriment of the political plot. In the late 70s and early 80s, maneuver theorists doggedly pursued the idea of an "elastic defense" of Western Europe despite the fact that the Europeans themselves were deeply against anything except an active defense on the frontiers. Finally, civilian leaders with poor tactical and operational knowledge but sound strategic vision have won wars from the American Civil War to the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese conflict.

    Both camps would benefit from considering strategy's fundamentals: the necessity of a sound theory of victory composed of a just and viable political object and a plausible narrative of how it is enabled by organized violence. Both military and civilian need to answer General Petraeus' famous question "tell me how this ends." Civilian and military cultures will always see war differently, and the "unequal dialogue" of civil-military relations will always (rightly) privilege civilian command. But the strategy bridge is the key terrain that both sides need to share in order for America to secure its vital interests.

    civil-military relations, Strategy

  • On Accusations of Orientalism
    August 13, 2012 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 7:40am | 7 Comments

    Is there a lazier way to dismiss analysis of the contemporary Middle East than by leveling a blanket accusation of Orientalism?

    Rami Khouri:

    [The] discussion of how events will unfold in post-Assad Syria is riddled with wildly unsubstantiated speculation and pessimism, often tarnished by doses of Orientalism, anti-Arab and anti-Islamic racism [what is the Islamic race? -- Ed.], and plain old-fashioned amateurism and ignorance.

     

    The prevalent speculations I refer to include that Syria will long remain locked in domestic strife; the Alawites will face eternal hostility and revenge; sectarian civil war is likely to break out; the post-Assad struggle for power will be chaotic and perhaps violent; Syria could easily break up into several smaller ethnic statelets linked to neighboring states or compatriots; Syria’s collapse will trigger warfare across the region, and a few other such scenarios.

    It occurs to me that learned students of civil wars and insurgencies as phenomena might argue there are ample, non-racist reasons to believe that any of the above might happen in Syria. It also occurs to me that students of the conflicts in Lebanon (1975-1990) and Iraq (2003-present) might also find reason for any of the above to happen in Syria -- but these concerns can safely be dismissed as Orientalist. There is actually nothing to fear, because as Khouri helpfully explains:

    The Syrian people are too intelligent, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan to allow themselves to sink into a dark pit of sectarian warfare.

    [Editor's note: the history of civil wars, eastern and western, is filled with people too intelligent, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan to fight them.]

    Syria

  • Red Dawn Remake
    August 10, 2012 | Posted by aelkus - 5:26pm | 9 Comments

    Most people are already snarking the hell out of this on Twitter, but want to foreground the irony. What does it mean if one of the 80s' most rabidly nationalistic action flicks had to censor itself (the Chinese were the original villains) in fear of not getting that overseas box office? What would Patrick Swayze have done? I'm not sure. Mostly I'm just nostalgic for the days that teenagers with bad hair could stand up to the evil Cuban/Nicaraguan invaders. Wolverines!

    The only plausible North Korean invasion strategic aims would be to capture Disneyland, a particular favorite of the Kim clan. Thankfully, we have a blueprint of how to retake the Magic Kingdom, courtesy of the USMC.

    Wolverines

  • Airpower, Special Operations, and Paramilitary Support
    August 10, 2012 | Posted by aelkus - 2:46am | 1 Comments

    Wondering how the Afghanistan-Libya-Syria? template of air power, special operations forces, and native forces got going? Simon Anglim, author of a wonderful new book on Orde Wingate, has a new piece worth your attention in the Journal of Military Operations. Paramilitary support operations, as Anglim calls them, have a long and somewhat checkered history. There are essentially two methods of supporting an insurgency that Anglim catalogs: first, issuing weapons and supplies to irregulars while using small units existing outside formal command structures to plan operations against the enemy's nerve centers and communications. Wingate was not a huge fan of this method:

    Wingate was vitriolic about [T.E.] Lawrence’s approach to paramilitary support – issuing weapons, ammunition and money to anyone claiming they would fight, in the hope that they would wage protracted ‘People’s War’ along enemy lines of communication, forcing enemy formations to disperse and breaking their will via frustration and exhaustion. Wingate knew that winning the ‘armed struggle’ in reality necessitated success in battle, requiring disciplined, well-trained and well-armed professional guerrilla forces – the opposite of anarchic tribesmen like Lawrence’s Bedouin:

    Certainly there were also personal issues involved, as Lawrence had written some nasty things about Wingate's mentor. But there was also a genuine philosophical difference prompted by Wingate's rather desultory experiences with guerrillas. Whlle fighting againt the Italians in Ethiopia, Wingate had experienced the problems of trying to hand out weapons and then expecting that the weapons themselves would unify squabbling tribesmen, warlords, and 'accidental guerrillas' with their own disparate agendas. More often than not Wingate found that the results did not result in strategic effect for British policy aims. Moreover, Wingate also lived in a time when the primary counterinsurgents suppressing internal rebellion were the thoroughly destructive Imperial Japanese Army and the German military and paramilitary warmaking apparatus. Both maintained iron grips on conquered lands, even if the Japanese could never gain strategic control over the whole of China and the Germans struggled mightily to cope with partisans in Yugoslavia and the Eastern Front. Compared to the "Three Alls," even the horrific brutality of a Assad or Gaddafi looks rather tame in comparison.

    Either way, the partisans on both fronts did not create a true strategic threat to their German and Japanese opponents. Soviet destruction of German military power in Belorussia 1944 in Operation Bagration did what partisan bands could not, and Japanese ground military power in China was only uprooted after the Soviet destruction of the Kwantung Army in 1945's Manchurian Strategic Offensive. As Wingate noted, "When opposing ruthless enemies, such as Japanese or Germans, it is wrong to place any reliance upon the efforts of the individual patriot, however devoted. Brutal and widespread retaliation instantly follows any attempt to injure the enemy’s war machine, and, no matter how carefully the sabotage organisation may have been trained for the event, in practice they will find it impossible to operate against a resolute and ruthless enemy." Survival at all costs was the prominent concern when faced with such opponents, especially since those who survived long enough to see the Japanese and Germans leave would have a head start in the postwar struggle over domestic political power.

    Wingate attempted to create a new mode of warfare rooted around a different vision. Regular units specializing in operations inside enemy lines, supplied by air and able to draw on close air support, would convert "potentially drawn-out and desultory guerrilla warfare into combined-arms operations having swift, decisive strategic effect." His Long Range Penetration (LRP) forces would find targets for bombing attack deep behind enemy line. But as Anglim observes, "airpower on its own was perhaps less important than the ability of ground forces to summon it, and then exploit its impact." Ultimately, the United States carried out a version of this sort of warfare on a grand scale in Afghanistan in 2002, and Anglim argues that Britain, France, and Qatari special operations forces in Libya provided forward air control, operated anti-tank missiles, and coordinated rebel ground offensives with NATO airstrikes. In 2003 in Kurdistan, the United States took Mosul in concert with Kurdish irregulars. The key to Wingate's mode of warfare was the prosecution of integrated air-ground offensives with an aim to generate strategic effect through operational guidance of ground forces to ensure that weapons are used appropriately and tactics are sound. Such a presence need not necessarily be too large, but must also be sufficient for the task.

    Whether or not paramilitary support operations are in the national interest is a policy question, but Anglim has admirably outlined the British operational lineage of the "Afghan method" that many have assumed was explicitly American and invented in 2001. Of course William "Bull" Donovan and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) also worked on similar ideas, and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) implemented a similar operational design at times. But Wingate expressed the primary ideas with perhaps the most clarity.

    Strategy, Syria

  • Back in the USSA (Links)
    August 3, 2012 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 10:09am | 14 Comments

    I have been abroad for the past five weeks and just got back two nights ago. I have currently worked my way through two weeks of emails and have another three to go, so if you have tried to get in touch over the past month, have some patience with me. I was working a bit while I was abroad, as anyone who watched me in debates on France24 knows, and I want to provide some links to my columns for World Politics Review so that you can reach beyond the paywall. (Now having said that, I encourage you all to actually buy a subscription to WPR. It's not terribly expensive, and -- my column aside -- the content is both fresh and informed.)

    1 August 2012: "Fallout from Libya Precedent Felt in Syria Debate"

    25 July 2012: "State, USAID Must Learn From Afghanistan Errors"

    18 July 2012: "U.S.-Israel Military Ties Face Long-Term Strains"

    11 July 2012: "Breaking Down the Barriers Between the U.S. and Its Military"

    4 July 2012: "No Crisis in Wartime U.S. Civil-Military Relations"

    27 June 2012: "America's Dysfunctional Decade in Afghanistan"

    Afghanistan, CMR, Libya, Misc., Pol-Mil, Syria

  • Guest Post: The Last Argument of Tyrants
    August 1, 2012 | Posted by dtrombly - 5:14pm | 3 Comments

    Captain Brett Friedman is an active duty field artillery officer in the United States Marine Corps. He is currently attending Expeditionary Warfare School in Quantico, Virginia. He normally blogs at the Marine Corps Gazette Blog.

    While much ink has been spilled about the use of digital social networking on the part of protestors and insurgents during the Arab Spring and every use of air strikes draws the condemnation of the world, an old standby been a mainstay of Middle East tyrants clinging to their positions: artillery. After the imposition of a No Fly Zone over Libya, Muammar el-Qaddafi used artillery in an attempt to reduce the city of Misurata and even succeeded in closing down the port. The opposition has utilized indirect fire as well. In June of 2011, then President of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh was injured in a mortar attack. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad has used artillery throughout the country in an attempt to destroy the Free Syrian Army.

    While indirect fire in warfare may have reached its apex during World War I, investing in artillery is still advantageous for countries with developed militaries. It is far easier and cheaper to train artillery crewmen than it is to train, educate, and pay pilots for example. Most artillery crewmen only require basic math skills and more educated officers can oversee multiple guns. Artillery is also less expensive to employ. For example, the United States pays $27,000 for a basic JDAM. The tactical tomahawk, the United States’ newest cruise missile, costs $730,000. An average high explosive artillery round like the M107 only costs about $1500. The Syrian regime, for example, has taken advantage of this cost effectiveness. Depending on defections, they have over 3,440 pieces.

    Despite the disparity in costs, artillery remains one of the most effective weapons on the battlefield. The ubiquitous M107 shell, for example, boasts a fifty meter casualty radius. What that means on the ground is that any unarmored human standing within fifty meters of the point of impact in an open field will die. Injuries can occur well outside that radius. Buildings and terrain features are not always a savior for those subjected to artillery fire. Wood, rocks, bricks, and metal all become shrapnel when thrown by the force of an explosion. Depending on the model and fuse, artillery shells can penetrate buildings and explode inside. Additionally, artillery shells are never fired for effect one at a time. Most gun crews will fire one or two rounds a minute, although well-trained crews can do better. Multiple guns fire dozens of shells at a time and, unlike air frames, are not restricted by weather or darkness. Behold 11th Marines, a regiment, firing at the same time on the same target outside Baghdad in 2003. More advanced rounds are even more destructive, like the Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition shells that explode in the air and drop eighty-eight shaped charge bomblets.

    Those are just the physical effects, not for nothing was PTSD first known as “shell shock.” Those lucky enough to live through sustained bombardment can be affected for the rest of their lives. Unlike their Hollywood portrayal, incoming artillery rounds do not make a sound before impact. Unless you are able to hear the cannon themselves, there is no telling where and when the next round will strike. If they are well supplied and reasonably competent, a mere battalion of artillery (eighteen guns) can keep a small city under fire indefinitely. Civilians and combatants will be similarly affected. Sustained bombardments prevent sleep, put the nervous system through a rollercoaster-ride of fear, relief, and surprise, and do not discriminate between enemy, friendly, and neutral actors. An old adage goes that a bullet may have your name on it, but an artillery shell is addressed “to whom it may concern.”

    So why has the use of artillery in the Arab Spring garnered little of the attention of the other combat arms? Every use of helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft draws renewed cries for the tactic du’jour, a No-Fly Zone. Yet, Misurata in Libya was shelled for months and the Syrian city of Aleppo is under bombardment as I write these words. Perhaps we have less fear for artillery, a weapon that has been used for centuries, than we do for relatively young weapons like airplanes and tanks. Our greatest fear is, of course, the use of chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction. But artillery is easier and cheaper to employ to the same effect without the international condemnation that would follow any use of chemicals. Artillery can literally wipe a city off the map, given time, yet the international community seems far more accepting of its use than any other major weapon. Tyrants seem to realize this. We should be just as aghast at the indiscriminate shelling of Aleppo as we were at the mere rumor of Assad using his chemical weapons. That being said, we should also be wary of exposing our troops to its effects.

    Although it is destructive artillery, like drones, is just a tool. Western militaries strive to increase the accuracy of artillery to reduce the chance of collateral damage. The M982 Excalibur precision-guided artillery round is just one example. Professional militaries also limit the destruction of artillery through battlefield restriction like GEN Stanley McChrystal’s famously strict rules of engagement in Afghanistan. Despite its advanced age, (the first use of gunpowder artillery occurred on January 28, 1132 in China) artillery has remained a relevant and effective element of warfare. Advanced militaries continue to invest in and develop better indirect fire capabilities while hard-pressed despots use it to destroy insurgents and civilians. Some in the US military have predicted the end of artillery as air support has improved and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan took to the population centers to deter US firepower. The tyrants of the Middle East seem to disagree.  

    Arab Spring, artilery

  • Escalation and Land Warfare in Offshore Concepts
    August 1, 2012 | Posted by dtrombly - 12:08am | 0 Comments

    When it comes to issues of irregular warfare and Middle Eastern conflict, there is an understandable focus on the terrestrial domain and the problems of insurgency and terrorism. Furthermore, given the recent record of that experience, it’s unsurprising that direct engagement in land warfare is something of an anathema in debates about the American strategic future. Avoiding “land wars in Asia,” whether by substituting local soldiers for Americans or by avoiding such conflicts altogether through a strategy of “offshore balancing” is again the new vogue.

    Many commentators and analysts, particularly those of the realist persuasion in international relations, have sought seapower and “offshore” models of power projection as a refuge from the problems that now seem inextricably linked with land warfare and land presence generally - terrorism, insurgency, occupation and nation-building. Even the rhetoric of the “pivot to Asia” and the seeming defense policy transition from a large-footprint counterinsurgency force to a suite of unconventional or offshore counterterrorism and counter-A2/AD capabilities suggests an escape from the messiness of the Middle East and irregular conflicts.

    Yet as the recent death of one fisherman and the wounding of several others off the coast of Dubai should remind us, naval operations - and maritime-centric strategies and policies - are still messy, even if they are not as obviously costly or politically painful as those of the past. The USS Cole bombing and Iran’s persistent use of irregular maritime operations to harass American shipping should make it clear that the problems of irregular conflict on land - the unclear distinction between combatant and noncombatant, the counteraction of American conventional superiority with unconventional platforms and tactics, and the persistent risk of violent entanglement with American presence still remains in the Gulf. Indeed, as a comparison of American responses to Iranian naval provocations and its well-documented operations against American forces on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan shows, the risk of wider conflict breaking out appears higher at sea than due to American land presence.

    Far from being an easy extrication from “perpetual war,” America’s maritime presence, and the sorts of missions and political interests associated with it, has often been a trigger of major conflicts. The Quasi-War, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam all had maritime incidents as serious triggers. As the U.S.S. Cole bombing demonstrated, even in areas where the U.S. does not have a permanent basing presence, naval vessels pose potential targets.

    “Gunboat diplomacy,” and all the political and cultural connotations it presents, should disabuse us of the notion that offshore power’s exercise is inherently more warmly received. Not only that, however, but a clear delineation between offshore power projection and onshore warfare is not likely to remain a viable strategic concept. As the recent report of the Amphibious Capabilities Working Group points out, a “single naval battle” approach requires addressing challenges not simply in the maritime domain, but in the air, space, cyberspace and on land. Whether the maritime threat includes a state’s sophisticated land-based defenses or home ports for pirate vessels, the arbitrary political division between offshore assets and onshore warfare requires a competent and reliable ground complement for operational and strategic coherence.

    In cases such as Libya, the U.S. and its allies were lucky enough to work with an irregular ground force capable of matching Gaddafi’s military and paramilitary assets, albeit likely with support from contractors and allied special forces. In Somalia, as Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and I have noted, the U.S. has worked with a wide network of partner nations and proxy groups within Somalia, often buttressed with private contracting, to accomplish ground operations in support of substantial U.S. offshore assets. Yet it’s unlikely that local allies will always be able to furnish the requisite ground power to enable the muddier aspects of the “single naval battle,” let alone war aims more firmly rooted in enemy soil.

    As Chris Rawley has noted, war on land is not synonymous with the modes of warfare the U.S. has charged its land forces with in the last decade. The offshoring of U.S. power, if it does occur, should not and probably will not mean an end to the frequent use of land power as an instrument of U.S. policy. Nor is such an approach ultimately incompatible with an austere, downsized military with limited national aims. After all, the Small Wars Manual was a product of a Marine Corps fighting in a relatively underfunded military with low tolerance for large footprints and in a political framework under which the U.S. enjoyed far less flexibility and international freedom of action compared to today.

    On the high-intensity end of the warfighting spectrum, Brett Friedman argues that even a concept such as AirSea Battle, which gives land warfare a backseat in its very name, ultimately will have to relate to a theory of victory that addresses land power. Ultimately the division between air, sea, cyber, land land, is one of political convenience, obscuring a strategy reality where someone, at America’s behest or in America’s aid, provides Wylie’s “man on the scene with the gun.” As in the late 19th and early 20th century, after the sound of the cannons fades, or beyond the reach of their shot, even an invulnerable offshore force faces the problems of land warfare.

    History has also demonstrated, since then, that naval power projection and naval forces do not provide an escape from irregular warfare or regional military entanglement. Ultimately, while an “offshore” strategy and its supporting policies may have many reasons to recommend them, they do not necessarily mean a low footprint, a less bellicose foreign policy, or even an escape from the problems of land warfare. Instead they demand a reconsideration of ways of warfare, especially amphibious operations, that will likely prove a necessary complement to any sea and air-based defense posture.

    amphibious operations, Marines, Persian Gulf, U.S. Navy

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