Center for a New American Security

Abu Muqawama, at this very minute, is editing a paper, listening to Conrad Crane on C-SPAN, and also providing a link to the Conrad Crane interview here. (Conrad Crane, an historian, was the lead author on the new counterinsurgency manual, FM 3-24, and recently returned from a visit to Iraq.) Dave from SWJ passed this along.

Also, check out this interactive account of a battle in Afghanistan between the Brits and the Taliban.

A few days ago, Abu Muqawama received over e-mail the proofs for the new edition of Armed Forces Journal. There is some good stuff in this latest issue, including a thoughtful essay by MAJ Daniel Davis on the continued (ir)relevance of net-centric warfare. He writes:

...given the current state of technology, the probability of future development in nations across the globe, and a historical perspective on the performance of new and emerging technologies in the past, does this theory stand up to rigorous examination? I argue that it does not. Aside from a near-faith-based, unsubstantiated belief in the efficacy of technology to do anything and everything imaginable, one of the primary factors upon which this assessment is based is its failure to give proper consideration to the capabilities of the future enemy force.

Davis then goes on to talk about tanks and planes and all kinds of expensive weapons systems that Abu Muqawama freely admits he has no experience with. But for those of you who like reading this blog for defense issues not related to counterinsurgency -- who the hell are you? -- this article will be thought-provoking.

For the rest of us, the real treat in this issue of AFJ is the debate between MAJ Chris Rogers and LTC Gian Gentile on the new counterinsurgency doctrine. Gentile has a big problem with the new counterinsurgency doctrine. In a previous, controversial essay for AFJ, he wrote:

The eminent scholar and strategic thinker Eliot Cohen noted that counterinsurgency war is still war, and war in its essence is fighting. In trying to teach its readers to eat soup with a knife, the COIN manual discards the essence and reality of counterinsurgency warfare fighting, thereby manifesting its tragic flaw. ... War is not clean and precise; it is blunt and violent and dirty because, at its essence, it is fighting, and fighting causes misery and death. The authors of the Army’s 1986 AirLand Battle doctrine premised their manual on fighting as the essence of war. Fighting gave the 1986 manual a coherence that reflected the true nature of war. The Army’s new COIN manual’s tragic flaw is that the essence of war fighting is missing from its pages.

Basically, Gian Gentile thinks the new COIN manual leaves the enemy out of the equation, a dangerous thing to do when thinking about, you know, stuff like war. War, for Gentile, is fighting. And if you describe a kind of war without violence, you're just going to go and confuse the American Soldier. In the latest issue of AFJ, Gentile refines his message:

...the predisposition to focus exclusively on ourselves and our doctrine leads us potentially to violate the guidance of one of the oldest philosophers of war, Sun Tzu, to know oneself and the enemy and the environment, too. Our doctrine directs us to believe that in a counterinsurgency war, the people are the center of gravity. In this theory, the enemy is removed from the essence of war and placed at the fringes. Then, within this so-called war devoid of an enemy, applied scientific processes align the people to their government. Because the enemy is removed as the central element in war, the element of friction in war is gone, too.

Gentile is especially put off by the admonition found in FM 3-24 (the new COIN manual) that "tactics mean nothing." (The manual doesn't actually say this, so this is a straw man. The manual says that tactical success guarantees nothing. Which is not to say that tactics are not important. It's just saying that good tactics are not the "end state" here.) Rogers gamely addresses this claim, though:

The salient point from this paradox is not that tactics mean nothing — it is that tactics must be employed as part of a larger design aimed at achieving strategic goals.

Now, you guys can all read these articles yourselves, but in Abu Muqawama's opinion, Rogers gets the better of Gentile mainly because Rogers has the advantage of being right. Gentile, apparently, thinks FM 3-24 seeks to push the Army and Marine Corps into some crazy post-Clausewitzian era. But Gentile -- for whom Abu Muqawama has a lot of respect -- takes this to mean we have moved past the "era of battles and wars of decision." Abu Muqawama -- who may be silly and ignorant but has read his Clausewitz -- sees FM 3-24 actually pushing the Army and Marine Corps closer to Clausewitz.

The essence of war is not to fight and kill the enemy. The essence of war is to achieve political aims through the application of force. Everything an army does must be subservient to the overall political objective. War seen as the destruction of the enemy's fighting force is some kind of alternate, Jominian concept. Sometimes you "fight" by applying violence to (read: shooting and bombing) the enemy's fighting force, sure. Sometimes you "fight" by merely threatening the enemy. But however you do battle, the single most important thing is the political aim you wish to achieve. Nothing else -- neither body counts nor seized cities nor sunken battleships -- takes precedence over the political aim.

In a U.S. Army operations order, the single most important thing is the commander's intent. If you forget everything else, soldiers are told, remember the commander's intent and work toward that goal. Abu Muqawama is sorry if someone told Gian Gentile and his soldiers that killing the enemy was their job, but it's not -- at least not necessarily. Accomplishing the stated political aims of the American political leadership through the application of force is their job, and that may or may not mean shooting bad guys. To remind soldiers of that -- even if it means shattering the illusion that war necessarily means lots of killing -- is no bad thing.

Holy cow, we know you all want to talk about last night's national championship game, but everyone who reads this blog needs to read Matt Matthews's interview with retired Israeli general Shimon Naveh on the 2006 Israel-Hizbollah war. Not only does Naveh display a more nuanced view of Hizbollah than is normally seen or heard south of the Blue Line, but he also has a withering critique of the IDF's officer corps. Some choice excerpts:

"Look, Hezbollah are Lebanese patriots. I don’t know if you are aware of it. There are many tensions within the theory. They are Shi’a but they are Lebanese patriots. They pursue their own political and military agenda and yet they are Lebanese patriots. In fact, their entire fight against the Israelis very much served several purposes. One was regaining Lebanese sovereignty over the south, but the other one was to really boost up this duality between being a social-political entity and a militant entity."

"First of all, I cannot get into Halutz’s mind; it’s too tough. ... He’s an idiot. In this sense he’s an idiot, as I said in the interview. He’s really a fool; he’s a clown."

"I know one brigade commander who I think should be executed for cowardice. First of all, remember, there was no coherence in what he was doing. He was told to move troops in, then pull out, move in and then pull out. Sometimes plans would change five times a day. Yet when he gave this command to a specific guy whom I referred to – the commander of 7th Tank Brigade – he was given the mission to go in and he was afraid, simply afraid. He used this as excuse."

"Basically I think that the IDF was totally unprepared for this kind of operation, both conceptually, operationally and tactically – mainly conceptually and practically. The point is that the IDF fell in love with what it was doing with the Palestinians. In fact, it became addictive. When you fight a war against a rival who’s by all means inferior to you, you may lose a guy here or there, but you’re in total control. It’s nice. You can pretend that you fight the war and yet it’s not really a dangerous war. This kind of thing served as an instrument corrupting the IDF."

Andrew Exum has an analysis up on Harvard's Middle East Strategy blog on what lessons U.S. policy-makers and military professionals can draw from the 2006 war which builds off the Naveh interview:

Some will say the lesson in Israel’’s 2006 war is that the U.S. military can go "soft" by spending too much time on counterinsurgency in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, forgetting the kind of combined arms skills that come in handy in major combat operations. This would seem to be the opinion of the current Commandant of the Marine Corps, among others. Counterinsurgency theorists would say this is ridiculous. John Nagl describes counterinsurgency as “"graduate-level warfare," and it follows that just as a PhD candidate in mathematics would not forget how to solve basic algebra equations, it is unlikely a junior officer in the U.S. Army will necessarily forget basic infantry battle drills while sipping tea with sheiks in Anbar Province. (And besides, until the U.S. military truly learns counterinsurgency, it is unlikely to “"overlearn" counterinsurgency.)

It is true, though, that much of the blame for the IDF's poor performance in the 2006 war must fall upon the IDF’'s officer corps (and Israeli politicians for slashing the IDF'’s training budget). Complacency is the enemy of any good military, and it certainly seems as if the IDF grew too accustomed to the kind of missions they performed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories after the 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon. In the same way, the U.S. military officer corps in Iraq and Afghanistan is perhaps the most combat-proven officer corps in our nation’'s history. But operational commanders must work hard to ensure that the overall culture within the officer corps is not overrun by complacency. This is their job, as officers, commanders, and custodians of the nation’'s military.

If you do not read anything else today, though, read the Naveh interview. Looking forward to the comments on this one!

This SSI publication came across Charlie's desk today: On the Uses of Cultural Knowledge by Sheila Miyoshi Jager. It manages to pack a review of FM 3-24, an overview of the controversy surrounding Human Terrain Teams (and anthropology in COIN, in general), and a set of culturally based policy recommendations for the GWOT into a v. trim 30 pages. This in and of itself is quite a feat. But wait, there's more! It's also really good.*

Of particular interest to Charlie was the author's distinction between the uses of culture at the operational and strategic levels, something she's been trying to sort out at work recently. Much of the current focus on culture--particularly in the COIN community--is in assisting operators in the field. And that's damn important. But it's not the whole picture:

If cultural knowledge has helped U.S. forces to refocus their efforts to better achieve their operational and tactical goals, the question our political leaders should be asking is whether cultural knowledge can also help them to redefine a broader strategic framework for counterinsurgency.

One element of this dichotomy is that "operational" culture is relatively static: it consists of customs, habits, and traditions; the cultural or symbolic details of everyday life. But,

Against this definition of culture as an enduring “grammar” of values and customs rooted in a timeless tradition, cultural knowledge as applied to the level of strategy assumes that cultures are dynamic entities, not static categories. Hence, in formulating an overarching strategic framework for counterinsurgency, it is important to grasp not merely the cultural logic of say, Sunni identity, including their values, customs, traditions, etc., but how Sunni extremists have invoked these traditional values, historical experiences, and belief-systems in the contemporary context to justify their extremist actions.

[snip]

[E]xtremist groups like al-Qai’da have appropriated and reinterpreted Islamic texts, belief-systems, and traditions to justify their own radical ideology; in other words, they have used culture instrumentally.

Recognition of this instrumentality is underlies many of the policies associated with the Anbar Awakening and CLCs in Iraq. Which also to suggest that it's not a panacea: cultural knowledge, of the type used in devising strategies, often creates strategic possibilities where seemingly none existed before. New fissures to exploit, new allies to woo. But these polices can also be fraught with peril. Policies informed by culture are nearly always going to be at least marginally better than those that aren't (cf, Iraq 2003-2005). Like most everything on the battlefield, these victories are precarious.

Jager may respond that those are operational decisions, still not informed by anything resembling a grand-strategy based on an understanding of AQ's ideology and place in the Muslim world. And Charlie is in violent agreement. Here's hoping that that changes soon (especially with all the talk about arming/engaging tribes in Afghanistan and Pakistan). But as we all know, hope is not a plan.

*Charlie is still rather uncomfortable with the idea of "culture" as popularly used. She tends to think more in terms of institutions (or, if you prefer, preference functions, which "culture" influences and orders). Jager notes that at the Army War College (which hosts SSI), they think of strategic culture primarily in terms of history. Which, to Charlie's mind, also works.

Ace national security reporter Shaun Waterman has an interesting story up on the UPI wire on the way in which the U.S. lost the information battle during First Fallujah:

A secret intelligence assessment of the first battle of Fallujah shows the U.S. military believes it lost control over information about what was happening in the town, leading to political pressure that ended its April 2004 offensive with control being handed to Sunni insurgents.

"The outcome of a purely military contest in Fallujah was always a foregone conclusion -- coalition victory," reads the assessment, prepared by analysts at the U.S. Army's National Ground Intelligence Center.

"But Fallujah was not simply a military action, it was a political and informational battle. … The effects of media coverage, enemy information operations, and the fragility of the political environment conspired to force a halt to U.S. military operations," concludes the assessment.

It adds that the decision to order an immediate assault on Fallujah, in response to the televised killing of four contractors from the private military firm Blackwater, effectively prevented the Marine Expeditionary Force charged with retaking the town from carrying out "shaping operations," like clearing civilians from the area, which would have improved their chances of success.

"The very short time allowed for shaping operations before the fight resulted in a battlefield full of civilians," observes the assessment, prepared in March 2006 and classified secret.

A copy was posted on the Web last week by the organization Wikileaks, which aims to provide a secure way whistle-blowers can "reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations" and says it favors government transparency.

Although a spokesman for U.S. Army intelligence declined to comment on the document, United Press International independently confirmed its veracity.

Abu Muqawama would post the hyperlink to the classified intelligence assessment but he thinks that's, like, against the law or something. Is it? Anyway, he'll post the hyperlink from wikileaks if it's not. The report is a good one -- whoever wrote it clearly understands the nature of the fight better than most general officers in the U.S. Army or Marine Corps. Regardless, read the full Waterman report.

Very rarely does Abu Muqawama recommend a book to his readership without first reading it. That said, Steven Metz's new book, Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy,is one to which we'll gladly lend some free publicity. Steven Metz has done some of the hardest thinking within U.S. government on counterinsurgency (and is a reader of this blog, it's rumored). Abu Muqawama looks forward to what Metz has to say in this new book. He knows Metz has been skeptical of how much "traditional" counterinsurgency theory (think: David Galula) applies to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and also whether or not a nation-state like the USA can ever defeat an organized insurgency. This book should offer, then, plenty of food for thought for readers of this blog.

Anyway, check out Small Wars Journal for a sneak preview. And congratulations, Steve!

Also, was anyone else out there laughing as much as Abu Muqawama as Georgia embarrassed Hawaii last night? Yeah, Carl was right:

Carlotta Gall, whose reporting from Afghanistan Abu Muqawama has enjoyed over the past few years, has an article today in the New York Times talking about that way in which the vast majority of the militants in Pakistan are Pakistani.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Qaeda network accused by Pakistan’s government of killing the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is increasingly made up not of foreign fighters but of homegrown Pakistani militants bent on destabilizing the country, analysts and security officials here say. ...

Al Qaeda in Pakistan now comprises not just foreigners but Pakistani tribesmen from border regions, as well as Punjabis and Urdu speakers and members of banned sectarian and Sunni extremists groups, Najam Sethi, editor of The Daily Times, wrote in a front-page analysis. “Al Qaeda is now as much a Pakistani phenomenon as it is an Arab or foreign element,” he wrote.

Now that may seem like an anodyne observation to the majority of you, but it's important to consider how this affects the counterinsurgency dynamic in Pakistan. It's one thing when you can -- as in the case of the Afghans -- dismiss your insurgent rivals as "outsiders" or "foreigners." The Pakistani Army, however, has over the past few months shown very little appetite for fighting other Pakistanis over the course of a sustained counterinsurgency campaign. Convincing the Pakistani Army to fight such a campaign is one of the great strategic challenges the U.S. faces in South Asia. Stephen P. Rosen has more on this dilemma on the MESH blog...

Elsewhere in the Gray Lady is a long treatment of the way in which Benazir Bhutto charmed the Washington establishment. Boy, she sure did. To the point where all of her friends went to great and shameless lengths to stress their connections to her and very few mentioned the fact that:

a) She was dismissed from office, twice, on corruption charges.
b) Her husband, whom she once described as the "Nelson Mandela of Pakistan," embezzled millions from Pakistan into Swiss accounts while she was prime minister.
c) She is widely believed by her own family to have killed her brother (and staunch political opponent) in a political assassination in 1996.
d) A "feminist hero," she turned the other way as the Taliban enslaved the women of Afghanistan and once described them as a "stabilizing influence" in Central Asia.
e) A "champion of democracy," Bhutto was the "chairperson for life" of her political party and has now been succeeded by her ... 19-year old son.

But don't pay any attention to all that. She was, after all, an attractive woman who graduated from Harvard and Oxford. Did you know she was physically attractive, by the way? And spoke excellent English? Anyway, that's all you need to know. Oh, and Ann Curry loves her.

Update: "I broke into Benazir Bhutto's dorm room at Oxford 30 years ago and now feel the need to put that anecdote into this otherwise respectable column to prove how cool I am."

Abu Muqawama is thinking hard about whether or not this specific event -- the Bhutto assassination -- affects U.S. COIN efforts in Afghanistan, Swat, and the FATA. While he's thinking about that question this afternoon, though, he'll be watching this discussion on The Charlie Rose Show featuring Sarah Sewall and Montgomery McFate. (h/t SWJ) Enjoy:

From our partners in crime over at the Small Wars Journal Blog:

We are checking it out now, but apparently the last of 86 unique items and over 140 total books and two movies were purchased today and sent off to the Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy in Kabul. Moreover, through this effort the Academy and my (Dave Dilegge) 'day job' organization (Wargaming Division of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab) were able to hook up resulting in 50 Small Wars manuals and COIN related DVDs and CDs sent as well. Thanks to all who helped us and Abu Muqawama with this effort.

Let us second those thanks. We couldn't be more proud.

Abu Muqawama got some pretty sweet Christmas gifts yesterday, and he wanted to share a few of the titles with you all.

1. Hugh Kennedy's The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In

Abu Muqawama is pretty excited to read this military history of the Islamic conquests. In the one hundred years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), Islamic armies conquered a land mass greater than that of the Roman Empire. How?

2. The Russian General Staff's The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost

Translated and edited by Les Grau, Abu Muqawama flipped through this book a few weeks ago and thinks this book will be a valuable companion to The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan and The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet Afghan War.

Right now, though, Abu Muqawama is reading No Country for Old Menbefore he sees the movie. So far, the book is fantastic. But then, Abu Muqawama has always liked Cormac McCarthy.

(Abu Muqawama also received a great bottle of Scottish gin from one cousin and a nice bottle of single malt scotch from another. That has nothing to do with counterinsurgency, of course, but it does make an evening spent reading about Afghanistan a lot more enjoyable.)