Topic “Stability Operations”
On Nation Building
Max Boot's provocative op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in defense of nation-building has been getting people excited and angry. Max:
If you want yet another example of how costly our aversion to nation-building has been, look no further than Iraq. The Bush administration associated nation-building with the hated policies of the Clinton administration and refused to prepare for it. The result was that Iraq fell apart after U.S. troops had toppled its existing regime.
I'm with Max half-way on this one. On the one hand, I firmly believe that when you decide to go to war, you should be prepared to use any and all means at your disposal to effect victory. If that means building institutions of the state, as we have done in both Iraq and Afghanistan, okay. You can't "win" in either place, after all, without at least creating strong police forces to take your place and keep public order so that a peaceful political process and economy can thrive. You have to create a secure environment in any post-conflict state, and unless you plan on staying forever, that means building up competent local security forces. That's a form of nation-building that I can support.
Where I diverge from Max is in two places. First, Max conflates nation-building with the willingness to intervene and engage in the first place.
Is isolationism really a course we want to follow today at a time when Iran is going nuclear, Pakistan is turning against the West, North Korea is trying to export its destructive technology, turmoil is spreading across the Middle East, Al Qaeda is far from defeated and China's power is growing?
I know Max is afraid Americans of all stripes will now embrace isolationism in the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But employing whatever means you need after the United States enters a conflict and deciding to intervene in the first place are two different things. I, for one, in large part because I am all too familiar with what a "resource suck" wars can become, am reluctant to intervene in places like Libya in the first place. And, had anyone asked me about Iraq in 2002 or 2003, I would have offered the same opinion there. But I whole-heartedly endorse the U.S. decision to rebuild and train Iraqi military and polices forces after the invasion. (I do not feel the same way about Libya. For any number of reasons, the United States should step aside and leave the responsibility for post-conflict Libya to others. I have a sinking feeling we will not do this, though.)
The second place I disagree with Max concerns our ability to nation-build. For the most part, we suck at it. In Afghanistan, at least, our aid and development projects have arguably exacerbated the drivers of conflict. We have created a rentier state on steroids, and as we begin to withdraw the majority of our aid and development funds, it will take a minor miracle to avoid Afghanistan's economic collapse. The only area in which we are reasonably competent is in building military organizations, which we have a lot of experience doing, but even there, we are better at building military organizations in our own image rather than the kinds of police/gendarme forces countries like Afghanistan really need.
Why do we suck at nation-building? A lot of reasons. Here are just a few: (1) We are ignorant. We do not know enough about the cultural, political and social contexts of foreign environments to fully appreciate how our interventions will affect those environments. Thus our aid and development spending (and military operations, to be fair), meant to ameliorate drivers of conflict, often exacerbate them. (2) We do not provide enough oversight and accountability for the projects we initiate. This is boring but important. We have spent ungodly sums of money in both Iraq and Afghanistan and have not provided enough contracting officers to effectively oversee the money we have spent. How do we just give tens of millions of dollars to agencies and departments in the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan without any oversight? Lack of contracting officers. How are contracts in Afghanistan divided up between shady sub-contractors and sub-sub-contractors, with tax-payer money falling into the hands of the Taliban and warlords? Lack of contracting officers. (3) We do not have any patience -- and we have limited resources. Nation-building takes time. Where we can nation-build at relatively low-cost over an extended period of time, as in Colombia, we can be successful. But asking Americans to spend massive amounts of money for an extended period of time in Iraq or Afghanistan is a recipe for ... turning your average U.S. tax-payer into an isolationist.
Random Thoughts
CNAS is closed for the week, so I am at home catching up on my reading and workouts. A few random thoughts, though:
1. The Dutch are justifiably ashamed of what happened -- and what did not happen -- at Srebrenica, but someone explain to me how today's ruling is good for peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention. If you can be held responsible in a court of law for things you did or did not do in a peacekeeping operation, what incentive is there for top-flight military organizations such as those that belong to the NATO countries to participate in peacekeeping operations? Will you not be left with only those countries who need the money? I am not trying to say military organizations in peacekeeping operations should not be held accountable for their actions. I just see today's ruling unhelpful. When the United Nations next goes around looking for participants in peacekeeping operations, we might see fewer hands go up. Or rather, we might see fewer hands go up from among the better militaries.
2. 197 U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan in the first six months of this year.* 195 were killed in the first six months of 2010. Does this mean anything? Well, not really. First off, let me start off by saying that those 197 men and women are "statistically significant" to the mothers, fathers, friends and other family they left behind in the United States. We Americans all mourn their passing and honor their sacrifice. But in terms of trying to wrap our heads around the conflict, an increase of two is statistically insignificant. Or maybe it is significant when you consider there were roughly 30,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan in the first six months of 2011 than there were in the first six months of 2010. So you have more troops in the country, contesting more areas, and the number of U.S. casualties more or less held steady. That might be good news, then? But we have a real problem with data in Afghanistan. Most of the data we do have actually tells us little about the direction of the conflict. And much of the data we want to have is uneven, unstandardized, and has massive gaps in it.
3. The security services of the Pakistani state are an annoyance to the United States. They are a hazard to the people of Afghanistan. And they are an absolute menace to the people of Pakistan itself.
*A number of readers pointed out that this figure is lower than the one tracked by iCasualties. That figure is 203, which I do not think changes anything. (Though, again, I realize every single one of these fallen soldiers is someone's son or daughter, so I am not trying to be insensitive here.)
Two Lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan That May Not Apply to Libya (But Probably Do)
We all learned different lessons from our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. One lesson I learned was that you should always robustly plan for stabilization and reconstruction operations to follow the conclusion of major combat operations. But with that lesson in mind and being fully aware of the costs associated with properly resourced, comprehensive stablization operations, another lesson I learned is that you should be very, very cautious about intervening in the first place.*
Here's Max Boot in today's New York Times:
To avert the worst, we must work with the nascent opposition government, the National Transitional Council, to develop a plan for a post-Qaddafi state. It is also vitally important that Western special forces, Arab soldiers or both begin arming and training the rebel fighters. They must be able to not only help toss out Colonel Qaddafi but also maintain law and order in the new Libya.
Like such other post-conflict states as Kosovo and East Timor, post-Qaddafi Libya will most likely need an international peacekeeping force. This should be organized under the auspices of the United Nations, NATO and the Arab League — a step that will require amending the Security Council resolution, which forbids a “foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.”
Max and I have agreed more than we have disagreed about what to do in Afghanistan and Iraq after the United States and its allies intervened in both places.** But there is no way the U.S. Congress will authorize or fund the kind of comprehensive stabilization operations about which Max is writing here. (To say nothing of the United Nations, the Arab League, or many other NATO member states.) He and others who have advocated on behalf of military intervention in Libya should have known this prior to the intervention.
*Although I have a lot of tactical, operational, and theoretical lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan that might interest readers of this blog, at the end of the day, my personal lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan boil down to the following: "Well, this has been hard, bloody, painful and expensive. Let us think very hard before ever doing it again."
**I did not support going to war in the latter on strategic grounds, but since I was a lowly 1st lieutenant at the time, I kept my mouth shut. Which is a hard thing for me to do.
What Happens After COIN? The Emerging Sri Lanka Case
The LTTE has always been an unusual group. As Charlie noted to me just a few moments ago, "you've got a very robust organization linked to a very strong cult of personality." The former suggests that cutting off the head of the snake isn't effective, the latter suggests otherwise. This early on, Carlos is guessing that the "cult of personality" side may have the edge, and that the *violent insurgency* may be over. Carlos expects some "rogue" events, but the days when the LTTE ran the northern part of Sri Lanka look to be done.
That doesn't mean peace, necessarily. The Sri Lankan government has won the military part of the insurgency, but they now need to win the peace. This is really where pop-centric COIN's going to have to make money, folks. Colombo has not really administered the Tamil-controlled areas for a while. They need to get in, but not get in so that the fence-sitting population (many probably quite tired of the fight) doesn't tip back over.
The still-robust LTTE support organization (fundraising, especially fundraising) could now move into less political, more organized-crime type stuff. Here, Carlos is guardedly optimistic. Much of the ability for the LTTE to raise funds, especially from the diaspora had been through power/ability to intimidate and threaten family members, usually still in Tamil-controlled portions of Sri Lanka. The loss of those areas may lessen this power, but it won't all go away. Chinese gangs have still been able to pick up protection money from diaspora populations with this intimidation tool.
Charlie asked the "why now?" question. As in, why did the Sri Lankan government finally get off its collective rear and go after these guys? I haven't looked at the domestic side, perhaps some changes in leadership explain some of that. I do know that Prabakharan had been reshaping his image the last 3-4 years as the "Nelson Mandela" of South Asia. Perhaps that was starting to gain traction and Colombo decided to move before that got any more momentum.
Now, of course, it's time for the real work. What does "phase IV" look like after a decades-long conflict? What's the reconciliation/reconstruction mechanism? How to (re)integrate LTTE fighters? Cutting the snake's head off just means you can start to deal with these problems (and if Colombo hasn't been asking these questions already, we are all in for a *long* ride....)
IW scores big at the Pentagon
The directive, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England on Monday, requires the Pentagon to step up its capabilities across the board to fight unconventionally, such as by working with foreign security forces, surrogates and indigenous resistance movements to shore up fragile states, extend the reach of U.S. forces into denied areas or battle hostile regimes."Think of where our forces have been sent and have been engaged over the last 40-plus years: Vietnam, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and more," Gates said in a recent speech at the National Defense University. "In fact, the first Gulf War stands alone in over two generations of constant military engagement as a more or less traditional conventional conflict."Gates warned that, for the near future, the United States will face the greatest threats not from aggressor countries but from insurgents and extremist groups operating in weak or failing states. "We do not have the luxury of opting out because they do not conform to preferred notions of the American way of war," he said.
All told, the 2008 National Defense Strategy concludes that although U.S. predominance in conventional warfare is not unchallenged, it is sustainable for the medium term given current trends. It is true that the United States would be hard-pressed to fight a major conventional ground war elsewhere on short notice, but as I have asked before, where on earth would we do that? U.S. air and sea forces have ample untapped striking power should the need arise to deter or punish aggression -- whether on the Korean Peninsula, in the Persian Gulf, or across the Taiwan Strait. So although current strategy knowingly assumes some additional risk in this area, that risk is a prudent and manageable one.
The Department of Defense's conventional modernization programs seek a 99 percent solution over a period of years. Stability and counterinsurgency missions require 75 percent solutions over a period of months. The challenge is whether these two different paradigms can be made to coexist in the U.S. military's mindset and bureaucracy.
On Critiques of COIN/StabOps (Updated)
There are so many ways in which this article is bollixed. Let's start with this peach of a sentence:
FM 3-07, Stability Operations signifies the success of the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Feith Pentagon and Bush-Cheney White House at legitimating a project that was anathema to many officers a decade prior.Okay, I know that if you don't like something, it's always easy to link it to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Feith to convince others not to like it as well. I do it all the time myself. But anyone who has closely followed defense debates of the past seven years or read any of the many accounts of the run-up to the Iraq War understands that, if anything, the emergence of doctrine such as FM 3-24 and FM 3-07 represents an explicit rejection of the facile understanding of military power embraced by the neoconservatives. War ain't easy. It is, in fact, the realm of chance. The very fact that military force alone could not bring about quick victories in complex environments such as Iraq and Afghanistan necessitated doctrine such as FM 3-07 and FM 3-24. (The fact that our inter-agency was ill-prepared to support the military in such environments was another reason.)
Then there's the author's whole problem of taking operational doctrine and claiming it represents some tectonic shift in U.S. policy rather than the efforts of pragmatic military officers to find solutions to the aforementioned complex operating environments in which U.S. soldiers -- not to mention thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians -- are dying because our existing doctrine doesn't give operational and tactical commanders a clue as to how to address such environments.
The author of this article reminds me of the Bob Dylan song Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues in which the singer sees communists and the Red Menace everywhere -- even in the red stripes of the American flag.
If you are predisposed to see imperialism everywhere, you'll find plenty of it in the operational doctrine of the U.S. military. My advice to the author is to not stop at FM 3-07. Check out all our doctrine for conventional combat operations as well. All of it -- every word of every sentence -- is fundamentally about the application of military power in the service of political ends. If you see FM 3-07 as imperialist, you'll find lots more to fill articles in MERIP in the rest of the Reimer Library.
In spite of it all, the author raises a good question that has absolutely nothing to do with operational doctrine. Should the U.S. Army be doing stability operations in the first place? Well this is indeed a good question. But that's a question for the politicians, not the military. If the political decision-makers draft policy using the U.S. Army for imperialist ends, then the means also become imperialist. If the politicians use the U.S. Army to fight fascism, well, then I guess our doctrine reverts back to being heroic. And if the officers of the U.S. Army say that "we don't do windows" and refuse to author any doctrine for nation-building and security sector reform and then the politicians decide that oh yes you do, then who is being irresponsible? Both parties, perhaps, but certainly the officer corps. What the author of this article doesn't understand is that while military officers don't decide how the U.S. military is to be employed, they do have a responsibility to ensure junior officers and their units are prepared for any foreseeable contingency. Even nation-building.
This mirrors a problem I had with Andrew Bacevich's thought-provoking new book.
Bacevich suggests that because our COIN doctrine is rooted in the writings of Galula and Trinquier -- who were fighting dirty imperialist wars at the time they wrote their books -- our own doctrine is also by necessity dirty and imperialist. Well, no. That just doesn't wash logically. Operational doctrine is just that -- operational. You could apply Galula to a UN-sanctioned peace-keeping mission in Haiti, and there wouldn't be anything dirty or imperialist about that. (Well, not much anyway.)Bacevich, though, does a better job than the author of this MERIP piece -- who seems like an intelligent guy, even if completely out of his element here -- at asking the big questions. These questions -- how are we to use our military, what is to be the aim of U.S. policy abroad, etc. -- are political in nature. They boil down to decisions that need to be made by politicians and the electorate. The military, meanwhile, concentrates on the operational and the tactical. (As Richard Betts points out, contemporary military operations are so complex and demanding they often prevent military officers from being good thinkers at even the strategic level.) I think that Bacevich, in fact, has in my opinion made the most cogent critique of COIN -- much more coherent than the criticisms offered by our friend Gian Gentile or Charlie Dunlap, for example -- in large part by focusing on the political questions at stake. They are the ones that matter.
This MERIP piece is just another example, I'm afraid, of what happens when a political scientist tries to arrive at broad conclusions about the military without the necessary familiarity and study required to do so.
UPDATE: Dave Dilegge and Janine Davidson get involved here, and Spencer Ackerman contributes his two cents here.
