Center for a New American Security

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.

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.

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.

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.]

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.

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 11^th 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.  

I greatly enjoyed Steven Metz's article on the rise of "invisible wars" in World Politics Review. Why? Well, Metz is way ahead of the giant pack of writers looking to capture the zeitgeist of American strategy because he understands that truly limited wars occur because of limited political objectives rather than simply limited means:

While the United States would like to find and support partners that share its objectives and priorities, it does not rely on finding them. So long as it is able to buy some degree of access to areas that spawn extremists, it can prevent terrorists from developing an effective power-projection capability. After all, that is the objective, even if we sometimes seem to forget it.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, special operations forces, cyber capabilities, and the tactics and operations associated with each are certainly more limited means than large-scale stabilization missions. But they can still serve unlimited political ends. There is a persistent misconception that more modest uses of military and political resources equates to limited war. In reality, one can have quite grand and expensive capabilities tasked towards fairly modest objectives or pursue expansive goals without the resources neccesary to achieve them.

I am, however, unsure of how long the US's current military and strategic concepts will last. First, as Antulio Echevarria wrote in 2002, most new ways of war are in fact "ways of battle." The American way of war--to be more accurate a set of competing ways of war--evolved slowly over a period of multiple centuries. We have had many more ways of battle, most of which tend to have a fairly limited shelf life. Politics--budget and otherwise--tend to change fast and with them the tactical and operational tools and technologies that the US uses to make warfare. Think, for example, how far Afghanistan and Iraq were from the future of small, high-end brushfire wars predicted by many 1990s Transformation enthusiasts. We embarked on our ten year journey in the first place because 3,000 of our citizens were murdered by terrorists operating out of a fortified base area.

Would another 9/11 cause us to throw everything overboard and go back to large-scale stabilization operations? Probably not. There are resource constraints to conducting force projection that we are steadily approaching. We also depend on operational heft and symbolic political importance from allies whose cuts make the worst sequestration scenarios seem tame in comparison. But a cautious lesson can be found in the 1950s nuclear strategy debates. Here, limited means actually increased the potential destructiveness of warfare because the US aimed to make nuclear weapons substitute for expensive conventional local forces. What matters most is not the means but the politics and policy behind them.

As Dan wrote in his post on declaring victory, politicians risk substantial domestic costs if they fail to give sufficient attention to counterterrorism. The public is happy because the violence is, if not exactly invisible, once again relegated to exotic locales in Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. A sense of distance between the US and its opponents has once again been restored, but for good? It's still hard to tell in late July 2012.

Tim Mathews is a former Army Officer and newly-minted attorney who studies and occassionally lectures on the Afghan legal system. He's usually found on Twitter, and I'm glad to share his >140 character thoughts on effectively teaching U.S. personnel about Islam in the midst of heated debate about the way today's PME is approaching it.

A recent article in Armed Forces Journal (AFJ) (How to teach about Islam, Armed Forces Journal, July 2012) discusses the issue of how to teach our personnel about Islam. When I began typing this, my intent was to critique the article. However, my differences with the article are so nuanced and our areas of agreement are so plentiful, that explaining the differences would require twice as much text as simply laying out my view. Although I will briefly touch on a few areas of disagreement, I encourage the reader to read the full AFJ article as a companion piece to this weblog post.

Issue: Our forces will continue operating in majority-Muslim countries and need some cultural knowledge relevant to those operating environments.

Over the past ten years, hundreds of thousands of members of our armed forces and other government agencies have deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Many more troops and civilians have been involved in deployment activities by doing intelligence analysis and related functions from the United States. Surely, at least tens of thousands of personnel had direct interaction with Afghan and Iraqi civilians on the battlefield. Many personnel who did not engage in such direct interaction were involved in analyzing intelligence, briefing decision makers, and creating products that were designed to inform or influence local civilians. Whether directly interacting with local civilians, or interacting with the information environment that influences local civilians, our personnel need some cultural knowledge relevant to the theater of operations.

Constraints: Efforts to educate our personnel about Islam will continue to be constrained by the time available for training. Time available will increase as dwell time expands and deployments are shortened, but the complexity of the training will increase due to a more diverse mission set.

When operations were concentrated in Iraq, particularly when we had over 150,000 troops in Iraq for a prolonged period of time, it was easy to identify the necessary knowledge that most troops should have. The same is true now, in Afghanistan. Basic vocabulary, cultural taboos, and customary practices are easy to teach (or should be) when nearly everyone is deploying to, analyzing, or supporting operations in one or two countries. But as operations have wound down in Iraq, and as operations begin to wind down in Afghanistan, our forces are not coming home to stay. We are increasing our footprint in the Arabian Peninsula, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Languages skills, cultural norms, and customary practices are logistically more difficult to teach when troops are being shuffled among multiple countries. The optimal number of subject matter experts and learning materials swell with each new deployment destination. However, as the deployment tempo of our forces continues to decrease, there should be more time for training. As dwell times lengthen to two years and deployment times are reduced from 12 months to 9 months (for most of the US Army), commanders and staff should not be forced to stuff "10 pounds of training into a 5-pound bag," as my old Battalion Commander used to say.

High points and low points

We do not always do an adequate job of teaching our deploying and supporting personnel about how Islam influences daily routines and shapes values, norms, and beliefs in the areas where we operate. One example is a lengthy presentation given to personnel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which portrayed radical Islam as being mainstream. That portrayal is neither accurate, nor useful. A more egregious example is a course formerly taught at the Joint Forces Staff College in which a professor – a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army – reportedly taught personnel to "prep for a 'total war' on Islam using 'Hiroshima'-style tactics." If that report is accurate, then the course was not only useless, but actually counterproductive, possibly causing personnel to be less informed than when they began the course.

Thankfully, there are bright spots in our training efforts that I have seen at our Combat Training Centers (CTCs). When I was a Soldier preparing to deploy to Bosnia, we conducted training scenarios at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Louisiana that used Bosnians as role players. When I was preparing to deploy to Iraq, we conducted training scenarios at the National Training Center in California that used Iraqis as role players. Some of the most productive moments in those training events were the unstructured interactions with the role players, after training scenarios played out. We were able to discuss misperceptions and cultural nuances that are difficult to learn from a book or training video. This training was certainly not adequate, because it represented a very small fraction of our training time, but what little time it occupied was used well.

A more recent example that I have seen is the Naval Postgraduate School’s Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace (LDESP) program, which provides mobile and online instruction for troops preparing to deploy. Many lecturers are recent immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, or others with extensive experience in those countries. This program provides an incredible opportunity for units to receive instruction from experts who are among the most knowledgeable and experienced in their field. Instruction includes history, culture, strategic overviews, economic issues, security threats, and specific blocks of instruction about Islam, the legal system, and numerous other issues. The LDESP program is limited by how much time it can spend with each unit, but augments this time by providing online resources and distance learning programs.

It is reassuring to note that I have first-hand knowledge of positive programs, but I am only aware of the negative programs because someone tipped off a journalist. If the problematic programs were more widespread, then I suspect that I or someone whom I know would have encountered examples when serving in the Army, and repeatedly deploying to majority-Muslim countries.

Positive programs like LDESP, and good ideas like using native role-players, will hopefully survive budget growth-rate reductions. The greatest argument for retaining and expanding those methods is that they are useful and can be even more effective if an adequate amount of time is dedicated to them. As noted above, training time will be limited, but should be available as deployment tempos decrease.

The ends sought

This leads to the question of how to educate personnel about Islam. Our personnel will continue to deploy to majority-Muslim countries. They will have more training time to prepare for those deployments. But the content of the education will need to account for a greater number of deployment destinations. There are some basics about Islam that can be taught regardless of the destination, such as introductory material about who Muhammad was, how the Qur'an was compiled, prayer times, what occurs during Ramadan, and so on. There will need to be variation in instruction that aims to teach personnel how Islam shapes local culture, since this varies differently in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.

At the start of this piece, I mentioned the recent article in Armed Forces Journal. One of the issues that it dedicates a lot of attention to is the domestic squabbling in the US between two groups: one that includes "those who believe extremism is intrinsic to Islam itself" and the other that includes "those who see no relationship whatsoever between Islamic doctrine and extremism."

I generally agree with the author’s assessment of the dishonest and dumbed-down debate that is unfolding in the United States. Most people in foreign countries, as the author points out, are shocked to discover how Islam is portrayed in the United States. Indeed, the way in which Islam is portrayed by anti-Islam activists here in the US is so far removed from reality as to be useless, and even detrimental, if any personnel were to accept it as accurate and rely upon that knowledge while deployed to majority-Muslim countries. But, as stunningly ignorant as much of the anti-Islamic nonsense is, much of the outrage it generates – real and feigned – is counterproductive. Reacting to an inflammatory statement only gives that statement free publicity and wider attention. Reacting to a minor slight reinforces a perception of being as unreasonable and extreme as your opponents allege.

As should be clear, I agree with problems that the author identifies in the US. However, I fail to see what this has to do with the issue of educating our personnel. We are not training our personnel to be foot soldiers in a culture war fought on cable television and weblogs in the United States. We are training our personnel to conduct operations in foreign countries.

The author laments that our “government educators are often caught between extreme anti-Islamic voices and aggressive lobbying by Islamic organizations to silence criticism of Islam." Perhaps this is true. I lack the knowledge of the personal pressures that are felt within the halls of our professional military education system. He goes on to declare that “there is only one way out of this dilemma." That way, he argues, is "to understand the battle for American perceptions of Islam, to map out the topography of the debate and to teach students to critically analyze rival arguments."

The specific details of what the author advocates includes some good ideas. I actually agree with much of it. But our agreement on ways and means is nullified by a disagreement on ends. The problem that he identifies is not relevant to preparing our personnel for deployments to conduct, and provide support for, operations in majority-Muslim countries. What the author has advocated is a program to help our educators avoid being pulled into battles of a culture war on US soil and, along the way, educating our personnel. The primary focus should be educating and the secondary focus on mitigating public pressure from fringe organizations.

As noted at the start, my disagreements are on nuanced issues. Rather than go point-by-point with what I agree or disagree on, I will simply lay out my view for any readers that have managed to survive this far.

Finding the way and means to get there

Our primary goal is not to make life easier for the educator. Our primary goal is to make the educational experience more valuable to the student. To achieve that, the content must be understandable, sufficiently comprehensive, usable, timely, relevant, and conveyed within tight time constraints. Ultimately, training schedules are approved by commanders whose primary concerns are readiness, sustainability, combat effectiveness, logistics, and basic combat skills. It would be wonderful if personnel had the time to read and discuss the works of Maliki and Shafi’i, analyze case studies involving hudud and qesas punishments, debate the views of Robert Spencer versus Tariq Ramadan, and so on. Try selling that idea to commanders.

Some classroom time is needed. For the average American teenager who has never met a Muslim, seen a mosque, and who may not know the difference between a Muslim and a Hindu (I’m projecting my 18-year-old self onto others), many basic concepts will seem abstract and are best taught in a classroom. But, as much instruction as possible needs to be integrated into training. Role players at CTCs are an excellent idea that should be expanded and refined. Rather than boring troops in a classroom with do’s and do not’s about barging into a mosque, burning a Quran, or handing out pork chow mien MREs, we should incorporate those things into training. Training scenarios can include:

- an insurgent attack being launched from behind a mosque as the call to prayer goes out
- actors playing the roles of orphan children begging soldiers for food and water at high noon during Ramadan
- leaders being thrust into situations where it is difficult to discern whether role players are motivated by religious extremism or political ambition guised as religious piety

As tactical units respond to those situations, the basic essential knowledge will be retained. The value of understanding the impact of religion will also be enhanced. Commanders will then be more amenable to making space on the training calendar for further instruction on Islam. Ideally, once a unit has begun collective training, developed standard operating procedures, and begun to receive details about its next deployment, it can receive more specific instruction relevant to its area of operations. This is an area that the LDESP program places emphasis upon. The cadre, composed of retired field grade officers and senior non-commissioned officers, explains to lecturers where the unit is deploying to, what the mission is, and gives a general idea of what the unit will be doing on a regular basis. Lecturers then tailor their presentations to be relevant to that mission set.

Challenges

One institutional challenge that we must overcome is that our classroom environments are geared toward identifying articulable and measureable learning objectives to convey explicit knowledge. I am speaking from experience in the Army, but my view is that we are not very good at conveying tacit knowledge. We like to break down the knowledge, skills, and abilities of our personnel into lists that can be selected and installed into our personnel like applications in an iPhone, according to the mission set. If only life were that simple.

The greatest weakness of classroom instruction is that classroom objectives can be achieved without adding value to the unit. Instruction must be geared toward laying a foundation of knowledge that personnel can apply. In order for this to occur, there must be buy-in by unit commanders. In order for that buy-in to occur, there must be perceived value for the training. Instructors need to sell the value of this education to unit commanders by making it relevant. This means digging up case studies where knowledge of Islamic practices in an area of operations enhanced unit effectiveness, rather than reciting doctrinal distinctions between Sunni and Shia theology. This means following up those case studies with realistic and simple recommendations for how to incorporate the concept into training.

As commanders buy in to the value of the instruction, they will offer more details of what type of training they want. When this collaboration occurs, the instruction offered will be better received. It will be more relevant as input from the unit is incorporated into the instruction. But, none of that will happen until the unit leadership buys in to the value of the training.

The first move needs to be made by the educators. And educators will not convince anyone of the value of their instruction if their focus is primarily upon making sure all sides are heard in the classroom (this is where I part ways with the AFJ article and, again, I urge readers to read the entire article). There is not ample time for educators to give all viewpoints a voice in classroom instruction. And, quite frankly, nobody cares about hearing all viewpoints.

Unit commanders want to hear useful information that will make their units more effective. The least likely way to do that is to assure a commander that virtually "any viewpoint would be welcomed," but "not wholeheartedly embraced" and that his troops will "emerge with sophisticated views that are nuanced in all the right ways." I pulled those quotes directly from the AFJ article. Educators need to set out with the goal of convincing a commander that the instruction offered will make his unit more effective. If educators set out with the goal of placating fringe groups within the US, then everyone’s time is wasted.

Full disclosure: the LDESP program that I speak so highly of has permitted me to give guest lectures about the Afghan legal system, on 4 occasions over the past year.

Jonathan Jeckell, a plans and operations officer at the Army Sustainment Command at Rock Arsenal, is one of my favorite Twitter interluctors. You see, Jonathan and I both love talking about robots. Giant robots, small robots, any robots. We often talk about robotics and future military doctrine, and I prevailed upon him to write a guest post laying out his ideas about robotic military roles and doctrine. This is some serious thought about the future of military operations, not HAL and the pod bay doors. As always, Jeckell's opinion is his own.

Differentiating between different forms of innovation and implementing them accordingly can greatly enhance military innovation.  Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation elucidated in The Innovator’s Dilemma is a particularly useful and important model for innovation.  This model breaks innovation down into two types, sustaining and disruptive. The difference between them is more about the purpose of the technology (which can include processes, not just physical products) and its relationship with the other components of the system (including the user) than the nature of the technology itself.

A Brief Primer on The Innovator’s Dilemma

Sustaining innovation encompasses most new technologies, and almost all improvements in existing technologies.  Some forms of discontinuous innovation are mistaken for disruptive innovations, such as new technological S-curves, radical technological breakthroughs, or other types of architectural changes.[i] Sustaining innovations are not necessarily evolutionary or incremental.  They are far more common and can have consequences no less profound than disruptive innovations.  For example, the introduction of continuous-aim naval gunfire improved accuracy by 3,000 percent, but was a sustaining innovation.[ii] Well-run organizations are very good at exploiting sustaining innovation because the improvements fit with existing metrics valued by the organization.

Despite the connotations of the term, disruptive innovations do not necessarily constitute revolutionary change, or use cutting edge technology.  They usually perform worse in the near term and are typically cheaper, simpler, more convenient, or have features that appeal to niche users.[iii] Well-run organizations usually miss disruptive innovations because they do not fit with established performance metrics or the organization’s resources, processes and values.  Disruptive innovations frequently require creating a new organization or exploitation by an organization that values its attributes, which is why it is often associated with entrepreneurs.  While disruptive innovations often fall short of the performance of existing technology on established metrics in the near term, they often open up opportunities for new classes of users over-served by the performance of the existing technology.  Also, first movers in this form of innovation often gain advantages over rivals because they gain insight and experience (much of it tacit) with the new linkages.  Sustaining innovations are much easier to mimic or steal since their value is readily recognized and easily plug into competing established organizations.  Established organizations have an advantage with sustaining innovations over smaller new entrants because they are motivated and able to apply resources to the innovation to win.

 Applying the model to military innovation: Armored Warfare

This model can help explain the relative success in different organizations incorporating new technology and other forms of military innovation.  The same technology can fall into either category depending on how and where it is implemented, which can have dramatic consequences for its success.  For example, the French Army incorporated tanks within their existing organizational structure as a sustaining innovation, which led to it merely serving as an infantry support vehicle.  Infantry was the dominant branch, and thus dominated the values of the army as a whole.  This determined the performance metrics valued in the platform, and determined how the tank was designed and used.  Hence French tank doctrine was a linear progression of their experience with tanks in World War I.  Because French tanks were added into an existing organization, they were evenly distributed across the Army as just another tool to do their traditional tasks.  They were expected to cross the kill zone between trench networks and breach enemy defenses or fight from relatively static positions in support of WWI style trench warfare.  As such, French tanks such as the Char B were slow (since they did not need to outpace the infantry they supported) with heavy frontal armor and a large, heavier cannon than turret technology could support at the time emplaced in the hull.[iv]  Lacking a mechanism to traverse the gun, the whole tank had to pivot to aim.  French tanks were not designed to shoot moving targets, nor were they designed to fight and maneuver at the same time.

Conversely, the German Army developed mobile warfare doctrine (colloquially referred to as Blitzkreig) by focusing on the relationship between the tank and other elements of their army in new ways to create a combined arms team.[v]  The new organization was free to develop its own processes and values to exploit attributes of the tank ignored by the French.  While French tanks were superior in armor and firepower, German tanks had better mobility (including both speed and range), communications, and fire control, allowing them to actually run rings around French tanks and hit them in vulnerable locations or bypass them altogether and attack their logistics and leaders.  German doctrine used tanks in a completely different way for a completely different purpose, concentrating them to provide overwhelming force at a decisive point to achieve massive local superiority to overcome their technical shortcomings.

Applying the model to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The disruptive innovation model also provides important insights into many other forms of military innovation, and demonstrates how Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (aka Remotely Piloted Vehicles, colloquially referred to as drones) can fall into either category of innovation depending how and where it is implemented, and how that choice can have dramatic consequences.

Despite professional literature as far back as the 1970s highlighting possibilities facilitated by unmanned platforms, the U.S. Air Force has resisted deploying unmanned aircraft in roles other than target drones and decoys.[vi]  Sure, they famously deployed MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reapers, but because it was driven by external demand and competition against enormous institutional opposition.  The Air Force is still trying to figure out how incorporate drones into their institution, particularly regarding the career paths of their pilots, who usually bitterly resist leaving manned aircraft status.  Drone programs currently being implemented in the U.S. Air Force compete against their key resources and do not fit well with the processes and values of the organization, causing the entire organization to resist and undermine their success.  It is also fixating the organization on the technical performance of the component rather than novel ways to use it or its relationship with other systems.  Most Air Force drones are similar in size to manned aircraft, and it’s no accident they continually compare their performance directly against manned aircraft with a similar role.[vii]  They have failed to exploit the advantages of freeing an aircraft from human limitations.  Instead, head-to-head competition with manned platforms has led their advocates to counter-attack and make improvements on their platforms to keep pace.  This is why the Air Force is spinning the RQ-4 Global Hawk program as a fiasco.  Despite new possibilities and attributes, it is still being compared directly to the U-2 on the same performance metrics.[viii]  Meanwhile the Navy is much more enthusiastically pursuing nearly the identical platform for their MQ-4C Triton Broad Area Maritime Surveillance System and value it for very different reasons.[ix] 

A series on Time’s “Battleland” exemplifies the weird, contorted logic many in the US Air Force are using to compare drones to manned platforms along conventional metrics favoring (surprise) manned aircraft[x] (using very faulty analysis, as pointed out by James Hasik on his blog[xi]).  In contrast to the Global Hawk, external demand and threat of competition from other services and agencies keep the Air Force plugging along with the Reaper and Predator, much as it did with the A-10 Thunderbolt II (aka Warthog).[xii] 

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates rejected repeated bids by the US Air Force to become the lead service for drones (and failing that, they continually painted small drones as a dire safety hazard). This allowed the U.S. Army, Special Operations Command, and Marine Corps, the former constrained in the type of aircraft it could operate by the Key West and subsequent agreements[xiii], to pursue drones in a disruptive manner.  Soldiers and Marines in remote outposts enthusiastically embrace the RQ-11 Raven, RQ-7 Shadow, and MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAVs because they provide them with aerial surveillance and reconnaissance almost on demand, in contrast with the availability of alternatives, such as a manned fighter or helicopter.  Moreover, these units are vastly over-served by performance of these alternatives, which are designed for much more demanding tasks.  Army and Marine Corps units are highly motivated to use and improve their UAVs, regardless of growing pains or technical shortcomings.  Disruptive innovation theory predicts, however, that placing the MQ-1C Gray Eagle in Army Combat Aviation Brigades could result in the same type of institutional pushback endemic in programs in the Air Force. Army and Marine Corps units have asymmetric motivations to move upward to include capabilities provided by UAVs than the Air Force or Combat Aviation Brigades have to move downward to compete with them.[xiv]

Conclusion

This model can be applied to many other ways with military technology and doctrine. The Innovator’s Dilemma offers methods to recognize disruptive technologies and handle them successfully.  The main lesson of this model is the danger of focusing on a technology or method in isolation, although the ability to develop new technologies and identify the best way to use it in a broader context are equally important.  The US development of precision guided munitions allegedly began without a concept that could exploit the technology, while the Soviets developed doctrines based on a reconnaissance/strike complex, but could not develop the technology to realize it.[xv] Uncritically inserting a new technology into an existing organization, even if it superficially seems to fit its existing capabilities, can be as bad as not having it.

Peter Bergen recently put out an interesting piece recommending the United States declare victory against al Qaeda. He starts off by making the comparison, as many do, with that ideal-type of American conventional warfare, World War II:

To end World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin demanded an unconditional surrender from the Nazis.  But there will be no such surrender from al Qaeda. The group is not a state that is capable of entering into such an agreement, even if it wanted to do so, which seems highly unlikely.

So we are left with a choice:  We can continue fighting al Qaeda indefinitely and remain in a permanent state of quasi-war, as has already been the case for more than a decade now.

This is somewhat true, but a misleading comparison. The Nazis did not technically surrender - the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) did, in order to avoid a repeat of the World War I dolchtosslegende. Of course, some German military units resisted (such as Army Group Center), before the Allies’ overwhelming military power promptly defeated them. The Nazi civilian government, though it permitted military capitulation, was not part of the surrender process. The Allies arrested and unilaterally dissolved Dönitz’s Flensburg government. World War II, like Iraq in 2003, in fact ended in debellatio - with the destruction of the legal authority which could have signed a political surrender document.

The historical minutiae aside, this highlights an important point: World War II was actually won the way wars against irreconcilable foes often are - through the destruction of the enemy’s will and ability to resist - the only way to impose one’s will against a foe that is truly beyond negotiation. However, policy determines the question of which enemies need to exit the battlefield, dead or alive - how much of our will must be imposed. It’s true, as Bergen says, that we didn’t need to “kill every Nazi,” but we did not leave any Nazi-led fighting capacity standing in the field, and conducted a systematic military, political, and legal dissolution of Nazi fighting power - and we did so long after destroying Germany’s ability to pose a threat to the United States. Had the Nazis been able to initiate “Werwolf,” our policy likely would have looked much more similar to “kill every Nazi” than it happened to at the time, despite the basic disappearance of the Nazi threat to American security.

Of course, al Qaeda is nothing like the Nazis in any useful sense, other than perhaps that the United States held both to be irreconcilable foes, as Bergen notes. But the differences don’t easily lend themselves to assertions that irregular groups can’t have their wills as thoroughly broken. Mary Habeck echoes some of my critiques of this analogy, and goes on to point out that insurgent groups are formally and decisively defeated:

For instance, from 1898-1954, the U.S. absolutely defeated three separate insurgencies in the Philippines, including a nationalist insurgency, an insurgency by local Muslims, and a communist insurgency. The British took on and repeatedly defeated insurgencies (the Boers, the Malay communists, and the Kenyan Mau-Mau, for instance), and it is actually difficult to find, beyond the Sandinistas and Castro's group, an insurgency that has succeeded in Latin America.

The stories here are all significantly more complex, but it is true that irregular groups are not immune to decisive, obvious defeats, even if one quibbles with the cases. However, she goes on to describe what victory against al Qaeda would look like:

The objective of irregular wars is rather different, however: to secure the population by clearing out the insurgents; then holding the territory through persistent presence; and finally creating the political conditions necessary to prevent any further appeal by the remaining insurgents. In this view, winning against al Qaeda does not depend on body counts, but rather would look very much like victories against other insurgents: the spreading of security for populations in Somalia, Yemen, the Sahel, and elsewhere; the prevention of a return of al-Qaeda to these cleared areas; and the empowerment of legitimate governments that can control and police their own territories.

Here, we come to the problem with the current conception of what victory in our conflict against al Qaeda means. If the definition of defeating an insurgent group is clearing, holding, and then politically precluding the appeal of insurgency, then it’s hard to say that, by Habeck’s standards, some of the other insurgencies Habeck mentions have truly been defeated. After all, the Philippines were not able to “spread security” and preclude the continuation of Moro insurgency in Mindanao until, today, where the counterinsurgency campaign against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front continues. While few Latin American insurgencies succeed, few Colombians would consider the conflict against FARC over.

As Colin S. Gray noted in his 2002 monograph on decisive victory, starkly delineating decisive victory - especially a politically permanent one - as a simple alternative to failure is grossly misleading. As Gray notes:

… decisive victory is probably best viewed as a range of possibilities, rather than as a stark alternative to the failure to achieve such a success. The enemy can be understood to have continuing powers of resistance on a sliding scale. Decisive victories come in many guises and sometimes mislead the winner. Cannae was the tactically decisive victory straight from the textbook, but its operational, strategic, and political consequences were trivial.

If one retains the normal political concept of victory - imposing our will on the enemy - then irregular warfare does not require anything so radical to produce meaningful political outcomes - but it should similarly make us wary of hasty attempts to derive political victories from tactical, operational, or even strategic ones.

Frustration with the inability of seemingly obvious tactical successes to translate into the total debellation of an irregular group has misleadingly brought some to believe that there is some fundamental break between regularity and irregularity as modes of war. This is mistaken. The objective of irregular wars isn’t different, we’ve simply naturalized a version of them which considers governing our enemies inseparable from the idea of defeating them - for a country waging a war against an insurgency in its own territory, this may be critical, but for one trying to defang a transnational threat, it may not be. Though Habeck tries to draw a dichotomy between World War II and irregular war, in terms of political goals, the total defeat and preclusion of an ideology’s appeal was at the heart of the American approach to Nazi Germany - moderated only when post-war planning glimpsed the potentially destabilizing effects of such an approach.

It was the embarrassment of Germany’s upturning of the post-WWI international order that made such a total defeat of Germany - including the preclusion of ideological resurgence and the “empowerment of legitimate government” - so critical. It’s an important reminder of the point of declaring victory - to advance policy goals. Bergen notes it is politically unfeasible to declare victory al Qaeda. This is true: unlike Nazi Germany, al Qaeda is not reliant on mass mobilization to launch politically damaging operations against the United States.

But then what purpose does declaring a political victory over al Qaeda achieve? If one has won a war tactically and operationally but lost politically, one has still lost the war.  It is undoubtable that at the very least, tactically and operationally (and many would argue strategically) that the U.S. has inflicted grievous blows on al Qaeda. But the persistent capability and possibility of al Qaeda’s thus-far unbroken will translating itself into coercive power make a political declaration a liability. Indeed, were an attack to occur after such a declaration, the response would likely severely undermine the wartime credibility of civilian leadership and inaugurate an even more costly and ambitious conception of retaliation and counterterrorism, which is particularly problematic since Bergen’s goal is to redirect resources away from the war on terror.

Despite the fact that al Qaeda’s operational capability to conduct attacks on the continental United States is undoubtedly weaker than during 9/11, it retains strategic options to imperil US interests. Al Qaeda retains the ability to expand the battlefield against the U.S. and threaten Western assets outside of American soil. Bergen argues that our extensive defense establishment is part of the logic behind declaring victory, but if the goal of declaring victory is to refocus assets from that establishment, and deploying overwhelmingly superior resources is our defense, the benefits of declaring victory remain slim and potentially counterproductive. Because the U.S. hasn’t decisively stemmed the growth of local affiliates - which can still kill U.S. citizens and personnel or target critical assets abroad - the potential remains for the al Qaeda threat, however operationally reduced, to exact politically significant costs. By the logic of Bergen’s argument, the massive defense establishment will again have to ensure that none of al Qaeda’s dispersed affiliates reconstitute some sort of transnational threat, which could make preserving our victory against al Qaeda costly, and a declaration of victory politically disastrous.

It’s a mistake to assert, as Habeck does, that governing away al Qaeda is a necessary victory condition of an irregular conflict against it. If a lesser exertion of state power with more modest political aims produces major gains in security at a much lower cost, then there’s little merit in perpetually maintaining or increasing the nation’s resources. It is not contradictory to say that a decisive - and politically satisfactory - victory against al Qaeda may not yet be won, without taking a maximalist operational approach to achieving that end. Bergen was correct to note, in his “kill every Nazi” comment, that utter tactical and operational annihilation is not a requirement for a decisive victory in terms of political aims and policy - but nor do seemingly overwhelming tactical  and operational victories, as Bergen seems to sense, translate into a decisive success.

Yesterday, I caught up with some friends at IFRI* over lunch and scored an invitation to come hear the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, speak later in the afternoon on the future of Turkish-French relations.

I don't think I've ever seen a foreign minister as confident as Davutoglu. With Europe in a financial crisis and the Arabic-speaking world in a political crisis, Davutoglu clearly sees his own country as flourishing when compared with its neighbors near and far. "The question for Europe," Davutoglu asked, "is: with or without Turkey?"

Davutoglu clearly feels Turkey has as much or more to offer the European Union than the European Union has to offer Turkey at the moment, which is a provocative thesis to introduce to a room full of western Europeans.

Accordingly, one of the distinguished guests in the room pushed back during the question and answer session. He proposed that Turkey was rather more like the American West -- nationalistic and religious -- than Western Europe, which is known for its culture of tolerance and inclusivity. He asked whether Turkey thus still needed Western Europe as much as Western Europe needed Turkey.

As I squirmed in my seat and bit my lip, Davutoglu proceeded to deliver one of the best smack-downs I have ever heard in a public forum. He began by remarking, "I don't know if there are any Americans in the room, but your question is a little Euro-centric."

He then bluntly stated that the American identity is more inclusive than French identity or German identity. He referenced the fact that the American president is the son of a Kenyan man and that the very name "United States of America" references a geographical location whereas the names of European states often reference a specific people or culture. He concluded by saying that when the Germans elect a man or woman of Turkish descent as its president then Europe could begin lecturing Turkey on matters of inclusivity.

I am not doing justice to how epic a smack-down this was. He must have spoken for five minutes, at least, about the virtues of American identity and inclusivity, and it warmed my heart. Although he teased America about how young a nation we are, he surely knew that the day prior was our birthday, and his words made for a wonderful belated birthday present.

Davutoglu had a lot more to say on Israel and Syria that would interest readers of this blog, but the above vignette was the one I most wanted to share.

*If you do not know the crew at l'institut français des relations internationales, you should. My friends Etienne de Durand, Marc Hecker, and Corentin Brustlein are doing some of the very best work in strategic studies in all of Europe. Ifri.org