Secretary of Defense Gates’ Speech at Colorado Springs

MEMO TO: Whoever forms the next Presidential Administration, please keep Secretary Gates in post

The Secretary of Defense just made a strong speech on a hot topic. Here’s a snip but you should read the whole thing:

There is a good deal of debate and discussion – within the military, the Congress, and elsewhere – about whether we are putting too much emphasis on current demands – in particular, Iraq. And whether this emphasis is creating too much risk in other areas, such as:

• Preparing for potential future conflicts;
• Being able to handle a contingency elsewhere in the world; and
• Over stressing the ground forces, in particular the Army.

Much of what we are talking about is a matter of balancing risk: today’s demands versus tomorrow’s contingencies; irregular and asymmetric threats versus conventional threats. As the world’s remaining superpower, we have to be able to dissuade, deter, and, if necessary, respond to challenges across the spectrum.

Nonetheless, I have noticed too much of a tendency towards what might be called “Next-War-itis” – the propensity of much of the defense establishment to be in favor of what might be needed in a future conflict. This inclination is understandable, given the dominant role the Cold War had in shaping America’s peacetime military, where the United States constantly strove to either keep up with or get ahead of another superpower adversary.

And, certainly, one cannot predict the future with any certainty. Soon after 1900, Winston Churchill said that he could not foresee any “collision of interests” with Germany. In the 1920s, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he said that there wasn’t the “slightest chance” of war with Japan in his lifetime. Today, rising and resurgent powers with new wealth and ambition are pursuing military modernization programs. They must be watched closely and hedged against.

But in a world of finite knowledge and limited resources, where we have to make choices and set priorities, it makes sense to lean toward the most likely and lethal scenarios for our military. And it is hard to conceive of any country confronting the United States directly in conventional terms – ship to ship, fighter to fighter, tank to tank – for some time to come. The record of the past quarter century is clear: the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Israelis in Lebanon, the United States in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Smaller, irregular forces – insurgents, guerrillas, terrorists – will find ways, as they always have, to frustrate and neutralize the advantages of larger, regular militaries. And even nation-states will try to exploit our perceived vulnerabilities in an asymmetric way, rather than play to our inherent strengths.

Overall, the kinds of capabilities we will most likely need in the years ahead will often resemble the kinds of capabilities we need today.

On National Public Radio there’s a good piece on the debatet that Gates is talking about: Army Focus on Counterinsurgency Debated Within

My two cents (heavily informed by a correspondent who observes Beltway politics from a closer perspective than me):

What is the future conventional threat? Not Russia and not China either for a long while yet but low-level skirmishes in which a COIN-focussed military would be a useful thing.

What is the current imperative? In a nutshell: not losing the wars we are actually in right now.

Is there really a conflict of interests between major warfighting and COIN? Possibly, but less than meets the eye. A COIN-adapted force is one with a high level of basic skills in which low-level leaders are tested for flexibility, initiative and the ability to adapt. These are good things. Anyway, we know now that the old orthodoxy is wrong. It’s harder to go from warfighter to COIN-operator (should you care to make that distinction) than it is to go the other way.

Is there a risk of overdoing COIN? In my view, not really. The real problem is overstretch of the forces. That’s what’s killing the Army and Marine Corps.

That said, call me cynical, but the real, real problem is that a COIN-focussed force really doesn’t offer a great deal of opportunity for the truly gargantuan defence contracts we’ve gotten used to over the years. It’s about the mindsets and skillsets of the force much more than it is weapons suites and materiel.

The World’s Most Dangerous Gangs

Foreign Policy: The List: The World’s Most Dangerous Gangs

Wars all over the place, typhoons, earthquakes… Just in case your dystopia isn’t dystopic enough have a look at the list from Foreign Policy at the link above of the world’s most dangerous gangs. ‘Dangerous’ is a subjective term, however. What seems to have made the list are the gangs which are biggest–which is alarming enough. But size is not all; moreover the distinction between criminal gang and insurgent is rather gray and mutable. For a fuller treatment of a fasciniating subject see the  SSI monographs of Dr Max Manwaring (available at the link).

Air Combat by Remote Control

Air Combat by Remote Control - Wall Street Journal

Interesting article in Wall Street Journal which, in the words of the student who forwarded it to me, illustrates a ‘new level of intersection of air power and tactical ground combat’.

The sniper never knew what hit him. The Marines patrolling the street below were taking fire, but did not have a clear shot at the third-story window that the sniper was shooting from. They were pinned down and called for reinforcements.

Help came from a Predator drone circling the skies 20 miles away. As the unmanned plane closed in, the infrared camera underneath its nose picked up the muzzle flashes from the window. The sniper was still firing when the Predator’s 100-pound Hellfire missile came through the window and eliminated the threat.

The airman who fired that missile was 8,000 miles away, here at Creech Air Force Base, home of the 432nd air wing.

…

These are early days for unmanned aerial warfare. The 432nd is only one year old, and its mission continues to evolve. The 42nd Attack Squadron — the Reaper squadron — is still young, and still small, with only enough men and equipment to keep two planes at a time in the skies over Afghanistan.

Col. Chambliss compares the situation to the early decades of manned flight. “You know how fast things went from the end of the First World War to the end of the Second World War, how aviation, the capabilities vastly increased. That’s where we’re sitting right now. . . . I have no doubt when I’m sitting in my rocking chair, a retired old guy, I will be sitting there going, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’”

I’d love to know more about how the legacy Air Force views this development. Anybody have any good sources? Are they prepared to embrace this change or are they like interwar cavalrymen seeking some shred of a reason to dismount their horses? Decades from now when authoritative histories of today’s wars start to emerge I will bet the chapters on guys like Col Chambliss will get the most attention.

Breaking News: US Government Shoots Self in Foot, Again.

Abu Aardvark: resource tradeoffs and the war on ideas

Via Marc Lynch at the link above I note that the US government because of ‘budgetary shortfalls’ is forced to fire analysts in Radio Free Europe/Free Liberty. Those receiving pink slips are apparently to include RFE/RL analysts Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo authors of important reports on Iraqi insurgent use of media The War of Images and Ideas and Al Qaeda’s use of the Internet The Virtual Network Behind the Global Message.

I really don’t get this administration. Actually I do get something: six years into the GWOT they still haven’t got a clue about the nature of the war they are in. It’s not just the ignorance which galls its the studied, committed blindness and warped priorities which they exhibit. RFE/RL’s annual budget is $79 million. By comparison that kind of money would buy you about one half of a single F-22–pilot and fuel not included. Says Aardvark:

That’s right: the US government is cutting loose one of its best analysts of al-Qaeda’s use of the internet in order to save money which doesn’t even amount to a rounding error in the Pentagons budget.

Update: Is it a sign of the apocalypse that Jon Stewart on The Daily Show perfectly encapsulates this administration in two pithy words? ‘Seldom outdumbed.’

KOW tops 50,000

Absolutely glorious day here in London. Good day indeed to celebrate the glorious success that is Kings of War - which has just topped 50,000 viewings. KOW has been going for just over seven months.

Much of this success is down to David Betz, the driving force behind KOW. But thanks also due to the whole team of contributors, and to those who view our posts and pitch in their own comments. Please do keep on visiting our site and debating war and the world with us.

KINGS OF WAR! From the left! Left, right, left, right…

[Postscript: Of course, Londoners know that glorious May usually means a crap Summer ahead. Still, let's not worry about that for now.]

Blood debts and exotic others

Imagine this.

You live in a country occupied by foreigners. Since invading, they have thrown out a vicious despot who once reigned, but communal violence has at times been horrific. They hire mercenaries to help keep order in the occupation. In a shoot-out downtown, your little son is accidentally shot dead by one of the soldiers of fortune. None of the mercenaries are put on trial. Representatives of the occupying power do not officially apologise. But they offer you compensation, in the form of money in an envelope.

Do you reject the offer? Do you feel outraged? Do you think you are denied justice?

If so, you must be an Arab. You must be from ‘traditional Arab society’, that ‘values honor and decorum above all.’

Pardon the sarcasm, but this is what happens when culture is studied very badly.

We have been told for a while now that cash compensation is a necessary part of managing relations with the natives. But, despite the analysis of this article, which interprets Arab rage as a spasm of exotic culture, it turns out Iraqis can’t easily be bought off, that they want a formal apology for their killed relatives, and some of them want a formal trial.

The Human Terrain System itself actually has got a lot going for it. There is prima facie evidence that by getting the military to think harder about the social ecology of host populations, it has helped to depress violence and make military force more discriminate, while building greater consent amongst the people.

But culturalism fails where it interprets people as exotic, alien creatures, bound in a world of archaic tradition, without agency or linkages or resemblances to the modern West, and without multiple identities. Iraq, for example, may be a place of ‘traditional’ mores, but it was also a highly modernised, bureaucratic, literate society, mingling secularism with piety, modernisation with tribalism, and its a place where interests and identity jostle, where warriors change sides, where criminals reinvent themselves as jihadists, and where, despite the vulgar attempts to buy them off, families feel every bit as angry about losing relatives as we might.

Matt Yglesias puts it better than I can:

“It’s really bizarre how, in the context of war, totally normal attributes of human behavior become transformed into into mysterious cultural quirks of the elusive Arab. I recall having read in the past that because Arabs are horrified of shame, it’s not a good idea to humiliate an innocent man by breaking down his door at night and handcuffing him in front of his wife and children before hauling him off to jail. Now it seems that Arabs are also so invested in honor that they don’t like it when mercenaries kill their relatives.”

Bravo. The many shifts and changes in propaganda by Saddam Hussein should make us remember how fluid, contested and volatile culture really is. Iraqis have ‘tradition’, but they also have politics, they may have tribe, but they also have the interpenetration of ideas, technology and influence.

Unfortunately, dodgy ideas of culture are not just evident in popular media, but amongst some retired generals, academics, at least one senior cultural anthropologist, respected public affairs journals, and military doctrine. Hopefully the talented (and brave) folk at the HTS will push back against this wave.

A good pedagogy of culture and war should be attentive to the linkages, crossovers and relationships (especially the reciprocity of war itself) that mean culture is not reducible to a discourse of difference and separation, but should acknowledge global patterns as well. What Shylock said about Jews, also applies to Iraqis:

“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.”

(This is kind of a plug for a book I’m writing, as you can probably tell.)

Note to self: Never Assume…

BBC NEWS | England | Royal Engineers beat Atlantic

My student, Major Michael Forster, is recently back from the remote island of Tristan da Cunha where his Royal Engineers unit was busy saving the harbour there from battering by the South Atlantic. The BBC thought it newsworthy and so do I. We forget sometimes that the British Army plays a global role–and not just in Afghanistan and Iraq. Go watch the clip at the link.

There was a lesson here for me, however. Forster is a student on our on-line programme MA War in the Modern World. My interaction with these students is mediated entirely through the computer on a dedicated-platform, via email, or internet telephony. Generally speaking I have no idea where they are unless they tell me. They might be in Afghanistan in a slit trench. They might be manning a desk in Whitehall just down the road. It doesn’t make any difference from a pedagogical point of view although there are obvious practical considerations. For instance, ‘I’m sorry my essay is going to be late. I’m sending this email from [some place in Afghanistan] from the cab of a 4×4, engine running to keep warm (minus 6 or 7 here) as the Dutch armed forces cafe which has wi-fi, outside which I’m parked shuts at 2230′ is not an unusual communication.

But sometimes they tell me where they are and it just goes over my head. A couple of months ago I was badgering Mike about progress on his dissertation (which is shaping up nicely!) and I received this email in response:

David,
I have had a bit of a fast ball, I have been on the island of Tristan da Cunha for the last month - 6 days on a fishing boat to the place. However I have managed to get loads done and I want to run what I have done past you. Can I send you what I have done so you can give me a steer? I have to go back to Tristan on the 19th Feb for 6 weeks but I will have e-mail when I get there.
Mike

Now I’m not exactly your ivory tower academic type. I’m pretty practical and worldly as professional eggheads go. But when I read this the mental image I had was of something like this:

Not of a guy working away on his dissertation in the spare hours available to him while doing a tough job in one of the toughest and remotest places there is. Point in my favour: Tristan being in the southern hemisphere it would have been summer down there so maybe he did catch a few rays. Anyhow, the lesson being never assume (you’ll make an ass out of you and me). I really admire the dedication of my students. As teachers go I’m very lucky.

Social scientist killed in Afghanistan

Social Sciences in War: The Cost of Being There Complex Terrain Lab

Via Michael Innes at the link above comes news that Michael Bathia, a social scientist with the US Army’s Human Terrain System, has been killed in Afghanistan.

In Memory of Michael Vinay Bhatia ‘99

Michael Bhatia

May 08, 2008

Michael Vinay Bhatia ’99 died yesterday in Afghanistan, where he as working as a social scientist in consultation with the US Defense Department.

In addition to graduating magna cum laude in international relations from Brown University, Michael was a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute from July 2006 to June 2007. At the Institute, he was involved in a research project on Cultural Awareness in the Military, while also writing his PhD dissertation.

Over several years, Michael’s research and humanitarian work took him to such conflict zones as Sahrawi refugee camps, East Timor, and Kosovo, in addition to Afghanistan.

Of his work in Afghanistan, Michael wrote in November: “The program has a real chance of reducing both the Afghan and American lives lost, as well as ensuring that the US/NATO/ISAF strategy becomes better attuned to the population’s concerns, views, criticisms and interests and better supports the Government of Afghanistan.”

Michael Bhatia was writing his PhD at Oxford University. He had also done work for the International Policy Institute here at King’s College London. He also taught in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University where I did my BA and MA degrees. Sadly, I never met him. I have the greatest respect for Michael Bhatia and people like him who are prepared to lend their vitally-needed expertise on the ground exposed to danger. Rest in peace.

A moving personal tribute at The QWU Blog

If you google Mike, you’ll read a lot about his scholarly work around the world, especially in Afghanistan. Mike was a true academic, but in many ways he was more like Indiana Jones. Mike didn’t sit around and do research. He spent his time in the field: in Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan and more. Mike was a genius.

More at Ghosts of Alexander

Sound of battle

BBC News: Gun battle message shocks parents

The sound of battle is what the parents of Stephen Phillips heard when they checked their answering machine. The 22 year old who is serving in Afghanistan with a US Army MP company, had unknowingly phoned home when he accidentally hit the speed-dial on his mobile whilst in combat.

Turns out the parents had just returned from buying flowers for Stephen’s best friend, who had been killed in action in Iraq the year before. They were understandably distraught, especially to hear gunfire and somebody screaming for “more ammo.”

As for the young man, when he heard the recording, he was embarrassed by the swearing. Good god there’s nothing to be ashamed of. You should hear the cursing when I stub my toe. A little colourful language by men fighting for their country is neither here nor there.

British readers will not be surprised by the tagline in the Sun: “Son’s on the Taliphone.“

Sigh.

DefenseLink Bloggers Roundtable: DoD Minerva Consortia: A Partnership for Knowledge

Roundtable discussion with Dr Thomas Mahnken, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning

Thanks to Matt Armstrong at Mountain Runner who recommended me I just took part in a DoD bloggers roundtable (linked to above) on the Minerva Consortia which Secretary Gates recently announced. If you’re an academic interested in defence and security research this is a big thing. The gist of it is excerpted below (read the whole thing here The Minerva Consortia):

America today faces more, and more complex, challenges than at any time in its recent past. From the rise of new powers to trends in the environment, demographics, and culture to violent extremism, we will increasingly grapple with unprecedented change. To address these shared challenges, Americans, and their government, need a better understanding of the factors and causes behind them, what they mean, and what the future might bring. We in the Department of Defense propose a new initiative to help develop that understanding: government-supported research consortia that will draw upon the knowledge, ideas, and creativity of the nation’s universities. The Minerva Consortia will provide important and lasting professional contributions to a variety of disciplines, and a critical public service.

Concept

Minerva’s core approach is to encourage the formation of diverse consortia to conduct original research in a range of topic areas. Each topic or question will be framed and approached in a fashion appropriate to it and from a range of perspectives. We seek teams of scholars across universities and colleges who will tackle a question or topic across disciplines, coordinated by a lead institution. Participants need not be U.S. citizens.

…

Initial Topic Areas and Products

1. Chinese Military and Technology...

2. Studies of the Strategic Impact of Religious and Cultural Changes within The Islamic World…

3. Iraqi Perspectives Project...

4. Studies of Terrorist Organization and Ideologies…

5. Exploratory Areas for Research…

Some observations:

• The call is not exclusive to US institutions and scholars which is excellent because chances are that the problems which vex the DoD also vex their allies; that being the case,
• compelling insights and possible solutions may be found abroad; so,
• good for the DoD to recognize this with an international approach.

I was caught offguard by having the first question on the Roundtable. I managed to say ‘gee, good idea, we’ll send you a proposal’ which wasn’t a question as such, but an important point nonetheless. The fellow from Blackfive had a good question, I thought, about the gap between the military and academia (epitomized of late by the brouhaha over anthropologists and the Army’s human terrain system which we’ve written about here at KOW). The importance of getting the military into civilian educational settings was noted. This is another issue which is of much interest to me (see Pedagogy for the Long War). I was glad that he brought it up because I think this is a two-way street. Yes, the army needs to go Beyond the Cloister, as Petraeus put it; but universities need to think more creatively about how they can educate ‘beyond the cloister’ too. Our on-line Masters degree MA War in the Modern World is an example of how that can be done, so I was happy to get a plug in for that in the discussion. The British Army education branch has quite a good motto for our times: ‘train for certainty, educate for uncertainty.’ I think it expresses pretty much Gates’ message and intent with the Minerva programme. I welcome the initiative.

Sharon Weinberger at Wired’s Danger Room was less impressed: Pentagon’s Academic Outreach, Big Talk Little Cash Fair points, actually. The amount of money being stumped up is not huge–it is no Manhattan Project. It’s the defence department’s money being coughed up whereas arguably it should be coming from other agencies. And the appetite of universities for cash is so large (higher education is not cheap to operate, particularly to staff) that a few million is not going to go terribly far. All I’d say is a/ it’s a start, b/ other departments should be doing this, the DoD should be commended for actually doing it, and c/ if the funding is carefully targeted on issues which are otherwise extremely difficult to get funding councils to support then it could make a useful impact.

On the last point, it occurs to me that the initial topic areas are broad and what’s missing is, in my view, the biggest problem we now face: an understanding of how to conduct influence/information operations and propaganda in the 21st century. That’s the issue that is most pressing and it exists at every level of war from the grand strategic to the section level tactical. It applies ‘over there’ as well as at home. It’s a bit frustrating since Gates and Rumsfeld before him have both expressed the same frustration and incredulity about the situation they find themselves in:

Robert Gates: …public relations was invented in the United States, yet we are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about our policies and our goals. It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the internet than America.

Donald Rumsfeld: Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today’s media age, but for the most part we, our country, our government, has not adapted. Consider that the violent extremists have established media relations committees—these are terrorists and they have media relations committees that meet and talk about strategy, not with bullets but with words. They’ve proven to be highly successful at manipulating the opinion elites of the world. They plan and design their headline-grabbing attacks using every means of communication to intimidate and break the collective will of free people.

The US and the UK have been fought to a standstill in two theatres by global jihadists not because
they’re better at moving metal than we are but because they’re better at the purposeful shaping of the ideas
and beliefs of others to warlike effect. That’s the cutting edge for insurgency research.