This may, one day, make a really great movie

… but it’s a pretty dismal way to make strategy: ‘Rift in US war cabinet as Obama throws out all options in debate over troop surge.’ What is with all these leaks?

Looking the wrong way?

I’m sure this is not a unique thought, but I thought I’d ‘get it out there’…. inspired by the horror-story of a friend of mine at Bristol Uni who had this critique made of his work, I’ve thought about it a little bit, and then on hearing Lord Ashdown et al this morning talking about Bosnia I’d share it.

The problems western powers have faced since the early 1990s have not been about the reconstruction of states, but have been more acutely focussed on how to destroy states in a way that facilitates their reconstruction.

Put more simply, where is the doctrine and thinking about state destruction?

We know how to remove the levers of coercive power from those occupying it (Iraq is a good example) but we didn’t know how to do this in a way that paved the way towards reconstruction. The oft-cited example of how the western powers handled the Iraqi armed forces is a good one in this light, as is the handling of myriad civil servants and border control guards. Put simply, if you remove all the levers of coercive power, what you are left with is an unwieldy bugger’s muddle.

If you do a cursory, or even indepth, lit search you’ll discover that there was a veritable full scale nationalised industry in writing about ‘post-conflict reconstruction’ in the 90s and noughties, and this spread out into conflict, security and development. All very worthy, all very interesting… and all very liberal, in the pejorative sense of the word.

It is all very well ‘wanting to help people’, who doesn’t? But reconstruction is premised on the need to reconstruct something, and that something must have been destroyed.. and whilst we are all lovely people who read The Times, wear sensible jumpers and eat cheese, we are variously involved in or living within authorities who did the destroying bit… And it would be jolly nice, and a lot more sensible to focus our attentions on  - as the late McNamara once said in paraphrase – killing people in a smarter way. Because only in thinking about how we tear down a state, remove its leaders, and the levers of coercive power, will we be able to achieve the sorts of reconstruction activity that liberal academics, liberal NGOs and liberal politicians so crave.

So, I’d issue a challenge to the funding councils, and to any government who fancies taking it on.. why not fund some serious research into the art and science of state destruction? And for the record: no, I don’t want to do it. There are far better qualified people than me.

The view from there

Theo Farrell, KoW pioneer, writes in the Guardian on his recent trip to Afghanistan. He’s upbeat:

Notwithstanding the tragic events in Nad-e’Ali, the Afghan security forces are getting better, as is the partnership between Afghans and the International Security Assistance Force. I saw this most visibly in Garmsir, where I spent some time with the US marines. Garmsir district centre has tarmac roads, solar streetlights and a thriving bazaar. US-run Radio Garmsir pumps out popular programming courtsey of its two local DJs; it also receives over 1,000 letters a month from listeners. Most striking of all, the marines trust Afghan police and soldiers to secure the district centre. Garmsir feels very much like a society that is shaking off the shackles of war.

Sounds good. What do you make of it?

Analogies

Did you know that the Soviets were in Afghanistan in the eighties? Apparently they lost. A bit like the Americans in Vietnam. If only they’d tried COIN like we did in Iraq in 2007, all would be well. We should double down in Afghanistan like we did there.

…Wait, maybe the lesson is that the stakes aren’t high enough to warrant staying. We should retreat with honour. We’d better get out before only one man’s left alive to cross the border – did you know the Brits lost that one too?

I see an official has just resigned. It’s Daniel Ellsberg all over again – or maybe its John Paul Vann. This guy Karzai is just like Diem; his brother’s on the CIA payroll, but he’s just not our sonofabitch. Maybe these drones will work like the Phoenix programme. Maybe Obama is holding off because, like LBJ, he’s got a Greater Society to force through Congress.

We all use analogies – they save a lot of mental effort and play to our propensity to find patterns in cause and effect. Sometimes they help policymakers resolve ambiguity, but that’s not always the way to bet it.

I like IR theory (someone has to), so I can see the attraction of reaching for abstraction and generalisation. Not everything is sui generis. The problem is that analogies often leave too much out of the picture. The pithy connection of two events concentrates too much cognitive attention on the similarity, not the differences between the two.

I’ve a similar problem with theorising on ways of war, or strategic culture. In his Carnage and Culture, to unfairly pick one example, Victor Davis Hanson has written a brilliant and vivid account of battle. But the abstraction required to identify consistent features of a western way of war that spans the millennia is too far a stretch for me: culture is too dynamic for that, too nuanced.

Change and difference. It’s not 1989, not 1965, and certainly not 1842. It’s not even 2007.

Unto us this day a journalist is born

Tom Rogan is a recent War Studies graduate (BA ‘08). His first ever column ‘Obama must listen to Gen McChrystal‘ is up on the Guardian today. Well done, Tom. He writes, ‘I was wondering if you would consider posting a link on the Kings of War blog. I would love to get some (informed) opinion!’ Pleased to oblige. In his view there are three choices with respect to Afghanistan:

First, to support the implementation of a co-ordinated, full-spectrum counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan; an approach that focuses on the protection of the Afghan people and the development of long term civil stability and empowerment.

Second, to adopt a counter-terrorism based strategy; an option that will energise the political undercurrents that fuel violent extremism, while leaving Afghanistan and the region in perpetual chaos.

Third, to withdraw from Afghanistan and invite the absolute disaster – human and political and moral and strategic – that would without question follow, when the Taliban and al-Qaida assumed free control of the country once again.

For what it’s worth Tom, my heart goes with the first but my head says it’s too late, too expensive in lives and money, and ultimately not worth it. I am skeptical of the second; it hasn’t worked before, why should it work now? I don’t think we’ve cracked how to fight a war amongst the people without actually being there yet. Which leaves us with the third where I think maybe you are begging the question. Will it be an ‘absolute disaster’? I think a fair answer is maybe–it definitely won’t be good, but truly, who knows how bad? The status quo, meanwhile, is not easily tolerable.

Liberalism is not Neutral and not a Shield

UN gets by with little help from its friends

The UN finds itself the victim of another complex terrorist attack.  The implications of the attack on the Organisation will probably be manifold, but allow me to look at some of them.

Emotions and Strategy

Patrol near Forward Operating Base Baylough, Zabul, Afghanistan, March 19, 2009. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Adam Mancini)

Matthew Hoh, a Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain, has resigned his post as senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban “hotbed,” the Washington Post reported yesterday. The very public resignation of a combat veteran with an important role has been the talk of town here in Washington. And it raises a momentous question: what is the effect of emotions on strategy?

Reading Hoh’s very personal resignation letter (.pdf) is moving. “I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end,” he writes. “I fail to see the value or worth of continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.” The Post, not without awkwardness, reported that Hoh had suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the past. So the reader is left tempted to connect the dots: well, perhaps trauma impairs a rational mind? Perhaps Hoh’s analysis is skewed? I already heard that argument made.

The subject of emotion has something personal. So perhaps it is adequate to respond in a personal way. I just returned from a short two-weeks trip to Kabul and Helmand. It was my first time in a combat zone — and it was both confusing and humbling. Confusing because, as you talk to soldiers, civilians, Afghans, you’re flooded with anecdotes: always detailed, always different, some optimistic, some pessimistic, and often in contradiction — forming a bigger picture seems impossible. Two weeks, even two months, are of course too short to understand. But perhaps long enough to be confused. Humbling because two weeks in the dust just make you understand how tough it is to serve in Helmand for a year or more. Even inside the wire, you’re close enough to feel the proximity to violence. To sense what it means to go on patrol. To grasp, at least superficially, what courage means — not fearlessness, but the ability to cope with fear.

And this goes the critical point: everybody there feels the emotional impact, not just the “kids” who get their legs blown off or have to collect body parts in a humvee after an IED struck, and store a comrade’s foot into a fridge normally used for food. It is really tough being a mid-level officer whose decisions might cause casualties among troops and civilians. The same goes for the very senior officers, who work tirelessly under unimaginable pressure to get it right. And of course for civilians, who serve under the most adverse conditions.

Sacrifice creates not just individual regret, like for Hoh, it creates collective value. All these losses, all this energy, the effort, the sacrifice, all this cannot have been in vain — it has to serve a purpose, something positive has to be achieved, we just need to carry it through. For we gave so much.  But therein, in these arguments, lies a danger. The danger that war might change “from a tool of policy to a force that imposes — or seeks to impose — its own emotional demands.” These words are Peter Paret’s, from a brilliant new book, The Cognitive Challenge of War. Prussia 1806. Trauma and stress don’t just affect individuals, they affect entire armies, even their political masters. ”Above all,” Paret warns, “it is important to keep in mind that wars are fought not to be won but to gain a political objective beyond war.”

Questioning Hoh’s assessment because he’s seen bad things is equivalent to questioning McChrystal’s assessment because his army has seen bad things. Think about it. Are we ready to do this? If the answer is no, Paret is proved right.

Dr Ellsberg, I presume?

The resignation of Matthew Hoh, a foreign service officer and former Marine, from his post as senior US civilian in Zabul province is getting a lot of attention. See, for instance, in the Washington Post ‘US Official Resigns Over Iraq War‘. Ambassador Eikenberry tried hard, it would seem, to keep him–and it’s not hard to see why given Hoh’s cv–but to no avail. Read his Resignation Letter and you will see a man whose mind is made up. Painfully, regretfully, it seems to me, Matthew Hoh has reached some conclusions about the Afghan War:

Our support for this kind of government [Karzai's], coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency’s true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam; and unpopular and corrupt government we backed at the expense of our Nation’s own internal peace, against an insurgency whose nationalism we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War ideology. 

…

Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds, some that will never heal or will only worsen with time. the dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can anymore be made. As such, I submit my resignation.

Clearly, this will not be welcome in Washington. For a while I have been writing how deplorable and at sea British strategy has been; this is in part, of course, a function of the aimlessness of American strategy.

 

More war paint

After my last post on war art, a friend asked why I’d not featured any paintings by soldiers – in my ignorance, I wasn’t aware of any. Happily, now I am.

How do you like Matthew Cook’s paintings from Afghanistan? His work is also featured in The Times, and you can buy his book here, or if you really like them, a few of the paintings are still available here, but going fast, by the look of it.

Cook is a TA soldier, but as he relates elsewhere, both his Afghan trips were for artistic purposes, rather than deployments with the TA.

The Forever War continues

Dexter Filkins has a long profile of Stanley McChrystal in the New York Times – well worth a read, particularly once you’ve watched the PBS Frontline on Afghanistan, and read Paula’s post below. Do the youngsters in his command, like the Marines in the documentary, understand his mentality? Do the other generals? Can his approach work if they don’t?

In ‘The Forever War‘ Filkins had written my favourite book about these wars thus far, deserving of all the critical acclaim. If you’ve not read it, his Times piece gives some idea of the style. But there’s another book just out which comes close to besting it: David Finkel’s ‘The Good Soldiers‘.

This is more tightly focused than Filkins’ book – indeed the atmosphere is so claustrophobic that I read it in one go, partly just to get out the other end. Finkel embedded with 2-16 infantry during their surge tour of eastern Baghdad in 2007-8, and he gives us war at the micro-level, with all its shocking brutality.  His depiction of seriously wounded soldiers trying to recover, and in some cases failing, is particularly harrowing. At the book’s centre is Ralph Kauzlarich, the battalion commander, and his struggle to maintain his essential optimism and faith in the mission.

Thinking of McChrystal’s dilemma, The Good Soldiers is revealing. Kauzlarich’s battalion operate for the most part in profound cultural ignorance and isolation: they have only limited interaction with the locals, even once they get out of their FOB. Iraqis they encounter seem to inhabit a separate, unreachable world, the politics of which are obscure and only hazily grasped by 2-16. On Kauzlarich’s desk FM 3-24 gathers dust, alongside a box of footballs intended for local kids.

And yet.

It’s that ‘and yet’ that keeps Kauzlarich and his team going as the surge unfolds. COIN may be the graduate level of war, but only when it comes to writing the field manuals. The kids on the ground in The Good Soldiers, many fresh from school, were a small part of a counterinsurgency effort that paid off. The 19 and 20 year old rangers of 2-16 might not have been particularly culturally astute, but across Baghdad quantity had its own quality. That seems to be how McChrystal sees things too.