What could be worse?

we may have to revise our views of the ends of war.  We may have to deal with historical grey zones which will not permit historians of the future to engage in the periodisation of history into neat themes, phases, eras, and epochs, each with its own unique spirit of time.

The Roman philosopher and statesman Cicero’s ancient saying, “In time of war, law is silent: (inter arma silent leges), is regularly invoked for the proposition that law and politics differ during wartime.  Wartime becomes a justification for a rule of law that bends in favor of the security of the state.

…security is about survival…The special nature of security threats justifies the use of extraordinary measures to handle them.  The invocation of security has been the key to legitimizing the use of force, but more generally it has opened the way for the state to mobilize, or to take special powers, to handle existential threats.  Traditionally, by saying ‘security,’ a state representative declares an emergency condition, thus claiming a right to use whatever means are necessary…

Traditionally, this distortion has been tolerated because wars end.  In the twenty-first century, however, we find ourselves in an era in which wartime–the war on terror–seems to have no endpoint…

Viewing war as an exception to normal life…leads us to ignore the persistence of war.  If wartime is actually normal rather than exceptional time, then law during war must be seen as the form of law we usually practice, rather than a suspension of an idealized understanding of law.

The American people cannot wait for a new peacetime to end detentions at Guatanamo or to rein in expanded presidential war power.  Time itself will not wash them away.  Wartime has become the only kind of time we have, and therefore is a time within which American politics must function. 

A ‘reflexive’ rationality…preoccupied with averting an array of possible adverse undesirable consequences that may or may not materialise.  This is in contrast to the previous more direct linear ‘instrumental’ rationality, which emphasised calculating and matching means to attain desired goals. 

The irony of risk here is that rationality, that is, the experience of the past, encourages anticipation of the wrong kind of risk, the one we believe we can calculate and control.  The bitter ironies of this risk are virtually endless; among them is the fact, that, in order to protect their populations from the danger of terrorism, states increasingly limit civil rights and liberties, with the result that in the end the open, free society may be abolished, but the terrorist threat is by no means averted.

If all of this adds up to a series of constraints that tie the hands of our governments, so be it.  It is the very nature of democracy that it not only does, but should, fight with one hand tied behind its back.  It is also in the nature of democracy that it prevails against its enemies precisely because it does.

I’m not a fan of the post-colonialist critique. Well, more to the point, I’m not a fan of the word ‘colonialism’ being used to describe any and every attempt by a given state/actor/person to influence another. There’s plenty of good work on colonialism, but lazy academia/journalism/activism has expanded the use of an important concept to the point that it becomes unusable as an analytical tool, or basis for judgement. Let’s not forget, colonialism is used as a basis for judgement. Saying that “colonialism is good” is tantamount to heresy in the liberal west, as much as bold-facedly stating that “colonialism was good” constitutes the starting pistol for an intellectual brawl. Even those who argue that colonialism wasn’t entirely a bad thing face barrages of complaints (see Niall Ferguson). Using the word ‘colonial’ tends to imply an automatic moral judgement on the part of the author, and expect a certain similar reaction in the part of the reader. For that reason, I tend to shy away from the word myself. There’s plenty of other words in the English language to describe the processes that I consider bad.

Having said all that, I’m going to ‘call’ colonialism on this article. Well, more to the point, I’m going to suggest that the author might want to read up on/cite a brief history of Europe’s empires (since we don’t tend to associate colonialism with earlier empires and Americans don’t like to think of themselves as an empire). One of the bits of ‘state-building’ that I find quite odd is the internal logic that assumes that dry technical reforms can somehow be divorced from nation-building (ie – meddling with someone’s culture, politics and nationalism etc). For historial reasons, Americans tend to call state-building nation-building, but the division exists (technical reform/assistance vs identity politics and nationalism). The problem is that the two are intimately linked, even if ‘we’ tend to disclaim any intervention in terms of identity and politics. Well, except the NGOs. The end result is that an article can espouse, in quite bland and agreeable terms, actions which would likely have significant and morally dubious effects if put into practise. As a thought experiment, re-read the article and imagine it as a manual for the Dutch East India Trading Company. After doing so, it is difficult to consider the actions espoused in the article without also thinking of the moral ramifications of such actions. Well, unless you want to forget a considerable chunk of history. That isn’t to take a particular stand on the issue one way or the other, but I think it’s important to consider the morality of operations, especially when you’re talking about re-ordering the power structure, politics and economy of a given group of people for your own benefit. I know, morality and society isn’t the military’s job, but killing people isn’t the State Department’s job. I’m sure that the SD would put a hell of a lot of thought into such issues if they were asked to start killing people, so I don’t see why the military shouldn’t do the same when getting into development.

Metrics, metrics, metrics. Three out of the six pointers in this rather good Foreign Policy article concern the ability of military organisations to figure out their impact on the world around them. Surprisingly, the concept doesn’t appear (by name) in Robert C. Jones’ advice on the revision of the FM 3-24 manual.

My considered response to the Army’s revision request (which may or may not get put together into a formal submission) is “send in the continental philosophers”

I know that a) this response would go down like a lead balloon and b) that from the way the military appears to think about knowledge and metrics, it would do them the world of good to encounter some people that would politely point out that the empirical realist assumptions they make about knowledge are roughly a hundred years out of date, and that even the hard sciences don’t tend to think in such terms since the advent of quantum physics.

The problem, as I see it, is that military types probably wouldn’t want to be seen dead lifting ideas from post-marxists, or people that proclaim the gulf war never happened (sort of). Likewise Foucauldians and other types don’t tend to want to translate their grand attacks on rationality, hierarchy and power for, well, the armed agents of hierarchical power structures. Or, like Agamben, they can make the claim that Foucault’s work on sovereignty constitutes an ‘unprejudiced analysis’ with a straight face, presumably because it is believed to be true.

While I can understand the reticence of generally left wing philosophers to get involved with the military, the other side of the coin (ahem) strikes me as a slight dereliction of duty. After all, when you’re grappling with problems of communication, semiotics and signification, like it’s a new thing,* a military type might pick up Baudrillard and note that he was writing on the topic thirty five years ago, and, while the military is stumbling around looking for methods of analysis, his four logics might just be the ticket to constructing a crude framework for thinking about the role/production of violent acts in a war. I read many hazily worded pieces on ‘strategic communication’, I haven’t yet found a course on military semiotics.

The oddest part of all this is that the military are one of the few organisations that tend to accept chaos and subjectivity as an inherent part of their business, yet the thinkers studying precisely these problems aren’t widely read or cited within these circles. For Clausewitz, war is friction, for Michel Serres, ‘noise’ is the system. I’d bet good money that the majority of people who’ve read Clausewitz haven’t read Serres, and vice-versa. Now that militaries are asking ‘big’ questions like ‘how can we know what we want to know?’ concurrent with the expansion of the types of knowledge that military organisations are seeking, it might be the time for them to also engage with the ‘big guns’ on the subject.

*I think there’s now a curious ‘imagined past’ where the communicative aspects of violent activity never existed, or weren’t important to military affairs. One wonders how these folk integrate thousands of years of military ‘demonstrations of force’ into this worldview.

Earlier this year I had a lively discussion with a BA student regarding the video of marines urinating over the dead bodies of their dead opponents. The argument boiled down to the questions of whether we need to understand their mindset prior to judging their actions, or whether we need or should even attempt to do so (NB: My argument was yes on both counts). This week, the LA Times brought the issue of trophy pictures back to the top of the news agenda. Of course, such acts were immediately condemned by Leon Panetta and President Obama. Before we jump to conclusions, let’s remember that not all official apologies are shared by the perpetrators of similar actions.

Here’s a thought – maybe these pictures are a long-term good.

I’ve been re-reading Michael Ignatieff’s Virtual War recently, and gauging how it holds up. Some bits have taken a dent (both his and Luttwak’s writings on post-heroic war definitely need an update), but others remain as clear now as they were back in 2000, prior to the decade long war on terror. The last paragraph always sticks with me, particularly:

“We see ourselves as noble warriors and our enemies as despicable tyrants. We see war as a surgical scalpel and not a bloodstained sword. In so doing we mis-describe ourselves as we mis-describe the instruments of death.”

My reading of Virtual War is that it documents an important milestone in the idea of rational warfare, a concept which I personally consider to be a tad bizzarre. Photos of soldiers posing with mutilated bodies provide a very direct reminder that war isn’t rational, and can never be so, despite the language we use and the way it is viewed by politicians and the public. In short, pictures of soldiers desecrating the dead don’t bring home the ‘reality’ of war, but they drive home its inherent irrationality. Rupert Smith might have made a meal out of ‘killing people and breaking things’, but he still called his book The Utility of Force, which hints at the way in which the very people apologising for marines and soldiers view war – as a tool or implement. Most of the language and way we think of war involves attempts to rationalise or process it, from Robert McNamara through to today’s metrics-based operations. The people that are honest about war recognise that there are irrational elements beyond ‘uncertainty’ which are part and parcel of warfare. Almost everyone involved in conducting war, at least on our side, has a reason for downplaying the barbaric/undisciplined/’conduct… [that] does not in any way represent the high standards of the US military’ bits that will happen in any war. As revolting as pictures of desecrated dead are, they serve to remind everyone that this will happen when young men (and women) are trained to kill people and put in stressful situations.

It is natural to rationalise war (as anything else). Being an academic, studying war, I rationalise it all the time. We use analytical tools to try and draw some semblance of objectivity from extreme subjectivity. I’m well aware of the odd looks I get from my non-academic/non-military friends when I say things like ‘It’s not as simple as that’ in response to issues of dead civilians, because I study the internal rationalisations of war (just war theory and international humanitarian law) and through those lenses there is a perspective where it is okay to kill non-combatants because of proportionality, necessity, double-effect etc. At the same time, I’m well aware that certain aspects of war are irrational – we expect people to be okay with killing another human being, normally among the most abhorrent acts in a criminal code, but at the same time to respect their body. We view pictures of desecration and are horrified at urine, rather than the corpse. In the long run, photos like those published this week remind everyone of what happens in war – that despite the rationalisations, and the necessity, and the values: soldiers will commit terrible acts and desecrate one another. In other words, there are undefinable, but present, limits to the extent to which war can be rationalised, and the extent to which the irrational aspects of the phenomenon can be exorcised.

To re-cap the advocation – maybe the photos are good because they remind everyone (politicians, soldiers, public, press) that war is a really bad thing, not simply a foreign policy tool.

The Web was supposed to kill distance.  I think it kills difference. 

And that is far more significant.

In reading the comment left by Syrynx regarding Dave Betz’s thought-provoking piece, I started thinking about the order of action proposed by Reinbold:

Find your tribe. Decide what you believe. Rally them around you.

Like Syrynx, I found that ordering a bit odd, and more than a bit disturbing; but as I thought more about it, I guess that is the more organic way of looking at it.  It carries the metaphor of tribe more authentically.  In an actual tribal environment, no one picks their tribe.  They are born into it and are (more or less) stuck there.  Movement is possible (exile, splintering off, migration) but it is rare.

When we speak of the public sphere or civil society, this mobility is supposed to be the ‘big deal’.  In post-traditional (read: Modern) society, we can move around, we can have ideas, we can discuss them outside the home and without the State interfering.  That interstital space–between the family and the state–is the definition of civil society.  Civil societies are free to have a debate within themselves.  Traditional societies are not–they suffer from what Ernest Gellner called the ‘tyranny of cousins’.  Real tribes–just like Reinbold’s virtual ones–do control what is believed and what is acceptable.  Blood is thicker than reason. 

Part of the tyranny Gellner describes is that tribe members only feast on the same diet–the same ideas, opinions, beliefs, are merely recycled.  The YouTube video from Ignite lays the contemporary version of this ‘dietary monotony’ out clearly, as does this piece from the Wilson Quarterly (h/t: The Browser):

Social media such as Facebook or Twitter might tell you to pay attention to cassette recordings in Iran, but only if your friends include Iranians. Social media are a powerful discovery engine, but what you’re discovering is what your friends know. If you’re lucky enough to have a diverse, knowledgeable set of friends online, they may lead you in unexpected directions. But birds of a feather flock together, both online and offline, and your friends are more likely to help you discover the unexpected in your hometown than in another land.

This is why de Toqueville was so impressed with America.  He saw it (then) as having developed egalitarian institutions that could be freely joined and exited, rather than the more ascriptive (e.g. hereditary, or class determined) European institutions.  So joining the Lions or the Rotary Club is a good thing (freely done based on set, equal criteria), whereas being inducted into the Order of the Gilded Underpants or the Guild of Honourable Underpants Fashioners was just a way of reifying the status quo (the rich and powerful extending monopoly perqs to themselves) that added no value to the ‘greater good’.  Freedom of association is a determinative factor in creating a democracy.  This is why anti-democratic regimes fight to restrict and/or prevent it.  [Now, the romantic nature of what De Toqueville reports as having observed can be debated on several grounds.  Did it really exist like that?  Didn't it also exclude non-land-owning, non-male, non-White people?  The argument might better be seen as an ideal-type, rather than an actual description.]

So, in the current environment, are we seeing a post-modern return to the more ‘Traditional’ setting, where the idea of a ‘common good’, a ‘public sphere’, a ‘civil society’ is being replaced by a host of tribes?  Is ‘blood’ again the most important ingredient in ‘belonging’ and from belonging to ‘meaning’?  [Our Tribe--KOW--looked at this issue some time ago.]

One of the interesting aspects of Gellner’s idea of civil society was that he cautioned against going too far.  Tribes might be bad, but so were ‘atomised’ individuals, isolated from others.  This is the trope that Robert Putnam took up in his Bowling Alone (which DB has already posted on in the past here at KOW). 

What does all of this do to our Modern, liberal, democratic, meta-narratives?  Is this why Romantic philosophers (and their disciples), such as Nietzsche and Schmitt are making such a comeback?  How much of this reverberates in or in reaction to, the various scribblings of the various Breiviks that inhabit the Internet:

And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned in their unrighteousness.

Ah! how ineptly cometh the word “virtue” out of their mouth! And when they say: “I am just,” it always soundeth like: “I am just–revenged!”

With their virtues they want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies; and they elevate themselves only that they may lower others.

And again there are those who sit in their swamp, and speak thus from among the bulrushes: “Virtue–that is to sit quietly in the swamp.

We bite no one, and go out of the way of him who would bite; and in all matters we have the opinion that is given us.”

And again there are those who love attitudes, and think that virtue is a sort of attitude.

Their knees continually adore, and their hands are eulogies of virtue, but their heart knoweth naught thereof.

And again there are those who regard it as virtue to say: “Virtue is necessary”; but after all they believe only that policemen are necessary.  [Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Second Part, XXVII]

(Even the much more ‘reasonable’ sounding Reinbold’s sitting in the dark is not a million miles away from sitting in the swamp.)

If the ‘ideal/assumption’ that ‘all people are created equal’ actually starts to be fall apart, where will that leave the current ‘nation-state’ structure?  Does it contribute to the Revolt of the Hoodies in the UK earlier this year?  Does this explain why we in the West, especially those of us in the dominant classes, so poorly understand events like the Arab Spring? 

Are we seeing, then, not an opening up, but a closing down, thanks to the Internet?  Have we taken the liberty to associate and to debate and turned it on its head, freely choosing, instead, to have our Google searches so refined as to guarantee we only get what we already believe?  Living inside smaller and smaller Circles of Friends?  Homogenising all the diversity and dissonance out of our lives?  We establish our own, self-regarding, semi-permeable membrane and wall off ‘stuff we don’t like’?  We sit in the swamp, drinking our own bathwater, and at the same time Breivik is willing to kill–not those who are different–but those who tolerate difference.  Our indifference allows others to destroy difference, leading to a sterile sameness.  Breivik as a Norwegian Taliban at a Summer Camp.

Or is even this ‘difference’ (between a liberal us and a radical them) just an illusion?  Have we, as suggested by some, simply asborbed Breivik, and sanitised him, by denying that he has any legitimacy, thereby restoring the soothing status quo?  Our system of rule of law, which prohibits any means of blood letting or appeal to base feelings of revenge (set the judge aside who dares express to his Friends the opinion that capital punishment might be a fitting end to cases like this), is therefore, superior to anything so crude as ‘an eye for an eye’ sentimentality.  Breivik is ’no big deal’; this too shall pass; we can handle it. 

Does this not, though, point to what Herbert Marcuse observed in 1964,  

the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference. [One Dimensional Man, p. 61]

Really, I am not sure I can affect an entire zeitgeist. Instead, I will be sufficiently content to adjust the perspective on counterinsurgency (COIN) a bit (1), and offer a means to begin describing its grand objectives, terms, costs, requirements, etc., as simply as those used for conventional warfare. You are surprised that I am more concerned about the zeitgeist bit, and not what you might be thinking about the first part. I would be foolish not to expect a raised eyebrow or more over that one and so it does not concern me. In fact, I will enjoy imagining these first impressions. Besides, you would be disappointed if I did not fully exercise my titling license. 

It should be obvious that the COIN’dinista zeitgeist is taking a beating over the recent turn of events in Afghanistan. Born in the chaos which emerged tentatively and then spread like wildfire across the fracturing regions that was Iraq in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s ouster, the newest iteration of counter-insurgency theory had all the markings of a favourite son striding onto the world stage to earn a place in destiny sustaining the “surge to victory” in 2007/08. Despite claiming intellectual (and tactical) victory in COIN and extolling the virtues of the COIN’dinista Wise Men, we seem to be down the rabbit hole again in Afghanistan. To be honest, I’m not even sure if the conflict there is an insurgency. It may well be a civil war. Perhaps no foreign intervention can eliminate it – perhaps foreign intervention is the cause. That would be tragic-comic, to say the least. No matter the outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan an understanding the fundamentals of insurgency and counter-insurgency deserves to be worked out, particularly as Western countries and their military forces will continue to get caught up in insurgencies elsewhere. Let’s not lie to ourselves, such operations will continue. Insurgencies sparked by regime collapse, natural disasters, and resource shortages will all continue to demand the attention of multi-lateral forces, especially in key locales or for key objectives. For example, I suspect the clock is ticking on “Back to Somalia II: The Pirates of Mogadishu,” as the costs and disruptions to the shipping industry and critical resources is becoming too great. Because the root of the piracy issue is the dislocation at the center as factions struggle for control, any foreign intervention would rely to a degree upon COIN expertise. This, then, is an exploration of a particular view of COIN that might be of use to a foreign force in such contingencies.

I have always wanted to argue for a radical review of the assumptions regarding use of force requirements, and was inspired by the topic of a talk put on recently in the department, a critique of the use of happiness as a metric (ugh) for progress in counter-insurgency activities. For the record, I hate this term. It makes me utterly despondent that military affairs have been so quantified that a new and rarefied term for “measurement” was necessary.

To attempt to measure the happiness of a population as a means to tally tactical, operational, or strategic progress in COIN operations? I clearly understand the near impossibility of doing that with any usable reliability. But happiness as an objective to orient COIN doctrines and practices at all levels (policy, strategy, operations and tactics) away from force and towards something else suggests itself as a plausible answer to the riddle of this form of warfare. 

So, I wanted to know what the speaker thought of this perspective, as she had spent a fair bit of intellectual energy coming to grips with the terms of happiness in the context of COIN. I do not care what makes for more effective COIN, it is imperialist and should not be done, even if done well, was the response my inquiry earned. (2)

I was not happy. I am a military historian. I am not interested in political interpretations of current events, and I am neither recommending nor making policy. My purpose was to understand what makes for effective COIN practices to provide a means to interrogate events in my capacity as a historian. I take the world as given and try to explain why things have happened as they have, set the context, narrate events, and examine and analyze the outcomes. If I am to be any good at this I must be able to set aside my personal opinions and interrogate a subject rigorously.

Nevertheless, I was quite intrigued by the conceptualization of the objective in COIN to be the happiness of the people. And I think I can offer my own reasoned response in support of this idea. The historical record on the topic – from the insurgent, partisan, and “terrorist” as well as the COIN’dinistas’ perspectives – in addition to the general run of the military strategic and tactical treatises and studies on the subject suggests that where the people are the object their happiness matters. First, and yes, before defeating the insurgents. Always.

While other views on COIN nod to the Hearts and Minds mandate, most cannot fully commit to stepping away from the kinetic fight and still urge, recommend, and require the use of a good deal of force. It seems to me that this is because the focus is too often to counter the insurgent rather than the insurgency. The former orients the COIN forces to fighting and defeating the insurgent military as the means to succeed. To take the latter as one’s focus offers different perspectives and approaches. Most importantly, as I see it, making the insurgency the objective requires consideration of its causes (which must lead to political, economic, and social reform) as well as the temper and inclination of the people. This is the starting point, that it is the insurgency, not the insurgent, that must be countered and this inevitably includes limiting force and a consideration of the people. (3)

It is not easy to create a frame of reference for a Western military mind of war that makes quite clear that while strength and resolution are required, the profligate use of force is not a good option. Hence the rather stark coupling of babies and insurgencies to characterize this view. Yes, it’s unconventional, but that seems entirely appropriate to the topic.  Nevertheless, the comparability is impressive given the perspective of COIN I wish to create. (4) Consider:

You don’t win by physically crushing the baby. Even though you can. And sometimes really think you want to – sort of. It’s that brief moment of insanity, in which we are all mostly lucky for not acting on the idea. Furthermore, the baby can hurt you to its heart’s content, with glorious impunity.

In short, this makes clear that COIN victory cannot come at the point of a bayonet and you must be willing to accept that the insurgent – and sometimes even the civilians – will cause casualties. Force does not serve the ends of COIN in the contemporary political-strategic environment. “Collateral damage” is a euphemism for feeding an insurgency. Furthermore, as the conflict’s roots tend to be in political, economic, or societal issues, the population will necessarily be involved. Thus, these conflicts tend to take place within an environment in which the local civilians are at best ambivalent towards the established authority, and it may even be the case that they support the agenda of the insurgents. In conventional warfare, this would make them collaborators. Not so in COIN. But if you are fighting around them with great frequency or intensity they will not only suffer the incidental effects, but their actions and attitudes could make the come to look like the enemy. This creates too great an opportunity for confusion and frustration for the COIN forces. Even where loyalties are legitimately questionable aggressive action towards civilians does not aid COIN – in any way. As events in South Vietnam a half century ago and Afghanistan in recent months demonstrate, the natural problems of COIN are exacerbated by active and offensive combat operations. The rigors and confusion of COIN can lead to terrible outcomes where the COIN operator is not prepared to accept this context and serve the people unconditionally.

Moreover, this restraint is a key requirement for Western armies deployed abroad given the proliferation of communications’ media and platforms. If you are a foreign COIN operator you should probably leave the bulk of the fight to the locals. To the extent that you exercise a mentoring role, you should probably counsel arrest, light treatment, and as many amnesties as possible. Does that risk sending a few bad apples back into the general population? Yes, but you limit the downside of alienating further those who might not have really been committed insurgents. This “train a local to fish” approach was the brilliance of William Corson’s original concept for the Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam. He knew instinctively that there was a limit to what the Marines could do for the Vietnamese and that his real mandate was to work the Marines out of a job. (5)

Above all else, for the baby you will die. Same for the civilians, the people whom you are committed to serve in a COIN environment. (6)

Sgt. Weichel was right. I feel nothing more than the most sincere sympathy for his family, friends, and comrades. But his inclinations and actions were exactly correct. Were such ideals the standard that defined COIN in the US armed forces, for example, events in OEF/OIF might have followed different trajectories. And were we to train and indoctrinate personnel to see the people caught up in these conflicts humanely it would become easier and more transparent to see our own forces in the same way, thus minimizing the chances for men and women in uniform to ever become so troubled as it appears Sgt. Bales did and yet still be deployed. (7)

This vision of counter-insurgency codifies the sanctity of the civilian and looks to eschew force wherever possible. Not to make the military forces softer or because I want people to think I’m nice (I’m not), but because THIS is the only way to render the costs of COIN for Western armed forces abroad accurately. From the most selfish perspective the costs, in time, treasure, and the blood of our sons and daughters, are all far greater than the position on the warfare spectrum leads people to assume. COIN is not soft warfare. It is, in fact, peltingly difficult. These characteristics arise out of the necessary exercise of restraint in the use of force on the one hand and the willingness to die – to sacrifice – for one’s protectees on the other.

Of course, my interpretation and analysis could be wrong. Probably not entirely wrong, though - there is enough to the point that it would interest me to see a discussion that took the issue of the use of force in COIN and interrogated all of the assumptions and objectives with vigor. At the very least it seems to me that the past ten years suggests the wisdom of such a review.

Endnotes

1. I was counselled that COIN was passé. Perhaps this is true for the flash in the pan pop-scholarship commentarists. The Abu-pundits will resurrect themselves anew with the next big idea – I’m waiting for a Boydling. (A free drink to anyone who gets that reference.) But I’m a historian, what do I care of fads?

2. There is the matter of ‘complicity’ – that is, that one’s ideas might be hijacked and used, or rather abused for ends or arguments you never intended and might in fact protest. I understand how this might be a concern, but the truth is we can neither know nor control how our intellectual work product will be interpreted and applied once we put it out there. Little remembered any longer, but Alfred Thayer Mahan was viewed dimly by Americans in the aftermath of WWI for having taught the Germans naval strategy. A book about Long Island, NY, written in the 1930s notes with glee that the Captain had learned the truth of sea power when his home was damaged by the hurricane of 1938. (William Oliver Stevens, Discovering Long Island, Dodd, Mead & Co. (1939).)

3. You will think me quite infatuated with Hearts and Minds in COIN. I will go further than that to say that as concerns war generally, where the people are valuable to the political and strategic objectives, then they – their needs, preferences, desires – must be factored into the decision-making. When the people no longer matter in war I will set my sights elsewhere, but until then, I remain focused.

4. Who puts babies and insurgencies together? What do you expect from a military historian made recurrent single parent by the fortunes of war?

5. Corson wrote his own book on Vietnam and his efforts at COIN in The Betrayal, (New York, W.W. Norton & Co.); see also Michael Peterson’s history, The Combine Action Platoons: The US Marines Other War in Vietnam, (New York: Praeger, 1989)]

6. As I originally conceived this concept, I had a rather cheeky PowerPoint presentation in mind for the points. For the first rule, a picture of a parent throttling a baby, in a circle with a line through it. That sort of thing. When I imagined how to train for the mission: Photo of a ranker, NCO, or officer, in full combat gear holding an infant — if he can keep the baby happy and safe for a month on his own he’ll have an idea of what will be demanded of him in a counter-insurgency conflict. A scary prospect I am certain, and perhaps some might prefer the clarity of storming a fortified position. Other rules: Everybody loves the baby. Highlights the point that the insurgent is often ahead in the PR campaign, whereas the side with the preponderance of power usually finds itself coming up short on this front. If Van Creveld is correct, the obviously stronger side is _always_ going to have a PR problem. What worked yesterday may not work today, and today’s victories could be tomorrow’s tragedies, the corollary of which is where you solve one problem but create another. Build a school in one village and you risk offending the denizens of a neighbouring village. Insurgencies usually involve complex issues that will destroy any vain hope that the path to success will be straight forward or simple.)

7. It is for the opposite but similar reasons that I deplore any form of torture or harsh treatment for prisoners – to have our people behave in such a way is an act of brutality – unwarranted – done to them.

A wise man once said ‘Remember it’s just a blog. Have fun’. In the light of these sage words, I give you the parody saga of Generalissimo Grice versus the Mouse Insurgents.

My wife and I recently moved into a new territory (rented a new flat). Like many occupying powers, we decided to take over the location because of its geostrategic advantages (it’s near the local high street and has good transportation links), its natural resources (a dishwasher, washer-dryer and a large fridge freezer), its relatively tranquil surroundings (a nice quiet residential street) and territorial considerations (it’s slightly bigger than our old apartment).

However, after the initial turmoil and subsequent euphoria of occupation (moving in), we came across the first symptoms of something worrying: insurgents in the mist (we found mouse droppings under the fridge and a few other places).

Like many occupation forces, our first reaction was denial. We  convinced ourselves that the symptoms were exaggerated (that the droppings were old), that the threat was inconsequential (just one or two mice) and that any resistance would quickly expire (our very presence would drive the mice away). We repaired the damage (vacuumed up the droppings) and set about the other tasks of governance (studying, working, paying bills, etc).

But the problem didn’t go away. In fact, it became worse. Noticing our lax approach, the mouse insurgents grew bolder and began to sally out from their strongholds (holes in the walls) on guerrilla raids (dashes across the living room floor late at night). Other evidence of insurgent activity increased (the droppings reappeared), and gradually we realised were in for a fight.

In response to the threat, we first consulted with our North American support base (our Canadian landlady), and then embarked upon a series of counterinsurgent campaigns, also known as: Generalissimo Grice’s five anti-mouse bandit encirclement campaigns:

The first campaign involved an attempt to physically prevent the insurgents from infiltrating into our territory and to coop them up within their hideouts. Without resources, so the plan read, the insurgents would be starved and forced to either surrender or perish. We erected walls and barb wire fences around potential strongholds (stuck a bunch of steel wool into the holes in the walls) and restricted access to open food sources (vacuumed up any and all crumbs after each meal).

Alas, the number of potential hiding places vastly outnumbered the quantity of resources available (too many holes, not enough steel wool; too many meals, not enough vacuuming willpower), and we weren’t entirely convinced that the defences we had erected were effective anyway (my wife remains convinced that they were pushing the wool out of the way or simply climbing over it). When it became clear that the campaign had failed to have a measurable impact (we had further mouse sightings), we decided to embark upon a second campaign.

For the second campaign, we took the fight into the very outskirts of the mouse rebel heartland and placed false sympathisers within the area, each of whom was tasked with infiltrating and killing the enemy (we put a bunch of poison into areas where we had found droppings).

Once again, however, this undertaking failed. We had underestimated the strength of the enemy’s organisational structure and intelligence network. They were able to detect and ignore the agents (didn’t seem to eat the poison, despite its supposedly wheaty smell and grainy goodness). Insurgent activity remained high (yet further sightings), and we decided on a different approach.

The third campaign represented an escalation of the strategies employed during the first. We deployed heavy artillery (high pitched noisemaking devices that only mice can hear) along the outskirts of the insurgent borderlands and used this to try to drive them out of their holes and either destroy them entirely (force them out of the building) or at least make them flee to another country (go and bother some people in another flat in our semi-detached building).

This too failed to make a clear difference. Our resources were limited and artillery is expensive (anywhere between £25 and £40 pound for a decent quality noisemaker and they only really cover one room each) It was also unclear whether the artillery used was actually impacting on the movements of the insurgents at all; foreign reports suggest that insurgents can operate under such conditions relatively unhindered (some Amazon.co.uk reviews suggest that mice may just run past noisemakers). Fresh evidence of insurgent activity continued to appear, and a new campaign decided upon accordingly.

Campaign number four represented a change in approach. Up until now we had tried to fight using precision tools, without success. Now it was decided to go with more aggressive approaches, including building armed block houses, laying mines and preparing ambushes (setting mouse traps). We piloted both violent and violent methods, but found the more humane options to be more expensive (£0.99 for a standard mouse trap, around £10 for a humane one) and less effective in design (they set themselves off constantly and seemed less appealing for a mouse).

However, insufficient resources were used (we purchased just six mouse traps in total) and negligible impact achieved. On review, we noticed that some of the new methods seemed to contradict the older ones still in place (placing the traps in the kitchen seemed pointless when that was the same room which had the most steel wool and the noisemaker in it) and that some of our intelligence was wrong (apparently mice don’t like cheese, but prefer peanut butter or chocolate paste). Learning from our mistakes, we prepared yet again for a new campaign.

The fifth and final campaign (so far), involved a massive effort to root out and destroy the mouse insurgents. Significant amounts of resources were invested (I purchased a further 26 mouse traps) and efforts were taken to adopt the latest counterinsurgent ruses from abroad (we copied this YouTube video of an American building a bucket trap). Efforts were synchronised to avoid internal contradictions (we removed the steel wool from trap heavy locations and switched off the noisemaker) and lines of blockhouses, mines and ambushes were set across all of the major insurgent border areas (all of the mouse traps were laid, now with peanut butter and chocolate paste baits). This time, we vowed, there would be no respite, only victory.

The results are hard to discern. We have yet to catch a single mouse insurgent, a sad truth that has permeated our entire counterinsurgent endeavour. However, there have been no further raids and no other symptoms of insurgent activity (no more sightings or droppings). We know that our immediate neighbour (the flat downstairs) has had success in using capitalist running dogs within their territory (their dogs have caught several mice in their garden) and wonder if perhaps these were the same mouse insurgents that we had fought against. Similarly, we conjecture about whether some of the methods used in our initial campaigns may have gradually worn the enemy down and had a belated impact (e.g. they ate the poison and eventually died away from our flat).

We are now facing a period of internal disagreement. One side of the government (my wife) remains convinced that the mouse insurgents are still present, merely biding their time, growing in strength while we become complacent. On the other side (me), there is a growing belief that the mouse problem has been resolved and that by focusing in on an expired threat impairs our ability to rebuild our territory for the future.

Who is right? Time will tell. If hostilities flair up again, it will feed fire to my fear that Formosa/Taiwan may be represented in this analogy by our attic. If the comparison plays out in full, I may end up writing the remainder of my PhD while perched up there with a laptop. Here’s hoping for a more successful outcome!

I hope you will forgive me for the somewhat whimsical tale (inspired perhaps by too much reading about Chiang Kai-shek and his war against the Chinese Communists on my part perhaps) – definitely not a post to be taken too seriously!

Complexity is now a big thing in military affairs, what with effects based operations and all. It is, in my mind, possibly the most banal appropriation of scientific language of the past decade. With apologies to the author for singling him out, here’s an example of the banality of complex war:

Complex environments lead to complex groups, and their interactions can even further add to problems in analysis.

What, exactly, is a non-complex environment? Perhaps if we consider a pitched battle between two armies, we might approximate one. Even so, both those armies will have internal dynamics and external linkages. Napoleon had to think of France, even when in Russia. Furthermore, what is a non-complex group? It seems to me that the very concept of a complex group is dreamed up in contrast to a “simple” modern army. Simple modern armies don’t exist. The idea of them does, as a straw-man to the RMA et al, but any military historian worth their salt would point to the myriad intricacies of the functioning of any group. To return to simplesville Napoleon, take a look at the list of participants in the Seventh Coalition, and tell me that its operation was a simple affair.

Again, I’d like to point out that I bear no particular grudge against the author, but the same assumption is trotted out time and again. My problem is off-hand statements like this:

Complexity is non-deterministic, and gives no way whatsoever to precisely predict the future.

The insertion of ‘complexity’ in place of ‘we don’t know…’. Question – has anyone going to war been able to precisely predict the future? Can any method of analysis of human affairs, least of all contested human affairs enable such prediction? Complexity is used in this instance to state that the outcome of human activity is uncertain. That isn’t scientific, that isn’t analysis – it is a statement of common sense. My point is not to question statistics, or economics, but professionals in those fields like things like observable datasets, rational actors, and repeatable tests. War tends to come up short on most of those factors.

Let’s return to those EBO’s, here’s complexity:

COMPLICATED
The engine in an automobile is complicated; yet pressing on the accelerator pedal dependably produces the same result — the car moves. Moreover, this output is proportional to the input, the greater the pressure exerted on the pedal, the faster the car goes. This dependable repeatability and proportionality of inputs and outputs comes from the fact that the engine consists of a series of known and linear cause and effect chains. This linearity means that, if the car fails to perform as expected, an auto mechanic can work his way along that chain to determine which particular cause and effect is malfunctioning.

COMPLEX
If the engine in the car were complex rather than complicated, there would be no way to know exactly what might happen when the accelerator was pressed. We would not know what all of the interdependent variables involved were much less how they would interact; the chain of causes and effects that produced a particular reaction would be non-linear and probably never be the same twice; and the chain would change in ways that could not be known or predicted. In short, there would be no repeatability and no proportionality between inputs and outputs – and no auto mechanic who could fix it.

Input-output: we can know simple, we can’t know complex (see above).  But from a strict physics point of view – we don’t know how everything interacts within the engine. We have a very good idea, but until someone comes up with a grand unifying theory of physics, we have no clue how the quantum phenomena in the engine interact to produce the newtonian system upon which the engine relies. The problem here is that this is dichotomy is presented to us as new. Specifically, we’re sold this dichotomy to sell the idea that contemporary ‘new’ war is complex, and ‘old’ war isn’t.

To the above I say: humbug.

Complexity theory is sold on top of network theory to produce an idea that the conflicts of today are whizz-bang affairs involving an ever-increasing number of battlespaces that are jolly well more difficult to analyse and manage than the wars of old. But social networks existed in the 1st century AD, as they exist now. They didn’t suddenly spring into life with Durkheim – the method of analysis did. It stikes me as incredibly odd that we somehow conceive of present day war as being somehow complex because we’re interacting with social structures that didn’t quite join up to the modernity project of colonial times. Are those structures more complex than pre-modern structures were? By a large margin? I’m yet to see any concrete proof of this. Sure, there’s change (Giustozzi’s book on the neo-Taliban is a good example), but apart from the ability to stabilise network connections over long distances, that doesn’t change the underlying complexity. Globalisation didn’t spring from shipping containers, it has been happening for hundreds of years. If anything, the world has been getting less complex – languages dying off by the dozen, cultural signifiers being homogenised by McDonalds, Mickey Mouse and Coca Cola. It strikes me that there is an incredible temporal orientalism (don’t quote me on that, it’s a horrible phrase) towards the past, particularly in military terms. We view past wars as simple affairs (except when reading Caldwell) and contemporary wars as ‘complex’. In a nutshell, my thesis is that conventional wars were as complex as current ones.  Would any WW1/WW2/American Civil War historians put their hand up and say that those wars were simple? No.

Why the complexity vibe? My take on this is that people don’t want to use the word ‘uncertain’ because it’s unsellable, in both military and academic terms (well, unless you’re a mathematician). Complexity gives cover to uncertainty, it allows generals to say “Well, the situation is extremely complex…” and sound authoritative rather than “If we dump troops in here, we can never be sure of what will happen.”. Furthermore, as much as I believe in the expansion of knowledge, it seems to me that there are some things we will never know. Counterfactual histories aside, how, exactly, does any theory of complexity get tested on the battlefield? The answer is – it can’t. As it stands, the sketch outline of complexity theory (an important concept) has been draped over ready rules of thumb (2+ social groups going to war produces uncertain outcomes) to replace unseemly non-scientific statements with pseudo-scientific quackery. At least rules of thumb are honest about what they represent.

Which brings me back to the post title: “Alea iacta est”* – if Caesar, with his army, crossing a river to fight known opponents in a single culture didn’t know the upcoming result, what’s to say anyone will ever be able to do so? If Suetonius had replaced those words with “This situation is complex”, I doubt that they would have echoed through the centuries.

*”The die has been cast”

I did my first studies of United States Foreign Policy and Diplomatic History at the Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna. This is a critical fact in my scholarly background: SAIS was the Cold War International Relations school. Both the Washington, DC, and Bologna, Italy, centers were founded to serve American foreign policy needs at the outset of the Cold War.

As such, every course on the subject of American foreign policy made the start of the Cold War a pivotal moment, whether at the beginning, middle or end of the period of concern. The events from the end of WWII to the promulgation of the seminal strategic document, NSC 68, and the outbreak of the Korean War have a very distinct and familiar progression for me. From the heights of success with military victories across multiple theatres in a global war to visions of doom, of life and death under communist tyranny or a mushroom cloud.

At the Naval War College, the elective on American Foreign Relations titles this period deftly: “Military Victory and Policy Frustration: The End of WWII and the Start of the Cold War.” I had the opportunity to lead this seminar a few times, and to make the point of the historical distance covered in just a few years I would open with two contrasting images of the American mood. The first was the good-heartedly triumphant song, ”There’ll be a hot time in the town of Berlin (when the Yanks go marching in),” performed by Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters. (1) Sweet, American wholesome eagerness packed into four minutes of lyrics and a snappy tune - even if the characteristic is mostly mythic. The second was a picture of Joseph McCarthy. Point made.

This perambulation through “ancient” diplomatic history is no mere nostalgic reverie.

The start of the Cold War is important here for two reasons. First, that long war created the habit in the United States of seeing the world in terms of apocalyptic struggle best solved by military force. It was this habit which made it too easy to write the Jihadist threat and American response similarly in the wake of 9/11. American policy makers are slowly waking to the fact that this might have been a bit of threat over-reach. Second, the identified foundation for the Cold War policies which defined the bitter, deadly contest is an article written by George Kennan, or Mr. X in his legendary Foreign Affairs article. Except it was never Kennan’s intention to write the Soviet Union as a monolithic enemy nor inspire a militarized, zero-sum security policy to deal with this new competitor. Perhaps as misunderstood as Chamberlain at Munich (whatever you do, do not mention the ____ Analogy), especially at the time, Kennan’s report on the Soviet Union, particularly under Statin, was used to fuel the greatest sustained period of military preparedness in American history.

Which makes it very curious that an effort develop an American national strategy for the 21st century seeks to model itself after this particular document. Nevertheless, reviewing the article, and listening to Captain Porter speak last night, I have no particular objection to the broadly conceived set of interests that ought to inspire American policy in the coming decades.

My problem is this: these interests make a perfectly good starting point, but so what? The real question is how they will be implemented, particularly how they will be translated into the American military policies for the coming decades. As resources shrink how the American armed forces will be equipped, the doctrines under which they will operate, and the contingencies to which they will be dedicated are just a few of the important issues to confront and settle. And dealing with them will involve difficult compromises and choices. Even as Captain Porter was correct to point out last night that the armed forces are not the answer to every problem, they are a necessary response to some. 

The historic trends of American military policy - near abandonment or over-militarization – are two extremes whose utility are well past. A more nuanced, tempered approach must be crafted.

It seems, then, that we have one more stop to make in the alphabet. Mr. Z, your destiny is calling.

Endnotes:

1.  Check out the song at YouTube: http://youtu.be/Izjl5yzTDDo

I’m just dashing off a short article, spinning off a chapter in the book I’m writing. In turn, here’s a short post about the short article. Work it baby!

Strategy, I contend, is inherently about making judgments in time. We seek to use violence instrumentally to reach some desired future state. And we are guided by the past when we do so. Strategy is temporal.

The problem is that we are not good judges of time. Utility theory, the basis of many rational actor models, is fundamentally flawed, because we do not have consistent, stable preferences. The very act of choosing an option, for example, increases its value to us – a phenomenon known as the endowment effect. Preferences are not revealed by choices, so much as created by them. That’s particularly true if the choice we make is emotionally engaging, as war is – passionately so, ofttimes.

As for memory, our only handrail, we also construct that from our present condition too – leading, among other biases, to mood congruent memory. Memory truly is postmodern – a view that emerges from neuroscience, that hardest of sciences. In other bad news for rational models, we are poor judges of risk, overweighting improbable events, particularly if we have vivid memories of previous examples.

Where does that leave strategy? In a fix.

We frequently lament our limited capacity for strategic thought – but without a clear, imminent existential threat, there is always scope to interpret the national interest. Strategy becomes an act of imagination. Trouble is, the future we imagine we want might not actually be so pressing when we actually arrive there. And the cognitive models of cause and effect that we draw on to guide the way are susceptible to all sorts of flaws – our memories are unrepresentative constructions that underweight chance and overweight the emotionally engaging.

So when it comes to balancing ends ways and means, or even discerning them – the very essence of strategy – forget it. Instead it’s perhaps better to think about strategy in its less ‘grand strategic’ sense – and instead conceptualise it as the organisation of power in the moment, in response to contingencies. Stop trying to anticipate the future so much, because, as Philip Tetlock has shown, we are rather bad at it.