He likes Reinhold Niebuhr...

I, as much as the next guy, like a good dust up.  As I have posted about before in this august forum, intellectual spitting contests can be quite entertaining, not to mention downright catty.  In this case, though, we have one that is all that…and slightly bewildering.

Enter the latest salvo from Andrew Bacevich aimed squarely at Robert Kagan.  Well, ostensibly the critique is aimed at Kagan’s latest book, The World America Made, but at times, it is hard to tell.  Consider these bons mots:

The World America Made, a slim volume of mythopoeia decked out in analytical drag   <kee-runch!>

Kagan’s Copernican interpretation of contemporary history–with America the sun around which all else orbits  <biff!>

The World America Made deserves attention–not for the truths it purports to convey but as a sterling example of the spurious enterprise that it neatly embodies  <pow!>

Bacevich’s critique seems cogent enough, and is certainly predictable, given that he and Kagan represent differing sides of a multifacted American foreign policy divide.  What are perhaps a bit surprising, though, are two aspects of Bacevich’s review which don’t ring true.  The first is that the review contains an attitude of barely concealed contempt for on the behalf an academic (Bacevich) for a pundit (Kagan).  Since both figures are well-established in their respective field, such a jibe feels a bit silly.  Consider this rather long comment:

Yet all those who in engage in such forecasting…share membership in the same fraternity.  Whatever their pretense to serious analysis, they are fabulists, conjuring up simple stories that connect past, present, and future in a seamless narrative…To divine the course of world events, you’d do as well to probe the entrails of dead animals.  Better still, ask your hairstylist.  She will be at least as insightful and probably more entertaining a prophet that anyone you can read in Foreign Affairs or the op-ed op page of the Washington Post.   <blam!>

Bacevich does have a point to what he is saying, but it applies not only to pundits or journalists, but to sloppy academics as well.  When serious people try and chase or encapsulate fads–whether from the newsroom, the think-tank, or the ivory tower–the result is rarely good.  One might think of such zeitgeist inspired articles/books as Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations, Eliot Cohen’s Supreme Command, Niall Ferguson’s Empire, amongst others, including Kagan’s previously wildly popular Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order.

Bacevich correctly identifies the problem with such ‘straight-forward’ narratives:

What [authors who write these kinds of books] offer is not enlightenment but consolation.  Trafficking in knowingness, as opposed to actual knowledge, they sustain the Hollywood fiction that if those who have their hands on the levers of power just do what needs to be done, things will come out all right. [Such] books…fulfill our longing to believe that history does have purpose and direction, that is ongoing chronicle of collective human endeavour is not devoid of meaning.

We could all do with less of these kinds of fairy tales, but this goes doubly so when they are picked up by decision-makers.  Making political decisions on the basis of over-simplified versions of events is as dangerous as it is convenient.  Distillations are easier to read, especially when you are busy trying to run a country, save an economy, thwart an enemy, and win an election, all at the same time. 

And this is why, as Bacevich points out, the practice continues:

Why purveyors of such of shameless quackery continue to peddle their wares is easy to understand.  It’s a good gig, offering practitioners a fair share share of fame and fortune, along with a simulacrum of influence.  Imagine having the president of the United States carry around your book?

And that is the second point that just feels strange…Much of what Bacevich may be true, but a good measure of it could be applied to his recent writing, too.  His ‘popular’ (as opposed to scholarly) works seem to be lacking only one aspect of Kagan’s–the president has not been seen carrying them around.  The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism and Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, both published as ‘current affairs’ books with MacMillan rather than as academic books with Oxford University Press, are clear, cogent, and simplified versions of American foreign policy.  And like Kagan’s books, they aim not to contribute to the existing body of knowledge, but rather to convince the reader of a particular ideological perspective.  Bacevich’s review is really an extension of his existing line of argument, carried out in the pages of Harper’s Magazine. 

Perhaps the most telling give-away of the similarity between Bacevich and Kagan is this line from the opening of Bacevich’s review:

Call it a hallowed tradition.  To invest their views with greater authority, big thinkers–especially those given to pontificating about the course of world history–appropriate bits of wisdom penned by brand-name sages.  Nothing adds ballast to an otherwise frothy argument like a pithy quote from [people such as] Reinhold Neihbur.

What are we to make, then, of the fact that, not only (according to his publisher) has Bacevich’s “writing… appeared in Foreign Affairs [and] The Washington Post”, at least two of his books feature extensive quotes from….wait for it…wait for it…Reinhold Niebuhr?

...and so does he.

To round up the morning’s press revelations of FCO document destruction chronicling the worst bits of Malaya, Kenya and the Diego Garcia thingamyjig, let’s cast our eyes back to Yes, Minister:

Bernard: Shall I file it?

Hacker: Shall you file it? Shred it!

Bernard: Shred it?

Hacker: No one must ever be able to find it again!

Bernard: In that case, Minister, I think it’s best I file it.

Jack Straw might be wishing that the Libyans had been slightly more discerning about the documents that they shredded, seeing as he is now getting sued for complicity in rendition/torture.

Before I come off as a wannabe Assange (and who would want to? What with the useful idiot jumping into bed with Putin yesterday etc), there’s a few things that I find interesting about the colonial revelations.

1) It is almost as if the writers for the Guardian didn’t know that the Malayan emergency/insurgency/war was directed at a small Chinese population and predicated on independence for Malaya. One could be forgiven for thinking that their singular focus on terms such as ‘terrorist’ without any background analysis of that particular war was designed to mislead the reader. It also strikes me as a bit, well, mis-leading to neglect to mention the whole ‘cold war’/'global confrontation with communism’/'looming spectre of nuclear annihilation’ business to place the whole thing in context.

2) People in high office would do well to raise an eyebrow at how quickly the chickens come home to roost these days. Malaya: fifty plus years, War on Terror: less than a decade.

Kim Jong Un just makes it too easy: a baby-faced heir following in the footsteps of his father by acting like a petulant child in the geopolitical sandbox. North Korea’s recent missile activity only strengthens the impression that it is amateur hour in Pyongyang. Rather than counting down to the next nuclear test, we should instead be anticipating the sequel to Team America. Up until recently there was hope that Kim the Third could be North Korea’s Gorbachev, a Western-educated departure from his mercurial father. But the past week of North Korea’s missile activity suggests it will continue to be business as usual. Given the new leadership, how does this recent activity fit into North Korea’s past behavior? Is it all just posturing and silliness? Or, if North Korea is cause for genuine concern, what is to be done?

On April 13, North Korea tested the Unha-3, a space-launch vehicle allegedly for civilian purposes, but which also launches the Taepodong-2 missile. The test was an utter failure to the point that the North Korean propaganda machine admitted as much. The missile soared for 93 miles over the course of one minute before breaking apart and falling into the South China Sea, an epic and rapid waste of $1 billion. The failed missile test was followed by the April 15 celebration of the 100^th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, at which North Korea displayed a new missile. This three-stage missile, likely a variant of the Musudan, is intermediate-range and apparently road-mobile, although it has not been tested and it is doubtful North Korea has perfected the solid-fuel technology required to optimize such a missile’s effectiveness and mobile nature. Missile development and tests are prohibited in North Korea under a series of UN Security Council resolutions, not to mention the recent Leap Day agreement by which it agreed to cease nuclear and missile development and testing and allow in international inspectors, in exchange for 240,000 tons of U.S. food aid. That agreement has since been canceled by President Obama.

Missiles and nuclear weapons remain Pyongyang’s sole political currency, regardless of whether or not they work. North Korea’s missile capabilities are tenuous, at best, and the only missile it has successfully tested was the medium-range Nodong in 1993. Therefore, at a technical level, the North Korean threat is inflated. Yet, until recently, North Korea somewhat successfully used its missile and nuclear programs as political bargaining chips to gain concessions from the West and assert the legitimacy of the Kim regime. Kim Jong Il allegedly faced a legitimacy crisis when he inherited the Hermit Throne in 1994 upon the death of Kim Il Sung. He gradually solidified power by rejecting Western overtures, protecting the dynastic and military elite, building up the military, and taking a hardline stance in both domestic and international affairs. One must assume these lessons and sins of the father were passed down to the son. As a new and untested leader, Kim Jong Un must prove himself to be the true heir by falling into his father and grandfather’s footsteps.

In spite of these failed tests and media jests, Pyongyang’s petulance presents a real threat in at least four ways. First, North Korea has a track record of proliferating military technology to other countries, which, one should assume, may have more success in developing missiles and nuclear capabilities. Second, North Korea matters to its neighbors, namely South Korea and China. Given U.S. security guarantees to the former, it cannot readily ignore Seoul’s threat perceptions and visions for regional stability; meanwhile, China may be the only source of leverage against Pyongyang. Third, North Korea damages the legitimacy of the nonproliferation regime. North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2002, and the failure of the NPT regime to enforce membership or compliance damages its reputation and normative strength. And finally, the tricky thing about nuclear weapons is that someone might actually use them. Given Pyongyang’s obsession with regime security, it is unlikely to use nuclear weapons because of the consistent message from the international community that this would lead to retaliation and the end of the Kim dynasty. However, the Hermit Kingdom is, by nature, opaque and the West must be attuned to the risk of miscalculation or escalation.

So how should we treat such a petulant, yet dangerous, child? The strategy thus far can best described as putting North Korea in a corner, peppered with name calling and taunting on the part of the Western media. The nonproliferation regime has attempted to isolate North Korea and treat it as an anomaly and example of what not to do (this one’s for you, Tehran). But beyond this, Western engagement needs to draw lessons from other cases and pursue exit strategies from the current cycle of inertia with North Korea. Clearly it would be perfunctory to equate North Korea to the Soviet Union; however, the rapprochement between Reagan and Gorbachev offers insight into alleviating tensions between former adversaries under the tensest of conditions. In totalitarian regimes, change of leadership can be a once in a lifetime opportunity. These recent provocations suggest Kim Jong Un is likely to follow his father’s pattern of behavior, however what if he was given an alternative? What if he has the potential to become North Korea’s Gorbachev?

What would Reagan do with Kim Jong Un? With some extrapolation, we can identify four principles from Reagan’s strategy of engagement with the Soviet Union that could offer guidance, assuming the United States remains engaged either on a bilateral or multilateral level, regardless of the fate of the Six Party Talks. The United States sought to address sources of Soviet insecurity, which is exactly what must drive any strategy hoping to halt the current trajectory of relations with North Korea. First, Reagan emphasized the importance of linkage. He bundled together four initiatives with which to engage the Soviet Union and pursued them in parallel. This served to lay a diplomatic groundwork, which must be the first step for North Korea. Such a linkage strategy could include human rights efforts and economic collaboration with South Korea, along with efforts in the nuclear realm, such as allowing in IAEA inspectors. Second, even before Gorbachev came to power, Reagan tested the waters of rapprochement by taking small steps and sending subtle signals that he was not content with the status quo and open to improving relations. In the case of North Korea, small steps will likely need to come from China rather than the West, but Pyongyang should be made to understand the status quo is unacceptable and there are alternative means of regime security, international engagement, and domestic control. Third, Reagan did not ignore bad behavior, such as the downing of a South Korean passenger airliner, and would not sacrifice long-term visions for short-term diplomatic gains. The West should not merely roll its eyes at recent North Korean provocations, as this could tempt Pyongyang to resort to increasingly aggressive actions. Instead, the United States can revisit and, if necessary, reinstate the Bush-era targeted sanctions against the military and political elites, along with rescinding the Leap Day agreement. And finally, Reagan maintained a strategic vision throughout the ups and downs of engagement with Gorbachev, namely the desire for reciprocal reductions in nuclear weapons and a more peaceful world order. For North Korea, the West should not lose sight of the primary objectives – to uphold the nonproliferation norm and improve stability in the region.

This is by no means an easy strategy nor a quick one. But it will help address North Korea’s underlying and deep-rooted sources of insecurity, while also reconceptualization the regime. Reducing Kim Jong Un to a cartoon character, humorous though it may be, must be balanced with sobering recognition that he does control (some of) the deadliest weapons on earth and has the potential to wreak havoc on a volatile region of strategic importance.

The new Hasbro blockbuster Battleship was released recently in Europe, and I watched it yesterday with pleasure.  The movie is at times thrilling, visually impeccable, voluntarily caricatural (hence funny) and if, like me, your favorite mind-clearing technique is to watch a blockbuster, you should appreciate it. As a reserve naval officer, I was sort of bound to enjoy it anyways because of the beautiful ships displayed. However, after a good two hours of laughs and visual entertainment, the movie got me into thinking about the cinematic expression of strategic concerns in the U.S.

Several scholars, in particular James S. Shapiro or James Der Derian have shown the epistemic significance of cinema as a way to both illustrate and constitute specific world visions, and Jean-Michel Valantin has convincingly argued that the production of “national security movies” is closely linked to the Pentagon, which issues contracts to the cinematographic industry. I don’t want to get into much details (they are in the books), but just think of Top Gun, virtually every Jerry Bruckheimers’ productions or every Michal Bay’s movies as a starter, add the adaptation of Tom Clancy’s novels and you already have a good list of such “national security movies”.
Interestingly, Valantin shows that to a large extent, these movies reflect the strategic concerns of their times. For example, the soviet threat is illustrated with the alien movies of the 1950s, the Vietnam War by movies such as The Deer Hunter or Apocalypse Now, and the reaganian moment finds its proponents in Rambo III or James Bond (The Living Daylights).
This movie production can sometimes be critical (the Vietnam War movies, or the critiques of the CIA in the Bourne trilogy), but is always a reflection of the greater American strategic concerns.

Let’s have a look at specific sub-genre of the “national security movies”, to which Battleship belongs, namely the alien invasion movies.

I created a graph from this list to illustrate a few points. The data are probably incomplete (my guess is that there has been more U.S.-produced alien movies than listed here), but I did not find a better listing and I don’t think that it would change the patterns observed here anyways.
The blue graph represents the overall number of movies featuring aliens per year. It can be anything (horror, comedy, sci-fi, etc.) and comprises movies as different as Star Wars, Species, Cocoon, Abyss, Independence Day, E.T. or Men in Black.

The red graph is much more interesting. I selected the movies according to these relatively strict criteria:

• the scenario must feature an alien plot to take control of the earth (hence no movies showing the struggle of a humanoid race such as Star Wars: the earth as we know it is the battlefield)
• the movie must be dramatic (e.g. War of the Worlds-like instead of Men in Black-like)
• events have to be contemporary, in the recent past or in the near future (which includes movies such as Cowboys and Aliens).

The results are telling. We can see that the “alien-invasion/we are all gonna die” sub-genre represents almost every movie featuring aliens between 1949 and 1959, which has been interpreted as a representation of the communist threat.

peaceful aliens

This sub-genre is nearly forgotten in the 1980s, which showed almost nothing but E.T.-like, nice and harmfulness aliens. There is a small peak in the 1990s, mostly because of Independence Day and X-Files, but the most fascinating trend is the renewal of the genre since 2003-2004 and the release of movies such as the Transformers franchise, Skyline, Battle: Los Angeles, Cowboys and Aliens, The Darkest Hour, The Invasion, Night Skies, Alien Abduction, The War of the Worlds or, more recently, Battleships.

If we take Valantin’s hypothesis seriously, this renewal can certainly tell us something of the current U.S. strategic thinking. Here are a few thoughts, far from definitive.

The few, the proud. Obviously, many of these movies sing the glory of the U.S. armed forces. However, it is interesting to notice which specific service is particularly advantaged. Independence Day was very much an Air Force movie, displaying the beauties of cyber-weapons and the courage of the jet fighter pilots. But it was in the 1990s, when everybody was still stunned by the success of the Gulf War and when the strategic debate was all about the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Recent film-makers have to deal with the anxiety in strategic thinking created by the long campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the realization that the fog of war is unlikely to be removed anytime soon.
A scene in Skyline can be read along these lines: a B-2 stealth bomber, accompanied by several drones and fighters, is able to launch a nuclear missile at the alien mothership. But it doesn’t work! The mothership reassembles and attacks again, like if nothing had happened! The scene is the anti-Independence Day moment of the movie: when the heroes realize that their most advanced technologies won’t save them and that what had been considered the ultimate weapon, able to sanctuarize a territory (see the French nuclear doctrine), is worthless.
Unsurprisingly, the new heroes are the grunts: those who hold their grounds and fight protracted battles. For example, Battle: Los Angeles is all about a platoon of Marines, led by a staff sergeant, who pretty much behaves as a strategic corporal. The marines fight an enemy literally buried under the ground, controlling the city and having established air superiority (once again, the USAF doesn’t look good). In a sense, Cowboys and Aliens can be seen along similar lines, the heroes breaching the mothership and forcing the aliens into a ground battle, hence removing their technological advantage. Can’t you smell the Counter-Insurgency (COIN) debates behind this representation of the armed forces?
Battleship is interesting on that regard because well, you know, the U.S. navy saves the world and stuff. It is probably already the sign of the end of the COIN era and the beginning of a new focus on the global commons and the strategic roles of the navies.

Causes of war. In almost all of these movies, the aliens come to grab earth’s natural resources. The want water in Battle: Los Angeles and Battleship, conducive metals in The Darkest Hour, brains in Skyline, gold in Cowboys and Aliens, or simply a new planet (ours) in the Transformers franchise. In every case, a resource-hungry alien power tries to overcome mankind in order to achieve its goals. Of course, this plot resonates with contemporary debates on energy scarcity and the need for a new global energy order. A country as dependent on oil and other resources as the United States is obviously sensitive about risks of a peak oil and sees the emergence of resources-driven competitors as a potential threat.

Looking for a new peer-competitor? The notion of peer-competitors, which designates a state which could be as powerful as the United States, is very important in the American strategic debate. Interestingly, while the emergence of a peer-competitor is officially feared, one almost has the impression that the U.S. wished to have one. It is as if strategists (military and civilians) were frustrated by the last decade of relatively low-tech COIN (although some new technologies were widely used on the battlefields) and wanted a real competitor to emerge in order to finally be able to use their expensive and so sophisticated hardwares. Screw the insurgent and his AK-47: we want large-scale air battles and cruise missiles to flow! This is translated in the movies by the use of high-tech of some kind, even in movies worshiping the action of the local grunt. In Battle: Los Angeles, the Marines finally destroy the mothership by calling an airstrike (or a cruise missiles strike, I don’t remember for sure) and in Cowboys and Aliens, Daniel Craig is able to use a special gauntlet made up of alien technology.
In Battleship, the aliens generate some kind of energy shield, that isolates Hawaii and prevents a powerful fleet to get in. Fortunately, an American-japanese task force trapped inside the energy field destroys some alien aircrafts with its Arleigh Burke class destroyers (apparently, two Tomahawks missiles can do for an alien aircraft) and, when its ships are destroyed, uses an old WWII Iowa-class battleship to finish the alien mothership. Now, here is the trivia: in your opinion, which country is deploying anti-access strategies and can be perceived as a threat by both the United States and Japan ? Yes, you’re right.
Once again, we notice the cinematographic representation of a contemporary strategic concern.

I probably missed a lot of aspects in this short analysis, and it would be interesting to extend the study to other sub-genres. For examples, one could look at the representation of UAVs in movies such as Body of Lies and Eagle Eye,  at the civilizational discourse in the new trend of Greek mythology-inspired movies (300, Immortals, Wrath of the Titans, etc.), or the recent super-heroes movies. I just hope I won’t have you overthink the next blockbuster you’ll watch.

I have been busy with statistics on the UAV strikes in Pakistan and have come up with the following: between 2004 and 2011, the ballpark figure for the estimated civilian-combatant* casualty ratio is somewhere between 1:4 and 1:5. Torturing the New America Foundation’s figures to breaking point results in an outside ratio of about 1:3.

I am not a historian by trade, but I am struggling to come up with a war in which a “better” average occurred (from the civilian point of view) in the last hundred years. I can think of Israeli claims of a 1:28 ratio at points of its targeted killing campaign in Gaza, but that’s about it.

My question to KoW readers: do you know of one?

*Taken to be people estimated in datasets as militia/Taliban/AQ etc regardless of IHL targeting, and all ‘unknowns’ as civilians.

This week’s furor about Peter Cruddas, co-treasurer of the Conservative Party, offering the opportunity to suggest policies in exchange for cash is unlikely to die down for quite some time.

But I’d like to play devil’s advocate for a moment and propose a (possibly slightly far fetched) counterpoint: why shouldn’t we let parties accept policy suggestions in exchange for donations?

We live in a democracy, in which politicans secure power through means of a popular vote, a vote which depends on the government’s ability to deliver what the people want. If they deliver it, they stay in place. If they don’t, they get voted out.

Let’s imagine for a minute an alternate history in the Cruddas Saga, in which three imaginary things had occured:
1. The newspaper representatives had genuinely been potential donors.
2. That Peter Cruddas did indeed have the power to arrange donor input into Tory policy committees.
3. That the donors had signed up and then provided an idea to the policy committees to consider.

If the idea put forward  had been discriminatory, partisan or simply self-serving, then the Tory party would have been nuts to pick it up: their existence in power relies on winning elections, and to do that you need popular support. Advancing an unpopular policy is a sure way to lose support. If however, in a fit of madness, the Tories had decided to accept the bad idea and run with it, then the system’s safety net would have kicked into gear - the policy would have reduced their popularity and decreased their chances of being re-elected. Alternatively, if the idea had been a good or selfless one that resonated with the people, then fine - the people’s will would still have been served (and we got the good advice for free no less!).

Of course, the obvious rebuttal is to argue that the added money provided by political donors would allow a party to mask or gloss its actions through publicity and – dare I say it - propaganda. But this represents an overly pessimistic view. Positive marketing can only go so far – if I’m waiting on a station for a train and it’s running late, it doesn’t matter how many adverts the rail provider plays about their high quality services, I’m still stuck fuming on a station and I’m going to be hacked off.

For those who aren’t yet convinced, consider this – America pumped billions of dollars into supporting Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist regime in China between 1945 and 1949. But no matter how much money they spent, they were never able to persuade the Chinese public that the regime was not corrupt; that inflation was not rife; that the party was not going to lose the war; and that generally the country was going in the right direction. Money given directly to a ruling party does not guarantee popularity amongst its people.

The model that scares me more is the one where donors offer money directly to the public in exchange for votes (“Vote for my candidate, and I’ll build your community an ice rink. Vote for the other candidate and you’ll get nothing”).

We saw an international relations versus of this in the 2000 when the West offered up the Serbian people a deal: Vote Slobodan Milosevic out and we’ll lift our economic sanctions. Vote him in again, and we’ll keep on squeezing you until the pips squeak. The Serbs promptly voted Milosevic out (okay, there were other reasons too – but the economic…’incentive’…certainly helped!).

So, no, I’m not really afraid of donors being allowed to suggest ideas to party policy committees in exchange for money – any party that follows a policy of accepting and running with ideas that fail to serve the wider country will quickly find themselves voted out of power. The very institution of democracy protects us.

I’ll start worrying instead when the donors turn their attention to us and start offering us cash or other incentives in exchange for our votes directly.

It seems like a lot of other people had very important criticisms regarding that video. We’re a bit overwhelmed with the response to the comments I made yesterday, and it has now displaced llamas and running shoes (no, really) as the top article on a blog about war.

Invisible Children, for their part, have offered a rebuttal.

There are plenty of people out there who can offer better advice than I can on NGO governance structures, the ins and outs of Northern Uganda and so on. One of the point I was trying to make yesterday was that IC appeared to have a deficit in understanding regarding military affairs, and their campaign was therefore bloody dangerous.

Thankfully, IC have also published their letter to Obama, and outlined just how poor an understanding of military matters that they have. For a backgrounder, read this Foreign Affairs piece, it’s the best single-article precis of the issues at hand. This article is essentially an extension of my post yesterday – I’m not a development specialist, I don’t claim to have the answers to ‘the problem’ and I’m pretty sure that my definition of ‘the problem’ will differ from the people that it directly affects. Instead, this is a set of things that concerns me, because the Kony campaign is in full swing. By all means, support it (free country, etc), but people should be aware of the wider issues. For me, I’m concerned with military bits and bobs.

In the first paragraph, IC refer to the LRA operating in “remote and ungoverned areas.” As perhaps any geographer, anthropologist, sociologist or other person that studies human beings, there is no such thing as an “ungoverned area.” Humans create governance structures whereever they interact with one another, those governance structures can be brutal, unfair, even lethal, but they still exist. ‘Ungoverned space’ is security-speak for “A state doesn’t control it” and the fact that they’re even thinking in those terms raises a red-flag for where the rest of the letter is going.

The next interesting paragraph is quite jaw dropping in its assumptions:

However, we fear that unless existing U.S. efforts are further expanded, your strategy may not succeed.

Okay. Cards on the table – expand existing U.S. efforts (the military advisors).

The Ugandan and other regional militaries pursuing LRA commanders and groups continue to face daunting challenges. Their operations are hamstrung by flagging political will, weak cross-border coordination, the absence of tactical airlift, and the withdrawal of more than half of the Ugandan troops initially deployed to the field.

This entire segment is a straw man argument. Let’s look at potential solutions to those problems:

1) Flagging political will – What, exactly, will America do about the choices of these countries not to pursue the LRA? Could it be that a country such as the Democratic Republic of Congo might have other problems? Or Uganda? Or South Sudan? Depicting this as a ‘problem’ indicates that it needs to be ‘solved.’ By writing to the President of the United States, I assume that IC wants Obama to lean on Uganda et al to make Joseph kony public enemy number one, irrespective of the problems that they might have assessed within their own country.

2) Weak cross border coordination – I don’t know where to begin with this, so I turned to Google Maps for quick visual reference:

and for comparison: South Carolina.

The two maps are to scale. What IC are talking about is trying to get four states, who all have their own internal problems, to assert control over a region roughly the size of South Carolina. How many people are in there? I don’t know. How many ongoing conflicts and local issues would such an effort effect? I don’t know. My guesstimate answer to both would be “lots”. The point is, IC don’t know either, and they’re the ones asking the President of the United States to take action in the area. I’m not a development worker, but as a human being with a brain, my first inclination would be to sit down, shut up and listen to the people living there before embarking on a half-baked crusade, rather than imposing my own narrative of what the biggest problem is, and what needs to be done first. Talking of crusades…

3) ‘Tactical airlift’ – I personally thought Peter Singer had it right in ‘Taking George W. Bush Seriously‘, so I’ll do the same to IC on this point. Let us suppose that the panacea of tactical airlift will somehow enable the four states to hunt down Kony. Okay. Now let’s look at the logistics. Tactical airlift means planes and helicopters. That means runways, bases, pilots and mechanics. Where are they going to go? Are any of the four states offering to let the US build a base on their turf? No? Thought not. For some reason, maybe to do with the history of colonialism and decolonisation, these states happen to be quite sensitive to things like that. Can you blame them? Not really. Even if, if, one of those states was to let America (or whoever) build a base, then that base has to be supplied, it will have a logistics chain to keep it operational while the ‘tactical airlift’ does its magic. That means an influx of tens of millions of dollars into whichever local economies happen to be nearby. Normally people say “Hey, money, good thing, right?” but pumping extremely large sums of money into an economy, particularly one that might be affected by conflict is going to destabilise that region. People will find better paid work supporting a military facility than building a sustainable economy of their own. Think of dumping a big military base in the middle of a warzone as akin to striking oil. So your tactical airlift takes Kony out, and now your big base has destabilised half a country. Great job. Not quite as pyhrric as Team America: World Police, but still.

As for:

Moreover, bureaucratic inertia and cuts in the U.S. foreign assistance budget have drastically limited the scope of non-military aspects of the strategy’s implementation, which are equally important to the pursuit of lasting peace in the region.

Hey, I’ll give IC a pass on that bit. Fair play. But back to the nuts and more nuts of IC intervention. I will skip the bit about advisors and the threat the LRA poses, what with most informed observers stating that the LRA isn’t much of a threat anymore. Instead, let’s look at this gem:

In the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, $35 million was authorized to strengthen regional efforts to protect civilians and pursue top LRA commanders. These funds should be used to provide enhanced mobility, intelligence, and other support for ongoing operations, though it is crucial that any beneficiaries be monitored closely and held accountable for abuses committed against the civilian population or any other illicit activities.

If you take a second look at the NDAA you will find that $35 million doesn’t buy a hell of a lot. I think it is what the defence industry would refer to as ‘chump change’. Again, I wonder if anyone at IC has any idea about the costs of military equipment and operations. Let’s think about providing ‘enhanced mobility’ for a second. Obviously they can’t be talking about tactical airlift, since planes cost a hell of a lot more to run than $35 million. So I’ll be kind, and think that they’re referring to trucks or something. As pointed out before, that means either running it yourself (requirements: base, troop deployments, logistics) or giving it to a local state. I consider the second option to be dangerous, since it means arming state governments to go after one person, with little control over what they do with the equipment. Is the $35 million going to include monitoring? How is America going to monitor the use of its equipment in another country halfway around the world? What happens if that country does something bad with it against civilians, or uses it against opposing factions within the country? The Obama strategy of advisors is pretty good in my books because it does not involve these technology transfers. If someone starts slaughtering civilians, they can jump on a plane and fly away.

The next throwaway word was ‘intelligence’. Sounds great, huh? Let’s improve our intelligence support to their operations. Two problems: human intelligence collection and ISR capabilities (spy planes, to the lay readers). Human intelligence collection means probably starting from scratch and sending the CIA (or whoever) deep into an area of the world where they probably don’t have much backup. Let’s just say that’s a total non-starter for $35 million. ISR capabilities means planes or drones. Both of those require runways and… we’re straight back to the ‘tactical airlift’ problem.

Gem three:

Congress also directed in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 that up to $10 million be used for programs that provide early warning to communities vulnerable to LRA attacks, help LRA abductees escape peacefully, and enhance telecommunications and road infrastructure in affected areas. The absence of basic infrastructure is key to the LRA’s ability to perpetrate mass atrocities. As such, it is vital that your Administration utilize the full $10 million to expand existing efforts in these areas, which currently benefit only a small fraction of the affected population. Programs to increase LRA defections – such as direct outreach to LRA commanders, expanded radio programming, aerial leafleting, the establishment of safe zones for surrender, and community sensitization – are a particularly important and underutilized means of reducing the LRA’s capacity to attack civilians. In Central African Republic (CAR), where most LRA commanders are currently located, no such efforts exist; U.S. military advisors are uniquely positioned to help expand these activities in CAR.

This paragraph is so wide-eyed and half-baked that… Well, let’s start with infrastructure. Let’s look at the operational area again, and compare it to the size of South Carolina. Now let’s build basic infrastructure to cover the entire area for $10 million. If this were remotely possible, or feasible, half the NGOs in the world would be out of business. I’m all for advocacy, but in publishing this letter, it seems like IC is making the argument that this is a possibility. It isn’t. If the lack of infrastructure is key to the LRA’s threat, then maybe IC should be arguing for more cash. Otherwise it sounds like they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Now let’s talk about safe zones. What makes a safe zone a safe zone? The ability and inclination to use sufficient force to deter or defeat anyone that wants to make it unsafe. Otherwise, you get Srebrenica. To effectively secure a safe zone, you need an army, not 100 advisors. How, exactly, are US advisors therefore uniquely positioned to expand these activities in the CAR? If the CAR isn’t creating these safe zones, are the advisors meant to do so unilaterally? Are they meant to order the army of a sovereign state to do so? Persuade them? Again, it seems to me that IC either don’t know what soldiers do, don’t know what the limits of their use are, or they are being willingly deceptive. I give them the benefit of the doubt. In this instance – America cannot unilaterally create safe zones without deploying vast numbers of troops.

The reason I’m writing this all out is that these are the sort of nuts and bolts questions that need to be asked around any military deployment. War kills people, and the use of the military should be a matter of necessity. IC appear to perceive military force as some sort of silver bullet – pull the trigger, solve the problem, walk away like Clint Eastwood. It never has been, and it never will be. If IC want to see the expansion of US military activity, then they should say so. That should be the debate – “Dear Obama, please spend $X million dollars on these activities…”, if not, then they’re selling their supporters the idea that their campaign can change things that it can’t. More than that, if they are serious about selling a military intervention, then they need to be upfront about the risks as well as the possibilities. If they don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to military matters then they should remember their medical ethics before arguing for military action – “First, do no harm.”

Edit – We don’t usually “sell” things on this blog but if you’re interested in these issues, the Department has a number of MA options including the Conflict, Security and Development MA led by Professor Mats Berdal, as well as the distance learning MA War in the Modern World.

Gian Gentile’s review of Lewis Sorley’s biography of General Westmoreland isn’t the type that authors enjoy. Unfortunately, given the scale of Gentile’s criticism, it isn’t a NYRB length vivesection, but still well worth a read.

Gentile makes a number of criticisms about Sorley’s work. I’ll hold my hand up and say I’m not a Vietnam historian, so I won’t be commenting on the validity of these points. I would be very interested in what Sorley has to say for himself, given that Gentile is essentially accusing him of ignoring contradictory evidence and interpretations wholesale. Gentile’s criticism regarding the wholesale absence of CORDS is particularly stinging. One of the quoted articles, by Andrew Birtle, is available here, and has been added to my now-gargantuan “post-thesis” reading pile.

That aside, the real interest for me is the debate over the status of the war that threads through the review. Vietnam, obviously, is a contentious issue, but anyone familiar with current COIN debates might be forgiven for thinking that Vietnam was at the back of Gentile’s mind when he wrote:

The tale of a better war in Vietnam is seductive. It offers a simple explanation of an army redeemed through tactical innovation brought about by a savior general.

Cue three paragraphs on Iraq, Afghanistan and Petraeus.

My problem with Gentile’s view is not his criticism of the “better war theory,” but that it could have gone any differently. The reason for the defeat:

Washington lost because it failed at strategy. It failed, in short, to discern that the war was unwinnable at a cost in blood and treasure that the American people would accept.

What is perhaps striking is that there is no mention of the Cold War in the review, nor is there any mention of the strategic culture or mindsets of decision makers taking America into the war. Let us not forget that Vietnam wasn’t an invasion like Iraq, it was a steadily entwining Gordian knot which eventually strangled America. Much like Iraq in 2003, really. Gentile sees decision making regarding war as something different – Washington should have seen it coming. In my mind, this argument doesn’t hold weight, at least in the Vietnam case. Afghanistan, Iraq, well, they had the Vietnam case study to chew over, so the point is currently moot (but the coming decades of argument over the latter two will probably prove Gentile right). Consider the policy-making position prior to escalation in Vietnam, could anyone have seen the staggering scale of strategic defeat coming? I think not. The problem with the defeat in Vietnam (which Gentile is accurate in saying was coming regardless of tactical victories) is that we know it happened, and it colours everything when thinking about the decisions that led to the war. Details that may have appeared at the time random and irrelevant now stick out as so many Chekhov’s Guns that upon reading any book on Vietnam, one is liable to consider the war in its entirety, rather than a steadily cascading series of events. In this regard, reading Thomas Ricks’ Fiasco is rather like walking through Chekhov’s armoury.

The point about Chekhov’s rifle is that it foreshadows tragedy. Vietnam was a tragic war, but one that Gentile apparently believes could have been avoided. I’m not so sure, just as I’m not so sure Afghanistan could have been avoided (I’m about 50/50 on Iraq). It is quite easy to sit back after the fact and design Sorley-esque better war theories, or to proclaim that it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Both of these views are predicated on the fact that the only “good” war is the one that you win. Well, y’know, tell that to the Poles in WW2. They went to war without a hope in hell of winning, and they lost. A rational post-facto calculation of the events, in line with ius ad bellum would surmise that they should have waved a white flag the moment tanks started rolling into the country from either direction. In Vietnam, American policy makers saw themselves as defending the free world from the spread of Communism, expecting them to shut up shop in Vietnam over questions of blood and treasure is a bit, well, questionable. It is all well and good for us to look back now and say “Oh, it was Vietnamese nationalism, and not Communism and blah blah blah,” but that isn’t accurate to how policymakers (wrongly) perceived the conflict at the time. Sometimes wars happen not because two sides make a balanced calculation, but because they interpret the same thing in two entirely different ways. It’s tragic but it happens.

Lastly, the only part that I actively disagree with is Gentile’s criticism of Westmoreland (and by extension, Petraeus):

Westmoreland’s failure, like so many others during that tragic war, was his inability to see that the war could not be won at a cost that was acceptable to the American people.

My main question being: “So?” – was it Westmoreland’s job to discern the post-facto determination of Vietnam as unwinnable? No, it was his job to lead his men and prosecute that war as best he could. Depicting generals as omniscient beings responsible for the entirety of a war is dangerous. At the end of the day, their responsibility is to the Commander in Chief, and in America, the Constitution. That means if the President of the day decides to send you to fight an un-winnable war in a South Asian jungle or a Middle-Eastern desert, that’s your job. Obvious problems here with draftees, but Westmoreland wasn’t one (and neither was Petraeus).

There is current talk in Britain of our Generals perhaps letting politicians believe that they could achieve more in Afghanistan than they actually could. Their effort was perhaps a little bit more discreet than Westmoreland’s cheerleader effort in the MACV. But Westmoreland didn’t take America in, he was responsible for the situation as it was handed to him. This is an important difference. As the interface between the military and the executive, the role of the General is political. There are, however, limits. Should Westmoreland have unilaterally realised the war to be un-winnable, packed up his divisions and gone home? No? If not, then his job was to fight as best he could. The same with Petraeus, the same with anyone in that situation. Can Westmoreland really be held to account for his faith in American military power? Even if he did understand its limits, the choice to continue the war was not his to make, and that is where the ultimate responsibility for the defeat in Vietnam lies. The better war thesis passes the buck to the military for the decisions of politicians. The question, it seems to me, is not whether Westmoreland (ahem, Petraeus) should have stopped with the positive updates, the “we can win this thing” narrative and called time on the war but whether he could have done so, given his situation.

"You know the score, pal. You're not cop, you're little people!"

Questions of Obama’s proclivity for realism were raised in the New York Times, amongst others well before Obama okayed the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. Today we’re told that he gave the State of The Union speech while neglecting to mention that he’d just ordered a commando raid in Somalia that wound up killing 9 pirates. President Obama, the man elected on a platform of “Hope”, the great left(ish) liberal dream, the man awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for being elected, has turned out to be something of a foreign policy enigma. At least, he falls far short of the anti-thesis of George W. Bush, which many of his supporters had probably hoped he’d be. What is the core understanding of Obama’s foreign policy? Not his rhetoric, but the things that he actually does. The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that he is a realist in the post-state era. When dealing with the great affairs of politics amongst nations, his record is far from clear. When it comes to the little people: individuals who do things that America considers threatening, it is not so murky. Obama’s “Shadow War” doctrine is pretty simple in this regard: if you threaten us, we will hurt you, and we won’t make much of a fuss about it, either.

On Obama’s watch, the ethical, legal, social and political restraints on killing individuals have dropped to the point that it’s okay to launch a drone strike if you think you might hit a terrorist. George W. Bush might have invaded two countries, Obama seems to consider that persistent lethal force is okay, anywhere. That is, as long as you don’t have state backing. Obama’s played an incredibly cautious hand with the big beasts of the international system: states. The closest he’s come to flexing muscles was Libya, and there he was content to put about 2/5ths of the cash in, compared to US leadership in Afghanistan, which is still haeomorraging money. When it comes to the terrorists, militants and pirates, he’s okay with killing them, but he doesn’t talk about it all that much, and even then, only really in passing.

What strikes me about this is that it is, in essence, the realist critique of liberal theories of international relation: your talk, your speech, your laws, they’re all okay and fine, but when it comes down to it, the gloves come off. How Obama has approached supposedly weak states such as Yemen, Syria and Iran is supposedly indicative of a liberal foreign policy – respect for international law, sabre-rattling in the august institution of the UN and so on and so forth. I think that any real critique of Obama’s foreign policy should include the fact that people who are pretty much defenceless (well, unless someone figures out a cheap way of protecting against 24 hour surveillance and JDAMs) are getting killed on the presumption that they might pose a threat in future, or that their very existence is a threat. Whereas George W. Bush may have contorted international law past breaking point before tilting at WMD windmills, Obama seems wholly content with ignoring it. How? Because in these affairs he is the anti-thesis of the neo-conservative. See the SOTU speech for details: “For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.” In fairness, he already did the slayed-the-dragon speech, but the fact that the death of OBL barely warrants a footnote in the summation of a year is interesting. In case you’re wondering, the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki doesn’t even warrant a mention.

I write all the above not because I think the policies are necessarily wrong, or that Obama is a bad president, and so on and so forth. Rather, the conduct of Obama’s foreign policy reminds me of an adult stepping on ants whilst on the way to work – there are more important things to worry about.  Obama is a man of big (some say too big) ideas, and the US has a hell of a lot on its plate (global financial armageddon, China, the usual laundry list). I used to consider the silence that surrounds the targeted killing program somewhat deafening, but now I think of it in a slightly different sense. After all, when the world is falling down, will anyone really miss a few self-proclaimed terrorists? Obama seems to have astutely guessed that these men-without-country are vulnerable, in that their own territorial sovereigns will offer them up for dead (Yemen), as long as not too much of a fuss is made (and in Pakistan’s case, they get to complain about it loud enough for domestic constituents to hear). Rather than proclaim these people so evil as to warrant special measures, Obama’s foreign policy appears to reduce them to the point of unimportance, past the point, incidentally, where the administration cares whether stepping on them might violate some legal principle or other. As long as no-one kicks up a fuss, and the Supreme Court refuses jurisdiction, the results are left to speak for themselves. After all, who’s going to call America to account over a couple of hundred people? Russia? China? I’m sure both are quite glad that America is coming around to their way of slicing Gordian knots in two.