The British have a long history of stealing/saving (depending on your perspective) historical monuments from other cultures. The Elgin Marbles are a case in point.

However, I think we can all agree that we reached a new high of historical preservation/theft with the acquisition in 2003 of the buttocks from the iconic statue of Saddam Hussein by a (now former) SAS soldier, which he wants to auction to raise funds for wounded UK soldiers.

But now apparently the Iraqi government has demanded its return, claiming that the former dictator’s shiny metal ass is…wait for it…“a cultural antiquity”.

I have no doubt that in some ways it’s a very serious issue with lots of valid argumentation on both sides…but sometimes you really do just have to laugh!

Of course, the band's founder, Phil Campbell, left in 1984 for a very successful career with Motörhead; but that, dear readers, is another story for another day.

Amidst a hockey-sock of uncertainty and anxiety, one country stands out from the crowd–and that is saying a great deal, given that the crowd includes Syria, Egypt, Nigeria, China, and North Korea (to name but a few).  That country, of course, is Iran.

Now, as the sharper amongst you may have guessed, I am a bureaucrat (at least for the moment!) and that means that I belong to one of the most risk-averse (and risk-insulated) tribes that you will ever meet.   Therefore, I will not offer a prediction as to what –if anything–will happen.  But, because I am specialist bureaucrat that deals with risk analysis and management, what I will do is analyze the process of determining the risks and the options surrounding ‘the problem of Iran’. 

Risk

What is needed here is a little methodology (bear with me).  Risk is an oft-abused term that needs to be defined before it is of any use.   The risk to an object (be it a person, an asset, or a programme) is generally regarded as the function between threats to that object, the vulnerabilities of that object, probability of those threats actually occurring, and the impact or consequence to the object if they do occur. 

The very first thing to determine,  however, is the object in question.  ‘What is at stake?’ Or more stated more properly, ‘What is at risk?’  This is crucial, because depending on what we regard as ‘at risk’ the threat posed by Iran varies significantly.  Given that we are operating in the realm of the political, which means that there are a number of choices or perspectives that we might adopt, the question of what is at risk cannot be assumed to be self-evident.  Do we consider American regional influence to be at risk?  Or is it the existence of the State of Israel? Or the security of other allies or states of interest, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or Afghanistan?  Or is it the concept of innocent passage and perhaps even freedom of the high seas?  Of course, we may choose to hedge our bets and use fluffy terms, such as ‘national interest’, but since these lack specificity, we only (perhaps not by accident) add to the ambiguity, rather than providing clarity. 

Commentators, such as John Yoo, have made the case that Iran is “a looming threat” but it is not quite clear what it threatens, exactly.  The breathless warnings of Cassandras like Yoo and Matthew Kroening take it for granted that the reader knows what is at stake.  Frankly, most of the time it seems as if they are implying that it is the very existence of civilisation, at least, that is in jeopardy.  As Stephen Walt points out, this is a tried, tested, and true (unfortunately) rhetorical device that bears no relation to the actual risk being described. 

In any event, we can see that even in the first step of the risk analysis process, we are beset by argument and debate.  What is critically important to see is that this debate is not, at this stage, about facts, but rather about perspectives.  About chosen frames of reference.  About ideological positions.  And that means it is often going to be a nasty, emotion, and heated debate, rather than a productive one. 

Unfortunately, the subjective aspects of the debate that characterise the beginning of the ‘risk analysis’ process often continue to colour the remainder of it.  For instance, when the notion of probability comes up, it is most often discussed in equally subjective terms.  Yoo, for instance, speaks of Iran as an “unavoidable challenge”, pushing any measurement of probability towards the end of spectrum marked certain.  And yet any forecast is clearly arbitrary, even if mathematical terms are introduced.  There is no way of knowing the probability of an Iranian nuclear strike.  Attempts to ‘know’ these things have failed in the past (such as with Iraq in the lead up to the 2003 invasion), not least because the process of measuring has a significant impact on the thing being measured (ooo…quantum politics kids, a la Herr Doktor Heisenberg, hang on to your hats!).  Warnings, monitoring, discussing options–these activities alter the risk equation as it goes along.  See, for instance, this week’s naval cat and mouse game.    

The same skewing occurs with respect to impact.  Those looking to spur action choose to portray potential impacts in the most dire way, while those looking for other courses will downplay any consequences.  That goes for second order consequences, too.  THEY will cause Armageddon, but WE will be surgical in our response, causing nothing but joy and light.

Response

Once an analysis has been conducted and a determination of the risk made, the next logical step is to formulate some kind of response.  There are two important aspects to be aware of here.  The first is that ‘risk appetite’ or ‘risk tolerance’ is not a pre-set value.  What one actor can live with, another may find intolerable.  Famously, for instance, Dick Cheney was said to have preferred the ’1% Doctrine’ (whereby even a 1% chance of an event occurring was enough to warrant a response).  Others set there thresholds higher.  Some too high: Neville Chamberlain, for instance, faced with indications of Germany’s desire for domination in Europe, was satisfied with verbal assurances to the contrary.   Again, I would claim that risk appetite can also be associated with a particular ideological–rather than empirical or biological–position, so where you sit often determines where you stand, as it were.

Given a particular risk tolerance, there are four strategic options for risk management:

1. Avoidance
2. Transfer
3. Mitigation
4. Acceptance

Avoidance means what it says: try and have nothing to do with the threats that you have identified, insulating yourself from their impacts.  Essentially, you are trying to reduce the probability of a threat occurring to zero.  This can be easier said than done, depending on the circumstances.  If you want to avoid the risk to your life posed by commercial air travel, it can be done.  You may have to forgo some opportunities (vacations abroad, membership in altitude-calibrated societies…), but it is possible.   In the world of geopolitics, however, it is not so easy, especially at the strategic level.  Again, the issue really defines how you frame the argument; what is at risk in the first place?  The USN could, for instance, avoid confrontation with Iran by withdrawing from Gulf.  This, however, would not work as a feasible strategy if the ‘object at risk’ were US freedom of the seas, for instance. 

The second risk management option is transfer.  In ordinary realms (such as finance or commerical operations) risk transfer means insurance.  Essentially, one outsources the risk, by passing it on to a third party.  Worried about the threat of fire as a source of risk to your home, you can ‘transfer the risk’ to the insurance company.  Note that while some benefit (and arguably peace of mind) can come from such a transfer, you can never really transfer all the risk away.  If your house burns down, you might get a pay-out, but you cannot escape the risk of being injured or killed in the blaze.  Again, note that the risk that was transferred was specifically about a particular ‘object at risk’ (the physical dwelling).  Your life is another matter entirely.  In geopolitical terms, risk transfer is often attempted–by kicking difficult balls into touch, by referring them to the Security Council, or Allies, or other actors.  But, just like in real life, there is often a sticky residue that remains.  Iran is not North Korea where a strategy of containment and compartmentalisation has worked (to a degree). 

The third option is mitigation.  It is sometimes referred to as control, but I think that overstates the case.  This is the most ”active” of the options: it contains the measures one takes to try and reduce the risk.  Generally speaking this can be done in two ways: by reducing the threat or by reducing the vulnerability to that threat.  In physical security terms, this might mean going out and disrupting or destroying those pesky terrorists or pirates.  Or it might mean improving the armour plating on your vehicles, or getting a newer high-tech IED jamming device.  Geopolitically, it might mean increasing your means of deterrence or launching pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, or providing naval escorts to commercial vessels navigating the tricky Straits of Hormuz.  Whatever the decision, this option is about capabilities.  There is little point in coming up with ideas that cannot be put into practice.  Similarly, there is little point in implementing plans that have no effect.  Making a sweeping generalisation (and invoking the Rid Principle of Blogorific Freedom in so doing) those commentators, be they civilian or military, that one might label as Hawks, tend to put their faith in this option as the best one available.  More guns, better ships, awesome F-35s–these are the ‘mitigating measures’ that are needed to address risks. 

 Finally, we come to acceptance, which while the term of art, is not one that I think adequately addresses what this option actually entails.  One way of looking at acceptance is to view it as resigning oneself to the risk that remains after all else has been tried.  Another way is to see it as the result of a deliberate ‘cost-benefit’ analysis: whatever the potential upside is (a better reputation, cost savings from not taking an aggressive approach, etc.) outweighs the potential downside (money spent on guns and not butter, potential to ignite a tinderbox, etc.)  I think both views are needed.  The problem is, of course, that acceptance is–perhaps more than any other option–bound up in the inherently subjective/ideological Gordian Knot of risk tolerance/risk appetite.  How much risk should we accept?  How far should we attempt to avoid, transfer, and mitigate before we accept?  All very good questions, and none of them are technical in nature.  They are inherently political, and that is where the fun starts.

While not a formal risk management option, I would like to propose that what lies behind these active options is the idea of risk absorption.  In short, this is what we end up with when all that ‘sticky residue’ (mentioned above) and ‘unintended consequences/second order risks’ and accepted risks are accounted for.  Often times, the total risk picture is not known, due to neglect, the sheer complexity of it all, errors in calculation and/or wishful thinking.  But all the ‘real risk’ (if such a thing could ever be known) is absorbed by an object…until it can no longer be accommodated.  For instance, we might say that we accept the risk of a nuclear Iran, but can we really?  Or, we might say that we can accept the risk of armed conflict with Iran if that is what results from a strategy of ‘not backing down’.  Maybe, though, with all the other risks that we have absorbed (either knowingly or unknowingly) perhaps our capacity to deal with that risk is exceeded.  Maybe we need to cut our budgets and cannot deal with two contingencies at the same time any longer.  So we might ‘accept’ a risk, without being able to actually deal with it. 

In reality, of course, nothing is simple.  There are not simple ‘risk-reward’ calculations, or cost-benefit analyses to be done.  And it is not that we would make the ‘right’ decisions ‘if only’ we had more information, more time, another satellite, better allies, more honest interlocutors, better hair (but it never hurts).  There are risks that need to be traded, prioritised and off-set.  Military risks sit along side financial and economic risks, which must be seen in the context of domestic political risks.  There is no correct answer, no preferred perspective. 

Risk is a tricky thing.  It is as beguiling as it is confusing.  As some wise old Persian once observed

If one has to jump a stream and knows how wide it is, he will not jump. If he does not know how wide it is, he will jump, and six times out of ten he will make it.

 The trick is in knowing whether or not you really do know…or not.

I recently had the opportunity to ask this question to a group of serving UK military personnel. It cropped up in relation to an intriguing query raised by Ole Jørgen Maaø in his article: Leadership in Air Operations – In Search of Air Power Leadership:

Air power has often been used to attack societies and structures within societies, often to deter an enemy from pursuing their goal. This requires in-depth analysis of an enemy’s society. Is a fighter pilot best at doing such an analysis? It is hard to believe such a proposition. It could be that different analysts of society, such as political scientists, social anthropologists, sociologists or even psychologists at least ought to be consulted in such an analysis. Maybe a political scientist is better educated and trained to perform this task?

We know from history that commanders with exclusively military backgrounds have not always won the day: Mao Zedong – for example – was a librarian, while his defeated opponent – General Chiang Kai-Shek – was a seasoned military veteran. So in an age where warfare is increasingly fought in alternative theatres outside of the traditional battlefield, a pressing question has become:

Is it right for people with an exclusively military background to lead the armed forces and oversee military operations? (this refers only to leadership of the armed forces, not the state as a whole).

Would an Air Marshal be capable of handling cyber threats such as Stuxnet or would a computer programmer be more appropriate? Would a General be best positioned to ferret out terrorists from an unfriendly population or would a police constable be preferable? Would an Admiral be most suitable to tackle the tangled social, political and economic roots behind marine piracy or would a sociologist be better? At a broader level, Clausewitz asserted that War is the continuation of policy by other means, and many modern analysts believe that political successes are just as important in today’s wars as military ones.

Should we then hand over command of the armed forces to civilians?

‘Yes’ is a tempting answer. But that misses an important piece of the puzzle. The people most able to influence enemy assets and support friendly forces from land, sea and air are almost certainly the people with the most experience in these areas. The same Air Marshal who might struggle to understand the complexities of cyber warfare is still more likely to know about how to destroy an enemy radar post or intercept an enemy fighter squadron than a computer scientist. Removing military leadership from any and all command of the armed forces would be ridiculous.

However, in an age where some say that warfare is becoming ever more complicated, it does seem important to more effectively combine civilian, military and political expertises within our military command structure.

So what then would be the best way to carry this out?

Should wars be waged by committee, with delegates drawn from a sprawling pool of military and civilian specialisms, each one providing bespoke advice and guidance about their area of expertise? It sounds logical in theory, but would be a nightmare to implement. What level of decisions would the body make? How would decisions be made? Who would chair the group? How would arguments be resolved? How would the group respond quickly enough to rapidly moving events? Which specialisms would be included? We have seen before the difficulties of using committees in war, albeit on an international rather than interdisciplinary scale.

Or should we appoint a single leader with a background in politics, the military and civilian trades? Alexander the Great embodies this model. As combined military and political leader, he exploited the structural weaknesses of the Persian Empire by pursuing a path of political decapitation, militarily triumphed against vastly larger armies, and effectively channelled civilian efforts to achieve incredible technological feats (such as coordinating civilian engineers to build a massive causeway during the Siege of Tyre) and to accomplish political goals (such as infusing Greek culture into the rich tapestry of societies he conquered). But this has its problems too. Firstly, finding a person with all of the requisite modern skills would be a Herculean task. But perhaps more importantly, it would create a potentially abusive concentration of power that could lead to military dictatorship or worse.

Should we then try to share command between two or more partners? During the final civil war of the Roman Republic, the military commander Octavian used his political skills to outmanoeuvre his opponent – Mark Anthony – with propaganda, while his close aide Agrippa used his engineering genius to build a navy and his military expertise to defeat Anthony’s forces at Actium. Their partnership worked well, but others have failed. We cannot forget that prior to Actium, Anthony had himself been the military expert who was allied with Octavian, that is until their relationship fragmented and collapsed into civil war. This seems like an unappealing risk for today.

Or would we be better off dividing the two elements entirely, as once proposed by President Obama in his speech about developing a Civilian National Security Force? This once again is flawed – not only would it involve vast expense, but could easily lead to rivalries and gaps in communication and coordination between the two separate entities.

It seems then that there are no easy answers. But the importance of the question remains.

Sadly, no one in the group agreed that I should be the leader of our armed forces. But they did believe that academics should be more involved with the decision making progress. The considered and balanced nature of their response both reflects well upon the sophistication of the UK’s armed forces, and shows how seriously the military itself takes the issue.

Or perhaps they just didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

(This was something that I intended to include in a lecture to the department’s Experience of War course yesterday, but ran out of time. I thought that some KoW readers might be interested, hence its appearance here)

Now that Afghanistan is entering the “end-game” phase (well, at least from our perspective), it seems like a prudent time to consider the imagery of the war. Specifically, what images define(d) it? Over the course of the War on Terror, I’d argue that there are a handful of resonant images, not all of which were taken by photojournalists. Obviously, the World Trade Centre on 9/11 is emblematic (more so than the Pentagon or flight 93), and that image has been reproduced countless times, globally. From the “first bit” of the War in Afghanistan, not so much, yet images of Guantanamo Bay will probably be reproduced endlessly. The invasion of Iraq resulted in the pictures of Saddam’s statue being pulled down, the (disgraceful) images from Abu Ghraib, as well as the photos of the capture of Saddam, and the less than tasteful video of him being executed. Asides from this, there is also the well-recognised image of Daniel Perl, in an orange jumpsuit, prior to his execution. On top of this, there are the images of terrorist attacks worldwide over the period, possibly the most memorable of 7/7 is the image of a lady with a burns mask. This version taken by a former colleague of mine, Andre Camara, made the front page of The Times, amongst other papers.* Of these images there are effectively three classes. One is those taken/published by witnesses, “us” as civilians, the second is those taken by journalists, or published by them (Abu Ghraib falls into this category), and lastly, there are those taken by the belligerents.

The point of all the above is that images matter. People can argue as to whether video is more important than photography, or whether youtube is more important than Hollywood, but taken together, visual representations of war are how many people are going remember these conflicts. For the sake of brevity, this post is considering “factual” imagery only, creative interpretations (which are important!) would need another post.

But what I really want to talk about is Afghanistan 2, aka Afghanistan after ISAF’s expansion. That’s not to say that prior to this Afghanistan wasn’t important, but the second phase of the conflict is when it came home. What, then, is the defining image of this war? I’m going to make a case for this photo. If you live in Britain and read papers, you have probably seen this image repeatedly over the last four years. It crops up everywhere and is still used from time to time.

It is a great picture. It has pretty much everything you’d want in a war photo: officer on phone, fixed bayonet, Royal Marine mid dive holding his rifle with a single hand (importantly, he also has his eyes open which adds to the picture). In the background there is another commando running, as well as a big explosion. I say it again, this is a great, great picture. And I’d like to say that the reason it is so ubiquitous is that it is a great, great photo. But I can’t, and the reason why is important.

If you clicked the link, you’ll see it is an MoD pic, taken by Gaz Faulkner. Importantly, this picture is distributed by PA, the Press Association. For those of you unfamiliar with the UK press, the Press Association is the national news agency. It supplies copy (words), photos and more to its members. It is also highly influential, in that what it puts out tends to get picked up by the national press. Like international news agencies such as Reuters and the Associated Press, it is a major source of information, images and stories. They are, however, sometimes invisible to the casual observer. As a result of the hollowing out of newsrooms, these agencies have grown in influence, and will continue to do so. For a quick “oh” effect, this screengrab of the Chicago Tribune’s (online) front page with the wire stories removed should suffice.

The point is that there is no longer much of a budget for news, or news photography. Newsroom budgets are under pressure and free is good. Newswires provided by the news agencies provide (for a fee) a continual source of stories and free to use images. If you happen to be a picture editor faced with insane budget cuts, then free becomes the name of the game. Faced with the choice between paying a freelance photographer, or using a near-free picture provided by a wire service, the economic reality of contemporary newsrooms militates against the former. There is no budget for online photography use. If you doubt this, take any national, and compare the printed paper to its online equivalent, I’d be willing to wager at least a pint that you won’t find an online story accompanied by a picture that required payment which isn’t in the print edition.

So on a systemic level, a good picture of British troops under fire, available for free, is likely to get propagated far wider than a similar image taken by a freelancer who is (rightly so) going to demand payment for their services. As good as Gaz Faulkner’s photo is, I’ve seen far more great pictures from Afghanistan, some of which I’m not even sure made it to print.

And the US military is going far, far “bigger” than providing a free picture to newswires. Take a look at Flickr.com, for example. A couple of years ago Getty Images, the world’s biggest picture library (providing an imagery service similar to Reuters etc) did a deal with Flickr. Essentially the biggest player in the photo industry happens to think that Flickr is the way forwards for image sourcing and distribution. Now, Flickr has an interesting feature in that it allows users to upload images with a creative commons license, this means that people can use the images in a variety of ways, without having to pay for doing so.

Now take a look at these essentially free pictures from Afghanistan on Flickr. Notice something? No matter how far you scroll, most of them are from the US army, ISAF or other military sources. And quite a few of them are good pictures, some are great. If you happen to be a hard up blogger looking for an image to illustrate your Afghanistan blog post (or even make your banner), your alternatives are either this, something similar or stealing someone’s work. And for me, this is quite troubling.

What I think is happening here is essentially a new method of control over the representation of war, one that is beyond propaganda, censorship or even embeds. It is the military out-competing objective journalists at their own game, and selling them (and the public) a biased representation of the war on terms that their accountants cannot refuse. And there can be no doubt that the military representation of the war in Afghanistan is biased. Think of the photography that emanated from Vietnam, or numerous other wars, images that hurt the representation of the military, or ISAF, won’t get re-produced by them. It won’t get distributed to press agencies, or posted on the internet for anyone to use. All those images that might balance, or produce an alternate narrative of the war (one that maybe includes death and corpses), won’t appear.

But significantly, beyond this, in flooding the market, the military is essentially undercutting freelancers. It means that there is less money in the economy of war reporting. That is not to say that major newspapers don’t send their photographers out there, I’ve seen great work from staffers, but media organisations no longer have the funds to sustain foreign bureaus. That means that even wars as big as Iraq ended up with a dearth of dedicated bureaus. Which means that the people “bearing witness” are free lancers, or the military, in between staff reporters getting sent for trips. And since the military is able to undercut the freelancers of the world, their images will inevitably be replicated to a greater extent. Hence why I think Faulkner’s picture is probably the most replicated picture of Afghanistan. The problem? This means that the military has an increasing hand in the images that define war, at least the journalistic side of it. And I’m pretty adamant that having belligerents replacing journalists is a bad thing.

To return to the start, images matter, and they’re likely to define the popular memory of the war in the way that certain images of Vietnam probably define or govern the memory of that war in younger generations.

As for me, my defining picture of the war in Afghanistan is probably Specialist Boyd, for no other reason than it is a great picture, and the image of a gun-wielding soldier in pink boxers harks at that special “WTF?!” level of incomprehensibility in the war that spawned a thousand bad Buzkashi comparisons.

If you’re paying attention, it is also an AP photo.

(Full disclosure: I worked for The Times/ST/News International in a variety of roles between 2005-2010 as a casual)

*NB: This isn’t meant to be an exclusive list, it is the images that I consider being globally important, there are many, many more pictures and images of the last ten years, but adding to this list wouldn’t drive home the point much further.

-edit: the link to the discussion pic was broken, so I replaced it with a link to the Navy News site (who happen to agree with me!)

Grégor Mathias has recently published a groundbreaking book examining David Galula’s operations in Algeria. The book, aptly titled Galula in Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice versus Theory, is based on careful archival research and previously untapped sources describing Galula’s own experience with counterinsurgency. Given that much of today’s counterinsurgency theory is based on Galula’s own writing, the task of assessing his approach to these types of operations seems long overdue.

This gap has been amply filled by Grégor Mathias – a researcher at the Service Historique de la Défense and professor at the Collège Foch – Haguenau in France. The book has already attracted some attention over at Small Wars Journal (thanks to Mike Few) and is sure to fall on fertile ground both among counterinsurgency proponents and detractors.

Given the above, I was honoured when I was asked to write a foreword for this new volume. Available as of late October, the book’s publishers have now agreed to feature its foreword here on Kings of War – to trigger a discussion about the book, about Galula as a commander, and about what his record says about the counterinsurgency principles we have inherited from him.

The foreword follows…. and you can buy the book itself here.

Foreword to Grégor Mathias, Galula in Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice versus Theory (Praeger & ABC-Clio, 2011), 143p.
by David H. Ucko

Mark Twain apparently quipped that while the past does not repeat itself, it certainly rhymes. So, thirty years after it had left the jungles of Vietnam and forgot all about insurgency, the US military again faced the same problem, though in Iraq this time, following its invasion of the country in 2003. Counterinsurgency had been under-researched if not deliberately neglected between these two wars, so it was only natural that when it came to studying and learning about this concept many officers and scholars would turn to the 1950s and 1960s for advice. For better and for worse, insights were drawn from Vietnam and made to apply to the war in Iraq, though notable attention was also given to other countries’ experiences with these types of campaigns: the British in Malaya; the French in Algeria.

This intellectual re-discovery of counterinsurgency elevated an unlikely group of experts, mostly forgotten since their heyday of the 1960s. Foremost among this group stood David Galula, a French military officer whose combat experience in Algeria and writings on counterinsurgency were viewed as particularly instructive to understanding the challenges of modern counterinsurgency. When doctrine writers from the US Army and Marine Corps got together to write their new counterinsurgency doctrine in 2006, David Galula’s influence was evident, not least because his Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice was one of three works cited in the field manual’s final preface.

To those in the US military seeking to gain a better understanding of counterinsurgency, Galula offered an accessible guide to the difficulties and dilemmas typical of these campaigns. From his experience in Algeria he derived and illustrated various counterinsurgency principles that have not only been found to apply elsewhere, but were now picked up on and reiterated in the most recent of doctrine. These touch upon the importance of achieving a nuanced political understanding of the campaign, operating under unified command, using intelligence to guide operations, isolating insurgents from the population, using the minimum amount of force necessary to achieve security, and assuring and maintaining the perceived legitimacy of the counterinsurgency effort in the eyes of the populace. Galula’s writings offered a clear illustration of how these time-tested principles could be implemented based on his own experience in Algeria.

Counterinsurgency Warfare soon earned the reputation of a classic in the field, though it would be fair to say that far more people had heard of the book than actually studied it; indeed, it is another of Mark Twain’s sayings that a classic is a ‘book which people praise and don’t read’. Far less attention still has been paid to Galula’s own life and practical record as a counterinsurgent, of which little is known besides that which he himself shared in his books. The result of this curious neglect has been a tendency toward hagiography in much of the writing on Galula, underpinned by a fundamental uncertainty of how this maverick officer himself handled the problem of insurgency in his day.

This is where Grégor Mathias steps in, providing us with a carefully researched, densely packed and in many ways unique account of David Galula’s own practical experience with counterinsurgency. The picture that emerges is of a remarkable and intellectually hungry French officer; a polyglot; a traveller; explorer; and keen learner. His most formative experience with counterinsurgency was his command of a French company in the Djebel Aïssa Mimoun subdistrict of Kabylia, Algeria, in 1956-57, though as Mathias makes clear, much of what he later taught derived equally from his time as a military attaché in China during the civil war, as a member of the UN commission in Greece during its civil war, and from his visits to Indochina and the Philippines, where he observed ongoing counterinsurgencies without himself participating.

It is said that it is a curse to live in interesting times, yet Galula appears to have taken this fate in his stride. Indeed, his international exposure and encounters not only help explain his fine grasp of political violence, but also provide a fascinating narrative intertwined with major historical events. Still, perhaps this book’s greatest service to counterinsurgency scholars today is to provide a more comprehensive account of how Galula fared when seeking to put into practice the very theory for which he is now so famous.

It soon emerges that even for Galula, it was far easier to derive principles from ongoing campaigns than to make sure they were properly implemented. Indeed, Mathias’ account reveals a company commander grappling with many of the same dilemmas facing today’s military leaders – in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. While Galula was comparatively successful as a commander, his time in Algeria clearly shows the limited ability of an outside force to exert legitimate influence and pressure on a local population. It also shows the difficulty of honouring the principle of civil-military unity of command when there are tangible differences in priority and approach between these two sets of actors. Like many commanders today, Galula struggled with troop shortages, wrestled with a domestic press unconvinced of his operational gains, and outright stumbled in the delicate transition from French to Algerian control and governance. Not all of Galula’s setbacks can be placed at his own doormat: after all, a company commander can only wield so much control. Even so, perhaps one of the more interesting insights in Mathias’ account regards the difficulties of determining ‘success’ in counterinsurgency campaigns and the related tendency, one certainly shared by Galula, for unwarranted optimism in the face of short-term gains.

If Galula’s own record mirrors many of the frustrations felt by today’s commanders, does he nonetheless merit the reputation and influence that he has now earned, posthumously? Certainly. His writing offers one of the most lucid and accessible treaties on counterinsurgency, helpful to any student and practitioner seeking to understand the difficult dilemmas common to these campaigns. His principles, while difficult to implement, nonetheless provide a foundation upon which to base action. That Galula’s own record as a counterinsurgent is more mixed should not surprise, but rather act as a helpful reminder that this form of warfare is never easy, but rather ‘messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife’.[1] Arguably, it is precisely because Galula struggled with the same challenges that we see today that makes his record and his writings so relevant.

For this reason, Mathias’ account is also a helpful corrective to some of the overblown and under-researched portrayals of Galula in recent years. Neither Galula’s writings, nor his experience in Algeria, were ever going to provide us with the right answers, but rather help us ask the right questions. As Mathias persuasively shows in this book, there is no master-key to these types of operations and Galula’s principles provide no checklist for success. This is something the French counterinsurgency expert would no doubt have agreed with: counterinsurgency, he noted, ‘may be sound in theory but dangerous when applied rigidly to a specific case’. (96)

All of this – Galula’s mixed record and his tentativeness in proposing his concept – should instill a much-needed measure of humility about what is possible in counterinsurgency operations, and through military intervention writ large.  For this very reason, it is incumbent on those militaries with expeditionary ambitions to study the history of their intellectual forefathers, to learn from their experiences, and try not to repeat their mistakes.

Over on Carl Prine’s Line of Departure (the new hotness of the blogosphere) a couple of weeks ago he had an essay ‘Framed and Shot in Afghanistan‘ comparing the rather insipid work of a contemporary photographer in Afghanistan with the extraordinarily eye-catching and evocative work of the 19th century photographer John Burke who accompanied the Peshawar Valley Field Force, one of three British Anglo-Indian army columns deployed in the Second Afghan War (1878-80), despite being rejected for the role of official photographer. Go browse these amazing photos for a while and read Carl’s essay too. It made me want to buy this book by Omar Khan ‘From Kashmir to Kabul‘. They are all terrific but, like Carl, my favourite is this one. Can you even guess which one the political officer is? I’m not sure myself.

If you like these photos then you will probably also like the King’s College London Liddell-Hart Centre for Military Archive’s online exhibition The Serving Soldier which is also worth a slow browse.

What got me about Carl’s post, however, was that it made me remember other sepia shots of young men in similar pose in exactly the same places–Soviet soldiers in their ill-fated adventure in Afghanistan and the people whom they fought there. I’ve not got a political point here; rather Burke’s photos struck a personal chord which takes a bit of explaining.

A little less than a year ago my friend Valeriy Volkov died alone in his flat in Moscow. It’s not quite clear how he died as he was alone at the time; but he had been suffering long-term neurological effects of having been blown up by a grenade while on service in Afghanistan (traumatic brain injury, I think we would call it). It seems possible this had something to do with it.

Valeriy had been a paratrooper and a special forces man in the Soviet Army. He served at least two years in Afghanistan and then, as I recall, two more in the neighbouring Tajikistan Military District in a military intelligence cell. I met him in the mid-1990s when I was running something called the Democratic Civil-Military Relations Programme for the Canadian Department of National Defence. This was one of a number of NATO-Partnership for Peace bridge-building/democracy-promoting/military tourism activities that were prevalent at the time. I took it seriously (it led pretty directly to my PhD) but few of the participants did-certainly not Valeriy, who by that time was a Lieutenant Colonel, and much more interested in carousing.

As it happens carousing is also one of my main hobbies, in fact in my younger days you might have thought it a vocation. I was quite happy drinking vodka through the night, singing and listening to war stories, sobering up with a swim in the Ottawa River, quick shower in the gym, then back to the office for a nap under the desk with no one the wiser. Well, I didn’t get fired anyway.   In other words, we got on very well indeed. We stayed in touch and later wrote an article together called ‘The False Dawn of Russian Military Reform‘. Valeriy’s stories about his time in Afghanistan made a very strong impression on me. More to the point as far as this post goes his photographs really made an impression on me. He was an amateur photographer, a really good one, and he had taken hundreds of shots of the places he had been and the people whom he had fought with and against. The one which I remember best looked like this one which I found here.

He had quite a lot of such photos of fierce looking Mujahids because for the most part what his work had involved was walking around Afghanistan with a bag full of money and favours, living on his wits, and hiring one band of Mujahideen to go kill some other band one month and vice versa the next. In other words, I think my friend was probably a lot like the political officer in Burke’s photo of the Khan of Lalpura and his not so merry band of mountain men which is how I would like to remember him.

The thing that makes me mad though is that this photo only looks like Valeriy’s photo. It’s not nearly as good. Unfortunately, like a lot of Russian officers particularly around the crash in 1998 Valeriy was for all intents and purposes a pauper despite his military rank. Someone with his skills might have done very well for himself in Russia at the time in biznis–smart, multilingual, highly-trained–as did lots of others like him. But whatever taste for fighting he’d had when he was a spetsnaz man he had left in Afghanistan. He was the mellowest, harmony-seeking commando I’ve ever met. He was also too honest to be a crook and too proud to ask his friends for help. So, he sold his photos for a few hundred dollars. I believe they were bought by Time magazine or whatever photo archive it is that they own. In any event I cannot find any sign of them on the web. They are gone, presumably in some dusty forgotten file folder where they don’t deserve to be. They’re as good as Burke’s and a damn sight better than those being exhibited at the Tate right now.

Anyway, if you’re still reading because you’re interested in war photos, or maybe you are a picture researcher or a journalist and you should ever come across photos of Afghanistan from the 1980s by Valeriy Germanovich Volkov please let me know. I would like to see them and I think many other people would benefit from seeing them too.

Johan Galtung was on Al Jazeera yesterday talking a lot of sense about the Western intervention in Libya. Much of what he said flowed naturally from his status as something of a peace activist (and often outspoken critic of the United States) and might therefore be dismissed as idealistic or tendentious. Yet one should not sweep aside some of the truly important points he made on the topic of legitimacy and history, relevant not only here and now in Libya but in future Western interventions around the world. In particular, Galtung stressed the need to consider the psychological effects of having NATO warplanes bomb yet another Muslim country, given the sensitivity about this across much of the Arab and Muslim world, and the tenuousness, given the region’s recent history, of Western legitimacy and credibility there.

Galtung made this case quite well with regard to Libya. He intimated that despite the signs of local thankfulness for the Western intervention, the convergence of interests and of agendas may very well unravel, first because it is not every Libyan who is welcoming this intervention, and second, should missiles start going astray or the great hopes of the resistance movements somehow go unfulfilled, it will be quite easy for Ghaddafi’s supporters to pin the blame on the Western attackers. In such an instance, it would also be important not to forget that Ghaddafi still has the potential, among some sectors of society, to pose quite effectively as an anti-Western charismatic leader, launching a counter-crusade against Western colonialist.  He may have lost the veneer of a revolutionary a long time ago, but the spell, or what Galtung called the ‘magic of the revolution’, still has possible potency.

On that front, I was particularly interested in the care Galtung took to place current events within the longue durée of Libyan and regional history – something I fear the Western world often forgets to do or dismisses as unimportant. In particular he pointed to the fact that it is just Italy, France and Britain – the countries now involved in the bombardment – who colonised Libya for much of the 20th century, since 1911 in fact, something that will be a much more immediate memory among the colonised rather than the colonisers. ‘In other words ‘ Galtung said, ‘you will have among the 350 million Arabs, so many, such a percentage, who will say “just what did we say?; here they go again; we know them; it’s the same old game”‘. In a similar vein, Galtung asked, what are the likely psychological effects of the fact that this intervention marks the 100th anniversary of the first-ever instance of aerial bombardment, carried out by Italy in Libya in 1911, and resulting (much as today) in apparent ‘collateral damage’ (then called ‘frightfulness’).

Galtung does not offer any easy solutions to this dilemma. He does speak to what might have been an alternative to the use of force by the West, or its effective involvement in a civil war. This which would have included a much more assertive and active Arab League or African Union, playing a strong role in getting the competing sides to the negotiating table. He also puts his hope in the ability of the United Nations Security Council to ‘administer humanitarian action in a humanitarian way’, which would need to involve constructive participation of the BRIC countries, so as to engender the needed legitimacy.

We can argue about the viability of these international and regional organisations, but I think Galtung is onto something when he talks of the West’s genuine credibility gap in many of the places it is asked to intervene. This does not have to mean paralysis but it would be foolish to confuse our way of viewing these wars with how they may be seen, or come to be seen, by those on the ground.

You can see the whole interview here.

Man with a plan

Comrades, I have a couple of new papers out. One on Al Qa’eda’s strategic theory is in the current Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. In it, I make a connection between Guevara’s focoism and AQ’s strategic writing, drawing on some of those texts. And I have a pop at some theorists who see AQ as a kind of post-modern, deterritorialized movement.

The other is in the current British Army Review – which is a cracker this winter. Alas, for some reason the Review is not available online, but continuing a recent, and bold, theme, some of its writers don’t pull their punches in criticizing their bosses. Mine isn’t that sort of article – it’s called Some Principles for Influence in Counterinsurgency, and sets out to describe how psychology and neuroscience can inform the practice of winning ‘hearts and minds’. You can link to a pdf of the article from my webpage, here.

Hope some of that floats your boat. Sorry for my absence from here lately – am trying to write a book and several other bits and bobs, which is keeping me busy. Right now I’m enjoying the bizarre psychological theories propounded by JC Carothers during the Mau Mau revolt. All very entertaining, of which more soon.

Hasta la victoria siempre! Inshallah…

A little decency, please. It's all we ask.

Henry Kissinger will go down in history for many things, but one of his most interesting contributions is his phrase ‘decent interval’ describing the Nixon Administration’s desire to have an orderly withdrawal of American forces from South Vietnam and then some delay before the inevitable collapse of the Thieu regime.  What is perhaps most interesting about the phrase is the context within which it was used: Kissinger used it in his discussions with the Chinese in his secret 1971 trip to Beijing:

We are ready to withdraw all of our forces [from South Vietnam] by a fixed date and let objective realities shape the political future. . . .We want a decent interval. You have our assurance.  [The highlighted text represents Kissinger's hand written marginal notation in his Briefing Book]

Now Kissinger may have coined the phrase, but he did not invent the sentiment.  Indeed, 25 years earlier Lord Wavell pleaded with Atlee to “avoid an ignominious scuttle” when the British withdrew from India.

What took place exists in two dimensions simultaneously.  On one level, Britain was able to leave in the midst of a fog of pomp and circumstance, with the allure and glamour that only Dickie Mountbatten could bring.  Atlee knew who to assign to the task of  ’washing up’:

Despite all its imperfections, the transfer of power in India must be considered a geopolitically prudent response to the realities of declining power, as response which Atlee brought about quicker than would otherwise have been the case.  [Ronald Hyam.  Britain's declining empire: the road to decolonisation, 1918-1968 (CUP,  2007): 116.]

As to the second level, I guess that for Hyam it is not too bad that in the end those so-called ‘imperfections’ numbered nearly 1 million dead and 12 million displaced.  So it goes. 

I’d been in Vietnam five and half years when the end came. It was one of the most shameful moments I’ve ever lived through…The reason it ended that way was wishful thinking on the part of a lot of American officials. Few wanted to admit the war was lost. So we waited too long to plan for the exit.[Fred Snepp. Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End. (Random House , 1977): 1]

In the Indian case, it was not that there was a hope of staying, just a refusal to consider the consequences:

No preparation or consideration was given to the central issues of citizenship, security and property rights in the division of the country. On the other hand, India’s civil servants, the babus of empire, were busy itemising every fixture in their offices down to ink pots and paperweights that were to be divided between Pakistan and the new India. Lack of planning, hubris, confused thinking and a complete void as to the consequences were the fatal flaws in the partition plan.  [The Economist, "The unruly end of empire".  19 July 2007]

As Gwynne Dyer points out, the current plan to ‘transition’ security to the Afghans, is not without precedent. 

This is actually how the Vietnam war ended. The United States went through a major exercise in “Vietnamization” in the early 1970s, and the last American combat troops left South Vietnam in 1973. At that point, the security situation in the south seemed fairly good–and the North Vietnamese politely waited until 1975 to collect their winnings.  In doing so, they granted Henry Kissinger, national security adviser to President Richard Nixon, the “decent interval” he had requested. A decent interval, that is, between the departure of the American troops and the victory of the forces that they had been fighting, so that it did not look too much like an American defeat. In practical political terms, that is also the best outcome that Obama can now hope for in Afghanistan.

The issue I have in applying the notion of a decent interval to the Afghan case is that it is not completely clear of whom it is we are asking it.  Are we hoping that the Taliban has the good grace not to ‘take advantage’ during the transition phase?  Dyer seems to think they will probably honour such an implicit request:

All the Taliban leaders have to do is wait…and then collect their winnings.  If they are intelligent and pragmatic men–which they are–they may even let the foreign forces make some apparent progress in the meantime, so that the security situation looks promising when the time comes to start pulling the U.S. troops out.  In fact, the Taliban might not even try to collect their winnings right away after the foreigners leave. There’s no point in risking a backlash in the United States that might bring the American troops back.

Or are we hoping that Karzai will grant us our interval?  After all, as Obama is said to have remarked, “If we’re ponying up billions of dollars to ensure that President Karzai can continue to build and develop his country then he’s got to also pay attention to our concerns as well.”  [Cue Dickie Mountbatten flashback: "I am under no illusion about the difficulty of my task. I shall need the greatest good will and I am asking India for that good will."  Pity that.]

Or is Tehran the target of our supplication?  Something like, “Dear Mahmoud, Please don’t assert yourselves here any more than you already have in Herat, at least until after we’re gone for a while.  There’s a good chap.”  Or is it Islamabad?  Or the mystical AQHQ itself?

If we are pinning our hopes on Karzai, there is much that should make us worried.  Consider the opinion of Ahmed Rashid, a journalist who has known Karzai for 25 years.  After a recent interview with the Afghan president, he believes that

…it was quite clear to me that his views on global events, on the future course of NATO’s military surge in southern Afghanistan, and on nation building efforts throughout his country have undergone a sea change. His single overriding aim now is making peace with the Taliban and ending the war—and he is convinced it will help resolve all the other problems he faces, such as corruption, bad governance, and the lack of an administration…With his weakened position, the war escalating across the country, and Western forces wanting to leave, Karzai still wants to appear presidential and reassert Afghan sovereignty.

With countries (such Netherlands this year and Canada next year) already pulling pole, and Britain and the US itching to exit as soon as decency will allow, what is the West doing to avoid the “lack of planning, hubris, confused thinking and a complete void as to the consequences” that marked previous departures of this sort? 

Even Dickie, albeit in the comfort of his own memoirs, had to admit that merely hoping for a good result was woefully insufficient:

We all had dreams of a united India. Within weeks they were shattered.

Surely Hyam is correct and there will be ‘imperfections’, regardless of how and when we exit.   We must ask ourselves if we are ready, as Kissinger said the US was in 1971, ’to withdraw all of our forces…and let objective realities shape the political future’.  Whatever the answer, we must above all heed Snepp’s warning and avoid ‘waiting too long to plan for the exit.’

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*Someone really should blog about that shameful rag produced by NATO and announced in Lisbon…Perhaps one of the NATO bods around here will pick up the torch.

Robert Wilson's Helmand

Reading John F. Burns’ post on the NYTimes.com ‘At War’ blog from a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about the many art exhibits I’ve seen in recent years with direct inspiration from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as from earlier conflicts. I have not yet been to the National Army Museum’s exhibit that prompted the post, but there are several others that come to mind for me as thought provoking and emotionally moving.

The most moving for me was the Emily Prince exhibit at the Saatchi Gallery earlier this year (here for the ongoing project). When I walked into the room with over 4,000 hand drawn sketches of my dead comrades in arms, it was jarring to hear some of those in the room speaking loudly and even laughing, seemingly oblivious to the implications of the art. When I walked up close to the wall with those casualties from the beginning of the conflicts, the first image my eyes focused on was someone I had personally known who died in Iraq in 2003. I was, at that moment, glad I had chosen to go by myself to the museum that day. After a few searches on my iPhone, I was able to find the precise dates of several other colleagues’ deaths and find them on those three walls. This art exhibit was a not-so-subtle protest at the Iraq war, begun the day after President Bush’s reelection, but for me it was the perfect memorial that day and a celebration of the vital importance of free speech and expression for which we serve.

At another point during my time here in London, I went to Edinburgh for the weekend and found myself at that city’s iconic castle, which at that time was hosting ‘Helmand: Faces of Conflict‘ by Robert Wilson in the galleries of Scotland’s National War Museum, based on the stunning portraits from his book Helmand. The portraits are, for lack of a better word, haunting. On that trip, I was not alone, nor did I wish to be, for those I was with were a supportive group amongst which to be that day.

In the coming weeks I plan to see the play War Horse at the National Theatre here in London. While set during the First World War, I suspect there will be ways in which history echoes for me in my own experiences, though I can’t be certain, not having yet read the novel on which the play is based.

To those who have served in uniform of whatever country, which art exhibits or performances resonated most strongly for them, whether during or after their service? To those who have never served, which artistic portrayals of war are the most emotionally moving? More selfishly, for those knowledgable about the London art scene, which other exhibits are must-sees for a serving officer or anyone else that wants to understand today’s conflicts?