Arms and influence

Mutinies and critical tests

IN THE NEWS
For the last several months, I've been taking detours into discussions of the philosophy of science. That's not too far afield from this blog's main topic, for two important reasons:

1. The Bush Administration's discomfort with (or on some days, naked hostility to) experts often betrays an underlying misunderstanding or indifference about science.


2. Political science, as a proto-science still getting its bearings, needs to follow the same rules that the "hard" sciences like chemistry and physics obey.

One of the important parts of the scientific method is the notion of a critical test. You never try to prove your hypothesis; instead, as an honest researcher, you conceive of ways to disprove it. You'll never run out of ways to color data the way you'd like, or just discard the inconvenient bits that challenge your theory. If you want to believe that demons, not microorganisms, cause disease, you can keep finding signs and portents that you're correct. This version of medicine has "worked" for many societies, including Western civilization during its most superstitious moments. The invisible world of spirits and devils is, in many crucial ways, easier to accept than the anonymous, complex, and challenging universe of bacteria and viruses.

Scientific researchers, therefore, are required by their professional ethics to look wherever possible for the critical test, the experiment that will definitively disprove your own hypothesis, if it turns out to be incorrect. No playing around with the data. No creative number-crunching. No coughing, no shuffling of feet, no claims of how from another perspective, you might still have a good idea. The critical test is the real acid test, in the truest sense of the term. If it works, your pet theory dissolves into nothingness. A critical test for the Newtonian model of physics involved measuring the speed of light, which turned out to be constant no matter where you are, in what direction you're moving, and in what direction light is moving relative to you. Since Newton's model of physics couldn't account for this odd result, poof! the Newtonian model went out the window, and in came Einstein's theory.

One of the foibles of commenting on public affairs is the ease with which you can keep grasping for the factoids that support your worldview, while batting aside the ones that challenge it. It's one of the reasons why journalists fall into an accepted script (Kerry is a plutocrat, Bush is a boob, etc.), regardless of all evidence to the contrary. During the Vietnam War, many journalists missed the successes of the American effort, the occasions when we really were making progress, because after a certain point (most significantly, the Tet Offensive), the press corps had written off any effort in Vietnam as a complete waste. Victories, such as the defeat of the National Liberation Front, just didn't fit the script.

This week as I was catching up on the news, I found this article about the reservists from a supply and logistics unit who disobeyed orders to drive a convoy of fuel to their assigned destination in Iraq. (Click here for another account of the incident) The reservists believed it was a suicide mission, driving unarmored trucks full of fuel through extremely dangerous stretches of road. The fuel was already contaminated with diesel, so the whole mission seemed pointless anyway.

People who are skeptical of the US strategy in Iraq are likely to conclude that this is yet another sign of a disintegrating US war effort. People who are more supportive are likely to slap the label "Typical moment of military inefficiency" on the incident, give the reservists a silent moment of sympathy or condemnation, and file this under "The right way, the wrong way, and the Army way."

It's tough to think of a critical test for either hypothesis. The only one I can imagine runs as follows:

1. Find a standard definition for incidents of insubordination used during other wars. (Blatantly refusing orders? Fragging officers? Being slower than average to respond?)


2. Use the frequency of mutiny in the ranks in these conflicts as empirical points of reference.


3. Apply the same definition of insubordination to incidents that have happened since the United States invaded Iraq. (Of course, these will be tough to find, but the Internet does make it easier.)


4. Then, compare these incidents to the toughest, messiest, nastiest war like Iraq in which we've found ourselves. The more fouled up, the better. This war will be our "baseline" conflict.


5. If the frequency of insubordination is substantially higher in the Iraq war than in the "baseline" conflict, then there's definitely a serious problem afoot.

The critical part of the test is in step #4. If we're doing worse than, say, the counterinsurgency war in Vietnam, we're definitely facing a real crisis. There was more success in the counterinsurgency facet of the Vietnam War, as I mentioned above. However, it was a nasty mess, for two major reasons:

• The United States made years of mistakes before hitting on an effective formula. Sadly, many of the mistakes undercut these later successes. For example, the chronic political instability in South Vietnam didn't just vanish; nor did the outrage and skepticism that governmental corruption, incompetence, and brutality bred.


• Other aspects of the war also undermined the successes against the Viet Cong. The "credibility gap" eventually led to the collapse of American will to stay in the war. The truly conventional part of the war—the NVA fighting ARVN and US forces—regularly disrupted programs at the village and hamlet level. Counterinsurgency was one of several items in a finite budget for Vietnam, and Pentagon decision-makers often looked own on the work of "snake eaters" in the Special Forces and others involved in the counterinsurgency campaign.

Mental exercises like this one can make your head hurt, most of the information you need to make an informed judgment is already available. It's not always easy to find, but it's almost all available. Vietnam is a good choice for a baseline conflict because, unlike US involvement in insurgencies in other countries (El Salvador, the Philippines, etc.), there are thousands of books and articles about the Vietnam War. This massive corpus covers nearly all aspects of the counterinsurgency war, as recorded in first-person accounts, narrative histories, statistical analyses, and even documents and interviews from the enemy's side of the war.

Researching the Vietnam War as a baseline would be a challenge. Anyone already familiar with the available documentation, however, could distill the information needed to identify just the rates of insubordination in just the counterinsurgency side of the war (the part comparable to the current US campaign in Iraq). The press could be doing a better job of covering the war in Iraq, but it's possible to track down incidents of insubordination through not just the mainstream press, but military blogs, web sites like Soldiers for the Truth, and other sources.

Impressionistic data are not encouraging. Whenever I read about how US forces are using tanks, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and artillery against insurgents in cities like Karbala, Fallujah, and Najaf, I cringe. For reasons I'll discuss in greater detail in later postings, the operational sine qua non of conventional warfare—bring to bear the maximum firepower against the enemy—is the worst way to fight a counterinsurgency war imaginable. But that's just an impression, based on impressionistic data. If we wanted to address this question seriously enough for a critical test, we would need to suspend our judgments until we had all the data collected and analyzed.

It's comforting to know that we are not without the means to measure how well things are really going in Iraq. It's frustrating beyond words to see all too few people in the press and academia interested in doing the work.

I'd love to do take on this project myself, by the way. Just give me the salary of the journalist or researcher who's not performing this vital service, and I'm all over it.

Wishful thinking dies hard

IN THE NEWS
Of course, wishful thinking always dies hard, but it doesn't stop human beings from falling under its spell.

Most recently, many Americans had hoped that the torture scandal would go away with the prosecution of a small number of reserve MP soldiers. Note that I did not call it "the Abu Ghraib scandal," since the scandal clearly was not confined to one detention facility in Iraq. The pattern is much larger, as evidence by both new revelations about Guantanamo Bay, where the stain first appeared, and today in Afghanistan, where it spread long before it visibly marred the American mission in Iraq. The same unit, the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, appear in both Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan, but so too do countless civilian contractors, CIA interrogators, and other military units, both regular and reserve. These other players don't conveniently pack up, move to a new location with the 519th, and thereby keep the torture and abuse of prisoners neatly compartmentalized.

I, too, wish the few "bad apples" had been the end of the story, but I can't believe. However powerful a nation we are, we can't warp time and space just by wishing.

2004 withholding

IN THE NEWS
The days when Americans swore never to politicize 9/11 feel as distant as classical antiquity. It's proper for the electorate to scrutinize the events and decisions leading to 9/11, and the events and decisions responding it. The incumbent needs to delineate and defend his record; the challenger needs to criticize it, with the kind of sagacity and delicacy required for a national tragedy with broad national security implications.

The inappropriate "politicization" of 9/11, to be specific, means undercutting the war against al Qaeda or other enemies, for fear of how particular actions might affect the 2004 election. It also means obscuring or distorting the record of the last few years, again for fear of losing voters in the process.

When American civilian and military leaders, off the record, say that they are delaying offensive operations in Iraq until after the November elections, we know both (1) many of them are not happy with that decision, and (2) it's as clear a sign of the first sort of politicization of 9/11 you can get. If you think that political expediency should trump military necessity (why else both delay and advertise these operational plans?), you must also think this is justified because you're the only Administration that can fight terrorists. Once you've made that decision, you've found yourself outside the very democracy that you once swore to defend. Every tyrant justifies himself the same way: democracy can't be trusted; his opponents lack his skills and wisdom; the danger from The Enemy is too great.

Meanwhile, Mark Mazzetti's article in The Los Angeles Times correctly asks the question, What effect will this delay have on the Iraqi elections? The more security continues to unwind, the less successful the elections will be. Here, we have to measure success both in the numbers of ballots cast and counted, as well as less quantifiable but far more important realities, like the confidence Iraqis have in their own post-invasion government.

The second kind of politicization, obscuring facts needed to make a complete, sober judgement of the Administration's performance, is visible in this op-ed piece, also from The Los Angeles Times. Whatever further reports on 9/11 the CIA has slated for public release, the White House should order released now, whether the information is embarrassing to them or not. We, too, have a crisis of confidence in our own government, which would deepen even further if, after November 2, voters discover that they were denied the full account of 9/11 they needed to make an informed choice. Whatever guerrilla war may exist between the White House and the CIA, it's no excuse to sit on any information. Cosmic or trivial, every scrap of information released swings the balance of confidence back in the right direction; every scrap withheld swings it the wrong way.

There are issues more important than this election, the war against al Qaeda, or the war in Iraq. National security, as generations of Republican and Democrats can tell you, is about preserving the American way of life. We can disagree over the details of what constitutes that way of life, or how best to defend it, but public accountability is something that no one would dispute. Without information, accountability is impossible.

Iranian vice-president resigns

IN THE NEWS
I'm no alarmist, but the evolving situation in Iran is very troubling. The politicians trying to relax extreme Islamist controls (and, by extension, the frequently paranoid mindset behind them) have been fighting a cold war with that country's radical right. Lately, they've been losing ground, as evidenced by today's announcement that Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist ally of President Mohammad Khatami, is resigning. The hard liners in the majlis are unwilling to work with reformists like Abtahi at all, and they're clearly hoping to ultimately win a war of political attrition with Khatami, too.

We have almost no leverage with Iran, particularly since the "Axis of Evil" speech and the invasion of Iraq. The American imperial colossus has become a useful political weapon for the extreme Islamists, since they can always point to American statements and actions and say, "See, what are you going to believe? The perfumed words of those who would sell out the Revolution, or your own eyes, which can see what the Americans are doing on our very doorstep?"

Slouching further toward Beslan

IN THE NEWS
To follow up on my earlier post about the Beslan massacre, I recommend reading this article in today's Washington Post. Be warned: it will break your heart. However, it is one of the best articles I've seen in the mainstream press for depicting (1) the ethnic animosities that have been boiling over in the Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and (2) the reasons why local residents are furious with the Russian government. Topping the list of outrages: the official number killed in the massacre at Middle School Number One doesn't match the actual number missing (and presumed dead).

Making Muqtada

IN THE NEWS
It's welcome news that the Army of the Mahdi, headed by Muqtada al-Sadr, has agreed to disarm as a precondition to entering "normal" politics in Iraq. Cross your fingers that this is the end of one chapter of the early history of post-Baathist Iraq, in which the United States was a minor supporting character.

That last characterization might seem unfair. After all, wasn't it the US invasion that made Sadr's ascent possible? And didn't the US assaults in Fallujah, Najaf, Karbala, and Sadr City bring the Army of the Mahdi to heel? The answers is, Yes to the first question, and no to the second. The American military's urban operations didn't somehow tame al-Sadr. Instead, they were the political stage that the Sadrists needed to establish themselves as major players in Iraqi politics. That's what I meant by the adjectives minor and supporting. The United States did not hold the political initiative in this very political of wars, and it obligingly supported the Army of the Mahdi's political credentials.

Watching these attacks from the American side had an unreal quality. The United States seemed determined to attack al-Sadr because he was there; the actual operational point was lost on everyone, including the head of the Marine 1st Expeditionary Force, Lt. Gen. James Conway, who commanded the most recent siege of Fallujah. Meanwhile, the Sadrists themselves clearly understood the point they wanted to make: they're the genuine opposition to the American occupiers. Accept no substitutes. The Army of the Mahdi has been recruiting from the ranks of young males frustrated with the status quo, and eager to do something. Muqtada al-Sadr offered the chance to do a lot more than a gesture, but a gesture was all they needed to do.

The Sadrists are not beloved, and in fact, local populations frequently have begged them to leave. The American operational approach, emphasizing armor, artillery, and air power far out of proportion to what counterinsurgency warfare requires, flattens neighborhoods and kills innocent bystanders. No wonder the inhabitants of Sadr City, named in honor Muqtada al-Sadr's father, asked the Sadrists to take their fight with the Americans somewhere else. Political clout, however, doesn't depend solely on love, as Machiavelli told us a long time ago. It also rests on fear. The Sadrists' political gait was a swagger, not a humble shuffle. When they marched out of Fallujah, weapons in hand, they had good reason to feel confident. Militarily, they proved to be tougher fighters than the Iraqi government units fighting alongside the Americans. Politically, too, they proved smarter than the Iraqi interim government and the US authorities. To borrow another Machiavelli metaphor, they showed themselves to be both lion and fox.

Although many observers worry that negotiations over the disarmament of the Sadrists may collapse, as they have done before, it seems that their agreement to demobilize is genuine. Undoubtedly, they will keep weapons stockpiled if needed; in any case, re-armament is not an issue in a country awash in guns, mortars, and grenades. The Sadrists have made their point; now, it's on to the next stage in their political career.

If we look at this outcome soberly, we may be disappointed. We should, only if we delude ourselves about Iraq. We can influence its political direction, but we cannot dictate it. Some of our preferred leaders won't succeed, and some whom we find odious (like al-Sadr) will enjoy more success than we would have liked. We may even find that, in the long run, al-Sadr will be more willing to work with the United States, once he has consolidated his position. These political curves are just part of nation-building, however, since ultimately the nation has to re-build itself, with our assistance.

Another angle on accountability

IN THE NEWS
One area for which the Bush Administration needs to take greater responsibility is the political invective, often crossing the line into threats, that plague our national dialogue about counterterrorism. Recently, a newspaper in Crawford, Texas endorsed John Kerry for president, resulting in an avalanche of nasty letters like this one:

In the Old West days they hung people for being traitors. Quite frankly, I feel that way about the liberal press, both in the newspapers and on TV. It sounds like you’ve gotten on the “Flip/Flop” bandwagon and I sincerely hope that ALL Texans will ban your newspaper.

The Framers of the Constitution believed that democratic debate was not only possible during war, but necessary. It's the job of political leaders, therefore, to remind people like the author of this letter--or Ann Coulter, for that matter--of the American political tradition.

I'd say the same about Kerry, except I haven't run across anyone encouraging the Democrats to use the tactics of Josef Stalin or Pol Pot on their opponents. We're long overdue for the Republican leadership to rebuke someone advocating the return of Old West-style lynch mobs.

[To wage war effectively, the United States needs to cleave to its own democracy and rule of law. That's why I'm bring up this topic on a blog devoted to security affairs.]

Custer Battles in Iraq

IN THE NEWS
Thanks to the excellent blog Body and Soul for the pointer to this article about Custer Battles, a "security services" firm operating in Iraq. As James Davis, a veteran mercenary, argues in his book, Fortune's Warriors, it's very easy for the greedy, unprincipled, and incompetent to start a new company in this business, then land some contracts. The door is open very wide indeed if you're have friends in the Republican Party--so wide that, in 2003, Custer Battles, a firm with no experience but plenty of connections, can land the contract for protecting the Baghdad airport.

As I've argued earlier, we're rapidly moving toward a three-tiered military, consisting of the modern equivalent of legionaries, auxiliaries, and mercenaries. Leaving aside whether or not this is the right model for the US military, there's one obvious point to make: all the tiers need to work, or the whole effort falls apart. The less accountable the mercenary contingent is, the more danger exists for everyone else.

Accountability

IN THE NEWS
A lot of people have already commented on the final question for Bush in the last presidential debate. His inability to name any mistakes he's made may not have been his worst moment in the debate (for example, I hid my face from the television during his bizarre and inaccurate description of the Dred Scott case), but it was pretty bad. While he fumbled a question that every job candidate gets asked, and he could have guessed was coming, his most disturbing moment was when he articulated his theory of accountability--or lack thereof.

We've already had indications that Bush doesn't feel bound by the normal rules of cultural and Constitutional accountability. The infamous Defense Department white paper on the use of torture in terrorist interrogations, a document whose sentiments have been echoed in public by Bush and his top aides, argues that all authority emanates from the president, who can decide when the Constitution does and does not apply. The Administration justifies its ugly treatment of "enemy combatants," material witnesses, and terrorist suspects on the grounds of necessity, not the Constitution--and the person in the White House, according to their thinking, who decides what's necessary. (Thankfully, the Supreme Court slapped down the Administration's handling of accused enemy combatants.) As I've argued earlier in this blog, the "dog that didn't bark in the night," to borrow a term from Arthur Conan Doyle, is the complete non-discussion of whether the United States should have formally declared war on Iraq. The Congress failed to push the question; the Administration was happy to wage a war without the question ever being raised.

There is a context, therefore, for this statement Bush made during the last debate:

But history will look back, and I'm fully prepared to accept any mistakes that history judges to my administration, because the president makes the decisions, the president has to take the responsibility.

This isn't the first time Bush has made this argument. His theory of accountability more or less boils down to the following:

1. The president makes decisions, including whether to wage war.


2. The nation, including the two other branches of government, rally behind him.


3. Critics should remain silent, since they otherwise might demoralize the troops and give comfort to our enemies.


4. Years after the end of a president's term, history will judge whether or not he made good decisions.

That's hardly a description of accountability, in the sense that leaders take responsibility in the here and now for decisions gone awry. Anthony Eden resigned as prime minister of Great Britain because of the Suez Crisis. Lyndon Johnson's informal circle of advisors convinced him that, in the interests of the nation, he should not run for re-election. John Profumo resigned from Harold Wilson's cabinet when the newspapers ran a story that this mistress, Christine Keeler, had also been romantically involved with a Soviet naval attache.

In the American political system, the system of checks and balances ensures liberty by blurring and confusing responsibilities. That does not mean, however, that accountability for your own actions does not exist. When you insist on centralizing warmaking powers in your own hands, you don't even have the blurring effect of checks and balances to disguise your mistakes. Unless you're assuming the powers of a Byzantine emperor, responsible only to God and history, there is some reckoning you need to face in the here and now.

The election is one way to enforce accountability. The statement, "You shouldn't change horses mid-stream," is both inane and anti-democratic. The missions in Somalia and the no-fly zones in Iraq survived the transition from George Bush Sr. to Bill Clinton. The mission in the Balkans survived the transition from Clinton to Bush Jr. If Kerry is elected, the mission in Iraq will survive. And even though Bush believes himself answerable only to God and history, the rest of the nation may feel otherwise.

Slouching toward Beslan

IN THE NEWS

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

--Robert Burns, To a Louse

As I've mentioned before I'm a great believer in the outsider's perspective. We all give a nod to the idea that unstated assumptions skew our vision of the world and ourselves, but most of the time, we act as though our vision is self-evidently clear and accurate. However, the foreign observer often notices things that we miss, or express discomfort with things the we accept without question. Think of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, one of the most perceptive books about American politics. Or, to take another Frenchman, think of Voltaire's Letters Concerning the English Nation. V.S. Naipul's observations about the West in general are equally noteworthy.

Americans, too, can look at another society's strengths and foibles in ways the citizens born and raised in that cultural thicket cannot. It's a rare and valuable moment when Americans can learn lessons about that other society that apply to ourselves.

I haven't written about the Beslan massacre yet because it was an event that needed time to digest. The aftermath, too, was as important as what happened on that horrible day.

The Chechen rebels are, of course, dangerous fanatics. Chechnya may indeed deserve its full independence from Russia. Like many portions of the former Soviet Union, Chechnya is the inheritor of Stalin's ugly legacy of demographic confusion. To keep the non-Russians in line, Stalin moved some groups, like the Tatars, and deliberately intermingled others, often through internal migration and colonization. If you think the political boundaries in the Caucasus don't make sense, you're right: Stalin wanted them to make no demographic sense. As long as intertwined ethnic groups continued to choke each other, they didn't threaten Moscow's power.

This leads us to the first observation we can make about Beslan: The situation is more complex than the leadership portrays. Putin's fulminations about the Beslan massacre—including a four-hour session in which he buttonholed the international press—talk about a simplistic universe of Russians and terrorists. In fact, Beslan and the region around it are home to Chechens, Ossetians, Russians, and the Ingush. The Ossetians are divided, thanks to Stalin, between the North Ossetians in Russia, and the South Ossetians in Georgia. Among the ethnically Persian Ossetians, the majority are Christian, but a minority are Muslims. The majority of Chechens are Sunnis, and they share historical roots with the Ingush. Few of these groups believe the Russians belong in the Caucasus; few could agree on what should replace Russian rule. It appears that the terrorists who seized Middle School Number One were a mix of Chechens and Ingush.

The larger populations of Chechans, Ossetians, and Ingush don't support the terrorists, however. The larger population doesn't think that terrorism will win independence; it will ensure brutal Russian reprisals. In fact, during the Beslan hostage crisis, Russian troops took Chechen families hostage, which gives new meaning to the phrase counter-terrorism. This leads to the second observation about Beslan: The majority of the local population may not be on the side of the government, but they're also not on the side of the terrorists.

The "counter-hostages" incident shows that the Russian strategy for Chechnya hasn't gone after the most violent groups with surgical precision. Brutal operations like the siege of Grozny may frighten the "gentleman insurgent," but they don't deter the most ruthless, violent groups, like the militia headed by Amir Abu al-Walid. Events like Grozny and the political blacklisting of Aslan Maskhadov outrage and radicalize enough people to keep a sufficient level of recruits joining the terrorist groups. Here, then, is the third observation: Ham-handed counterterrorist tactics distill the enemy into smaller, more dedicated, and more violent groups.

Whatever happened at Beslan, these groups are far from defeated. They'll continue to bomb subway stations in Moscow, take hostages in the Caucasus, and assassinate Russian military officers. Since the Russian government has yet to account for exactly what led to the deaths of over 300 people. Clearly, the Russian security services have done a poor job infiltrating and monitoring the Chechen militants, for a terrorist operation on this scale to have caught the Russian government flat-footed. (Putin has admitted as much, stating that corruption and inefficiency hampered intelligence efforts.) No one excuses the terrorists, but nearly everyone n Russia believes that the government bears some responsibility for the disaster.

One of Putin's first responses, however, had nothing to do with counterterrorism. Ending the direct election of regional governors won't help catch Chechen and Ingush terrorists; its only purpose is Putin's continued consolidation of power and destruction of his political opposition. The seizure of all media outlets, the legal and economic attacks on political opponents like Yukos president Mikhail Khodorkhovsky, and now the elimination of gubernatorial elections are all steps toward building a post-Soviet autocracy, not preventing another Beslan. In fact, as long as the "gentleman insurgent" or non-violent separatist believes that it's ridiculous to believe in anything the Russian government says about self-government, the militants will keep the political high ground in Chechnya. (Especially since the Putin administration's first instinct is to lie during a crisis.) This points to our last observation: Restricting freedoms is an irrelevant and ineffective strategy for counterterrorism.

Now, let’s look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and the PATRIOT Act for a moment. Would the following statements also apply to the recent actions of the United States?

• The situation is more complex than the leadership portrays.


• The majority of the local population may not be on the side of the government, but they're also not on the side of the terrorists.


• Ham-handed counterterrorist tactics distill the enemy into smaller, more dedicated, and more violent groups.


• Restricting freedoms is an irrelevant and ineffective strategy for counterterrorism.

If you were a Russian, Canadian, Zimbabwean, South Korean, or Brazilian, you'd probably answer yes more readily than the average American. But again, they have the benefit of the outsider's perspective. Perhaps they don't have our cultural blinders, or our discomfort to admit our own mistakes, but that's a real benefit, unlike the whining complaint that the rest of the world just doesn't understand us.

George W. Bush once said that he looked into Vladimir Putin's soul. If so, did he see anything recognizable?