Arms and influence

Counterinsurgency is hard, part IV

THEORY
As discussed in the last post, the military organization that fights a counterinsurgency war isn't necessarily designed for that type of conflict. In fact, it's rare to find one, right out of the shrinkwrap, that has been preparing to fight guerrillas.

While, in the midst of fighting guerrillas, the military is making adjustments to its doctrine, organization, training, and equipment, soldiers are by necessity working alongside civilians also involved in the same counterinsurgency effort. Spies, diplomats, aid workers, technical advisors—if they're needed to move along the societal reforms that are part of the counterinsurgency strategy, they'll be there. However, that does not mean that they are all working together, or even see the conflict the same way. Centrifugal force is a fact of life in large organizations, including very large ones like the US government.

Again, the early years of the Vietnam War provide a cautionary tale. Between 1965 and 1968, it's hard to talk about "the US war effort" without a bit of a smirk. In fact, there were several different war efforts, often managed from outside Indochina altogether. The general in charge of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) only controlled the ground war. The air and naval "assets" also fighting the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front were controlled by high ranking generals or admirals in Hawaii or Washington, DC. The CIA had a decent working relationship with the Special Forces, but far less effective collaboration with the rest of the US military. In an era long before a joint special operations command was created, the different American special operations forces (SOFs) focused on different parts of the war. While Army's Special Forces advisors trained regular and militia units, the Navy's SEALs carried out operations up and down the rivers and coasts of Vietnam. The Agency for International Development (AID) delivered economic assistance according to a program set by legislators and bureaucrats in Washington. The US embassy in Saigon tried to exercise leverage on the South Vietnamese government and military, without control over the inducements and punishments delivered through separate agencies like AID.

Later in the war, US officials pushing reform on the South Vietnamese had to engage in some administrative reform of their own. A genuine partnership between the MACV commander and the US ambassador. The civilian and military bureaucracies merged to the point where civilians sometimes operated as the superiors of military personnel, and vice-versa. New endeavors, such as the controversial Phoenix Program, passed muster only if their output benefited the overall war effort. It may be surprising for many not familiar with the full history of the Vietnam War to hear the success of these reforms, which in turn made it possible to exercise leverage over the South Vietnamese more effectively. The Tet Offensive, which devastated the NLF, made it possible to capitalize on these reforms immediately. By late 1968 and early 1969, some districts that were once too dangerous for Americans to travel without an armed escort were relatively free of mines, snipers, and ambushes. Unfortunately, this part of the Vietnam story was lost in the clamor over the continued strategic bombing of North Vietnam and the expansion of the war into Cambodia.

In short, it's possible to overcome bureaucratic resistance within the US government to tighter integration of effort. The job of fostering this type of integration in an allied government is much trickier, especially when it runs counter to other reforms we are trying to foster. The United States might appear to be sending mixed signals when it simultaneously demands, on the one hand, a more effective unified chain of military and civilian command, and on the other, the devolution of central power through elections and other political reforms.

It's possible to do both simultaneously, without sacrificing one objective to another. Once again, the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines gives a few pointers in the right direction. The US advisory group fostered good relations with the Defense Minister, Ramon Magsaysay, members of this staff, and key military commanders. Over time, this group gained greater control over the fractious Filipino military. That control translated into the ability to keep military from making mistakes, such as allowing local commanders to run extortion rackets. It also made it possible for the military to operate more effectively, such as conducting psychological warfare campaigns, and breaking down the scale of operations to a more effective company and battalion size

Meanwhile, the government was also carrying out administrative reforms, before playing the election card. For example, judges, who also frequently abused their position for personal gain, fell under greater scrutiny. Mayors and other local officials were also targets of the government's anti-corruption campaign. The energetic Magsaysay made a point of following up on complaints, no matter how small or parochial, to build the perception that important reforms were already underway. The government carried out these programs, in concert with military clear-and-hold operations, in one district after another, to ensure that it could focus on making and consolidating reforms before it moved on to the next region.

By 1953, the scheduled date for national elections, the government's legitimacy was already on the rise. The United States' preferred candidate for president, Magsaysay, had already built a reputation for integrity and effectiveness. An increasing number of civilian and military leaders could be trusted in districts where the government had focused its attention. Therefore, the elections were about something important, control over an increasingly better government. Afterwards, whoever held an elected position could consolidate the gains of the government against the Huks, since officials could be better trusted.

The US mission in the Philippines that accomplished these successes with its Filipino partner was itself very small. During the critical years of the Huk Rebellion, the primary arm of US assistance, the Joint United States Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG), counted only 32 officers and 26 enlisted men. Clearly, for the US to help an allied government defeat guerrillas, size matters far less than other factors, including coordination of effort.

PRACTICE
In the decades since the Vietnam War, the US government has taken some deliberate steps to ensure it would not repeat the mistakes of that earlier counterinsurgency campaign. Other changes inadvertently helped, including in ways that enhanced the coordination of effort within a single country or a region. One such "accidental reform" was the increase in the significance of the commanders-in-chief of the regional combat commands, such as CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM. The "CINCs", as they're informally known, acted almost as the viceroys of American power, handling more than just military duties in troubled regions like the newly-independent Central Asian countries, the "Stans" (Tajikstan, Uzbekistan, and the like).

Unfortunately, the CINCs' considerable influence made many people inside and outside the Defense Department nervous. Some were traditionalists who wanted a return to the neatly hierarchical model, with the chief of each service exercising more control over US forces deployed to than the regional commander who happened to be assigned there. Others were military reformers, who for a variety of reasons wanted to shift the CINCs' power to other parts of the Pentagon. One such reformer, long before the 9/11 attacks gave him greater latitude to implement his set of changes, was Donald Rumsfeld.

In early to mid-2001, Rumsfeld was fighting an uphill struggle to take power out of the hands of the CINCs. Rumsfeld wanted to alter the US military along the lines first proposed in the 1980s as the "Light Infantry Division" model. Rather than deploying large forces in potential battle zones, the US government would secure basing rights in these regions. The military—and in particular, the US Army—would be whittled down to a smaller number of "forward deployed" troops, augmented by a quick reaction force that could be airlifted or sealifted quickly wherever they were needed. Even the classic divisional-centric organization of the US Army would change, to be replaced by smaller units that could be deployed in smaller chunks. In Rumsfeld's mind, these reforms would cut the overall cost of the military budget, play to the US military's strengths (highly mobile, highly trained troops armed with superior equipment), and put control over national security policy squarely where he believed it belonged: in Washington, DC, not the regional headquarters of the combat commands.

This model might make sense, if the only conflicts the US fought were like the long-threatened second Korean War. On defense, Allied troops and the small US contingent fight a delaying action against an aggressor, while commanders in the United States quickly shift the mobile reaction force to the battlefield. On offense, US reaction forces would build up to the point where they considered themselves ready to start shooting. War plans could then be predicated on a replay of Operation DESERT STORM, where the US could use its undisputed advantage fighting conventional wars to win the day.

Obviously, this model might fits the Korean Peninsula, but is completely out of place in Somalia, Colombia, Tajikstan, Bosnia, or other countries torn by internal wars. Not only does it deploy the wrong type of troops for counterinsurgency warfare (with a few exceptions, such as the special operations forces), but this strategy instantly raises the political stakes beyond the point where people in the field can effectively fight a counterinsurgency war. It's no accident that the most successful post-9/11 counterinsurgency efforts, in places like the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia or Basilan Island in the Philippines, are the ones outside the spotlight.

The progress in Afghanistan, which received just as much media attention as Iraq initially, is also where the Rumsfeld strategy was not fully applied. Since conventional forces could not be mobilized fast enough to reach Afghanistan by the opening shots of the 2001 invasion, the special operations forces (SOFs) numbered far higher than they would in a "normal" operation. That fact, combined with the greater participation of NATO allies, has made all the difference in the occupation. While far from being as successful as it should have been, Afghanistan is in no way the messy debacle that Iraq has become.

The Rumsfeld approach shares the same defects as the LAPD's approach to policing Los Angeles before the 1992 riots. As the Christopher Commission and other critics argued, the LAPD had become addicted to its own version of the quick reaction force, two uniformed officers in a squad car. Rather than walking a beat to prevent crimes, the LAPD would rush to the scene of a crime that was already committed. While the post-riot commentary focused on how this approach created a divide between the police in the squad car and LA citizens requiring assistance, that was hardly the only problem. The police officer walking the beat (difficult, to be sure, in the suburban megalopolis of Los Angeles) built contacts within the community that amounted to both an intelligence network and good PR for the department. The beat cop also was a deterrent—not only because he could be coming down the street at any moment, but because people in the neighborhood who trusted him would relay any information they had about a crime to him. Clearly, one police officer with feet on the street could accomplish more than two, four, or ten in patrol cars. 

At a much broader plane, the CINCs were, like it or not, closer to "the cop on the beat" than the alternative, a minimalist invasion force that clearly failed. The world's policemen landed in Iraq, truncheons swinging, and quickly overwhelmed the opposition. However, keeping a street corner in Inglewood or Karbala safe requires much, much more.

Without recourse

IN THE NEWS
Good news: Enough daylight has shone into Guantanamo Bay for a federal judge to rule that two prisoners have been held illegally. Bad news: Given the legal black hole that is Guantanamo Bay, the judge doesn't see any action the US government is compelled to take--including just setting the two men free and flying them back to Pakistan.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not surprised that the law is frayed and rent around Guantanamo Bay. The people in charge of the overt and covert detention facilities did not seem at all concerned what to do about people who proved to be something other than a 100% verifiable "enemy combatant." But didn't the Supreme Court place the burden squarely on the Defense Department? The Court's decision--which basically said, If you can't give them an immediate and fair trial, release them-- certainly implied that the DoD had responsibility to do something other than shrug.

[Thanks to ahistoricality for the original link to this story.]

Counterinsurgency is hard, part III

THEORY
If the political science courses you took in college did not teach you the difference between policy and execution, demand your money back. There is nothing more basic to the study of politics than that distinction. Its relevance to counterinsurgency has many faces, but two in particular make counterinsurgency difficult for either the regimes directly under attack or the foreign governments that support them:

1. Rarely does any military organize itself for counterinsurgency.
2. The level of coordination for a single "project" like coordination is usually absent among civilian and military bureaucracies.

This posting deals with the first challenge. I'll cover the coordination issue in a later post.

Militaries are like any organization, designed for a particular function. No organization can handle every exigency, so the people within it must choose the scenarios for which they will prepare.

Decision-makers define these scenarios for the rest of the organization. For example, the US military regularly publishes its vision of the wars it will fight, as codified in its field manuals. In the 1940s, US Army manuals outlined the doctrines of maneuver warfare at all levels of strategy. The infantryman, tanker, or artillerist knew what was expected of him at the tactical level. The colonel or one-star general knew what was expected of him at the operational level. Higher-ranking generals shared a common vision of war fought at the theater level. In the 1980s, the overall doctrine became AirLand Battle, an updated version of the maneuver warfare model from four decades earlier. In the current decade, the model is now called "net centric warfare."

It's important to note that, even at this early stage of discussion, different military branches, or even different portions of the same branch, may have radically different views of the overall strategy. For example, the US Air Force has resisted for decades a subordinate role to the "ground-pounders" it supports. Close air support, missions flown to support infantry and armor on attack or retreat, requires different tools and methods than air-to-air combat or the bombing of strategic targets like communications centers or factories. If you were in the Air Force, would you rather be flying the unglamorous A-10 Warthog, designed for close air support, or the Stealth Bomber? Not surprisingly, the doctrines for the Army and Air Force have looked very different over the last several decades. Even if their manuals used the same terminology, or they included the same "boilerplate" text about modern warfare in the introduction, they often held very different views of how war should be fought. In fact, the Air Force's disinterest in close air support has contributed to the longevity of the B-52: without a replacement, the Air Force had to keep the aging bomber for situations like the saturation bombing of the Iraqi army in Operation DESERT STORM.

Doctrines can vary across or within organizations, since they're the next step after deciding which scenarios represent what the institution will need to handle. Imagine a meeting where the managers in your organization jointly decide to recognize employees on their birthdays. After the meeting ends, each manager then goes back to his or her organization and has to implement the new policy. You'd be surprised if the outcome were the same for every department. In some cases, the manager sends an e-mail wishing the person a happy birthday. In another group, everyone takes the employee out to lunch. A different group might decorate the employee's cube with balloons and streamers. In other words, doctrine reflects the habits, personalities, and history of the organization as much as the issue the doctrine is supposed to address.

During the Cold War, the US military faced two scenarios that it had to address before any other concern: a strategic nuclear attack on the United States; and a conventional invasion of West Germany. Naturally, it looked to its own habits and history for guidance, and particular personalities helped shape the doctrine for handling these nightmare scenarios. For example, in the late 1940s, the US military tried to keep nuclear weapons within the framework of the conventional battlefield. That doctrine had as much to do with institutional inertia as any argument that nuclear weapons could be a "force multiplier" against the Soviet army. The doctrine served the interests of both the Army, which wanted access and control over nuclear munitions, and the Air Force, which wanted to play an important role in the defense of Western Europe while still being the service to deliver nuclear weapons to their targets. The odd cases, such as artillery-fired nuclear weapons, also show how force of habit shaped this doctrine. After all, weren't nuclear weapons simply a more powerful kind of munition? A few decades later, the military answered that question much differently, but there was still an effort to keep nuclear munitions within a conventional framework. Rather than seeing them as instruments of terror, brinksmanship, and compellence, the "warfighters" in the early 1980s, such as Colin Grey, tried to depict nuclear weapons as the instruments of fighting a conventional (albeit more destructive) series of air, land, and sea battles.

Once the doctrine is crafted, the organization needs the physical and human capital that the doctrine demands. In other words, organizational charts need to be filled with people, who need to be trained to play their parts. Equipment needs to be purchased, and in some cases, designed for the first time. Managers need to know how to judge the performance of their subordinates. Employees need the same understanding of what's expected of them, and they also demand a career path for future rewards and advancement. Since you can't keep reinventing the organization, you expect that you're going to live with the organization, as designed, for some time to come.

However, you will have to make adjustments. After first invoking the truism, "The only constant is change," legions of management consultants will tell you how to build corrective mechanisms needed to keep the organization "agile." What these experts will not normally tell you, however, is the way an organization's personality shapes its responses and limits its adaptability.

Psychology tells us how our personalities filter and color our perceptions. We therefore respond to the world as we perceive it, not necessarily to the way it is. In one classic social psychology experiment, five people on a panel were asked if two lines were the same length. In some cases, when the lines were clearly not identical, the first four panel members, who were confederates of the experimenter, insisted they were. One-third of the real test subjects—on each panel, the fifth person asked if the lines were the same length—went along with the majority opinion, despite the evidence of their own eyes. There are plenty of other examples from individual and social psychology, but you get the idea.

What is true of individuals is also true of organizations. Left to their own devices, institutions learn what suits them. For example, during the Vietnam War, the Marine Corps showed greater adaptability and success in counterinsurgency than the Army. Part of the explanation lies in the different institutional memories of the two services. The Army saw conventional, large-scale conflicts, such as the two World Wars, as iconic. When it had experience in other kinds of warfare, such as the Indian Wars, the Army did not look to them for guidance in fighting future conflicts. In contrast, the Marines had more experience with little wars, such as the repeated interventions in Latin America, and by extension greater willingness to see these operations as normal. The Marines Hymn begins with the invocation of the Mexican War ("the halls of Montezuma") and the campaign against the Barbary pirates ("the shores of Tripoli"), the type of conflicts that received only the most cursory attention from the Vietnam-era Army.

It's fairly obvious, therefore, why militaries in general do not plan, organize, equip, and train for counterinsurgency. Conventional warfare, the first mission of nearly every military, consumes nearly all the organizational wherewithal. During the Cold War, the nightmare scenarios, nuclear attack or a Warsaw Pact invasion, dominated the attention and resources of the US military. When it looked at the wars it was fighting, not just the ones it hoped it never would have to fight, it could pick and choose experiences that fit its institutional bias towards conventional warfare. The Korean War, a wholly conventional conflict, showed that the struggle on unexpected battlefields might take an otherwise expected form. Brief interventions in places like the Dominican Republic showed how inconsequential "little wars" could be, requiring no major changes in doctrine or organization to deal with these trivial incidents.

Counterinsurgency, as past postings have taken great pains to show, is not the same as conventional warfare. It demands a different strategy from the tactical to the theater levels of strategy. The center of gravity is different, as is the nature of the initiative, which is more political than military. In short, it's exactly the sort of warfare that the US military was not equipped to fight the NLF guerrillas in South Vietnam. In 1965, it arrived armed and equipped for defeating the NVA, and chose initially to treat the NLF as merely an unconventional arm of the otherwise conventional enemy. In taking this view, General William Westmoreland and other American commanders ignored the counsel of the people under their command who had already been working in South Vietnam as advisors. The US military came to Vietnam with a hammer, in search of nails. It found some, and therefore concluded that it was adequately equipped for the job at hand.

This bias against counterinsurgency exists even in countries where the government regularly has to fight guerrillas. The Philippine military in the late 1940s was organized along conventional lines, even though Islamic separatist movements were a regular feature of Filipino history. The threat of the Hukbalahap movement was evident to every Philippine leader by the end of World War II, and yet it wasn't until well into the insurgency that the military, with the advice and encouragement of US officials, re-organized and re-trained itself to fight the war at hand. While changing operational procedures to give battalion commanders more freedom of action might sound like an obvious way to fight a war of small, nasty firefights, the Philippine military—like many other armies in many other countries—did not immediately take this obvious step.

PRACTICE
A lot has changed in the US military's view of counterinsurgency since the Vietnam War. The Army in particular re-examined its bias against "little wars," so that a new generation of officers now have a greater appreciation of what's required to win these conflicts, including cases where the enemy is a guerrilla force. The services have expanded programs, such as the courses taught at the war colleges, to give military personnel more knowledge of counterinsurgency. They have given more latitude for military personnel to pursue a career in places other than Europe, and in specialties other than conventional staff work and command experience. They have also, after a great deal of struggle, expanded the role of the special operations forces (SOFs), which now have their own combat command, SOCOM, in theory on par with the traditional, regionally-organized commands like CENTCOM, EURCOM, and PACOM.

However, these steps have been halting. It took more than one act of Congress to direct the US military's attention to the poor job it had done in "little wars" like the Grenada invasion. Counterinsurgency expertise still does not put you on the fast track for a military career. Most importantly, the US military was still organized for conventional wars, in which it would re-deploy regular forces and call up the Reserves and the National Guard as needed.

Even the part of the military that has been most directly, and often most successfully, involved in counterinsurgency, the SOFs, still don't necessarily get the respect they deserve. In fact, they may get the wrong kind of respect, setting them up for failures for which they cannot be held accountable.

After World War II, veterans of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), such as William "Wild Bill" Donovan, had to fight hard to keep the SOFs of that era from being completely de-mobilized. The SOFs like the Navy's Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs) and the Army's Special Forces suffered in obscurity until President Kennedy gave them greater prominence. Kennedy argued that the "twilight struggle" of the Cold War was increasingly fought in the developing world, where the US military's conventional capabilities were ineffective. Instead, Kennedy argued, a new generation of warriors were needed for missions ranging from advising the South Vietnamese military to staging top secret commando raids on Soviet and Chinese facilities. To signify the importance of this new style of warfare, Kennedy let the Army's Special Forces adopt their signature green beret, and he ordered the expansion of the SOFs across all services.

Even a presidential edict did not transform the US military overnight. Pentagon leaders fought hard to either stop the "snake eaters" from getting resources needed elsewhere, or forcing them into a subordinate role. For example, the Army argued it could use the Special Forces as commandos in Europe, in case of a Warsaw Pact invasion, instead of deploying them to the developing world, with a great deal of freedom of action.

And that was just while Kennedy was alive. Afterwards, the services continued to keep a lid on the SOFs, until the notable failures of the Iranian hostage rescue and the Grenada invasion, both demonstrating how the SOFs were being undervalued and misused. Not until Congress intervened with the Goldwater Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, followed by the Nunn-Cohen Act of 1987, did the SOFs get the staffing, organization, and latitude they needed.

However, the victories for the SOFs were not automatically good news for people worried about counterinsurgency, which is only one of the SOFs many missions. SOFs do well at counterinsurgency for two reasons: (1) their willingness to embrace all forms of unconventional warfare; and (2) their experience working in many different societies with everyone from Uzbek tribesmen to regular Colombian soldiers. By their training, philosophy, and institutional experience, the most of the SOFs—which range from the Army's Special Forces to the USAF's Air Commandos—have the understanding needed to do counterinsurgency right. They're usually deployed long enough to meet the commitment and patience criteria as well. (See the previous "Why counterinsurgency is hard" post for more details.) With the major reforms in the 1980s, the SOFs also have more of the latitude they need for counterinsurgency.

As well suited as they appear, the SOFs can only focus on one facet of a counterinsurgency war, the military part. They can train and advise another country's troops; when needed, they also can fight guerrillas directly. They are not the instruments of administrative reform or political change, nor are they even the right people for the very long-term engagements. A twelve-man Special Forces "A" team might be deployed to Honduras, Georgia, or Pakistan for one or two years. They can't always stay in that country, or even that continent, for much longer than that. These elite troops have additional missions, including counterterrorism, to pursue. Other military and civilian professionals, often with deeper "country knowledge" than a Special Forces team member will ever acquire, are the right people for these longer assignments.

Whenever the SOFs gain prominence, as they have during the Afghanistan and Iraq missions, it seems as though they're capable of handling any mission thrown at them. Elite troops, like every type of organization, are very good at some things, and not others. The SOFs excel at the unconventional forms of warfare—but, at the end of the day, they focus on the military aspect. The conflict itself is much larger than just the military dimension, so a coordinated effort among the military branches and civilian agencies is always required. However, as we'll see in the next post, it's almost never easy to bring all these groups together in a unified campaign.

WWII veterans database

IN THE NEWS
A colleague showed me the World War II memorial's online database of veterans. I immediately looked up John Covington, the husband of one of my high school English teachers. He was a tank commander at D-Day, after which he faced the hard fight through bocage country. Like many veterans, he did not talk about his war experience until many years later--in Covington's case, when he related them to a goofy teenager (me) doing a history class project. It was an honor I still feel that I did not deserve.

I encourage you to look up a relative or acquaintance in the database. It's quite an experience.

A&I gets respectable

IN THE NEWS
I guess this blog has achieved some degree of respectability or maturity, now that it's linked from the official entry for Thomas Schelling in Wikipedia. My appreciation to whoever added the reference to my early post about putting Schelling into perspective.

Chopping through ice

IN THE NEWS
As the preceding post shows, I've been chopping through the intellectual ice, working on more of the "official" posts, in spite of distractions from the holidays, work, and other sources. That last post about counterinsurgency was tough to write, so I hope it's not equally tough to read. At least you can settle down for a long winter's nap with it.

There's another "Counterinsurgency is hard" post in the works. Next time, it's all about how militaries, the American one included, aren't normally organized around the requirements of counterinsurgency warfare. It's a bit of the untold story about counterinsurgency, something that's now as important an issue as it was in the 1960s and the 1980s. Americans keep re-discovering insurgency and  counterinsurgency (and sometimes the same authors on the topic, such as T.E. Lawrence and David Galula) whenever a particular guerrilla war bubbles up from the policy deeps to burst into the public consciousness. Unfortunately, translating doctrine into practice means changing the way military and civilian bureaucracies work--not always the prettiest thing to watch.

Counterinsurgency is hard, part II

THEORY
As discussed in the first post in this series, counterinsurgency is inherently difficult. Victory may be impossible without political and economic changes that are unpalatable to the incumbent elite. Tactical successes can disguise a losing strategy at the theater and operational levels. Meanwhile, the level of violence, both controlled and uncontrolled by both sides, escalates.

Into this tragic mess steps the regime's great power patron—often the United States. If counterinsurgency is difficult for the regime under siege, it is doubly difficult for the United States as an outside party. US officials may be outside the swaying, tottering edifice of the other society shaken by internal war, but they may have even less understanding of what keeps the current structure standing than the people living in that society. They may have great resources to bring to bear, but little idea where to spend them. American military and civilian leaders may also view the conflict from the wrong perspective, imposing American assumptions and timetables for another society's military, political, administrative and economic reforms. As Lyndon Johnson learned, a dam project might buy the support of a senator or a governor, but it couldn't buy the acquiescence of Ho Chi Minh.

Since some degree of societal transformation is normally necessary to win a counterinsurgency war, US policy is simultaneously targeting not just the guerrillas, but also the allied regime, elites, and population. The United States is working on many fronts at the same time, and almost none of them provide opportunities for the United States to use its vast national power. Leverage, not power, is usually the tool required. No carrier battlegroup will persuade influential leaders to end their support for reactionary death squads.

Perhaps the classic example of this principle is Great Britain's experience in Afghanistan, which lay between India, "the jewel in the crown" of the British Empire, and Britain's great rival in the Central Asian "great game," Russia. Fearing what might happen if the Russians gained a foothold in Afghanistan, the British sent an expeditionary force through the Khyber Pass to replace Dost Muhammed with a more solidly pro-British leader.

Unfortunately, after the bulk of the British troops left, the political situation quickly disintegrated, in large part because of the lack of leverage the British had over their new subjects. The British had little to offer the Afghans, other than threats of military reprisals. That threat became less credible as the Afghans learned how easily colonial officials were bamboozled by the mercurial politics among the clans. The one thing the British could clearly "offer," though unwittingly, was a chance to rectify the humiliation the Afghan clans felt as a conquered people. The situation became so dangerous that the British decided to retreat, setting the stage for one of the bloodiest and most humiliating episodes in British colonial history. Rebels assassinated Britain's proxy ruler, Shah Shuja, leaving the British with no allies in Afghanistan. After rescuing some hostages and destroying parts of Kabul, the British reaction force was forced to leave Afghanistan behind. British power vanished from Afghanistan for nearly a decade.

Whether fighting Ghazi raiders or NLF guerrillas, counterinsurgency requires more than just good relations between a great power and a foreign head of state. Instead, there needs to be an intimate relationship at all levels between the two governments and militaries in question. In fact, the network of relationships will spread beyond official circles, a phenomenon that works in both directions. While American representatives teach people how to run a local election, the ambassador from an allied government may appear on Nightline to sway American public opinion. American military trainers work directly with squad, platoon, and company commanders, and depending on the rules of engagement, may accompany these units on missions. American intelligence agents pool and share information with soldiers and civilians in the allied government. Agricultural experts from the Agency for International Development work with farmers and village elites to change they way they grow and harvest crops. Officials from the Department of Labor provide labor unions with advice on effective collective action techniques that don't antagonize the wealthy and powerful.

Based on this description, you might build a mental picture of a massive US effort behind any counterinsurgency war. In practice, not every counterinsurgency campaign requires the mobilization of massive resources or large numbers of personnel. The military advisory group in El Salvador stayed at a Congress-mandated maximum of 55 trainers. In 1915, only 115 US Marines occupied Haiti, trained its military and police, and even handled public finances. While you can easily lose a counterinsurgency war by underfunding it, other factors than sheer numbers can be far more important. All of these other factors contribute to leverage, not power:

• Commitment.. The great power patron of the government under siege has to demonstrate that it's in the fight for the duration. This rule extends from the broad canvas of foreign policy down to the Brueghel-like individual details. For example, American advisors assigned for a long tour to a particular South Vietnamese village or military unit had far better success on average than people assigned for shorter rotations. Not only did American advisors have sufficient time to learn the situation, but they also put a flesh-and-blood face on American commitment to the war. (For an excellent case study of what US forces could accomplish on a longer assignment, see Bing West's The Village.)
• Understanding. Needless to say, anyone ignorant of the situation in a counterinsurgency war might as well pack it in and leave. Not everyone needs to be an expert at everything, but they need to have genuine expertise at what they do and some knowledge of the people with whom they're working. For example, the US Army's Special Forces are trained to be quick studies when they need to learn a particular culture, but in rare cases do they expect to become "country experts" in the same fashion as foreign area officer (FAO).
• Patience. Understanding takes time, a precious commodity when both the US government and its ally are impatient to see results. However, patience is a supreme virtue in counterinsurgency warfare. Guerrillas win by being patient, surviving long enough to wait for the right Maoist or Leninist revolutionary moment. The governments fighting guerrillas have to demonstrate some progress, but they're also waiting for their own counterrevolutionary moment. For example, the US and Salvadoran governments could not defeat the FMLN decisively until several important reforms—the professionalization and expansion of the Salvadoran military and police, the curbing of right-wing paramilitaries (the infamous death squads), and the reduction of governmental corruption—had made significant progress. Even then, the door to "victory," in the qualified sense that is always part of counterinsurgency warfare, wasn't completely open until the FMLN gambled and lost on a Tet-like "final offensive" in 1989.
• Latitude. While it might sound counter-intuitive, successful conventional armies are not the ones where every subordinate unquestionably follows the orders of every subordinate in the chain of command. Militaries that function in this strict top-down fashion, such as the Iraqi army under the Ba'ath Party, usually lose wars. If commanders can't have the freedom of action to respond to "local conditions," the military as a whole will stagger blindly toward disaster. The same principle applies to counterinsurgency wars, only moreso. Given the depth and breadth of understanding needed to assess the military and political situation in a Vietnamese district or an Iraqi province, the people closest to the action—military advisors, intelligence operatives, embassy officials, and the like—are the ones best situated to make the right decision for that particular corner of the war. Just as importantly, for them to have any effectiveness, the people with whom these American officials need to believe that they can deliver the goods when needed. If American civilian and military professionals are reduced to passing messages and reciting policy, their counterparts will ignore them.

Ironically, the more important a counterinsurgency war becomes to the United States, the harder it may be for the United States to fight it. For example, allied governments measure American commitment by the size and regularity of military and economic aid. Once a counterinsurgency war becomes important enough for it to become a national controversy in the United States, the flow of aid can become extremely unpredictable. In the 1980s, the US Congress properly exercised its Constitutional powers when it tied American assistance to El Salvador to that government's demonstrated progress on human rights. While that created one form of leverage, genuinely frightening Salvadoran military commanders that the United States might abandon them, it also made it harder for the 55-man military advisory group (MILGROUP) to do its job. With uncertainty over the size of next year's assistance package, US advisors lost leverage with their Salvadoran counterparts. With the loss of latitude that "baloney-slice funding" implied, American advisors seemed less likely to be able to deliver the goods—or even deny them, when appropriate. (For a good analysis of the US advisory effort in El Salvador, see Bacevich et al., American Military Policy in Small Wars: The Case of El Salvador.)

Similar problems arise when the US government shovels undertrained and underprepared situation into a counterinsurgency effort, just to demonstrate to the American public that it's doing all that it can. Rising political stakes—often the result when progress take longer than American leaders originally promised—can create a collective impatience for results that cannot be realistically achieved in a war that can only be won through the transformation of another government and society. The brighter the spotlight, the harder it will be for nervous superiors in Washington to grant their subordinates in the field the latitude they need.

The great negative example of what happens when counterinsurgency turns into controversy, of course, is the Vietnam War. It took decades for the discussion to become calm enough for people with different perspectives on the war to even see the same facts, such as the progress made against the NLF after the Tet Offensive. In contrast, the United States' support for the Filipino government against the Huks never reached the level of national emergency that Vietnam became. Staying under the radar, but still monitored by decision-makers in Washington, the US mission in the Philippines had the commitment, understanding, patience, and latitude to be successful.

None of these are reasons to retreat from every counterinsurgency war, just because it may be difficult for the United States to win. It does show, however, how important the first months of US commitment to a counterinsurgency war can be. The ground rules that the US President and Congress set have repercussions throughout the rest of the war. The way these leaders explain the war to the American public during these early months is just as important.

PRACTICE
Obviously, everything discussed here has immediate and often painful relevance for the US counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rather than cover every possible ramification, I'll focus on just one: If you want to know how well US counterinsurgency efforts are going, don't look at the top of the organizations involved. Look lower in the organization chart instead.

Unfortunately, that's not how the Bush Administration—representing the top national security decision-makers—itself operates. Instead, the Administration often focuses on top leaders, among our allies and enemies alike, to the exclusion and detriment of nearly everything else. When the Iraqi occupation turned into a bloody counterinsurgency war, the defects of this political style became painfully obvious. For example:

• The White House put the capture of Saddam Hussein at the top of its list of priorities for the first six months of the occupation. Later, with Hussein's two sons dead, Hussein himself in jail, and most of the Ba'ath Party leadership also in custody, the insurgency continued to rage as if these events had never happened. The hunt for Hussein also distracted US officials from the far more important task at hand, squelching the insurgency in its infancy and helping Iraqi officials rebuild their government and military.
• When Hussein's capture didn't cripple the insurgency as expected, the Bush Administration shifted the blame to the Syrian and Iranian governments were the real culprits behind the insurgency. While there's no question that different insurgent groups have operated across Iraq's borders with other countries, and Iran has a clear strategy for using the Iraqi insurgency against the United States, the cross-border enclave issue is just as much of a red herring as it was during the Vietnam War. It obviously matters whether a particular insurgent group can find training, equipment, and a safe haven across the border. However, you can't defeat an insurgency simply by sealing off the borders. Suicide bombers have changed the tactical equation, as long as willing martyrs can be found. The vast number of looted weapons and munitions in Iraq make foreign support less important for the insurgents. And in the end, the important question isn't whether the US military can stop infiltrators; it's whether Iraqi security forces can police their own borders.
• Whenever Bush Administration officials discuss progress against Iraqi insurgents or Al Qaeda, they continue to cite the killing or capture of enemy leaders as one of the most important measures of progress. However, Al Qaeda has already adapted to the point where the organization that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and others once led no longer exists. The protean, "venture capitalist" model that now defines Al Qaeda doesn't need the same kind of operational leadership that Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi once provided.

If you're still not convinced by this critique of the Bush Administration's leader-centric focus, I'd recommend a review of the Administration's foreign policy before 9/11. Whether the threat was weapons of mass destruction or terrorism, the real source was a rogue regime like the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, the "mullahcracy" in Iran, or the paranoid "hermit kingdom" in North Korea. Terrorists, if they merited any attention at all in this worldview, were mere proxies of leaders in Baghdad, Tehran, or Pyongyang.

If this sounds familiar, it's probably because this worldview is a contemporary echo of the old monolithic view of world communism, circa 1950. It took a decade or more for the average American to understand that China's interests were not those of the Soviet Union, many guerrilla movements were less concerned about solidarity with Moscow and Peking than defeating local governments, and the problems of troubled regions like Latin America and Southeast Asia started long before the Cold War ever began.

The Bush Administration's "leader-centric" view of foreign policy generally and Iraq specifically has more than one source. Undoubtedly, some of it is the byproduct of the subculture of American business, the "C-level" caste in particular.  Some of it also springs from Bush's own inexperience with national and international politics, which don't operate quite the same way as the Republican Party or the Texas state government does. The foreign policy advisors around Bush—Wolfowitz, Perle, and Rumsfeld in particular—always emphasized "rogue states" over their local "proxies." Whatever the ultimate source, this leader-centric emphasis works to the detriment of the American counterinsurgency effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even if President Bush and his advisors don't genuinely believe that elections in Afghanistan and Iraq decisively settle these conflicts, their rhetoric certainly suggests that it will. The White House has promised that elections will deliver twin benefits, elected leaders that will be solidly pro-American, and elected governments whose inherent legitimacy will eventually overshadow the insurgents fighting them. Any Americans who believed these promises are in for a grave disappointment. As disappointment increasingly turns into outrage, the commitment, understanding, patience, and latitude that US officials need to win these wars may become even harder to achieve.

Chemical clouds

IN THE NEWS
I often link to Armchair Generalist because, among other reasons, the author knows a great deal about the real world of detecting chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. He'll tell you what smells like a real threat, and what doesn't. It's therefore worth reading what he has to say about Al Qaeda's possible interest in the American oil and natural gas pipelines, which seems more likely than the FBI's fears about nuclear material hidden in mosques.

A Christmas epiphany

IN THE NEWS
When Christmas Day finally arrives, it always seems like a bit of an anti-climax. After forty-three Christmases, I think I've finally figured out why.

Christmas, like other holidays marking the end of the calendar year, is an introspective holiday. All bright trappings, clamorous music, and back-slapping good-fellowship aside, Christmas grabs you with two hands and forces you to look at your life. The first hand is, as I said, the end of one calendar year, soon yielding to a new year ahead. You're faced with the record of 365 days of choices behind you, and another 365 ahead. How wise or foolish these choices have been is, of course, the question that haunts the holiday, in much the shape and style of Scrooge's three famous spectres.

The other hand of Christmas is the moral symbolism of the holiday. Turn one way, and you're face to face with Santa Claus, the secular symbol of ultimate charity--something which all of us fall short of achieving. Turn the other way, and you're facing Jesus, who may or may not be the son of God for you, but who nonetheless graced this world with a powerful moral message.

Whether or not you think the Pope speaks for God, the Holy Spirit passes through the congregation at Sunday services, or it's possible to be sufficiently moved by a hymn to babble in the tongues of angels, Jesus can prod you, as he is reported to have done to the people around him, with sharp questions. Who is the better person, the outwardly pious individual, or the maligned Samaritan who helps a person bleeding to death? Is the compulsion to do the right thing--what Jesus probably meant by the word faith--something limited to his apostles, or a trait that even a pagan, Roman soldier could have? And who can say for certain whether the father of the prodigal son made exactly the right choices dealing with both his sons?

Christmas, therefore, is a holiday with power beyond both the strictly secular and the strictly religious. When Christmas Day arrives, the frenzy of December begins to wind down, all the packages have been opened and all the relatives and friends called, I'm left, as you may be, with a question: Is that all there is?

Please don't mistake what that question really purports to ask. It's not, Are these all the presents I got? Are these all the people who can wish me good cheer on this holiday? The question really is, Is this all that I can be?

It's OK to be bothered by this question. Both Jesus and Santa would want you to ponder it, at least for one day out of the year. (Probably every moral thinker from Aristotle to the Buddha to John Rawls would approve as well.) It doesn't have to overshadow whatever good you have done in the world, and you don't have to feel guilty if, indeed, you're grateful for the good things you have. The question really is, what should you do next?

Living through a troubled age grants you an unfortunate bounty of choices. You can give to organizations involved in good works, such as sponsoring a child in Central Asia, providing medical care to families in Africa, or demanding that the Chinese government release its political prisoners. If you have the time, you can volunteer your labor to build homes for the poor in Latin America, help Sri Lankans recover from both a brutal civil war and a devastating tsunami, or bring a steady supply of food to people to people who were destitute before Hurricane Katrina, and homeless afterwards.

Charitable works aren't enough, however. You need to be charitable in your heart. Last night, Alan Jones, the dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, said in a moving sermon that Christmas is like being handed a infant. Suddenly, you're responsible for a small life that, mere mortal or Godhead incarnate, nonetheless represents the future of mankind. It's not what you expected, nor will you know what happens next. The only thing of which you can be confident is your own desire to do the right thing.

Writing this blog is a duty for me. Not a chore, but something I do because I feel I have to. I feel bad when I don't post, even though I have no idea what good my work on this blog does. The possibility of doing good, however, is all that I can be confident in having. I feel bad on days when I don't post, and I feel uplifted when I have the time and energy to add what I hope is a little enlightenment about a frightening and confusing subject. (Maybe if these posts weren't long-winded, I could write more of them.) I also hope to make it easier for people who strongly disagree, but nonetheless have the same compulsion to do good, to identify common signposts on the road ahead.

All of us have the same chances every day, in conversations we may avoid having with one another, for fear of offending or enraging. I strongly believe that it's better we do converse. We may be delighted or disappointed at the results, but the important thing is to try. The life of a child in Nyala, a woman in Kandahar, or a soldier in Baghdad may depend on the results of that conversation.

So, from the bottom of my un-churched, heathen heart, happy holidays to you. Let us embrace the next year of challenges together.

Going ape for Stalin

IN THE NEWS
Rather than continuing the legal fight against the teaching of evolution, proponents of intelligent design might think about promoting their alternate version of biology among our enemies. They could then take credit when the Iranians or North Koreans waste time and money on pointless, boneheaded programs like Stalin's efforts to create a hybrid human/ape supersoldier. Only in a nation where Lysenkoism was entertained to the point of creating mass famine could ideas like the Soviet version of Manimal take root.