Arms and influence

Russia's one-fingered gesture

Russian president Vladimir Putin has revived a Cold War practice: keeping long-range bombers patrolling outside the borders of the country, ready to strike at...Oh, you know who. With...Well, do we have to tell you what?

No, the Cold War is not back. Putin may be a cynical SOB, but he's not deranged. The Putin government is clearly trying to demonstrate the independent course on which it wants to keep Russia, beholden to no one in the United States, Europe, or China. Reviving these patrols is a gesture, not preparation for nuclear war.

Still, it's worth pondering exactly what the Russia government plans to do with this independent power, and why it feels free to exercise it. High oil prices help the Russian economy, which helps Putin stay in power. Therefore, the Iraq war--not the only cause of high oil prices, but a significant one--helps Putin--maybe not an enemy of the United States, but no friend, either.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...

While headlines from Iraq, such as the latest clash in Ramadi, continue to dominate the headlines in American news outlets, here are some events of note in the rest of the world:

• Pakistan's military struck at Islamist figherrs in Waziristan, killing three.
• Russian strategic bombers have resumed patrolling beyond Russia's borders, an obvious, intentional reminder of the old Soviet nuclear threat.
• A suicide bomber in Afghanistan killed 15.
• In an interview, the head of the British army acknowledged that UK forces in Afghanistan are holding their ground, but are substantially overstretched.
• Internecine violence among Palestinian spread to a refugee camp in Lebanon.

Suppose the Iraq war never happened. Which of these events would appear more prominently in the news? Or, in other words, which of them deserve more attention now?

The best spies money can buy?

Let's hope that we see more attention paid to the "outsourcing" of US intelligence gathering and analysis. Just as Americans were unpleasantly surprised to learn how many military tasks, such as piloting Predator drones, were handled by civilian contractors, they're likely to be just as flabbergasted that a rapidly increasing number of intelligence functions are now privatized.

Worse, the argument is often no more specific than, "The competition of the private sector is more likely to produce better results than a bunch of civil servants." If there were more of a "business case" to let businesses handle American spycraft, the $1 billion of privatized line items in the latest Defense Intelligence Agency budget might have a bit more specificity:

The DIA did not specify exactly what it wants the contractors to do but said it is seeking teams to fulfill "operational and mission requirements" that include intelligence "Gathering and Collection, Analysis, Utilization, and Strategy and Support." It holds out the possibility that five or more contractors may be hired and promised more details on Aug. 27.

If you want to see if your vague feelings of unease about intelligence privatization have any justification, read RJ Hillhouse's blog, The Spy Who Billed Me. Hillhouse, who has been a voice in the wilderness on this issue, details the risks, such as the possible slanting of the President's daily briefing. Judge for yourself how serious these risks are.

Privatization of government functions does not get the skeptical questioning it should, particularly when we're talking about fundamental national security responsibilities. Here's a slow softball pitch to the Congressional Democrats: demand that privatization be doubted, not automatically granted the benefit of the doubt.

A lull is no victory

What does it mean for counterinsurgency to “work”? That’s the question implied in a recent Washington Post article, which described the “blood feuds” that continue to simmer, if not boil, during the recent escalation of US forces in Baghad and the Anbar province.

The article quickly bounced from blog to blog—not surprisingly, since it might reflect what you already have concluded about Iraq. However, we need to move beyond the desire for an Aha! moment, and look for some measures of success with which everyone can agree.

So, at this stage in a counterinsurgency campaign, how do you know you’re winning? Here are some possible signs:

• The frequency of violence drops. This statistic is the simplest, which should make you immediately suspicious of how well it describes the complex reality of a war.
• The type of attack changes. You might see a switch from raids on military targets to terror attacks on civilians and conclude that the guerrillas are getting more desperate. On the other hand, even desperate measures may still undermine the regime’s political base.
• The size of guerrilla groups drops. The simple equation is, progress equals fewer insurgents. However, that begs the question of how big a revolutionary movement needs to be. Since few successful revolutionaries enjoyed the approval of a majority of the population, size matters only to a point.
• Recruitment into guerrilla groups slows or stops. The political appeal of the insurgents may wane, or the government may be dismantling these organizations faster than the guerrillas can re-build them.
• The quality of intelligence about the insurgents improves. Improvements in the amount and quality of information about guerrillas can be a measure of both the government’s improved effectiveness, and the revolutionaries’ decreasing effectiveness.
• The government increasingly governs. In other words, the regime’s political, administrative, judicial, and police organization function, without competition, in an increasing number of regions. Obviously, this return of the government needs to be permanent, to be permanent, the regime needs to achieve some amount of acquiescence and support.

You might think of a few other possible measures, but that’s a pretty good list for now. Which is the best? Without a doubt, the last one. Fewer guerrilla attacks, shrinking insurgent organizations, more information about the guerrillas—these are the preconditions for a final step, when an embattled regime re-ascends the seat of power. Many regimes fail to take that last step. For example, the Somoza regime routed the Sandinistas, but failed to convince enough Nicaraguans that the regime deserved their s tolerance. The broad anti-Somoza movement gave the Sandinistas the opportunity to seize power that their earlier, failed military campaigns in the jungles and mountains of Nicaragua couldn’t create.

Any escalation of military, police, and intelligence efforts can, at best, create an opportunity for the regime. The regime may be unable to seize that opportunity, often because of the grave political defects that allowed the insurgency to arise in the first place.

Sadly, the Iraqi government seems unable to seize whatever opportunity the “surge” presented. Suppressing bombers and snipers doesn’t heal the political fractures in Iraq:

"We are in the middle of it," Garrett said, indicating the center of his area of operations, which is the size of Rhode Island. "I'm not fighting one sect or the other. I'm fighting both. And not only am I fighting both, but at certain points I have to put my forces in between the Sunni and Shia groups to protect the populace."

Later:

"We are in the land of the blood feuds," said Maj. Rick Williams, a liaison to tribes in the area. "It's very difficult to tell a tribal fight from a sectarian fight because interests are pretty mixed. You can't just put up a fence."

Of course, the Washington Post article is told purely from the US military’s point of view. You don’t hear the perspective of local clan leaders or government officials who may be trying to negotiate an end to the chronic violence. However, the situation as delicate as this one, with few incentives that either the American military or the Iraqi government can offer, seems like only a “negative peace,” a temporary lull in violence.

Victory does not necessarily mean a complete end to all violence. In fact, most guerrilla wars don’t end with a final spasm of violence, with one side or the other completely defeated in some Ragnarok-like final battle. However one defines victory, however, the situation in Iraq seems far from resembling it.

Experts, shut up!

This post from Atrios hit a nerve with several bloggers. For example, here are Armchair Generalist's comments about it.

In post-WWII history, we've never seen hostility in the White House to the "expertariat" like the Bush Administration's. Presidents have been willing to ignore the national security community's advice, or cut  the experts out of the decision-making process altogether. However, even Nixon had one foreign policy expert, Henry Kissinger, in which he trusted, even as he started building new relationships with the USSR and PRC, in secret from most of the executive branch (and of course, the American public).

However, I disagree with the argument that the anti-war opposition has been anti-expert, too. In fact, it's even hard to find pacifists among the critics of the Iraq war and the Global War On Something. Most people I've read or met seem fairly pragmatic, willing to accept the necessity of violence to achieve national security, but deeply disturbed about the ways in which the Administration has been using force. They're willing to admit that, as average citizens, they haven't studied the uses and misuses of force to the level that some scholars and practitioners have.

Experts are hardly the enemy for these critics; instead, they want to give the experts more respect and clout. One of the iconic moments, for critics of the war, was the dismissal of General Shinseki, punished, not rewarded, for his expert opinion of what occupying Iraq would require.

As I've argued before, the Administration's hostility to national security experts arises, in part, from a hostility to expertise. That animus, in turn, has deeper roots in an anti-scientific strain among many members and supporters of this presidency. There's no comparable anti-science faction within the ranks of the war's critics.

Side project

This week, I sacrificed posting for a few days so that, in my slender spare time, I could finish a prototype for a wargame I'm designing. If you've read this blog before, you can probably guess the theme. (Or, you can look at my hot list of games in the left-hand column of this page.)

Since I've been a wargamer since my teens, it's perhaps a bit odd that I've never tried designing a game myself. It's never too late, I guess.

Saturday morning programming

Before I get down to anything serious, I thought I'd share a couple of clips apropos of the weekend.

Batman meets Star Trek
If William Shatner and Adam West had actually been on screen together for more than a few seconds, televisions around the globe would have self-destructed. If there ever had been a Batman/Star Trek crossover, it definitely would have looked something like these amateur films, made with a frightening attention to detail.

"Hans, I just noticed something..."
From a BBC skit show, two German officers have an epiphany.

Blood feuds

On this side of the world, the person who worked very, very hard to warp and twist a national tragedy into political opportunity has now left his post. On the other side of the world, people are still living with the horrible consequences of that warping and twisting. The political labyrinth that Karl Rove helped build led always to the central concerns of George W. Bush, whichever way you turned. Iraq was one of those concerns.

For someone like Rove, Iraq mattered only for what it meant to American politics. The reality of Iraq, as Iraqis live it every day, mattered far less than Iraq as the nation conveniently led by a moustachioed villain, who vaguely meant Americans harm. There is no evidence that, to this day, the political character of Iraq--a nation that could quickly devolve into a series of blood feuds--mattered at all to Rove. For Rove, the 9/11 attacks were not a somber moment, when the nation's next step had to be forceful but correct. Instead, Rove treated that moment in much the same fashion that a retail executive handles fads like pet rocks and Tickle Me Elmo, an opportunity begging to be exploited.

It's hard to know how to feel at a moment like this. Every day in his finite life is measured by the needless, violent deaths of others, until he faces his final moment, in what all probability dictates will be peace and comfort. Even if you don't believe in Hell, it's moments like these that help you understand why every culture has some version of the same story, in which the naked soul faces judgment.

In other news...

Gestern war mein Geburtstag.

(For some reason, I can't say it directly.)

Battlefield Biker

Even if you travel in a less adventurous four-door sedan, Battlefield Biker is a great resource for military history buffs. If you want to know how to get to a battlefield site, and in many cases, how to tour it by motorcycle, car, velocipede, or ice cream truck, the Biker is a good place to start.