Arms and influence

Happy Halloween from manservant Hecubus

Since it's Friday, and Halloween, I'm forced to post something frivolous. Here are a couple of videos from YouTube that are just right for the day.

The failure of leadership

I've spent a good part of the last couple of days pondering the question, "What did Bing West really mean in denouncing Nir Rosen's Rolling Stone piece?" Yesterday, I jumped into the question that West (pictured to the right) raised of whether a journalist should be traveling with the enemy. (Short answer: Press coverage of the other side is essential. Being in a situation where you might be complicit in the killing of Americans is not defensible.)

Today, let's look into West's accusations of failed leadership:

Most disturbing was the lack of outrage to Rosen’s sojourn by the administration, the military, the civilian appointees and the politicians. Secretary of Defense Gates is a cool, detached official who reacts to events. He does not plot a course into the future. He does not project a determination or a vision about how to succeed in Afghanistan. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral William Mullen, calls for a strategic review – after six years of fighting! - laments that “we cannot kill our way to victory”, a vacuous absolution that transfers responsibility for failure to others. Why increase from 32,000 to 50,000 US troops, whose basic training is as riflemen, if the application of force – killing - is not the objective? A policeman protects the population by arresting criminals; a soldier protects the population by shooting the enemy soldier. Our military succeeds in confusing us all by reverting to Rodney King's plaint that we should all just get along.

When our leaders lack moral clarity and courage, then agnosticism about our mission in Afghanistan is understandable. Rosen’s conduct is not the problem; he was taking advantage of American moral lassitude. Our leaders don’t stand up for the righteousness of our cause. Why not hang out with the Taliban, if America’s leaders see nothing wrong with it?

This passage inspired some equally strong responses from other bloggers. Here's our first rebuttal, from Spencer Ackerman:

Recognizing the basic strategic fact that not all problems have a military solution indicates that Bob Gates and Mike Mullen and David Petraeus means "transfer[ing] responsibility for failure to others." Could this myopia be any more self-refuting? I take back what I said about not reading West's new book, because I can't wait to see how The Strongest Tribe explains away the obvious failures of the killing-our-way-to-victory strategy in Iraq from 2003 to 2006.

Abu Muqawama had even more to say in defense of the senior leadership at the Pentagon:

Aside from accusing the Department of Defense -- en masse -- of lacking "commitment and passion in the cause," West also accuses Sec. Gates and Adm. Mullen of lacking "moral clarity and courage." If you're Sec. Gates -- getting your teeth kicked in on a daily basis while trying to fight two wars and keep a military from falling apart -- how much patience would you have for Bing West's opinion right about now?

While the paragraphs I've quoted above are not West's best written work, I think it's pretty clear what he's arguing:

• At the level of the Secretary of Defense and the JCS Chairman, there has not been a clear strategy for Afghanistan. Gates is reactive. The strategic review should have happened a long time ago.
• If we can't "kill our way to victory," what's the point of sending more American troops? I'm reading that section of West's blog post a lot differently than ackerman and Muqawama. West is hardly a babe in the woods about counterinsurgency. He knows that sending soldiers "whose basic training is as riflemen" is not necessarily going to help. They're not trained to be policemen, or civilian reconstruction professionals, or intelligence analysts. The NATO mission in Afghanistan needs to increase all these skills, not just blindly send more soldiers whose training is limited to shooting the enemy. West is arguing against a simple-minded "surge for Afghanistan," when something else is needed--which undoubtedly includes more people who also know how to kill.
• People who don't have a clear strategic vision leave the moral playing field wide open. If there's no clear picture of what people should do to create particular outcomes--political, military, and moral--there are no grounds for saying that someone, like a journalist traveling with the Taliban, is doing something wrong.

I don't agree with everything West says. For example, the phrase "American moral lassitude" is a bit too broad for what otherwise sounds like a criticism of the top military and civilian leadership (much like Dereliction of Duty accuses the top brass of failures in the Vietnam War). I also don't think that the US government needed to respond officially to Rosen's article at all.

On the other points, however, I think the critics both misread what West was saying, and in some ways, were definitely wrong themselves. It's specious for Ackerman to accuse West of being against a free press--a little weird, since West is a journalist himself. (And someone who has had some pretty acid things to say about the senior leadership already, in his book on Iraq, No True Glory.) And who cares if Muqawama is right that Gates gets his "teeth kicked in on a daily basis while trying to fight two wars" if he can't clarify what the strategy for the Afghanistan war really is?

West's post does have its faults. On the "how do journalists cover the other side" question, his answer leaves almost no room for a Rosen to do his job. (Robert Farley's rebuttal is still the best I've read on this question.) But on the leadership issue he has a much stronger argument.

The moral imperatives of war journalism

I've had the latest Rolling Stone article about Afghanistan on my "To Read" pile for a few days. Before I could get to it, however, I got distracted by the flurry of posts about the article.

The author, Nir Rosen, traveled with Taliban fighters to a meeting with a Taliban commander. While Rosen doesn't actually witness the Taliban fighting US, Afghan, or NATO troops, he very well could have--and in fact, set out with the intent of observing a Taliban attack, if the opportunity presented itself:

They have promised to take me to see the Taliban in action: going out on patrols, conducting attacks, adjudicating disputes and providing security against bandits and police.

Some bloggers, including Bing West, took exception with what Rosen did--loud, angry exception. And I largely agree with them.

During war, public information about the other side is critical. Citizens cannot judge the wisdom or stupidity of the war without knowing something about the adversary. Whether the reality of the enemy is better or worse than the caricature that emerges out of ignoramce, the important thing is, the caricature is wrong. It does not tell you what it's really going to take to defeat the adversary. Debates over the war then inevitably collapse into disagreements over the military actions we pursue, with practically no reference to the people who are their target, or the effect these operations have. Ultimately, this kind of one-sided discussion is not really about war at all, but some kind of fictional military engineering problem.

In fewer words, then, it's just important to recognize the importance of getting information about our adversaries. There's no question that, not only is that an important service that journalists can provide, but it's arguably their duty.

The real question, though, is how they go about that task. Interviewing a Taliban commander isn't wrong. Agreeing to accompany Taliban fighters during a mission to kill Afghan or Western soldiers is.

Instead of spilling a lot of my own words about this topic, I urge you to watch the second part of the "Under Orders, Under Fire" episode of Ethics In America. Both this series and The Constitution: A Delicate Balance were filmed in the 1980s. Prepare to be surprised by whom you'll see in these excellent discussions, what they say, and how well they say it.

After starting "Under Orders, Under Fire," you should first listen to the brief but illuminating discussion about torture in war. Then go to the second part, in which the panel wrestles with the problem of an American journalist traveling with enemy soldiers, just as Rosen did. The real kicker comes when a Marine colonel makes the rhetorical question: what happens when American soldiers are in a position to save endangered journalist?

If that doesn't paint a clear enough picture for you, watch this short video of a British journalist and British soldiers caught in a Taliban ambush. Next, imagine yourself as a journalist on the other side of this firefight. If you didn't have doubts whether you should be there...Well, you're a cold-hearted bastard, at the very least.

Bing West goes a little farther than necessary to make his point. Comparing the Taliban (whom I am not defending) to the Waffen SS just gives critics the opportunity to give less weight to the important part of his argument. You don't need "American moral lassitude" to explain one journalist who displayed faulty judgment.

I strongly recommend reading Robert Farley's analysis, which makes many excellent points that I don't need to repeat here. However, I'll make one last observation of my own. Rosen's article just isn't very good. He leaps to broad conclusions about the Taliban from encounters with a small group of them. Not only does that leave him open to the compound fallacy, but it's not impossible to imagine that some of the softer, nicer elements of Taliban life were staged for his benefit.

Even if you take everything he sees at face value, the narrative of the story is, "My wild, dangerous trip to see an ornery Taliban commander." His experience may add to our understanding of the war in Afghanistan, but it's too small for the general conclusions about the war that Rosen wants to make.

Inspecting the CIA

The latest podcast from the National Spy Museum is especially good. Frederick Hitz, the first inspector general for the CIA, covers a number of critical topics, including weaknesses of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the critical importance of the staff for Congressional oversight committees, and the uphill battle hiring good people into intelligence jobs at painfully sub par salaries. Definitely worth the half hour listening to it.

People may give a brief nod to the weakness of the rational, unified actor model of government behavior in foreign policy and national security. Yeah, yeah, the government is really different formal organizations and distinct personalities that cooperate or clash. There's no philosopher king with complete control over everything. If you really want to understand why governments do what they do, you really have to understand how their constituent parts work together (or not).

Unfortunately, it takes real attention to learn how governments really work. Changes over time, like the upheavals in the CIA over the last couple of decades, only make it that much harder for the average citizen to keep track of it all. Yet another reason why we need fewer lazy journalists who attend press conferences at the Pentagon or the White House and type up the results. To return to the content of the Hitz interview for a moment, it isn't enough to report the passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Act. The real story is what happens next.

Debt and the great powers

Sven at Defense and Freedom cites some interesting statistics about debt as a percentage of GDP in Europe and Japan. It's certainly bigger in many cases than I expected. However, I'm not 100% sure of the conclusion:

This government debt situation has certainly implications for the ability to spend the same or more on military power in the future. The Grand strategy of NATO and its nations should attempt to avoid large arms races due to its mature and not vital enough economies/societies/governments.

The next several years will be the real test of how much debt constrains military power--at least for the United States. Assuming a more parsimonious regime than the debt-happy Bush Administration and Congress of 2001 to 2007, how fast can the US government return to a point where it can afford to fight another regional war? And even if it can't afford it, will the United States fight future wars anyway? Would it be restricted to the Operation DESERT SHIELD/STORM model, in which other countries that benefit from US military action help pay the bill?

In the last few weeks, we may have just seen the biggest constraint on future American military action: the interconnectedness of national economies. We were already likely to see a revival of multilateralism in US foreign policy, after the Bush Administration's failed experiment in weak coalitions and unilateralism. Now, we know that, if expensive military venures weaken the US economy, the cascade effect will hurt other economies as well. Even if a future President didn't want to embrace multilateralism, other countries might not leave us much of a choice.

Happy Norman Conquest Day!

Since today is the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, I thought I'd re-post this animated version of the Bayeux Tapestry.

World of Wankcraft

Note to future applicants for high-security DoD jobs: you might want to re-consider your membership in a World of Warcraft clan. You might also want to stop reading this blog right now. The part of the DoD that screens applicants for these jobs suspects that your online behavior indicates whether you're a security risk.

In my day job, I do a fair amount of research covering life in the Internet age. Not surprisingly, Web 2.0 (Wikis, blogs, social networking, etc.) has re-invigorated interest in what people do while they're on the web. Many companies are trying to figure out how to use any new technologies, such as massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs), to attract the attention, contribution, and loyalty of people who fit these different profiles.

Therefore, I can speak with a little authority on the topic of whether online behavior is a good indicator of whether someone is a good security risk. I'm not aware of any data pointing to whether someone who contributes Wikipedia articles is more or less likely to leak secret information to Iran than, say, someone who comments on the same Wikipedia articles, or just occasionally reads them.

Nor am I aware of any indication that the question is worth pursuing. Some people like to play World of Warcraft, and other people are just plain bored by it. Some people write blogs, other people comment on them. Some people use Delicious to maintain hundreds of bookmarks, and some people don't bookmark much of anything.

There's no reason to assume one group is more or less dangerous than the other--unless, of course, you're a defense contractor or government agency looking for budget-enhancing projects. (In this case, the price tag is $800,000, paid to two contractors, neither of whom are exactly luminaries in understanding online behavior.) As Drew Conway notes, the unjustifiably paranoid assumption behind this study is "likely lead to standards that disqualify the exact people the U.S. military needs to recruit in order to reclaim dominance of cyberspace."

In other words, do you want to recruit people for the 'information battlefield" who don't really use the Internet, with the possible exception of Overstock.com and eBay? I thought not.

¿Donde esta el uranio?

Armchair Generalist notes the latest "Everyone panic!" notification from the Department of Homeland Security. This time, a DHS official murmurs ominously about a possible alliance between Latin American drug traffickers and Al Qaeda. The modern-day Escobars have the infiltration routes; Al Qaeda might someday have nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. This dark alliance of swarthy people might happen someday. Maybe.

Sure, there might be a "potpurri of scum" who do business with each other. After all, Al Qaeda members might need the occasional source for weapons and fake passports from somewhere. Opium from Afghanistan has to get into the US through some route.

But does that mean that Latin American drug smugglers have any interest in helping Al Qaeda infiltrate unconventional weapons into the United States? Um, assuming that Al Qaeda even had them, probably not. Look at how the Uribe government escalated its counterinsurgency campaign, once it found out the Venezuelan government was providing money and technical assistance to the FARC. Now imagine what might happen if either a local government or the US government discovered any collusion between drug traffickers and foreign terrorists.

Smugglers are businesspeople that exercise extreme caution, given the number of law enforcement agencies are constantly trying to monitor or infiltrate their organizations. Even if Al Qaeda agents did not have NUKE AMERICA tattooed on their foreheads, the smugglers would have reasons to turn down anyone they don't completely trust. Smugglers sneak drugs into the United States, not people, and certainly not people from the Middle East.

Just because something is imaginable doesn't mean it's a real concern--particularly when the US government is already spending billions of dollars to track suspected drug smugglers. The DHS should not be getting ideas for "public service announcements" from the technothrillers sold in the supermarket check-out line.

UPDATE: Maybe this is all a prank designed to publicize the planned remake of Red Dawn. We can only hope so.

Tete a tete with the Taliban

It's too early to jump to any conclusions about talks with the Taliban, for the following reasons:

• It's not exactly new. NATO forces and the Afghan government have already been trying to get Taliban commanders to defect to the government side. In some cases, such as Mullah Abdul Salaam, they've been successful. These defections couldn't happen if there were no quiet talks happening already.
• Which part of the Taliban are we talking about? Certainly, the Taliban as a movement is vulnerable to a divide-and-conquer strategy. Many of the ambitious clan leaders who have joined the Taliban might drop the mask of revolutionary Sunni doctrine if they get a far better offer. The core of the movement, the doctrinal purists that coalesced around Mullah Muhammed Omar, are a much tougher sell. So, too, would be Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami, which seems to believe firmly and sincerely that it will always have more clout as a foil to the Karzai regime than as its ally.
• Is the Taliban interested in peace talks? Given their recent successes, Taliban commanders are much less likely to negotiate seriously. However, they might come to the negotiating table simply to be intransigent, and in the process, humiliate the Karzai government. We need to be wary of replaying the worst days of Vietnam War-era talks with the intransigent North Vietnamese government.
• What's the Afghan government's interest? Getting the Taliban, in part or in its entirety, to the negotiating table is a means to an end. But what does the Afghan government want from the Taliban? It's hard to believe that Karzai's brother was trying to get the Taliban to surrender. The real topics under discussion might be as prosaic as prisoner exchanges, or as ambitious as a temporary cease-fire.
• What's the US and NATO interest? And does it gibe with what the Afghan government wants?

I don't want to sound like a complete party-pooper. The offer of negotiations is important, if for no other reason than to give potential defectors an easier time of quitting the Taliban. However, I'd hate to see expectations get too high, if negotiators spend the first few months arguing over the shape of the table.

Russia bails out Iceland

The latest example of how the high per-barrel price of oil plays mischief with US national security: Russia offers to bail out Iceland:

More likely, this act of benevolence is being viewed as a way of helping Russia secure a bridgehead for an advance into the Arctic regions to claim the vast hydrocarbon and other mineral deposits there. Iceland happens to possess a once vital NATO base, which has been in mothballs since 2006, and the Russians may be eyeing that as well.

Last month's example was the Russian fleet's planned visit to Venezuela. And no, I'm not a Russophobe. I also worry about how high oil prices have complicated US national security on other fronts. On the other hand, Vladimir Putin has been playing a new form of brinksmanship with the West, not with nuclear weapons, but other sources of national power and leverage. The big pile of petrodollars makes it easier to afford risky, confrontational foreign policy ventures, such as the recent war with Georgia.