Arms and influence

Man bites feral city

During my days in academia, this sort of conference abstract would have tempted me, just to see what the hell they were talking about:

Contemporary political discourse on armed violence and insecurity has been largely shaped by references to spatial knowledge, simulation, and control: “human terrain”, “urban clutter”, “terrorist sanctuaries”, “failed states”, “core-periphery”. The historical counterpoint to this is to be found in the key role the successive technologies of clock, engine, computer, and network have all played in spatializing the practice of warfare. In this context, what implications do “feral” Third World cities, “rogue” cities organized along non-Western ideas of urban space and infrastructure, and “wild” cities reclaimed by nature, have for the battlespaces of today and tomorrow?

It might turn out to be a brilliant example of original thinking, or an incredibly goofy whackfest. As my professorial friends at Poliblogger and Fruits and Votes can tell you, it's the sort of risk you take in the world of higher education.

Rocket balls

Of course you couldn't resist reading a post with that title. A military contractor is developing a new weapon, "kinetic fireball incendiaries." But, come on, everyone's going to call them rocket balls.

Yikes. How many D6 do you roll if you release rocket balls in a 10' by 10' room?

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.

You're all a bunch of posses

There's an interesting discussion of posse comitatus going on at Armchair Generalist and Lawyers, Guns, and Money. I've been chewing on the following excerpt from AG, and I just don't agree with the conclusion:

Folks, this administration is nearly over. With luck and hope, we won't see a third term of the Bush administration, and perhaps (maybe I'm being overly optimistic) the general public and the Democrats in particular will be better positioned in the future to stop egresses such as those we've seen. Let's not discount the advantages of having active duty military forces augmenting the federal, state, and local emergency responder community. Let's not view our military forces as some kind of Hollywood heavy-handed thugs - they're good people, just like us.

While I take the Constitutional concerns very seriously, there are also eminently practical reasons for keeping the US Army (and the other branches, for that matter) limited to missions outside US borders:

• Overstretching the military's capabilities. The US military has enough to do already. During the inevitable retrenching period to come, the DoD has to focus on increasing readiness and recruitment. We should be asking the military to be better prepared for its core missions, not to be responsible for more missions.
• Overstretching the military's prestige. During the last decade, many Americans have spoken about the military as if they were frighteningly omnicapable. If you want something done right--intelligence gathering, the political side of counterinsurgency, disaster relief--give it to the armed forces. Of course, the US military is extraordinarily skilled at what they do, fighting (or threatening to fight) particular kinds of conflicts. That's why the US public gives the military high marks, which may be at risk if Americans see the armed forces fumbling domestic missions for which they are not trained, equipped, or otherwise prepared.
• Continued erosion of federalism. Jason at AG thinks it's a good idea for the Army to supplement state, county, and city emergency responders. However, how many Americans even know what these lower levels of government can do? For that matter, how many Americans can name their mayor, state representatives, or district attorney? One of the themes of American politics for the next several years will be, "The federal government has its hands full, so what can the other levels of government do?"
• Confused lines of accountability. Another big theme will be accountability, for which we've all grown nostalgic in its absence. Introducing the US Army into situations for which state and local authorities should be accountable (and in operational control, in many cases) only muddies these waters further.
• The transparency of the US military. By necessity, the DoD is secretive with basic details--who's doing what, where they are, how much money is allocated to them--than their partners in domestic projects. One complaint (among many) about the Army Corps of Engineers' role before and after Katrina was the occasional lack of transparency into their organzation. How much worse will it be when you involve other parts of the military that, unlike the ACE, aren't already involved in domestic civil projects?

And, of course, there are all those Constitutional and legal problems, particularly with the weakening of privacy protections, habeas corpus, and other basic principles that Bush and Cheney attacked with a meat cleaver. It's not too hard to imagine scenarios when these concerns become all too real. Should Army units deployed to a major city during a riot have the right to indefinitely detain people? Should troops during a blackout be free to eavesdrop on cell phone conversations for any reason, such as catching looters?  And let's not forget the percentage of the US military that is now privatized: should  posse comitatus exemptions extend to them?

It's wrong to wave aside these concerns with straw man arguments about "Hollywood heavy-handed thugs." We might also look at some of the debates about regulars and militias during our country's early history as something more than quaint and antiquated. Many of the Founding Father's concerns are still valid.

Vulnerable rear areas now safe

Well, whaddaya know. A recent study chaired by four retired American officer finds that gays and lesbians do not hurt cohesion in their units. The rebuttal, according to this Army Times article, consists of the circular argument, "Because we think gays might hurt unit cohesion, we frown upon them serving in the US military, which is a nudge-nudge wink-wink way of saying that discrimination against gays is OK, because it might hurt unit cohesion."

You'd think that someone whose job is to train and lead people to do extraordinarily difficult things, such as advancing under fire, might be able to rise to the challenge of saying, "Knock off the faggot jokes already. The guy you're scared might covet your ass is more likely to save it some day soon."

Have you ever been experienced?

[Before the brouhaha over Wesley Clark's recent comments started, I had planned on posting something about military experience and presidential leadership. I guess it's even more overdue that I thought.]

For the next several months, we're going to hear a lot of debate over how much personal military experience matters when making presidential decisions about foreign policy and national security. Already, it's clear that the typical discussion in the mainstream media makes a lot of incorrect assumptions, so I thought I'd add some perspective.

Certainly, being in combat does teach you important lessons. For example, every infantryman learns quickly exactly how boring the time leading up to a battle can be, and how terrifying it is when it starts. The average ground-pounder also sees how confusing battle can be. The unluck soldiers also learn how quickly a battle can unravel because of bad information, poor training, or weak leadership.

Leaving aside any existential lessons about life and death, do you really learn anything that is relevant to the job of President of the United States? Yes, to a limited degree. You certainly get an appreciation for how difficult the "management of violence" is. The obvious conclusion is to be conservative in your expectations of what soldiers can do, when chance and violence intersect.

Military experience provides lessons about the means of warfare. It doesn't necessarily teach you anything useful about its ends. There are exceptions. Soldiers who have been stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan may have learned something about how counterinsurgency  is the ultimate expression of the adage, "All politics is local." Someone stationed at NATO headquarters may absorb by osmosis many of the important dynamics of alliance politics. However, these are hardly all the experiences you might wish someone to have before becoming the commander-in-chief.

In fact, many people go through their military careers being dumb about warfare. Here are a few quick examples from the American military experience:

• Mark Clark, the general whose unimaginative, prickly leadership style helped turn the Italian campaign in a slow, bloody crawl up the peninsula.
• William Westmoreland, who vainly tried to treat the Vietnam War as the sort of conflict Americans preferred to fight, instead of the type it really was.
• George McClellan, who had bursts of inspiration at the theater level of strategy, only to fumble these plans when handling the operational and tactical specifics.
• John C.H. Lee, who as the general responsible for supply and logistics in the European theater of WWII, whose laxity and ineptitide almost single-handedly set the war effort back several months (and many thousands of lives).

And we're just getting started with the generals. If you keep going down the chain of command, you'll find countless officers and enlisted men who "saw the elephant" but didn't understand what they were seeing.

While you might prefer your presidential candidates to have served in the military, service is no guarantee of good leadership. For example, while many historians have overlooked Grant's virtues as a general, there's little disagreement that he was a mediocre president.

We also have to be careful not to confuse gratitude with praise. We may be grateful that someone served in the US military. That is not the same as saying that they were good at the military profession, or that they will excel in a different role related to the waging of war.

A poem for warriors

I have a big pile of writing to do for work, so I might not get to posting much today. Therefore, I'll give you this great live video of Steve Earle performing "Warrior." It lacks the electric guitar of the studio version, but it loses none of its emotional punch. In fact, the quieter approach has its own advantages.

A bad week for the USAF

On top of the resignations of the Air Force Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force, here's a video of a recent B-2 crash.

General outrage

At first, I was skeptical about Glenn Greenwald's post describing the "general in your pocket" controversy. If you want to get people to feel outraged, focus on Iraq, not Guantanamo Bay. The "independent" retired military commentariat that wasn't so independent was giving its thumbs up to a great deal more destruction in Iraq than Guantanamo Bay. Plus, Americans die in Iraq, but not on the tip of Cuba.

(I really hate having to make these sorts of comparisons at all. Which unjustified, self-destructive policy is worse? Anyway, onwards.)

However, Greenwald's target seems to be the media more than the generals themselves. Therefore, the willingness to swallow what the retired officers were saying about Guantanamo Bay is no worse or better than any of their claims about Iraq or Afghanistan. It's the gullibility and cowardice of the media that's the real topic of Greenwald's post.

I'll add one tiny detail to Greenwald's already detailed analysis: you'll note that, in spite of watching only one interrogation, Shepperd implies that he observed multiple interrogations.

Small is beautiful...but still small

For years, I've been skeptical about the preponderance of "big ticket items" in the US military budget, such as carriers and main battle tanks. Sure, the United States needs some of them...But how many, really? Especially when they contributed very little to the "little wars" the US was actually fighting? With the end of the Cold War, the justification collapsed even further.

Still, there are limits. William Lind cross the line in this recent post (and thanks to The Strategist for the pointer). In the 1990s, the "peace dividend" sparked a discussion about shrinking the military budget. Now, the catalyst is the ailments of the American economy. Lind's recommends grand strategic adjustments to this new situation:

First, adopt a defensive rather than an offensive grand strategy. America followed a defensive grand strategy through most of her history. We only went to war if someone attacked us. That defensive grand strategy kept defense costs down and allowed our economy to prosper. We do not have to be party to every quarrel in the world.

Unfortunately, the days of "we'll keep the sword sheathed unless we're attacked" are long over...If they ever existed in the first place. I'll assume for the moment that Lind is describing the United States before Pearl Harbor--before WWII made Americans into energetic internationalists.

The pre-WWII United States was hardly pacific. The embargo on Japan that triggered the Pearl Harbor raid might not have been a military action, but it was hardly isolationist. The US objected to Japanese imperialism in China and Korea--hardly a policy based strictly on direct threats to the United States. In fact, it was a preface of American internationalism to come. The United States was worried about markets and resources in East Asia; the "special relationship" made it easier for the United States to respond to Japanese moves against these markets and resources.

Decades earlier, the United States had sent expeditionary forces to China. During the Boxer Rebellion, the United States fought alongside Europeans and Japanese to maintain their collective grip on China. And China was hardly the only place where the United States was willing to send its armed forces. While Americans might not have been part of the race for Africa, they did defend their great power supremacy in the Western Hemisphere from both external and internal threats. Nicaragua, Haiti, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Panama...While these might not have been major wars, they were hardly defensive.

Therefore, WWII wasn't the first time that Americans were willing to use force to defend interests outside the territorial United States. American isolationism slowed down the grand strategic logic that led countries like Britain to see their interests threatened in every corner of the world (if we're worried about India, we have to be worried about Afghanistan...). However, the pull persisted, in spite of recessions and depressions.

Second, scrap virtually all the big ticket weapons programs such as new fighter-bombers, more Aegis ships, and the Army’s Rube Goldbergian Future Combat System. They are irrelevant to where war is going.

No argument here, as long as there's an actual review, not a stampede. The US still needs to project power in a lot of places, if not everywhere. If some new weapons systems or upgrades to existing ones can help, let's still pursue them.

Third, as we cut, preserve combat units. That means, above all, Army and Marine Corps infantry battalions. Cut the vast superstructure above those battalions, but keep the battalions. Infantry battalions are what we need most for Fourth Generation wars, which we should do our utmost to avoid but which we will sometimes be drawn into, even with a defensive grand strategy.

This may be the bitterest pill of all for the services to swallow. The Air Force and Navy would have to accept the primacy of ground forces. The Army would have to reform its structure and culture even further from the centrality of the divisional organization. Giving up a new weapons might be annoying; changing the way the Army operates will be agonizing.

In the Navy, keep the submarines. Submarines are today’s and tomorrow’s capital ships, and geography dictates we must remain a maritime power. Keep the carriers, too, though there is little need to build more of them. Carriers are big, empty boxes, which can carry many things besides aircraft. Mothball most of the cruisers and destroyers. Build lots of small, cheap ships useful for controlling coastal and inland waters, and create strategically mobile and sustainable “packages” of such ships. Being able to control waters around and within stateless regions can be important in 4GW.

Now we're in the outskirts of Cloud Cuckoo-land. Submarines can't handle all the missions that missile-armed surface ships or carrier-based aircraft perform. Sure, we might be fighting more little wars than big ones, but we do need, on occasion, to fight something like Operation DESERT STORM, threaten to use air and missile strikes to achieve foreign policy goals. Plus, a littoral navy that Lind is describing can't deploy across the globe--they're littoral.

I'm all for reducing the overall size of the Navy, but a Navy of submarines and modernized PT boats couldn't handle all the critical missions.

Fighter-bombers are largely useless in Fourth Generation wars, where their main role is to create collateral damage that benefits our enemies. Keep the air transport squadrons and the A-10s, and move them all to the Air National Guard, which flies and maintains aircraft as well as or better than the regular Air Force at a fraction of the cost. Reduce the regular Air Force to strategic nuclear forces and a training base.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to downtown Cloud Cuckoo-Land. Not every war the United States will fight will be a counterinsurgency war. People killed by American bombs in a conventional war might still appear on the evening news, often as a tool of "fourth generation war" used against us. But is this an argument for not fighting conventional wars, in which bombers and fighter-bombers play an important role?

If I have to shoot down enemy fighters, or deliver a "bunker-busting" payload against a highly reinforced enemy HQ, I'd rather not depend on A-10s, thank you. And if we're giving the A-10s to someone, why not the Army, to improve close air support coordination and better protect their budget?

There's a lot of merit in some of Lind's recommendations, and we've had decades of inattention to the real needs of fighting wars that were smaller and wholly unlike the hypothetical NATO/Warsaw Pact clash over Central Europe. However, you can go too far in the other direction.