Simulated Laughter

Moving On

2007-11-22T16:15:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Zenpundit's example, I'm moving to a new blog. Update your blogrolls and RSS feeds to

http://rethinkingsecurity.typepad.com

I'm going to leave Simulated Laughter open for posterity's sake. I have a lot of positive memories about the people I've met through this blog and the growth in my own thinking that it helped facilitate.

Have a happy thanksgiving!

UPDATE: RSS/XML subscription problems have been fixed.

Resilience

2007-11-13T18:34:00.000-08:00

I have a new piece up at the Huffington Post looking at the Navy's new strategy. I also try to introduce--in detail--my interpretation of the strategic concept of resilience. Thanks to John Robb, Shane Deichman, and Steve DeAngelis for the inspiration for this one.

On Remembering

2007-11-11T15:04:00.000-08:00

I don't have much I can add to any of the wonderful tributes I've read so far.

Security Dilemmas

2007-11-11T13:24:00.000-08:00

Younghusband of Coming Anarchy defends Robert D. Kaplan's focus on naval arms buildup in China:

"In the post-cold war the first new influential thinking that came out was net-centric warfare, developed by an admiral. The army guys read up on that stuff and loved it, and it is reflected in the RMA literature filled with visions of “the network” and “total battle space awareness.” Well, that platform-based stuff doesn’t translate too well on the ground. There are important functional differences between air and sea operations and ground operations. Some theorists tried to modify NCW to fit the ground war (NEOps, ADO etc.) but others simply abandoned it. Now the pendulum has swung the other way. All the current conceptual work is in xGW, COIN , UW etc. None of this fits the platform-based services particularly, but they are still reading the stuff. With all the attention focused on the ground fighters, there is a lack of visionary thinking for the navy. ...

So, before you go “spanking” old Kap over his article, remember this: How many “experts” do we have on Afghanistan, Iraq and COIN popping out of the woodwork now? Academic journals on security are jam-packed full of articles on that stuff. Naval arms races in northeast Asia on the other hand? There may be lots from the mid-90s when we were preparing for “war with Japan” and a fight over Taiwan, but since then it has dropped out of the headlines. Unfortunately the situation there has yet to be defused. There is lots of build-up still happening but it is a page 10 story. That is the kind of stuff that Kap has made a career drawing attention to. Remember the Balkans? In about 10 years when there is a boomer war going on in the Pacific, and DOD only has a shiny new COIN manual to turn to, the US president will be calling Kap to the White House once again for a chat."

That would be rather amusing to imagine--Kaplan arriving to essentially say "I told you so" to the President and the Secretary of Defense. Now, putting aside that image, the dispute over Kaplan's article illustrates, in part, a large problem. As Younghusband notes, North American seucurity thinking is, in a large part, a search for the "next big thing." Before counterinsurgency, it was network-centric warfare, and before that it was AirLand battle, etc. What makes John Boyd exceptional is not the relevance of his theories to Iraq or Afghanistan. It is that he presents a totalizing vision of human conflict that is applicable across the board, rather than a specialized doctrine suited to a particular service of conflict.

While I agree with Younghusband that it is foolish to write off the emerging East Asian naval security situation, I also don't have the fear, as some do, that the current theoretical focus in American security thinking on unconventional conflict will lead to degraded conventional ability. As Air War College professor Jeffrey Record notes, counterinsurgency has never been really been regarded as central to American military thinking. True, the United States has been involved in COIN operations both at home and abroad well before Vietnam, but it was always regarded as a kind of specialist sideshow. That is why it was so easy for Army to largely erase COIN from their institutional memory after Vietnam.

Pakistan's Broken Army/Dinner with Iraqi Gov't

2007-11-11T12:34:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf cited for his revoking of civil liberties was the danger posed by Islamic extremists. While this is obviously self-serving cover for his own desire to hold onto power, Pakistan's pathetic failure against the Taliban/Al Qaeda cannot be ignored. We have indulged an unrealistic expectation that their military forces could be effective against the Taliban. Part of the problem is the condition of Pakistan's army.

At present, Pakistan's military forces are not capable of counterinsurgency. They have been trained for years for a conventional engagement with India and regard rural counterinsurgency with disdain. Additionally, some in the Pakistani high command see countering the Taliban as a strategic mistake, given the Taliban's historic role of countering Indian influence in Afghanistan.
Pakistani troops drawn from the border regions won't fight against their neighbors
Insurgents have succeeded in defeating the army on the moral/mental level. High casualties, kidnappings of soldiers, the shock of coming under terror attack, as well as heavy operational commitments (Pakistani equivalent of "stop-loss") have resulted in record numbers of desertions and surrender to insurgents.
Musharraf spends US military aid on building up conventional forces, not counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism.
Continuing support in some sectors of the Pakistani government for the Taliban militants the Pakistani government largely created to give them "strategic depth" in Afghanistan.
Lack of public support in the tribal regions for the Pakistani forces, due to incipient separatism and the Pakistani government's alternating policies of neglect/abuse of tribal territories.

Also, had dinner with some members of the Iraqi government on Friday night. Situation was still dire for them, but all in all a wonderful night. State Department translator (an Iraqi exile) did a great job.

Lions for Lambs Review

2007-11-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

Don't believe the bad reviews, Lions for Lambs is actually a very good movie. It certainly had flaws--may have been overly talky in some areas and parts of it stretched on too long, but it's certainly a very engaging drama. Tom Cruise also pulls off a remarkable performance as a senator attempting to grease his way to the White House through a new military strategy in Afghanistan. Although one would expect a cartoonishly villainous conservative in a Robert Redford-directed film, Cruise's senator is multidimensional, persuasive, and the most developed and human character in the film. Although he is meant to stand in for Bush/Dick Cheney, he surpasses them greatly.

The actual strategy Cruise's character, Senator Jasper Irving, pushes for is interesting. It reads like the Petraeus plan on steroids--"forward operating points" of a few men deployed on high mountain ridges to deny the Taliban the high ground. Of course, things do not go as planned, and Irving in any case makes a crucial error. Not only does his plan lack the numbers for the kind of blockhouse/isolation strategy (as old as counterinsurgency itself) to succeed, but he misjudges the enemy's center of gravity. Controlling a few geographic points is not the objective, controlling the people is. This is reflected in his debate with Meryl Streep's journalist character when Irving dismisses the utility of "building clinics" in favor of a pure annihilation of the insurgents and their Iranian patron.

Amusingly enough, the "California University" where Robert Redford's character teaches is a thinly disguised Pitzer College.

The Guns of Baghdad

2007-11-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

New article at DNI analyzing Iraqi snipers as strategic weapons. The title refers to the Clash song--one of my favorite punk songs.

Speaking of DNI, this Zenpundit post is good an overview of Fabius Maximus' increasingly prolific body of work.

UPDATE:

On an unrelated note, take part in this survey. Help Dan tdaxp (and scientific inquiry) at the same time!

Sideshow in the Desert

2007-10-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

I've got a new piece up at DNI about the Israeli airstrike on Syria. My attempt with this is to look at it from the perspective of Israeli security.

UDPATE:

Dan Tdaxp comments:

Isreal is a small country surrounded by hostile regimes. The only way such a state can continue to exist is if her neighbors distrust her neighbors more than they distrust her. (The United Arab Republic was so dangerous because it suggested that the Arabs would put aside their mutual animosity to finally destroy Israel.) The break-up of the Palestinian Authority into Fatah and Hamas controlled territory is a wonderful improvement for Israel, because it creates a revolutionary state whose main objective is the overthrow of her other neighbors. Yet A.E. considers such progress "counter-productive."

This is based on the assumption that Hamas poses a threat to Israel's neighbors. It doesn't. Unlike Al Qaeda, which seeks the overthrow of all "apostate regimes," Hamas desires to strike at Israel itself. Even if it wanted to, it's hard to see how it could do so given that it has little reach outside of Israel. Despite Iran's patronage of Hamas, its identity rests as an essentially Palestinian guerrilla group. Hezbollah, on the other hand, has operated outside of Lebanon as far as South America.

Dan professes to be sometimes "puzzled" by my analysis. This is natural, as we approach the issue from strikingly different theoretical and political places. However, I feel that such a clash of views is ultimately beneficial towards both of us improving in our own thinking.

Of Interest

2007-10-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

-Enjoying Shloky's new blog, Naxalite Rage. We had a conversation earlier about publishing the results of his research in a political magazine, but this seems like a much better format (especially given the subject matter).

-Air Force takes the lead in cyber-warfare. Looking to do a longer article on this once I read the manual referred to in the article.

-Egypt's security dilemmas.

-Soob takes a skeptical look at Hillary Clinton's Iraq withdrawal plan. He also issues a warning against "buying a sexy dress" for Helen Thomas and Oscar De La Hoya.

Hayden and COIN Pt. II

2007-10-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

Sarah Sewell, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, was one of the academics attacked in Tom Hayden's anti-counterinsurgency article in The Nation. She and several of her colleagues respond in the Harvard Crimson:

“The Carr Center’s mission is to make human rights principles central to the formulation of public policy,” Sewall said. “Civilian protection in war is premised on core human rights and has become a cornerstone of international humanitarian law. Helping to ensure that international humanitarian law is fully embraced in military doctrine will contribute to human rights protection.”

In recent articles for the Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle, Sewall highlighted the lack of instruction given to U.S. troops when dealing with civilians.

She said she hopes this new manual will fill this educational gap in the soldiers’ training.

As to Hayden’s concerns that “counter-insurgency, being based on deception, shadow warfare and propaganda, runs counter to the historic freedom of university life,” Sewall said that, as a knowledgeable outsider, it was her role to help educate the military about humanitarian concerns.

“Academia has a unique responsibility and opportunity to apply its research and insights to public policy challenges,” Sewall said.

Sewall’s colleague, Carr Center Faculty Affiliate Jonathan Moore, echoed the sentiment about whether a university should be able to advise the military, calling Hayden’s argument “worse than nonsense.”

“If the scholarship is serious and thorough and knowledgeable, or at least has a base of knowledge that it attempts to expand,” Moore said, “it should not restrict itself by a narrow interpretation of the mandate of the organization it stems from. You do not let an ideology distort your scholarly efforts.”

Nina M. Catalano ’09, co-president of the Harvard College Human Rights Advocates, wrote in an e-mail from Bogota, Colombia that the Carr Center and similar institutions cannot afford to remain isolated from important world events.

“The human rights movement did not win a place on the global stage just by engaging other like-minded organizations,” Catalano wrote. “While Hayden fears the Carr Center may be succumbing to what he dramatically calls ‘the Pentagon occupation of the academic mind,’ he offers no alternate, ‘clean’ opportunity for human rights defenders to influence wartime policy.”

Though she said her organization has not taken an active stand against the war in Iraq, Catalano wrote that, “one need not accept the validity of war as a political option or the premises of the current war to appreciate the desperate need for strong legal and moral guidelines for warfare.”

Sewall said she thought it was absurd for people to think that collaborating with the military went against the Carr Center’s mission.

“How can you hope to change the conduct of war without engaging those who practice it?” Sewall said. “We should all hope to live in a world without war, but there are many steps we can take to minimize war’s horror along the way.

Although this is an reasonable defense, it's also wishy-washy. Hayden attacked counterinsurgency itself as an inherent evil, and her "changing the system from the inside" answer does not rebut that. It almost seems that Sewell is afraid of defending the military doctrine she (among others) helped create.

Adrian of Politics and Soccer's comment on this sums up the problems with Hayden's thinking:

Sounds like Hayden's reasoning against COIN is a democratic one based on a few assumptions:

1) that in order to exist or flourish, insurgencies require the support of the population,
2) that support is giving freely, and
3) if a government is in the position where it has to ask for outside assistance in a COIN effort, it probably doesn't deserve to survive anyway.

A tempting argument for those who believe in democracy. However it is wrong because:

1) insurgencies do not require the support of the population to survive or flourish, such as the examples you gave using child soldiers - furthermore, instead of a unified population there can be many divided populations (Shia, Sunni and Christians in Lebanon, Sunnis, Shia, Kurds, Turkmen in Iraq, etc.),
2) even when insurgencies have the cooperation of the population, that population is not necessarily given out of free will,
3) therefore, deserving governments can require outside assistance.

(h/t Duck of Minerva)