Blogging Nagl - Whose Vote Counts? Posted by Michael Cohen

One of the arguments that you hear from many COIN-advocates about the need for the US military to devise counter-insurgency expertise is that this is the future of military conflict. Even though counter-insurgency is not necessarily in the American military's comparative advantage; even though there is limited political will for long-term counter-insurgency operations we need to prepare because as John Nagl puts it in this month's Washington Quarterly "the enemy gets a vote."

It would certainly be preferable if the U.S. military could simply focus on what it does best, ignore other contingencies, and dictate the terms of every engagement. Unfortunately, that world does not exist.

. . . The history of the past sixty years demonstrates that we will not be able to dictate when, where, and how wars are fought. Doing more of what the U.S. military ‘‘does best’’ is not the answer to all of the challenges that will be forced upon us.

Well sure that is true, but the US government gets a much bigger vote; and how we use our military should be determined by what America's civilian leaders determine is in the country's interests. 

The COIN-danistas deterministic notion of future military conflict is particularly hard to reconcile with Nagl's later point that "U.S. conventional military capabilities still qualitatively outstrip those of potential adversaries to a significant degree. Such capabilities are too costly and infrastructure-intensive for most countries to develop, purchase, or field. Instead of playing the U.S. game, current and potential enemies have turned to asymmetric approaches designed to neutralize our strengths and exploit our relative weaknesses."

Well wait a minute here - if no country can qualitatively match the United States and if our enemies only approach for confronting the United States is through asymmetric approaches then wouldn't this suggest that the United States has a rather fulsome capability to decide when, where and how to fight wars?

Take Afghanistan, for example. We were attacked on September 11th and rightly saw the necessity of a military response. Now there were many specific ways we could have responded; a large military footprint (which would have been prohibitively difficult and expensive both in money and lives) or a combination of air power, special forces and the use of local militias.  Indeed, we were precisely capable of determining, as a country, how we fought Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And there was almost no chance that we wouldn't be successful in dislodging the Taliban from power and degrading Al Qaeda's capabilities.

In Iraq, there were many opportunities for how to deal with Saddam Hussein - diplomacy, a stronger sanctions regime, air power and finally invasion and occupation. We of course chose the worst possible option, but the point is that Saddam didn't get a vote at all. How we responded was a decision completely at our disposal.  Finally, consider the Balkans. There was a widely held view that Serbian aggression in Bosnia and later Kosovo represented a threat to our regional interests there. But the United States didn't engage militarily until 1995 and we chose to utilize our air power backed by diplomacy. We used our own determination of our interests and capabilities to decide how we intervened there.

The simple fact is that the United States has an enormous ability to determine precisely where it fights wars, when it fights them and how it engages the enemy. It is perhaps America's greatest comparative advantage as a military power.  Indeed, it is deeply ironic to consider that we are, by and far, the world's most powerful country, uniquely capable of shaping world events - yet we act as though our behavior on the international stage is crucially shaped by the actions of others. Perhaps the best example of this was the Bush Administration's constant reminder that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda wanted to set up a caliphate across the MIddle East.

So what?

Our actions need not be shaped by the rantings of sociopath, but by a cool and calculated determination of the threats we face and the best means of confronting them. If the civilian leadership determines, as it did after the Vietnam War, that the US should avoid long-drawn out engagements with unclear political goals and a not easily defined exit strategy than we have the power to execute on that policy.  If they decide we simply shouldn't fight counter-insurgencies and use our military for nation building then, we as a country, are more than able to adopt that approach.

As this wonderful movie clip from my youth reminds us, sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

In the end, perhaps Nagl is right that our enemies get a vote. But the United States gets a veto.

NSN Daily Update 5/1/2009 Posted by The National Security Network

See today's complete daily update here.

What We’re Reading

Heavy fighting continues for a third day in Buner province as Pakistani troops try to oust Taliban forces. Spencer Ackerman looks at a Fox report stating that Gen. Petraeus is telling “people privately that the next two weeks are a test of the Zardari government’s survivability.”

European May Day rallies, a traditional workers’ holiday/protest day, are expected to be larger than usual this year due to the economic crisis.

Al Qaeda agent Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri pled guilty to conspiracy in federal court. AG Eric Holder emphasized that this shows “what we can achieve when we have faith in our criminal justice system and are unwavering in our commitment to the values upon which this nation was founded and the rule of law.”

Commentary of the Day

Richard N. Hass argues against prosecuting the government officials who wrote the torture memos.

After Britain ended combat operations in Iraq, David Blair looks at whether life for Iraqis has improved in Basra.

Laurence Gostin examines how the WHO and the CDC are trying to fight the swine flu pandemic without the appropriate resources and authorities.

Blogging Nagl - The Failed States Myth Posted by Michael Cohen

John Nagl and Brian Burton have a new piece in the Washington Quarterly arguing that the military must improve its ability to wage counter-insurgency. As regular readers of DA are well aware, I don't see eye to eye with this view. Over the next week I'm going to blog a bit on the article and highlight some areas of disagreement and agreement.

One of the more routine assertions of the COIN-danistas is the notion that the US is not only fighting a long war with Al Qaeda, but is facing a future of responding to the challenge of failed and failing states, which represent the locus of future US security threats.  Now, as I have written before here I think the very notion of a long war with Al Qaeda and more specifically jihadist terror groups is terribly misguided. Not all jihadists are necessarily a direct threat to our national interests and the response to every homegrown jihadist movement is not always via our military. This sort of shoot-first attitude (which led us down many a wrong path in the Cold War) creates a self-perpetuating cycle that can only help ensure we will indeed fight a Long War, with both real and imaginary enemies.

But beyond these misperceptions there is a deeper one that underpins the counter-insurgency model - the failed state as an incubator of terrorism against the United States. Nagl writes:

Trends like the youth bulge and urbanization in underdeveloped states and the proliferation of weapons and advanced technologies point to a future dominated by chaotic local insecurity and ‘‘non-traditional conflict’’ waged by non-state actors rather than confrontations between the armies and navies of nation-states.

This likely future of persistent low-intensity conflict around the globe suggests that U.S. interests are at risk not just from rising peer competitors but also from what has been called a ‘‘global security capacity deficit.’’ Gates recently warned that ‘‘the most likely catastrophic threats to our homeland, for example, an American city poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states.’’ As a result, the U.S. military is more likely to be called upon to conduct counterinsurgencies, intervene in civil strife and humanitarian crises, and rebuild nations than to fight mirror-image conventional forces.

Now I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that non-state actors represent a serious (perhaps the most serious) threat to the United States. But as for the popular notion that catastrophic threats to our homeland will emanate from failing states well I'm not sure the evidence is there. As Stewart Patrick points out in this excellent Washington Quarterly piece from 2006:

Policymakers and experts have presumed a blanket connection between weak governance and transnational threats and have begun to implement policy responses accordingly. Yet, they have rarely distinguished among categories of weak and failing states or asked whether (and how) certain types of developing countries are associated with particular threats. Too often, it appears that the entire range of Western policies is animated by anecdotal evidence or isolated examples, such as Al Qaeda’s operations in Afghanistan or cocaine trafficking in Colombia. The risk in this approach is that the United States will squander energy and resources in a diffuse, unfocused effort to attack state weakness wherever it arises, without appropriate attention to setting priorities and tailoring responses to poor governance and its specific, attendant spillovers.

Some weak states have incubated global threats - obviously Afghanistan and Pakistan comes to mind. Others are responsible for regional instability (Somalia, Congo, Lebanon and North Korea). But the majority of failed states represent very little threat to America and to address Gates's argument more directly, they are highly unlikely to be the source of a terrorist attack (particularly one involving WMD) against the United States (for example, Haiti, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Chad, Cote d'Ivorie, Burma, Uganda, Guinea, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc).

Indeed many of the threats we confront today come states that would hardly be considered failed or failing. Right now we are dealing with a possible pandemic and bloody drug war from a non-failed state next door (Mexico); the pot, cocaine and heroin that kills thousands and leads to crime in America comes from places like Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and even Canada. The 9/11 hijackers were trained in Afghanistan, but resided in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and other potential jihadists find support in Western Europe.

And Tuesday's excellent New York Times article on cybersecurity bears noting as well. As the article makes clear many of these attacks are coming not from failed states, but instead from places like China and Russia - and not necessarily from the government. In case you don't think is a serious threat consider the words of former direction of National Intelligence Mike McConnell who "argued that if a single large American bank were successfully attacked 'it would have an order-of-magnitude greater impact on the global economy' than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." McConnell also warned that “the ability to threaten the U.S. money supply is the equivalent of today’s nuclear weapon.”

Considering the multi-varied types of threats confronting the US, it makes the notion of a military response to the phenomenon of failing states that much more of a head-scratcher. Nagl argues that the U.S. military will "be called upon to conduct counterinsurgencies, intervene in civil strife and humanitarian crises, and rebuild nations than." First of all it is hardly clear from the COIN experience of Iraq that such a course of action would even be effective, but beyond Pakistan and possibly Afghanistan how would a military/nation-building response in the vast majority of failed states be in America's interest? Nagl notes that "Insurgency is a classic strategy of the weak, and it has been successful in case after case when the stronger power tried to combat it with sheer military might. After witnessing the United States struggle in Afghanistan and Iraq, both state and non-state actors are likely to adopt a variety of insurgent methods to try to keep the U.S. military off balance." Now Nagl uses this argument to dismiss a too great focus on conventional warfare. But to my mind his argument is just a strong a case against counter-insurgency. If non-state actors view insurgency as an opportunity to bloody the nose of the US military (a goal that OBL was seeking pre 9/11) why would the US play directly into their hands?

Nagl also relies on a very selective history to make his case for a future of failed state intervention:

Despite protestations of prominent foreign policy elites that the United States ‘‘doesn’t have a dog’’ in many of the sub-state fights going on around the globe, U.S. forces have been sent to intervene in strategic backwaters like the Balkans and Somalia in the recent past, and there have been demands from within and without for the United States to do even more in places like Darfur and Rwanda. Those pressures will only grow in a globalized world in which local problems increasingly do not stay local.

This is highly misleading. The experience of the US military in Somalia was a disaster and conveniently ignored is the fact that this intervention -- where we sent ground troops and tried nascent nation-building -- was stunningly unsuccessful. As for the Balkans, the United States did not intervene with ground troops (peacekeepers) in Bosnia or Kosovo until only after a peace agreement/cease fire had been reached in both locales - and it was not our military that did nation building in either country, it was the United Nations and other civilian agencies. And while Nagl is right that the demands to intervene militarily in places like Darfur and Rwanda have grown, doesn't it tell us something that such demands have gone unmet? It is hardly accidental that the United States did not send ground troops into kinetic environments as nation builders in each of these situations.

Failed and weak states represent areas of potential threat to the US, but Nagl's response - counter-insurgency and nation-building -- is not only political realistic it makes little sense from either a strategic or tactical perspective. Above all, it is a disproportionate response to what are, for the most part, not vital threats to the United States.

Failed or failing states represent a serious challenge to the global system. They can be breeding grounds for disease, conduit points for criminal networks, sources of regional instability even, in rare cases, home to terrorist groups. But it's crucial to recognize that failed states generally demand humanitarian or development-oriented responses rather than military responses. And in the case of some failed states sometimes the best policy is one of containment (Somalia is one example that comes to mind). But when we start thinking that every failed state is a nail that needs to be dealt with by a hammer we are creating a self-perpetuating reality of more and more unnecessary and ill-advised military interventions.

The Conservative Credibility Parade Continues Posted by Adam Blickstein

Conservatives, Dick Cheney and his daughter, and now Condi Rice look at themselves in the mirror and see credible critics and experts of the Obama administration on national security issues, especially on torture, even when they are blatantly complicit governing over the worst era for America's national security in generations. Just in case you were worried that the absurdity department couldn't expand in size, disgraced former FEMA director Michael Brown thought it would be a smart idea to publicly deride the Obama administration's handling of the swine flu outbreak:

BROWN: Well I think there’s one thing they’re legitimately worried about and that is this H1N1 is a new strain we haven’t seen before so we’re not sure how Tamiflu and everything will work against it. Here’s what I really think is going on. I think they want to raise this level because that gives them more attention, it gives them more, you know, more legitimacy, and allows them to get out there and say ‘oh look at us, we’re in control we've got this thing taken care of.’ It legitimizes what they’re doing. We shouldn’t be scaring the public. [...]

Neil, my theory always was after Katrina that the Bush administration and now the Obama administration will do it too. They will come out and they will do everything including the kitchen sink because they don’t want to get caught with their pants down. But what that does is, that’s the same as crying the sky is falling, chicken little. And next time people will be less inclined to believe it. 

The suggested response to this is a heckuva lot easier:

The GOP Can't Quit Michael Bay Posted by Adam Blickstein

So House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner (as in only 20% of Americans agree with his political affiliation Minority) released a new web video today declaring that after 100 days, it's clear that President Obama and the Democrats have made America less safe. Well, before fisking the video itself, let's actually look at what the American people (80% of which don't identify as agreeing with the Republicans ) actually think:

Seventy-two percent of those questioned in the poll released Monday disagree with Cheney's view that some of Obama's actions have put the country at greater risk, with 26 percent agreeing with the former vice president.

Ok, so 80% of America doesn't align with the Republican Party, and 72% of America disagrees with the Republican Party claim Obama has made America less safe. By my calculations, that makes the chance that the video will actually be effective falling somewhere on a scale between the mortality rate of a wolf being raised by Sarah Palin and the likelihood of a post-surgical patient actually receiving his pain medication from a pharmacist named Rush Limbaugh.

And now on to the video itself (I would link to it but you've probably already seen Team America and why give Boehner's video the traffic). Auspicious, haunting music? Check. Zoom in on scary headlines declaring that Obama was wrong to ban torture and is going to unleash terrorists from Guantanamo across America? Check. Grainy pictures of training camps in the mountains featuring terrorists in masks running around with machine guns and climbing over obstacles while declaring jihad on the infidels? Check. Haunting music transitioning into crescendoing violins which get louder and louder as the word "al Qaida" flashes on the screen, followed by photographs of Obama bowing to Saudis, shaking hands with Chavez, burning American flags, a ski-masked man holding rocket launcher, fireball explosions, and then...the still smoldering ruins of the Pentagon on 9/11!?! Check.

It's 2009 and I can only imagine that this original and one of a kind political ad is destined to be looked upon by historians as the definitive moment where the Republican Party was born anew.  I mean, the last Congressional race where the GOP aired a very similar ad featuring auspicious music, terrorists, and 9/11 won the race for Republican candidate Jim Tedisco right? Oh wait, he lost. Just like in 2006 and 2008 when Republicans employed the same Michael Bay ad strategy across the country and still managed to get destroyed. Seems like the only thing this is a winning strategy for is making sure that 20% eventually become 2% sometime in the near future.

So House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner (as in only 20% of Americans agree with his political affiliation Minority) released a new web video today declaring that after 100 days, it's clear that President Obama and the Democrats have made America less safe. Well, before fisking the video itself, let's actually look at what the American people (80% of which don't identify as agreeing with the Republicans ) actually think:

Seventy-two percent of those questioned in the poll released Monday disagree with Cheney's view that some of Obama's actions have put the country at greater risk, with 26 percent agreeing with the former vice president.

Ok, so 80% of America doesn't align with the Republican Party, and 72% of America disagrees with the Republican Party claim Obama has made America less safe. By my calculations, that makes the chance that the video will actually be effective falling somewhere on a scale between the mortality rate of a wolf being raised by Sarah Palin and the likelihood of a post-surgical patient actually receiving his pain medication from a pharmacist named Rush Limbaugh.

And now on to the video itself (I would link to it but you've probably already seen Team America and why give Boehner's video the traffic). Auspicious, haunting music? Check. Zoom in on scary headlines declaring that Obama was wrong to ban torture and is going to unleash terrorists from Guantanamo across America? Check. Grainy pictures of training camps in the mountains featuring terrorists in masks running around with machine guns and climbing over obstacles while declaring jihad on the infidels? Check. Haunting music transitioning into crescendoing violins which get louder and louder as the word "al Qaida" flashes on the screen, followed by photographs of Obama bowing to Saudis, shaking hands with Chavez, burning American flags, a ski-masked man holding rocket launcher, fireball explosions, and then...the still smoldering ruins of the Pentagon on 9/11!?! Check.

It's 2009 and I can only imagine that this original and one of a kind political ad is destined to be looked upon by historians as the definitive moment where the Republican Party was born anew.  I mean, the last Congressional race where the GOP aired a very similar ad featuring auspicious music, terrorists, and 9/11 won the race for Republican candidate Jim Tedisco right? Oh wait, he lost. Just like in 2006 and 2008 when Republicans employed the same Michael Bay ad strategy across the country and still managed to get destroyed. Seems like the only thing this is a winning strategy for is making sure that 20% eventually become 2% sometime in the near future.

NSN Daily Update 4/30/2009 Posted by The National Security Network

See today's complete daily update here.

What We’re Reading

The U.K. ended combat operations in Iraq, handing control over to local forces a month ahead of schedule.  Britain will send an additional 700 troops to Afghanistan, but they must be withdrawn by 2010.

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, an al Qaeda suspect being tried in federal court, may plead guilty to a charge of conspiring with al Qaeda as early as today.

Attorney General Eric J. Holder indicated that European nations are willing to resettle some Guantanamo detainees.

Russia signed a border protection deal with the two Georgian separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Commentary of the Day

Joseph Margulies, co-counsel for Abu Zubaydah, describes Zubaydah’s mental and physical suffering as a result of CIA interrogation tactics, and discusses his status within al Qaeda.

David Ignatius interviewed National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones on how he’s running the NSC and the Administration’s toughest foreign policy challenges.

Julia E. Sweig argues for giving Guantanamo back to Cuba.

100 Days of National Security Budget Priorities Posted by Adam Blickstein

Gordon Adams examines the first 100 days from the perspective of our national security budget and finds that while Obama and Gates have already made some big improvements, such as increasing the foreign policy and assistance budget while reimagining the Defense budget to better reflect the needs of the Pentagon rather than the desires of defense contractors,  work still needs to be done:

In its first 100 days, the Obama administration has had to confront a series of pressing foreign policy and national security issues--North Korean missile launches, a revamping of the war strategy in Afghanistan, the Taliban's continued rise in Pakistan, and, of course, the Iranian nuclear program. As with all new administrations, the issues have come faster than the Obama administration can cope with them. Thus, improvisation has been a major feature of the administration's response--especially with only part of the team in place.

As I've written before, my main concern has always been whether or not the administration is putting in place the budgets, structures, and processes that will allow them to escape the siren song of improvisation and begin to set a course toward longer-term strategic planning for foreign policy and national security.

The first 100 days of the Obama administration have been promising, but to paraphrase Death of a Salesman, 'Attention must [continue to] be paid.'"

Full piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists can be read here.

NSN Daily Update 4/29/2009 Posted by The National Security Network

See today's complete daily update here.

What We’re Reading

Pakistan continues its offensive against the Taliban and claimed to have re-taken a strategic town in Buner province.  The Taliban’s advances prompt adjustments in U.S. strategy.

Afghanistan cancelled public celebrations of a holiday marking victory over the Soviet Union for the first time in sixteen years, likely over security concerns.  The U.S. undertakes an offensive against Afghan poppy cultivation.

Fatah and Hamas ended talks without agreement, but decided to meet one more time to try to reach an accord before May 15.

Cybersecurity experts described U.S. digital defenses as “broken” and “childlike.”

Commentary of the Day

Today is the 100th day of the Obama administration.  Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; Amb. Marc Ginsberg, former U.S. ambassador to Morocco; NSN's own Ilan Goldenberg; VoteVets.org Vice-Chair Brandon Friedman; ; and the New York Times’ 100 Days project react.

The Wall Street Journal acknowledges that Obama’s presidency has heralded a new era abroad, but still says dissent remains and policies have yet to shift substantially.

Tom Friedman explains why President Obama got the release of the torture memos right.

Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. lays out the Pakistani perspective on partnership with the U.S and its strategy against the Taliban.

No "real challenges"? Really? Posted by James Lamond

Over at Shadow Government Steve Biegum says the following:

"The first 100 days? Still too early to say one way or another. A good start on foreign policy but no real challenges yet either. Kind of seems like the easy part has been upfront -- regards, apologies, photo ops, etc."

Hhhmmmm. I have been reading a lot about Obama's first 100 days, from both progressives and conservatives.  There is a lot being said, but everyone pretty much agrees that this president has faced more "real challenges" than anyone could imagine.  I would certainly count the global financial crisis, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Swine Flu, and well everything else going on in Mexico as pretty "real" foreign policy challenges.

And to say that it is too early to tell one way or another well... he has moved to end the war in Iraq; refocused on Afghanistan and Pakistan; lead a global response to the financial crisis; set out a an agenda on nonproliferation; restored America's relationship with Europe; engaged the Muslim world on an unprecedented scale and about 100 other things. 

Another Obama at 100 Days Foreign Policy Piece Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

Over at the Prospect I have my own take on Obama's foreign policy over the first 100 days. As far as I'm concerned he has made four very significant strategic changes.  First, he has put terrorism in its proper place, treating as a major challenge but not one that should override all other priorities.  He has moved nuclear weapons policy way up on the agenda.  He has begun to move around budget priorities to build a military and government for the 21st century.  And he has sought to apply integrated regional approaches instead of looking for silver bullets.