The Soup Knife

End of an Era: Petraeus Relinquishes MNF-I

2008-09-17T22:31:00.004-04:00

Yesterday it became official: David Petraeus is no longer the commander of the multinational forces in Iraq. Amidst much valediction, command was transferred to Ray Odierno, the "reeducated" (in the Chinese sense) general who had been serving as Petraeus's deputy.

With Petraeus soon to be CINC of CENTCOM, it seems as good a time as any to take preliminary stock of his time at the face of the war effort. While it is far too early to assess the long-term success or failure of the Petraeus tenure in Baghdad, it is likely that his legacy will be defined by his previous 20 months of service. Barring a major unforseen crisis, Petraeus's time at CENTCOM will be overshadowed by his efforts in Iraq. Given that, where will Petraeus rank in the pantheon of US generals?

Since World War Two, there have been two distinct sets of well-known general officers - those that interject themselves into politics, and those who abstain. The former group includes Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, Maxwell Taylor, and Colin Powell. All of these men became major public figures outside of military circles. The purist camp consists of men like Omar Bradley, Chester Nimitz, William Halsey, Matthew Ridgway, and William Westmoreland, men who dealt with the impact of politics on their profession yet refrained from becoming political figures themselves. Since the Vietnam War, though, the general ranks have become so politicized that flag officers have only appeared in the public eye as politically-oriented figures. Colin Powell's career (and the less significant impact of officers like Wesley Clark) exemplifies this trend. By comparison, purist generals such as Norman Schwarzkopf and Anthony Zinni (at least before retirement) have had considerably less staying power.

It is ironic, then, that David Petraeus would gain ascendancy during the partisan and intensely political Bush Administration. As a field commander, Petraeus has dominated public attention in a way not seen since Westmoreland, although the Petraeus philosophy owes much more to Westmoreland's less high profile successor, Creighton Abrams. Throughout his tenure at MNF-I, Petraeus managed to retain his credibility and avoid being tarred as a Bush lackey. Despite intense pressure at all sides, Petraeus remained first and foremost a commander and Army leader. He is neither a purist nor a political creature but a general mindful of the political context in which he operates. It is a trait that other flag officers would do well to emulate.

It will be interesting to watch the next and perhaps last phase of Petraeus's career. CENTCOM has proven to be a difficult assignment since its creation: Franks and Abizaid were undone by Iraq, the command of Schwarzkopf has lost much of its luster since 1991, and Admiral Fallon found himself run out of town. Petraeus will need every ounce of his political savvy to keep his footing and not become a victim of Washington or Pentagon politics. Unless Petraeus decides to join the civilian side of the Executive Branch, this post will likely be his last - but after all of his efforts, it would be only fitting for him to leave on his own terms.

Pakistani Outrage and the Imperative of Sovereign Control

2008-09-16T23:59:00.004-04:00

JCS Chairman Mike Mullen was suddenly dispatched to Pakistan yesterday to deal with the uproar created by news of a US incursion into Pakistani territory. The new Pakistani administration continues to assert its own rights and seems eager to be seen as facing down the US, although military professionals on both sides would probably prefer to keep any chance encounters off the front page. Both Pakistani and international politicians have emphasized the importance of respecting Pakistani sovereignty, which leads us to an interesting gap in international theory.

Can nations reasonably expect the world to accept their sovereignty over areas they cannot actually control? The Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan has never fully submitted to national authority, and has been at blows with federal forces more often than not. This is the standard excuse for the inability to track down and capture key Al Qaeda figures. If internal forces do not respect the authority of Islamabad in the NWFP, then why should international law force external actors to respect that authority?

The answer to that question is fairly obvious: to prevent the type of foreign intervention that was demonstrated most recently in Georgia. But Pakistan is a special case, in that it contains a universally acknowledged international threat lodged within its borders. It is difficult to imagine a region more conducive to terrorist concealment than the NWFP, and if Al Qaeda could be dislodged from its stronghold, it would be severely, perhaps fatally weakened as an organization (although it would certainly live on as a source of guidance and inspiration). The unique value of the NWFP as a terrorist redoubt cannot be reproduced, and the incentive for the international community to secure that redoubt is immense. So why does international respect for sovereignty persist in this case?

International Law is yet to confront the reality that the NWFP and Afghanistan do not conform to the Westphalian state system that dictates every other aspect of international relations. The concept of sovereignty is difficult to grasp when that mantle is cast over areas that are de jure autonomous regions and de facto independent polities. It is time to account for actors within these actors that pose a threat, not just to the regime that claims sovereignty over the area or its neighbors, but to the international community as a whole.

[Edit: The US incursions actually took place in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), not the NWFP. I still stand by everything stated above, although FATA is even further from government control than the NWFP]

More LCS Debates

2008-09-16T21:55:00.004-04:00

As the LCS program slogs forward, Information Dissemination continues its coverage by offering fiscal and strategic perspectives on the program's evolution. Much of this, particularly the strategic debate, has been presented before, but these latest posts expand on both the theory of naval strategy in relation to LCS and the true costs of the platforms.

I have relatively little to contribute further to this discussion; I laid out my preferred alternative to LCS a few months back. However, I have noticed that the comparisons between the OHP FFG-7 class and the LCS are growing. This is largely sensible, as the FFG-7 is one of several classes that the LCS will replace, but one important difference is being overlooked. The FFG-7 was intended to operate in low and medium threat environments, but it was also regarded as the more expendable part of a low-high mix of combatants. The strategic and political environment has now changed to the point where American leaders and the public will not tolerate the loss of any vessel, particularly $550 million hulls, unless the US is confronted with a massive act of foreign aggression. The US version of the LCS is not equipped to defend itself against Corbett's "cruisers", and those cruisers are no longer limited to major powers. As it stands now, it is likely that admirals will treat the LCS as a glorified minesweeper and light transport - roles in which it should excel, but a limitation which will undermine the rationale for the program itself. The LCS is not a cruiser, cannot fight like a cruiser, but the loss of one will be considered as serious as the loss of a cruiser. That is a problem, one that noone seems motivated to address.

Boeing puts profits over patriotism

2008-09-11T21:02:00.003-04:00

It's official - the Air Force has caved on the KC-X contract it had awarded this spring. Boeing's congressional cronies came through and now the whole issue will be punted to the next administration. So now, having won the contract through ethical misconduct and lost it through a lack of competitive quality, Boeing will get an incredible third chance at a pot of gold worth a potential $100 billion.

Why this company pretends to be American, I don't know. On a critical contract to address the needs of an often overlooked segment of American military power, Boeing shamelessly played the domestic employment card to have its way. Instead of moving forward to replace a fleet of tankers that were built during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, the Pentagon will start from scratch. Perhaps yesterday's news was inevitable, but it is disappointing nonetheless.

This incident can be traced to an innate distrust of foreign military contractors, but Boeing's actions have shown that domestic contractors are no more concerned with the national interest than their foreign counterparts. More distressingly, the tanker drama has shown the moral bankruptcy of congress on the subject of military reform. The denizens of the Pentagon had the courage to place patriotism over corporate profit, but an unscrupulous legislative branch intervened on behalf of their aerospace buddies. The only question is: how many KC-135s will be eligible for Social Security benefits by the time their replacements are built?

Seven years later, and its business as usual.

(On a somewhat happier note, Saturday Night Live returns this week after a strike-shortened previous season. I want to make a personal plea for Tina Fey's return as Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin. The pairing is simply too perfect to pass up, and we desperately need Fey's dry, acerbic wit. She'll have a field day with a pro-life, pro-gun, pro-hockey mother of five. Bring back Fey! She has been missed.)

Georgia's woes and the wrath of the Daily Telegraph

2008-09-09T21:13:00.005-04:00

By now, a lot of ink has been spilled over the Georgia crisis, but we are just beginning to see the long-term effects of the Russian incursion. The Daily Telegraph unloaded a strongly worded editorial today that offered both a skeptical view of the current negotiations and some sweeping proclamations about the state of world politics:

We should be sceptical that the meeting, in which Mr Sarkozy pressed for a Russian withdrawal from Georgia, will be a lasting success: the last time the French president negotiated with the Russians, he fell victim to Kremlin realpolitik. The Russians ignored the commitment to withdraw, citing technicalities in the agreement.

We should also be concerned, moreover, that we are leaving a vital part of Britain's foreign (and energy security) policy to Mr Sarkozy; he may have many virtues but his foreign policy interests are not necessarily identical to our own.

Who knows what Franco-Russian deals he may be contemplating? From the EU's perspective, these negotiations are less about Georgia and more about seeking to build credibility as an international power broker.

Yet, without an army, navy and airforce, aggressors are never going to take an EU foreign policy seriously; and, while the europhiles would see that as an argument for an EU military arm, that would be a recipe for factionalism.

There will be a temptation, after the inevitable European humiliation, to pass the buck to other supranational institutions such as the G8 and the United Nations. This would be a mistake.

The world has returned to 19th Century-style great power struggles between nation states, uninhibited by international institutions. With a risk that Russian will impose its will on other neighbours such as Ukraine in the future, we cannot rely on impotent organisations to keep the peace.

Instead, it requires politicians here and the United States to wake up to their own national interests and take a tough line against Russian expansionism, which will be discouraged not by soft power but by strength.

Beyond the slightly paranoid fears about French double-dealing, the editorial betrays a conservative belief that Russia's actions have shown the irrelevance of international controls and the ephemeral nature of the post-Cold War cooperative atmosphere. The conviction that Russia cannot be reasoned with or politely diverted from its aims points to a return to Cold War thinking. The thrust of the editorial is that Europe has placed too much faith in its political and economic collective without investing in the hard power resources to rebuff Russia's regional imperialism. In the face of Russia's efforts to reassert its traditional sphere of influence encompassing recalcitrant polities such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Europeans have found themselves over the literal and metaphorical barrel (of oil). Now that Georgia's section of the BTC pipeline is vulnerable to further Russian intervention, Russia's hand is even stronger.

Have we indeed returned to the 19th century? I refuse to believe that the situation is so simple as that. Even if the EU and UN are powerless, Russia's power is entirely dependent on the price of energy and the willingness of multi-nationals to do business with an unstable and corrupt regime. In twenty or thirty years, alternative energy sources might relegate Russia to second-rate status yet again. Until then, we may have to consider a piece of history that the Daily Telegraph did not mention. I'm sure there are a few copies of "Article X" floating around, just waiting to be updated for a xenophobic petro-state.

A "Surface SSK" for the US Navy

2008-06-17T00:16:00.000-04:00

There's no shortage of hand-wringing going on with regards to the future of the US navy. While last year's Maritime Strategy has been accepted as a worthy, if flawed, statement of naval goals for the near future, the Navy's leadership and shipbuilding plans have been savaged by critics.

The greatest source of frustration for many naval bloggers is the failure to develop smaller ships to complement the navy's preponderance in large surface combatants. Perhaps the best articulation of this shortfall was provided by Information Dissemination back in February. The LCS program was supposed to provide a semblance of balance between large combatants and smaller vessels, but spiraling costs and mission controversy have led many to question the feasibility of the LCS concept and search for other ship designs that could work within a more refined US naval strategy.

I agree with most of the criticisms of the LCS. The ships being developed are underarmed, have questionable range, and rely on a modular system that is operationally troublesome and unproven. Significantly, "international" versions of the LCS with additional armament have generated considerable foreign interest, but the heavily modularized US version has been a non-starter in the export market.

There are plenty of good, modern frigate/corvette designs available on the world market, in addition to the international versions of the LCS. I won't spend much time discussing precisely what class of ship the US should adopt or develop, but there is a pressing need for a "utility infielder", capable of deploying with a carrier group and screening the battle force. Something in between 3000 and 6000 tons, with speed comparable to modern cruisers and destroyers (none of this 50 knot fantasy), 16-32 VLS, and the ability to instantly switch roles from AAW to ASuW to ASW. Versatility should emphasized without succumbing to the allure of immature technologies and complicated logistics.

Unfortunately, a utility infielder will be too large and expensive for some scenarios, especially environments with numerous small submarines and fast attack craft. From the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka to the PLAN, navies with diverse origins and interest have embraced the use of small platforms to trouble larger, more precious Western ships (Information Dissemination has dubbed the PLAN philosophy "Streetfighter with submarines"). These threats will likely be predominant for the next 15-20 years, so they merit a purpose-built ship to counter them.

Traditionally, the USN has preferred to hunt submarines with its own SSN fleet. However, , the proliferation of advanced non-nuclear submarines combined with the declining numbers of US submarines places that strategy in doubt. Additional US submarines are needed, but their numbers will never match that of their foreign counterparts. Also, submarines are a poor platform to combat small, fast surface craft. Something else is needed to neutralize the submarine threat while keeping FACs at bay.

A very interesting piece on the internet (and linked by Defense Industry Daily's coverage of the LCS) proposed an alternative to the LCS program. The main thrust of the article was that the modern submarine threat demanded a purpose-built craft that could, with the requisite support, sanitize operational theatres. This Diesel-Electric Corvette would have sharply reduced IR, radar, and acoustic signatures, making it an ideal platform to stalk surface or undersea targets. It would be, in effect, a "Surface SSK".

The original article used the Swedish Visby as a foundation for what an ideal corvette would look like. At this point, we must confront the issue of the corvette's size. For a defensive littoral corvette operating close to home, the Visby is perfectly suitable. However, as noted in a CSBA report on the LCS, the Danish Navy concluded that any ocean-going small craft suitable for expeditionary operations would need to be at least three times the size of the Visby (which is roughly 650 tons). Allowing for modest advances in seakeeping and endurance (and installing lower-speed, efficient engines), that points to a displacement range of 1500 - 2500 tons for any prospective design. Kockums was once working on a "Visby-Plus" with sufficient size; now that Thyssen-Grupp has taken over, it has its own designs. These are just starting points from a ship design standpoint, but they are oriented in the right direction.

How do you counter a ship that can sit off of a coastline, collecting intelligence and monitoring enemy movements, without being successfully targeted? How do you justify the amount of resources needed to hunt down such a ship, when the USN battlewagons are lurking further offshore? The beauty of the Surface SSK is that it is flexible enough to conduct missions beyond sub-hunting with very little in the way of hardware modifications and downtime. They have the potential to become part of twenty-first century gunboat diplomacy, the invisible partners to the 100-ft corvettes and large motherships that are being developed for low-intensity conflicts.

The Meme of Seven

2008-06-16T21:58:00.005-04:00

Galrahn came calling, so here goes:

Here are the rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

5. Present an image of martial discord something more relevant to my blog from whatever period or situation you’d like.

To the facts we go...

1) Like the person who tagged me, I too was voted most likely to succeed in high school, although my personality was certainly not an asset. My cynicism was (and still is) legendary.

2) I briefly achieved local fame as the high school student who aced both college entrance exams (SAT and ACT). Yale still rejected my application, although they accepted a double legacy and a football player from my school (this slight has not been forgiven).

3) I knew the difference between a T-62 MBT and a T-72 by age ten. I finished Samuel Eliot Morrison's history of WW2 naval operations at age eleven.

4) I hail from the same state which produced Abu Muqawama (aka Andrew Exum).

5) Soccer is in my blood. My father was a coach, I played as a youth, and I have been a licensed referee for eight years. I have often thought about getting a coaching license (usually after officiating woefully coached squads). Right now I am obsessively following Euro 2008 and supporting the teams which play with imagination and zeal (mostly Holland and Spain).

6)I write sporadic (and usually unfinished) pieces of fiction and creative non-fiction. I also read a lot of twentieth century American authors, including Joseph Heller, Saul Bellow, Hemingway, and Vonnegut. I can't stand feminist and postmodern literary criticism, and I've written academic papers refuting those perspectives.

7) Although I am politically unaligned, I live in one of the most Republican congressional districts in the country. How Republican, you might ask? When Tennessee finally seceded from the union, my region of the state almost seceded from Tennessee. My district has had four years of Democratic leadership since the Civil War.

And now, the tags...

Armchair Generalist

Westhawk

The Strategist

Blog Them Out of the Stone A ge

Peter Coates

CDR Salamander (who I discovered through Galrahn's frequent references)

Ghosts of Alexander

I couldn't find a topical picture to include, but since this blog owes its existence to the senseless destruction of human life and property, I thought I'd include the picture below. The Palestinian boy being shielded by his father was killed shortly after the picture was taken. It is one of the defining modern images of the Palestinian conflict and a striking metaphor for the masses of humanity trapped between belligerent parties.

SecDef going hunting; adds two pelts to office wall

2008-06-07T19:34:00.005-04:00

By now you know the facts: the top civilian and military officials in the USAF have been axed. There were a lot of potential reasons for head-hunting, but it seems the loose nukes problem was the straw that broke the camel's back:

“Mistakes are not acceptable when shipping and controlling sensitive, classified parts” of the United States’ nuclear arsenal, Mr. Gates said. “Our policy is clear. We will ensure the complete physical control of nuclear weapons, and we will properly handle the associated components at all times. It is a tremendous responsibility, and one we must not, and will never, take lightly.”

Memo to the presidential candidates: Make a pact to support the renomination of Gates regardless of November's results. We can't lose the contribution of a public servant capable of taking on the services and restoring the good name of "civilian control" that Rumsfeld sullied. If Gates can go beyond administrative incompetence and start holding general officers accountable for combat performance, he may go down as the best Secretary of Defense since James Schlesinger, who just happens to heading up the task force investigating the nuclear woes of the USAF.

As for the fallout from yesterday's dismissals, the defense industry is already feeling the pressure. The USAF had played congress and industry against the OSD on several issues, most notably F-22 procurement. With Gates determined to exert some semblance of constitutional control over the Pentagon, the next eight months will be very interesting, starting with the KC-X challenge, which will require a ruling by June 19th. Stay tuned as the USAF tries to adapt to the new command environment while holding out for a more permissive successor administration. I'm sure the Army and Navy will be keeping a weather eye on the horizon as well.

In light of Gates' action, allow me to make one overtly political point. Given the backgrounds of the two presidential political candidates, who is more likely to build upon the Gates tenure? Put another way, who has the experience and standing to confront the generals on their own turf? The Hah-vard boy who relies on the support of effete, anti-defense liberals, or the war veteran who has built his career on combating wasteful spending? I would expect a victorious McCain to appeal to Gates to remain at his current post. I would also expect a victorious Obama to get his clock cleaned should he dare to meddle in the affairs of the E-Ring.

All The Chairman's Men and the Willie Stark Effect

2008-06-02T00:06:00.003-04:00

Galrahn has recently chosen to highlight the visual tragedy of the Chinese earthquake for Information Dissemination. The pictures are certainly worth a look, but what caught my eye was Galrahn's observation that the deaths of schoolchildren continue to generate outrage towards those responsible for school construction. As Galrahn notes, "In many areas, the schools collapsed killing hundreds even when most other buildings nearby did not."

At this point I looked at my bookshelf and found the perfect literary analogy.

All the King's Men is the definitive novel of American politics, partially because of Robert Penn Warren's writing and partially because it resembles the career path of legendary Louisiana governor Huey Long. Huey Long's doppelganger, Willie Stark, rises from anonymity to become the most powerful man in the state. But how did Stark make his first political mark?

As I said, if a man like Willie can be said to live in the world of luck, Dolph Pillsbury and the Sheriff were his luck. They ran it over Willie and got the new schoolhouse built by J.H. Moore. J.H. Moore used the brick out of the kiln owned by the distant relative of Pillsbury. It was just another big box of a schoolhouse with a fire escape at each end. The fire escapes weren't the kind which looks like a silo and which has a corkscrew-shaped chute inside for the kiddies to slide down. They were iron stairs attached to the outside of the building.

There wasn't any fire at the schoolhouse. There was just a fire drill.

About two years after the place was built, it happened. There was a fire drill, and all the kids on the top floor started to use the fire escapes. The first kids to start down on the fire escape on the west end were little kids and and they couldn't get down the steps very fast. Right after them came a batch of big kids, seventh and eighth graders. Because the little kids held up the traffic, the fire escape and the iron platform at the top got packed with kids. Well, some of te brickwork gave and the bolts and bars holding the contraption to the wall pulled loose and the whole thing fell away, spraying kids in all directions.

Three kids were killed outright. They were the ones that hit the concrete walk. About a dozen were crippled up pretty seriously and several of those never were much good afterwards.

It was a piece of luck for Willie.

Willie didn't try to cash in on the luck. He didn't have to try. People got the point. Willie went to the triple funeral the town had for the kids that got killed, and stood modestly in the background. But old Mr. Sandeen, who was the father of one of the dead kids, saw him back in the crowd and while the clods were still bouncing off the coffin lids Mr. Sandeen pushed back to him and grabbed him by the hand and lifted up one arm above his head and said, loud, "Oh God, I am punished for accepting inequity and voting against an honest man!"

It brought down the house. Some women began to cry. Then other people began to come up and grab Willie by the hand. Pretty soon there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Willie's weren't dry, either.

It was Willie's luck. But the best luck always happened to people who don't need it.

He had Mason County in the palm of his hand. And in the city his picture was in all the papers. But he didn't run for anything. He just kept working on his father's farm and studying his law books at night. The only thing he did about politics was to get out and make some speeches for a fellow who was running in the primary against the Congressman who had always been a pal of Pillsbury. Willie's speeches weren't any good, at least the one I heard wasn't any good. But they didn't have to be good. People didn't bother to listen to them. They just came to look at Willie and clap and then go vote against the Pillsbury man.

Then one day Willie woke up and found himself running for governor.

One reformer, in the right place at the right time. For honest government advocates in Sichuan Province, it is both. Anyone who had staked their career on fighting corruption will be able to attract supporters without exploiting the situation. The scale of the tragedy in China dwarfs the schoolhouse in Mason County, but the outcome should be the same. Expect to see new faces in local and regional government posts. This is one of the biggest openings imaginable for new leadership. If the earthquake cannot move the Chinese to rein in their government, nothing will move them.

This leads me to suggest the existence of the Willie Stark effect: A populist uprising against entrenched machine politics in the wake of a mismanaged or preventable human tragedy. The Willie Stark effect may represent the best hope for grassroots democratization around the world, since it takes advantage of totalitarian bureaucratic shortcomings to unleash powerful internal forces for government accountability. By no means am I trumpeting the onset of democracy in China, but the accountability of public officials at all levels of government is an important step towards free and fair elections. Once people feel the consequences of poor governance, they are much more likely to promote alternatives to the usual slate of candidates. And if those alternatives pan out, a new generation of politicians might begin to follow Willie Stark up the political food chain to positions of higher power.

Keep an eye on Sichuan and other provinces dealing with with similar hardships, such as environmental degradation and industrial accidents. There just might be a thousand Willie Starks waiting in the wings.

Abu Muqawama Changes Hands

2008-05-31T00:08:00.003-04:00

Today is the first day in the blogosphere without Andrew Exum and his contributions to the incisive and entertaining domain of Abu Muqawama. In just a year and a half, the site has become the best COIN-centric civilian blog on the web, and makes a strong case for best civilian blog anywhere for military affairs.

In reading the flood of comments following Exum's departure, I was surprised to find out just how many readers have joined in recent months. I first encountered the blog last October and still consider myself a relative latecomer, but as Exum himself noted, the readership growth has been "exponential". Perhaps the greatest testament to the strength of the site's commentary is the diversity of the current audience . Mothers of servicemen, ROTC cadets, active duty US officers, foreign scholars, amateur civilian analysts...all of them have found AM to be intelligent and accessible. That diversity is what separates Abu Muqawama from narrower sites such as the excellent but military-dominated Small Wars Journal and the exclusive Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard. Rather than confine debate to credentialed experts, AM has opened its doors to the masses, and the resulting dialogue has created a strong community that should continue to thrive.

Andrew Exum may have left Abu Muqawama to further his academic career, but the blog may become his greatest legacy. There is a revolution underway in public discourse, with issues of national strategy being debated by an active and informed virtual community. Bloggers have been electronically recording their opinions for some time now, but we are beginning to see devoted followings coalesce around the best sites. Abu Muqawama is at the leading edge of that trend, and as more people are drawn into the grand discussion, impassioned arguments from below will meet receptive policymakers from above. The revolution has just begun, and many people have lined up to resist change (I'm looking at you, Air Force), but the elitist circles of national security are under siege. So thank you Andrew Exum, for taking an inside joke way too far and giving life to Abu Muqawama.

And to Erin Simpson, the new Chief of Blogging Operations: Welcome. We can't wait to see how you build upon Exum's work. Abu Muqawama will remain in good hands.

Chicagoland COIN

2008-05-29T20:36:00.007-04:00

Americans have a deep-seated fear of involving the military in public life. In a time when even recruiters for a volunteer military are targeted by domestic protesters, it is difficult to contemplate importing concepts and techniques from a military involved in an unpopular occupation of a foreign country. The disjunct between the military and the civilian population has never been greater, with consequences for both civil-military relations and the health of American society.

During the 2000 election, the Bush campaign renounced "nation-building" as a role for the US military. The results of the decisions to invade Iraq and Afghanistan have forced the US to reluctantly shoulder the responsibility of (re)building those nations, and the weaknesses of national governments throughout the world will dictate future requirements for a robust nation-building capability. Questions are being asked, particularly about the health of the foreign advising program. Bureaucratic recognition the institutional importance of advising is still in doubt, as is the military's ability to interface with both American and host nation civilian departments. A full spectrum nation-building program is still a ways off, but progress is being (fitfully) made.

A curious dynamic has developed through the military adventures of the twenty-first century. The armed services, long a xenophobic, conservative, and isolated community, have experienced a cultural enlightenment at the grassroots. An entire generation of soldiers and sailors (maybe even a few airmen) have been exposed to the diverse social and cultural landscape of the world beyond the American bubble. Servicemen have acquired painful firsthand knowledge of the expanded range of obstacles to national strength and unity, including social and economic inequities as well as political, ethnic, and sectarian fault lines. Having been forced to "reverse engineer" new governments and reinforce existing one, the armed forces are producing rudimentary public administrators as well as warfighters.

All of this stands in sharp contrast to the state of public administration at home. While critics have focused their attention on the qualities and shortcomings of high ranking officials, critical attention to state and local governance - the levels where the military has had the most success - has been lacking. Even the most rudimentary security concerns of domestic crime have been ignored during a wide-ranging presidential campaign. The GWOT/Long War has stripped away funds for social programs everywhere, from police officers to daycares. So far, America's foreign experiences have done nothing to improve its "domestic tranquility".

As writers such as John Robb have concluded, the true challenge facing modern societies is the construction of resilient communities, not national bureaucratic monstrosities. If we choose to view the United States as a patchwork of communities rather than a single nation, then our vulnerabilities become more apparent. The most dysfunctional and unstable communities hamstring our economic and social growth by perpetuating inequity and wasting national resources. These communities are concentrated in impoverished urban centers, and they demand a holistic solution that has not been forthcoming. Sporadic efforts to address urban poverty have produced mixed and sometimes counterproductive results.

These urban pockets are not ruled by the legitimate authorities that govern the rest of the country. Through a combination of inadequate resources, misplaced priorities, and corruption, state and local governments have relinquished their claims to troublesome urban enclaves. The abandoned communities have since become semi-sovereign entities, with their own power-sharing arrangements, economies, and social structures. Although individuals and organizations in these enclaves once subverted legitimate authority, it was ultimately he government's decision to abandon them. Therefore, the situation cannot be properly termed an insurgency. Technical definitions aside, enclaves exist within the nation's physical borders yet outside its legitimate authority. If the government is to reclaim the "ghetto center", it much learn from previous counterinsurgency experiences.

There are some striking similarities between American urban life and foreign environments. In Afghanistan, we have encountered the difficulties of confronting the drug trade and those who subsist on its revenue. We have also learned the value of infrastructure improvements in improving popular support and building community empowerment. In Iraq, we have grappled with the difficulty of transferring the loyalty of urban slums and providing basic government services. In both countries, we have been forced to work across massive social, cultural, and linguistic gaps.

Many of the characters we have dealt with during our occupations have counterparts in our domestic landscape. Comparisons have been made between the Sons of Iraq and the Italian mafia; many urban gangs have consciously adopted the business and organizational model of the mafia. The unique role of black preachers, who are active in the spheres of culture and politics as well as religion, is the closest approximation to the all-purpose influence exerted by certain Muslim religious figures. (are Jeremiah Wright and Muqtada al-Sadr really that far apart?)

If we make the required investment, our chances of success will be much greater in Chicago than in Baghdad. The cultural gap between the ghetto and suburbia is serious, but not as overwhelming as in Sadr city, and the linguistic barrier disappears entirely. Ethnic and sectarian tensions are significantly lower in America's cities, and organized alternatives to government control have not entrenched themselves. We will not have to contend with porous borders or a neighboring regime's patronage of rebellious elements, nor will we have to contend with overextended supply lines. Best of all, we will not face a nationalist insurgency bent on the eviction of foreign invaders.

We will not enter these enclaves without information. While the Pentagon struggles to drum up support for research in the social sciences, anthropologists and sociologists like Sudhir Venkatesh have produced a considerable body of work to form a foundation of knowledge. Even an elementary appreciation of the environment and primary actors will ease the learning curve and give officials a better delineation between what they know, what they don't know, and what they need to know.

To reclaim and reintegrate these urban enclaves, a massive influx of manpower and funds is paramount. One of the fundamental shortcomings of the urban center has been the lack of men to police it; by using recommended COIN force ratios, we can rectify that problem. The additional men will need to come from local and state police, backed by national guard units, preferably those with GWOT experience. Regular army units may be employed to train the new units, but under no circumstance should soldiers be employed in community security outside their home state. The primary task of these additional forces would be to deter gang activity and petty crime, with an eye towards separating the criminal command element from its lower ranks.

Once basic security has been established, infrastructural investments can begin. Three critical areas - housing, schools, and public transportation - should receive priority. Innovation should be encouraged in order to draw the best architects, urban planners, and administrators. Beyond infrastructure, however, human capital will have to be stockpiled, in the form of education and entrepreneurship. The vast underground economy will have to be regulated, with the illicit section gradually phased out as conditions permit and the legal unregulated businesses slowly integrated into the larger economy. The workforce will have to be gradually shaped to survive in the increasingly competitive global marketplace, without crippling the fragile social fabric of the communities.

The time frame for the transformation will need to be extensive, more in line with traditional COIN campaigns than election-driven four year cycles. Even with a full investment and sufficient political will, it may take a decade to secure gains made in these communities. The federal government will need to take the lead until reliable state and local partners can take over; the political machines of major cities have been one of the biggest historical obstacles to urban renewal.

With domestic COIN projects underway, government officials will have a testing ground for population-centric strategies with potential military applications, while the armed forces will have more time to maintain its proficiency in high intensity conflict. The benefits of stable communities will eventually pay for the considerable expenses of reclamation, creating a beneficial investment cycle. Most importantly, the experiences of Americans abroad will be leveraged to strengthen the nation at home. Chicagoland COIN can bridge the gap between America's nascent organizational capabilities and its lingering social needs. For millions of Americans, there is simply no alternative.

This is admittedly a very ambitious and far-reaching concept; expect this post to be edited and revisited in the near future. As always, constructive criticism is welcomed.

A Higher Class of Propaganda (Threats to Air Supremacy)

2008-05-28T14:07:00.007-04:00

Watch the rest of the video here.

Kudos to the AFA for turning out such a well-produced segment. Even though it's a blatant attempt to justify additional F-22 production, the threat assessments presented were very accessible and convincing. The video did a particularly smart job of emphasizing the proliferation of these air denial systems while using the Taiwan Straits as a primary scenario illustration (a clever sleigh of hand).

F-22 production aside (and I'm a bit torn on that point), my reaction to this video is to emphasize the value of ECM, Allied SAM technology, and UCAVs. The impetus to control program goals and spending has never been greater.

Perhaps, though, the modern challenge is one of personal influence. Those legacy fighters rendered obsolete in the AFA video owed their era of dominance to organizational renegades like the late Colonel John Boyd. We don't need a next generation of fighters as badly as we need a new generation of men to guide their development.

In Case You Were Wondering...

2008-05-23T14:25:00.003-04:00

The head of Northrop Grumman believes his company's contract for the new Air Force KC-45 tanker should be upheld. I'm not surprised to see this PR push in light of all the political posturing, but it's a little disappointing that the LA Times has given Northrop Grumman this type of platform. Granted, at least some pundits at the paper have always favored the Airbus/Northrop Grumman offer over Boeing's planes. Don't be surprised if Boeing fires back in another major publication, either directly or through a Congressional lacky. The GAO isn't required to report a decision until June 19; that leaves plenty of time for more congressional-military-industrial propaganda.

On a less serious note, Danger Room is soliciting names for the prospective tanker.

Utter Garbage

2008-05-23T13:19:00.003-04:00

I expect much better from John Nagl than this piece of refuse he "co-authored" with Chief Neanderthal Charles Dunlap. Unless Dunlap forced Nagl to write at gunpoint (possibly) I have lost some respect for the gentleman who inspired the name of this blog. This is precisely the type of cheerleading, self-congratulatory generalization that leads to eventual defeat. Mixed metaphors, overzealous allusions and an entirely gratuitous plug for free market systems make the lack of concrete assessments and prescriptions all the more obvious. What was the point of this essay, other than create a superficial display of unity?

A conspiratorial reader might sense DoD involvement, with an eye towards papering over any disagreements and trying to work up enthusiasm for the Department's future:

The finest military leaders want, indeed, demand, that differing ideas be ruthlessly explored. They expect and encourage vigorous debates. Can that process go awry? Sure. When it devolves into personal attacks and gets mired in finger-pointing, progress ceases. Accountability for the past may have its place, but it is vastly more important to look to the future. The stakes are too just too high.

Looking to the future is what took place at Carlisle. The American way of war is renewing itself. Our most powerful weapon - the competitive analysis of security issues by America’s military - is taking the field. Our enemies ought to beware. And update their wills.

Bottom Line: love letters to Milton Friedman and the armed forces should be confined to personal diaries - they do not substitute for real organizational progress

A Tom Clancy Connection?

2008-05-21T15:38:00.003-04:00

I was looking through some of the non-fiction titles written by Tom Clancy (whose fiction has dropped off lately), when I noticed something from the 1999 book Carrier. As part of his book, Clancy joined a CVBG during a fleet exercise. At the time, that CVBG was commanded by Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Michael Mullen, who of course is now the JCS Chairman.

What really makes this curious is the fact that Mullen is not the only military officer to make a cameo in Clancy's work before reaching higher command. While commanding a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, David Petraeus was featured in Clancy's 1997 book Airborne. Going back even further, H.R. McMaster was interviewed for his role in the Battle of 73 Easting for the 1994 book Armored Cav.

Any ideas as to why Clancy keeps running into these guys before the general public? Has he been getting leads and recommendations from within the services, or is he just lucky?

Resilient Communities and Urban Renewal

2008-05-20T17:22:00.005-04:00

I don't quite have the proper practical or theoretical background to put this article about urban decline in perspective, but aside from being a great piece of journalism, it seems to hint at John Robb's Resilient Communities (a concept that doubles as the title of his upcoming book).

A second conclusion is that many of the current political structures and leaders are either unable or unwilling to deal with these new realities. When you find the exceptions, like a reluctantly persuaded but then fully committed Mayor Ed Koch or a housing commissioner like Felice Michetti, fine. But waiting for most to act or blaming them when they don’t are often not constructive responses. This puts the burden of thinking and acting back on a new type of civic leader: a volunteer with a real following in a local community, but also with a range of analysis and understanding that crosses town or county or city boundaries. The renewal of most of the failed cities of the failed state of Ohio—Dayton, Toledo, Cleveland, Youngstown, Sandusky, Lorain, and many others—depends on men and women who live in and care about those cities. But they will need to relate to leaders well beyond their own towns. And they will need to become a kind of ad hoc economic strategy team for their area, for their state, and for the struggling midwestern region described in Richard Longworth’s fine book, Caught in the Middle.

Also significant (at least for my purposes) is the article's focus on Chicago's poor governance and the struggle of Chicagoland communities. The comparison with New York's community-based resurgence is stark and unflattering.

The not-so-great generation

2008-05-16T16:52:00.002-04:00

Since high school and college graduation ceremonies are well underway, I thought it'd be a good time to provide a quotation from Rick Atkinson's excellent history of the WW2 Italian Campaign, Day of Battle:

of the 683 graduates from the Princeton University class of 1942, 84 percent were in uniform, and those serving as enlisted men included the valedictorian and salutatorian. Twenty-five classmates would die during the war, including nineteen killed in combat.

Contrast that with Princeton graduating class, which is expected to send two graduates to the Army - unless someone outside of ROTC volunteers. This isn't a shot at Princeton, though - at least the college actually has an ROTC, unlike other Ivy League schools. It's funny how Harvard didn't mind segregated units back in the day, yet the inability to be openly gay is grounds to ban ROTC. I'm so glad institutions like that are the pinnacle of civilian achievement in this country.

Meanwhile, some continue to carry the banner of real public service, like 2005 Princeton salutatorian Graham Phillips, who did join the Army - as an enlisted man. That kind of humility and duty is desperately needed in a time of war where college "service" has become a euphemism for trash collection and dance marathons.

Grand Theft Auto Hints at Something More

2008-05-14T14:47:00.005-04:00

When is a video game something more? When its lack of political correctness allows it to look past the conventional wisdom.

That is the main thrust of Sudhir Venkatesh's assessment of Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest installment of one of the most controversial video game franchises in history. GTA IV has received excellent reviews from nearly every gaming magazine, but Venkatesh isn't concerned with graphics or gameplay. Instead, Venkatesh (a sociologist at Columbia University) compared the game's portrayal of human networks to the reality of life on Chicago's Southside. His conclusions are striking enough that they deserve to be quoted at length:

This may sound strange, but I found that Grand Theft Auto actually offered a less sensational portrait of gangland and ghetto streets than the one put out by most cops, politicians, policymakers, and even academics. There is nuance in the game that exceeds most of the conventional portraits of American cities; the game goes beyond a black-and-white tale of innocent law abiders fending off the obnoxious criminals. Not that I'm suggesting that we turn to GTA IV to solve the gang problem or that we should we make it required viewing in our high schools. The game is a carnival of violence, deceit, and cruelty that makes you slightly nauseated after playing for only a few hours—I had to periodically rest and play a Neil Diamond song just to calm down. But I have to admit that I was surprised a video game had such a well-developed, fine-grained understanding of human nature.

The game's success can be traced to a simple principle: Niko Bellic, the protagonist who roams around Liberty City, making his way in the world by building relationships. Even in a city dominated by warring gangs and unjustifiable carnage, people have to find ways to work together not only to commit crimes but to resolve disputes, respond to injustice, and otherwise fulfill their assigned missions. As you move the dashing Niko through beautifully rendered streets, you build up his network of friends and comrades. Of course, in the exploitative terrain of the black market, you can't trust anyone for long; this is one of the key challenges that animate GTA IV. But the point is that a lone wolf can't survive. Niko has to take a risk and trust somebody.

Even the criminals must follow this rule. In the real Big Apple, the local gangs are made up of self-interested mercenaries who move about as money and circumstances dictate. A Jamaican "posse" may control one project one day, but they'll move over a few blocks if the money is right. A gang member might also become a turncoat and join another outfit, even one run by a former adversary. In other words, free agents abound on Wall Street and ghetto streets. GTA IV's Liberty City gets this fluidity of enmity and alliance exactly right. A friend can become a foe; a gang member can turn on you; an ally is never to be trusted for too long. You can't do it alone, and the game forces you to make your bets.

Here, we can clearly Venkatesh is asserting the primacy of human networks in the impoverished inner city. These networks are highly susceptible to both positive and negative incentives, with fluid power structures and alliances. The social structure of these environments is semi-autonomous and often has few points of direct contact with the established, "legitimate" local authorities and greater society.

Venkatesh has become something of a celebrity in sociology circles for the dramatic nature of his written work and the public attention he has received (he was recently interviewed on the Colbert Report for his last book, Gang Leader For a Day). Much of this can be attributed to Venkatesh's ability to free his subject from dry academic rhetoric and offer a richer ethnographic narrative. This approach has enhanced the understanding of the complex and conflicting relationships that underpin daily life in poor urban areas.

I've read quite a bit of Venkatesh's work lately (see his other mentions by Slate here and here) and I believe that his work leads to a new option for public policy. There's a pressing need for a new innovative approach to poverty alleviation within US borders, and traditional programs of purely domestic origin have failed. If America can muster the political will, though, and overcome some deep-seated cultural fears, there may be a way to apply recent government experiences and integrate these urban enclaves into the mainstream of American society.

...But all that will have to wait for another post

Israeli Idiocy

2008-05-14T14:08:00.002-04:00

The saddest aspect of this AP piece is its brevity - the expansion of West Bank settlements, even at the start of a new diplomatic effort, barely merits a couple of paragraphs. Larger criticisms of Israel aside (and I have several), the timing of this announcement reveals Israel's disdain for the entire peace process. The US needs to start holding Israel accountable for these types of provocations, and I'm not talking about pro forma public statements. We ought to be considering the returns we're receiving from our annual $3 billion investment in the Israeli military. It certainly hasn't raised our standing in the region.

New Passengers on the AAC Advocacy Train

2008-05-13T13:19:00.003-04:00

Westhawk has been keeping an eye on US military advisory missions, noting both the renewed hiring of contractors for Iraq and the overstretched optempo of SOCOM. The former has been commented on by others, but yesterday one of the most prominent critics of Private Military Companies weighed in on the situation.

Peter Singer has been kept busy ever since he published Corporate Warriors, one of the first academic works about the PMC phenomenon (I listened to him give a talk on the issue just two months ago). Singer's opposition to the inclusion of contractors is no surprise, but his voice still carries considerable weight (given Democratic ties to the Brookings Institution, among other things).

Translated from bureaucratic-speak, the Pentagon is seeking to hire private contractors to help fill out the teams that will train and advise Iraq army units, including in their operations in the field. In more blunt terms, arguably the most important aspect of the operation in Iraq, the crux to defeating the insurgency/getting our troops out of there (whichever you care more about), is starting to be outsourced.

The real eye-opener, though, is at the end of the piece, where Singer mentions a certain LTC...

It is completely understandable why a hard-pressed force would contemplate contracting out advising the Iraq military. From a bureaucratic standpoint, it’s the easy way out. Despite repeated calls by such top military thinkers as Colonel John Nagl, the U.S. Army still does not have an official advising capacity. Advising has never been something “Big Army” has been all that interested in doing (it has traditionally been viewed as a career drag) and moving officers and NCOs into these roles would mean moving them out of other units. By contrast, all the muss and fuss can instead be handed off to a company to handle.

But just because a company can do the job, doesn’t always mean it should. Advising the Iraqi Army has been determined by our national leadership as a task that is essential to our successful war effort. We should treat it that way in how the job is executed.

Now, numerous bloggers have mentioned the Advisory Corps (Westhawk has given it a plug on both his posts), but I can't recall Singer getting involved before. This is yet another indication that the Army Advisory Corps is gaining traction, and a sign that others are beginning to recognize the hole that the AAC will attempt to fill. It seems Nagl will get his Corps sooner, rather than later.

An Unfortunate Comparison, Part Deux

2008-05-08T22:42:00.002-04:00

...And Lebanon teeters on the brink of civil war. Who would have guessed?

The ability of Hezbollah to create a "state-within-a-state" has progressed to the point where even the headless Lebanese government is forced to confront it. The government attempts to reign in Hezbollah's organization and infrastructure are simply too little, too late...the group has had years to entrench itself psychologically and physically. The paralytic state of Lebanese politics has only weakened the central government's ability to deal with a force that is arguably the most cohesive political unit in the country. The rest of the Middle East may not a renewed ethnosectarian conflict in Lebanon, but unless the government backs down (and it would be the government, not Hezbollah, that blinks), that's exactly what's going to happen

An Unfortunate Comparison

2008-04-26T21:11:00.003-04:00

Remember two weeks ago when Crocker compared Iraq to Lebanon? That analogy made me a little nervous, and news like this doesn't do anything to help. Iran's attempts to involve itself in sectarian disputes helped create the self-sufficient Shiite militias that have rejected government attempts to maintain a monopoly on armed force. The population, recognizing that rejection, will not trust the government to ensure their personal security - thus, the rush to buy all sorts of portable weapons.

Even if the United States is able to remove Iran's sponsorship of factions within Iraq, it will have to contend with a more mature and professional set of militias. While disarming and neutralizing those militias will be even more difficult given their development, the alternative is to rob the Baghdad government of public confidence in times of crisis. We will not be able to claim success in Iraq until it reaches a level of stability superior to Lebanon's chronic para-military tensions.

Divergent Procurement practices

2008-04-14T10:36:00.003-04:00

Two superficially unrelated posts on StrategyPage point to a burgeoning divergence in US-Israeli armor development. The first piece of news is the delivery of Nemer IFVs to the Israeli army. These vehicles (basically old Merkavas sans turrets) offer roughly the same degree of protection as an MBT, and at 44 tons they are substantially heavily than your average IFV. StrategyPage reports that the development of the Nemer was motivated by the belief that Israel will continue to fight in urban environments. That may be true, but the firepower of Hezbollah may have also convinced the IDF that now was not the time to be skimping on armor protection. The ability to convert obsolete tanks also cuts down on R&D costs, so it's a win-win. The Nemer was tested against the Stryker system, but the added tactical mobility of the ICV was not enough to compensate for the additional security of the topless Merkava.

Meanwhile, development on the FCS-based successor to the M1 Abrams continues to chug along. You'll notice that the StrategyPage update focuses on the development of the 120mm cannon and studiously avoids tackling the real developmental challenges to a thirty ton MBT (as if gun recoil was the primary issue!). Even with the advances in weight-saving Explosive Reactive Armor and its smarter cousin Active Protection Systems, it will be tough to provide all-around protection to a future MBT.

According to Jane's (sorry, hardcopy catalogue), the IDF successfully tested its TROPHY active protection system on the Stryker, but decided to go with the Nemer anyway. Even with the additional protection of TROPHY (which is much further along than any comparable US system), the IDF still opted for the platform with the heavier traditional armor. Given the recent Israeli combat experience, this decision should be carefully assessed (instead of running obviously contrived hypothetical FCS brigade simulations in Lebanon) on its merits. Clearly, the Israeli are concerned with the proliferation of EFPs, IEDs, and advanced man-portable missiles. Even the M1 has shown weaknesses in the face of such threats, an oversight the Army has attempted to rectify with its Tank Urban Survival Kit (TUSK) upgrade. A lighter MBT would provide much needed operational mobility, but unless the DARPA boys have an ace up their sleeve, a half-weight tank won't be matching M1 protection anytime soon. So the IDF will keep bulking up and the DoD will keep trying to slim down.

Coffee Break Material

2008-04-14T10:30:00.002-04:00

While new substantive posts are in the works, Danger Room has linked to an innovative medium for commentary about Pentagon procurement. The writing quality might be charitably described as "uneven", but kudos to the authors for thinking outside the box (after all, it's not like conventional methods have gotten the point across). Who knew aliens struggled with obsolete threat assessments, too?

Hijacking the Hezbollah War

2008-04-08T16:30:00.004-04:00

Yesterday's WSJ article about the importance of counterinsurgency makes me angry. The increasingly common use of Gian Gentile as intellectual cover for lesser military thinkers (in this case Casey, Conway and the JCS) is a worrisome trend. While Gentile is generally wrong in his analysis, he does provide a respectable viewpoint. By comparison, the self-serving and JCS concerns about war with North Korea have no place in a serious conversation about COIN. Fortunately, most informed commentators can discern the difference between Gentile and knee-jerk reactionaries within the the military.

(Side Note: Did anyone else notice how secure Gentile feels about his career prospects? He might claim that the COIN community is winning, but while Nagl has left the army for greener pastures Gentile will have a shot at general's stars. Read as much or as little into that as you want.)

Far more serious than the ravings of the JCS, thought, is the body of evidence used by Gentile to backstop his claims. The cornerstone appears to be Gentile's interpretation of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war, an interpretation that the US military has failed to refute. The thesis that Israel was somehow too focused on COIN has been vigorously supported without any real basis in fact.

One character, whose work was referenced without attribution in the article, is military historian Matt Matthews. Matthews wrote the Combat Studies Institute paper that tried to analyze the lessons of the 2006 conflict. The paper was strong in many areas, but an unfortunate combination of analytical overreach by Matthews and selective excerpts has given the erroneous impression that Israeli-Hezbollah conflict was an indictment of the COIN philosophy. Matthews spent most of his paper following the Israeli transition to Effects Based Operations (EBO) and the controversial Systemic Operational Design (SOD). By comparison, Matthews spends very little time on the issue of counterinsurgency in the occupied territories. Nevertheless, in his conclusion Matthews placed almost equal weight on the flaws in EBO/SOD and counterinsurgency.

The conclusions about COIN seemed to have been based on anecdotal information about the decline in the combat capabilities of deployed Israeli forces. Part of this information is new to Matthews’ final paper, but some of it was derived from his interview with retired General Shimon Naveh, the architect of SOD:

SN: Basically I think that the IDF was totally unprepared for this kind of operation, both
conceptually, operationally and tactically – mainly conceptually and practically. The point is
that the IDF fell in love with what it was doing with the Palestinians. In fact, it became
addictive. When you fight a war against a rival who’s by all means inferior to you, you may lose a guy here or there, but you’re in total control. It’s nice. You can pretend that you fight the war and yet it’s not really a dangerous war. This kind of thing served as an instrument corrupting the IDF.

MM: Now, is this something where years of counterinsurgency operations have...

SN: Yes. This may happen to you, remember that.

MM: That’s one of the points in my...

SN: Well, you’re fighting a more serious rival than we are fighting. The rivals you’re fighting
are not Palestinians. They’re real hooligans; they’re tough guys. But still there’s a danger.
Becoming addicted to the present fight may corrupt you as an army. This is what operational
art is all about: maintaining elements that will be looking beyond...

Naveh (who has every reason to deflect blame from his SOD concept) appears to caution against excessive COIN focus, but in context his warning is aimed towards the type of institutional lethargy that infected the IDF in Palestine. Naveh acknowledges the superior nature of Iraqi insurgents, although he fails to compare US doctrine in Iraq with IDF practice in Palestine. This oversight conceals a fatally flawed security strategy in Palestine that has more in common with Vietnam than Iraq. Israel may indeed be fighting an insurgency, but they have failed to create a coherent, progressive COIN strategy.

Both Naveh and the Winograd Commission, though, do pinpoint an IDF weakness that has gotten little play in American circles. Here’s Naveh talking about IDF Chief of General Staff Dan Halutz:

SN: Halutz is a victim of subculture. He might have been a good fighter pilot, he was probably
even a good base commander in the Air Force, but he’s totally innocent of any education that
could have prepared him for the challenge that awaited him as a general. Being both arrogant
and ignorant, he never bothered, like so many generals, to really study. I think that he could
have studied if there was an educational process. Moreover, if he would have had some
skepticism, some heresy, some modesty, he could have learned things. He’s the kind of man
that, if you can’t really comprise your words into two lines, he’ll never go through it.

MM: Did you think he understood his own doctrine that he signed?

SN: He’s an idiot. In this sense he’s an idiot, as I said in the interview. He’s really a fool; he’s a
clown. He signed something that he really has never bothered to learn, and I was trying to tell
him to wait a minute. He signed something that he has never really bothered to learn and
understand. One of the bad things that happened to us was that – actually, the opposition never
bothered me. As being the mentor or the force behind all this, the opposition never bothered me
because I look at opposition as a good thing, as a source of tension that yields changes. It forces
not only the oppositioners but also us. We regard ourselves as the good guys – to change, to
transform, to produce better learning methods. What really worried me were the blind
followers, and the IDF was full of them. They were just mumbling the words without really
appreciating what lay in the base of these words – and Halutz was such a guy. He was just
using the right words but he never really bothered to understand. Understanding implies
learning, and learning is painful.

After reading this, one is reminded of USAF Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap, the biggest oppositional figure left out of the WSJ article. Halutz was not a heavy COIN advocate; he was enamored of the same precision firepower that dominated US thinking during the 1990's. While Naveh’s cutting remarks might not carry as much weight as an official review, the Winograd Commission had its own severe criticisms of Halutz:

14. The Chief of Staff (COS) is the supreme commander of the IDF, and the main source of information concerning the army, its plans, abilities and recommendations presented to the political echelon. Furthermore, the COS's personal involvement with decision making within the army and in coordination with the political echelon was dominant.

a. The army and the COS were not prepared for the event of the abduction despite recurring alerts. When the abduction happened, he responded impulsively. He did not alert the political leaders to the complexity of the situation, and did not present information, assessments and plans that were available in the IDF at various levels of planning and approval and which would have enabled a better response to the challenges.

b. Among other things, the COS did not alert the political echelon to the serious shortcomings in the preparedness and the fitness of the armed forces for an extensive ground operation, if that became necessary. In addition, he did not clarify that the military assessments and analyses of the arena was that there was a high probability that a military strike against Hezbollah would make such a move necessary.

c. The COS' responsibility is aggravated by the fact that he knew well that both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense lacked adequate knowledge and experience in these matters, and by the fact that he had led them to believe that the IDF was ready and prepared and had operational plans fitting the situation.

The Minster of Defense in question, Amir Peretz, was similarly excoriated for his conduct during the conflict:

a. The Minister of Defense did not have knowledge or experience in military, political or governmental matters. He also did not have good knowledge of the basic principles of using military force to achieve political goals.

b. Despite these serious gaps, he made his decisions during this period without systemic consultations with experienced political and professional experts, including outside the security establishment. In addition, he did not give adequate weight to reservations expressed in the meetings he attended.

c. The Minister of Defense did not act within a strategic conception of the systems he oversaw. He did not ask for the IDF's operational plans and did not examine them; he did not check the preparedness and fitness of IDF; and did not examine the fit between the goals set and the modes of action presented and authorized for achieving them. His influence on the decisions made was mainly pointillist and operational. He did not put on the table - and did not demand presentation - of serious strategic options for discussion with the Prime Minister and the IDF.

d. The Minister of Defense did not develop an independent assessment of the implications of the complexity of the front for Israel's proper response, the goals of the campaign, and the relations between military and diplomatic moves within it. His lack of experience and knowledge prevented him from challenging in a competent way both the IDF, of which he was in charge, and the Prime Minister.

e. In all these ways, the Minister of Defense failed in fulfilling his functions. Therefore, his serving as Minister of Defense during the war impaired Israel's ability to respond well to its challenges.

Thus, we have the highest civilian and military leaders castigated for their poor leadership during the crisis. While the extent of Israeli COIN expertise can be debated (and is likely inferior to current US knowledge), it seems clear that the critical weakness of the IDF was the leadership. To be sure, the EBO concept, invalidated by recent combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, weakened the IDF. Although conceptual value of SOD is much harder to evaluate, it appears that an incomplete version of the doctrine was deployed with poor institutional results. Nevertheless, it was the IDF leadership that was responsible for the implementation of EBO/SOD, and the decision makers were responsible for the poor reaction to the initiation of general hostilities.

These lessons from the 2006 conflict invite one last question: why has the US army not embraced them? In retrospect, this case study should bolster LtC Paul Yingling’s claims about leadership failures, rather than Gian Gentile’s Philippics about excessive devotion to COIN. Unfortunately, the armed forces will never voluntarily accept the idea that its own leadership could jeopardize an operation. Gentile’s interpretation is allowed to flourish precisely because it poses less of a threat to the military establishment. Matt Matthews, as part of the Army Combat Studies Institute, does not possess the kind of professional independence necessary to criticize the Army on this point. This kind of professional unwillingness to confront hard truths that has allowed the COIN debate to rage on while the culture of leadership within the military remains unscathed.

EDIT: I apologize for the distorted text layout - Blogger is doing something weird

An Open Letter to President Nuri Kamal al-Maliki

2008-04-04T09:47:00.002-04:00

President al-Maliki:

I tried. I really did. When you launched your Basra offensive and splashed Iraqi violence all over the front page of US papers, I wanted to believe you accomplished something. I drew attention to the JAM losses and implied that al-Sadr couldn't keep up with attrition. I talked about the significance of your independence from Sadr, putting a positive spin on what was basically an intra-political Shia feud. I gave you the benefit of the doubt on your allegedly quixotic quest to disarm JAM and its lesser Basra brethren. I even talked about the lack of Iraqi defections as proof that progress was being made in ISF training and organization. Whatever you have to say, you cannot claim that I was ever biased against you.

But I'm afraid that the two of must now part ways. It seems that you are determined to embarrass me by refuting every point I try to make in your favor. Yesterday I discovered that you had indeed embarked on a rash and poorly planned effort to take out your rivals, and that you would have probably committed political suicide if not for the intervention of the Americans who you kept out of the loop for so long. Today I find out that a thousand of your troops refused to fight your battles for you, after I specifically cited the LACK of defections as proof of ISF progress. I still believe the Iraqi Army is improving, but that tenuous accomplishment has been put in jeopardy by your complete and inexcusable lunacy. I'm still hopeful that your mistakes haven't crippled our efforts to stabilize your country, but if we do manage to leave behind a somewhat functional government you will receive no credit from me. We have saved your ass one too many times for that, and I refuse to defend your actions any longer.

Your embittered former apologist,
T.E. Shaw

Al-Qaeda's 4GW Guru

2008-04-03T14:57:00.003-04:00

Kafr al-Hanadwa, an excellent Egyptian blog, recently excerpted an article from the London Review of Books. I had never heard of Abu Musab al-Suri before, but after reading the full review I was floored by the description of Al-Qaeda's best strategic thinker:

"Abu Musab al-Suri is the nom de guerre of the Syrian jihadi Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar, al-Qaida’s most formidable and far-sighted military strategist. Al-Suri played a key role in the 1990s in establishing al-Qaida’s presence in Europe and forging its links to radical jihadis in North Africa and the Middle East, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, South and East Asia. He was a spokesman for the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armé, a press attaché for Osama bin Laden in London and an adviser to Mullah Omar in Kabul, and he appears under a variety of aliases in books by foreign correspondents he escorted to meet the man in Tora Bora. Until he was captured in Quetta by Pakistani intelligence agents in October 2005 and handed over to the CIA, he went wherever the jihad travelled. Indeed, it was al-Suri who first argued that in order to survive, al-Qaida had to become a kind of travelling army based on mobile, nomadic, flexible cells operating independently of one another, unified by little more than a common ideology – and by the sense of shared grievances that the West’s ‘war on terror’ was likely to foster among Muslims. The concept of ‘leaderless jihad’, now much in vogue among so-called terrorism experts, is to a great extent al-Suri’s invention.

Considering his belief in leaderless jihad, it’s remarkable that al-Suri continued to have the ear of some of al-Qaida’s highest-ranking leaders. He wasn’t one to show deference towards his superiors, let alone express himself tactfully: he’s usually described as gruff and sarcastic, and that’s certainly true of his writing. According to one Islamist interviewed by al-Suri’s biographer, Brynjar Lia, ‘his sharp tongue spared nobody,’ not even bin Laden, whose hunger for fame he mocked (‘our brother has caught the disease of screens, flashes, fans and applause’). He was also provocatively at ease with ‘infidel’ sources, more likely to cite Mao than Muhammad: in Afghanistan he was known for giving lectures on Robert Taber’s 1965 study of guerrilla movements, The War of the Flea, once a favourite of the IRA. Al-Suri, Lia writes, was ‘a dissident, a critic and an intellectual in an ideological current in which one would expect to find obedience rather than dissent, conformity rather than self-criticism, doctrinaire ideologues rather than introspective individuals’. But his story suggests that it is our expectations about that ‘current’ which need to be adjusted.

If al-Suri remained in the good graces of al-Qaida, it’s probably because his devotion to the cause was never in doubt, and because like all political movements al-Qaida needed an in-house critic. In his books on Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria and Pakistan, and in his last published work, The Global Islamic Resistance Call, al-Suri rigorously anatomised the jihadi movement’s failures – stodgy, hierarchical forms of political organisation, carelessness about security and indifference to long-term strategy – and tried to explain how the movement could learn from them. The jihadi movement, he argues in The Call, needs a new fighting strategy based on ‘unconnected cells’, operating out of safe houses and ‘camps of nomadic mujahedin’. In order to resist penetration by intelligence services, the movement should be decentralised, almost anarchist. It would be the sum of its actions, from ‘individual operations’ like the murder of tourists and ‘democratic dissidents’ in Muslim countries to ‘deterrence’ operations in Europe like the 2004 bombings in Madrid, which led to the defeat of Aznar and to the withdrawal of Spanish soldiers from Iraq."

This is riveting stuff. At a minimum, it seems that al-Suri functioned as the Al-Qaeda counterpart to Bill Lind (with the added parallel that al-Suri's ideas faced an uphill struggle). In the long term, al-Suri could become second only to bin Laden himself as the most important figure for future students of the GWOT. al-Suri assimilated the best of Western and Eastern insurgency tradition and gradually synthesized his own doctrine of decentralised resistance. It was a remarkable achievement and may well have saved Al-Qaeda in the wake of the US invasion of Afghanistan. TSK fully understands why the CIA doesn't want to talk about its custody of al-Suri; in the meantime, it cannot wait to get its hands on this biography.

A Tale of Two Newspapers

2008-04-02T20:47:00.004-04:00

Although this site often highlights articles from The New York Times, The Soup Knife is not a tremendous fan of its military coverage. Nevertheless, the NYT is considered a first-tier national paper for a reason, as The Washington Times demonstrated today.

Alongside its op-ed by John Nagl, the editors of the NYT included a short piece entitled "Wanting and Wasting at the Pentagon". While the MSM does not pay nearly enough attention to military procurement, the recent GAO report prompted a strong condemnation of government practices:

"Figures compiled by the Government Accountability Office showed that 95 major weapons systems — including ballistic missile defense, the Joint Strike Fighter and the Littoral Combat Ship — have exceeded their original budgets by a mind-numbing total of $295 billion in the past seven years. In 2000, new weapons were running 6 percent over initial cost estimates; by 2007, that figure had skyrocketed to 26 percent.

Not only did Mr. Bush and his former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, allow contractors to run amok in Iraq, they let them run amok in the halls of the Pentagon. The G.A.O. cites the Pentagon’s heavy reliance on contractors as one reason for the gross mismanagement of acquisition programs. The Pentagon also let contractors submit unrealistically low cost estimates, rushed development of new systems — causing costly mistakes that had to be fixed — and made too many changes after projects were under way, according to the G.A.O. and other experts."

Compare those words with yesterday's op-ed piece in The Washington Times, where the nostalgia for Rumsfeld-era "Defense Transformation" is almost tangible:

"The Cold War, after all, is over. The fight today is not in established Europe, but in places like Kandahar, Fallujah, Mindanao, and Mogadishu — underdeveloped urban frontiers for which a Cold War military is ill-suited.

That’s why the U.S. military has embarked upon its greatest transformation since the Second World War, some 65 years ago. The “information revolution” of the past quarter-century has transformed the commercial world, but much less so the bureaucratically insular U.S. military. Consequently, 19-year-old teenagers today typically have more technology at their disposal than 19-year-old soldiers and marines."

Other than a token acknowledgment that "it is not necessarily the case that this new money is being well appropriated", the case for even more military funding is presented as if it came from a career Civil Affairs NCO, which in fact it did. The argument is simplistic enough that it could have been delivered by a high school debate team and completely ignorant of the scale of procurement waste currently clogging the corridors of the Pentagon and the offices of Beltway Bandit contractors. If The Washington Times ever wants to carry the same kind of weight as its New York counterpart, it should strive for a little more research and nuance in its op-ed pieces. Pretending that we're still in the heady days of RMA-based transformation merely weakens the case for further investment in our military forces.

The Question of Foreign Advising

2008-04-02T10:18:00.004-04:00

John Nagl continues to be the country's hottest ticket for military intellectual thought (How many 0-5s have managed to do op-eds for the Times and the Post within a four week span?), and today's New York Times indicates that he has found his main initiative. Ever since last June's CNAS paper outlining his vision of a Foreign Advisory Corps, TSK has been waiting for a public airing of the idea. We've been teased for months by allusions to it in editorials by Max Boot and Nagl himself, but today's piece is the first to elaborate upon the proposal and offer a detailed layman explanation. The Colonel Killebrews of the world may argue that we don't need a FAC, but the hard truth is that Nagl has more star power than anyone who has come out in opposition to the proposal. As always, bureaucratic inertia is the biggest obstacle to a true Corps of advisors, but it seems the MSM is willing to give Nagl a platform to make his case.

"Too much of that statement still rings true today. In the long term, we need to institutionalize our ability to field advisers and provide effective military assistance to allies. As it stands now, the troops we train at Fort Riley do their tour and are then moved back into conventional roles, while the embedded training teams are demobilized. This is as senseless as if in World War II we had decided that the First Infantry Division, which had gone ashore in North Africa and Sicily, was to be disbanded and replaced on D-Day with a division that had no experience landing on hostile ground. What we need, even after the Iraq and Afghanistan missions have ended, is a standing advisory corps of about 20,000 troops that can deploy wherever in the world we need to get our allies up to speed."

One final note: If you read the end of the CNAS paper, you'll notice that Nagl leaves the door open for a Corps that expands beyond twenty thousand soldiers. In the op-eds, though, the number is presented as an implied end strength. I suspect this is a political move on Nagl's part to forestall more opposition from stone-age military commentators, and if so, I approve. Nevertheless, students of COIN should keep in mind the possibility that the op-tempo of a FAC will almost certainly demand an expansion, should the idea ever gain acceptance among the Army brass.

Armchair Privates and Worthless Rankings

2008-04-02T09:33:00.004-04:00

Kings of War alerted me to this ridiculous ranking of "World Military Strength". The idea of Germany being ranked number five made me laugh with incomprehension, until I saw the disclaimer at the bottom of the page:

"Nuclear weapons, past and present military experience, training and equipment quality are not taken into account."

My only question is: what does that leave you with? Raw manpower and press releases? Are German soldiers receiving more weight simply because they're heavier than their foreign counterparts?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm about to rank the top ten NBA players of all time (without taking into account championships, All-Star awards, or career statistics, of course)

FARC-ical Dealings

2008-03-31T21:54:00.003-04:00

This purported evidence of Venezuelan collaboration with FARC is amusing. It's not surprising that Chavez would prop up those down-on-their-luck rebels, but the lack of even elementary operational security and deniability is very entertaining. For someone who's always railing against the incompetent meddling of the US, Hugo sure has a lot to learn. As for Ecuador's potential involvement, that country may be trying to punch way above its weight class. Why can't we infect our enemies in the Middle East with this type of bumbling?

Sadr Wins! Maliki Loses! Or something like that

2008-03-31T21:33:00.006-04:00

The MSM has weighed in on the ceasefire negotiations, and they're handing the match to al-Sadr by virtually unanimous decision (here, here, and here). I know I'm in the minority on this, but Moqtada's increased political acumen aside, you don't bargain with someone you can continue to defy with impunity. By no means is this a blowout win for al-Maliki, but the last round of violence provided exactly the type of situation where al-Sadr would have handily beaten the Prime Minister even a year ago.

Any arrangement where JAM is kept out of the fighting and al-Maliki can retain his independence is a win in the long term for Iraq. While the issue of disarmament will have to be dealt with eventually, the bigger issue is getting al-Sadr to buy into the political process. Once that happens (a big if, to be sure), then disarmament will be a much more surmountable problem. I hope that al-Maliki knew that he just can't disarm the JAM, but wanted to establish a strong position for later compromise (otherwise the PM has been drinking the GI Kool-Aid). Bottom Line: the Iraqi Army is taking baby steps towards standing up to the militias, and the Iraqi Government has survived a potentially devastating situation caused by British negligence in Southern Iraq. Second-guess all you want, but that's far from the serious setback that the media is trumpeting.

EDIT: Abu Aardvark thinks al-Maliki was indeed drinking the Kool-Aid, and he has moved me to agree. Significantly, though, he too sees a long term picture with the possibility of progress. I'll admit to being a little more optimistic about the chances of political cooperation, but I completely concur with the perspective.

JAM cries Uncle

2008-03-30T17:03:00.003-04:00

Yes, the number of updates this month has been shameful, but don't count on an immediate onslaught on posts. It could be mid-May before I start really churning out material.

In light of Sadr's pullback in Basra and throughout the country, we really ought to be asking ourselves about the health of the JAM. The Long War Journal provides a surprisingly thorough assessment of JAM losses, arriving at an encouraging estimate of 1.5-2.5 percent attrition over a five-day period. That kind of loss rate is not sustainable, and the JAM knows it.

It seems clear that Sadr is no longer in a position to dictate politics to the Shia community. The move to civil disobedience is as much about conservation of forces as it is about regaining legitimacy. Maliki is fully independent of Sadr (a development which is not getting nearly enough attention in the mass media) and aiming to eliminate JAM as an armed threat to the state. Early reports of Iraqi defections have been officially refuted, and given Sadr's decision, it seems the Iraqi Army maintained cohesion during the recent violence. While a lot of credit should be given to the people negotiated with Sadr, kudos to the US and Iraqi forces for bringing him to the table.

The British Position on Foreign Policy

2008-03-19T16:37:00.005-04:00

It's a rare occasion when a foreign official makes the rounds in the American Southeast, so I was excited to attend a lecture delivered by Martin Rickerd, the British Council-General in Atlanta. The presentation, "Key Priorities for Britain in the World," was well put together and provided a concise portrait of Britain's current foreign policy outlook. Rickerd has spent over thirty years in the Foreign Office, and the lecture allowed him to draw on many of his experiences. Some things that stood out:

Rickerd focused on three major areas of contemporary British policy: Climate Security, and Terrorism, and Sustainable Development. Rickerd went out of his way to explain the use of the term "Climate Security"; it appears that Britain has fully embraced the concept of global warming as a security issue as well as an environmental one. Here, Rickerd cited a Center for a New American Security paper on climate change and references Georgia's own water woes. Clearly, the UK is determined to learn from American mistakes and policy debates. Also mentioned; a parliamentary effort to mandate carbon emissions cuts throughout the UK. Despite his obvious pride in British environmental efforts, Rickerd emphasized the potential for American leadership in this area.

On terrorism, Rickerd hammered home the idea of treating terrorists as common criminals. He questioned the overuse of the GWOT designation, cautioning that it made it easier for policy makers to cast the enemy in monolithic terms. He spoke in general terms about British efforts to support and build rapport with its 1.6 Muslims, even going to so far as to point out the extent of Muslim representation in government (e.g. a deputy commissioner in London's metropolitan police). The common challenge of Muslim minorities throughout Europe was brought up, although Rickerd made the seldom-acknowledged point that the origin of these minorities varies; Britain's Muslims are primarily South Asian, France's Muslims are generally North African, and Germany's community is predominately Turkish. The approaches to dealing with these minorities will require a cultural understanding that acknowledges ethnicity and nationality as well as religion.

During the Q&A, I asked Rickerd about the perceived weakness of NATO in the post-9/11 era. He responded that NATO had lost its original purpose with the end of the Cold War, and that the alliance was still searching for a new mission. Rickerd described Afghanistan as a "good trying ground" for a new NATO orientation and conceded that "things have not gone as well as they might". Still, he refused to question the relevance or future potential of the alliance.

The last question came from a skeptical professor who asked about the British position on the proposed Missile Defense sites in Eastern Europe. Rickerd denied current knowledge of the official British line, but (much to the surprise of the professor) went on to say that the British government supported any measure to bring additional security and that he believed the proposal "made sense." I don't mean to add much weight to Rickerd's personal opinion, but I found that openness to missile defense very interesting coming from a senior Foreign Office official.

KC-X Fallout

2008-03-03T17:59:00.007-05:00

Just when we were tired of fighting about the F-22 program, the USAF decides to create more controversy. On Friday, the contract for the long-delayed and desperately needed KC-X tanker was awarded to the EADS/Northrop Grumman team for their Airbus 330-based entry. The prize starts at $35 billion, and given the shape of the Methuselah KC-135s, that figure will only go up. But the real battle is just beginning, as sore-loser Boeing mustered its congressional allies en masse:

“We are outraged that this decision taps European Airbus and its foreign workers to provide a tanker to our American military,” the Washington State delegation said in a joint statement. Boeing planes are assembled outside of Seattle. “This is a blow to the American aerospace industry, American workers and America’s men and women in uniform,” the statement added.

Wow, that sounds kinda bitter. I hope Boeing didn't prematurely celebrate an anticipated victory...

A Boeing victory was considered so certain that many Wall Street analysts had already factored the contract into their economic forecasts for the company. One senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, sent out a press release prematurely praising Boeing for its victory.

Well, that's embarassing, but can we make it more so? Maybe throw in a blatant congressional conflict of interest?

Representative Norm Dicks, a member of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee and a Democrat from Washington State, said he was attending an anticipated victory party at Boeing’s offices in Washington when the mood suddenly darkened.

Mr. Dicks added: “Here we are in the middle of a recession, and we give this to Airbus? That is not going to go down well.”

SERIOUSLY? I can't believe the NYT wrote that with a straight face. A member of the defense subcommittee from Washington state is attending Boeing "mission accomplished" victory parties? And he feels safe enough to disclose that fact right before protesting the decision? The entire Washington State delegation ought to be barred from Appropriations and Armed Services committees. This is inexcusable. Not that EADS doesn't have its own defenders, of course.

Ronald D. Sugar, the chief executive of Northrop Grumman, said in a telephone interview that he expected members of Congress would have a “variety of views” depending on whether their districts would be gaining or losing jobs under the deal.

Mr. Sugar said that 60 percent of the content of the new tanker would come from the United States and that it would create 2,000 jobs in Mobile and 25,000 over all in the United States.

“This is more about the capability that we will give to the kids fighting the wars and the cost to the taxpayer,” Mr. Sugar said.

Backing Mr. Sugar’s view was Senator Richard C. Shelby, an Alabama Republican who hailed the decision as “great news for Alabama.”

At least Northrop Grumman (which last time I checked was an American company) knows how the game was played. And any contract bringing jobs to Katrina country has a certain sentimentality to it. Reuters put together a nice piece on the program's issue of contention, and it noted that the deal would create jobs in 49 states (this blogger hopes Washington was excluded out of spite)

If Boeing wants to maintain a shred of patriotism and ethics, it should meekly accept the Air Force decision and move on. The company has been eating the lunch of EADS subsidiary Airbus with its 787 orders, and Boeing will undoubtedly receive billions more in defense contracts in the future. If Boeing is really worried about American servicemen, it will not appeal the contract award and add 2-3 years to the deployment date of these tankers. As it is, we may not be able to phase out the 1950's era Stratotanker until 2040. We desperately need upgraded airlift capabilities in both fuel and cargo (categories where EADS handily won). Besides, Boeing had a shot at its own deal a few years back, and all it managed to do was land a company exec in prison and cause its CEO to resign in disgrace. If there's such a thing as karma in procurement, then Boeing is being paid back with interest for its previous dishonesty.

P.S. Congratulations to the Air Force for resisting the domestic contractor lobbying machine. Now the real test - can you stand your ground with Congress?

The Weekend Roundup

2008-02-26T23:55:00.003-05:00

Time's been in short supply lately, so there's a slight backlog in recent developments. Here's a brief rundown:

On Friday, Muqtada al-Sadr officially extended his unilateral ceasefire by another six months. The announcement did not get a lot of play in the mainstream media, which has chosen to pretend that the surge is the only variable worth discussing. Most Americans probably failed to appreciate the importance of Muqtada's August withdrawal, even though the removal of the Mahdi Army gave the surge forces much-needed room to operate. Al-Sadr's extension keeps the recent Iraqi political momentum (okay, it's a relative term) alive, and also keeps al-Sadr's forces intact until the additional US brigades return home. A lot of hard work went into keeping Muqtada on the sidelines, and now the US and the Iraqi government have six more months to convince him that he should bury the AK for good. The real reckoning with Muqtada al-Sadr is a ways off, but at least he has allowed Petraeus to shore up the struggling Sons of Iraq without major Shia interference.

The New York Times Magazine has a devastating piece on the struggle for one of the nastiest corners of Afghanistan. It manages to capture the limitations of even the best COIN operators and emphasizes the strains placed on soldiers at the company level. (Spoiler: the stop-loss program does not win the Army any good-will.)

The underrated story of the day: Pakistan's accidental worldwide shutdown of Youtube. The explanation of how an act of national censorship went global is a rare look at the way countries seek to restrict the internet and how those same techniques can be applied to cyberwarfare.

The AP wire has news of Pentagon force projections for the summer. After the surge brigades leave, the US will still have 140,000 troops in Iraq, up from 132,000 before the surge. Afghanistan, the poor and increasingly ugly stepsister, will have its allotment of forces raised to 32,000. If the gains in Iraq hold up, expect to hear more and more about the backsliding taking place outside the cozy confines of Kabul.

Secretary Gates is busy conducting F-16 diplomacy with Indonesia. Worried about losing a valuable market in a country receiving millions in military aid, the Bush administration is trying to override Congressional concerns about the country's human rights record and kick-start the process of delivering training and equipment. The US only reestablished military ties in 2005, so the Pentagon is eager to curry favor with their Indonesian counterparts.

The Article Every American Citizen Should Read

2008-02-21T21:48:00.003-05:00

George Packer has an amazing new article, "Over Here:Iraq the Place vs. Iraq the Abstraction", in the winter issue of the World Affairs Journal. It's a stunning reminder of the ambiguity and complexity of war as well as a rebuke of the ideologues on both sides who have projected their own simplistic worldviews onto the conflict.

In his article, Packer speculates that the names of Iraq's best reporters will never gain the recognition their brethren did in Vietnam. But with this short piece, coming as it does on the heels of his play Betrayed and his incisive account of the US experience in Iraq, The Assassin's Gate, George Packer has proved he is a worthy spokesman for that scarcest of war commodities, the truth. That trait alone should separate him (alongside others such as Thomas E. Ricks) from the faceless mass of opportunistic commentators who stoop to call themselves "journalists". America could use the reporting of a few more George Packers.

AFRICOM Blues

2008-02-20T19:16:00.004-05:00

By now, a lot of ink has been spilled about the placement of the new AFRICOM regional command. Yesterday word came that the HQ was staying Germany, today it seemed Liberia could still ending up being the host country. The fierce opposition to this new command has had many people talking about America's loss of respect and prestige, but this interpretation is misleading in that it overlooks the experiences of other regional command headquarters. A rough measurement of distances between important geopolitical points and the HQ assigned to them reveals that CENTCOM is about 7000 miles from Baghdad and 7700 miles from Kabul. PACCOM is about 4700 miles from Beijing, and SOUTHCOM is 1400 hundred miles from Venezuela. The distance between Germany and Kenya, at 4100 miles, is not so expansive by comparison. And if the failure to gain a foothold in Africa indicates a lack of post-9/11 confidence in America's intentions, then why has CENTCOM spent two decades with its HQ in the wrong hemisphere?

This scuffle over basing rights should not prevent AFRICOM from eventually establishing a presence on the continent after the initial furor dies down. Some of the African protests are patently ridiculous, anyway. Worries about being drawn into the GWOT are moot considering the fact that Sudan hosted Al-Qaeda during the mid-90's and that August will mark the tenth anniversary of the East African embassy bombings. The GWOT has been in Africa for some time, whether its countries acknowledge it or not.

More legitimate concerns about competition with China and additional US military deployments will need to be addressed for AFRICOM to become a success, but it might be a good idea for everyone to take a deep breath and reserve judgment until this young organization has a few years under its belt.

The Biggest Non-News Event of the Year

2008-02-19T15:26:00.002-05:00

By now, all the major news services are reporting on the resignation of Fidel Castro. While in some ways this does mark the end of an era (has anyone had such a successful career of defying the US?) the reality on the ground in Cuba is not going to change. The hard truth is that Fidel has only been a shadow of himself for the last two years, and his brother Raul has probably been running the show for some time now. If the official transfer of power to Raul goes off smoothly, this event in and of itself means nothing. If a next-generation communist leader steps to the forefront in Cuba, on the other hand...

American officials have already ruled out the smartest course of action, which would be a removal of the embargo. It's no secret that the Fidel-US feud has been a personal affair, and with his retirement a normalization of trade would throw the communists for a loop. But this White House would never produce such a unilateral gesture. It'll be up to the next president to confront the lingering issue of Cuba, and up to Raul to decide if he wants to stay within his brother's framework or venture down the path of limited economic reform. Certainly China, Cuba's new benefactor in the post-Soviet era, would be willing to provide advice and expertise.

Sudan Receives an Armor Upgrade

2008-02-18T20:05:00.003-05:00

In recent years, people have noted the appearance of new hardware in Sudan's arsenal. International outrage over Darfur notwithstanding, the government has had no problems in obtaining effective heavy military equipment through the export market. Now, reports have been coming in about a new tank, the Chinese ZTZ 96 (AKA Type 96) main battle tank. While not the absolute cutting edge in Chinese armor, the Type 96 equips the bulk of China's modernized forces. These are not tired Cold War hand-me-downs; the Type 96 can outmatch virtually any armored vehicle in the region (with the exception of Egypt's fleet of M1A1s). Even as Sudan continues to draw the ire of Western activists, it has quietly upgraded its ability to intimidate and bully its neighbors.

The framework of sanctions created for Iraq in the 1990's was specifically designed to degrade Iraq's existing weapons capability and prevent Saddam from acquiring new weapons systems. Unfortunately for Saddam, he didn't have a devoted supplier. In Sudan, China's export industry has a cash cow, and Beijing will never allow the UN to levy the types of sanctions that might make Khartoum commit to a peaceful solution.

But Mom, Do I HAVE to vote for Barack?

2008-02-18T10:10:00.005-05:00

MESH has a very interesting, off-the-cuff observation about the appeal of Barack Obama in the Middle East. Evidently, Arabs are just as taken in with his background and oratory as the Democratic electorate.

A friend from the Gulf tells me her young relative was so excited about the Democratic candidate that he tried to donate money over the Internet, as he’d heard so many young Americans were doing. Then he found out he had to be a U.S. citizen to do so. Another young woman, visiting from next-door Saudi Arabia, said that all her friends in Riyadh are “for Obama.” The symbolism of a major American presidential candidate with the middle name of Hussein, who went to elementary school in Indonesia, certainly speaks to Muslims abroad.

While TSK still has serious concerns about Obama's foreign policy credentials (his overconfidence in personal diplomacy and naive bromides about ending genocide, for example), it's becoming increasingly apparent that Obama will receive a better reception abroad than any other candidate. If Obama is able to leverage that goodwill into concrete gains, than he could prove to be just as good as Hillary or McCain. Diplomatic traction is a precious commodity, and the prospect of the Middle East welcoming the election of a new president (and not just the removal of Bush) is a powerful asset for the Obama campaign.

By the Seat of their Pants

2008-02-14T17:07:00.003-05:00

StrategyPage has this on a humorous and rather simple problem in Afghanistan: combat trousers are having a tough time handling the strain of maneuver over rough terrain. The army is moving quickly to deal with the problem, but this incident should serve of yet another reminder of how far we've come since Rumsfeld's vision of "transformation". Before we can create amazing networks of information-consuming soldiers, we have to account for the basic necessities of combat. No matter what, there will be times when our troops are forced to improvise by the seat of their pants - and it'd be nice to know that their pants are up to the task.

Congress rides to the rescue of the F-22

2008-02-12T20:32:00.001-05:00

The much-questioned F-22 seems to be living a charmed life. The House Appropriations Committee is discussing the possibility of adding billions of additional dollars in funding in the upcoming congressional supplementals. Not much is available in the way of details, but 20 additional fighters per year is a lot when the baseline number of fighters stands at 183. The estimations of future unit production vary widely, but observers agree that additional fighters can only lower the average cost of the total production run, now standing at a little under 160 million dollars. Perhaps Congress thought that getting four fighters for the cost of one lousy LCS wasn't such a bad idea after all. Regardless, the additional money could be a positive development for everyone (with the notable exception of Charlie over at Abu Muqawama).

US Navy Hits the Wrong Kind of Targets

2008-02-12T20:01:00.001-05:00

Last week Defense News reported on the increasingly bloated cost of the first two ships of the new LCS class. Originally, the baseline price of LCS-1 and LCS-2 was designated to be 220 million dollars each. Accordingly to the navy, both ships cost over double that amount in basic construction costs. That seems bad enough, but when the rest of the costs incurred in development are factored in, LCS-1 comes in at an obscene 631 million dollars, while LCS-2 tips the fiscal scales at 636 million dollars.

The lone silver lining in this mess is Defense Industry Daily's note that the Congressional Budget Office released estimates last July forecasted the first two ships to come in at 630 million dollars apiece. So while the Navy struggles to build anything approaching a respectable class of new ships, at least they can match CBO estimates down to the nearest ten million dollars. The same CBO estimate gives an average figure of 450 millions dollars for the LCS class as a whole. It will extremely interesting to see how that Navy requirement of 55 ships holds up under budgetary scrutiny.

At this point, I'm not sure that the Navy shouldn't use the two LCS prototypes as demonstrators and use the technology developed to adapt something like the Swedish Visby Corvettes or the Israeli-owned, American-made Saar-5 Corvettes. Using off-the-shelf platforms , there's a good chance the Navy could do better than nearly a half-billion dollars per ship. The LCS was supposed to be the low end of a High-Low mix of ships, but I can't imagine such expensive and underarmed ships being put in harm's way. This could be the most troubled procurement program in the entire US military.

Follow-up On the Defense Budget

2008-02-07T14:17:00.002-05:00

StrategyPage provides more information on the struggle to replace those worn-out F-15s. The Air Force has evidently decided to lean more heavily on the F-35 program in order to bridge the readiness gap.

Slate Gets Myopic on Defense

2008-02-05T23:17:00.000-05:00

Some people never learn to take the long view. Over at Slate, Fred Kaplan has produced an extremely skeptical analysis of the Defense Department's proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2009. While Kaplan makes a point of noting the true magnitude of defense spending, he zeros in on one particular category:

But let's delve into the Pentagon's base line figure—the $515.4 billion that has nothing directly to do with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's in there? Do the U.S. armed forces really need that much for the everyday maintenance of national security?About a quarter of that sum—$125.2 billion—is for personnel costs: understandable. Another third—$180 billion—is for operations and maintenance of equipment (a bit more mysterious, since this is apart from the O&M costs brought on by the war). But a larger sum still—$184 billion—is for what the Pentagon calls "major weapons systems."

Notice the use of quotation marks. In Pentagon-speak, there's nothing remotely confusing about the phrase "major weapons spending." Kaplan goes on to elaborate:

This includes $45.6 billion for military aircraft, including $6.7 billion to buy 16 more F-35 stealth planes. The F-35 is still in its early stages; the Pentagon has, to date, spent only about one-tenth of what it estimates to be a $300 billion program. It's not too late to ask if we need such a costly, sophisticated fighter jet, given that air-to-air combat is not likely to be a major element of future wars and, to the extent that it might be, we're way ahead—in numbers and technology—of any prospective foe. Or let's accept the proposition that China's air force is going to be a formidable rival by the year 2020: Do we need to tear full-speed ahead on the F-35 now? Could we slow the program down and see how things shape up?

Wait a minute, "early stages"? The FY 2009 budget includes money for low-rate initial production of the F-35A. That's well beyond the prototype stage and a precursor to delivery of the first operational aircraft. This project has been in the works for over a decade, and NOW Kaplan wants to pull the plug?

Right now, the Initial Operation Capability for the F-35 variants is estimated to be 2012-13. That leaves about seven years for the services to work out the glitches and be comfortable with the new system. These projects always have teething problems. As it is, we should be able to have confident in our new generation of fighters when 2020 rolls around. To slow the program down would be to saddle our airmen with untested platforms at a critical point in the global security environment. As for the idea that the PLAAF won't be a rival by 2020, Kaplan does nothing to present a serious argument and the strength of China's military modernization program is well documented. At a time when our existing front-line fighters are literally falling out of the sky, it is imperative that we press ahead with new purchases.

Rest assured, though, that Kaplan does not just single out the Air Force:

The budget also allots $16.9 billion for Navy shipbuilding, including $4.2 billion for a new aircraft carrier, $3.2 billion for a new DDG-1000 destroyer, and $3.6 billion for a new Virginia-class submarine. (The Navy is also pushing up, from 2012 to 2011, the year when it starts to build two of these subs annually, instead of one.) Again, where's the imminent danger, what's the rush?

And there is $3.6 billion for continued research and development into the Army's trouble-ridden Future Combat Systems program. (According to the Pentagon's budget documents, the estimated "initial deployment" for this system has now slipped to 2015, and its projected cost has risen to $160 billion—second only to the F-35 in the list of most expensive programs. Only about $20 billion has been spent so far; it's not too late to bite the bullet.)

Once again, Kaplan seems completely ignorant of future threats and the procurement challenges that face each service. With the proliferation of next-generation AIP diesel submarines and the navy's desperation for a new class of destroyers, delaying these programs is simply not an option. Aircraft carriers, meanwhile, remain the navy's most versatile platform and the ship class which sets the USN apart from its foreign counterparts. As for the FCS, the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan have reinforced the need for a new network-based system to rapidly disseminate information to the soldier in the field. While the program may be reviewed and modified, simply abandoning it would leave the army with nothing on the shelf. If nothing else FCS is providing valuable technological expertise that might lead to at least an evolutionary, if not revolutionary change for the US warfighter.

At the end of his critique, Kaplan concedes that the US can afford the current budget, but in the same breadth he questions the need for such expenditure. Given the fluid nature of warfare and the long lead time on these "major weapons systems", it is astonishing that any pundit could suggest we scrap our current programs simply because of the perceived lack of an immediate threat. Unless our policymakers can obtain perfect intelligence about foreign threats as they materialize (and here the recent track record is not encouraging), we cannot wait to be confronted by fully prepared enemies who will take advantage of our indecision. The mere possession of advanced weapons systems and publicity of their development may deter potential rivals from challenging the United States. The lack of such systems, conversely, can be (correctly) interpreted as a lack of long range commitment and willpower.

Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that Kaplan ignores these realities. After all, he once advised the former congressmen Les Aspin, who went on to have a questionable record as Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton. The neglect of military procurement and maintenance in the 1990's is largely responsible for the procurement gap the DoD is confronting today. But with all the focus on the day-to-day demands of the combat theatres, long-term force planning has once again suffered from a lack of serious attention. Hopefully Congress will look beyond its obsession with Iraq and starting working on the requirements of 2020 today, not tomorrow.

Kenya Comes Apart at the Seams

2008-02-01T13:39:00.000-05:00

The NYT and other major news outlets are reporting on the death of a second major Kenyan opposition politician. David Kumai Too was gunned down just two days after the murder of Melitus Mugabe Were, and the public seems to have discounted the government's claim that Too's death was not politically motivated. Violence has ratcheted up yet again, suspending UN-brokered peace talks and prompting Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to announce his arrival in Nairobi today.

Most of the media coverage has noted the surprised reaction of the international community to the chaos of the past month. Kenya's reputation as a successful African democracy seems so ingrained that even foreign correspondents fail to do any historical fact-checking. The truth is that Kenya's democracy peaked in 2002, with the peaceful transition of power to an opposition candidate. Ironically, it is that candidate, the incumbent president Mwai Kibaki, who is accused of manipulating the recent election. Kenya has never has a consistent track record of fairly and fully contested elections, and with the mishmash of ethnic communities scattered throughout the country (Wikipedia has a very interesting map here) the question should be why Kenya didn't disintegrate sooner.

The Soup Knife should also mention that Kenya is the tenth most unequal country in terms of income distribution and plays host to Kibera, the world's largest slum. If this is supposed to be "stable Africa", TSK shudders to think what it takes to be considered troubled.

Disturbingly, it seems that the political faction leaders have lost control over their followers. The latest round of riots appear to have spontaneously erupted after news of the most recent killing, and the divisions within the Kenyan citizenry are becoming less political and more sectarian. With even US representatives describing the violence as "ethnic cleansing", why is the UN relying on high level diplomacy? If the feuding politicians cannot rein in the hatred of their factions, then peace talks will be useless. The UN should require proof that the negotiators can exert control over the rioters before committing to any protracted talks. Otherwise, any diplomatic achievements will become meaningless footnotes to an orgy of violence.

DID Goes the Subscriber Route

2008-01-31T00:08:00.000-05:00

On January 29th, Defense Industry Daily started to offer subscriptions to its website. According to the site, this move is a direct result of reader surveys which expressed a desire for "more and more detailed information on defense programs." Evidently, that desire has been translated into a reason to charge $46 a month for full access. DID is not the first source to make the move to fee-based content, but this news still comes as a major disappointment.

Like many blogs, this publication has no operating budget. The Soup Knife is completely reliant on open-source information for its articles and analysis, and is constantly searching for new perspectives on current developments. Procurement is a critical aspect of security studies, and all too often this information is the provenance of elite contractors and government contractors. In my admittedly brief experience covering procurement issues, I found DID to be far and away the best free source for defense industry coverage. Obviously, the site was never meant to target my demographic, but perhaps incisive bloggers benefited from its resources even more than the defense executives who will continue to have unfettered access.

The procurement process has always suffered from accusations of corruption and waste, and the secrecy of the defense industry does little to improve its collective image. Transparency is essential to any public sense of accountability, and the trend towards fee-based contract information is not conducive to public debate over procurement planning and execution. Without any real investment in privileged access, this blog, like so many others, will be forced to make up the shortfall in other ways. Hopefully, creative networking will allow us to continue to offer an independent voice on the hundreds of billions of dollars that sustain the worldwide flow of armaments.

Breaking Down the Surge

2008-01-29T17:41:00.001-05:00

Westhawk has an interesting commentary on a piece in the most recent issue of The Weekly Standard. For the first time, the details of the surge's conception and delivery have been released in the mainstream media. The cast of characters should be fairly familiar to those who follow national security issues, and now it seems intriguing to go back and review the opinions that George Bush received in 2006, as the plan was being formulated.

Three figures stand out in this drama, all members of a NSC-convened panel in June 2006. Frederick Kagan and Robert Kaplan scarcely need introduction as prominent commentators and proponents of US power abroad. Michael Vickers held a much lower public profile, although his involvement with Afghanistan in the 1980's has since obtained some much overdue attention. These three men, along with State Department adviser Eliot Cohen, presented their perspectives on the situation in Iraq during a Camp David retreat with the president and his senior staff.

Kagan had already been developing a plan for securing Baghdad, and with his directive to "clear, hold, and build" he clearly articulated the basic principle of the eventual surge. Surprisingly, Robert Kaplan refused to take a firm position on the surge. Instead, Kaplan limited himself to a discussion of other counterinsurgency campaigns. Vickers objected, believing that Iraq could be won with even fewer units than were then deployed in Iraq. The original article does not explain Vickers' rationale behind such a proposal, but I concur with Westhawk in the belief that Vickers wanted to rely on better relations with the Iraqi tribes to ensure at least localized security.

Kaplan's refusal to advocate a solution is curious given his familiarity with irregular warfare in Afghanistan (he covered it in the 1980's) and his experiences as a journalist during the Iran-Iraq war. Kaplan has never made apologies for the use of US troops, and his recent books seem almost panegyric in their depiction of American servicemen. But here Kaplan chose to pass up an opportunity to support the surge. Why?

The answer may lie in Kaplan's beliefs about the future of warfare. Kaplan sees a long-term trend against the use of massive troop developments and in favor of smaller detachments of elite units (Kaplan's book Imperial Grunts prominently featured the SF community). The surge strategy was an implicit admission that counterinsurgency requires more than a token presence on the ground. Kaplan's transformative view of warfare, similar to the doctrine espoused by Donald Rumsfeld, could not account for this reality, and so even as Kaplan acknowledged the gravity of the situation he could not sincerely advocate an influx of additional forces.

Tracing the perspective of Vickers seems less problematic. His opinion was exactly in keeping with a veteran of CIA and SF operations. Given Vickers' success in Afghanistan, it would be hard to dismiss the opinion of a man who has proven so adept in using native social and political forces to his advantage. But here Vickers seems to have forgotten the difference between his Afghanistan experience and Iraq. In Afghanistan, Vickers was logistically supporting an insurgency; in Iraq, he was confronted with the theoretical challenge of stopping one. It appears that Vickers wanted to create a US-supported insurgency to fight the existing one; in effect, a literal "counterinsurgency". This would have the benefit of minimizing US troop presence (and casualties), but likely would have left the country in chaos, a chaos that likely would have borne a strong resemblance to post-Soviet Afghanistan. Vickers was correct in assessing the potential of engagement with the Iraqi tribes, but without a heavy US presence to maintain order the tribes would have only finished the job of tearing the country apart.

Ultimately, Kagan was the big winner. Even though his plan could never have succeeded on its own, he was the beneficiary of several contemporary developments, including the new COIN doctrine, Al-Qaeda's poor relations with the Sunni tribes, and Vickers' policy of engagement as eventually implemented by commanders on the ground. In this light, the surge stands as a masterful job of amalgamating various perspectives on successful COIN operations.

This episode should also temper enthusiasm for every new policy planner who suddenly gains recognition and credibility. This is not to suggest that Vickers is not an unusually productive and competent advocate of US policy, or that he lacks an impressive resume; it merely suggests that he has the same limitations of any observer with specialized credentials. Vickers (and to a lesser extent, Kaplan), struggled to adapt the situation to his previously established practices, rather than the other way around. The Pentagon is surely better off with Vickers in a position of real authority, but as we move forward his position and that of other irregular warfare practitioners should be balanced with more conventional minds.

Is This the End of the Awakening?

2008-01-24T11:04:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has a gem of a front page article today about a new trends of attacks against members of the Sunni Awakening. Prominent members of the Sunni hierarchy are being targeted and the resulting chaos threatens to end the recent decline in sectarian violence. Remarkably, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia appears to have completely reoriented itself as a result of the Awakening. Instead of butchering Shias as they did under Zarqawi, Al Qaeda is now focused on punishing Sunnis who assist US security efforts.

American and Iraqi officials blame Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for most of the killings, which spiked after the Dec. 29 release of an audio recording in which Osama bin Laden called the volunteer tribesmen “traitors” and “infidels.” While the organization is overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni, American military officials say it has foreign leadership, though its links with Mr. bin Laden himself are unclear.

Officials say that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has a two-pronged strategy: directing strikes against Awakening members to intimidate and punish them for cooperating with the Americans, and infiltrating the groups to glean intelligence and discredit the movement in the eyes of an already wary Shiite-led government.

It has been interesting to watch the focus of Al Qaeda progressively narrow since the original invasion of Iraq. Immediately after the fall of Baghdad, Al Qaeda positioned itself as the vanguard of Islam engaged in battle against the imperial West. As the conflict intensified and Zarqawi rose to prominence, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia allowed itself to be drawn into sectarian conflict with the Shias. Now, with the explicit consent of bin Laden, Al Qaeda is reduced to targeting fellow Sunni Muslims.

Tactically, this is a viable threat to stability in Iraq. Strategically, it reeks of desperation. Even if Al Qaeda succeeds in marginalizing the Awakening, it runs the risk of alienating its last remaining constituency. Al Qaeda's coercive measures helped push the Anbar tribes into American arms in the first place; now it thinks it can bully them back into neutrality. In the long run, these attacks will ensure Al Qaeda's rejection in all quarters, both Sunni and Shia. In the short term, however, it could undermine the most visible example of US progress in the last two years.

Fortunately for Al Qaeda, the Sunnis appear to be more concerned with the threat from Shiite militias.

[Officials] are worried about losing men like Omar Abbas, 23, one of the thousands of Awakening foot soldiers who expose themselves to danger every day at checkpoints throughout the country. American and Iraqi officials agree that Al Qaeda is the major threat, followed by the Shiite militias.

But many Awakening members like Mr. Abbas turn that hierarchy of risk upside down, singling out the Shiite militias.

“Badr is the worst threat,” he said, referring to the military arm of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a leading Shiite political party. The next greatest threat, he said, is the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of the political movement of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Both militias have deep influence in Iraq’s security forces.

Opinion appears divided on whether the Shiite militias are acting on their own initiative or with the approval of the top Shiite leadership. Suspicions of Iranian involvement are rampant, although little direct evidence exists. Clearly, though, at least some members of the Shia community have decided to exploit the newly vulnerable Sunni Awakening after watching it thrive with the encouragement of the US. The White House needs to apply as much pressure as possible on Maliki and the Shiite contingent to rein in these attacks while American troops assist the Sunnis in their fight against Al-Qaeda. If Maliki cannot call off the dogs, then the Sunnis will continue to prepare for sectarian conflict and ignore the importance of collective Iraqi security. There is an opportunity here to curtail Sunni disaffection with the political progress in Baghdad, if only the Iraqi government can muster the courage and influence to prevent another round of bloody retribution.

(Click here for Intel Dump's take on today's news article)

Hagee remains optimistic about naval procurement

2008-01-23T23:43:00.000-05:00

I had the opportunity last week to speak briefly with retired four-star general and former Marine Commandant Michael Hagee. With the current travails of the naval procurement system (especially the LCS and DDG-1000 programs) in mind, I asked the general if he was worried about an eventual reduction in Marine amphibious capacity, especially with the public's attention focused on the land-based conflict in Iraq. Hagee maintained that the public understands the value of sea power, and emphasized the unique capabilities of the Marines. Specifically, Hagee spoke about Marine interdiction of Taliban forces in western Afghanistan and the successful humanitarian interventions in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami and the earthquake in Kashmir. I'm glad that Hagee feels so secure about the future of his service; hopefully the Navy and Marine Corps can work together to maintain a highly visible role in the GWOT. (Follow the link for information on the Navy's "individual augmentees" program in Iraq).

In the course of our conversation, General Hagee recommended to me the book "Fighting Talk", a collection of maxims compiled by the English professor Colin S. Grey. Hagee lauded the work as a concise "infantryman's book" with lots of good thoughts about the planning and execution of war. I've already borrowed a copy for myself, and I've found the forty mini-essays both informative and easily digestible. I highly recommend for anyone interested in defense issues, regardless of credentials.