The rank hypocrisy of veterans on OPSEC

I've written on these pages before about questioning the expertise of anyone claiming to have expertise and that arguments should be weighed as they stand. Most recently, I hit on IAVA for talking about civ-mil relations in a way that exceeded their understanding of it. But that sin is much less than those of groups who intentionally mislead the public through their own hypocrisy. Specifically, political veterans from the very right on OPSEC.

I don't think I need to go into a lot of detail - most of you know the background. This past summer the right end of the veteran (and non-veteran) blogosphere blew up with allegations against the President (and his administration) of leaking classified information about the SEAL raid to kill bin Laden for political gain. They didn't just get frothy-mouthed about this issue (of which they had some standing before they lost their reasoning faculties), they got active with at least one Super PAC started by a former Navy SEAL dedicated to OPSEC alone.

Fast forward a few months and the change in their position on OPSEC is so radical that it makes my head spin. Take the milblog This Ain't Hell - a staunchly conservative, veteran group blog that I occasionally visit for their amusing (if too serious) "stolen valor" posts. In primary contributor Jonn Lilyea's 11 June 2012 post, "Sanger defends Administration leaks", Lilyea says:

How about we let our secrets remain that way until whichever war we're fighting ends, so we don't intentionally get mired in the morass that the media made of this last war with their "open debate". ... And how about someone put a muzzle on the leaks out of the Obama Administration and let them debate the issues instead of smokescreening their failures.

Pretty straightforward position: secrets are secrets and should stay that way while the secrets affect current operations. But when it comes to Benghazi the tone changes. Lilyea posits today, in a post that quotes a report drawn from an "uncovered" Secret cable, "Who knows what other information they're sitting on today that will blow up in our faces and cost more American lives later." Again, this classified cable that affects current operations coming to light isn't an OPSEC violation, it's "uncovered". Blatant, reeking hypocrisy.

The previously-mentioned Special Ops OPSEC Super PAC does not even hide their hypocrisy on OPSEC. In a press release from 17 October 2012, the OPSEC president said:

President Obama wanted credit after our military killed bin Laden. Highly classified secrets were leaked, endangering real heroes and their families. But when terrorists killed SEALs and diplomats in Libya, this administration does not tell the truth about what happened.

In summation, this Super PAC was started because the President leaked classified info about something he shouldn't have leaked because it relates to ongoing operations. But the President is at fault because he doesn't leak classified info that relates to ongoing operations. Don't think about it too long or it will hurt your brain.

This hypocrisy isn't limited to fringe blogs (admittedly with more hits than this humble blog, but I'd rather be thoughtful than popular) or fringe political groups. A fringe blogger at a mainstream newspaper, Jennifer Rubin, supports hitting the President on the bin Laden leaks in a July post, positively quoting Governor Romney at the VFW, before accusing the President of "stonewalling" yesterday for not disclosing information that is rightly classified. I'm less concerned about Rubin as she's a pure political hack, but the point is that pure political hacks are taking their cues from veterans-cum-hacks because of the latters' perceived expertise.

These veterans and their hypocrisy is irritating at the least and dangerous at the worst. Because our veteran population is so small and our national defense so complicated, the general public looks to those few veterans who speak up to help explain how varied aspects of our national defense work. But the most vocal veterans on the issue of OPSEC, at least in volume, has been those who bathe in the fetid waters of hypocrisy. Their domestic political concerns are skewing how they present defense issues to the public, causing them to mislead the American public into believing the President is wrong for both leaking classified information and for not leaking classified information. And the American people don't know to juxtapose these two issues and see the hypocrisy of it all, even if there was some substance to the crux of their original position (minus the whole "Obama is a traitor" nonsense).

Obviously free-thinking people should always examine any argument for fallacies or validity, but too often we allow related experience to substitute for expertise. As my IAVA post made clear, being a veteran in and of itself does not make a veteran an expert on anything beyond his or her own experiences. Keep that in mind as you read through political discourse in the waning days of the presidential campaign.

The failure of light-footprint intervention to provide long-term stability

Today the RAND Corporation released Libya's Post-Qaddafi Transition: The Nation-Building Challenge co-written by a team of researchers. The paper is pretty good on discussing the current security, economic, and political situation and challenges in Libya. However, the paper's discourse on the security situation, specifically through a "light-footprint strategy", has helped me get my brain around an issue I've been struggling to wrap my grey matter around because I don't think it addresses the nature of the conflict that lead to today's situation. To be exact (and with caveats not discussed here):

Light- to no-footprint intervention in support of rebel forces is not a long-term solution for stability.

The U.S. and other NATO involvement in Libya was essentially the provision of air support (with notable exceptions of on-the-ground SOF teams). There are a number of reasons for this approach, much of which is centered around domestic Western politics. But the provision of close and strategic air support to a motley crew of disparate and competitive armed groups is only asking for a disaster. Yes, this method helped bring about the end of the much despised Qaddafi regime, but it is certainly not helping bring about a lasting peace and stability. Much like our initial efforts in Afghanistan, failing to provide the forces necessary in the aftermath of the destruction of a regime creates an environment conducive to warlord-ism and the promise of many years of conflict.

Since the 1990s at least, conflict studies have proven time and again the value of well executed DDR (disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration) and SSR (security sector reform) programs. Our failure to begin this in earnest in 2002 (or really up to at least 2005!) in Afghanistan and our failure to do it now in Libya is exacerbating the security situation where the internationally-recognized government has very limited control over its own territory. Did we expect that these militias, that we supported with weapons (in some cases) and effective air support, to simply integrate themselves into the state or to return to their peaceful lives in the interest of democracy and human rights? Our planning for both Libya and Afghanistan suggest that we did expect that even if it sounds profoundly stupid when stated this directly. But without adequate intervention forces (military, police, civil) on the ground to provide security and to direct and lead DDR and SSR efforts, your only other option is to hope that DDR and SSR happen on their own. Which, as near as I can tell, has never happened.

The purpose of this short post is not to lobby for boots on the ground in Libya, but on the contrary to caution those out there who think that we can simply help these rebel groups with air power. For example: here. If our actions in Libya did create a gratitude account with the Libyan people, great. But that does not translate to those warlords that wield power through their militias as often their fight will be with other militias as they strive for greater influence. Without boots on the ground, we are unlikely to be able to stop these violent struggles for power if we can't be there to broker the peace and help move it along.

As much as military analysts bemoan the general public's lack of understanding of the effort and violence of a no-fly zone, the longer peace is much harder to accomplish without large numbers of troops on the ground to provide stability after the regime falls. If we are not willing to put troops on the ground before or after our service as a rebel-force air force, then we should seriously contemplate refraining from intervening in the first place. Or at a minimum, not be surprised when our actions do not provide the stability for which we had hoped.  That is where I have issue with the RAND paper: it discusses the light-footprint as a problem in developing long-term stability, but it does not discuss the real nature of our initial intervention and how we have not yet succeeded in using it to accomplish long-term foreign policy objectives. Instead of looking merely at Libya today, we need to understand that this has not worked yet in accomplishing anything other than short-term objectives: removing the guys we don't like. We need to understand that this approach is the minimal-interventionist version of the Bush administration's failure to provide a Phase IV plan for Iraq. It has the exact same consequences and is based on the same weak planning assumptions. Just keep that in mind as debate about intervening in Syria continues and we consider possible courses of action.

Trombly and Foust on R2P, sovereignty, Libya, and a rational basis for U.S. foreign policy

I haven't had time to write about this subject (though if you follow me on Twitter it should be plain that I have strong feelings about it), but Dan Trombly and Josh Foust are absolutely killing it on Libya and the so-called "responsibility to protect."

First, see Anne-Marie Slaughter at The Atlantic.

Now read Foust at PBS Need to Know.

And finally, check out Trombly's comprehensive take-down of R2P opportunism at Slouching Towards Columbia.

I like Anne-Marie Slaughter -- I think she's charismatic and engaging, and her enthusiasm to correspond with analysts and students on Twitter is an admirable example for other policy big-wigs to emulate. But Foust and Trombly are so effective in categorically dismantling the philosophical and logical foundations of her argument that the reasonably-minded can only lament their comparative distance from the levers of power.

(It seems like an appropriate time to offer this aside: Dan Trombly is a freaking superstar. I don't know the guy personally, but if this kid spends his 20s making copies for the Michael O'Hanlons of the world, it will be a damned tragedy. It's depressing to consider how completely the so-called "foreign policy establishment" is walled off to original thinking, but I hope he gets an opportunity to do meaningful work. Read his blog. Every day. (No, seriously.))

Don't expect much from me over the long weekend, as I'll be on a train to New York this afternoon. (Hopefully I can get through the last 300-ish pages of The Makers of Modern Strategy, but I'm not holding out a ton of hope.)

Is COIN dead?

That's the contention of this piece in The National Journal, which runs with the subtitle "It isn't just people who are dying in Afghanistan. So is an entire concept of war." Michael Hirsh and Jamie Tarabay give a thorough accounting of the way the so-called "COIN narrative" has played out in policy discussions, but they fail to prove the contention that counterinsurgency's time has come and gone.

I'm not going to go into this in depth right now, because I'm on vacation (at least for 36 more hours). I've stayed away from Twitter and blogs for a week, and I didn't even listen to the president's speech on Wednesday. But consider for just a second what COINdinistas Dave Barno and Peter Mansoor's very different arguments tell us about counterinsurgency's place in America's future approach to warfighting. Here's Mansoor:

[T]here's not going to be any stomach in the United States for this kind of thing going forward... We're going to shy away from regime change or these really large-scale counterinsurgency conflicts. That's why you see, in Libya, the reluctance of the Obama administration to do more than what they're doing.

And here's Barno:

You're never [going] to see a conventional war ever again that doesn't not [sic] have a very robust irregular component to it. [Nice editing, NJ.]

What's missing from both men's vision of the future is any discussion of regime change -- narrowly-focused conventional warfighting missions -- absent a post-war cleanup: stability operations and counterinsurgency. The debate about Libya has been characterized by a decided reluctance on almost all sides to commit American military power to the acknowledged aim of ending Qaddafi's rule. Why should this be so? We have the tools at hand to kill Qaddafi, to destroy his army, to target the regime's resources and infrastructure and to make life very, very difficult for what remains of the government in Tripoli. Why won't we use them? The answer is simple: because we can scarcely conceive of using force to achieve our military objectives without then making an effort to shape outcomes in the postwar period. (I know of no individual, even among proponents of regime change, who believe that U.S. involvement should or can begin and end with the regime's destruction.) We can't even imagine a world where breaking it does not mean also buying it.

Of course, preventive or punitive raiding will always be a part of the spectrum of possible response to threat and provocation, but this has meaningful consequences: we must either accept that the security challenges of the future will be less amenable to solution with the military instrument, or we must struggle to retain (or one day regain) our appetite for expensive, time-consuming, manpower-intensive irregular conflict.

[insert pithy, non-profane post title here]

I don't like to scream profanity into cyberspace via post titles, which are embedded in the URL, so I'm just going to bump it down into the body text.

Max Boot: Are you fucking kidding me?

To head off the dangers that may come with “catastrophic success,” it is important for the coalition to plan now for stabilizing a post-Qaddafi Libya. If policymakers haven’t already done so, they ought to consult The Beginner's Guide to Nation-Building put out by Jim Dobbins, Seth Jones, and their colleagues at RAND. In particular look at page 39, which lists “peak military levels for peace enforcement” in a variety of conflicts from 1945 Germany to 2003 Iraq. Iraq was on the low end of force levels—only 7 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants. Germany was on the high end—101 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants. This helps to explain why post-war Germany was so much more peaceful. Bosnia and Kosovo, also relatively successful exercises in nation-building, were in between—with 19 and 20 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants, respectively.

What does that mean for Libya—a country that, according to the CIA Factbook, has a population of 6.6 million? If the aim is to replicate the Bosnia/Kosovo experience then 330,000 peacekeepers would be called for. If Iraq is the model, 94,000 peacekeepers would be needed.

Of course, as with all such metrics, these are very rough rules of thumb that need to be adjusted based on circumstances. In Libya there are a number of factors that suggest lesser levels of risk, including the fact that the eastern portion of the country around Benghazi has been relatively peaceful and stable under rebel control. So perhaps even 94,000 peacekeepers won’t be needed. But it is likely that a need substantial if smaller force will still be required, and it is imperative for NATO policymakers to begin planning for such a deployment. As part of that planning process, they need to shine greater public attention on this issue and make clear why a peacekeeping force would need to be sent. Otherwise they risk shock and opposition among publics that have not been prepared for yet another deployment.

For ten minutes after I read this post, I could do nothing but stare blankly at the screen.

Are you fucking kidding me?

The political and public will to secure, stabilize, state-build, or otherwise involve U.S. forces and resources in a post-conflict scenario in Libya simply does not exist. A significant majority of Americans oppose U.S. involvement even at current levels: when asked last week "do you think the U.S. is doing the right thing by using military force in Libya now, or should the U.S. not be involved in Libya now?", only 33% of those polled approved of the enterprise. (See question 31.) There's no small irony in Boot's exhortation to policymakers to "shine greater public attention on this issue and make clear why a peacekeeping force would need to be sent," considering the way Boot himself is manifestly incapable of offering a persuasive rationale to his own audience.

Beyond that, Boot's analysis of force requirements is so stupid it practically drools. One can only assume that the RAND state-building study is cited and linked as a sort of bluff; surely Boot knows that his foolishness will be revealed if the reader takes time to examine it even cursorily. "In particular look at page 39," we're told, where a chart compares the peak troops-to-inhabitants ratio for Germany and Japan in 1945 with six peace enforcement missions from the post-Cold War period. Here's Max:

Iraq was on the low end of force levels—only 7 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants. Germany was on the high end—101 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants. This helps to explain why post-war Germany was so much more peaceful. Bosnia and Kosovo, also relatively successful exercises in nation-building, were in between—with 19 and 20 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants, respectively.

Yes, force levels do help to explain the success of peace enforcement and stability operations. Dobbins et al. agree: "High levels of forces have generally tended to correlate with high levels of security and order and low levels of casualties." But they don't completely explain outcomes: just look at Japan, where post-conflict violence was nonexistent with a ratio of only five occupying troops to every 1,000 people -- the same as violent Somalia in 1992.

It is, of course, intuitive to assume that high force levels are conducive to low violence. But the sample size of the RAND study is troubling, as is the lack of consideration given to a number of other qualitative differences between the various campaigns. The wars against Germany and Japan, for example, ended with the surrender of each country's high military command, to the evident relief of populations that had been battered by years of total war. The Bosnian war had a similarly settled conclusion, with Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic (acting by proxy for Bosnian Serbs) agreeing to the Dayton Accords alongside the Bosnian and Croatian national leaderships. The Kosovo conflict, on the other hand, ended with the withdrawal of Serbian forces from the province and the entry of KFOR peacekeepers, who were joyously received by Kosovar Albanians. (In this sense, it can hardly be classed as "peace enforcement.") And the Iraq war, of course, merely shifted from conventional to irregular war in 2003, the year the data was reported; the government in Baghdad had collapsed, the armed forces scattered, and the anti-coalition resistance taken up by sectarian militias and loyalist irregulars.

What this brief exploration should show is that a great many variables related to conflict termination can impact the level of violence in the peace enforcement or stability operations phase, and troop levels are not uniquely determinative. Boot seems to acknowledge this when he writes that "these are very rough rules of thumb that need to be adjusted based on circumstances." But he goes on to conclude that the risk of post-Qaddafi violence in Libya is likely even lower than in any of the scenarios mooted above, and that a stabilizing occupation could perhaps be effected with an even lower force ratio than Iraq in 2003 (which, contrary to Boot's assertion, is not "on the low end of force levels," but rather just above the median in a set of eight cases). Of course, there's a serious problem with this line of reasoning: if the post-war situation in Iraq were reproduced in Libya this year, that would be a totally unacceptable result for the United States and the international community! The force levels in 2003 Iraq didn't come close to assuring stability!

There are a good many reasons to believe the precise opposite of what Boot asserts -- to believe that the risk of violence in Libya is much, much higher than in Japan or Somalia or Kosovo. Many Libyans have already insisted that a Western troop presence in the country would be unacceptable to them, even during a phase of the conflict when the outcome is still uncertain. If Libyans are unwelcoming of American combat power that could aid in Qaddafi's demise, how much more likely are they to resist a foreign presence once the dictator is gone? As Boot has clearly noticed -- he reminds us early in the piece that "Libya has been a major recruiting center for Al Qaeda" -- Arab North Africans in authoritarian countries are solidly within the target demographic of America's most committed foe; should we expect that AQAM will be unable to rouse resistance fighters to the anti-crusader cause in an Arab country with weak borders, surrounded by other Arab countries with weak borders and populations presumably susceptible to the bin-Ladenist pitch? We should instead pretend that post-conflict conditions in Libya will be less like the disaster of post-Saddam Iraq and more like Kosovo, where occupying forces had come to the aid of a weaker ethno-religious faction after the expulsion of an aggressive, invading army?

In the end, we can't know whether Libya would violently oppose a Western occupation (even one that Boot would surely proclaim as salutary to the cause of Arab freedom). Steven Goode, summarizing the findings of a study on force levels by the Center for Army Lessons Learned, adverted to just this point.

Another caveat of the work is that the analysis cannot predict the violence level before a conflict starts. Many insurgencies simmer at a low level for years before becoming serious enough to provoke a significant reaction from the government. In contrast, the Soviet Union faced intense resistance immediately upon invading Afghanistan, with more than 4,000 Soviet and Afghan soldiers killed every year of the conflict (or more than 250 fatalities per million Afghan residents). Policy-makers contemplating intervening in other nations should remember that not only can invasions lead to insurgencies; they can also lead almost immediately to levels of violence more than three times that currently [in the winter of 2009-10] seen in Afghanistan after eight years of war.

All of which by way of saying what almost everyone except for Max Boot seems to have learned by now: this kind of thing isn't as simple as you think it is. (Or more succinctly: STFU.)

The Logic of Violence in Civil War: Libya edition

Tonight a friend asked me "if everyone hates Qaddafi so badly, why isn't there more rebel activity in the west? Why isn't there more sabotage and insurgency and all that?" My first thought was something like, hell, you've got me. What the hell do I know about Libya? And that's true enough: I don't know much of anything about the specifics of the civil war, of ethnic cleavages or tribal rivalry, or really even about the geographic patterns of violence there beyond what's been widely reported in the media. But I do know a very little bit about the general subject of insurgency and irregular war, and the literature has something to say about this.

For one thing, popular interpretations of civil war and rebellion tend to overstate the power of ideology as a motivating factor for combatants. In the present example, this manifests as the belief that widespread loathing of an authoritarian leader should logically translate into broad-based, geographically indifferent rebellion. A melange of motivations is evident in anecdotal reporting from the front (none better than what runs under the byline of prolific multi-platform star C.J. Chivers), though we'd be well-served to keep in mind that people aren't always fighting for the reasons they say they are. These accounts don't really answer our question, in any event: if the rebels of Brega and Benghazi are fighting for democracy, the Qu'ran, or anything but Qaddafi, then surely some in the west of the country would take up arms in the service of one of those ends, right? Here's Stathis Kalyvas (p. 46) on the subject:

An extensive body of research shows that combatants are usually motivated to fight not by ideology or hate or fear but by peer pressure and processes involving regard for their comrades, respect for their leaders, concern for their own reputation with both, and an urge to contribute to the success of the group -- in short, what is known as "primary group cohesion."*

Chivers' account of one rebel straggler, too, puts paid to ideological explanations; Sgt. Abdullah Insaiti, a 13-year veteran of Qaddafi's army, defected to the opposition with his entire unit in February.

His unit, he said, had been scattered under fire in the fighting in recent weeks. He said he believed that eight of his friends had died, but offered that the number was probably much higher than that. Some, he said, had been blown apart in the shelling they had been subjected to out in the desert, where the forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi have been pounding the rebels with all manner of fire. 

Asked if he knew where his unit was now, Mr. Insaiti gave a perplexed shrug.

I'd be curious to see how many of this man's unit return to combat versus blending back into the considerably less dangerous routines of civilian life, but the tale is an instructive one either way: surely an entire platoon doesn't defect over ideology.

But regime security forces are a bit of a special case, to be fair -- this still doesn't really speak to the question of the west's relative quiet. But Kalyvas does, at least in a general sense. To boil a 400-page book down into a few sentences, let's put it like this: The Logic of Violence in Civil War argues that combatants are most likely to employ selective violence in areas where they are approaching, but have not secured, hegemony. To put it even more simply: the warring parties are most likely to kill people not in those places that either they or the opposing faction firmly control, but rather in those places where killing people might have a meaningful impact on defections and the supply of information. Here it is in the original Social-Science-ese (p. 13):

The theory bridges the meso- and microlevels and predicts the likelihood of violence as a function of control. On the one hand, political actors do not need to use violence where they already enjoy high levels of control and cannot use selective violence where they have no control whatsoever; having no access to information, they may use indiscriminate violence, but it will be counterproductive. Instead, they want to use selective violence in contested areas, where they have incomplete control. On the other hand, individuals want to denounce only where it is safe for them to do so; this is the case where their victims have no access to the rival political actor and, therefore, lack the option of counterdenunciation. In turn, this option is related to control: the higher the level of control for one actor, the lower the presence of the rival one, and, hence, of the option of counterdenunciation. The prediction is that violence is most likely to occur where one actor is near hegemonic, not where this actor is in full control or is being contested. Violence, in other words, is most likely where the organizational demand for information meets its individual supply. 

Now, if you're still awake: what does this mean for Libya? Well, Kalyvas doesn't directly address the question of sabotage and guerilla activity, but rather selective violence against neutral or undecided populations. We can, however, draw logical conclusions from his work, and the most meaningful of these -- widely known to students of insurgency but perhaps counterintuitive -- is that collaboration follows control. Conceptually inseparable from the belief that ideology drives rebellion is the commonly-held view that regime strength corresponds geographically (and demographically) with regime popularity; in point of fact, civilians are most likely to peaceably accede to the wishes of the government in areas where the regime's military power and physical control are at their peak.

All of which is just a long way of expressing a pretty simple hypothesis: it's entirely possible that few Libyans are rising up outside of the east and a few small pockets of rebel control simply because government control of the rest of the country just seems incontestable or insurmountable. (Kalyvas, p. 93: "The absence of alternatives often produces collaboration irrespective of the level of popular satisfaction or lack thereof," which come to think of it could've pretty much been the whole post all by itself.) As I mentioned to my friend, there may be other valid explanations related to ethnic or tribal politics, geographic history, and so on, and these would certainly be more effectively articulated by an area expert. But I'm not that guy, so this is what I've got.

*Why this should be so is a complicated question that's largely beyond the scope of what we're talking about here, but Kalyvas alludes to a number of biases that impact scholarly work on the subject. Notably: "There is a clear epistemic bias, at least in the sociological and historical traditions, in favor of the assumption that all (or most) participants in conflicts are motivated by ideological concerns. Because 'urban' scholars tend to be primarily motivated by ideology themselves, the often assign unambiguous ideological motives to participants, even if this is not the case" (p. 44).

Why don't the Libyan rebels unilaterally disarm? (UPDATED)

Ok, I know this sounds like a nutty idea, but it's something I've been thinking about ever since the staggeringly effective U.S. bombardment of Libyan air defenses and maneuver forces kicked off the present period of stalemate: if the UNSCR authorizes protection of civilians and populated areas and nothing else, and if U.S. and NATO forces have made it clear that they will NOT perform close air support for opposition forces (or even support them with suppressive or defensive fires), and regime elements have indicated that they will continue to push east-northeast and take offensive action to suppress the rebellion... why don't the rebels simply lay down their arms, return to built-up areas, blend in with the civilian population, then wait for the inevitable destruction of advancing regime forces by coalition strike assets tasked to protect civilian life?

Is this too simple? Is it too much to expect the Libyan opposition to entrust their lives to the discretion of Western commanders, even after the coalition has proved itself both willing and capable of rendering regime forces combat ineffective or inoperable?

Presumably NATO's inaction in the face of regime offensives against Misrata and Brega is a result of the rebels' military defense of those towns. It's hard to imagine that the unopposed shelling of civilians would be permitted by the coalition, while sensitivity about intervention in running battles of a civil war may be giving Western political and military leaders pause.

"The opposition" has proved itself largely incapable of protecting civilians, holding ground, or doing much more than harrassing regime forces as they advance or flooding into abandoned ground after coalition air assets loose that ground from the regime's grip. What do they have to lose?

UPDATE: Chris Chivers has more on the haplessness of the rebels' military organization, if such a thing can be said to exist.

But by almost all measures by which a military might be assessed, they are a hapless bunch. They have almost no communication equipment. There is no visible officer or noncommissioned officer corps. Their weapons are a mishmash of hastily acquired arms, which few of them know how to use.  

With only weeks of fighting experience, they lack an understanding of the fundamentals of offensive and defensive combat, or how to organize fire support. They fire recklessly and sometimes accidentally. Most of them have yet to learn how to hold seized ground, or to protect themselves from their battlefield’s persistent rocket and mortar fire, which might be done by simply digging in. 

Prone to panic, they often answer to little more than their mood, which changes in a flash. When their morale spikes upward, their attacks tend to be painfully and bloodily frontal — little more than racing columns down the highway, through a gantlet of the Qaddafi forces’ rocket and mortar fire, face forward into the loyalists’ machine guns. 

You also ought to be reading his blog, where he deals in greater detail with some of the opposition's armaments (including several outstanding and illustrative photos).

Arming Libyan rebels: it's not only a singularly awful idea, but it won't work

According to the president, the U.S. wants regime change in Libya. Also according to the president, the U.S. is not willing to use military force to effect that end (especially not ground troops). As such, the American military machine is left to enforcing a no-fly zone and "protecting civilians" -- i.e. vaporizing any regime formations that fail to meet an unstated and apparently arbitrary standard for establishing their lack of threat to rebel-held cities or the civilian population. It should come as no surprise, then, that there are a great many calls to send arms to the Libyan insurgents as a means to achieve our broader goals: that is, to facilitate the defeat of the Qaddafi regime.

By now you will no doubt have been exposed to some of the many, many good arguments against this policy course. I'm not going to exhaustively and categorically recount them all, but I want to take just a minute to go over some of the basics.

[I've been typing bits of this all day, and just within the last hour, Reuters is reporting that the president "has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi." Supposing the decision's now been taken, these issues are even more worthy of thoughtful consideration.]

First off, we don't have a damn clue who the opposition is. Sure, we've met with a few "ministers" in the anti-Qaddafi movement, mostly western-educated English speakers and former regime loyalists. But we don't understand the fundamental character of the rebel organization, the relationship between the various "transitional" or opposition political arrangements (some of which we're only just becoming acquainted with), or whether a command-and-control relationship between those groups and the armed men engaging regime forces on the ground even exists in any meaningful sense. Who the hell are we planning to arm? We're not even sure who speaks for the resistance movement, never mind who will fight for it. Divisions in the opposition mean that we can't be sure by whom and to what end the weapons will be used.

Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker has spent some time with the rebels. Here's an extended clip from his essential piece "Who are the rebels?":

Significant questions remain about the leaders of the rebellion: who they are, what their political ideas are, and what they would do if Qaddafi fell. At the courthouse on Benghazi’s battered seafront promenade, the de-facto seat of the Libyan revolution, a group of lawyers, doctors, and other professionals have appointed one another to a hodgepodge of “leadership councils.” There is a Benghazi city council, and a Provisional National Council, headed by a bland but apparently honest former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who spends his time in Bayda, a hundred and twenty-five miles away. Other cities have councils of their own. The members are intellectuals, former dissidents, and businesspeople, many of them from old families that were prominent before Qaddafi came to power. What they are not is organized. No one can explain how the Benghazi council works with the National Council. Last week, another shadow government, the Crisis Management Council, was announced in Benghazi; it was unclear how its leader, a former government planning expert named Mahmoud Jibril [who Secretary Clinton met with yesterday in London], would coördinate with Jalil, or whether he had supplanted him. 

It gets more confusing: there are two competing military chiefs. One is General Abdel Fateh Younis, who was Qaddafi’s interior minister and the commander of the Libyan special forces until he “defected” to the rebel side. Younis has been publicly absent, and he is distrusted by the shabab and by many council members. The other chief, Colonel Khalifa Heftir, is a hero of Libya’s war with Chad, in the nineteen-eighties; he later turned against Qaddafi and, until recently, was in exile in the U.S. [And by "in exile in the U.S.," we mean he's been living in the DC suburbs for the last two decades.] Unlike Younis, he elicits widespread admiration in Benghazi, but he, too, has kept out of sight, evidently at a secret Army camp where he is preparing élite troops for battle.

You may be negotiating with the western-educated English speakers, but they aren't going to be the ones handling anti-tank weapons. What do those guys want? Because once they've got the guns, good ol' Colon Heftir and General Younis may not be the only ones making decisions.

In case that's not enough, it seems pretty clear that whichever faction ends up with our support, it won't be even remotely capable of employing sophisticated weapons in an effective manner. Put simply, the Libyan opposition is not a viable military force. It's a rabble, a gang. It's a loosely-confederated group of people who are pissed-off enough at Qaddafi to take up arms (however briefly and ineffectively) in the name of his ouster. It's a non-state (sub-state) group. Damned near everything about the established methods by which we provide training and equipment to foreign partners is geared toward supporting states and institutions. Aside from covert methods (which it now seems we're gearing up to employ) and direct assistance from Special Forces, we don't even have a legal means to transfer weapons to an insurgent group operating on the territory of an embargoed country. The standard mechanism through which military materiel is provided to foreign parties by the U.S. government is foreign military sales (FMS), a process in which the USG procures and delivers hardware to the foreign customer under the terms of a signed contract. Who's the empowered official for a gang?

This seemingly mundane technical detail has broader, more serious implications: we have leverage over other states. We have mechanisms to ensure U.S.-provided gear isn't misused or transferred to other parties without our approval. We can take punitive action against states that don't honor their commitments as a recipient of American security assistance, and that threat almost certainly has a deterrent effect. Most foreign parties purchase U.S. gear to establish a relationship, not simply to buy military capability, and so they're loath to suffer the consequences of bad faith. Such commitments almost certainly would not hold with a non-state group, particularly one we can't seem to precisely identify or describe.

On top of all that: Guns aren't a policy. Guns are just guns. What that means is that once they're out there, you can't readjust. You can't recalibrate. You can't ask for all your weapons to be returned so that they can be redistributed to the faction that's better aligned with your strategic intent. You can only hope what you've done ends up accomplishing what you want. And I'll be the one millionth guy to say it: hope is not a plan.

We need to recognize that this lack of clarity and precision means we'll be backing a side in what might evolve from a bipolar anti-authoritarian resistance into a complex, multipolar civil war... and it's not even clear we get to pick our own horse. Like it or not, the provision of weapons means taking a side. The guy carrying a U.S.-provided weapon is now "U.S.-backed," whether you know one damn thing about what he wants or what he's doing. We've been through this in Central and South America, and we've reaped the whirlwind in Afghanistan. Somebody's going to end up with the guns. We don't get to decide how they use them. We don't even have enough information to guess at what they'll do if and when Qaddafi is deposed. (There's also the whole possible-ties-to-extremism thing that I'm not going to go into in depth here, but which we ought to keep in mind.) Arming insurgents is a fire-and-forget policy... one that can come back to bite you in the ass.

And finally, small arms almost certainly aren't the answer. Small arms are for personal protection and pot-shooting, not the destruction or defeat of professional mechanized armies. There are likely hundreds of thousands of battle rifles, pistols, grenades, and RPGs in Libya right now. Sending a few thousand more into the country isn't going to enable the conquest of Tripoli by a shitty non-army. As Nathan Freier alludes to in the Times piece cited at the top of this entry, "anti-armor weapons and rifles would allow the rebels only to consolidate their gains and hold the territory they have." Hell, arms of any kind probably aren't the answer. Command and control, communications, leadership, and unity of effort are all much more significant roadblocks to rebel success than simple firepower or a lack of weapons.

What would the rebels need to do the job themselves? Well, they're in the process of getting their asses kicked by Qaddafi's guys, and that's while operating in circumstances that permit NATO forces to engage any regime elements that seem to be "moving forward." So they need strike aviation. They need supporting fires, meaning mortars at the very least and probably heavy artillery. They need mobility and communications and some kind of basic ability to execute combined arms maneuver. They need stuff you can't unpack from a crate on the Benghazi docks. They need capabilities, not just weapons.

Whatever collection of disgruntled Libyans makes up whatever we're calling "the rebels" or "the opposition" -- "They range from street toughs to university students (many in computer science, engineering, or medicine), and have been joined by unemployed hipsters and middle-aged mechanics, merchants, and storekeepers," says Anderson -- the force as presently constituted is simply not capable of defeating regime forces. This isn't an equipment problem. Let's be clear about what this is: we're not just talking about augmenting the capabilities of a standing military force -- we're talking about creating an alternate Libyan army. We have some limited experience standing up military forces from scratch, but next to none organizing, training, and equipping forces to successfully wage an insurgency, or even a mostly-conventional civil war. And let's also be clear about the fact that the creation of such an institution out of whole cloth is a lot bigger than simply providing equipment: it means working to develop doctrine, organizational structure, to recruit, to train, to sustain the force, to establish methods of employment... it means building a proxy army.

When you run the cost-benefit on all that, it almost certainly makes sense for the needed capabilities to be provided directly by coalition forces rather than spending months or perhaps years and hundreds of millions to billions of dollars trying to create them in a rump Libyan force. Which brings us to what ought to be the bottom line, from the perspective of U.S. strategy: arming rebels is not the most effective solution to regime-change problem. If we want to enable the opposition to seize control of the country and we don't want to commit ground troops, why don't we simply pledge to use air and naval strike to target every single positively identified piece of regime military materiel or maneuver formation (though that might not even work)? Maybe this stretches the UN mandate a little bit, but a covert campaign to supply insurgents with weapons seems to brush uncomfortably up against the arms embargo. So now we're back where we started: U.S. airpower and "enablers" facilitating an offensive campaign by the rebels, something we've pledged isn't going to happen. Hell, let's just plow a bunch of time and money into creating a never-ending cascade of unintended consequences instead. It seems certain to end well.

I hear a lot of proponents for U.S. action saying things like "you have to consider the opportunity costs of inaction!" and "it's not like doing nothing is value neutral!" And that's fair enough. But to be frank, we ought to be biased towards inaction for the simple reason that it preserves our freedom of action later. Give guns to one party to a fight and you've made your bed. Horrifying as it may be to imagine "waiting it out" and bearing witness to a campaign of brutal repression, there are times when we may have to accept that uncertainty has the potential to be more dangerous than a return to the status quo. In such circumstances, it's hard for me not to conclude that errors of commission are much more painful and lingering than those of omission.

There is no new thing under the sun

Over the last decade or so, a number of DoD and national strategic documents have asserted the unprecedented security challenges of a world wracked by potentially destabilizing trends: globalization, urbanization, rapid demographic change, and so on. The language of last year's National Security Strategy (pdf) will no doubt be familiar to you:

The convergence of wealth and living standards among developed and emerging economies holds out the promise of more balanced global growth, but dramatic inequality persists within and among nations. Profound cultural and demographic tensions, rising demand for resources, and rapid urbanization could reshape single countries and entire regions. As the world grows more interconnected, more individuals are gaining awareness of their universal rights and have the capacity to pursue them. Democracies that respect the rights of their people remain successful states and America’s most steadfast allies. Yet the advance of democracy and human rights has stalled in many parts of the world.

Such features of the global strategic environment have been noted by military leaders, as well. Here's a portion of what GEN George Casey, soon-to-retire Chief of Staff of the Army, wrote in October 2009's Army Magazine, to describe what he calls the "era of persistent conflict":

Globalization can spread prosperity by accelerating the transfer of trade, technology and ideas, but it can also propagate destabilizing influences. While globalization has brought prosperity to people around the world, its benefits are unequally distributed, creating “have” and “have not” conditions that can spawn conflict.

Now check out this passage from another (less recent) assessment of the strategic environment:

Social patterns and institutions in most underdeveloped nations are extremely malleable. They are often a legacy of shapeless, frequently illogical political units which are derived, in part, from a colonial past. The disturbance of man’s mind and environment caused by the last World War  still lingers on in the Cold War. Concurrently a concept is spreading that society is manipulable. These characteristics act to diminish respect for public order, and encourage initiatives which easily cross the line into disorder and violence.

Intensifying and exaggerating these factors, and sweeping on with a momentum of its own, a social and economic revolution of great force has been spreading throughout much of the world. Purposefully or otherwise societies are gearing themselves to higher levels of economic and social activity. The necessary substructures inevitably cut into traditions and habits fostered by rural isolation. Rural people crowd into the strange environment of cities that lack for them a satisfactory pattern of living. Social action, like land reform, manifestly alters accustomed social and often political relationships. These are but examples of the manifold ways in which the revolution of modernization can disturb, uproot, and daze a traditional society. While the institutions required for modernization are in process of being created, this revolution contributes to arousing pressures, anxieties, and hopes which seem to justify violent action.

Looks familiar, I'd imagine, but I'm guessing you've never seen it before. Maybe I'm late to the game on this one -- and you should probably take away my COINdinista card for this -- but I'd never seen it before, either. The blacked-out sections above read "the last World War" and "in the Cold War." The passage is from the U.S. Overseas Internal Defense Policy (pdf), approved by President Kennedy in 1962 and promulgated via National Security Action Memorandum No. 182. The OIDP represented America's first run at national counterinsurgency policy, and served as the foundation for what would eventually develop into DoD's joint doctrine on foreign internal defense (pdf).

The worry in 1962, of course, was that weakened "transitional" societies would be vulnerable to communist subversion and insurgency. Today, our concern over weak and failing states stems from the threat of ungoverned spaces, violent extremism, destabilizing refugee flows and other humanitarian disasters, and so on.

A great irony of the present moment is the way that we've rhetorically (and in at least one case, materially)supported movements that seek to destabilize at least marginally capable state governments at a time when the very core of our foreign and security policy is reorienting in a Nixonian direction -- "the foreign policy equivalent of outsourcing," Peter Beinart once quipped. More to the point: we've spent the last ten years or so behaving in ways that suggested to the rest of the world that with the limited exception of certain well-known and agreed-upon poleis non gratae (the Irans and North Koreas of the world), handling your own anti-violent-extremist business was basically the way to satisfy America. (Viz. esp. Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, etc.) Perhaps the best example of this is the case of Libya: the rapprochement with Tripoli since 2003 need not be recounted here (see this CRS report (pdf) if you're interested), but it's worth noting.

Also worth noting is this section of the same 1962 COIN policy document excerpted above:

The U.S. does not wish to assume a stance against revolution, per se, as an historical means of change. The right of peoples to change their governments, economic systems and social structures by revolution is recognized in international law. Moreover, the use of force to overthrow certain types of government is not always contrary to U.S. interests. A change brought about through force by noncommunist elements may be preferable to prolonged deterioration of governmental effectiveness or to a continuation of a situation where increasing discontent and repression interact, thus building toward a more dangerous climax. Each case of latent, incipient, or active noncommunist insurgency must therefore be examined on its merits in the light of U.S. interests.

I suppose President Obama and other advocates of the Libyan intervention would feel similarly about anti-authoritarian movements in the Middle East, however hostile to al-Qaeda their despotic targets may be. Qaddafi surely banked on American restraint when hinting at the specter of terrorism; he obviously miscalculated. But it may be worth asking ourselves, after the expensive intervention that has resulted from this miscalculation, whether it's America's responsibility to more clearly enunciate just exacly how "each case of latent, incipient, or active" anti-authoritarian agitation will be evaluated.

Ends, ways, and means in Libya (UPDATED)

The U.S. is currently at war in Libya, this time (as nearly always) at the head of an international coalition. In closing his remarks on the passage of UNSCR 1973 last Friday, which authorizes UN member states "to take all necessary measures... to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in Libya," President Obama assured the nation that "our goal is focused, our cause is just, and our coalition is strong." Rest assured: at least one of these things is true.

There's been a great deal of justifiable hand-wringing over the last several days about war aims, an issue that has only been further confused by the president's remarks on the subject. In the directive portion of the Security Council resolution, that august body variously demands, stresses, authorizes, recognizes, decides, calls upon, requests, requires, and urges various parties to take certain actions. I'm going to boil all of that down to the fundamentals. So here's what the resolution does:

1. Demands an immediate cease-fire and end to violence against civilians (presumably by the regime).

2. Demands that the regime meet the basic needs of its civilian population.

3. Authorizes member states to take action to enforce (1), including by arming rebel forces.

4. Establishes a ban on flights over Libyan territory, with certain exceptions, and without specific instructions as to how such a ban will be enforced, or by whom.

5. Authorizes member states to figure out (4) for themselves, and to take responsibility for enforcement.

6. Forbids the deployment of foreign occupation forces on Libyan territory.

7. Reinforces the provisions of a previous resolution (UNSCR 1970) that relate to an arms embargo, travel ban, and asset freeze on members of the Libyan regime.

As you can see, member states are pretty well left to their own devices when it comes to enforcement. That means that individual states like the U.S., or groupings of states operating as an international enforcement coalition, must translate these demands and requirements into desired endstates and military objectives. How might that look? Here's my run at it.

ENDSTATES:
1) Operations against civilians by the Libyan regime are halted (either voluntarily or by compulsion)
2) A no-fly zone over Libyan territory is created and enforced
3) Basic needs of the civilian population are met by the Libyan regime*
4) Humanitarian assistance is freely provided to affected populations

*The president elaborated this requirement by saying that "Qaddafi must... establish water, electricity and gas supplies to all areas."

These endstates are conditions that are not time-limited; they contain no measure of sustainability, so we must assume that to enact them initially will be considered an objective endpoint. By this standard, the UN-authorized operation would have achieved its purpose if each of these conditions were to be satisfied -- that is, if Libyan forces declared and honored a cease-fire; a no-fly zone were created; water, electricity, and gas were restored to the entire country; and humanitarian assistance reached those who have been impacted by violence. (The president added that "Qaddafi must stop his troops from advancing on Benghazi, [and] pull them back from Ajdabiya, Misrata and Zawiya;" presumably this is to ensure the protection of civilians, but if a cease-fire were to be declared and honored, withdrawal would seem redundant.)

MILITARY OBJECTIVES:
1a) Defeat, dislocate, and/or destroy those Libyan regime forces directly threatening the safety of civilians
1b) Defeat, dislocate, and/or destroy those Libyan regime forces that refuse to withdraw from the immediate vicinity of Benghazi, Ajdabiya, Misrata, and Zawiya
2a) Establish air supremacy over Libyan territory in order to prevent regime air assets from operating
2b) Defeat, dislocate, and/or destroy those Libyan regime air defenses that may threaten coalition forces enforcing a no-fly zone
3a) Coerce Libyan regime to restore supply of water, gas and electricity to civilian population
3b) Disrupt Libyan regime efforts to interrupt supply of water, gas and electricity to civilian population
4a) Defeat, dislocate, and/or destroy those Libyan regime forces presently positioned to disrupt the provision of humanitarian assistance to affected civilian populations
4b) Secure those airfields and port facilities, and supply routes deemed necessary to deliver humanitarian aid
4c) Execute delivery of humanitarian supplies as necessary in support of international humanitarian relief effort

To be clear, if all of these objectives are achieved, here's where we're at: Qaddafi regime retains power; those Libyan forces not postured to threaten civilian populations are left armed and operational; governance of rebel-controlled areas, including supply of water, gas, electricity, and other basic needs becomes the responsibility of opposition forces, and/or the international community, as the Libyan regime will no longer have access to this territory; a de-facto partition of Libyan territory without any plan or vision for how this partition is either formalized or resolved. This untenable reality is, of course, a policy and strategy problem, not a military one.

But what about those military objectives? Are they achievable with the ways and means at our disposal?

WAYS:
1) Coalition air and naval strikes against Libyan regime maneuver forces
2a) Persistent presence and monitoring of Libyan airspace by coalition air and electronic warfare assets
2b) Coalition air and naval strikes against Libyan air defense and command and control assets
3a) Coalition air and naval strikes and information operations against Libyan regime leadership
3b) Restoration of water, gas and electricity supplies by coalition ground forces and/or provisional governmental authority
3c) Coalition air and naval strikes against Libyan regime maneuver forces
4a) Coalition air and naval strikes against Libyan regime maneuver forces
4b) Airfield and port seizures by coalition airborne and special operations forces
4c) Movement of humanitarian aid by military transport and logistics assets
4d) Persistent coalition air and ground presence to secure lines of communication

Let's pause for a second before we move on to means. There are a few of these ways that directly contravene various provisions of the UNSCR, notably the prohibition on "foreign occupation forces" (read coalition ground forces) on Libyan territory. As such, the ways available to coalition military forces to effect objectives 3 and 4 are fundamentally non-viable. Without the use of coalition ground forces to directly restore or coerce the Libyan regime into restoring water, gas and electricity, or to allow the movement of humanitarian assistance into affected areas, the only way to accomplish these objectives is to hope the regime can be battered so fiercely as to accede to international will. (This seems -- to risk understatement -- unlikely at this point.) And to make things more difficult, the regime must be battered sufficiently to allow the imposition of the international community's will, but not so thoroughly as to render it incapable of delivering mandated public services.

But now what about the means available? This is the easy part.

MEANS:
1), 2) U.S. and other coalition air and naval assets in the Mediterranean Sea, Crete, Malta, Italy, other parts of continental Europe, and long-range assets from the U.S. and non-European forward staging areas
3), 4) [Not applicable as they would cause a violation of UNSCR: as above, plus coalition ground forces, transportation and logistics assets, and humanitarian relief assets from the international community]

What if the roadblocks went away? Well, that's where things get really messy. If you want to talk about the restoration of public services to the population, the wholesale removal of regime threat to any and all civilians on all parts of Libyan territory, etc., then see Iraq, Republic of, 2006 et seq.

As mentioned earlier, all this is made even more confusing by President Obama's response when asked if regime change was a goal of coalition military operations:

“It is U.S. policy that Qaddafi needs to go,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference with the Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera. “And we’ve got a wide range of tools in addition to our military effort to support that policy.” Mr. Obama cited economic sanctions, the freezing of assets and other measures to isolate the regime in Tripoli.

In case this doesn't make sense to you: the goal of coalition (including U.S.) military action in Libya is to enforce UNSCR 1973. An additional policy goal of the United States is the removal of Qaddafi from power, but at present the U.S. does not seek to effect that goal through the application of military force -- i.e. through the expansion of the ongoing military campaign. What the president doesn't speak to is U.S. policy post-Qaddafi: if we get what we presumably want and the despot goes, then what? What is our responsibility? What is our desired endstate? What assets and resources can and should we bring to bear to effect that endstate? We're left in the dark. I suppose we can cross that bridge when we come to it, right?

So to sum this all up, our "focused goal" is to enforce the provisions of a UNSC resolution that is in part unenforceable, and on the whole almost certainly unsustainable. Our follow-on plan is to transition whatever military effort remains (after initial operations achieve their objectives) to an international coalition of uncertain composition and under uncertain leadership, and then to use what other non-military means we have at our disposal to seek the non-coalition, non-military, U.S. policy objective of regime change in Libya. ("We are not going to use military means to go beyond a well-defined goal -- specifically, the protection of civilians in Libya.") And then: apres Qaddafi, le deluge... of win. (We hope.)

UPDATE: Here's ADM Locklear, commander of JTF Odyssey Dawn, speaking to the press yesterday:

I think our president was pretty clear when he laid out the construct in his POTUS [President of the United States] speech on 18 March of what his expectations were; one of those, that the regime forces of Gadhafi have to stop advancing on Benghazi; they have to pull back from Zawiyah, Ajdabiya, Misurata.  They have not done that.  Benghazi, we have -- we basically have forced him out of Benghazi.  In the other three places, they have not complied -- (audio break) -- direction from our president.

And so if I take a look at how I -- my mission here, I apply that type of standard to operations that are occurring.  If Colonel Gadhafi would meet that requirement, would have a cease-fire implemented; stop all attacks against citizens and withdraw from the places that we've told him to withdraw; establish water, electricity and gas supplies to all areas and allow humanitarian assistance, then the fighting would stop.  Our job would be over.

This seems to confirm the military objectives identified above, as well as my conclusions about when U.S. leadership feels the operation will be over.

Command and control of a UN coalition for Libya

As the international community has reached consensus that a coalition of air forces will begin enforcing a no-fly zone and possibly air strikes, it's time to begin thinking about how to operationalize this endeavor. At last count, France, UK, Canada, and Denmark have already ponied up forces and President Obama was in discussions with Congress and French and UK leaders about possible U.S. involvement.

Here's the catch with U.S. involvement: if we provide troops (in this case planes and naval vessels), command and control of the operation may fall to the U.S. Title X of the U.S. Code dictates that the chain of command for U.S. forces will never deviate from the President to operational commanders. In the 1990s, President Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive 25, which states that if the U.S. is involved in UN operations, U.S. forces can be placed under the operational command of competent UN force commanders. It also states that as the proportion of U.S. forces in the command increases, it is less likely that U.S. forces would fall under foreign command. At the moment I can't find anything that supersedes this PDD (if our readers do know of anything please post in the comments), so it seems that it is the most liberal document on this topic and can likely be ignored, leaving the default deciding factor as Title X.

If the United States provides an aircraft carrier or two, we would likely be the largest single nation contribution to the coalition. That means we would have command. I would imagine this is in the administrations calculus on whether or not to be part of a coalition. It doesn't seem we want to own this and would prefer letting Europe take the lead, but it seems we can't do that and provide forces. This will be a tough decision for the U.S. and the international community.

The Powell Doctrine's fundamental flaw and the administration's dithering

I was going to write (yet another) post on intervention in Libya - specifically that the proponents of intervention, particularly a no-fly zone, are conducting their "planning process" backwards. They are starting with the tool they want to use and then backpedaling to find an interest to substantiate U.S. involvement (anywhere from human rights to the imminent threat Quaddafi poses). I was going to show how the process is supposed to work, starting with a grand strategy (or at least regional strategy) and then define the problem, what assets you have, etc. And then I was going to point out that the interventionists are correct on one thing: that President Obama is dithering. But not on what they think he is dithering on. The reason we don't know what to do with the Arab uprisings is that we don't have a coherent strategy to drive our policies and operations in the region - we don't know what we want out of all of this. That's where the administration is dithering, not in not blindly acting as to be seen as doing something.

The reason the previous paragraph wasn't turned into a full post of its own is because as I was about to go through the Powell Doctrine line-by-line, I noticed it, too, has a gaping strategic hole. And I thought that was more important than restating with an example that the U.S. has still not developed coherent regional or global strategies. Anyway, here's the hole: it doesn't account for the existence of any sort of greater strategy. The problem with the Powell Doctrine is the first question (the remaining questions address the operationalization of the intervention), which is the only question to address the reason for intervening. But it merely asks if a vital national security interest is threatened. The current situation in Libya is showing that without a strategic framework that elucidates what is a vital national security interest, when faced with a decision to intervene it can be very difficult to determine the answer to the first question.

As the administration has not yet said what they would want out these uprisings or a more general strategy in North Africa and the Middle East, we can speculate as to what those interests are. Some have argued that protecting the rebels in the east is a vital national security interest because failing to help them will have long term credibility consequences in the region. Others have argued that Quaddafi presents a threat to the United States (I think this is tenuous at best, but it is an argument being made). Or our oil interests in the region. Non-interventionists have argued that none of these are vital national security interests and therefore we shouldn't be involved. So who's correct?

The inaction of the administration (which most of you are aware that I support) indicates that they (and mainly the President) do not feel that any of these things are threats to vital national security issues. But they haven't said so and have been involved in interminable "discussions". These uprisings have been going on for nearly two months now and the administration has yet to define their stance on how to react to them. There is still no strategy, which would tell the U.S. government, the U.S. people, and the citizens and governments of Arab states what we consider to be our vital national security interests. Instead we're in a position where the administration doesn't know what to do, Arab leaders don't know what we're going to do, and the Arab people don't know what to expect from us. This can be a very dangerous situation with so many different expectations on what the U.S. can and should do.

The utility of the Powell Doctrine has been widely debated and untested, but now we're seeing that without a strategic framework to guide decision-makers in determining our vital national security interests, it doesn't much help us in deciding to intervene. It does provide a useful checklist for policymakers before intervening, but not whether or not to intervene. It appears we're getting past the point of useful intervention in Libya, but that doesn't mean the administration shouldn't still develop a strategy (or policy at least) to describe what it wants out of the region. If our current strategic incoherence continues, we are going to constantly revisit the intervention question and still not be able to intelligently address that question. Now would seem like a good time to finally developing viable strategies instead of putting out fires as they arise.

Leon Wieseltier: At least he's consistent!

You might remember that just as all this Libya drama was really getting kicked off a few weeks ago, I derided what I viewed as ill-considered advocacy for intervention by Leon Wieseltier. The broad outlines of the intervention/non-intervention debate have remained roughly the same in the intervening period -- most commentators have used the last three weeks to sharpen up their arguments with such compelling justifications as "look at all the people who agree with me/disagree with you," and that's something I've mostly tried to stay out of. But I couldn't help myself this afternoon when Ex pointed back over to good ol' Wieseltier, still harping on about American impotence and the staggering simplicity of effecting complicated political ends through the use of force. At least he's consistent, right? Hm, well, about that...

Here's what Wieseltier wrote today:

Of course nobody is suggesting that a single American soldier step foot on Libyan soil

But here's another distinguished foreign policy commentator back on February 25th:

Is the United States really prevented by its past from deploying the small number of troops that would be required to rescue Tripoli from Qaddafi’s bloody grip?

Apparently there is somebody suggesting that American soldiers step foot on Libyan soil. Or at least, there was somebody a couple of weeks ago, before pushback on even the prospect of a no-fly zone perhaps drove home for that guy just exactly how unpopular his proposal was with both the American electorate and the national security commentariat.

Oh, yeah, and this might also be noteworthy: that quote from last month was Wieseltier, too, of course.

A couple of notes on arming Libyan rebels

Josh Rogin is reporting this morning that P.J. Crowley has dismissed proposals to arm Libyan rebels as "not a legal option." Here's more:

"It's very simple. In the U.N. Security Council resolution passed on Libya, there is an arms embargo that affects Libya, which means it's a violation for any country to provide arms to anyone in Libya," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Monday.

Crowley denied reports that the United States had asked Saudi Arabia to provide weapons to the Libyan opposition, and also denied that the United States would arm opposition groups absent explicit international authorization.

Pressed by reporters to clarify whether the Obama administration had any plans to give arms to any of the rebel groups in Libya, Crowley said no.

"It would be illegal for the United States to do that," he said. "It's not a legal option."

Crowley's blanket statement seemed to go further than comments on Monday by White House spokesman Jay Carney, who said, "On the issue of ... arming, providing weapons, it is one of the range of options that is being considered."

Crowley maintained that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1970, which imposed international sanctions on Libya that included an arms embargo, applied to both the Qaddafi regime and the rebel groups.

"It's not on the government of Libya: It's on Libya," he said.

First: I don't know anything about U.N. Security Council Resolutions. I don't know on whom they're binding, I don't know the definitions they're operating under, and I don't know to whom the terms refer. That said, the language of the resolution (pdf) seems pretty clear:

Decides that all Member States shall immediately take the necessary measures to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, from or through their territories or by their nationals, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, and technical assistance, training, financial or other assistance, related to military activities or the provision, maintenance or use of any arms and related materiel, including the provision of armed mercenary personnel whether or not originating in their territories, and decides further that this measure shall not apply to:

(a) Supplies of non-lethal military equipment intended solely for humanitarian or protective use, and related technical assistance or training, as approved in advance by the Committee established pursuant to paragraph 24 below;

(b) Protective clothing, including flak jackets and military helmets, temporarily exported to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya by United Nations personnel, representatives of the media and humanitarian and development works and associated personnel, for their personal use only; or

(c) Other sales or supply of arms and related materiel, or provision of assistance or personnel, as approved in advance by the Committee;

Furthermore: what I do know is U.S. arms transfer regulations. And in those, unless otherwise specified, embargoes and other limitations on the transfer of defense articles pertain to all persons, corporations, business associations, partnerships, societies, trusts, or other entities, organizations, or groups, including governmental entities. (This according to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which are published by the Department of State and govern the transfer of defense articles and services to non-U.S. parties.) Particular end-users can be subject to certain specific transfer restrictions, but the ITAR elaborates policy determinations and embargoes on export to particular countries. Export, in this case, means transfer or disclosure to a foreign person. So if you show some documents containing technical data to a foreign national at your office in DC, that constitutes an export. All of which is a long way of saying that U.S. arms transfer restrictions on Libya pertain to all of Libya and all Libyan persons, not just the Libyan government.

And here's what Crowley didn't mention: UNSCR 1970 didn't impact the U.S. position on arms exports to Libya one whit. Here's ITAR 126.1(k) (click here for Part 126 in pdf form):

Libya. It is the policy of the United Sates [sic] to deny licenses, other approvals, exports or imports of defense articles and defense services destined for or originating in Libya except, on a case-by-case basis, for:

(1) Non-lethal defense articles and defense services,

(2) Non-lethal safety-of-use defense articls (e.g., cartridge actuated devices, propellant actuated devices and technical manals for military aircraft for purposes of enhancing the safety of the aircrew) as spare parts for lethal end-items.

For non-lethal defense end-items, no distinction will be made between Libya's existing and new inventory.

The short version? U.S. arms exports to Libya were already blocked by U.S. policy and regulation. These can be changed in exigent circumstances, of course, but they've now been bolstered (or one could even say obviated) by the provisions of the UNSCR.

(A P.S. while we're on the subject: Josh is one of what seems to me to be a vanishingly small number of national security journalists who takes the time not only to at least briefly research the law and policy issues that underpin his reporting, but to cursorily address them in his stories. Presumably the journalistic convention of not doing this derives from the assumption that the average reader is either disinterested in trivia or too stupid to understand the details of the background; as a result, I particularly appreciate those who go a little deeper.)

Cameron's fuzzy math and the failure of the SDSR (Updated)

With pundits and leaders (PM Cameron specifically) calling for NATO action to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, I'm at a loss on how this could be done. Even if we put aside the fact that the preponderance of the alliance does not want to get involved militarily, there's a plain old numbers problem with doing this. Let's go through this:

• Number of aircraft carriers needed to enforce a no-fly zone: at least 2 by most calculations.
• Number of operational aircraft carriers that the UK owns: 0.
• Number of operational aircraft carriers that France owns: 1. That has all sorts of maintenance issues and is just returning from an extensive trip in the Indian Ocean. Given it's history, it should think about heading home as fast as it can.
• Number of operational aircraft carriers owned by rest of European NATO allies: 4. Of the smaller variety (less than 27k tons)
• Number of operational aircraft carriers that the US owns: 11.

Well, well. Thank you Mr. Cameron for your interest in NATO (and the UK specifically) taking the lead on this important issue, in spite of the fact that you have no way of doing this without essentially asking the U.S. to do almost all of it for you. You either can't do sums or you're trying to goad the U.S. into action while assuming the lead. Well done, old boy. Buddy is only half of a word.

I am against a no-fly zone personally as I don't think the U.S. can answer the questions posed by the Powell Doctrine. If we can't answer those questions, I'm certainly against another open-ended military commitment with vague objectives. But make no mistakes, given the geography of the area, we're not talking about a multi-national coalition enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya. It's a U.S. enforcement. While our Special Relationship has been tense the past few years, it takes a lot of gall to clamor for NATO involvement and take the mantle of leadership upon yourself when you don't have the kit to back it up. Maybe that whole SDSR thing doesn't meet your national aspirations. Maybe you ought to give it a rethink. Or this is going to keep happening and our relationship is going to get more tense before it gets better.

UPDATE: Just a couple of point of clarification. Yes, the primary impediment to a no-fly zone is political. I get that. If that impediment is removed, it will be difficult to implement.

Land basing becomes difficult as well - although not impossible. Malta is not a NATO member, which would make air basing there difficult. I've also hear Cyprus, Crete and bases around Corsica. I can't speak for the infrastructure at these places, but I would hazard that it would be quite expensive to move the equipment and personnel necessary to these places. Especially for such long sorties to Libya, never mind time on station once they're there, and the flights back. For example, Crete to Tripoli would take nearly 2/3 of the fuel capacity of a Tornado (with extra fuel pods and no ordnance) just to cross the water between the two places. That's a long ways to go if you're planning on patrolling once you get there. Maintenance, fuel, refuel, and crew requirements make this a very expensive operation. No, I think carriers would be the best option (save Malta of course - but I'm making a NATO-internal argument here).

Finally, I hope our French readers do not take offense at my comments on the Charles de Gaulle. It was not a swipe at the French military, it was commentary on the shoddy maintenance record of that ship over the past few years and the fact that it's been in extensive operational use for Afghanistan and in exercises in the Indian Ocean. I'm not a naval expert, but when you combine those things, I would guess that the de Gaulle should head to port for some much needed sustainment maintenance. I could be quite wrong though.

Leon Wieseltier wants U.S. action on Libya, suggests it should be pretty clean and easy

Here's the good man on President Obama's well-founded reluctance to put an American face on the anti-Qaddafi movement by directly involving U.S. forces:

To be sure, there are conspiracy theorists in the region who are not in their right mind, and will hold such an anti-American view; but this anti-Americanism is not an empirical matter. They will hate us whatever we do. I do not see a Middle East rising up in anger at the prospect of American intervention.

Well I don't know about you, but I feel relieved!

In case it matters, though, this is the same Leon Wieseltier that was a signatory of the infamous Project for a New American Century letter of September 20, 2001 -- the one that ran down a list of targets for the "global war on terror." The list included Iraq -- "any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq" -- which should come as no surprise; Wieseltier was also a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

Presumably Leon Wieseltier "[did] not see a Middle East rising up in anger at the prospect of American intervention" to remove Saddam, either. I don't suppose the families of the 100,000+ people who perished during the "Liberation of Iraq" are particularly comforted that regional conflagration was avoided.

Maybe there are Libyan aircraft in Malta to freak out about, but this ain't the one

If you're tracking the Libya story, there have been a lot of reports of defectors heading to Malta (specifically defectors from the air force). NPR put an AP story up on their site about two hours ago that's headlined "Libya Air Force Jets in Malta, Pilots Seek Asylum"; two pictures are attached, one of which does in fact show a Mirage jet with Libyan air force tail insignia.

The other photograph, though, shows a Eurocopter AS332L1 civil-variant Super Puma with commercial markings. The caption reads like this:

Two Libyan helicopters sit on the ground after arriving at Malta's international airport, Monday Feb. 21, 2001. The helicopters reportedly arrived carrying seven people, with who [sic] claimed to be French.

Here's the thing: they probably are French.

The two helos pictured, Super Pumas with tail numbers F-GHOY and F-GYSH, are registered to the French company Heli-Union (as you can see from the paint job), which provides support to drilling interests. They've been photographed in the past in both Malta and France. Here's a photo of F-GYSH to which the photographer has appended the comment "Final destination TIP/HLLT Libya."

That's Tripoli International Airport. Which makes sense, because Heli-Union has a subsidiary in Libya (pdf).

So yeah, these helos were probably evacuating oil and gas folks -- almost definitely Westerners, one would expect -- and had the ill fortune to land around the same time as a couple of Libyan military aircraft.