Up is down, left is right, and COIN is FID

This is a new one: foreign internal defense is the real counterinsurgency.

That's what retired colonel and CNAS non-resident fellow Bob Killebrew writes, via Tom Ricks.

As U.S. combat forces have withdrawn from Iraq and are scheduled to leave Afghanistan in 2014 -- just twenty-four months from now -- various defense thinkers and publications have declared the U.S. involvement in counterinsurgency (COIN) over. Actually, nothing could be further from reality. The real story is that COIN is still very much alive, in Iraq, the Philippines, Colombia and a dozen other places where the U.S. still has interests and that, in Afghanistan at particular, the United States is moving, finally, into true counterinsurgency.

It's ironic that Ricks smilingly identifies Killebrew as a representative of "Best Defense department of doctrinal affairs" when this interpretation is antithetical to the one codified in U.S. doctrine. Yes, counterinsurgency is still alive. (Indeed, it will never die, or at least not for as long as insurgency exists, because it encompasses all actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency.) And yes, it's true that the U.S. is supporting partner nations' counterinsurgency efforts around the globe – including in the countries COL Killebrew has cited – through a suite of activities and operations that can be grouped under the rubric of foreign internal defense. But it's goofy to call this "true counterinsurgency"—it may be the truly effective reorientation of our security policy toward historically-proven best practices for third-party support to partner-nation counterinsurgency (though that's a bit wordy and something of a tautology, I suppose), but you can't call it "true counterinsurgency." To do so is the doctrinal equivalent of declaring that black is white.

Current American counterinsurgency doctrine is built around a construct of significant U.S. troop presence and extended stability operations. This makes sense, of course, because it's U.S. military doctrine: that is, a codification of best practices for the conduct of operations by U.S. forces. The preface to FM 3-24 (pdf) recognizes this fact:

A counterinsurgency campaign is, as described in this manual, a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations conducted along multiple lines of operations. It requires Soldiers and Marines to employ a mix of familiar combat tasks and skills more often associated with nonmilitary agencies.

COL Killebrew's comments aren't about U.S. military doctrine, but U.S. foreign policy: he's arguing that the most effective way for the U.S. to aid the counterinsurgency efforts of a partner nation is to indirectly augment the offensive, defensive, and stability operations of the host government rather than to undertake those operations independently.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the destruction of both governments made it necessary for us to take on major combat roles while we rebuilt the security forces. While the performance of our troops was superb, our initial effort to re-form both the Iraqi and Afghan armies was grudging, too limited and far too slow. In our we'll-do-it culture, we forgot that so long as U.S. forces are carrying the bulk of the fighting in somebody else's insurgency, we are delaying the time when the host government starts fighting the "real" COIN campaign and we provide assistance and support, which is the Americans' real role in COIN.

While this sentiment is extremely palatable to a lot of people in the wake of our bloody and expensive involvement in two manpower-intensive operations, we should acknowledge that it's an attempt to move the goalposts (COIN hasn't really failed, we've just been doing it wrong). Who cares, though, right? Well, it's also a way to whitewash the very real limitations of a more indirect, FID-centric approach and to avoid addressing the really important question: whether involvement in these conflicts, either directly or indirectly, is actually delivering any real security to Americans.

FID is better policy because it's cheaper, less risky in terms of human life and possible escalation, and potentially more effective (by limiting the additional inflammatory complications of visible U.S. troop presence). And if you're a 50-year old guy trying to help the Cowboys win football games, it's probably a better idea for you to become a defensive coordinator than to try strapping on the pads yourself. But FID isn't "true counterinsurgency" any more than standing on the sidelines with a headset and a clipboard is "true football."

I agree with Killebrew that counterinsurgency isn't going anywhere, as I've written before. And I agree that American security policy will likely shift in the direction of indirect approaches and smaller-footprint operations. But it's confusing and obfuscatory to suggest that these trends are one and the same, or that the latter shift does not constitute a rejection (or at least re-thinking) of counterinsurgency as it's been sold to the public. We haven't just been doing it wrong—we've been wrong to do it.

Back to the future: time to renounce panaceas in Afghanistan

My friend Andrew Exum and two of his colleagues at the Center for a New American Security, retired LTG Dave Barno and Matthew Irvine, published a new paper this week calling for a shift in the primary emphasis of the Afghanistan war effort.

It is time for a change of mission in Afghanistan. U.S. and coalition forces must shift away from directly conducting counterinsurgency operations and toward a new mission of "security force assistance": advising and enabling Afghan forces to take the lead in the counterinsurgency fight.

This change, the authors suggest, is necessary to solidify security gains made by coalition forces in recent years and ensure the continued protection of Western interests after NATO forces leave the country. While the report marks an analytical step forward, environmental and institutional constraints are likely to blunt the effectiveness of its policy prescriptions if not block their enactment altogether. It's difficult to escape the conclusion that what passes for creativity in our contemporary efforts to "save the war" has in fact come as much too little, and far too late.

A simple rendering of the report's main argument goes as follows: of the several courses of action available to U.S. forces between now and their ultimate withdrawal date in 2014, the one most likely to produce lasting positive effects entails an immediate, aggressive, and committed effort to increase the capability of Afghan forces. The other alternatives are presented as unpalatable caricatures: 1) continued emphasis on coalition-led counterinsurgency operations through 2014, then sudden and complete cessation of combat activities by NATO forces and transition to predictably incompetent ANSF; 2) unilateral abandonment of the agreed-to drawdown timeline and indefinite continuation of the presently inconclusive western-led status quo; and 3) a rapid and immediate withdrawal of all coalition forces, leaving 2015 Afghanistan both bereft of capable security forces and denied the potential security gains from 36 more months of sustained NATO counterinsurgency operations. The authors assert that their preferred course "will protect long-term U.S. security interests without a never-ending commitment of immense U.S. resources":

[W]e believe that the most prudent option for U.S. policymakers is to adhere to the Lisbon framework for transition in Afghanistan and accelerate the change in mission. By doing so, the United States and its allies will have more time and resources to support the ANSF ahead of the coming transition in 2014, increasing their capabilities and providing vital support as they take ownership of the fight.

Considering they've characterized the other options as expensive, slow failure; very expensive, very slow failure; and inexpensive, rapid failure, I don't suppose we're left with much choice.

A great deal of hay has been made over the past 48 hours of the fact that Exum was a vociferous advocate for escalation back in 2009, when the president grudgingly accepted GEN McChrystal's proposal for a so-called "fully-resourced counterinsurgency campaign." His many critics imply that Andrew should be embarrassed, should show some shame, should prostrate himself before the we-knew-better masses and ritually cleanse his analytical sins. As they would have it, he is advocating in 2011 for a transition that would've been similarly effective two years ago, and which would've saved lives (and billions) to boot.

Bollocks. The war is not the same. Afghanistan is not the same. America is not the same. I was a critic of escalation in 2009; my views are unchanged with hindsight. It simply does not follow, however, that the historical fact of escalation is irrelevant to the operational and political context of today.

That said: this should've happened two years ago.

Announcing his decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan in December 2009, the president said that those forces would "increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans." The Army had started deploying specially augmented brigades to Afghanistan to focus on the train-advise-assist mission. When a brigade from the 82d Airborne was tapped as the first of these, CNAS honcho John Nagl told the Washington Post that compared to previous SFA efforts, "the change couldn't be more dramatic." So one might fairly wonder why Barno, Exum, Irvine, and even Nagl are now essentially telling us that what Afghanistan needs is a fully resourced security force assistance campaign.

They know the answer, of course: COIN advocates insisted the 2009 escalation would be accompanied by a renewed commitment to generating and training capable Afghan security forces, but it didn't happen; the "surge" in combat and stability operations instead starved those efforts of the personnel, resources, and command emphasis they needed to succeed in parallel. The authors have diagnosed the problem properly, though they don't clearly state this conclusion. Instead we get this:

Evidence suggests that some ANSF units are failing today because they commonly operate in the field without embedded, continuous coalition support. Despite the importance of the security force assistance mission, no senior U.S. headquarters, organization or senior commander is currently dedicated to advising Afghan forces. (One can only observe the way in which the initial training of Afghan forces improved after the appointment of a U.S. three-star general officer in 2009 to appreciate the effect organizational changes can have on priorities -- and results.)

Another excerpt is more to the point: "Because U.S. units can execute counterinsurgency operations better and faster than their Afghan counterparts," the authors write, "they are continuing to do so despite the looming transition." Don't let the obfuscatory syntax fool you: individual units are not making this decision for themselves. ISAF has made a determination to focus on combat operations, to try make as much progress as quickly as possible, and then to transition to ANSF "lead" when the Lisbon deadline hits.

The authors can point to an improvement in initial training thanks to reorganization and re-prioritization, but that, too, came at a cost: by focusing on the rapid expansion of the ANSF to meet benchmarks on the "transition" timeline, the coalition tacitly accepted that the Afghan combat formations they stood up would be of inferior quality. The training and advisory effort became a sideshow, a supporting line of operation to the main effort of Western-led counterinsurgency: ISAF leadership knew that "showing progress in the training mission" would be essential to sustaining political support for the campaign, and that 350,000 mediocre troops brief better than 100,000 capable ones. Combine that with the reality that even exceptionally capable host-nation forces would still require the combat support provided by American enablers -- aviation, precision fires, communications, medical support, and so on -- and it's easy to see why quality and competence were sacrificed to rapid expansion. But let there be no doubt: that's what happened.

The paper's authors' bemoan the fact that the American military lacks "the institutional roots to support specialized combat advisor capabilities," as if this is the reason ISAF chose to emphasize initial training over embedded mentoring and assistance. Even if directed at general purpose forces (and ignoring SOF), it's a misleading and inaccurate suggestion: the Army and especially the Marine Corps may be resistant to specialization, but recent U.S. experience in Iraq forced the institutions to adapt. It is patently false that "neither service has devoted a portion of its U.S.-based force structure to training, organizing, equipping, or championing the delivery of dedicated advise and assist capabilities to Afghanistan." The Army dedicated U.S.-based force structure to training combat advisors in 2007; that function has been institutionalized and continues to this day. The 162nd Infantry Training Brigade (and before that, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division) has prepared individuals for deployment as part of Military Transition Teams and with dedicated advisory brigades (called Advise and Assist Brigades in Iraq and Modular Brigades Augmented for Security Force Assistance -- a tellingly short-lived designation -- in Afghanistan). Upon the transfer of SFA training mission (pdf) from Ft. Riley to Ft. Polk in 2009, the commander of its new home even remarked that the Army sought to avoid "let[ting] the good functions and training and art and science of this task atrophy and die out like we did after Vietnam -- the last time we made a concerted effort to train combat advisors." Much of this "art and science" was codified in doctrine with the Army's publication in May 2009 of FM 3-07.1 Security Force Assistance (pdf), an imperfect manual that nonetheless provided tactical guidance both to AABs and to individual combat advisors. This institutional commitment of more than two years ago looks very much like the one Barno, Exum, and Irvine would like the Army to make today.

The purported institutional shortcomings highlighted in the paper -- such as a failure to offer sufficient promotion and assignment incentives to encourage the most capable officers to volunteer for advisory roles -- were considered and addressed years ago, when the U.S. military first had this conversation with itself during the Iraq war. Most were discarded as unworkable or counterproductive, as was the transformational fantasy of a permanent advisor corps. (Consider the budget and force structure debate currently taking place in Washington, but imagine it's happening in a world where the Army's end-strength includes the equivalent of two-dozen infantry battalions dedicated solely to training and advising foreign military forces -- a task they're not even legally permitted to perform outside of war zones and other exceptional circumstances. Who do you think is first on the chopping block?) The Marine Corps has continued to provide capable personnel for MTTs, while the Army has supported the training and advisory mission through the creation and deployment of MB-SFAs.

This is not a service problem. This is a combatant command problem. It's not a matter of force generation, but force employment. When things went bad in the Arghandab River Valley as the president was finalizing plans for escalation, U.S. commanders threw 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment into the breach to replace Harry Tunnel's Stryker brigade and sustain counterinsurgency operations. Back to COIN for 2/508 -- one of the battalions of the 82d's SFA brigade, whose deployment for the train-advise-assist mission John Nagl had lauded mere months before.

Recognizing that a continuation of the status quo was unsustainable and unlikely to be effective, the U.S. faced very much the same set of questions in Afghanistan in 2009 as it had in Iraq in 2006. Was it still possible to accomplish American objectives? Could more troops or a new concept of operations improve the situation? Would precipitous transition to host-nation lead be too dangerous, risking the collapse of indigenous forces and jeopardizing U.S. interests? In 2006, a very serious and intelligent man wrote a memo for the president entitled "Transitioning to an Indirect Approach in Iraq" (pdf) in which he argued that success was still attainable if lead security responsibility were transferred to Iraqi forces. I want to share with you the meat of his argument, so I hope you'll forgive me quoting at length.

Given Iraq's unsettled politics, it is highly unlikely that American forces, even with growing Iraqi security force assistance, will be able to defeat the insurgency within the next 2-3 years. The current level of insurgency, moreover, is likely to be insensitive across a wide range of force levels. The assertion by many critics that more troops in 2003 could have nipped this insurgency in the bud or fundamentally altered its course are not credible. Likewise, increading the number of U.S. troops now is highly unlikely to be decisive. The insurgents will still control the initiative, and they can always temporarily decline to fight. Insufficient intelligence and continued strong support for the insurgency among the Sunni population will limit the strategic success of any near-term efforts. As long as the political grievances fueling the insurgency remain, the insurgency will remain.

Because of the direct approach's inability to produce decisive near-term results and its increasing cost, the longer we stay with it, the more we place our long-term goals in Iraq at risk. Continuing with this approach, moreover, does not play to American strengths. The insurgents and the states supporting them (i.e., Iran and Syria) retain the strategic initiative in Iraq, while we suffer from significantly reduced strategic freedom of action.

It is imperative that we accelerate our shift to an indirect approach, with Iraqis in the lead and Americans in support. Transitioning to an indirect approach will require that we begin and continue the drawdown of U.S. forces while the insurgency is still raging. It will require additional resources for Iraqi security forces. Most importantly, we must make our stated "main effort" our actual main effort.

Mike Vickers was not alone in his analysis, but the president disagreed. How much of the improvement in Iraq is attributable to his decision to escalate is and will continue to be a matter of debate. Perhaps the indirect approach, too, would have succeeded, but we can't know.

The same is now true in Afghanistan. The "change of mission" advocated by Barno, Exum, and Irvine might have been successful in 2009, with five years to take hold and show progress. (It seems unlikely to me, but I'm skeptical about our "strategy" and the no-safe-havens approach to antiterterrorism.) Or perhaps the course the president did choose for Iraq would have been similarly successful in Afghanistan had it been implemented with the "surge": a comprehensive foreign internal defense campaign that included elements of U.S.-led counterinsurgency and stability operations, SFA, and broad based nation assistance that cemented the authority of the legitimate civilian government and helped enable the exercise of that authority. (I doubt that, too, but it's a thought.) Instead what we got was a shadow of that, a mockery, an example of what happens when military leaders commit wholesale to a mission their government is too afraid to definitively refuse.

U.S. commanders are reaping what their predecessors have sown: giving short shrift to the essential enabling efforts that should have been a key part of their campaign plans, trying to "move the needle," show progress, and convince an indifferent public, an unimpressed president, and perhaps themselves that a war without a plausible strategic rationale is worth waging into infinity. SFA will not save us now. It is likely to be less effective than it would have been if comprehensively administered in 2009 by embedding advisors along with the troop surge, as this would've allowed the U.S.-ANA relationship to proceed along roughly the same path as the U.S.-IA relationship did before: first with U.S. units leading operations and owning battlespace, supported by host nation units with embedded American advisors; then partnered operations, where a more capable host nation unit with U.S. advisors owns its own battlespace and functions as part of a combined operation with U.S. forces; then eventually to host nation lead, where U.S. combat formations no longer operate independently and American advisors really live up to their name -- advising their foreign counterparts in independent operations as opposed to teaching and coaching them. This model may be followed to good effect in a few key districts, but reduced operational tempo with the beginning of the troop withdrawal makes it an unlikely template for the entire country.

Just the same: no matter how capable Afghan security forces may be today or in 2014 or in 2024, there will come a day where the western world forgets that it once seemed normal to spend billions of dollars sustaining an army in a place where a dead terrorist used to live. This day can perhaps be delayed, but it can't be avoided.

All of this may sound like I disagree with the paper's bottom line, but I don't. "By continuing to place its forces in the lead in counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, the United States is ultimately working against its long-term security interests." This is almost certainly true. Look back at what Vickers wrote to the president five years ago: "Because of the direct approach's inability to produce decisive near-term results and its increasing cost, the longer we stay with it, the more we place our long-term goals in Iraq at risk." Combat operations in Afghanistan are costing a fortune, depleting our force, wearing out equipment, and reducing our strategic flexibility to little evident effect. Anything that constitutes a step away from that -- even if it's still expensive and unlikely to succeed -- is something I can get behind.

U.S. troops and the LRA: What exactly IS "your typical advise and assist mission"?

As you've no doubt already heard, the president is sending approximately 100 U.S. military personnel to central Africa to aid partner security forces in the capture or killing of Joseph Kony, leader of the murderous Lord's Resistance Army. The public found out about this when President Obama informed Congressional leadership in a letter delivered last Friday, as he is statutorily required to do. A number of analysts and commentators have offered thoughts on the matter -- Crispin Burke has a brief but representative rundown on Wings Over Iraq -- but most have failed to provide the sort of context necessary to understand how a mission of this type is carried out. By extension, many people are drawing bad conclusions about what this development means for the U.S. in Africa and for our broader national security policy.

A number of my colleagues will be quick to remind you that I'm not an Africanist. (Less charitably, I "don't know shit" about Africa.) Keep this in mind, but remember that I'm interested in talking to you about U.S. military operations and doctrine -- not central African conflict ethnography. You should seek out area experts if you want to understand the LRA's history, organization, tactics, and so on, as they'll offer far more comprehensive and better-informed analyses than I possibly could. They can further explain how the group is a scourge on the continent, how Kony's elimination would produce cascading positive effects for regional security and stability; they can talk to you about what America's ultimate goals in the region ought to be, etc. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to tell you what American troops in central Africa are likely to be doing, how they're going to contribute to the accomplishment of the anti-LRA mission, and how all of this fits into the context of what we're training, equipping, and organizing our military to do, and what it all has to do with war powers. (Go read Carl Prine's interview with Michael Noonan on this subject, too, while I'm thinking about it.)

First things first: what is it that U.S. military personnel are meant to do here? According to the president, this "small number of combat equipped U.S. forces" will "provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield." But Barbara Starr told us yesterday that the African enterprise is "not your typical advise and assist mission"; how exactly the folks at CNN Security Clearance would define such a thing is left to our collective imagination, but perhaps her explanation can give us some clues.

President Obama’s decision to send 100 troops, mainly U.S. Special Forces, to Uganda to help hunt down leaders of the violent Lord’s Resistance Army is not meant to be a combat mission. But the troops will be well equipped if the need to fight arises, them CNN has learned.  The troops will have so-called “crew-served” weapons in the field.  These weapons, unlike a rifle or machine gun, requires more than one person to operate them, such as one person loading ammunition while the other person aims and fires.

The deployment of these particular combat weapons triggered the need for the Obama administration to publicly notify Congress of the operation under the War Powers Resolution, according to a Department of defense official.  That requirement demands that any time troops are put into a country “equipped for combat” Congress must be told to avoid any prospect of a secret war, the official explained.

Let's get the obvious objection out of the way: a machine gun is in fact the very most common and obvious example of a crew-served weapon (pdf). Such a basic error might call into question Starr's reliability and authority on the matters a "Pentagon correspondent" has responsibility for covering. But what about the meat of what I gather to be her argument -- that "deployment of these particular combat weapons" both triggered the WPA reporting requirement (an assertion she attributes to her source) and more generally indicates that the function these personnel will be performing is somehow atypical or rare? Well, both points are pretty plainly wrong.

The law (50 U.S.C. §1543) does require presidential notification when U.S. troops are sent to a foreign country "equipped for combat," as Starr notes. But the suggestion that crew-served weapons mark the threshold between being "equipped for combat" and everything else strikes me as wholly arbitrary. It's obviously a matter of interpretation, as the law doesn't specify the meaning of the term. But Starr and her helpfully explanatory official seem to have missed the much more important provision of the law: the section that explains the meaning of "introduction of United States Armed Forces" (50 U.S.C. §1547 (c)).

For purposes of this chapter, the term “introduction of United States Armed Forces” includes the assignment of members of such armed forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged, or there exists an imminent threat that such forces will become engaged, in hostilities.

So let's get this straight: CNN Security Clearance wants you to know that this deployment is "not your typical advise and assist mission," apparently because it triggered the WPA reporting requirement. But that requirement applies to every instance in which U.S. forces partner with, augment, lead, or advise a foreign military force that's actually engaged in fighting.

There's no such thing as an "advise and assist mission" in U.S. military doctrine, but that's not to say that the term isn't used. When the American mission in Iraq ostensibly shifted from combat (Operation IRAQI FREEDOM) to transition (Operation NEW DAWN), all U.S. Army brigade combat teams in-country were redesignated as Advise and Assist Brigades. (In the several months preceding this change, several AABs had operated alongside Iraqi formations while BCTs continued to conduct independent combat and stability operations.) "Advise and assist" is also considered by the Army to be one of five component tasks of security force assistance, alongside Organize, Train, Equip, and Rebuild/Build. Here's how the SFA manual (FM 3-07.1 (pdf), paragraph 2-50) explains it:

Advise and assist is a SFA task in which U.S. personnel work with FSF [foreign security forces] to improve their capability and capacity. Advising establishes a personal and a professional relationship where trust and confidence define how well the advisor will be able to influence the foreign security force. Assisting is providing the required supporting or sustaining capabilities so FSF can meet objectives and the end state.

It might have been appropriate for Starr to argue that "this is not your typical training mission," or even to say "this is not your typical security force assistance mission." But this is precisely "your typical advise and assist mission." The distinction is a matter of more than just semantic interest, and to show you why, I'm going to talk for a little while about what's called foreign internal defense.

Look, I know people get bored by doctrine and taxonomy and all that. (Ok, well, people other than me, that is.) But that's where we need to start if this is going to make any sense, so let's look at how FID is defined by the U.S. military:

[T]he participation by civilian and military agencies of a government in any of the action programs taken by another government or other designated organization, to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, insurgency, terrorism, and other threats to their security.

To put it more simply, FID encompasses whole-of-government efforts undertaken to help another government deal with internal threats. The U.S. military's view of its role in those efforts is explained in doctrine (specifically JP 3-22 Foreign Internal Defense and FM 3-05.137 Army Special Operations Forces Foreign Internal Defense), which characterizes DoD activities as being of three types: indirect support, direct support (not involving combat operations), and combat operations.

Indirect support in FID is primarily focused on enabling the host/partner-nation government and security forces to accomplish their internal defense and development objectives independently; it's how the USG helps another government do what it needs to do without doing it for them. This category of activity includes the sale or transfer of military equipment, training of partner-nation units and individuals, personnel exchange programs, and combined exercises. Indirect support is going on every day and with a wide range of countries. Selling helicopters to Mexican federal police? Putting a Filipino special forces officer through the Maneuver Captain's Course? Transferring NVGs to Pakistan for their pilots to use in the frontier provinces? All FID indirect support.

Direct support (not involving combat operations) is where FID really starts to distinguish itself from security force assistance, security assistance, and security cooperation: it entails U.S. military forces providing direct assistance to the host nation's security forces or populace. This type of activity typically takes place during violent conflict, but that need not be the case. Direct support basically means U.S. forces providing, augmenting, or amplifying under-developed or nonexistent host-nation capabilities like intelligence collection, communications, logistics, psychological operations/military information support, and civil-military operations (provision of basic services to the civilian population). Training partner security forces can also be identified as direct support or indirect support depending on the urgency and immediacy of the effort. (U.S. personnel putting Afghan National Army troops through basic combat training prior to operational deployment constitutes direct support, while training an Egyptian mechanic on how to maintain his airplanes might be indirect support.) We're doing FID direct support in a few places right now, with the most obvious being Afghanistan and Iraq (though much of our activity there has transitioned into indirect support as Iraqi security forces have achieved autonomous capability). That thing counter-LRA Starr mentions in her blog from back in '08, the curiously-named Operation LIGHTNING THUNDER, when 17 U.S. advisors gave comms help and intelligence information to Ugandan forces going after Kony? That was direct support.

Combat operations are pretty much what they sound like: that's the part of FID where U.S. forces undertake combat operations in support of the host government's internal defense and development plan. This could mean U.S. combat formations are partnered with host nation forces or simply operating in an adjacent battlespace in support of that government's objectives. It also includes combat advising. Here's what the Army SOF FID manual says:

The primary role for U.S. military forces in tactical operations is to support, advise, and assist HN forces through logistics, intelligence or other support and means. This allows the HN force to concentrate on taking the offensive against hostile elements. If the level of lawlessness, subversion, or insurgency reaches a level that HN forces cannot conrol, U.S. forces may be required to engage the hostile elements. In this case, the objective of U.S. operations is to protect or stabilize the HN political, economic, and social institutions until the HN can assume these responsibilities.

The precise character of FID combat operations is determined not only by operational requirements but also by the type of formation or personnel participating in the mission. Individual embedded advisors or small advisor teams will obviously be unlikely to undertake offensive operations as a constituted whole simply because of a lack of combat power, while an Advise and Assist Brigade maintains the capacity and capability to perform full-spectrum operations and could independently find, fix, and finish the enemy's maneuver elements if required. As you may have worked out from the excerpt above, "combat operations" in this context include things that would be considered "combat support" in a U.S. operational context: enabling functions for maneuver formations engaging the enemy. The reason they constitute FID combat operations is that they expose U.S. troops in the field to hostile action. If you're trucking host nation troops up to the front or turning a wrench on a busted vehicle while taking mortar fire at a forward location, you're performing a direct support function, but the exposure to hostile fire qualifies this as FID combat operations.

Ok, good, so we're all sorted out on FID, right? Then let's get this straight: the USG is doing all three types of FID in central Africa. Indirect support in the form of materiel assistance was announced several months ago. We've done direct support (not involving combat operations) at various times over the last several years, including intel-sharing during LIGHTNING THUNDER. The (presumably) Special Forces soldiers going to central Africa will likely continue to perform similar direct support activities from rear areas while also in some instances engaging in combat operations by embedding with Ugandan, Congolese, South Sudanese, and/or Centrafricain military formations.

So what's new about all this? Nah, it's not about crew-served weapons. It's not about any imagined intent for SF ODAs to conduct direct-action missions against Kony and his "army." It's about the simple fact that the law requires Congressional notification in any instance when U.S. forces may be exposed to hostile fire, including those times when they're embedded or partnered with host nation forces. As I've said above: this is the very essence of an advise-and-assist mission. In point of fact, it's nigh-on impossible to perform the advise-and-assist task without the presidential decision required to permit FID combat operations, at least assuming the supported foreign force is actually engaged in a fight. (And if it's not, then the SFA task U.S. forces are performing in support of them is much more likely to be training or equipping than advising and assisting, which is a term which almost universally connotes combat action. I'm at pains to think of a single instance of what I could call an advise and assist mission that does not involve combat of some type.

American military personnel have provided support to foreign security forces through FID and SFA for decades, if not longer. They've done so in Russia during the post-revolutionary civil war, in Vietnam, across Latin America during the Cold War, in Colombia, the Philippines, Iraq, and Afghanistan in the modern day. In every instance in which they've been exposed to hostile fire, they've required a presidential determination to that effect (enabled by either a declaration of war, a WPA notification, or an executive order/presidential finding/PDD). This instance is perhaps noteworthy to the media and the public because President Obama has decided not to ignore what's required of him by law (including a declaration of "the constitutional and legislative authority under which such introduction [of U.S. forces] took place") and instead sought to legitimize the effort by expressly citing the Congress' very own appeal for action: the Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009 (pdf).

And that's the great irony of all this, really: the media, the public, and apparently the Congress have been so inured to the wholesale and systematic hostility of successive presidential administrations to the distribution of war powers in American law that it's more noteworthy when the president does things properly. This is precisely the sort of activity that it ought to be a presidential prerogative to undertake: FID is fundamentally a matter of foreign affairs, not war, and the Congress should be made aware and kept informed insofar as military activities pursuant to the effort may unintentionally entangle the U.S. in a foreign conflict.

I know, I know: I can't even defend the president on this issue without complaining obliquely about Libya or Afghanistan! And it wouldn't be my style to go to all this trouble talking about a troop deployment without talking about strategy, but I'll be brief (and I'll probably surprise you): I explained why I'm ok with the process of this decision, but I don't have a big problem with the substance of it, either. This sort of FID mission isn't going to cost a tremendous amount of money, and the risk to U.S. personnel is relatively low even if we make an uncharitable estimate of it. It's hard to say that we're risking even a temporary diminution of U.S. readiness or combat power simply because it's such a small number of troops. There is very little risk of unintended escalation (though we should always be wary), and if the president determines that escalation is desirable or necessary, it seems plain to me that he has set the rather unique precedent of needing to take such a decision before the Congress. This type of mission is exactly what SF were conceived, organized, and trained to do. Don't be fooled into thinking this is some kind of panacea, a universalizable model for all future American military action, the cornerstone around which we can base our future security policy. But it seems like a just, affordable, and doable thing that stops short of war, and in this case, I don't see anything particularly un-strategic about it.

Max Boot is gonna learn us all up about Somalia! (UPDATED)

LULZ.

It is hard to believe anyone could be outraged by the U.S. government paying for contractors to train the Somalian armed forces. Those armed forces are the only thing standing in the way of a complete takeover of the country by the Shahab, the Taliban-like militia which has close links to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. There is absolutely no appetite in Washington for sending any troops into Somalia, beyond perhaps an occasional Special Operations raid; everyone remembers all too vividly the Black Hawk Down disaster of 1993. So how do we stop the Shahab? The CIA has an active presence there. But that’s not enough. We also need to provide arms and training to the Somali government troops, and because we’re not willing to send even U.S. trainers, that job has been contracted out indirectly to a security company called Bancroft Global Development, based in Washington.

1. No one is "paying for contractors to train the Somalian armed forces." Somalia can barely be said to have armed forces. We're paying to train Ugandan and Burundian soldiers who operate as peacekeepers under the auspices of AMISOM, the African Union Mission in Somalia.

2. I know you've been talking about the Iranian threat for a while, but I don't think Somalia's going to be taken over by intermediate-range ballistic missiles. More likely what you meant is Shabab, Somalia's AQ-linked militia. Shabab, not Shahab. (Dude, you wrote it three times. Don't tell me it's a typo.)

3. Don't you think it's a little strange to say that Americans lack the appetite for U.S. military action in Somalia -- with the exception of SOF raids -- because of troubling memories of the "Black Hawk Down" incident? Uh, all those Rangers and Delta guys were killed during a special operations raid.

4. This may be a news flash to you, but "we're not willing to send even U.S. trainers" almost anywhere (assuming you mean uniformed American servicemen) with the exception of Iraq and Afghanistan, in large part because of the massive manpower requirements of those wars. The bulk of U.S.-provided military training in partner nations is performed by contractors like DynCorp and MPRI (and innumerable subs); sometimes it's contracted through the State Department (as with putative peacekeeping training in Africa), and sometimes it's executed by DoD through foreign military sales.

5. Let's repeat this one to make sure you've got it: this isn't about training and equipping Somali military forces, but African peacekeepers deployed in Somalia. Maybe try reading and understanding next time.

(All of that said, I kind of agree with Boot that the Times article makes a mountain out of a molehill. It conflates peacekeeper training with mercenary military operations by highlighting the role of some European soldier of fortune that could've been an extra in "Blood Diamond," and intimates that U.S.-contracted PSCs are taking direct action against the Shabab in order to fill the gaps in what's described as a poorly-directed, "piecemeal" policy toward Somalia. Dude, this Rouget guy is not the "face of the American campaign against militants in Somalia," unlikely or otherwise. He's just a guy doing a job. The only "American campaign against militants in Somalia" is being waged by intelligence officers, drones, and the occasional special operator.)

UPDATE at 1555 ET 12 AUG: I threw this post together in about 90 seconds after reading Boot's piece yesterday afternoon, largely because I wanted to embarrass him before his mistakes were quickly noticed and surreptitiously corrected. It came as a small surprise when I checked back repeatedly today and noticed that the original post remained unchanged. That is, until some time in the last hour (h/t to @slowfalling on Twitter, who noticed and brought it to my attention); changes are in bold, and I've supplied the original language in brackets.

It is hard to believe anyone could be outraged by the U.S. government paying for contractors to train the African Union peacekeepers trying to keep Somalia from totally spinning out of control [orig.: the Somalian armed forces]. Those armed forces are the only thing standing in the way of a complete takeover of the country by the Shabab [orig.: the Shahab], the Taliban-like militia which has close links to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. There is absolutely no appetite in Washington for sending any troops into Somalia, beyond perhaps an occasional Special Operations raid; everyone remembers all too vividly the Black Hawk Down disaster of 1993. So how do we stop the Shabab [orig.: the Shahab]? The CIA has an active presence there. But that’s not enough. We also need to provide arms and training to African Union peacekeepers, and because we’re not willing to send even U.S. trainers, that job has been contracted out indirectly to a security company called Bancroft Global Development, based in Washington.

On a scale of 1-10, how surprised are you that neither Commentary nor Boot saw fit to make note of the corrections? -6 or so?

UPDATE 2: At Jeremy Scahill's suggestion, I feel it's my responsibility to retract all negative statements about Max Boot's expertise in the cultural and military dynamics of the Horn of Africa. I should also note that the errors in Boot's original post were merely spatio-temporal as opposed to factual, and that we could sort all these little disagreements out rather simply if we'd just send 100,000 U.S. troops to my office to conduct a fully-resourced Gulliver-centric counterinsurgency campaign en route to Mogadishu.

"The more things change...": Historical observations on the difficulty of SFA

I recently stumbled across a really interesting RAND report, published in the spring of 1965 by one G.C. Hickey. "The American Military Advisor and His Foreign Counterpart: The Case of Vietnam" (pdf) was based on interviews conducted by the author in the field over a ten-month period in 1964, and it distills a number of lessons about the challenges of the advise-and-assist mission that are relevant to this day. Some of these challenges are structural and circumstantial and impervious to U.S. military solutions. But some of them are not, and Hickey provides a series of recommendations -- grouped within the three major categories of advisor selection, advisor training, and administrative reform -- to improve the performance of U.S. advisors. Despite nearly a decade's worth of similar discoveries in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of these problems persist.

Here's a representative example:

Many Americans, measuring the Vietnamese by their own cultural standards, are highly critical of their value system and some of their attitudes and behavior patterns. They are apt to accuse their counterparts and other associates of being lazy, unenthusiastic, without a sense of urgency about their jobs and the pursuit of the war in general, lacking in frankness to the point of deviousness, intent on ritual but uncharitable toward their fellowmen, lax about health and hygiene, wasteful with materiel. Often, they vaguely ascribe these characteristics to what they call the inscrutable "oriental mentality"; nothing in their training seems to have prepared such critics to look on these aspects of Vietnamese behavior as appropriate and legitimate manifestations of a foreign culture and tradition.

One could rightly say that you can't train empathy and the anthropological ideal of cultural relativism, and I probably agree. But you can select for it, and one of the major flaws of systematic use of general purpose forces for security force assistance is that the opportunity doesn't exist to "select" for much of anything in the 19-year old specialists who make up the bulk of a brigade combat team.

If you can't find the time to read through the entire report, be sure to take a look at the Preface and Summary sections at the very least (pp. iii-xviii).

This brings to mind a paper I read three years ago when it was published by the Army War College: Michael Metrinko's "The American Military Advisor: Dealing With Senior Foreign Officials in the Islamic World" (pdf). (Metrinko, as an interesting if unrelated aside, was one of the embassy hostages in Iran.) This one is more focused on the relationship between senior U.S. military officers and partner nation policymakers or senior government officials, and less on tactical and operational combat advising. But this also helps to illustrate another SFA challenge that I'm constantly harping on: there is a big, big difference between teaching a host nation platoon leader how to run combat patrols and helping a foreign defense minister to set up his acquisition system.

But here's the point: we've thought about this stuff before. We've done this stuff before. So let's think about what's changed and what hasn't and then adapt to do the job right. It seems simplistic, but how can anyone fail to appreciate the similarity between the lessons of today and those of half a century ago?

Is this the new normal for SOF? (UPDATED)

I'm going to start with a disclaimer: I am not a special operator. In fact, I'm not any kind of operator. I never have been. I don't have any kind of inside knowledge about the way SOF does its business, and you shouldn't take anything I'm going to say here as a suggestion that I do. My angle on this is basically the same as my approach to a range of other military issues: I understand policy and strategy and force structure, and I have a reasonable amount of expertise in the theory, concepts, and authorities that underpin security force assistance. So let's just head this off at the pass: you don't have to come tell me YOU DON'T KNOW DICK ABOUT HOW SPECIAL OPERATORS DO THEIR JOBS IN THE REAL WORLD AND YOU SHOULD JUST STFU!!!11!1 because I'm pretty much already granting you that. So there's that out of the way.

Now then:

A growing number of veteran commandos in Special Operations are rising to top positions in traditional military units and across the national security bureaucracy, reflecting the importance of their specialized training to fight unconventional wars that defined the past decade.

Among the most visible of these appointments were the recent promotions of two Navy Seal commanders to the No. 2 slots at a pair of military regional commands, a historic first.

Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward was named deputy commander of Central Command, the military’s busiest, managing two wars while watching a complex set of partners and rivals across Southwest Asia and the Middle East. Vice Adm. Joseph D. Kernan was named deputy commander of Southern Command, specializing in upgrading the skills of local security forces across Latin America and the Caribbean with the exercise of American influence, or “soft power.”

The intermingling of conventional forces and Special Operations personnel is under way elsewhere, too, reflecting a significant shift in military culture and reshaping not only the armed services but also the executive branch and Capitol Hill.

This according to Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt in today's New York Times. (It's probably worth noting that Shanker and Schmitt also have a new book out on the role of SOF and intelligence assets in aggressively targeting AQAM.)

Admiral Eric Olson handed over command of U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to ADM William McRaven yesterday; both men are SEALs. Olson was the first ever three-star (and eventually four-star) SEAL, and the first SEAL to command SOCOM. McRaven was the first SEAL to command JSOC, SOCOM's most talked-about component. All of which is to say that SEALs are a highly visible, influential presence in the senior ranks of both the special operations community and the broader Joint force in a way they never have been before.

SEALs have been in the press a lot lately, of course: the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and the tragedy of last weekend's downed Chinook have ensured that both the sacrifices and the excellence of Naval special operators are front of the national mind. It's exactly this centrality to current operations that has made possible the increasing policy influence of the individuals cited above: in a war that is largely irregular, who better to help integrate special operations with those conducted by conventional military forces than representatives of the units whose statutory responsibility includes direct action, unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, and a range of other irregular tasks? The geographic combatant commands' "Phase 0" peacetime engagements and post-conflict activities have a great deal in common with the main elements of the SOF mission, so this seems like a sensible move. Shanker and Schmitt are right to emphasize the unique experience of special operators in dealing not just with other military officers, but integrating operations with representatives from across the interagency and partner militaries. This is surely a useful skill for flag and general officers at a combatant command, and it's something SOF guys have been doing for their entire careers. Here's an instructive snip from the Army's SOF field manual:

ARSOF missions are normally joint or interagency in nature. ARSOF can conduct these missions unilaterally, with allied forces, as a coalition force, or with indigenous or surrogate assets. Mission priorities vary from theater to theater. ARSOF missions are dynamic because they are directly affected by politico-military considerations. A change in national security strategy or policy may add, delete, or radically alter the nature of an ARSOF mission.

Special operators are Chuck Krulak's real "strategic corporals" fighting the "three block war," and this serves them well at the policy-oriented higher reaches of the combatant commands.

But what first jumped out at me on reading the article I've excerpted above is that all the guys we're talking about aren't just SOF guys -- they're all SEALs. That is, they're members of perhaps the most direct action-oriented SOF in the U.S. arsenal. That's not to say that Naval Special Warfare doesn't do FID or anything of the sort, but rather that the major emphasis of the SEALs both in the current wars and over the last several decades has been direct action, raids, counterterrorism, and so on. This is in direct contrast to U.S. Army Special Forces, whose traditional, foundational mission is UW and FID. (Look, this isn't about interservice rivalry, so spare me. It just is what it is.)

SF, of course, has done plenty of direct action in the last decade. The sheer size of the combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan has created a demand for direct action "door-kickers" that outpaced the supply of forces traditionally tasked with that mission, which has resulted in what I call the Ranger-izing of the bulk of U.S. SOF. (The 75th Ranger Regiment is the Army's elite light-infantry unit and is traditionally tasked with direct action and strike missions such as raiding and interdiction.) Simply put, with two big wars going on, SOF have increasingly been employed for door-kicking and trigger-pulling.

Should this be the new normal, though? Is this what we want these guys -- SOF writ large, I mean -- doing into the future? The unique capabilities that exist in U.S. SOF were created and maintained for a reason: they're specialized, they're training-intensive, and they're extremely useful to policymakers. Military leaders are always looking for ways to adapt and make themselves more relevant to the mission, and the hard-chargers in the SOF community are probably even more inclined to do so than most; viewed in this light, it's not surprising that a national security paradigm that prioritizes counterterrorism would mitigate in favor of an emphasis on raiding and direct action. But if the trend continues, the Joint force and the country risks losing the many other important force multipliers that SOF can bring to the table.

For their part, Special Forces guys seem to know this. Many of them understand that the future security environment, in which policymakers will almost certainly favor the indirect approach over costly and controversial military operations, demands a re-emphasis on their traditional core competencies. I've got a lot of technical quibbles with this idea (and a few conceptual ones), but COL Eric Wendt presents an aggressive and original idea for how Army SF can get back to their roots through what he's calling the Volckmann Program. It's worth reading, if only to appreciate the juxtaposition between Wendt's traditionalist understanding of what SOF are meant to be all about and the Dick Marcinko caricature that's become increasingly accurate in recent years.

Does the elevation of SEALs as opposed to Green Berets indicate a continued emphasis on direct action at the expense of FID? Am I reading too much into this? (I'm especially interested in input and comments from SF guys and other special operators. As I said above, I'm looking at this from the outside, and there's only so much you can see from there.)

UPDATE: Because I've finally realized after all this time that no one clicks through on links, and because it's directly relevant to this conversation, here's the list of specified "special operations activities" from 10 U.S.C. §167 (j). I've also included my own simplistic explanatory comments for your edification, but I'm not going to go into the sort of semantic digressions (as is my wont) that are so natural when discussing the DoD lexicon.

1) Direct action (DA) -- killing people and breaking things in surgical fashion in high-risk environments
2) Strategic reconnaissance (now called special reconnaissance, SR) -- essentially intelligence collection
3) Unconventional warfare (UW) -- support to foreign insurgency
4) Foreign internal defense (FID) -- support to foreign authorities combating internal threats (insurgency, terrorism, etc.); includes a training/advising (security force assistance) component
5) Civil affairs (CA*) -- liaison between civil government and military forces
6) Psychological operations (now called Military Information Support Operations, MISO) -- shaping foreign opinion in support of U.S. objectives
7) Counterterrorism (CT) -- self-explanatory, I hope
8) Humanitarian assistance -- responding to humanitarian crises in foreign countries, preferably in support of civil authorities
9) Theater search and rescue (SAR) -- getting people back from high-risk, denied environments; the "theater" bit seems to me to suggest that SOF are covering an entire AOR's SAR needs, including countries where U.S. forces are not engaged in combat operations
10) Such other activities as may be specified by the President or the Secretary of Defense

* "CA" is the acronym for civil affairs, which is a term that actually refers to units, not activities. CA perform "civil affairs activities," but I'm just gonna use the acronym here for simplicity. Remember what I said about the lexicon being stupid?

Joint special operations doctrine, developed by USSOCOM and codified in JP 3-05 Special Operations, gives a somewhat different listing of "special operations core activities" (see Figure II-2 on page II-6): DA; SR; counterproliferation of WMD; CT; UW; FID; security force assistance (SFA); counterinsurgency (COIN); information operations (IO); MISO; and CA operations. I'm not sure why SOCOM decided to re-define its core missions, but an exploration of how these concepts are nested with and overlap one another would bore the hell out of you and take forever, so I'll just leave it at that.

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.

A question for those who think the Afghan war is essential to maintaining stability in Pakistan

The argument about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons tends to be nested into a multi-pronged rationale for why escalation in Afghanistan is necessary -- very few people will say "the one and only reason we need to be in Afghanistan is to keep Pakistani nukes out of al-Qaeda's hands." But a lot of people (including John Nagl and Dave Kilcullen, unfortunately) will tack this on to whatever other justifications they've got, toss this one in there ominously. And why not? They probably think that even the slightest risk of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists is just about the most terrifying thing most Americans can imagine, and they're probably right.

I guess I should also make it clear that I agree about Pakistani stability being important. In fact, I think it's probably the most important feature of the entire war, and I have no qualms saying that regional stability in south Asia ought to be a bigger priority for America than the utter annihilation of al-Qaeda (which, like Rid, I think is probably impossible and possibly unnecessary) or the vaunted denial of the much-talked-about terrorist safe haven.

But lemme come to the point already: if you think that keeping Pakistani nuclear weapons safe is an important reason for us to stay in Afghanistan in significant numbers, then I want you to answer a question. Ready?

Why do we imagine that a third-party counterinsurgency campaign in the country without the nuclear weapons will be more effective in guaranteeing their security than small-footprint, foreign internal defense (FID)-oriented backing for the government that actually possesses WMD?

Can't we do more to prevent weapons from getting to AQ by engaging with the Pakistani government and military than by running around Helmand shooting at opium smugglers?