The Rubicon Bridgehead: the utility of confidence and an aside on aesthetics

This morning Diana Wueger highlighted an article in International Security on the Rubicon Theory of War (.pdf), which posits that once we've crossed the Rubicon to war and war appears to be imminent, cognitive biases cause us to become overconfident about war, that this overconfidence increases the likelihood of war occurring, and that this same overconfidence causes risky military planning. I agree entirely with the fundamental conclusion of Diana's post (and the article) that we (meaning the populace, decision makers, military and civilian leaders) need to recognize these biases and approach war (or avoid it entirely) with a steely eye unjaundiced by hope and expectations that exceed reality.

However, I see two problems with the original article: one in the mechanisms of the theory and the second beyond. In the first instance I think the theory's creators did not thoroughly plumb the depths of the moral quantities (to use Clausewitz's term) of war and how that plays with confidence (over- or otherwise). If one assumes that war has become imminent, one must recognize the importance of confidence when partaking of events that require courage. It seemed to me on the eve of war with Iraq in 2003 that much of the overconfidence we were sold (shock and awe!) was merely optimism. It was bravado intended to inspire the troops. I can't say if this was intentional or a side-effect of the cognitive bias talked about Johnson and Tierney, but you don't want to send soldiers into harms way with expectations of a long, tedious, and violent war. Doing so would ensure you lose the moral quantities calculus right off the bat and possibly the war.

The Iraqis too had engaged in this sort of nonsense, preying on the fact that their armed forces and people didn't have a very good idea of the poor shape of their forces and the better shape of our own. Would their soldiers fight if they knew much of our equipment was impervious to their weapons? That we would, for the most part, run right through them? Of course they wouldn't. In the need to instill courage (in both the Clausewitzian/utilitarian sense and the Platonic/ Aristotlean sense of courage as virtue) we engage in nearly unbridled optimism when addressing our people and our army. These two functional elements of the wonderful trinity need to be sold on the policies already dictated by the third element or the policy is doomed to failure if it can ever begin. Is it poor military practice to engage in hope and optimism? Sure is. But sometimes it is necessary in order to achieve your political goals. Are these actions - this stoking the flames of easy, short, and victorious war - are they cognizant acts deliberately intended to fool the masses? Or are they unrealized biases of overconfidence? I'd argue a little of column A and a little of column B.

I also think that the authors get a bit into the "imminent war is imminent" meme without addressing how we got to and crossed the Rubicon in the first place. There is little definition around the term "imminent" with regard to the holder of these views, varying between "people" in the generic sense, populations specifically, and those that hold some position of official responsibility. Through a Clausewitzian lens, I would like to know if it matters for each part of the trinity when they become overconfident and how that all works. Does it matter that the U.S. population become overconfident before Operation DESERT STORM? Was their confidence exceeded by reality? Was war not really inevitable unless Iraq withdrew its forces - a variable not under the control of the U.S.? I don't believe the authors laid out the framework of their theory on how imminent came about and to whom, when and the subsequent effects of all that.

But beyond all of that, I'm more interested in looking at what caused this fording of the Rubicon in the first place (certainly beyond the scope of Johnson and Tierney). How did we get to that point and into the realm of "imminent"? It seems that we haven't gotten that far with Iran or Syria, but we're moving in that direction. I'd love to go on and on about the intersection of politics and aesthetics and draw parallels not only to Iraq (2003) but also the Athenian invasion of Sicily and how that all applies to the proponents of conflict between the U.S. and those two nations. But alas, that's a whole other subject for another day. But to wrap things up, I'll quote George Kateb in Patriotism and Other Mistakes: "Mass politics, for example, constantly is taken in and consumed as advertisement and entertainment, with the result that the demotic erodes the democratic. The tendency to get carried away with aesthetics is irrepressible." (If you haven't read that book, I highly recommend it.) Those that see beauty in a certain type of world - without repressive regimes, without our enemies possessing capabilities that we cannot control - are pushing us forward to the banks of the Rubicon for their own purposes, beginning with the people and then the elites. I don't see that Johnson and Tierney apply yet to Syria and Iran, except to those aesthetes who will imagine every possibility imminent for their own ends. How do we stop the feeling of imminent from spreading and avoid triggering the Rubicon Theory of War in reality?

ISAF Accentuating the Positive - To its Own Detriment

You know what depresses me? That after all of these years, chock full of debate and writing on counterinsurgency, that a guy with operational experience and as a media adviser to ISAF's Counterinsurgency Advisory & Assistance Team can be as wrong on counterinsurgency as this. Wow. It is a cheer-leading piece with poor understanding of counterinsurgency, the use of output metrics, and just really bad argumentation. McLaughlin is hardly the first to write such a post or make such statements, but he has me wondering why ISAF personnel and supporters keep doing this? How can they be so distant from reality and logic?

This topic relates to a post I had written a while ago on why senior military leaders have a propensity to infringe on civilian leaderships' roles and responsibilities. That is: a can-do attitude. But looking at the past as the author of the above-linked post did requires more than a can-do attitude. It requires an odd analysis of what has happened and what is happening to look at that data and say "hell yeah, we're going to be just fine." The only way I can explain it (and of course I may not be at all, but I'm sure as hell going to try) is that ISAF has adopted positive psychology in lieu of a strategy.

For those of you who aren't familiar with this relatively new field of psychology (and I'm only tangentially aware of it, not being a psychologist and all), it focuses on an individual's strengths and virtues to increase resiliency and functioning. The Army has embraced this theory in its counter-PTSD programs, so it isn't that much of a stretch to think that it has pervaded other aspects of the war effort. Begun at the University of Pennsylvania by Marty Seligman, positive psychology has patients just look at the good things (according to the website above, positive emotions, traits, and institutions) but makes no mention of any negative emotions, traits or institutions.

McLaughlin's piece is a great big positive psychology stream of consciousness. Look at all of the great stuff we've done! We've killed lots of bad guys! We've trained lots of Afghan security forces! They get together in front of an American's camera and talk about how much they want to change Afghanistan for better! Kabul is rebuilding itself! Canals! Progress! The future! Indeed, the Sun itself is rising on Afghanistan. This might work very well for soldiers to combat PTSD symptoms, but it's a shit way for a theater command headquarters to think about anything.

Military history is replete with stories of commanders and forces that did not understand their own weaknesses, when it is as important to understand weaknesses as much as strengths. I understand that it's hard for ISAF to look at its own weaknesses; especially as its greatest weakness - the inability to bring about a political solution to the war - is essentially out of its hands. Let's face it, without significant changes to the underpinning conditions (economic, political, geo-political, etc), ISAF can't stabilize Afghanistan on its own, if stability in the Western sense is possible at all.

If you think that last statement is correct - and I would guess that most serious analysts do think it's correct - then one can understand why ISAF has a positive psychological view of what it's doing. And I don't mean approve of this view, just understand. One hundred thousand troops are sent to a war they can't win (or at least have a marginally thin chance of it) - how do you keep the morale up? How do commanders substantiate the futility of what they're doing (futility in a strategic sense - not in the small actually positive things that do occur in Afghanistan)? The accentuate the positive. They look at the great things they've done, what is great about their organization and their values. The U.S. military did this in Iraq, too, in the dark days. It was hard to stomach, but one had to focus on something to substantiate why one was putting his or her life on the line for dubious and nearly impossible to reach objectives. So yeah, I get it - I understand why this is positive psychological worldview is pervasive at ISAF.

The biggest problem is that this positive outlook compounds the problems on the ground. It's one thing to accentuate the positive and it's another to ignore your problems. If you're in a nearly-to-totally hopeless situation (again, at the strategic level) on the ground, ignoring your problems leads to more problems. For example, it leads to horrible planning assumptions that we've seen and dissected at great length. It leads to counterproductive operations - such as razing villages or building roads for their own sake. It leads to plans and operations that focus on positive tactical gains that can be listed as successes at the cost of long-term, strategic success (this was the topic of a paper I wrote a few months ago that I'm waiting to be published soon.).

So ISAF - I get you're doing some great things - that may or may not be great in the bigger picture. But until you start telling me how things are going badly and what that means and how you're addressing it, your positive view of the war isn't helping anyone and is most likely hurting and killing more people than it's helping. Get a better sense of your problems, of your organization, and what you're doing and start talking about that. Dump this positive psychology stuff in conducting wars and embrace reality instead.