Forrestal was right: Why the Marine Corps isn't going anywhere, EFV be damned (UPDATE)

There's been a lot of hand-wringing and heavy breathing from some corners in the wake of last week's announcement that the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) program will be terminated. Despite the Commandant's insistence that he'd not only consented to but recommended cancellation of the too-heavy, too-slow, too-expensive, and generally too-problematic (pdf) next-gen amtrac, the defense defenders are coming out of the woodwork to eulogize the sea service and lament the destabilizing effects of its passing (or in the case of A#1 douchebag Loren Thompson, suggest investment in body bags). Without the obsolescent forcible-entry capability offered by the EFV, some said, the Marine Corps was being stripped of its primary purpose and its existential identity. But by Jim Forrestal's count, the Marines have just a bit more than 435 years of beach-storming and ass-kicking left in 'em thanks to that famous flag on Suribachi. Gen. Amos seems to agree; if his remarks to the Surface Navy Association this morning are any kind of signal -- and I think they are -- then reports of the devil-dogs' demise seem tad premature.

So is Tom Donnelly right that cancellation of the EFV "calls into question the future of the Marine Corps, whether the Marine Corps can function as it has since World War II as a kick-down-the-door force"? Nah. (As a matter of fact: "Naw. Naw, man. Shit, naw, man! I believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin' somethin' like that, man.") Can the USMC keep doing kick-down-the-door missions without the EFV? Sure, just like they could today or yesterday or ten years ago. But amphibious assault is a wasting asset, and everybody from the Commandant to Bob Work to Andy Krepinevich to the SECDEF knows that (no matter what they're saying in press conferences). What that means is that this capability will be neither particularly useful nor tremendously relevant in the future: there will come a day where neither the Marines nor anyone else are kicking down a whole lot of doors from the sea, but that's going to be a result of operational realities and the threat environment, not cancellation of a luxury weapon system.

But as for the future of the Marine Corps... they're on the ropes now, right? Down goes amphibious assault! Down goes amphibious assault! Down goes amphibious assault! Not gonna recover from that one. What the hell good is a Marine Corps that can't perform a forcible entry on a fortified beachhead? We all know a Marine's only as good as his extremely sophisticated, wildly expensive tactical vehicle, right? Yeah, I thought so too, but then here comes Amos just in time to prove us wrong.

The Marines have always been really, really good at public and Congressional relations. Maybe it's the flashy uniforms (uh, yeah, uniforms!) and the excellent recruiting posters and ad campaigns. Whatever the secret, they've needed it: I've yet to meet an active-duty or prior-service Marine who fails to mention how the Corps has had to justify its existence to every new administration and Congress for as long as they can remember. And should we be all that surprised? If you're wielding the budget ax, first on the block is going to be that duplicative 200,000-man ground force, that redundant "second army," the really-not-all-that-apparently-useful naval infantry formation (hell, the Army did D-Day!). But they've worked their pitch to the circumstances, and they've always stuck around.

The 35th Commandant inherited a proud tradition -- not just of leadership, but of salesmanship. He and his speechwriters didn't disappoint:

The Marine Corps is America's Expeditionary Force in Readiness-a balanced air-ground-logistics team. We are forward-deployed and forward-engaged-shaping, training, deterring and responding to all manner of crises and contingencies. We create options and decision space for our Nation's leaders.  Alert and ready, we respond to today's crisis, with today's force.TODAY.  Teaming with other services, allies and interagency partners, we enable and participate in joint and combined operations of any magnitude.  Responsive and scalable, we operate independent of local infrastructure.  A middleweight force, we are light enough to get there quickly, but heavy enough to carry the day upon arrival.  We operate throughout the spectrum of threats-irregular, hybrid, or conventional-or the shady areas where they overlap.  Marines are ready to respond whenever the Nation calls.wherever the President may direct.

The bulk of Amos' speech, recounting the many ways in which Marine forces have been employed of late, reads like a nearly exhaustive laundry list of recent and ongoing DoD missions: combat deployments (division-sized presence on the ground in Afghanistan, not to mention air operations), humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, security cooperation and capacity-building -- activities across the spectrum of conflict and the range of military operations. 

But the Corps has more to commend it than high OPTEMPO and eagerness for a fight, and the Commandant isn't afraid to be explicit about the advantages his service offers the nation. Let's think about this for a second: if you're trying to preserve force structure in the face of inevitable budget cuts and the prospect of an extended, indefinite era of austerity, what's your pitch? Well, you probably don't want to be pigeonholed into just one mission area, like, for example, amphibious assault. (How do you know Donnelly, Thompson, and Goure don't give a shit about the Marine Corps but care a lot about expensive acquisition programs? Look at the way they find it impossible to imagine meaningful missions for the pointiest end of America's pointy spear in the absence of the amphibious-landing mandate.) Now we're on to something: flexibility. We're not interested in an airplane that can only dogfight, only attack ground targets, only operate in good weather, or only be flown by human pilots, and the same principle applies to ground forces: if you only offer a niche capability, we're just not going to be able to afford you absent special circumstances. The best life insurance policy: operational adaptability, something the Commandant was happy to demonstrate when talking about all the different missions accomplished by the same Mark 1, Mod 1 Leathernecks.

But that's not all! Marines have another advantage over their ground-force counterparts in Big Army: they're relatively light, having been built to deploy aboard ship with their entire complement of equipment. Marines don't require expensive and complicated logistical arrangements, as they spend their time at sea both in war and peace. As such, they serve as the nation's "force in readiness": this means they're agile and responsive, rapidly deployable to crises and contingencies, able to show up in Haiti or New Orleans or Afghanistan or West Africa or Kuwait at the drop of a hat. As Gen. Amos said, "You're either ready to respond to today's crisis with today's force, today, or you're late and risk being irrelevant." In an oblique shot at the Army's force-generation model, he also commented that "crisis response is incompatible with tiered readiness" -- in other words, how the hell do you expect to put boots on the ground in a hurry when half your damn force is in RESET at Fort Stewart?

And what if it's not just flood relief or a quick show of deterrent force -- what if they need to stick around? Well, the devil-dogs have you covered there, too. Marine units are scalable and self-sustaining, so they're easily tailored to the required mission and able to operate in austere environments without external support. This is a big bonus when they're the first guys to show up, particularly when you're trying to secure a lodgment for a larger force to conduct protracted operations. When they're relieved by follow-on forces or need strategic mobility, they can just helo out to their ever-present "Swiss Army knives of power projection": amphibs on station off the coast.

Taken together, that's a hell of a pitch. Amos puts it like this:

Factoring all aspects of our role in the Nation's defense, the United States Marine Corps affords the following three strategic advantages: 

• We provide a versatile 'middleweight' ability to respond across the range of military operations (ROMO).  

• We provide an inherent agility that buys time for national leaders.  

• We bring an enabling and partnering capability to joint and combined operations of any magnitude.

Here's what they called that in the good ol' days: any mission, any fight, any place on the globe, alongside whoever else you can bring to the show. From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Just makes you want to sing a damn song, don't it?

A Marine Corps for another 435 years, I say! Or how about this: a Marine Corps 'til we don't need what they have to offer anymore, or until someone else can do it and everything else. I think the Commandant did a hell of a job showing that day's a good ways off yet. Breathe, Donnelly... breathe.

UPDATE: I was away from the computer on Friday, but I wanted to share Philip Ewing's commentary from Morning Defense, which I think totally misses the point.

BULLISH ON THE CORPS – In true gung-ho fashion, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos on Monday put an optimistic spin on the future of a service that could’ve just sulked after the cancelation of its beloved EFV and more delays for its new fighter jet. But the Marines are still America’s ready crisis-response force, Amos said, and America uses ‘em all the time for their specialty: Amphibious operations.

Amphibious work isn’t obsolete, Amos said – the Navy and the Marines have responded to “crises and contingencies” at least 50 times just since Sept. 11. (Marine Corps leaders have cited a range of numbers for this factoid, depending on how you slice it.) So even though the EFV didn’t work out, the Marines’ basic purpose in life – to appear from out at sea, kill people and break stuff – remains intact and vital, he said.

The Commandant's pitch was smarter than that, though: everyone knows the Marines can "appear from out at sea, kill people and break stuff," but this EFV drama has underlined the need to justify their existence with a bigger, broader set of roles and missions. By emphasizing non-traditional missions like humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, security cooperation, and defense support for civil authorities, then also giving us a reminder about persistent presence, strategic mobility, rapid deployability, operational adaptability, and combat power, Amos was saying "hey, we're not just about killing people and breaking stuff these days." That's why the Marine Corps remains relevant -- not just because the world still has oceans and beaches.

Another related note from the weekend: in a moment of tragic irony, 27-year old Iraq vet Sgt. Wesley Rice died Friday when his AAV sank in the Del Mar boat basin off the coast of Camp Pendleton. The other five Marines aboard were able to escape the vehicle safely.

How to kill a perfectly good lunch hour fiddling with an essentially meaningless thought experiment; Or: How this graph mathematically proves withdrawal is a good idea

Step 1: Browse Abu Muqawama

Step 2: Observe new post positing a simple graphical model for Chinese and Iranian engagement in Afghanistan

Step 3: Immediately assume that this model is fundamentally flawed in extremely simple, easily illustrated way

Step 4: Second-guess, equivocate, hedge, rethink, repeat

Step 5: Sink an hour into playing around with your own draft

Step 6: Refresh browser, notice that Ex has appended explanatory update that basically resolves concerns

Step 7: Review Step 3, revise conclusion to reflect that Gulliver's brain is fundamentally flawed in an extremely simple, easily illustrated way

Step 8: Choke yourself

Seeing as I've now spent so much effort demonstrating my high nerd quotient and talent for auto-distraction, I suppose I ought also own up to being a blowhard and a popinjay by sharing the product of my scribblings. (N.b.: the time I spent carefully modifying Ex's graph was meant to have been dedicated to a far more substantial post, one illustrated by yet another semi-original visual aid. That one will have to wait.)

I promise this made sense a few hours ago

So there it is: my redrafting of Ex's graph and some explanatory notes. What the hell does it all mean?

First of all, I think the original depiction suffers from a well-intentioned attempt at parsimony and elegance. The concept being depicted is too complex to be accurately rendered with just two lines. I understand the attempt, and the logic behind it is so simple as to be nearly self-evident: as U.S. engagement in Afghanistan decreases, other states will likely become more involved in the country so as to protect their interests. In the near term, those states that view the U.S. as a competitor will try to bandwagon off American efforts -- taking advantage of the stability dividends of NATO presence in Afghanistan to serve their own economic and geopolitical interests -- while enjoying the relative benefit of reduced U.S. readiness and flexibility attendant to the commitment of a substantial force. As the American footprint shrinks, countries like China and Iran will seek to assert themselves in Afghanistan so as not to suffer an interruption to the largely beneficial status quo.

Ex lays all of this down in two simple assumptions. (There are certainly more implicit in the model, but it's a good beginning.)

Let's start by assuming both China and Iran have an interest in U.S. military assets remaining in Afghanistan at great expense. Let's also assume that neither country, both with interests in Afghanistan, wants more instability.

Ok, so let's double back: Here he's saying that Iran and China want instability in Afghanistan to continue at present levels so as to ensure the U.S. continues to dedicate resources and military assets to it, but that China and Iran have broader interests in Afghanistan such that increased instability would be detrimental to them (outweighing whatever benefit is derived from continued heavy U.S. involvement). Put another way: an increase in Afghan stability would benefit those interests that exist independent of the relationship with the U.S., while harming the specific interest those countries have in continued U.S. involvement in the conflict.

This is all predicated on the idea that the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan contributes to stability, and that their departure will likely presage instability (absent other mitigating circumstances), or at the very least that a precipitious withdrawal of all American forces would threaten whatever stability currently exists. The Chinese and Iranians, then, want instability so much as it's required to cement American presence (and thus enhance their own position vis-a-vis the U.S.), but not so much as to threaten their own independent interests.

But what if decisions about U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan were made independent of assessments about the country's stability? What if the timeline for withdrawal was not controlled or impacted significantly by the security situation, and American troops were to be brought home without a care for whether or not the Afghan government could be counted on to secure predictable political outcomes? Because as it happens, that's our reality: NATO has pledged to turn over primary responsibility for the country to its own government by 2014, a benchmark that's helpfully highlighted on the graph. With a withdrawal timeline set, we can't argue that stability impacts force sizing in any meaningful sense. So U.S. troop levels aren't going to increase, and in fact are going to decrease on a generally predictable schedule. As such, we can eliminate that variable from our assessment of Chinese and Iranian interests and say that stability in Afghanistan is an objective "good" for those countries.

This is worth repeating: because China and Iran benefit from Afghan stability in a broad sense, and because the only detrimental effect those countries suffer from Afghan stability is increased U.S. flexibility and readiness, and because U.S. troop levels (and thus flexibility and readiness) are determined by an independent political decision and are thus not connected to Afghan stability… we can ignore U.S. troop numbers and say that all things which increase Afghan stability benefit China and Iran.

Still with me?

If Afghan stability benefits Chinese and Iranian interests – that is, if there’s a directly proportional relationship between the two – and if it’s assumed that stability will decrease after 2014, then China and Iran will seek to engage in behaviors that either counter this decline or mitigate the relationship between Afghanistan and their other interests. (This means that their options are to make Afghanistan less impactful on their other interests or to try to make Afghanistan more stable. This is the same choice the U.S. is facing right now, and we’ve determined that the threat of terrorism makes it impossible to pursue the first option. At least until 2014.) So as U.S. troop levels go down, Chinese and Iranian willingness to take stabilizing actions must increase in order to keep the “Afghan stability” indicator from spiking downwards. This is a decidedly different concept from what the original graph is meant to represent.

Of course, I wrote all that before Ex made his "clarification" (which is really a correction!). So you can see on my chart that I've redlined "Chinese and Iranian interest in a stable Afghanistan" on the original graph and replaced it with "Chinese and Iranian willingness to take actions to ensure stability." The conflation (or at least confusion) of these two variables was a major flaw. I addressed this by adding a new line which you can see across the top of my version: "Chinese/Iranian interest in Afghan stability." Over a limited timescale, this measure should stay relatively flat. The dotted line that scoops upward from "willingness" to "interest" is meant to illustrate the mistake we make if we fail to consider the intended U.S. withdrawal timeline: our adversaries' enduring interest in Afghan stability is only variable if a decrease in stability is met with a flexible U.S. response -- meaning an escalation and the attendant consequences for readiness.

Does this new graph have any broader meaning or explanatory value? Well, it ought to indicate that so long as we're willing to assume that other countries have an interest in Afghan stability, reducing our troop presence is certainly the correct decision. It prevents potential competitors from continuing to bandwagon and coattail, and we reap benefits from improved readiness and increased strategic flexibility. (But we already knew this, right?) It also means that those states that perceive a threat to their interests from uncertainty in Afghanistan should be lining up to get involved in a productive, stabilizing capacity -- both now and after the U.S. heads for the exits. (An predictable and unfortunate side-effect is that the internationalizing of the conflict absent strong U.S./NATO leadership is likely to have negative outcomes for the Afghan people, if not for "stability.") So why isn't that happening? Well, there are a few options: either A) those other countries don't perceive a similar level of threat from instability; B) they feel as though they're sufficiently shielded from the negative effects of instability or that the U.S. will continue to shield them in some way, even without troops on the ground; or C) they simply don't believe the U.S. is really going to leave.

That's what spits out at the end of all this? Fuck, what a waste of time.

The Civil-Military Divide: Interesting but not Dangerous (UPDATED)

There has been a growing chorus that the divide between the U.S. military and the American people is widening and this is bad for our nation. Yesterday, Admiral Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added his voice to this cause as the keynote speaker for the National Defense University's Conference on Military Professionalism. The transcript is somewhat hard to follow - being quite literal - and it seems his remarks were driven by bullet points, not a script. But there is no mistaking his main point: there is a divide between the people their military, that divide is growing, and that is a bad and dangerous situation.

I would agree with the Chairman that there is a divide of sorts between the people and the military. The population of our all-volunteer force is a relatively tiny percentage of the nation's populations, a case made by ADM Mullen. This is exacerbated by the military's recent and intensive experience in combat in South and Southwest Asia. So yes, less than 1% of the population is bearing the brunt of these wars, often with extreme physical and mental damage to the participants. But the reality is that we couldn't afford to send more troops to these war zones, so what does it matter that only 1% experience them? This is the type of statistic where I nod my head and say, "Noted. So what?" There doesn't seem to be much of a solution there to rope in the rest of the populous into the effort, save a draft (which you know I'm against) and increasing taxes (a solution that rests with the Congress and is a hot political topic).

Is the divide growing? That is debatable, because it unmeasurable. Military posts are usually somewhat secluded from main populations centers (other than all the places in and around DC) - mainly because the land was cheap to purchase and not for security reasons. You can't physically move the military further from the population and in fact with overseas base closures, more will be brought back to the U.S. If the divide is measured by the percentage of the population in the military, in the course of force resizing, then the divide would grow. On the other hand, we'll begin to withdrawal from wars that have been the primary fissure between those under arms and those not, so that may stem any growth in the divide. I don't think that a growing divide has been or can be proven.

Which gets to my main point. If there is a divide and it is growing (or not), what makes that so dangerous to either the military or the nation? There are plenty of discrete populations of Americans who are essential to the maintenance of the nation who by the same standards of ADM Mullen would be considered divided from the nation they support. The first that come to mind are police (roughly the same percentage of the population as the uniformed services and charged with maintaining the law and order of a 300 million-person country) and the Congress. With a small share of the population and important and unique functions (often dangerous for the latter and apparently also for the former), why is no one talking about the divide with the police and Congress and how dangerous that is?

To me, there is a divide. It exists and it may or may not be growing. But I do not believe that it is dangerous for our nation or its survival. The military will always maintain its appropriate subordination to the government which is formed by the people. I do not see, nor have seen legitimate arguments, how a small professional military that does its job separate from the public at large will upset that arrangement. What other dangers could there be? I, for one, cannot identify any others. The military has always borne the brunt of wars - it is their job after all - and I've yet to see how that is dangerous for our society. It seems to me that it is as it should be.

UPDATE: While I've been thinking that isn't much recourse or point to connect the general population with military more than there already is, I left out the most important part of the discussion: the Guard and Reserves. True civil soldiers (and Marines/Airmen/Sailors/etc). And they're in just about every community in the country. For those of you that suggest that people need to be in touch with their military in order to be better informed on the conflicts in which the U.S. engages (the utility of which I do question for the most part), I come back to a comment I made yesterday. If you don't want to deploy the Guard and Reserve to a conflict, you shouldn't be in that conflict. To my mind, that's where the connection is: in the Guard, Reserve, and their communities - and I don't see how or much need to expand beyond that.

This is my current line of thinking. I need we to have a serious debate about this beyond the normal vacuous statements usually made and really think about what the problem really is (or if there is one), what can be done about it, what the aims of those actions would be, and if the costs are worth it. Otherwise, to be perfectly frank, I'm just hearing platitudes.

Is it time to reconsider the Taiwan delusion?

Courtney at GSGF links approvingly (it seems...?) to Tom Donnelly, Mackenzie Eaglen, and Jamie Fly's newest piece in The National Review, in which the authors unsurprisingly deride Secretary Gates' recent announcement of program cuts and future end-strength reductions. It's just like another spin of the ol' Best of Max Boot record: we don't have enough troops and weapons for everything, which is just the same as not having enough for anything! Jason's already gotten into the fundamental stupidity of this approach, but Courtney avoids Boot's worst pitfalls by positing a specific threat for which we ought to be prepared: aggressive Chinese revisionism vis-a-vis Taiwan. If you dare...

China's hot desire for a tiny tiny fun, free choice little sister democrazy (that hasn't ever bothered anyone) speaks volumes about the idea of messing with defense budgets.

Presumably the argument here is that an American military with 47,000 fewer ground troops (and no EFVs or SLAMRAAMs) would be unable to defend Taiwan against Chinese invasion.

Well, I'm not quite sure how to tell you this, Courtney, but... If the Chinese want Taiwan back, they're going to take it. And there's really not a whole lot of anything we can or should do about this reality, whether the defense budget is $553 billion or $553 SQUILLION.

Here's a little taste of what a war with China would be like, courtesy of the research geeks at Popular Mechanics. (Focus particularly on the first 700 words.) It ain't pretty, and (contra Bill Gertz) that's not because we've got bad intel on China or because we aren't spending our money right. No, it's really a matter of geography: just the same as we wouldn't expect China to be able to stop an American invasion of Cuba, when we think about the whole thing as a practical matter, it's patently absurd to imagine that we could defend the island from the revanchist whim of its powerful neighbor. What's the capability gap that prevents us from mounting an effective defense? I'd start with an inability to instantly teleport air and missile defenses across thousands of miles of ocean and lack of forward-deployed coastal artillery that's roughly as capable as the laser cannons defending Hoth at the start of The Empire Strikes Back. Anybody know the life-cycle costs on that stuff?

Seriously though: we're not going to explicitly renounce our commitment to defending Taiwan, but it seems certain we'll never be able to execute anything but a minor delaying action against Chinese landing forces. And I know Courtney's answer will be different to my own on this question, but: why should we? Is it worth the death of perhaps tens of thousands of American sailors and airmen to make a hopeless if symbolic defense of one small bastion of democracy just a brief sail from the Chinese mainland? Wouldn't we all be better off doing exactly what we're doing, which is sustaining the One China policy, engaging with Beijing in ways that are meant to mitigate the rising power's more aggressive tendencies while supplying Taiwan with defensive weapon systems and insisting they take no overtly destabilizing actions (like declaring independence)? And if not, why not?

Of course we're not interested in inviting an invasion, and the limited support that we currently provide to Taipei ought to demonstrate our seriousness on that front. But as a force planning construct, it seems absolutely insane to countenance the loss of a carrier strike group or two to defend a geostrategically meaningless hunk of rock from the unwanted affections of our biggest creditor. There may be good reasons to go to war with China one day, but that day ain't now, and Taiwan ain't the good reason. If and when war does come, it seems unlikely to be contested by infantry BCTs and Marine Expeditionary Brigades -- rather it's far more likely to be a stand-off scuffle between F-22s and the much-talked-about new J-20, or some kind of as-yet-inconceivable showdown between swarming UAV fleets. So let's leave aside any nonsense about "China's hot desire for a tiny tiny fun, free-choice little sister democracy" mitigating in favor of larger, more expensive U.S. land forces. It's not serious.

Donnelly, Eaglen, and Fly conclude their National Review piece with what I imagine they intended as a punch-you-in-the-face moment of ground-truth profundity: "Cutting land forces now can only make the 'Long War' longer." No, I'll tell you what will "make the 'Long War' longer": getting into a whole bunch more manpower-intensive, strategically dubious wars of choice. And war with China over Taiwan satisfies at least one half of that equation.

Sri Lanka: "a grisly test case for success in modern warfare"? (UPDATED)

You've heard it before: the success of the brutal Sri Lankan campaign against the Tamil Tigers proves that Western approaches to counterinsurgency are fundamentally flawed: they're not brutal enough, not bloody enough, not enough torture or summary execution or firepower or ultimatums. Jon Lee Anderson, biographer of Che, opens his New Yorker piece "Death of the Tiger" with tacit acceptance of that argument, couched in generalized descriptions of the future conflict environment.

In many respects--its entrenched religious and ethnic conflicts, its festering guerrilla warfare and suicide bombings, its seamless interchange between civilians and combatants--the war prefigured any number of later conflicts. Where it differed was in the government's brutal effectiveness in putting down the insurgency. To the extent that a counter-insurgency campaign can be successful, Sri Lanka is a grisly test cast for success in modern warfare.

To the extent that a COIN campaign can be successful, of course. One wouldn't want readers to think that we're  labeling the Iraq war a "success" or holding out hopes for a favorable outcome in Afghanistan. Heavens no! It's far more fashionable to insist that counterinsurgencies never work... unless, that is, they're executed in some way that's completely unreproducible -- whether for circumstantial, practical, or moral reasons -- by the U.S.

Anderson's basic summary of the campaign is useful for its brutal honesty about the tactical measures employed by the Sri Lankan military. I'm summarizing here:

1. Direct civilians to assemble in safe zones where they'll be free of military reprisals
2. Heavily shell these areas
3. Force remaining insurgents and associated (?) civilians into a geographically isolated space
4. Cut off all transportation, resupply, and communications to this space
5. Heavily shell this area 
6. Kill everyone who doesn't succeed in fleeing and/or is not killed by insurgents during efforts to flee
7. Kill insurgent leader
8. Declare victory

Each of these steps is to be concluded in an atmosphere of media blindness, and with a firm and steadfast resistance to the corrosive effects of international opinion. Here's how Anderson describes it: 

In military circles around the world, the "Sri Lanka option" for counter-insurgency was discussed with admiration. Its basic tenets were: deny access to the media, the United Nations, and human rights groups; isolate your opponents, and kill them as quickly as possible; and separate and terrify the survivors--or, ideally, leave no witnesses at all.

All of which leads one to wonder, if one is a member of those "military circles" discussing the Sri Lankan job with "admiration" (and I'm not quite sure which circles those are, if I'm honest): how in the hell is all that supposed to work?

The Sri Lankan "insurgency" differed in character so significantly from the Iraqi and Afghan insurgencies as to scarcely justify the same label (just as, to be fair, the Afghan and Iraqi insurgencies differ/ed from those in Colombia, El Salvador, Vietnam, Malaya, Kenya, Algeria, and from one another). Only its character as a geographically isolated ethnic separatist insurgency made such tactics both possible and largely effective. One can draw parallels with Malaya, where forced relocation and isolation of an ethnic minority-based insurgency were also successful, but the process of forcing both guerrilla and civilian alike into successively smaller boxes and killing everyone who doesn't surrender is simply not a viable approach to countering a broad-based national insurgency. And that's leaving aside, of course, the fact that such tactics are FUCKING REPREHENSIBLE.

But that seems to be the point that a number of commentators are trying to make about counterinsurgency these days: you can't really do it well, and if you want to do it as well as possible, you're going to have to kill a shitload of people. Well, true and false. Violence is inarguably a part of effective COIN, just as it's a part of effective military operations of nearly all kinds (and certainly all kinds of war). But sustaining a high rate of fires and an aggressive, patrol-heavy force posture is not the same thing as packing all the living humans into a free-fire area and letting slip the dogs of war. 3-24 might soft-pedal the firepower bit (though not quite so much as its critics on either side suggest), but it's not covering for a Rajapaksa reality.

Just the same, read the whole New Yorker piece if you have access. Anderson is an excellent reporter and an easy storyteller; you can't blame him for the zeitgeist.

UPDATE: Niel Smith helpfully links to his piece on the subject in the 4th Quarter 2010 issue of JFQ. It's worth repeating his conclusion here:

Those who wish to use the LTTE’s [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the Tamil Tigers] defeat as a foil for criticizing U.S. COIN doctrine have adopted an overly simplistic narrative of the LTTE’s defeat. These critics have missed the larger picture of what occurred in Sri Lanka. Appropriate and legitimate debate continues as to the significance of population centric tactics practiced by the U.S. military during the surge to the successful reduction of violence [in Iraq]. Without doubt, numerous changes in the wider internal and external dynamics of the conflict coincided with the tactical shift and accelerated the turnaround in Iraq. Likewise, by 2009, the LTTE was a shadow of its former self, bankrupt, isolated, illegitimate, divided, and unable to meet an invigorated government offensive of any kind. At almost every turn, the LTTE made profound strategic miscalculations in the post-9/11 environment by continuing its use of terror tactics despite a fundamentally changed global environment. Failing to realize this shift, [LTTE leader] Prabhakaran made poor strategic and tactical choices that doomed his movement long before the government began its final offensive. Taken together, these conditions proved essential to the collapse of the LTTE after nearly 30 years of conflict.

N.b.: the Tigers didn't do themselves any favors while becoming one of the most well-known terrorist outfits on the globe. Things might not have shaken out the same way had they not so effectively worn out their welcome with patron and undecided alike.

Max Boot is still not making the argument for a larger land force

Forget grand strategy and all that. There are a couple of significant problems with this newest Max Boot column where he responds to critics of his Weekly Standard article that I commented on the other day.

Let's start near the top. "Regarding the first point: critics say that Bush and his civilian and military officials decided to send a small force to Afghanistan and then Iraq not because of force constraints but because the were wedded to the ideology of the "small footprint." There is a great deal of merit in this assertion." Great deal of merit?? I've yet to see a single piece of evidence to suggest anything but that being the case. I ask Mr. Boot to provide any, because I've never seen it. Every book, article, or primary source I've seen on the subject stated explicitly that a small footprint was decided on as a matter of principle and had nothing to do with troops available. I'll agree that force sizing was part of the calculus later in the Iraq conflict, after the insurgency grew, but for a couple years, I'd still argue it was barely a "major" part of the calculus. No one was interested in an escalation for political reasons (remember that whole "we're not in the middle of an insurgency" business?) - as well as principles. At the time, Afghanistan was going swimmingly with practically no footprint. No one was terribly sure what was going wrong in Iraq that it couldn't follow that model.

The second major problem I have with his post is in the last paragraph. "Indeed, even as we were winning in Iraq, we were losing in Afghanistan, because we didn't have enough troops to adequately garrison both countries." He goes on to state that Bush and Clinton force planners that we'd have such large commitments. Let's get past the heavily weighted term "garrison" and move on to what this logic does mean for force planners. How big of a country should the United States be prepared to "garrison"? For what purposes? We had 500K active duty troops available (not including the USMC) for Iraq and Afghanistan to "garrison" two fairly large countries with populations totaling just over 50 million people. Mr. Boot specifically listed Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan as countries the President should assure us that we won't have to commit troops to. Populations? 26 million, 10 million, and 180 million people respectively. If Mr. Boot feels we should have maintained a force size of 700K to "garrison" 50 million people and that the U.S. should maintain whatever capability necessary to do the same to other problem nations, then by that logic we'll need an army of roughly 3 million active duty soldiers. Yeah, that won't adversely effect our economy.

This last bit was a bit tongue in cheek. I'd like to think that Mr. Boot wouldn't think an army of that magnitude would be reasonable (I could be wrong though). But this "who knows what we'll have to occupy" is terrible reasoning, especially as there is no real political, strategic, or operation reasoning that would dictate the necessity to "garrison" these and other places. To say nothing of the Albright logic (we have a huge military so let's do something with it) that could put the U.S. in strategically ill-advised positions again. And finally, as I mentioned the other day, neither of these articles mentions the size and role of the National Guard or Reserves in case of national emergencies. The more I think about it, the more I think this is a good rule of thumb: if you don't think your operation is so vital to the nation that you don't think the the Guard or Reserve should be deployed for it, then you shouldn't be there at all.

Anyway, there are probably good reasons for maintaining a large land force. Max Boot is not making any of them.

How the dialogue about "progressive national security strategy" is destructive both to progressives and national security

Several different discussion threads have been kicking around in my mind in recent weeks and have lately converged around the question of how security policy is and ought to be informed by politics. Jason’s been writing here about grand strategy and peer competitors; the SECDEF’s statement last week on budget efficiencies sparked conversations about the big-picture strategic implications of various defense spending philosophies; and a number of commentators have touched on what it means to advocate for “progressive national security policy.” Robert Farley has taken up this latter question at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, and he’s made what I think is a meaningful contribution to the discussion.

I also happen to think he’s very wrong.

Farley and I had an extended exchange about this on Twitter on Friday night (look at @drfarls and @InkSptsGulliver on 7 Jan, if you're interested. There's probably some easier way to do this, but I don't know what it is), and he basically cleaned my clock. (I’d excuse my poor performance by noting A) that we were jumping around on a number of different lines of inquiry, and B) that most of the conversation took place during my commute home on public transportation.) Rob is undoubtedly correct to say that politics plays a role in basically every aspect of security policy and national security strategy – that is, in everything from the way we conceptualize the values we’re trying to defend to the formulation of the policies and strategies we use to defend them… at least so long as we’re willing to stipulate that a fundamental belief in the importance of physical security and territorial integrity is a matter of political ideology. I’ll concede that there may be instances where a state (or a political actor within that state) is willing to bargain things that most people consider to be foundational national interests in order to achieve gains in other areas, but I think it’s also fair to say that there’s a well-nigh overwhelming socio-political consensus in the U.S. about the importance of those fundamentals. Even the most ardent libertarian would grant that defense against invasion is a legitimate constitutional prerogative of the federal government. But as I’ve alluded to in the comments on this post, political philosophy as concerns the appropriate relationship between government and governed and one’s interpretation of the social contract will certainly inform the way that individual citizens think about grand strategy (though less so, I believe, those citizens’ interpretation of vital national interests).

All of which is really a digression on the point that I really want to make, which is this: I think that it’s senseless and even counterproductive to try to talk about a “progressive approach to national security,” whether that means the conception of a “progressive” grand strategy or the construction of “progressive” policy options. Rob argues that progressives too often cede ground unnecessarily to conservatives when it comes to foreign and security policy, and he may be right about this. But that’s a political problem, not a policy problem. And “conceding ground” in a political debate may negatively impact policy formation, but only if your bad/good spectrum is built on fundamentally progressive metrics. That means you’ve got a tautology on your hands: progressive policies are good because they secure progressive goals, i.e. progressive is good because it’s progressive. So yeah, by that logic, any time progressives lose a debate to conservatives, it’s bad.

Here’s the problem with that, though: most people, when they think about national security, aren’t particularly concerned with labels like “progressive” or “conservative.” If they’re particularly broad-minded and forward-thinking, they might evaluate policy based on whether or not they think it’s consistent with their own personal views of what America is all about; that is, whether it’s consistent with their worldview and their grand strategic preferences. But most people don’t look at things like that – they just ask whether a policy “makes us safer” or not, and on this question they’re subject to the explanatory rationale provided by national security analysts – or more often, if we’re being realistic, to the bullshit spin provided by politicians and politically-minded pundits.

Farley recognizes this, and it’s central to his warning to progressives not to absent themselves from discussions of policy, strategy, doctrine, budgeting, and so on. Heritage and AEI understand that security policy is contested politically just the same as domestic policy, he says; why can’t the left recognize this and engage on those terms? If the conversation is being shaped by political hackery, then progressives need to hack harder! But this approach overlooks an important truth: conservative think tanks don’t explicitly advocate for conservative security policy – they argue for “good” security policy! They argue as if any policy but their chosen course imperils American lives! That’s why open advocacy for “progressive security policy” – either for progressive ends or progressive means – is necessarily counterproductive: because it emphasizes ideology and explicitly recognizes the primacy of the political. (What right-minded non-political national security pragmatist wants to self-identify with “progressive” or “conservative” policy prescriptions? It’s the rhetorical equivalent of the Bush Doctrine – a quest to accumulate enemies through inelegant phrasing and forced decisions.) Heritage cares just as much about Republican wins, sure, but they’ve developed a grammar of national security that doesn’t openly politicize it. If the public thinks you’re willing to prioritize political advantage ahead of effective policy, then they’ll doubt – with good reason! – your commitment to real security.

Paul McLeary has a great piece today that bears on this subject, entitled “Progression through unlearning.” In it, he highlights the way that conservative “defense defenders” are spinning Secretary Gates’ budgetary announcements to suggest that austerity measures will imperil our security and fundamentally alter America’s role in the world. Tom Donnelly, Mackenzie Eaglen, and Jamie Fly did exactly that in the National Review. But their piece is instructive: nowhere do the authors suggest that cuts are bad for conservative policies or conservative grand strategy. They merely beg the grand strategic question, proceeding as if global dominance is the only means with which to ensure American security. And then there’s the magic bullet for those who seek to privilege the defense budget in a time of sweeping cuts: an appeal to the social compact.

Gates’s argument is that defense dollars are not “sacred.” That is true, but that is also to trivialize the fact that national defense is different — a qualitatively different obligation of government than providing social services, health care, “internal improvements,” or economic development. And there is a moral dimension to defense spending, especially when only a few do the fighting and dying for the many.

It is ironic that the White House chose to announce defense spending cuts just as the House, by its public reading of the U.S. Constitution, tried to call the federal government back to its first principles. If there was one thing the Framers understood, it was that security was the first priority of the national government.

Now this is where Farley’s vision of “progressive defense theory” can come in handy! One can contest this reading of the obligations of government. But even more importantly (and probably more easily), one can contest this definition of security, instead elaborating the ways the modern threat environment has changed the way we understand this concept and must necessarily impact the means we employ to ensure it. This is where you talk about the whys and wherefores of your grand strategic concept, where you explain that “security” ain’t just about force-on-force anymore. This is where you get into human security, the “three Ds” (with emphasis on diplomacy and development), an intelligence- and policing-based paradigm for counterterrorism, and the many other elements that could make up whatever it is we want to call a “progressive approach to national security.” But for God’s sake, don’t use that term! Call it a modern approach. Call it a nontraditional approach. Call it an updated approach! But whatever you do, don’t use the language of domestic politics – it cedes the moral high ground, turns off the audience, and implies all the very worst things conservatives want people to believe about the way progressives/liberals/Democrats/non-neocons look at defense.

Effects of Grand Strategy without Grand Enemies on Budget Debates: GS/GE Part III

I'm going to just label this topic thread GS/GE (Grand Strategy / Grand Enemy) because I'm getting tired of typing it out. I had another post in this series planned in my head, but thanks to twitter I'm going to jump on a target of opportunity: budget debates without a grand enemy.

In short, these debates lack rigor. The budget aspect of grand strategy is essential as it limits a state's ability to react or project itself towards its interests. What else is the administration of government than this distribution of its assets? The defense sector likely among the largest and most critical (for both security and by the impact of it being among the largest). Sure, there are battles of ideas on defense budget issues in times of peace and war as well at times when there is a clear enemy and when there isn't. I'm sure the folks in the Pentagon are conducting rigorous analyses on the programs and monies under their control. But in the public sphere, this debate is becoming ludicrous.

In general, the disparate camps (with regard to defense budgets) could probably be classified as doves (we should spend less on defense, more on aid and domestic issues), "pragmatists" (what a strong defense, but understand that spending has to be limited at some point), and hawks (who would have a hard time ever finding a limit in order to have the strongest defense money could buy). While there are many bad arguments in each of these groups, I am going to pick on defense budget hawks today, and Max Boot in particular.

This afternoon, Mr. Boot linked via twitter to a column he wrote for The Weekly Standard Magazine. In it, he makes the following points:

1. The U.S. Army had a strength of 710,000 troops in 1991.
2. The U.S. Army has a strength of 566,000 today.
3. This reduction was a really bad idea and led to our not doing so well in Iraq and Afghanistan.
4. The Army intends to cut another approximately 50,000 active duty positions starting in 2015.
5. This is also a really bad idea and the President should provide explanation and assurances on what this bad decision for further cuts should happen.

Oh my. Firstly, I'm not terribly sure what on earth U.S. Army personnel strengths in 1991 have anything to do with our strength today. Those numbers were based on the strategic realities of 1991 (and the likelihood of a ground war in Europe - which we considered vital to our national interest). Secondly, point 3 is just ridiculous statement that is not just inaccurate, but not argued at all. Rumsfeld didn't use more troops in the invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq because he felt that it should be done quickly with a small footprint as a matter of principle, not because there weren't enough forces. The reason both conflicts went/are going so badly is because of piss poor planning assumptions and intelligence, not active duty strength levels.

As for points 4 and 5, my question to Mr. Boot is: after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan draw down to minimal footprints, how many soldiers do we need? What would they all do? Mr. Boot asks for certainty and assurances on the assumptions used to substantiate the draw down and then states that such assurances cannot be given. I ask Mr. Boot for certainty and assurances that we'll need to intervene in Pakistan, Yemen, or Somalia in the foreseeable future that would substantiate, not only the maintenance of current personnel levels, but likely the return to 1991 levels. Oh right. Such assurances cannot be given. In fact, I'm more inclined to take assurances that we won't be trying to do regime change/governance and state building / general meddling with large numbers of boots on the ground any time soon without a really, really good reason. Mainly because we've been doing it for a while and it's taking a toll on the military and our country. If a war of necessity does arise, that's what the Reserves and National Guard are for - they don't get that drill pay to play soldier, they get it so they're ready when they're needed. If you account for them in possible deployable numbers, we're talking just under a million potential pairs of boots.

While this post is dragging on longer than intended, just one more points. Saying that defense spending is "only" 20% of the USG's budget is misleading, considering how much of the total budget is non-discretionary (social security, etc.). It's 50% of discretionary spending - half of the money the USG can spend on things it chooses to. And we're still spending half of the world's budget on defense. Half. How much would be enough?

The bottom line for me, here, is that Mr. Boot isn't making an argument that we need to stop making cuts or even increase spending. He's making the same type of non-arguments that his opponents (who support the cuts) are making. No one has any idea what type of threat the United States should be preparing for - we have no idea what or who our enemies are or will be. Not even an inkling of an idea. Yet, pundits are waxing poetically from all sides of the budget debate without laying out realistic strategic foundations that would justify such a budget (yes, I know, it was an article in a newspaper...). I'm picking on Mr. Boot today, probably unfairly as he certainly is not the only one on any side doing this. But I am adamant that I am not at all interested in any budgetary ideas based on preconceived political ideologies devoid of strategic substantiation. And no Mr. Boot and others, naming countries that just really piss us off sometimes is not a strategic substantiation - it does not make them grand enemies for which to build a grand strategy.

Why "drafting the U.S. civil service for counterinsurgencies" is either a really dumb idea or an awesome piece of satire

Yesterday Small Wars Journal published a piece by one Michael A. Clauser entitled "Not Just a Job, an Adventure: Drafting the U.S. Civil Service for Counterinsurgencies." In it, the author -- a Congressional staffer -- demonstrates a staggering misunderstanding of the fundamental roles and missions of the U.S. government, draws mistaken conclusions about the commitment made by and compensation provided to U.S. civil servants, and offers an ineffective "cure" that would carry with it side effects far more damaging than the imagined "disease." Viewed as a piece of Swiftian satire, it is excellent. Considered as a serious policy proposal, it is colossally, catastrophically bad.

Clauser kicks off his modest proposal with the curiously-punctuated truism "[i]t's become trite to state that the solution for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is 'political,' and not solely 'military,' in nature." If that's the case, we're meant to wonder, why has the approach of successive administrations focused on the infusion of more combat troops? Well, it's the fault of those diplomats and engineers and urban planners and food safety experts safely ensconsed in comfortable D.C. offices and lavish embassies abroad, obviously: "neither President [sic] could find adequate numbers of willing foreign and civil servants to accompany our men and women in uniform." And this, quite obviously, is a problem. Michael Clauser thinks it's basically a supply problem -- not, apparently, that America lacks sufficient supply of qualified civilian experts, but rather that our system of laws and the general fecklessness, laziness, and/or cowardice of our non-DoD civilians combine to sabotage the government's efforts to apply this ready supply of expertise to important missions in combat zones and post-conflict environments. So our man has a drastic solution:

If the U.S. is serious about winning the war in Afghanistan through a political solution, Congress should change current law and begin to draft civil servants with the right skill sets and training for national objectives abroad.

Serious indeed.

There are a number of very significant problems with both Clauser's assessment of the situation and his proposed solution. The most troubling of these is that he seems to misunderstand the very purpose of the United States government and the fundamental roles and missions of its various component parts. Simply put, the organizing principle of the USG is not overseas warfighting, or even war-winning. The Departments of Justice, Transportation, and Agriculture do not base their organizational priorities on those of the Pentagon (or even State), and those departments do not plan, organize, hire, train, educate, or incentivize personnel to support foreign contingencies. Simply put, it's not their job, and it's not what their people signed up for.

One can reasonably argue that our national security apparatus ought to be reformed and restructured to better operate in a world where "defense" and "security" cannot be so cleanly separated from the other functions of the state. Many have made this case, and the current Secretaries of State and Defense have both indicated support for a proposal to pool resources and authorities so as to streamline U.S. efforts to build the security and governance capacity of foreign partners. One may go even further and assert that the work of those departments and agencies not traditionally understood to be focused on international concerns -- the USDOTs, the USDAs, the DOJs -- should by dint of philosophical fealty to some Constitutionally-derived idea of the "proper role of government" be suborned to the imperatives of national security. That the Department of Agriculture should first and foremost understand its mission as one of support to the defense of the American people, subject to the judgments and determinations of the Commander-in-Chief. One can certainly offer these arguments, which span from the reasonable but somewhat frought to the frankly absurd, and discussion of the consequences of which would expand this post beyond all get-out and really just kill the rhetorical force of the whole thing. But let's be clear: that's not the argument Michael Clauser is making.

(As an aside, Clauser works for a guy who has been reasonably forward-thinking on this issue; Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) introduced legislation (pdf) in March of 2001 that expressed the following in its findings section:

(1) The security of the United States homeland from nontraditional and emerging threats must be a primary national security mission of the United States Government. Attacks against United States citizens on United States soil, possibly causing heavy casualties, are likely during the next quarter century, as both the technical means for carrying out such attacks, and the array of actors who might use such means, are proliferating despite the best efforts of United States diplomacy.

(2) Attacks on United States soil may involve weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass disruption. As porous as United States physical borders are in an age of burgeoning trade and travel, its cyber borders are even more vulnerable, and the critical infrastructure upon which so much of the United States economy depends can now be targeted by governments as well as individuals. The preeminence of the United States makes it more appealing as a target, while its openness and freedoms make it more vulnerable.

The bill would have united the various agencies dedicated to border security, infrastructure protection, and emergency management under a new Homeland Security Agency; it would provide the broad outlines, several months later, for the establishment of DHS. If Michael Clauser wants to make a thoughtful argument about the way the government can be reorganized or repurposed to deal with a nontraditional threat environment, he should have a conversation with his boss.)

Back to the main effort here: the argument that Clauser is making is that the government does have the personnel, resources, and expertise to perform the necessary mission -- which he sums up by writing that "the U.S. must make it the top priority to train, advise, and equip Afghan officials to build their capacity to govern effectively and honestly" -- but that it merely lacks the authority to compel those people to show up and do the job. And that's simply just not true. The USG's efforts to build Afghan civilian governance capacity, which Clauser describes as "at best haphazard and improvised," are summed up like this:

Currently, undertrained Foreign Service officers and uniformed military personnel are left as the principal advisors to Afghan officials across all sectors of government such as education, transportation, public works, law enforcement, environmental protection, and agriculture. These U.S. personnel are supported by a host of contractors to augment their expertise--but at great taxpayer expense.

He goes on to assert that

[t]he U.S. needs to leverage the taxpayer-funded expertise of civil servants resident in federal departments like Education, Justice, Commerce, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services. It takes a U.S. Department of Agriculture employee to effectively train his counterpart at the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock, not a diplomat and certainly not a soldier.

Seems simple enough, right? After all, we've heard plenty of people arguing against the inefficient use of military personnel to perform inherently civilian functions, criticism of the inappropriate militarization of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so on. And it may be correct to say that it's not a soldier's job, nor even a diplomat's. But here's a news flash: the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn't have a massive, ready supply of ministerial trainers on hand. They have a whole bunch of ag-oriented bureaucrats. They don't have a whole bunch of people whose day job involves teaching other people how to be ag-oriented bureaucrats.

We're really talking about two different things here: 1) performing quick-win, high-visibility development functions as part of a campaign plan to secure control of territory in a counterinsurgency effort; and 2) building ministerial and institutional capacity in the host-nation government to take care of longer-term sustained development and governance activities. The first of those mission sets can be performed by military personnel, and in many (even most) cases the security situation will demand it. (I'm reminded of what Dag Hammarskjold said about peacekeeping: "it's not a soldier's job, but only a soldier can do it." There's some other content directly related to this subject at that link, too.) The second task is the one that ought not be done by folks in uniform, but the dirty little secret is that this expertise just simply does not exist in the quantity most people talking about a "civilian surge" imagine it to. Here's an even dirtier little secret to illustrate the difficulty of what we're talking about here: the military, which is experienced operating overseas, trained to support civil authorities, and operationally organized -- that is, set up to do stuff, not just as a staff -- basically has no idea how to support the requirement to provide ministerial and flag-level training and mentoring... to foreign DEFENSE ESTABLISHMENTS. Let me make this more clear: the Defense Department is not good at teaching foreign ministries of defense how to perform the same functions that the DoD accomplishes for the U.S. It's just not something we're set up to do. So you shouldn't be surprised if you find out that there aren't a whole bunch of people sitting in the HHS building over on the Mall with the necessary expertise to help a foreign government set up a health system. There is a difference between knowing how to do something and knowing how to establish, train, staff, and incentivize an organization in another country to do that same thing.

Now that we've established that the government isn't really set up to do this, that the necessary expertise may not exist, and that the stuff Clauser wants civil servants to do isn't really their job at all, let's forget about all that for a minute. Imagine we decide this is the number one national priority, that this is absolutely necessary, that we have the people to do it and we just need to get them there. How about this draft idea? Well, it's a really, really bad one. Put simply, Clauser makes the dubious argument that the extant legal requirement for U.S. males to register for Selective Service upon turning 18 somehow grants Congress the moral authority and justifying precedent to enact legislation impressing into involuntary foreign duty all U.S. civil servants who aspire to senior (non-political) leadership in government. I'll let him elaborate:

In the absence of adequate volunteers at time of war, this legal requirement provides a massive recruitment pool of U.S. citizens who either felt it their duty to make themselves available for uniformed service to their nation in dangerous places or sought some public benefit from the government and must make themselves available to the needs of the State accordingly.

The same principal [sic] can and should be transferred to the civil service. Title 5 of U.S. Code should be amended to require that career U.S. federal employees, as a pre-requisite for non-political appointment into the Senior Executive Services (SES), “register” with the Civilian Response Corps. Non-political employment within or promotion to the SES should be terminated for those who refuse to register or if having registered and called to service refuse to deploy. The legislation should authorize the Director of the Office of Personnel Management and the Secretary of State to jointly prescribe regulations to carry out this mandate. Waivers should be available for those with disabilities or other appropriate medical or family disqualifications. Not everyone who registers would deploy within their career. The legislation could be less than two pages in length—far shorter than this article.

After all, those in the career SES are the top-earners in federal government. They hold prominent titles that include words like “Administrator,” “Director,” and even “Secretary.” Is it unreasonable to ask that those interested in the highest levels of management, power, and pay in the civil service make themselves available to the full range of national needs?

The reader will note repeated use of words and phrases that suggest an antiquated, statist, borderline un-American view on the relationship of a citizen to his government. Those who fill out a selective service card with their drivers' license renewal form do so, in Clauser's telling, because they "[feel] it [is] their duty to make themselves available for uniformed service to their nation in dangerous places" or because they "[seek] some public benefit from the government" and choose to "make themselves available to the needs of the state." (Never mind the fact that registration for selective service is not precisely the same thing as declaring draft eligibility -- only documenting that one is in a draftable demographic -- and that it's REQUIRED BY LAW.) This is no more true than when Clauser writes of government employees, referencing their "taxpayer-funded expertise" and compensation as if to suggest that civil servants owe some debt to the nation beyond that which they are contracted and compensated to provide. If you get a government paycheck, it's apparently not enough to provide fair value for money, to do the work that's expected of you, to be a professional. One must "make [him or herself] available to the full range of national needs."

Needs of the state. Full range of national needs. Why not just put all federal employees on orders and deploy them as befits the "needs of the service"? After all, "America needs its best and brightest today to win the wars we're in." Leave aside the fact that the "best and brightest" that "America needs" in this context are the people most capable of going abroad to perform a teaching and mentoring function with international partners, and that those best suited for this job will almost certainly not hold SES rank (and many, if not most, will not care to pursue it). Leave aside the fact that aspirants for SES rank or departmental leadership in HHS, for example, may never have been abroad, may have absolutely no international component to their jobs, may not serve in a teaching or mentoring role at any point in their careers, and may find the suggestion that they ought to involuntarily serve abroad in wartime to earn their spurs in a government agency dedicated to American public health to be flatly ludicrous and insulting enough to force their resignation and departure from government. Leave aside the fact that many of these people, if they were to go, would perform the job no more effectively than the soldiers or diplomats or contractors that have been doing it in their stead, and the consideration that perhaps the "best and brightest" in our nation's public health system should be performing jobs that are dedicated to the public health mission, not national security.

Now: Just think for a moment about this one question: do we want to undertake the sort of philosophical reimagining of what we are as a country that's implied by our granting the state explicit authority to assign each and every citizen who aspires to leadership in public service -- oh! Except political appointees! -- to whatever corner of the globe it chooses, in order to perform whatever function the state deems that person best suited for? Because I know what I'd say to that question: GFY.

There's nothing I'd like more than for Michael Clauser to show up and say "nyah nyah! Gotcha! The original title of this essay was A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Civil Servants of America From Being a Burden to Their Government or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Nation, but then I thought it would be too obvious! Thanks for taking the bait!" But I don't think that's going to happen. (But if it does: Dude, brilliant!)

Grand enemies and grand strategy - Part II

Over a month ago I wrote a post asking the question: is a grand enemy necessary for a grand strategy? I had intended to get back to this since about a day after I posted and clarify and change some things, but alas here we are much later than that. In the meantime, Adam Elkus wrote a post on this topic which was followed by Zenpundit. They're both interesting reads, so check them out. I am especially interested by Adam's discussion of aggregating information and Mark's discussions on the impact of "systems" and that grand strategy is driven not by policy, but that it drives the development of policy. I will be drawing on these points later.

I will start this by saying that I worded the original post to ask a more fundamental question than I intended. I did not mean to pose the question so explicitly, but instead was trying (inelegantly) to ask the question: do those that develop grand strategy need to have a grand enemy, or the probability of a grand enemy forming, in order to focus their minds towards strategy development?

As Adam points out, the world is a highly complicated place with infinite data points and nearly as many networks. Without an enemy or adversary, how does a powerful nation mold its international activities to achieve its global ambitions? I don't know, because I'm not sure we've seen it done effectively. Yet. I get, and buy into, offshore balancing, but it is hardly something that permits the creation of coherent grand strategy. One need look no further than U.S. activities in South Asia as an example of incoherence that this type of strategy can lead to. The United States cannot, still, state whether it supports Pakistan or India in their conflict (that seems oh, so important to Afghanistan), whether or not Iran is being helpful or not with regard to Afghanistan (seems to be a bit of columns A and B), or if we prefer the company of the Central Asian states or cooperation of Russia. While the Afghan conflict is the biggest one we have at the moment, it has been a prime candidate for offshore balancing and a dismal failure in execution. The United States has no idea what regional powers to enable to assist itself without pissing off the other powers it may care about on other issues. (Let's face it, Afghanistan isn't the biggest strategic issue the U.S. faces at the moment, even if it is the biggest hot war going). This is one strategic problem that we have been thinking about for 10 years about one country and still haven't a clue on where to begin.

Mark is right that great powers seek to force their will upon rivals and others within a "system" defined by international norms and mores. What to do about Afghanistan is another example on how without a great rival, great powers don't know how to do this. In fact, offshore balancing is working the system - but we still don't know how to because we can't predict or understand 2d, 3d, Nth order effects of a system consisting of the aforementioned infinite data points and networks. We simply can't figure this out; a vestige our now-realized failed attempts at using the mujahideen to our own ends, ignorant of future threats of doing the same. I can't readily say I'm on the Boyd bandwagon (can't say I'm off either, I'm still trying to figure out the "so what" of it all), but if one were, with so many data points OODA loops for offshore balancing would be so numerous and of such short flash-to-bang intervals that the strategist would be overwhelmed by sensory overload.

I'm also with Mark on this business of grand strategy driving policy. But policy drives strategy (sans "grand"). Afghanistan is a strategic fight in my view, not grand. It is a war waged against an enemy that presents no existential threat to the U.S. or even significant threats to the national "interests" put forth in the National Security Strategy (talk about misnomers). It is, however, a case study in the failure of grand strategy development by powers with no real threats to itself. We can't tell up from down or whether we're coming or going. That's not the fault of the strategists - it is the realistic chaos of the world which I feel may be less than enough to focus the activities and expenditure of valuable resources of a powerful state with nebulous ambitions other than its own prosperity.

At this point I will cede that I have not yet made the case that a grand enemy can provide that focus that cuts through the information overload, but that there is a good case that the absence of one does not provide the focus necessary. So let's call this post one of at least a few on this topic, sequels to follow as time and brain waves allow.

We haven't retired or died, and other things to be excited about in 2011!

Just wanted to take a moment to let everyone know that we're not dead, we were just on vacation. And/or lazy. (And/or dead. Not totally clear on the facts here, as it's been a while since I've heard from MK.) But now we're back, and lemme tell you: it is time to blog the hell out of 2011. Starting January 4th. Like, January 4th at 1000, not 0045. Or maybe January 5th. But seriously, soon!

Really, though, thanks for having the patience and commitment and interest level to keep coming back here every day or week or month or however often you check in. We do very much appreciate everyone who stops by, and we especially appreciate those of you who contribute to the conversation. I'm looking forward to a great year for the blog, a year of renewed commitment and energy and blah blah blah, and I really hope we can reward your persistent presence. If anyone's even reading this, that is.

But in all honesty, there are about two dozen topics floating around in my little pea brain right now, and some of them have even been committed to text streams of various lengths. I've drifted away from frequent low-content updates over the last several weeks and end up getting trapped beneath the idea of some massive essay, so you'll have to excuse the virtual silence. I've still got to spit out my criticism of Michael Cohen's recent COINtra piece in The Nation, and I've been promising Matt Gallagher a smackdown of his pro-draft goofiness for about six months now. (Seriously, I've got like 3,000 words on that one.) So I hope you'll stick around with us as we try to move this thing in a more content-intensive direction. One of these days.

In the meantime, I want to draw your attention to an outstanding essay/speech that Ex linked to earlier today: "Solitude and Leadership," by literary critic and former Yale professor William Deresiewicz, as delivered in October 2009 to the U.S. Military Academy's plebes of the class of '13. It's a really excellent elaboration of why independence, genuine thoughtfulness, moral courage, and true conviction are such important traits for leaders of men (and particularly modern military officers). I've seldom read something so meaningful and thought-provoking in the last few years, and that's no exaggeration. I hope you'll enjoy it.

So, there. That's just a taste. Keep coming back in 2011, and I promise you won't be disappointed. Thanks for reading, and happy new year, wesolych swiat, feliz ano nuevo, bonne annee, blwyddyn newydd dda, and so on.

Lessons Learned from U.S. Government Law Enforcement in International Operations

I was recently involved in a project to research and examine lessons learned on the law enforcement elements of the U.S.'s experiences in Panama, Colombia, and Kovoso, printed by the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute as a PKSOI Paper. I'm not usually in the practice of hawking the things I work on in this forum, but I'm doing so for this one because I think it is an important topic that is often overlooked. In fact, that's one of the lessons we drew during this study. The U.S. has some experience doing this stuff in the past 20 years, but we act like the police elements of our operations are only important once we're in the middle of ops and that whatever the current operation is will be the last time we have to worry about it. Exhibits A and B being Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter of which we're still trying to figure out how to make work. And it doesn't appear that any of the lessons we have learned from these two wars are going to be institutionalized. These three case studies provide some good examples of what right looks like, how to fix a problem that's been identified, and some things not to do. I think this paper should help get the ball rolling on building the discussion of improving our ability to deploy police and raise indigenous police forces, hopefully beyond the handful of great theorists and practitioners currently involved who have been fighting this fight for some time with little support. Anyway, here's the blurb from the SSI website:

Law enforcement (LE) aspects have been an increasingly prominent feature within the U.S. Government’s (USG’s) commitment to international operations. Beyond the deployment of police personnel to interim policing missions, LE agencies may also be involved in international operations to enforce U.S. domestic law; for capacity building; and/or in support of U.S. military forces. This analysis examines lessons from three operations: Panama (1989-99), Colombia (1989-Present), and Kosovo (1998-Present). This analysis was supported by an extensive range of interviews and in-country field research in Colombia and Kosovo. The lessons learned were developed and validated in a series of workshops with subject matter experts. The results show the pervasive and complex role that law enforcement and related issues have played in contemporary international operations. Despite the unique circumstances and history of each operation, there were key findings that are common to all operations considered and have implications for broader USG law enforcement efforts in support of current and future international operations.

So head on over and give it a read.

Dick Holbrooke, a dedicated servant of his country, dead at 69

Whatever else you want to say about the man, Dick Holbrooke gave more of his life to America than almost anyone. He entered the foreign service in 1962 and went almost immediately to Vietnam, serving in austere conditions and with little supervision as a kid just barely out of college. During the Carter administration, he became the youngest Assistant Secretary of State ever. He missed out on the Republican 80s, then performed the same role (this time for Europe; the first for East Asia) during the Clinton Administration. He was twice a special envoy -- to Cyprus and to Kosovo -- and was the chief negotiator of the accord that ended the Bosnian war. And he capped off his career as the Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the position he held until his death earlier this evening.

Five decades of service. It's a hell of a thing.

If you need a reminder of just what Holbrooke has done for this country, read this profile by George Packer in the New Yorker last September. Think about what it means to spend 48 years in that business.

So RIP to a great public servant, and may his family know peace in their difficult time.

I will not boycott you again Tom - I will continue to engage you as my "solipsistic self"

Thank you, Tom, for pointing out that the United States has used the draft in the past 100 years. I obviously didn't know that since I was only born in 1980 and obviously nothing existed before me, at least nothing worth knowing. Or maybe my position on this topic is based on the realities of modern warfare, arms, and other conditions and not a "we've always done it this way" mentality. Possibly.

Yes, the draft was used in every major war the United States has fought since the Civil War through to Vietnam - most of these conflicts being of vital interest to the U.S., if not existential in nature. Obviously these conscripted forces performed very well - the Greatest Generation being the exemplar in this regard. There was a call and need for national service and it was well met.

I question the logic that if Americans were conscripted then the U.S. would not undertake foreign interventions because of greater effect on the elites and popular unrest. A war was fought in Vietnam with a conscript military with steady escalation. A war the ended after conscription ended. Decision-makers - politicians - have any number of reasons they make the choices they do, and I don't know how much their personal lives influence that (I'm sure it varies from politician to politician). As I mentioned in the comments to my last post on this topic, Senator McCain supported the Surge in Iraq and he did have "skin in the game" - a son in the USMC and another at the Naval Academy that was about to graduate. It didn't affect his decision making.

I also question the feasibility of conscription in today's economic conditions. All branches of the military are looking at where they can make cuts as our current wars start winding down and I'm not hearing any arguments from Congress or the Executive Branch to significantly increase spending to make these wars more "fair" when everyone is talking about cutting or at least stemming costs. They're much more concerned about weapons development and jobs in their constituencies, not adding tens of thousands (or more) people to the military's roles, with significant short term costs in paying, training, and equipping them and longer term costs in benefits. It is a political nonstarter because no one wants to pay for it.

And speaking of politicians, what do they benefit from re-instituting conscription? Pissed off constituents who feel their rights are being infringed? More national debt? An all-volunteer force is perfect for the political classes because they can use that force with minimal impact on the rest of America. I'd like to think they would do so out of their perspective of national interest and not personal politics, but we all know it's a little of columns A and B. They have zero interest in changing that paradigm - it's just bad politics for individuals.

The insulation of the military is also an absurd argument to bring back the draft. Draftees in our nation's history have been activated for 2-6 years of duty. I have no idea what the numbers are for those that stayed in after their commitment (and would be interested in seeing them if anyone has them), but are today's military leadership much different or more insulated than those during times of conscription? Are they not the same types of people that would have volunteered instead of getting drafted? Or stayed in after their conscription time elapsed? There has always been a core of military "elites" around which these conscripted forces were formed. That was the reasoning behind the founding of West Point - provide the professionals to lead the citizen soldiers when they were required. Conscripted junior enlisted and officers will not change the fact that the military's senior leadership will always be somewhat different from the rest of us.

So, yes, I do think that "some form of the draft just isn't gonna happen." Because it has been used in the past does not mean it will be used in the future. There's a whole other discussion of how the U.S. fights its wars now as opposed to WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam: it is technologically and capably superior to its foes, not based on mass. I think there's a good argument that our type of military does not benefit from losing its professional ideal. But that's another discussion for another time, just like how we'll have to sort out whether or not women get drafted and some other topics before this could be taken seriously as a real possibility. At the moment we can't afford a conscripted military, the politicians don't want one, it would have little to no effect on military "insulation", and probably isn't best for military readiness. If you want the people of this nation to care about war, then raise the hell out of taxes to pay for it. That will make people care and truly spread the pain (as opposed to a lottery that would likely have so many loopholes as to make the tax code look simplistic), even if that, too, is politically unlikely.

Would we reinstate it if a major conflict arose with existential consequences? Probably - and we probably should at that point. Until then there is no political will to do this nor any real reason. Except to make some people feel better that they're not the only ones paying for war. That's an unfortunate reality and will continue to be so until our actual survival as a nation is threatened. So no, I'm not being "solipsistic" or ignorant of our history. I'm looking at today with the benefit of having learned (yes, from books and not experience in this case) from that history and I don't see any real possibility of a draft in the near future nor the need for it.