Long War Strains: Army, Pentagon Debating Choices

Everyone one knows having a Ministry of Defense including armed forces is expensive. But in all likelihood, the new strategic realities makes defense and especially Army budgets even more strained -- rather than less, which was the Rumsfeldian transformation dream just three years ago. Just take this piece from the LA Times, "Army Warns Rumsfeld it's Billions Short":

WASHINGTON — The Army's top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding. The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented and signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked, say current and former Pentagon officials. (...)

According to a senior Army official involved in budget talks, Schoomaker is now seeking $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $25 billion above budget limits originally set by Rumsfeld. The Army's budget this year is $98.2 billion, making Schoomaker's request a 41% increase over current levels. (...) Most funding for the fighting in Iraq has come from annual emergency spending bills, with the regular defense budget going to normal personnel, procurement and operational expenses, such as salaries and new weapons systems. About $400 billion has been appropriated for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through emergency funding measures since Sept. 11, 2001, with the money divided among military branches and government agencies. But in recent budget negotiations, Army officials argued that the service's expanding global role in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism — outlined in strategic plans issued this year — as well as fast-growing personnel and equipment costs tied to the Iraq war, have put intense pressure on its normal budget. (...)

After Schoomaker confronted Rumsfeld with the Army's own estimates for maintaining the current size and commitments — and the steps that would have to be taken to meet the lower figure, which included cutting four combat brigades and an entire division headquarters unit — Rumsfeld agreed to set up a task force to investigate Army funding. Although no formal notification is required, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey, who has backed Schoomaker in his push for additional funding, wrote to Rumsfeld early last month to inform him that the Army would miss the Aug. 15 deadline for its budget plan. Harvey said the delay in submitting the plan, formally called a Program Objective Memorandum, was the result of the extended review by the task force. The study group — which included three-star officers from the Army and Rumsfeld's office — has since agreed with the Army's initial assessment. Officials say negotiations have moved to higher levels of the Bush administration, involving top aides to Rumsfeld and White House Budget Director Rob Portman. "Now the discussion is: Where are we going to go? Do we lower our strategy or do we raise our resources?" said the senior Pentagon official. "That's where we're at." (...)

In recent weeks, however, Schoomaker has become more publicly emphatic about budget shortfalls, saying funding is not enough to pay for Army commitments to the Iraq war and the global strategy outlined by the Pentagon. "There's no sense in us submitting a budget that we can't execute, a broken budget," Schoomaker said in a recent Washington address.

Military budget expert Steven M. Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent Washington think tank, said that despite widespread recognition that the Army should be getting more resources because of war-related costs, its share of the Defense Department budget has been largely unchanged since the 2003 invasion. However, a good portion of the new money the Army seeks is not directly tied to the war, Kosiak cautioned, but rather to new weapons it wants — particularly the $200-billion Future Combat System, a family of armored vehicles that is eventually to replace nearly every tank and transporter the Army has. "This isn't a problem one can totally pass off on current military operations," Kosiak said. "The FCS program is very ambitious — some would say overly ambitious."

Withholding the budget is of course at least partially a political manoeuver: an unusual signal about an unusual signal, and at the same time a tactic get more money. However, Rumsfeld or the OSD seems to be agreeing: the Long War strategy does indeed put a greater weight on boots rather than planes or other very fancy equipment. But, the future of the FCS is prior to and so mostly independent of the Long War strategy. The FCS was Army's answer to Rumsfeld's transformation demands, which, especially in his conception became about efficiency in terms of cost/firepower and therefore the speedy adoption of technology in order to allow 'seamless' cooperation and modularity e.g. in the Army.

The Army is then caught between (known) running operational expenses, (expected) development costs for the FCS, and the (less determinable) costs of implementing the Long War strategy. The difference between the three in terms of immediate needs is obvious. Interestingly, the "Senior Pentagon Official" points to the possibility of cutting down ambition for the Long War.

But the difference between the Long War and the present running campaigns is not very big in terms of content (if probably in scope, the Long War being more directed towards SOF and internal advising ops). In both cases the central need is make a military address to a political problem -- of having a stable and just state that will not only be safe for terrorism, but also one that its citizens will opt in to. The difference between the present campaigns and the Long War is thus the implementation of the aggregate lessons learned: especially organizational, at both tactical and strategic levels. Cutting down on the Long War in the Army might then mean throwing out the very lessons the Pentagon has paid for since the invasion in Afghanistan.

Given that the amounts put aside for e.g. linguistic training were insignificant compared to the stable investment level for the ABM research these proposals are perhaps not surprising. In spite of the Long War prominance in the QDR, the cold worriers are still waiting to seize the agenda.

Prussian Blues: NATO and Long War Division of Labor

In the ongoing discussion by proxy -- the leaked intel reports -- of the effect of Iraq on the Long War on terror, Mountain Runner has a great post, which emphasizes the problems with the way the Iraq war and post-war has been carried out:

Between news of the April NIE indicating Iraq as an engine for extremism and a Pentagon assessment showing Sunni support for the insurgency increasing more than five-fold in the last three years (14% to 75%), how does one not connect the dots between action and reaction with our foreign policy?

How does one not see connections between a failure to attempt to secure the peace, implement law and order, virtually no attempt to halt looting, complete irresponsibility in reconstruction, massive demobilization and unemployment of trained warriors, failure to protect known weapons caches, failing to provide basic essential services, and the creation of power vacuums as not contributing to the insurgency? Add on top of that indignities of obvious other newsmaking encounters and facilities and how can the dots not be connected? (...)

Each week there is more information on the failed Excursion into Iraq. It is even more sad to think of all the members of the armed forces and the civilian contractors who gave their lives in a theater where the enemy was effectively of our own making. The peace could have been won before Mission Accomplished. And despite what one might say that winning a war is not the same as winning the peace because of the 'changing nature of war', Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and Mao all agree on the necessity to treat the captives well and to not create enemies through mistreatment. Yes, even Clausewitz, dashed to the side by those that say '4GW' is a new way of war, nailed this outcome. Perhaps 4GW'ers should go back and re-read the Dead Prussian. The dots were there, labelled, and with flashing numbers.

As remarked several times before, the Long War as a corrected version 2.0 of the GWOT tries to remedy some of these problems: at the conceptual level at least. One important element is, as Mountain Runner also hints at above, the need for effects based thinking that embraces the theatre as a political realm ("Effects based Cultural Awareness").

The long War concept still needs further clarification before it can be operationally implemented (see e.g. this post about the problems with the new Administration anti-terror strategy). And whether it will be is far from a done deal due to internal Pentagon and Defense environment strategic discord. Rather, as Tom Barnett points out in a new column for the Knoxville News Sentinel, we have long backlog of pre-conceived understanding of what security means -- or ought to mean, we hope:

We don't live in a more dangerous world today. We just live in a security system that no longer offers zero-deductible insurance policies for global stability. America's zero-deductible mindset grew out of our long-term standoff with the Soviets, a strategic stability cemented by our dual decisions to pursue detente and abandon the Vietnam War's domino theory. It can be summarized as such: So long as nukes make great power war unthinkable, global stability is an existential reality that requires no regular blood premiums from America.

This mindset survived the Cold War's end. In the 1990s, Western great powers got involved with great reluctance in situations where globalization's disintegrating impact spun secessionist conflicts into genocidal fits of ethnic rage - such as the Balkans. And, if the killings were located far enough away from our integrating global economy, as in the case of Central Africa, then we made no effort at all. After 9/11, Americans grimly embraced the idea that defending our way of life would once again require regular sacrifices of both treasure and blood, and although many dispute President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, there remains a strong consensus that freedom isn't free.

But this zero-deductible mindset remains prevalent among several of our allies, leaving America dangerously exposed in several regional scenarios with the potential to derail globalization's advance.

Barnett, ultimately, would like to see the Chinese responsibly involved in adminstrating globalization's progress. The point here, though, concerning the present allies of the US, is more related to the situation in Iraq and perhaps even more Afghanistan. Here, NATO soldiers are not only fighting the Taliban, but also developing the PRT concept and other elements of enhanced CIMIC in practice. NATO forces have been doing this transformation -- weighted towards Peace Operations -- since then end of the Cold War. In Afghanistan especially, they have moved closer to the very hard end of these too, including sometimes in terms of risk willingness.

The major strategic question is whether the Pentagon will work its way towards a sustainable concept of the Long War. As Barnett has pointed out, Pentagon's direction is crucial because it works like a hub, where the allies are the spokes. But the NSPD44's outsourcing of ultimate responsibility for Stabilization and Reconstruction from Pentagon to State in combination with internal pressure from the Cold Worriers may mean that the allies will ultimately be expected to be doing the bulk of the work in the Long War -- because they are already fairly calibrated to do so. But that will clearly not suffice.

The New Terrorism Strategy: Long War Challenge Still Not Resolved

In anticipation of the 5-year mark of 9/11, the Bush administration has unveiled its new National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, while Democrats have unveiled their critique of the accomplishments (New York Times, hat tip to a friend). The CSIS people have their own evalution coming out tomorrow in the shape of a book (link courtesy of Dan Drezner), but the teaser quoted below is available for mere mortals. From the Washington Post, "Bush Warns Of Enduring Terror Threat":

Meanwhile, the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies issued a report saying that although the Bush administration has deprived al-Qaeda of sanctuary in Afghanistan and has prevented more attacks on U.S. soil in the past five years, it has not tracked down bin Laden or created "enduring security in Afghanistan." Moreover, the report said, the administration's attempts at public diplomacy are "undermined by perceived U.S. unilateralism."

Two points: one on the NSCT as example of Long War-policy problems and another, more general, observation about the production of ideas in US foreign policy in light of that policy challenge. First, the NSCT is one -- important -- 'doctrinal' element in the implementation of the Long War concept as a header for the struggle against violent extremism formerly known as the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The NSCT illustrates these challenges in presenting one long-term goal (spread of Democracy) and four shorter term initiatives (Prevent attacks by terrorist networks; Deny WMD to rogue states and terrorist allies who seek to use them; Deny terrorists the support and sanctuary of rogue states; Deny terrorists control of any nation they would use as a base and launching pad for terror). But these four are complimentary rather then essential to the first:

The long-term solution for winning the War on Terror is the advancement of freedom and human dignity through effective democracy. Elections are the most visible sign of a free society and can play a critical role in advancing effective democracy. But elections alone are not enough. Effective democracies honor and uphold basic human rights, including freedom of religion, conscience, speech, assembly, association, and press. They are responsive to their citizens, submitting to the will of the people. Effective democracies exercise effective sovereignty and maintain order within their own borders, address causes of conflict peacefully, protect independent and impartial systems of justice, punish crime, embrace the rule of law, and resist corruption. Effective democracies also limit the reach of government, protecting the institutions of civil society. In effective democracies, freedom is indivisible. They are the long-term antidote to the ideology of terrorism today. This is the battle of ideas. (...)

The strategy to counter the lies behind the terrorists’ ideology and deny them future recruits must empower the very people the terrorists most want to exploit: the faithful followers of Islam. We will continue to support political reforms that empower peaceful Muslims to practice and interpret their faith. We will work to undermine the ideological underpinnings of violent Islamic extremism and gain the support of non-violent Muslims around the world. The most vital work will be done within the Islamic world itself, and Jordan, Morocco, and Indonesia, among others, have begun to make important strides in this effort. Responsible Islamic leaders need to denounce an ideology that distorts and exploits Islam to justify the murder of innocent people and defiles a proud religion.

This is either pretty fluffy or strangely selective stuff. It doesn't even amount to what it probably would like to be: an indirect call for an Islamic Reform (that would bring with it a, less related, set of problems). Taking the NSCT in its context, the change from GWOT to Long War implies a change from military means to political means (or at least, to employing military means within a more clearly politically directed context and as such for political ends). In military terms, implementing this change means higher emphasis on counterinsurgency and other politically aware military operations types, as exemplified in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review.

Because the goals are fundamentally political, the Long War must necessarily also be more political in the means than in the GWOT framework. Meeting the Long War challenge means embracing the convergence of Security and Development, and understanding that not only is the latter probably a cost-effective way of achieving the first: it may also be the only way. The discrepancy in the NSCT between the short term initiatives and the long-term goals is not surprising -- but it needs to be resolved for the Long War not to be a mere continuation of the GWOT. The CSIS people take stock in their brief document of the U.S. strategy and capabilities for "winning the Long War":

Accomplishments
Established principle of sovereign accountability (no “safe harbor”) for terrorists
Renewed DoD emphasis on counterterrorism and irregular warfare
Increased Special Operations Forces capabilities, cultural awareness, linguists
Raised priority for building foreign capacity
Created State Department Office for Reconstruction and Stabilization

Continuing Challenges
No grand strategy or interagency concept of operations for the “long war”
Overemphasis on use of military, creating substantial strains on forces
Insufficient deployable operational capacity in civilian agencies
No master plan to coordinate “soft power” programs
Chronically weak interagency coordination, planning, and operations

The CSIS challenges list is sound: an interagency concept is needed, but without resolving the underlying tension between Pentagon and the rest of the agencies, most notably State, about who should be responsible for what and have the necessary means to carry it out. Since this includes finding the political will to fund a substantial enlargement of civilian deployable capabilities -- the interagency concept looks like a difficult thing to write. Of course the recent Pentagon re-evaluation of the central status of inter-agency capacities is a step on the way (see: Pentagon Ups Inter Agency Capability) -- just like the NSPD44 is the basic stepping stone for all further developments as it gives State ultimate responsibility for stabilization and reconstruction. Tom Barnett's vision for a Department for Everything Else, including the S&R bit, and thus gathering the nation-building elements (or SysAdmin, as he calls them) from the Pentagon and State, is radical but a logical solution to the fundamental strategic challenge. We may be heading in that direction but the civilian side deployment capabilities issue is crucial for it to happen.

Second, the NSCT exemplifies that the civilian side needs to learn from the military in terms of defining strategies proper. The NSCT is a good example of the actual development of the aggregate US foreign/security policy strategy hierarchy. In principle, this goes from the abstract, general description of threats and responses and means -- the NSS -- over sector designated descriptions -- the National Military Strategy, the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, the Homeland Security Strategy, etc. -- to even more specialized levels including operations doctrines until the level of field manuals. Maintaining this system logically congruent would mean changing the NSS first always, then subsequently the rest.

In reality, however, the different documents are updated less dependently. Different departments are in touch with different parts of an evolving situation and react with different speeds. In a way, this is a characteristic of a soundly working system of strategies: the concept of identifying a wished-for end-state, with means and ends allows for a clearer evaluation of changing effects of threats and reactions, and therefore visible and -- in principle -- accountable changes in a coherent policy.

But, as all of the important changes in this non-hierchical way have come from the military circuit -- for logical reasons as the military have met and meets the concrete challenges of first the GWOT and then the LW. But this is a problem for effectively resolving the LW challenge: the military knowledge production circuit has little institutional incentive to think much beyond the confines of military operations. The gap of the NSCT therefore demonstrates the need for 'civilian' academics and policy people to engage with the practical task of filling the strategy gap of the NSCT -- but in a way that is not too 'civilian', so that the result becomes something to implement in practice. The civilians' dare: come up with a strategy that can fulfill the political task of the Long War in strengthening democratic statehood in the long term while addressing the immediate and medium term challenges.

Two Lessons for Long War as Politics

The Long War is inherently political in nature. The conditions for the use of force have finally become Clauzewitzian, and the means must therefore be recalibrated. 'Clausewitzian' means here, that war must be understood and dealt with within the context of politics -- or everything else, as Thomas P. M. Barnett puts it in one of his central points -- and not just within the context of war. As mentioned recently, the new terrorism strategy, the NSCT, does not resolve this challenge. Mountainrunner prodded me to blog on the new interrogation standards. Instead of doing so, I'll make a brief reflection on this and another news item -- this Haaretz piece on IDF cluster bombs in Lebanon -- as examples of the political nature of the Long War, which leads to a conclusion on operational and strategic consequences.

An interesting starting point is Bush's speech of the importance of the war on terror. For a fine analysis of the instinctive and wrong left and right reactions to the basic challenge see Barnett's great post. The speech is interesting here not so much for what he said but for the reasons why he did so. The domestic political logic of the approaching mid-terms is merely a backdrop to (even if it provoked) his speech: Any war fought by a democracy that lasts more than a week is dependent on the good-will of the populace, of its accept of the means used for the ends sought. This equation depends on the larger, more abstract contract between leaders and population. Since the end of the cold war, (especially the Rest of) the West has seen an increase in the willingness among the populations to allow the political leaders to use force.

This increase rests on two important foundations: First, the moral arguments of humanitarian and security driven interventions where the use of force is not merely for self-defensive purposes, but also to the overall benefit of the local populations -- and therefore directed at military and regime targets exclusively. Second, the perceived growth in precision guided ammunition and general military theater dominance has established a contract which builds on the first point in the sense that the means allow for the distinction between civilians and military targets.

But along with this general growth in public acceptance of use of force has come another deep trend. This deep trend is a reaction to the general theatre dominance, first exemplified in the first Gulf War; and consists in a strategic and tactical adaptation of the adversaries towards guerilla and insurgency warfare.

Both the interrogation debate -- and here especially the CIA exception to the new standards -- and the Israeli decision to use the blunt MRLS cluster bombing tactic fly in the face of the political challenge of the Long War. It does so on two fronts: the home front and in the field. It is not possible to uphold the domestic contract between leaders and population of benevolent use of force if significant parts of what we do is exempt from those very standards we propose to bring forth. In the field, the political nature of the use of force in the Long War means that it is equated with counterinsurgency: operations, whether in terms of stabilization including rooting out complete spoilers or reconstruction of political and economic sectors, must be perceived as communication. Abu Ghraib and the IDF choice to leave behind a very large number of unexploded munitions after the firing has ceased are two examples of not getting this fundamental truth.

We therefore face two tasks : political and military leaders need to understand the conditions or rules of the Long War -- but Western publics also need to understand the inherent messiness of use of force. In the field, we must strive to follow our convictions and standards even in the face of an enemy that doesn't comply to these. Public scrutiny and indignation in case of non-compliance have a positive political function here -- and it should be welcomed and addressed. But public scrutiny needs to be coupled with a modified contract between leaders and populace in the West, based on a better understanding that the use of force will entail deathly mistakes -- and a willingness to spend: it will be costly to comply with both the technology-driven precision-based use of force, and the enlarged agenda of stabilization & reconstruction, which must segue into ambitious development policy for the transition process to post-conflict proper to work.

QDR: GWOT Becomes The Long War

On February 6 the Quadrennial Defense Review is published: this is the top strategy Pentagon document, which makes provisions for all of the services and commands in accordance with the document's stragic analysis. A few pieces from a a draft version have appeared here and there. One of those with access is William Arkin, who writes the interesting blog Early Warning at the Washington Post (link in the sidebar). Arkin's recent post on the QDR's grand strategy concept of a Long War replacing the concept of the Global War On Terror was unfortunately -- but a bit serendipitously -- overlooked, when I made the observation about the GWOT seguing into stabilization operations in the last post.

One phrase contained in the draft Quadrennial Defense Review document circulating amongst defense experts is sure to be a part of your life for years to come: The long war. Defense experts want the long war to be the new name for the war on terror, a kind of societal short hand that will stand shoulder to shoulder with the Cold War, promoted to capital letters, an indisputable and universally accepted state of the world.

"This generation of servicemembers will be in what we're calling the Long War," Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said earlier this week. "Our estimate is that for at least the next 20 years … our focus will be … the extremist networks that will continue to threaten the United States and its allies." (...) The Quadrennial Defense Review now exhorts the military to reform and retool to fight the long war, in everything from its business practices to its training. (...) "

Future warriors will be as proficient in irregular operations, including counterinsurgency and stabilization operations, as they are today in high-intensity combat," the document also states. Last year, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld already issued new guidance to the military placing "stability operations" on par with major combat operations in terms of funding priorities.

Arkin's critique of the same consists in three elements: i) the threat from terrorism is overblown, ii) the Bush administration blindly favors military instruments, iii) the two in combination means that we create more problems for ourselves by attracting more terrorists. Pressure begets counter-pressure:

Terrorists can not destroy America. Every day we articulate a long war, every time we pretend we are fighting for our survival we not only confer greater power and importance to terrorists than they deserve but we also at the same time act as their main recruiting agent by suggesting that they have the slightest potential for success.

The Bush administration has been in panic mode since 9/11, and though it has tripped upon sometimes improved articulations of what it is doing to respond to the scourge of modern terrorism, it has both the wrong vision of the severity of the threat and it has shown itself, in four years of fighting, that no matter how much it articulates that the United States and the world must use all aspects of their power to thwart and defeat terrorism, the Bush administration is only comfortable with the military response, and it is only really happy with secret operations.

And no: you cannot bomb your way to development, and yes, many of the challenges the Core (or the West and the rest of the industrialised world) will meet in dealing with the Gap (LICUS and those in between: the rest) will and do stem from social issues and must be solved that way. But we're back at one of the most fundamental discussions: is it possible to do international politics without recourse to security politics? Off course not -- sometimes somebody needs to tell the bad guys to stop: even if this is mostly done by implicit dissuasion.

But, perphaps more importantly and first, the destruction of wealth that follows in the wake of internal and international conflict, of failed and failing states is so huge that an effort here -- in terms of development, but sometimes at least partly with military means -- will be worth its weight in gold (see the Copenhagen Consensus paper by Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler). Second, it is exactly in the situations where societal structures are in crisis that they are most malleable: creating new institutional setups of course in the first place (which is never enough), but also forging new statelihood through well-cast societal grand bargains -- this radical development programme is probably easier then. Third -- and just as cynically as the second point, but this time just about ourselves: it is when policy is cast as an element of security; when we believe that this about our own long term good, then we are the most willing to spend political, human and monetary capital on anything.

In this way, the transformation of the Global War on Terror into a subset of the larger development puzzle of shrinking the Gap might just be more than icing on the cake -- it might actually be the crucial jigsaw piece. For this to work, we need to learn to do both Stabilization and (Re)construction at the same time, and equally well.

Central Command Drops "Long War" Moniker

Launched as a cornerstone notion to replace the GWOT, the "Long War" concept has been with us for few years. Central Command has now, according to the New York Times, dropped it as the aggregate name for what is also known as the GSAVE - Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. Michael R. Gordon also reports that the change comes solely at the level of Central Command, not Pentagon or the White House - but in parallel with e.g. the wish of the UK.

Military officials said that cultural advisers at the command had become concerned that the concept of a long war alienated Middle East audiences by suggesting that the United States would keep a large number of forces in the region indefinitely.

Admiral Fallon was also said to have been unenthusiastic about the phrase. He has stressed the importance of focusing on the difficult situation in Iraq and in achieving results as soon as possible. The notion of a long war, in contrast, seemed to connote an extended conflict in which Iraq was but a chapter.

The change “is a product of our ongoing effort to use language that describes the conflict for our Western audience while understanding the cultural implications of how that language is construed in the Middle East,” Lt. Col. Matthew McLaughlin, a spokesman for the command, said in an e-mail message. “The idea that we are going to be involved in a ‘Long War,’ at the current level of operations, is not likely and unhelpful.”

“We remain committed to our friends and allies in the region and to countering Al Qaeda-inspired extremism where it manifests itself, but one of our goals is to lessen our presence over time. We didn’t feel that the term ‘Long War’ captured this nuance,” he added.

This more anthopological - or, oh, politically adept or holistic or effects based - approach to the semantics of military action is highly welcome. But as the article notes in conclusion: there is not yet any good replacement candidate. At least one half of the old term captured a very true perspective about the struggle: it will not go away. Even so, the other half was definitely problematic as the "war" part in reality looks more like the metaphorical "war on drugs" than a classic state-on-state piece of warfare.

The threat that we are facing is still a reaction to the increasing connectivity of globalization - and the solutions are even more polticial than military (even if they will likely include a lot of military components): OECDification of the rest of the world - shrinking the Gap - will not happen overnight.

Cordesman on the Long War

Just discovered that the ever-prolific Cordesman has a new ppt file up on his site, which deals with the Long War concept. The interesting thing here is that Cordesman is an invaluable resource in terms of present policy analysis but he rarely dabbles in more lofty academic or conceptual stuff. As an example, take Tony Corn's Long War analysis.

So it is interesting to see Cordesman's practical approach to grand strategy, e.g. pointing out that currently there is none. In this he echoes the again more academic analysis of Antulio J. Echevarria in his great paper, Toward An American Way of War.The Long War concept ties together the coming Shaping JOC, the SSTR JOC, AFRICOM and also - because of the holistic, true clausewitzian approach - points to the troubled division of labor between State and Pentagon. But that is another story.

Click here for Cordesman's ppt (in pdf format).

For more on the Long War from Draconian Observations, click here.

Blair's Long War Vision

Tony Blair's speech to the World Affairs Council in LA is highly interesting. The speech lays out a plan of change in doctrine for the war on terrorism: one that is already present, but need support, in the shape of the Long War concept, and the NSPD 44 and the DoD Directive 3000 (more on the Long War here; and the directives here). As such it fuses the American ambitiousness with the European critiques. Finally, it seems to address and contain Tony Corn's analysis of the GWOT/Long War.

[W]e must commit ourselves to a complete renaissance of our strategy to defeat those that threaten us. There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching, with increasing definition, countries far outside that region. To defeat it will need an alliance of moderation, that paints a different future in which Muslim, Jew and Christian; Arab and Western; wealthy and developing nations can make progress in peace and harmony with each other. My argument to you today is this: we will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world. The point is this. This is war, but of a completely unconventional kind. (...)

My point is that this war can't be won in a conventional way. It can only be won by showing that our values are stronger, better and more just, more fair than the alternative. Doing this, however, requires us to change dramatically the focus of our policy. Unless we re-appraise our strategy, unless we revitalise the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade, and in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win. And this is a battle we must win.

What is happening today out in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and beyond is an elemental struggle about the values that will shape our future. It is in part a struggle between what I will call reactionary Islam and moderate, mainstream Islam. But its implications go far wider. We are fighting a war, but not just against terrorism but about how the world should govern itself in the early 21st century, about global values.

The reason I say our response was even more momentous than it seemed at the time, is this. We could have chosen security as the battleground. But we didn't. We chose values. We said we didn't want another Taleban or a different Saddam. Rightly, in my view, we realised that you can't defeat a fanatical ideology just by imprisoning or killing its leaders; you have to defeat its ideas. (...) This is not just about security or military tactics. It is about hearts and minds, about inspiring people, persuading them, showing them what our values at their best stand for. (...)

From the above it is clear that from now on, we need a whole strategy for the Middle East. If we are faced with an arc of extremism, we need a corresponding arc of moderation and reconciliation. Each part is linked. Progress between Israel and Palestine affects Iraq. Progress in Iraq affects democracy in the region. Progress for moderate, mainstream Islam anywhere puts reactionary Islam on the defensive everywhere. But none of it happens unless in each individual part the necessary energy and commitment is displayed not fitfully, but continuously. I said at the outset that the result of this struggle had effects wider than the region itself. Plainly that applies to our own security. This global Islamist terrorism began in the Middle East. Sort the Middle East and it will inexorably decline. The read-across, for example, from the region to the Muslim communities in Europe is almost instant.

But there is a less obvious sense in which the outcome determines the success of our wider world-view. For me, a victory for the moderates means an Islam that is open: open to globalisation, open to working with others of different faiths, open to alliances with other nations. In this way, this struggle is in fact part of a far wider debate. Though left and right still matter in politics, the increasing divide today is between open and closed. Is the answer to globalisation, protectionism or free trade? Is the answer to the pressure of mass migration, managed immigration or closed borders? Is the answer to global security threats, isolationism or engagement? Those are very big questions for US and for Europe.

Without hesitation, I am on the open side of the argument. The way for us to handle the challenge of globalisation is to compete better, more intelligently, more flexibly. We have to give our people confidence we can compete. See competition as a threat and we are already on the way to losing.

Blair has an amazing ability to communicate so people (including civil servants) can actually get this kind of practical, short-hand strategy. Would be nice if this prank was true. Regardless of what you feel about his policies, there are just too few politicians of his kind, anywhere.

More Long War: State of the Union and MCC Reform

The "Long War" now looks set to be the central moniker for the Bush administration's US Grand Strategy: it will pop up soon as an ingredient in the QDR, and it was the cornerstone of yesterday's State of the Union speech's foreign policy paragraphs:

Abroad, our nation is committed to an historic, long-term goal: We seek the end of tyranny in our world. Some dismiss that goal as misguided idealism. In reality, the future security of America depends on it. (...) In all these areas -- from the disruption of terror networks, to victory in Iraq, to the spread of freedom and hope in troubled regions -- we need the support of our friends and allies. To draw that support, we must always be clear in our principles and willing to act. The only alternative to American leadership is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world.

Yet we also choose to lead because it is a privilege to serve the values that gave us birth. American leaders -- from Roosevelt, to Truman, to Kennedy, to Reagan -- rejected isolation and retreat because they knew that America is always more secure when freedom is on the march. Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy, a war that will be fought by presidents of both parties who will need steady bipartisan support from the Congress. And tonight I ask for yours. Together, let us protect our country, support the men and women who defend us, and lead this world toward freedom.

The inclusion of the "Long War" as a cornerstone concept into the SotU speech gives a special weight to its place in the QDR. The exact role and definition within the military grand strategy perspective remains to be seen, but what it does already do now, is to offer common grand strategy framework which in many ways is not only, as mentioned in the speech, bipartisan in the American context, but also in principle in the transatlantic, wider left-right context. All of the questions about use of force, when to use it, and who gets to decide will stay with us for along time -- but what we basically have here is a continuation of the realignment between the "tough" and "soft" parts of global international politics. Bushs vision offers a two-pronged refusal of isolationism (the only thing Europeans secretly fear more than "blundering US activism") and a further, more deep-reaching convergence between security and development:

Our offensive against terror involves more than military action. Ultimately, the only way to defeat the terrorists is to defeat their dark vision of hatred and fear by offering the hopeful alternative of political freedom and peaceful change. So the United States of America supports democratic reform across the broader Middle East. Elections are vital, but they are only the beginning. Raising up a democracy requires the rule of law, and protection of minorities, and strong, accountable institutions that last longer than a single vote. (...) Democracies in the Middle East will not look like our own, because they will reflect the traditions of their own citizens. Yet liberty is the future of every nation in the Middle East, because liberty is the right and hope of all humanity. (...)

To overcome dangers in our world, we must also take the offensive by encouraging economic progress and fighting disease and spreading hope in hopeless lands. Isolationism would not only tie our hands in fighting enemies; it would keep us from helping our friends in desperate need. We show compassion abroad because Americans believe in the God-given dignity and worth of a villager with HIV/AIDS, or an infant with malaria, or a refugee fleeing genocide, or a young girl sold into slavery. We also show compassion abroad because regions overwhelmed by poverty, corruption and despair are sources of terrorism and organized crime and human trafficking and the drug trade. In recent years, you and I have taken unprecedented action to fight AIDS and malaria, expand the education of girls, and reward developing nations that are moving forward with economic and political reform. For people everywhere, the United States is a partner for a better life. Short-changing these efforts would increase the suffering and chaos of our world, undercut our long-term security and dull the conscience of our country. I urge members of Congress to serve the interests of America by showing the compassion of America.

An important piece of the Bush administration's development policy was to be the -- so far disappointing -- Millennium Challenge Account, administered by the Millennium Challenge Corporation, with a promised budget of 5 billion dollars annually. The simple and promising idea behind the MCC was to award development aid to countries that was already showing progress towards democratic and accountable reform, and then to give larger, more targeted funding. By creating incentives for more efficient, democratic and accountable state-building instead of focusing on purely need-based evalutations the MCC would then "invest" in the "democratic growth stocks" of the developing world. The MCC had a very bad run in the beginning, took too long to set up, and started extremely slowly in disbursing aid: these problems are now being addressed according to this interview with the new director in the Washington Post. The US may in this way be on its way to be a significant policy innovator in the realm of output based aid -- new public management for development policies -- if not in absolute ODA (Official Development Assistance) terms.

Two challenges are paramount for the MCC to deliver substantially: to introduce this kind of condition-based aid without losing focus on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), and to square this aim of choosing reform-willing partner countries with the OECD's DAC Guidelines on ODA in terms of effective focus on poverty reduction. One important element of the latter is the untying of aid, i.e. scrapping demands for procurement in donor countries. Untying development aid may be the development world's equivalent of agricultural subventions in that it effectively hampers growth of recipient countries' own capacities. According to the OECD there is some, but modest progress on this area: only 13% of overall ODA was untied in 2003. The ratio of LDC ODA that was untied (to tied LDC ODA) has risen substantially across the board for most DAC member countries since the Guidelines where agreed upon in 2001 (click picture for enlargement; page 14 of link above).























The Long War is thus not only a Pentagon affair, and it cannot be: the convergence of security and development means that both elements, seperately and jointly, have to deliver for the results to emerge. Whether the MCC -- including the USAid threshold program -- will be an efficient player in that game will depend among other things on its ability to deliver on poverty reduction in the LDCs.

Restoring Trust in Munich: NATO Out of Area or Out of Bounds?

The Munich Security Conference was again the scene for another attempt at Trans-Atlantic reconciliation. Over the coming months, the US wants the alliance members and Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand to study the possibilities for a closer cooperation between the four and NATO. Following in the wake of the introduction of the concept of the Long War to describe the continuation of the Global War on Terror, with both the early release of the 2005 QDR and President Bush's State of the Union speech, the proposal is both functionally logical for the disinterested observer and instinctively problematic in some ways for the Europeans.

So why would the Europeans oppose this development? For two reasons: 1) They do not see a vision, and they don't like to change the status quo just for the sake of change. For the Eastern Europeans, NATO still serves as a security guarantee against Russia and turning toward a more clear global role aimed at Out of Area operations they fear that NATO will lose its focus. 2) They have seen the vision, and they don't like it, or -- more probably -- they have seen the vision, they accept it to some degree, but they want a) to be consulted on policy choices, not be a tool box for Pentagon planners, and b) be sure that political means are given the proper weight.

Reconstructing the Trans-Atlantic trust is about more than unruly Europeans. There is a clear feeling in some European policy circles that the US refusal to let NATO get involved up front in Afghanistan was motivated by a "unipolar hubris", which now, because of the magnitude of the challenges ahead has passed -- for want of resources, not for ideological reasons or as a strategic choice. The US will need its partners for a lot of operations in the Long War, but they will want to be consulted before delivering. Right now they do not really trust the American return to dialogue. This is at the core of the German call for an assurance that NATO be the premier forum for policy choice discussions:

Leading European members of the North Atlantic alliance warned the US at the weekend that Nato could not become a global policeman, but must be used by both sides as a political forum to debate and agree on significant security issues such as Iran, the Middle East and energy security. Angela Merkel, Germany’s new chancellor, led the European calls for continuing reform of the organisation, with a plea to expand its political scope to co-ordinate strategy between Europe and the US outside the Nato area.

Even if the call for NATO as a forum at the face of it confirms the American problem with NATO as a talking shop, the Germans did point to the big question: How to balance the need for leadership with honest partnership? This is the essence of the challenge to America: not because the Europeans are annoying or selfish, but because this is the difference between leading and dictating.

The second part of the European hesitation has to do with a profound distrust, not the military means, but in the American preference for it. Kagan's Mars and Venus all over again. Why is this still really, really important? Because the Europeans, for operational reasons, are more right than maybe could be expected, although maybe not as right as they would like to be. The Long War, if it is to be, will not primarily be fought with military means, even if these may be more important than the Europeans are ready to acknowledge. Conceived of as a global counter-insurgency campaign, the political reality has to take precedence over military logic.

In a long-term counterinsurgency campaign where the goal is to accomplish a sufficient reduction of terrorism the means will be successful, legitimate states whose citizens choose opting into the state project. As Bruce Hoffman (RAND pdf) notes: "At the foundation of counterinsurgency is the salience of the political dimension—in doctrine, planning, implementation, and, most importantly, operational coordination." In strategic terms: in counterinsurgency the center of gravity is not so much military capabilities as it is the hearts and minds of the population.

If the Americans are to convince the Europeans about the strategic vision of the Long War, they will have to not only address the challenge of honest partnership, but also deliver a convincing vision that includes more than the military perspective. We still need political policy proposals that takes better into account the convergence between security and development. Of course, one might naively hope, the Europeans could produce the ideas themselves, but this does not look set to happen: the policy ideas production industry is almost absent from the European continent. But why that is is another question.

Counterinsurgency: Changing the Military Ethos

The complete reversal of the Foreign Affairs article outlining the Bush Administration's foreign policy priorities -- from big power politics to weak state stability -- continues. The Quadrennial Defense Review and other central policy documents have over the last 6 months been published with the Long War against terrorism as a central tenet. The craft of the American soldier changes in function of this re-organization for the Long War: from army vs army battles to counterinsurgency as nationbuilding.

The American defense etablishment may be huge and not prone to change, but the Pentagon seems to have been surprisingly nifty on this account. Or rather: those who have propagated this change seem to have had a fair amount of influence within the Army (as the QDR showed, there seems to be no support for or plans about major realignments of budget, meaning that the well-intended reforms for preparing for and executing the Long War proposed with the QDR are not funded on any meaningful level when compared with e.g. the missile defense bills). Thomas P. M. Barnett who more or less predicted all of this change ought to wake up feeling good about himself every day.

The change from army battles to effects based COIN is a huge and very difficult step for any military organization. The lesser NATO members have to some extent already been through this reorganization during the 1990s when their Departments of Defense were looking for a functional raison d'etre (in terms of both funding and strategy). But the challenge is bigger for the US Army exactly because of its prowess in the military arts: the ingrained self-understanding of the soldier (legitimate and non-reflexive use of power; friend vs. foe dichotomies; imposition of strategic will on opponent) must necessarily clash with a political conceptualization of counterinsurgency, which demands a much more holistic or contextual understanding of the processes related to the "enemy" -- because here "victory" equals not his "defeat" but his succesful integration into a democratic, non-violent political process (minus those who cannot accept the new setup).

This change is nothing less than a de- and reconstruction of the military ethos -- at strategic and tactical levels: the politics of the mission is everywhere; everything is communication of intent -- and so collateral damage becomes heavily fined. Interestingly, the US military's realignment to politically sensitive counterinsurgency is functionally akin to the civilian humanitarian agenda's call for the use of the military instrument sparingly and surgically. Actually, the "contract" between governments and people in the Western, pro-UN circuit of countries about the use of force as an element in humanitarianism relies on this precision of means and similiarity of goals (basically fusion) with development policy.

The New York Times has a fine piece about this whole reorganization in practice: "Mock Iraqi Villages in Mojave Prepare Troops for Battle", which of course is neither straightforward to train and learn, nor easily implemented in practice beacuse of the (here: domestic) strategic context:

The troops who come here are at the heart of a vast shift in American war-fighting strategy, a multibillion-dollar effort to remodel the Army on the fly. Here, the Army is relearning how to fight, shifting from its historic emphasis on big army-to-army battles to the more subtle tactics of defeating a guerrilla insurgency. The changes in the Army's emphasis are among the most far-reaching since World War II, all being carried out at top speed, while the Iraqi insurgency continues undiminished and political support for the war ebbs at home. American commanders say publicly that they still believe they can win the war, especially now with a more coherent strategy to combat the insurgency and train their soldiers to fight it. (...)

For the first time in more than 20 years, military planners are revising the Army's counterinsurgency manual, adding emphasis on nation-building and peacekeeping — subjects once belittled by the Bush administration. At the Army's Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., officers are being required for the first time to complete a course in counterinsurgency. (...) Junior officers are being encouraged to take greater initiative to adjust to local circumstances. An old military tradition of chronicling the lessons learned on the front and passing them on to other units has found a vital new outlet in password-protected Internet sites where platoon commanders and more senior officers can exchange combat experiences. (...) One third of the American troops now stationed in Iraq have been through the course here, and entire brigades — each with 4,000 soldiers, sometimes more — are processed through here every month. But it is still unclear how much effect the new training is having in the field.

Indeed, even as the new training strategy moves forward, American units are substantially withdrawing from Iraq's streets. With the country sliding closer to civil war, Iraqi military units, many of them of uncertain quality, are now taking the leading combat role in nearly half of Iraq's territory. (...) "There is a paradox in the approach," said Kalev Sepp, a former Special Forces officer and one of the most vocal proponents for changing the Army. "The training in the United States and in Iraq is teaching all the right things — decentralization of authority and responsibility to the lowest levels, engagement with the Iraqi population, cultural awareness and political sensitivity — the full broad range of measures needed to defeat the insurgency." "But on the ground," Mr. Sepp said in an interview, "the troops are being moved onto these large consolidated bases and being drawn away from the population just at point that they have been trained to engage them."

UPDATE: Washington Post has an interesting article on the situation in Iraq - quoting some of the stabilization & reconstruction savviest people, including Dobbins, Hammes and Wilson III: "Merits of Partitioning Iraq or Allowing Civil War Weighed".

Later UPDATE: On the ground in Afghanistan the US Army knows how to counterinsurgency; see this WashPost article: "US Commander in Afghanistan Thinks Locally".

Civility as Enhanced CIMIC in Afghanistan

Great piece by Mountain Runner (hat tip) on an interesting memo written on standards of conduct by deployed troops by Command Sergeant Major Daniel Wood of the Combined Forces Command in Afghanistan (the CSM is part of the leadership group of CFC-A, which runs ISAF).

The memo calls for something very basic: namely that regular standards of conduct by deployed tropps, including in non-threathening situations is respectful of and accomodating towards the local population. In fact, it spells out in a few clear words how a logic of counter-insurgency proper is different from a logic of war:

We are currently engaged with an enemy that attempts to win battles in the press where the tide of public opinion is the ammunition and make no mistake... this ammunition is effective, especially when it has credibility. The effective engagement of the "middle ground" or the people of the rural communities and villages of this country is where the long war will be won. EVERY TIME you move down a road in this country, you are affecting this middle ground either positively or negatively.

These observations are not new -- standard COIN stuff. But they represent an example of this logic in practice. Moreover, the memo means that there must be a clear lack of such standard conduct. Therefore, the new logic cannot have been well implemented if at all yet. Still the memo represents a seeping down to the operational level of the new COIN logic of the Long War in some version, as e.g. an example of an application of Echevarria's (top level division of labor) analysis in "Towards an American Way of War".

As the memo apparently only concerns US service personnel, it would be interesting to see to which degree its analysis of lacking conduct applies to the other NATO service personnel under ISAF -- especially those serving in the PRT units. The PRTs are one attempt at creating the international security administration units of the future, dealing especially with Thomas PM Barnett's SysAdmin tasks in the mix of stabilization and reconstruction, or "enhanced CIMIC" in other words.

The memo can be read in its entirety at Mountain Runner, including his fine analysis (don't miss the comments on Nagl and SWET as a 'broken windows' approach).
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Related posts:

Jun 06 2006: The Barnier Report: Slow Step Towards a European State-Building Agency
May 01 2006: Counterinsurgency: Changing the Military Ethos
Mar 29 2006: Of History and Counterinsurgency
Mar 17 2006: The Long War, Casualty Adversity & Fortified Concrete
Feb 21 2006: Effects Based Cultural Awareness
Feb 16 2006: Afghan SysAdmin Training for US Army

Defining the Long War: Tony Corn's 4GW

Policy Review may just have done it again: published an agenda-setting piece of strategic analysis, which, while intellectually limber, is not academically irrelevant. Former State Department employee Tony Corn's "World War IV As Fourth-Generation Warfare" has some thoroughly interesting arguments; summarizes the central elements of the debate on the War on Terror; and addresses the organizational changes underway in the comprehensive interagency perspective. The article is a rare case of strategy proper: tying together separate realms in a practical framework. Do go read the whole thing here. Just a few comments:

* Corn is right that The Long War isn't primarily military in its nature, and neither can our means be. The political dimension is necessarily what this is about. This doesn't mean that the military will not play an important and some times predominant role. But it does mean that the military has to become a whole lot better at the political thing, including calculating effects of military operations in political currency, if it wants to succeed.

* Because the Long War includes an entanglement of military and political elements in its strategy; and of probably all of the foreign policy related organizations in its practice, the resolution of interagency problems is paramount. This includes, first, basic and still very challenging coordination in terms of both operations, planning, learning, and convergence on strategic levels. Second (and this is the hard part!), it means addressing the institutionalized perspectives that a) stem from the civilian and military organizations' raison d'etre and that b) are braking if not blocking proper reaction to the challenges ahead (in short, respectively: warrior spirit vs. the political dimension, and disinterestedness/bureaucracy vs. teleological thinking/strategy).

* Corn's use of the Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) concept is a little off in that he repeats some of the misunderstandings of its proponents: that 4GW is post-clausewitzian because it contains non-state actors and is focused more on the opponent's political will than fighting capacity. This mistake stems from a legacy interpretation of Clausewitz -- what he actually says in the full version of the most famous quote is exactly that politics does take precedence over the military, strategic level; that the political outcome is what we should be aiming at: "[d]er Krieg [ist] nur ein teil des politischen Verkehrs, also durchaus nichts Selbstständiges." Corn uses the concept of 4GW because he wants to justify the strategic importance of what State does and the strategic value of the knowledge and experience of State's employees. This is more than just an honorable intention: he has a valid point. The problem is that the "4GW" concept is part of a military internal debate over the evolving nature of warfare: as such it is much more of an office politics than it is a proper analytical device (see Echevarria's piece on 4GW for the full argument; thanks to Opposed Systems Design for leading me to it). Corn's analysis of the salafist challenge is the central claim of the article, not the 4GW stuff which seems like an afterthought. In any case, as Echevarria has shown, "4GW" is close to signify about whatever you would want it to.

* His jab at Thomas P.M. Barnett's "Disconnectedness defines danger" is unfair. In the context it looks like Barnett meant that the salafists are "disconnected" in the sense that they are not in touch, not using cell-phones or whatever. The proper meaning behind the slogan is instead that "disconnectivity" is a grand strategy heuristic device for identifying future troublespots: it deals with the macrolevel of absence of economic and cultural integration, not the microlevel degree of technology in tactics.

EDIT: According to the Washington Post Corn's article already is on the agenda.

Purple fingers & interventions: spinbattle anew

With President Bush and the administration on a domestic offensive regarding the stakes, situation and prospects of Iraq and last week's very successful election, the long-running debate over the possibility and actualization of democratic reform in the Middle East is poised to take yet another round. Both Susan E. Rice's oped and Kristol & Kagan's piece are part and parcel of this political game. In the Western public spheres 'Iraq' is thus a metaphor for many things: not just about that country's situation; the political fallout of the decision to intervene; a proxy for the tendencies of the region; but importantly also a spinbattle about the legitimacy of rationales for the next intervention.

Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post stays true to his abilities and delivers precisely with his first sentence of today's column:

Though Iraq has now held the freest election in Arab history, conventional wisdom in Washington and the Middle East still dismisses the Bush administration's hope that its military intervention will catalyze democratic change around the region.

Off course, Iraq is a doubly special case to that effect: a 'testing case' and a 'case apart'. The former refers to the 'neocon argument' for the war, namely the creation of Iraq as a shining beacon of democracy in the region that would help transform the rest in a domino theory reversed. This position is necessarily tied up with a healthy dose of universalism, i.e. the belief that many things are constant across societies and that the basic forms of the human habitus are rather stable. The latter, then, refers not only to the common sensical fact that any given democratic development in Iraq cannot be compared to the rest of the ME for the obvious reason that is the war and the insurgency. Diehl quotes Mark Malloch Brown, for one:

"There's enough going in the right direction . . . that I am one of those who believes that the intervention in Iraq will be good for democracy in the region in the middle term," is the way Mark Malloch Brown, the witty chief of staff to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, puts it. "I'm just not sure it will be good for democracy in Iraq."

But in terms of fronts in the metadebate about how to frame the discussion about Iraq it furthermore refers to a heterogenous crowd: the culturalists and area studies people who emphasize anthropological differences; those that for ideological reasons wish to cash in on Iraq's bad run; non-interventionists from both sides of the spectrum; etc. So apparently this is what is at stake in the debate over Iraq: whether the shining beacon theory of the Iraqi Example, or Diehl's "conventional wisdom around Washington and elsewhere" (where 'elsewhere' includes pretty much all of the European political and administrative class) gets to be the agenda.

Unfortunately, neither of the two represent a valid framework for a long term assessment - and due to the high political stakes everyone wants to cash in on the short term, concluding in either direction every time an AP piece hits the network. Malloch Brown's "middle term" perspective is the proper for practitioners, and Diehl's when he points to systematic if not conclusively positive progress.

But in the long term, Bush's recent speeches and the Strategy for Victory in Iraq is more than just parts of the quarrell over how the war got started in the first place. That debate also plays an important role as a subset of the ME/democ spinbattle: the two things overlap in the discussion about official and 'proper' rationales for war. Rules of proper government, law, officialeese and procedures will deal with the official element - mixed up with and validated by the normal political process and press, domestic as diplomatic.* But the deep meaning of the debate we have now about 'Iraq' is a negotiation about the terms of how and why we will wage a war the next time.

This level, regarding the proper rationale, however, is about whether it would be OK to carry out regime change with military intervention - or rather: whether it would be OK to put the democratic argument behind the next intervention. That negotiation is structured less as a question of law and codified adminstrative interaction than as a deal between the people of the West and their governments. While the other level is necessary and important, this is the interesting debate: the much larger question is to which extent the cold war paradigm of interventions to protect freedom is or will be merged with the UN caretaker paradigm of humanitarian interventions of the 1990's.

The strategic blunder of the botched Phase IV - stabilization, reconstruction and transition - in Iraq and the increased understanding of the huge costs and difficulty of managing this part rather than 'just' the war part has of course put a welcome premium on interventions. Moreover, the debate on the official rationale of the (now known faulty intelligence on) WMD exacerbates this premium: pointing to intelligence will not get anyting flying with the public for a long, long time. (Kagan's October piece on the run up to the war is interesting in this respect and as an analysis of the media as an inefficent market for mediating between the public and the political).

Bush himself points to the humanitarian argument for taking out Saddam Hussein's regime (implicitly drawing on a tough cost-benefit calculus of course):

But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. And as your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power. He was given an ultimatum -- and he made his choice for war. And the result of that war was to rid the world of a murderous dictator who menaced his people, invaded his neighbors, and declared America to be his enemy. Saddam Hussein, captured and jailed, is still the same raging tyrant -- only now without a throne. His power to harm a single man, woman, or child is gone forever. And the world is better for it.

So in terms of words, the coupling of the two paradigms - visible as in the National Security Strategy of 2002 - hints that the UN circuit may have gotten more out 'Iraq' than hoped. The question is just whether any of the middle term changes will be evident long term conclusions before the next time around.

The Long War, Casualty Adversity and Fortified Concrete

Secretary of State Rice's launch of a plan for change at State named "transformational diplomacy" nominally mirrors the "transformation" at the Pentagon. But more substantially, it also lays the ground for the State Department part of the civilian work to be done in the Long War. The focus on moving diplomats away from the safer zones of the world toward the turmoil -- from the Core to the Gap, in the words of Thomas P. M. Barnett -- is a logical equivalent of the global counterinsurgency campaign that is the Long War.

As all true counterinsurgency, this campaign will necessarily be fought though politics, with political means for political ends (more on this e.g. here). In this, legitimacy is always the overriding goal, and this is where the transformational diplomacy's promise of moving more people into the field -- out of the capitals and into the regions -- looks both promising and necessary. From former US AID Director Andrew Natsios' article "American Fortresses" at the Weekly Standard website:

This new diplomacy--the work of a generation, Rice said--requires, among other things, redeploying many U.S. diplomats from Europe and Washington to countries like China, India, Nigeria, and Lebanon, given that the threat to the nation's vital interests has moved from the European theater to the Third World, the preferred haven for many of the extra-state forces threatening the United States. It will involve sending single officers out of embassies to small, low-key regional offices called American Presence Posts to interact regularly with civil society, something tried with considerable success in Indonesia and Egypt by Powell's State Department. A greater emphasis will be placed on regional approaches to public diplomacy, and on rapid response teams like those AID already uses for disaster relief. Our best foreign-language speakers will be "forward deployed" and encouraged to appear on live TV in their host countries. The Internet will be put to imaginative use to engage previously unreached audiences. The changes and the fresh thinking come not a moment too soon.

Still unknown is how fiercely the bureaucratic systems of the State Department will resist this shift, and whether the perverse security dynamic in our embassies can be reversed. What is certain is that a zero-risk mentality is not a war-winning mentality. Unless we allow for a tolerable level of managed risk--even risk to life and limb--neither our diplomats nor our aid missions can do the work for which they exist, at a time when their contribution is more needed than ever.

But exactly the nexus of the Pentagon's Long War against terrorism and State's means for Development (which then becomes a crucial tool of Security) is problematic. Natsios have some very good observations concerning the practical challenges related to implementing these strategies: in effect, casualty adversity due to political sensitivity and true threats are blocking these changes in practice.

The 1998 bombings, the Crowe report, and the attacks on 9/11 gradually increased the authority of the State Department's regional security officers by changing the incentive structure within embassies around security issues. The State Department's Diplomatic Security Service--the second largest bureau, with 34,000 employees including foreign hires--grew as the threat increased. Concerned that they might be blamed for failing to anticipate other incidents, regional security officers became increasingly cautious about allowing official Americans to move around freely outside embassies, and they tightened procedures for outsiders seeking to enter. Ambassadors themselves grew less and less willing to overrule their security officers out of concern that if an incident occurred they would be held responsible. The divisive politics of the Beltway, where security incidents become instant fodder for editorials, congressional hearings, campaign ads, and political recriminations, accelerated this perverse dynamic. (...)

Midlevel diplomats and aid officers who were supposed to spend their days interacting with the societies in which they served were more handicapped by the new security measures than ambassadors and AID mission directors, who usually had security details at their command. For aid officers who previously had done much of their work in the countryside, this meant fewer and fewer opportunities to build the relationships with local leaders and communities that underpin development work and ensure that U.S.-funded projects respond to local needs. It meant less chance to see firsthand what was happening in out-of-the-way regions, and to adapt programs to changing local realities. (...)

The situation is most extreme in Iraq, where official Americans are permitted to travel outside their working compounds--even inside the Green Zone--only if the trips are planned three days in advance, and then only with a security detail usually composed of a large contingent of retired commandos from Western militaries hired at great cost from private security contractors. Inevitably, the number of Americans leaving the compounds has dropped. Partner organizations, both Iraqi and American-based, began asking AID staff not to visit them in their offices outside the Green Zone because the large security details were drawing the attention of the insurgents. At the same time, the number of Iraqis and partner organizations visiting USAID officers in their compound, never very high, also dropped month after month. The high walls, the barbed wire, the heavy weapons at each corner, the high casualty rates of Iraqis waiting at checkpoints to get into the Green Zone, and the onerous screening procedures were an obvious discouragement. Afghanistan is little better.

This has hampered the reconstruction process in both countries ever so subtly. Reconstruction and development are not principally about building physical structures, but about building institutions, reforming policies, and transferring values and technology. To do it successfully, USAID officers must interact regularly with officials in government ministries, with professors in their universities, members of professional associations, leaders of businesses and religious institutions, and with local NGOs. At its core, it is about building trust and shared commitments.

It is daily interactions with local people and the personal trust they lead to that allow aid officers to guide change and encourage reform-minded officials. These relationships are often more important than any program. In Iraq and Afghanistan, these interactions are now limited to telephone calls and emails... (emphasis added).

When transformational diplomacy meets the security issues of the operational reality we are back at the fundamental challenge of Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations (counterinsurgency proper): there can be no reconstruction with security, but security itself can get in the way of reconstruction. The intervening variable here is casualty adversity: basically many of these operations and missions cannot be undertaken without running greater risks, meeting the locals without armor.

But the political sensitivity surrounding the issue is pretty fundamental: the original "contract" about humanitarian interventions between the populations and governments of the West rested on 1) the use of precision guided weapons, and the feasibility of "surgical" operations, thus minimizing civilian casualties, and 2) (and more importantly) on low losses among our own people, be they military or civilian. The trouble is that this contract cannot hold in the widened, more ambitious agenda -- be it framed as the Long War, or UN-sponsored humanitarian intervention.

The straightforward solution? Intensive and massive training capabilities directed at the local population whose casualty adversity is necessarily lower. In any case, we need to develop a common paradigm for civilian peacebuilding and military counterinsurgency and S&R operations.