Shaping Input: Africa's Horn in Foreign Affairs

The new issue of Foreign Affairs features a fine article on the conflicts – present and lurking – on Africa’s Horn, and the weaknesses of US policy ("Blowing the Horn", subscription required).

People at JFCOM currently working on the coming Shaping JOC are well advised to read John Prendergast and Colin Thomas-Jensen’s article. The challenges and solutions that they outline are basically what the JOC will have to address: learning full-scale diplomacy not in its diplomatic sense, but rather as a holistic problem-solving approach, which includes addressing grievances and issues over livelihoods.

The essential lessons of U.S. counterterrorism policy over the last five years – apparently unheeded by the Bush administration – is that in order for local Muslim populations to take the United States’ counterterrorism agenda seriously, the United States must take their state-building and power-sharing agenda seriously, too. Ironically, the strategy is already there on paper. In its 2002 National Security Strategy and elsewhere, the Bush administration has argued that failing states foster terrorism and has laid out a comprehensive approach to counterterrorism that involves promoting peace building, state reconstruction, and good governance. When it comes to the Greater African Horn, however, the Bush administration has simply not implemented its own policies. By relying on sporadic military strikes and continued support for autocrats without broader political planning, it has combined the worst elements of its current strategy in Iraq with the Cold War-era policy of cronyism. Conflict resolution and good governance are, in fact, the keys to countering terrorism in the Greater Horn of over the long term.

More on the Shaping JOC in this post – including the natural African focus of the JOC and here especially the CJFT-HOA. People who should also read their article include the CIA analysts involved not only with HOA related stuff, but also those working on projects similar to the Shaping JOC.

A final aside: Not surprisingly, the sharpest minds on the intricacies of policy development are no longer to be found in academia: they are more often at the best think tanks – and among them evidently the ICG where both authors reside.

The Coming JFCOM 'Shaping' JOC: A Revolution In Development Policy?

The creation of African Command (AFRICOM) is accompanied by a the development of a new Joint Operating Concept (JOC) with potentially huge ramifications for the continent and for the whole development sector -- including the largest non-American partners, from the national development agencies (DfID, Danida, etc) over the EU and especially the UN to of course the 'host nations' in particularly Africa.

This new JOC is called Shaping. It is the logical prequel to the SSTR JOC -- published in its final version in December 06 after several years of preparation. The SSTR JOC deals with Stabilization, Security, Transition and Reconstruction Operations and is the new version of the old S&R. The inclusion of especially transitioning points to the growing understanding within the Pentagon system of the importance of founding the conceptual thinking about use of force on a properly clausewitzian basis: namely that military operations must always be thought of as an element in a larger political concept (not to say that MCOs do not have to function in a more clearcut independent way). The philosophical critique has been expressed particularly well by Antulio J. Echevarria, e.g. in this paper Toward An American Way of War. The SSTR JOC basically underpins all MOOTWs including counterinsurgency.

SSTR Ops are those contained inside what is known as Phase IV: what comes after Phase III or MCO (Major Combat Operations). As I wrote in a report on Transitioning (in Danish), back in summer '05, this distinction between the phases is breaking down: the subsequent publication of the DoD Directive 3000.05 which puts SSTR on par with MCO within the US military; the NSPD 44, which gives States responsibility for Phase IV; and the extensive work going on in all sectors of USG to improve inter-agency cooperation, planning and training (without much to show for it so far) shows how the breakdown is real but also causing a lot of headaches.

Where SSTR equals Phase IV, the Shaping JOC is then tasked with dealing with Phase 0. Phase 0 is about prevention of conflict, and should in this perspective be understood as an element in the Long War ... or the GWOT (global war on terrorism) as it apparently and weirdly still is called in Pentagon circles. This PPT file shows not only the timeline for the new Shaping JOC (version 1.0 is due in August '07) but also the basic aspirations of the JOC:

Military Problem: In the complex future environment, economic, demographic and societal stressors will lead to areas of instability. Future state and non-state adversaries, to include extremist ideologues, will use all means available to:

• exploit this instability by undermining partnerships and further destabilizing weak governments,
• deny or disrupt US influence or access, and
• gain sanctuary in ungoverned, unstable, and remote areas

The future Joint Force Commander must be capable of working both unilaterally and closely with multinational, interagency and other partners to maintain or enhance stability, prevent or mitigate crises and set the conditions for access and responsive crisis intervention.

Scope: This JOC will focus on the actions a joint force commander might take in the context of unified action to advance US interests by:

• building partnership capacity
• influencing non-partners and potential adversaries
• mitigating the underlying causes of conflict and extremism; and
• setting the conditions that enable rapid action when military intervention is required

Proposed Solution: The Joint Force, as a part of a larger multinational and interagency effort, conducts continuous, anticipatory shaping operations that build partnerships with governmental, nongovernmental, regional and international organizations and reduce the drivers of conflict and instability in order to prevent or mitigate conflict or other crises and set the conditions for success in other operations—all aimed at a secure global environment favorable to US interests.

How do you '[mitigate] the underlying causes of conflict and extremism', and 'mitigate conflict and other crises'? Well, this is exactly the work of the aggregate development organisations: from the UKs PCRU and USAID plus international NGOs like the ICG to more long-term development organisations like UNDP. Mitigating underlying causes of conflict means addressing grievances before they turn into rebellion ... it means strengthening the local state so that it delivers to its citizens: from basic infrastructure, a working, stable and sustainable economy that provides jobs, rule of law and a decent political system.

The Pentagon will have their hands full -- and it is extremely important that they get the conceptual thinking right here. I hope the drafters will consult leading civilian development and political science experts and the extensive social science insights inside the CIA.

As a consequence of the NSPD 44, both the SSTR and the Shaping JOC are entitled "Military Support to..." but the Shaping PPT nevertheless underlines the probably necessity for the military to be able to deal unilaterally with the issue, i.e. have the capabilities to carry out these things without the interagency process. This is true also for SSTR: in many situations the military is the only organization present, as is visible in e.g. Afghanistan.

What are the ramifications? On the Pentagon side, the answer depends not only on the thinking to be done, but also on the implementation. The interesting thing here is that AFRICOM will offer the Shaping JOC a natural home (EUCOM shares the lead on the JOC development with JFCOM: will probably be transferred to AFRICOM?) -- it will not have to battle (a losing) struggle to get influence within the other COCOMs. Its reception within SOCOM is, however, very important. As Tom Barnett has noted, the existing CJTF-HOA will probably form the basis for AFRICOM even if it is placed in Stuttgart to begin with. Stuttgart is also the home of a SOCOM force (10th Special Forces Group, 1st Battalion). This may be a coincidence but it is probably not: The Long War's shaping missions will not solely be about development-like issues but will also include sharp-end elements, which is where the special forces come in handy as they excell in these more surgical operations. AFRICOM's tasks may be very political in nature but they will include very military means.

On the civilian side, including the whole of the development universe: You better wake up and follow this development closely. The Pentagon has so much logistical and funding clout that if the Shaping concept does indeed get feet, then there will be some very real opportunities to move the development agenda forward. My guess is, however, that most likely the development crowd will shy away from cooperation with the Pentagon. This is especially the case for the European development agencies.

Finally, there is NATO: This is stuff which should interest the CIMIC Centre of Excellence, but also people at higher echelons: anyone in the NATO militaries dealing with strategic planning.

This is a thing to be followed closely!

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EDIT: This old post gets a lot of readers. Please do not miss the later posts on Shaping, either by clicking here (and show all posts on shaping); or by going to these two posts, which further follow and evaluate Shaping/CSE:

• JFCOM: Shaping Ambition (Sort of) Implodes
• JFCOM: Shaping Ambition (Sort of) Implodes II

Tic Tacs #3: Long War By Petraeus, Harrison and the Air Force

Introductory portrait of General Petraeus, the American Commander in Iraq, in the Washington Post. Very interesting -- my European readers should read this, not least because it seems that the self-evident truth for any US government watcher that administrative and doctrinal turf wars matter and make the Goliath seem less monolithic than it is is often overlooked -- wilfully? -- by those who criticize it easily. Never explain by malevolence that which can be explained by incompetence -- or a learning curve.

Oh, and if you haven't seen it, this great piece by Harrison, which came out before Christmas, on the role of culture in nation-building. Of course this was always for the long haul: we are in the business of shrinking the Gap, and the agenda is exactly about formatting minds with each new generation. 200 years more until the End of History.

The generational aspect pops up here in this old December intro to the Long War through Air Force (!) Brig. Gen. Schissler who's deputy director for the GWOT in Joint Staff (do they actually still call it that?).

Then a clearly disturbed story from the LA Times about the surge plan being aprt of renewed neocon cabale. Come on: they cannot both be responsible for screwing up the post-conflict part and for wanting and having wanted more troops all the time. But maybe now is the time to listen -- not necessarily for the neocon rationales, but to the extent that they concord with military sagesse. Either way, yelling at the neocons is exactly what we don't need when important decisions are being presented to the public (cf. the note on seeing a monolith only above).

Some things are moving already on the new Iraqi strategy: dealing with unemployment should have been focus area very early on ... instead of adding to it. According to the AP some projects have already been launched, making a total of 11.000 jobs supposedly supporting almost 150.000 Iraqis.

Finally, more details are emerging on the new African Command -- it will exclude Egypt while CJTF in the Horn of Africa will stay with Centcom for another 18 months. All from the Christian Science Monitor.

And, as usual, do go read MountainRunner, this time for his 11 Steps To Success in Iraq.