The Modern State, Core & Gap

In a comment, Wiggins at Opposed Systems Design asked how the CRS report on US interventions abroad from 1798-2007 would make one reconsider the Core/Gap concept. Stealing this from my answer in his comments, I'd say that I didn’t mean "reconsider" in the sense of “thinking about discarding”, more like “think about again in broader/historical context”.

The Map was made as an extrapolation of data for US military deployed man-days 1990-2003; in the CRS report we have data for a rough cut for a historicized version. One would, of course, to make this systemically useful have to add up the (other) great powers’ deployments and interventions … and you would wind up describing hard-end trends in the colonial spread of the modern, industrial state. And thus, looking at the different interventions, you would get some perhaps interesting trends in the relative size and frequency of industrial vs. colonial (or big vs. small) wars), in the vein of - or supplementing - Rupert Smith’s great The Utility of Force.

That kind of reconsidering. The (problems related to) spread (and models) of the modern state is really at the heart of almost all security related politics. So historical trends and discussions hereof are interesting.

Marine Corps Humanitarian Task Forces

The need for military capabilities other than the perceived essential task of warfighting is evident - indeed it has been central to e.g. what the Marine Corps and the US Army have been doing in practice since at least the mid 19th century.

This is something that the Navy and Marine Corps has always done,. LeFevre said, "and now we’re planning doing it."

Indeed, the Marine Corps is now counting on putting together battalion size humanitarian task forces (from military.com):

Marines and sailors are not diplomats and they can’t make foreign policy. But at sea and in foreign ports they can and have practiced a kind of diplomacy that has benefited the United States in peace and war.

And now the Corps is incorporating those kinds of missions into its mission planning with the creation of Security Cooperation Marine Air-Ground Task Forces, built around the standard infantry-battalion unit but tweaked to emphasize humanitarian aid, medical and civil operations. (...) As envisioned, the new MAGTFs sometimes would be deployed for emergencies, and sometimes when there is no urgency but where its presence can do good and generate good will for the United States, said Marine Lt. Gen. Richard Natonski deputy commandant of plans, policies and operations, during a discussion on strategic engagement and maritime diplomacy March 19 at the annual Sea Air Space Exposition in Washington, D.C. The SC MAGTF would be manned and equipped to carry out anything from military training of foreign forces to humanitarian, civil and medical operations, he said.

These kinds of missions have paid diplomatic and strategic dividends in the past, Natonski argued, including in the period building up for the invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. and, later, Iraq. Rear Adm. Michael LeFevre, director of military personnel, plans and policy division, said the cooperation the U.S. got for staging or moving forces through a number of Middle Eastern countries near or bordering those countries was due in part of relationships built between the sea services’ leadership and senior officials in the various governments.

On general level, this is both a welcome development as the US military is the only organization with global reach and since it therefore always gets these kinds of assignments (in disaster response e.g.) it makes sense to formalize what has for a long time been part of tasking. Moreover, the Barcelona Report (pdf) called for the development of humanitarian brigades in the European context, aimed at fulfilling somewhat comparable tasks - an example of the sense of utility. Of course, these were envisaged more like deployable PRTs with large constituent of civilians. But as these have been in short supply and less forthcoming in e.g. Afghanistan - and as the military, as said, will always be the organization of last resort - then it makes sense to plan for what will inevitably come their way anyway.

Of course, there's in principle and in operational terms a huge difference between preparing for disaster response and fighting a counterinsurgency campaign. But a the strategic level, it seems of obvious importance that the US military has a continuous experience with warfighting in the context of everything else - to borrow Tom Barnett's term - and so an institutionalized understanding of the strategic connection between military operations and the political situation to which they pertain.

State Department Memo on Iraq

Last post today. Just had to recommend Barnett's latest on State Dept and SSTR:

I've been hearing a lot about this memo from various political appointees and senior bureaucrats recently, with everyone saying it would be a big deal when it hit the Net. Well, now it's here and while it is truly damning, to me it's just another nail in the coffin of the idea, promoted by the HELP Commission, that somehow a better or bigger State can handle this sort of operation in the future. Nothing could be further from the truth and this memo speaks to that reality. (...)

The problem is, of course, that our State Department and U.S. foreign policy in general (meaning Bush and Cheney) are largely missing from the scene. Yes, lotsa trips and many talking points delivered, and certainly there's been a vast shuffling of paper in the Green Zone, but where is the diplomacy? The security space created by the Surge was designed to create a political space that remains unexploited and even largely unaddressed. Nowhere is this lack of effort more apparent than in the diplomatic trenches of our State Department presence on the ground in Iraq, which this memo addresses.

Iraq and Afghanistan are transforming our military, with that transformation starting to penetrate the Pentagon itself. But no such transformation is brewing within the State Department, either on the ground or in Foggy Bottom. In the end, I don't expect one to ever brew inside State and, truth be told, I'm not sure one should brew, because I don't see the logic of trying to get this institution to add on such capacity in what will inevitably be a "lesser included" manner. It didn't work at Defense and it won't work at State, even as each department is a key player in this process.

We either create a legitimate bureaucratic center of gravity for such efforts, or we'll continue to underperform.

This seems to be a widespread problem in all of the Western foreign offices. But the diplomats are not the ones who are operative, traditionally. That role befalls the state aid agencies (USAID etc): But does the DFIDs, DANIDAs and NORADs of the world accept that they are in war with the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Regarding Iraq in particular, the memo comes at the same time as Global Guerilla's reflections on the Rosen article in Rolling Stone. Discomforting. For a 100 years?

Tic Tacs #6

Miami Herald: "Iran aid to Taliban hints at policy shift. U.S. officials suspect that Iranian weapons shipments to the Taliban may be retaliation for U.S. foreign policy."

Secrecy News: National Intelligence Council Sponsors Wiki on Global Disease. Students at Mercyhurst College created a wiki-based resource on global disease to support the National Intelligence Council, while demonstrating the utility of the wiki approach for intelligence analysis. "The fundamental question had to do with the impact of chronic and infectious diseases on US national interests over the next 10-15 years," said Prof. Kristan J. Wheaton, whose class produced the wiki.

Counterterrorism Blog: "A few days ago, I spoke with a U.S. official working for one of the new embedded provisional reconstruction teams (EPRTs) in Iraq. (...) The EPRTs are different. Rather than operating separately from and parallel to the military, they are embedded within the military structure. Six EPRTs operate in Baghdad, three in Anbar, and one in Babil. Their structure is similar to that of the PRTs (run by a foreign service officer, featuring a U.S. Army deputy, a USAID member, a bicultural advisor, and other staffers) but rather than functioning in the top-down manner of the PRTs, the EPRTs are designed to make more of a difference at what the official called the "granular" level. That is, the EPRTs are integrated into the military's tactical operations, and are designed to advance reconstruction efforts on a street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood basis.

Thomas P.M. Barnett: "The talks are cordial, but go nowhere. ARTICLE: "U.S. and Iranian Officials Meet in Baghdad, but Talks Yield No Breakthroughs," by Kirk Semple, New York Times, 29 May 2007, p. A8. Why should they? We hold talks to see what Iran can do to save our asses in Iraq but refuse to use that venue to discuss any quid pro quo Tehran might desire. These talks aren't designed to work. They're designed to check a box. That's my weekend column. "

Tic Tacs #5

Tom Barnett on John Robb's book Brave New Wars: "John's book is deeply informed by the fact he's a serious technocrat who distrusts politics. Indeed, politics as any form of solution is basically missing in action in this book. When it's referred to glancingly here and there, it's always to catalogue dysfunction or corruption (e.g., America's entire political system is dismissed with a reference to Jack Abramoff's ability to purchase it at will--a blanketing statement which comes off as strangely naive in its cynicism, but that's not unusual for military guys who often describe Washington like it's some modern-day Sodom)."

From the AP via Yahoo: "The Pentagon is setting up a civilian Language Corps, a cadre of some 1,000 foreign-language speakers who can help the government in times of war and national emergencies. In a three-year pilot program, the Defense Department will recruit volunteers and do testing to see if such a program would work. If successful, a permanent corps could be developed, said Robert Slater, who heads the Pentagon personnel office's security education program. "The federal government can't possibly identify, hire and warehouse professionals with skills in 150 languages," Slater said Wednesday. "So it's invaluable to be able to respond in emergencies, whether international or national.""

World Bank Private Sector Development Blog on quality of FDI (quote from referenced paper): "This paper exploits a comprehensive, industry level data set for the period 1985-2000 that encompasses 29 countries to examine the various links between different “types” of FDI and growth. An appealing feature of industry analysis is that it mitigates some of the effects of unobserved heterogeneity and model misspecification, which are difficult to control at the national level. We also use as an instrument a new industry-level data set on industry targeting. We find FDI at the industry level to be associated with higher growth in value added. The relation is stronger for industries with higher skill requirements and for industries more reliant on external capital."

North County Times: "CAMP PENDLETON -- The first five of 24 Iraqi civilians killed in Haditha by a squad of Camp Pendleton Marines in 2005 were repeatedly shot by two sergeants who then agreed to blame the slayings on the Iraqi army, one of the shooters testified Wednesday afternoon. Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz said he fired at the five men moments after Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich unleashed a barrage of bullets at the group being held at gunpoint with their arms raised in the air."

WorldPublicOpinion.org: "Publics around the world say the United Nations has the responsibility to protect people from genocide and other severe human rights abuses even if this means acting against the will of their own government, according to a multinational study."

Tic Tacs #4

Another round of Tic Tacs - a pick of interesting links:

• Tom Barnett on "The price of locking in China..."
• Kilcullen's deadpan picking apart of Luttwak (great big hat tip to MountainRunner)
• Arms and Influence on the "Hidden costs of the surge"
• World Bank's Private Sector Development Blog on the "Cost of Gender Inequality "
• And, finally, a lengthy rebuttal to this Economist piece on the OECD SG ... written by himself, here.