Blog Posts

Politics Daily's Chief Military Correspondent (and SWJ friend) David Wood has a very interesting piece that contains a lot of food for thought concerning "the rise of a new warrior class, the declining number of Americans in public life with the sobering experience of war, and the fading ideal of public service as a civic responsibility." See "In the 10th Year of War, a Harder Army, a More Distant America" at PD.

Continue on for today's SWJ news and opinion links.

The US Army/USMC Counterinsurgency Center is pleased to host Dr. Christopher Paul, Ph. D. He is a Full Social Scientist working out of RAND's Pittsburgh office and has developed methodological competencies in comparative historical and case study approaches, quantitative analysis, and survey research. He will be briefing from the COIN Center on Thursday, 16 Sept 2010 at 1000 CST, 1100 EST, 1500 ZULU. His brief is entitled "Victory Has A Thousand Fathers". Please see this linked slide for more details on the briefing and this link for his monograph Victory Has A Thousand Fathers.

Those interested in attending may view the meeting on-line at https://connect.dco.dod.mil/coinweb and participate via Defense Connect Online (DCO) as a guest. Remote attendees will be able to ask questions and view the slides through the software.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cBeen There Won That - Joe Biden & Yogi Berrawww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full Episodes2010 ElectionFox News

The Colbert Report: Joe Biden serves hot dogs to the returning troops, Stephen introduces the greatest toilet on Earth, and Yogi Berra determines when the Iraq war will be over.

Early today, the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit's Maritime Raid Force, operating off USS Dubuque, retook the German--owned vessel M/V Magellan Star from Somali pirates who had attacked and boarded the vessel early Sept 8. The Marines reported no casualties and said no shots were fired. The ship's crew was rescued and nine pirates were taken prisoner.

See this press release from U.S. Fifth Fleet for more details.

South Asia's Geography of Conflict by Robert D. Kaplan. Via the CNAS web site:

In South Asia's Geography of Conflict, CNAS Senior Fellow and acclaimed author Robert D. Kaplan provides a detailed analysis of South Asia's history and geography including the broad arc of territory from Afghanistan southeastward into northern India and highlights India's pivotal role in the region. Kaplan writes, "As the U.S. and China become great power rivals, the direction in which India tilts could determine the course of geopolitics in Eurasia in the 21st century." South Asia's Geography of Conflict is a must-read for American policy makers. Kaplan writes, "If Americans do not come to grasp with India's age-old, highly unstable geopolitics, especially as it concerns Pakistan, Afghanistan and China, they will badly mishandle the relationship."

Download the full report here. Watch a CNAS exclusive interview with Kaplan on South Asia's Geography of Conflict here.

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Clinton Compares Mexico's Drug War to an Insurgency - Paul Richter and Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times

Mexico Looking Like Colombia, Clinton Says - William Both, Washington Post

Clinton Sees Insurgency in Mexico Drug Trade - Daniel Dombey and Adam Thomson, Financial Times

Is Mexico at Threat from a Drugs Insurgency? - Ignacio de los Reyes, BBC News

Hillary Clinton: Mexican Drugs War is Colombia-style Insurgency - Matthew Weaver, The Guardian

Clinton Sees Drug "Insurgency" In Mexico And Central America - Reuters

David Ignatius on Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in today's Washington Post - "Gates: The Pentagon's Accountability Cop".

Lieutenant General William Caldwell in today's Wall Street Journal - "Dr. Seuss and the Afghan Military" (subscription required).

Rowan Scarborough of The Washington Times reports on a possible budget cut for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO).

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The Summer 2010 issue of Parameters is now posted at the U.S. Army War College web site.

Here is the lineup:

War—Continuity in Change, and Change in Continuity by Colin S. Gray

An Appraisal of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategy to Counter Terrorism by Malik Zafar Iqbal

Time for a Strategic and Intellectual Pause in Afghanistan by Raymond A. Millen

Positive Perceptions to Sustain the US-Pakistan Relationships by Randall L. Koehlmoos

A Counter-WMD Strategy for the Future by Albert J. Mauroni

Soldiers and Politics: Exposing Some Myths by Phillip S. Meilinger

The North Caucasus: Russian Roulette on Europe's Borders by Constance A. Phlipot

Google Confronts China's "Three Warfares" by Timothy L. Thomas

Book reviews and other departments can be found here.

An editorial in yesterday's Washington Post on the legality of targeted killings of terror suspects is an interesting pairing with my August 20 prediction in Foreign Policy that covert action, counterterrorism raiding, and proxy wars will be growth businesses for the U.S. government. America's adversaries have continuously adapted to the tactics, techniques, and procedures the U.S. military and U.S. intelligence agencies have employed against them. The current position of this chess match of adaptation is illustrated with the legal case of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a U.S.-born cleric living in Yemen who has been designated a terrorist for his alleged role in the Fort Hood massacre, the foiled Christmas Day "underwear bomber" attack near Detroit, and the attempted car bombing of Times Square. Since Aulaqi is hiding out in Yemen's badlands, inaccessible to either Yemeni or U.S. legal authorities, the U.S. government has ostensibly selected a Hellfire missile to close out his case, once it can confirm his position. In August, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to prevent the U.S. government from ever firing that missile.

The Aulaqi case is the latest, but certainly not the last, move on the adaptation chess board. The 9/11 attacks and others in Madrid, London, and elsewhere were maneuvers that bypassed Western conventional military power. The United States and some of its allies responded by attempting to bring governance to ungoverned territories where terror groups found sanctuary. Terror groups have in turn defended their sanctuaries by making deals with the locals and by displacing to new areas that the U.S., for either political or intelligence reasons, finds difficulty attacking.

As I explained in my August 20 essay, the U.S. government has also adapted its tactics. In the future it will strive mightily to avoid interventions involving the large-scale use of general purpose ground forces. Covert action, raids, and proxy battles will be preferred. Here "lawfare" has left its mark. In recent years the U.S. government has acquired few new terrorism prisoners. After the U.S. Supreme Court's interventions into Guantanamo, targeted killing or custody by foreign governments are now the only options the U.S. government employs (prisoners the U.S. holds at Bagram or elsewhere in Afghanistan will surely go over to the Afghan government).

Intelligence-sharing, electronic surveillance, tough visa restrictions, and higher airline and border security have made it difficult for foreign terrorists to get into the United States. Adversaries like Aulaqi have responded by using electronic means to recruit other Americans (or visa-holders like the Christmas bomber).

Having found a sanctuary where he is nearly impossible to apprehend, the Obama administration appears content to simply kill Aulaqi with a missile. The ACLU and the CCR fear the bottom of a steep slippery slope where a U.S. president is ordering Predator hits against any U.S. citizen anywhere for any reason without legal restraint. These groups want a court to define the "recognized war zone" (Afghanistan in, Yemen not in) and to apply judicial process to the president's war powers outside that zone. Adversaries like Aulaqi are not limited to the ACLU's view of the war zone; these adversaries would obviously take advantage of such a definitional system to establish new sanctuaries.

With techniques such as major combat operations and large ground force counterinsurgency campaigns in decline, covert action, counterterrorism raiding, and proxy wars will be in ascendance. The United States will make these adjustments to its tactics in response to its enemies' previous adjustments. But as we have seen many times before in history, covert action, counterterrorism raiding, and proxy wars are vulnerable to legal and political attack, resulting in new opportunities for adversary adaptation. The adaptation chess match goes on.

Continue on for today's SWJ news and opinion links.

Continue on for today's SWJ news and opinion links.

USJFCOM to be Axed... Went to work, got a bit of bad news

Went to work, got a bit of bad news Ol' Bobby G said here's your fate, gonna shut you down, gonna lock the gate Now we all have the Jiffy Com Blues...

Via Bill Sizemore at The Virginian-Pilot - "JFCOM contractor sings the blues over closure". Listen to Jiffy Com Blues here or at the previous link if your media player does not open automatically. Jiffy Com Blues written and sung by Bobby "BlackHat" Walters (listen here too), a civilian contractor at U.S. Joint Forces Command who moonlights as a blues musician.

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Improving in War: Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2006-2009 - Theo Farrella, Department of War Studies, King's College London, Journal of Strategic Studies. War disciplines militaries: it forces them to refine, and sometimes revise, their tactics, techniques and technologies, or risk defeat in battle. Yet there is no theory of how militaries improve in war. This article develops a theory of military adaptation, which it applies to an analysis of the British campaign in Helmand from 2006 to 2009. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources (military plans, post operation reports and interviews), it shows how British brigades adapted different ways of using combat power to try and defeat the Taliban from 2006-07, and how from late 2007, British brigades have adapted a new population-centric approach that has focused more on influence operations and non-kinetic activities. Read the entire article at Journal of Strategic Studies.

Here's the seventh edition of Small Wars Journal's Saturday Night Quote (SWJ SNQ). Kudos to Robert C. Jones. In the commentary section of SWJ Blog entry "Afghanistan: It's Not Over" COL Jones had this to say: "Those who dwell on ideology, those who dwell on sanctuary, and those who dwell on the thousands of perspectives as to how best engage the lower tier of the [Afghanistan] insurgency (from the "kill them" to the "develop them" to the "secure them" to the "govern them" and all shades in between) are all tilting at windmills in large degree. No amount of energy directed at the bottom can do more than suppress the insurgency for some small period of time. True victory, true stability, comes when the top tier issues are resolved. Focus there."

Understanding Sri Lanka's Defeat of the Tamil Tigers by Major Niel A. Smith, Joint Force Quarterly.

After three decades of conflict, Sri Lanka's government defeated the ethnic separatist insurgent group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), popularly known as the Tamil Tigers, in May 2009. The violence and brutality employed by both sides in the final years of the conflict drew significant interest from the global civilian and military communities, especially when Sri Lanka credited its callousness to civilian casualties as a key to its success. The defeat of the LTTE added to the debates over U.S. counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine and the role of lethal force in counterinsurgency. Some have advocated that the United States consider employing such tactics as part of an effective COIN campaign, utilizing recent cases such as Sri Lanka and Chechnya to bolster their case...

Read the entire article at Joint Force Quarterly.

The Allure of Quick Victory: Lessons from Peru's Fight against Sendero Luminoso - Major Michael L. Burgoyne, Military Review. The decapitation of Sendero Luminoso (SL) in conjunction with the use of local security forces and a whole-of-government approach allowed Peru to defeat SL in the 1990s. A failure to follow through with the benefits of government services and a lack of pressure by security forces has allowed SL to regroup. In order to achieve a lasting victory the Peruvian government must address the foundations of insurgency: the intransigent insurgent leadership and the welfare of the population. Peru's current challenges provide an admonition to the US in its current efforts to consolidate gains in Iraq and in support of other allies facing insurgency... Read the entire article at Military Review.

The latest issue of Joint Force Quarterly is now posted at National Defense University Press. Here's the lineup: JFQ Dialogue From the Chairman - Admiral Michael Mullen Letters to the Editor - JFQ Forum Executive Summary - David H. Gurney An Interview with General James T. Conway, 34th Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps - Dabid H. Gurney Developing an Operational Reserve: A Policy and Historical Context and the Way Forward - John D. Winkler Operational for What? The Future of the Guard and Reserves - John A. Nagl and Travis Sharp Senior Officer Professional Military Education as an Equalizer - James T. Currie Special Feature The Security Trinity: Understanding the Role of Security Forces in COIN - Eric E. Greek Understanding Sri Lanka's Defeat of the Tamil Tigers - Niel A. Smith ISAF and Afghanistan: The Impact of Failure on NATO's Future - Tarn D. Warren A QDR for All Seasons? The Pentagon Is Not Preparing for the Most Likely Conflicts - Roy Godson and Richard H. Shultz, Jr. Is the Conduct of War a Business? - Milan Vego Essay Contests Winners of the 2010 Writing Competitions - Joint Force Quarterly Harmonious Ocean? Chinese Aircraft Carriers and the Australia-U.S. Aliiance - John Frewen U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan: Flawed Assumptions Will Lead to Ultimate Failure - Mark Schrecker Information Strategy: The Missing Link - Hans F. Palaoro Comentary Ike Warned Us About This: The MICC Stranglehold on Responsible Procurement - Eric A. Hollister Redress of Professional Military Education: The Clarion Call - Charles D. Allen Breaking Ranks: Dissent and the Military Professional - Andrew R. Milburn Building a Potemkin Village: A Taliban Strategy to Reclaim the Homeland - Jeff Donnithorne Strategic Communication in the New Media Sphere - Timothy Cunningham Features What U.S. Cyber Command Must Do - Wesley R. Andrues China's Ace in the Hole: Rare Earth Elements - Cindy A. Hurst Responsible Drawdown: Synchromizing the Joint Vision - Paul C. Hurley and John J. Abbatiello Force Planning in the 2010 QDR - Kathleen H. Hicks and Samuel J. Brannen Force of Law A Patchwork Strategy of Consensus: Establishing Rule of Law in Afghanistan - Mark R. Hagerott, Thomas J. Umberg, and Joseph A. Jackson Recall Operation Albion and Joint Amphibious Doctrine - Gregory A. Thiele Book Reviews The Art of Command: Military Leadership from George Washington to Colin Powell - Rizwan Ali Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? - John D. Becker Intelligence for an Age of Terror - Clark Capshaw Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces - Todd M. Manyx Joint Doctrine Redefining the Center of Gravity - Dale C. Eikmeier Increasing Warfighter Interoperability - Ray A. Zuniga Joint Doctrine Update - JPs Revised or Under Review

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H/T jackscrew on YouTube and Niel Smith on Facebook

Petraeus Explains Afghanistan Strategy

By John D. Banusiewicz

American Forces Press Service

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 3, 2010 -- Progress in Afghanistan has been faster than expected in some respects, and not as far along in others, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus said here today.

Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, spoke to reporters traveling with Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before attending a working lunch with the admiral.

The progress achieved so far in Afghanistan is "about standard for any one of these kinds of deliberate campaigns," Petraeus said.

Continue on for more to include links to related news coverage (at conclusion of article).