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SWJ Blog is a multi-author blog publishing news and commentary on the various goings on across the broad community of practice. We gladly accept guest posts from serious voices in the community.

COIN Center Update

by SWJ Editors | Tue, 04/27/2010 - 9:41pm | 0 comments

Pakistani Army Officer Training Visit - Small Wars Journal.

On the 21st of April, the COIN Center hosted a delegation of the Pakistani Army in support of US Army Central Command and Office of Defense Representative Pakistan (ODRP). The Focus of their US trip, which included visits to Joint Readiness Training Center, National Training Center, 4/10 Mountain Division, 1/1 and 2/1 Infantry Division, was on learning how the US Army prepares soldiers for duty in foreign cultures during home station training and at the Combat Training Centers. Pakistan's Army Director of Military Training, Brigadier Raashid Wali Janjua was the senior representative. Also present were seven field grade officers from the Pakistani Army and Pakistan's Frontier Corps...

More at Small Wars Journal.

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint (Updated - Yet Again)

by SWJ Editors | Tue, 04/27/2010 - 2:29pm | 13 comments

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint - Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.

"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war," General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter.

The slide has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"PowerPoint makes us stupid," Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat...

More at The New York Times.

More and Related:

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint - NYT comment section

The TX Hammes PowerPoint Challenge - Starbuck, Small Wars Journal

Essay: Dumb-dumb Bullets - TX Hammes, Armed Forces Jorunal

Does the Military Overuse PowerPoint? - The Tank

Quagmire! - Jules Crittenden, Forward Movement

PowerPoint Is Evil - Edward Tufte, Wired

"Dumb-Dumb Bullets" and Information Processing - Adam Elkus, Red Team Journal

PowerPoint, Decision-Making, and Useless Staff Work - Reach 364, Building Peace

Who PowerPoint Empowers - Tom Ricks, The Best Defense

How Many SWJ Writers Can You Spot in this Article? - Starbuck, Wings Over Iraq

A PowerPoint Briefing About Why PowerPoint Is Bad... - Schmedlap

Hollow Point Power Point? - GSGF, GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD

When Technology Is The Problem - Bill Egnor, Firedoglake

Guns and Bullet Points - Julie Weiner, Vanity Fair

Army Discovers PowerPoint Makes You Stupid - Preston Gralla, Computer World

Afghanistan: The PowerPoint Solution - Julian Borger, The Guardian

The Battle for Hearts and Bullet Points - Michael Evans, The Times

The U.S. Military's Fight Against PowerPoint - Althea Manasan, National Post

Beautiful, Pointless Graphs - Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

Why the Military Declared War on Powerpoint - Max Fisher, The Atlantic

Pentagon Uses its Noodle to Win War - Brad Norington, The Australian

Baffling PowerPoint Presentation - Daily Mail

PowerPoint Backlash Grinds Onward - David Perera, Fierce Government

The US Military's War On PowerPoint - Kyle VanHemert, Gizmodo

And of course a blast from the past ppt that got many thinking WTF?:

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation - Peter Norvig

The Persian Gulf Military Balance

by Robert Haddick | Tue, 04/27/2010 - 12:57pm | 0 comments

Anthony Cordesman recently posted his report The Gulf Military Balance in 2010 at the CSIS website. This report (still in working draft form) is a graphical data dump and narrative discussion of conventional and irregular warfare capabilities and trends in the Persian Gulf region.

Some of Cordesman's conclusions:

1. On the charts, Iran records an impressive "bean count" of conventional military hardware. But Cordesman notes the ancient vintage of these systems, their poor state of repair, and inadequate soldier training and concludes that Iran's conventional military capability is limited and dwindling.

2. On the other side of the Gulf, U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, and others have been on hardware spending sprees. Yet in spite of constant urging from U.S. officials, Cordesman notes that defense cooperation among the Gulf Arab states remains much less than what it should be. This lack of cooperation diminishes significant mutual defense synergies these countries could achieve in areas such as air defense, missile defense, sea control in the Persian Gulf, and offensive deterrence directed at moderating Iranian behavior.

3. Cordesman asserts that the Iranian government seems to be directing its attention at high-end asymmetric (nuclear plus theater-range ballistic missiles) and low-end asymmetric (revolutionary subversion, terror, sabotage) capabilities at the expense of funding for conventional military capabilities. Iranian decision makers may have concluded that Iran possesses a comparative advantage in these "asymmetric" capabilities while at the same time concluding that conventional military capabilities are not nearly as useful for projecting power or creating intimidating effects.

Not displayed in Cordesman's charts are U.S. Central Command's military capabilities. This is an appropriate omission. In the long-run, Iranian power will need to be contained and deterred. Best from a U.S. perspective that this be done by America's local Arab allies. Regrettably, as Cordesman notes, although the Gulf Arabs states will have the capacity to contain and deter Iran on their own, such regional deterrence and containment will be in short supply as long as the Arab states squabble rather than cooperate. The result will be a major U.S. military presence in the Gulf, long after the U.S. has scaled down its efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Matt Gallagher on Michael Yon

by SWJ Editors | Tue, 04/27/2010 - 5:17am | 0 comments

Matt Gallagher, author of Kaboom, offers up some commentary and advice on the current milblog flap surrounding Michael Yon's recent Facebook postings. Posted on Gallagher's Kerplunk blogsite.

If you're not familiar with the Michael Yon brouhaha in Afghanistan, here's a good rundown. Short version: embedded journalist and author of Moment of Truth in Iraq makes a cryptic post on Facebook, saying General McChrystal is in over his head. Milblogging community reacts, generally stating that Yon is burned out and needs a break. Yon replies, stating that milbloggers are largely a "hurricane of hot air."

Unlike a lot of milbloggers, I don't know Yon. I've read his stuff, and while it's a little preachy for my taste, it's generally a decent read. And he may very well be right about General McChrystal, I have no idea. But that doesn't change the fact that he's displaying classic dick tendencies right now, something, some of you may remember, I did myself, back in 2008...

... My mid-tour leave in the Mediterranean cured a lot of my ills (the dickish ones and otherwise) back in 2008. Strolls along the beach, beers in the park, and a lot of sleep. Here's hoping Yon gets some of the same soon, and then returns back to his actual job in Afghanistan - war reporting.

More at Kerplunk.

U.S. Training Afghan Villagers to Fight the Taliban

by SWJ Editors | Tue, 04/27/2010 - 2:49am | 1 comment

U.S. Training Afghan Villagers to Fight the Taliban - Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post.

Taliban fighters used to swagger with impunity through this farming village, threatening to assassinate government collaborators. They seeded the main thoroughfare, a dirt road with moonlike craters, with land mines. They paid local men to attack U.S. and Afghan troops.

Then, beginning in late February, a small detachment of U.S. Special Forces soldiers organized nearly two dozen villagers into an armed Afghan-style neighborhood watch group.

These days, the bazaar is thriving. The schoolhouse has reopened. People in the area have become confident enough to report Taliban activity to the village defense force and the police. As a consequence, insurgent attacks have nearly ceased and U.S. soldiers have not hit a single roadside bomb in the area in two months, according to the detachment...

The rapid and profound changes have generated excitement among top U.S. military officials in Afghanistan, fueling hope that such groups could reverse insurgent gains by providing the population a degree of protection that the police, the Afghan army and even international military forces have been unable to deliver...

More at The Washington Post.

It Takes the Villages

by SWJ Editors | Tue, 04/27/2010 - 1:54am | 0 comments

It Takes the Villages - Dr. Seth Jones, Foreign Affairs.

Current efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are based on a misunderstanding of the country's culture and social structure. As three new books show, defeating the Taliban will require local, bottom-up efforts -- beginning with a deep understanding of tribal and subtribal politics.

I met Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, twice in 2009 and was quickly drawn to his unassuming demeanor and erudition. His jet-black beard and round spectacles gave him the aura of a soft-spoken professor, not a battle-hardened guerrilla fighter who had first tasted war at the age of 15. Zaeef told me about his childhood in southern Afghanistan, the Soviet invasion, his life with the Taliban, and the three years he spent in prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. What was particularly striking was his contempt for the United States and what he regarded as its myopic understanding of Afghanistan. "How long has America been in Afghanistan?" Zaeef asked rhetorically. "And how much do Americans know about Afghanistan and its people? Do they understand its culture, its tribes, and its population? I am afraid they know very little."

Zaeef is largely correct. In fact, U.S. Major General Michael Flynn, deputy chief of staff for intelligence in Afghanistan, echoed this point in early 2010: "Eight years into the war in Afghanistan," Flynn wrote in a poignant unclassified paper, "the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied forces operate and the people they seek to persuade." ...

Much more at Foreign Affairs.

This Week at War: Do We Still Need Special Ops?

by Robert Haddick | Fri, 04/23/2010 - 8:48pm | 5 comments

Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) Have the U.S. military's unconventional warriors defined themselves out of a job?

2) If you can't know the future, how do you prepare for it?

Have the U.S. military's unconventional warriors defined themselves out of a job?

What exactly is unconventional warfare? The U.S. military's special operations warriors have struggled with the definition for decades. To some, unconventional warfare encompasses the entire gamut of activities off the traditional battlefield, including support for foreign militaries, support for friendly guerillas, and behind-the-lines reconnaissance and raiding. Doctrinal purists object to this notion. To them, unconventional warfare means something very specific -- support for resistance movements battling governments hostile to the United States. Last year, the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School organized a conference attended by all of the stakeholders in the U.S. special warfare community for the purpose of finally settling on a definition. This they did. But in doing so, did they made unconventional warfare completely unusable as a tool for policymakers?

Here is the new approved definition: "activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary and guerrilla force in a denied area."

The idea of the United States supporting a resistance movement harkens back to U.S. support for French, Yugoslav, and other partisans resisting German occupation during World War II. During the Cold War, Green Berets prepared to drop into Eastern Europe to organize resistance if the Soviet army were to invade Western Europe. But the concept of unconventional warfare was later tarnished by the consequences of U.S. support for the Shah of Iran's overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, failed meddling in Cuba in the 1960s, and the Contra war in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Unconventional warfare has since had to achieve a very high burden of proof to defend its legitimacy.

With the new definition now written into various U.S. Army field manuals, special operations units will begin to implement training programs to prepare U.S. forces to execute such a mission if called on to do so. But if the special operators are preparing for something that is either politically unrealistic or that purposely avoids the most dangerous threats to the United States, will the unconventional warriors have defined themselves out of a job?

Click through to read more ...

How Insurgencies End (Updated)

by SWJ Editors | Fri, 04/23/2010 - 3:09pm | 10 comments

How Insurgencies End - Ben Connable and Martin C. Libicki, Rand.

This study tested conventional wisdom about how insurgencies end against the evidence from 89 insurgencies. It compares a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 89 insurgency case studies with lessons from insurgency and counterinsurgency (COIN) literature. While no two insurgencies are the same, the authors find that modern insurgencies last about ten years and that a government's chances of winning may increase slightly over time. Insurgencies are suited to hierarchical organization and rural terrain, and sanctuary is vital to insurgents. Insurgent use of terrorism often backfires, and withdrawal of state sponsorship can cripple an insurgency, typically leading to its defeat. Inconsistent support to either side generally presages defeat for that side, although weak insurgencies can still win. Anocracies (pseudodemocracies) rarely succeed against insurgencies. Historically derived force ratios are neither accurate nor predictive, and civil defense forces are very useful for both sides. Key indicators of possible trends and tipping points in an insurgency include changes in desertions, defections, and the flow of information to the COIN effort. The more parties in an insurgency, the more likely it is to have a complex and protracted ending. There are no COIN shortcuts.

Read the full study at Rand.

Update: Precedent Suggests Afghanistan Taliban Could Win - Ben Arnoldy, Christian Science Monitor.

While current U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine in Afghanistan broadly conforms to historical best practices, the Taliban have a number of advantages that have produced insurgent success in the past, according to a new study of 89 past and ongoing insurgencies worldwide.

The factors that favor the Taliban include receiving sanctuary and support in another country, learning to be more discriminating in their attacks and fighting a government that's weak and reliant on direct external support.

The historical trends suggest that the Taliban's Achilles heel would be the loss of their Pakistani sanctuary, while the principal American vulnerability is Afghan President Hamid Karzai's weak pseudo democracy.

The study, said the author, cannot be predictive, but it can help the U.S. address or exploit these vulnerabilities...

Much more at The Christian Science Monitor.

Clearing the Final Hurdle

by SWJ Editors | Thu, 04/22/2010 - 7:12pm | 8 comments

Clearing the Final Hurdle: Synthesizing Afghan, US Efforts on the Ground - Major Nate Springer, USA and USMC Counterinsurgency Center Blog.

I had a unique opportunity last month (MAR10) to attend the Counter-Insurgency Academy at Camp Julien, Kabul and later spent a few days at the Regional Command Headquarters -- South in Kandahar. This academy was supported by an unbelievable pool of talent from the International Security Assistance Headquarters (ISAF) ranging from General McChrystal to his primary staff. Although many significant topics were analyzed, none captured my attention more than the discussion of how our Soldiers will partner one-to-one with our Afghan Security Forces on the ground.

General Sher Mohammad Zazai, Commander, 205th Corps, Afghan National Army, spoke of the importance of partnering. He stated, "Full partnership between the Afghan Army and ISAF will create a force in Afghanistan that no one can beat. The American Soldier has the money, technology, and training; however, the Afghan Soldier has the eyes and ears that the American Soldier lacks. Americans are the left hand while Afghans are the right hand. Both hands are used to wash your face." I'm not sure I completely agree with this characterization of US brawn and Afghan wits, but I did understand the jist of his statement. We need to work in closer partnership, each side bringing its considerable strengths to the equation.

So which is the wisest way for our troops to partner with Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF)? The ISAF Headquarters and Staff stressed the intent is to achieve absolute partnership at every level and conduct combined missions, always. This effort is currently underway....

Read the entry post at the USA and USMC Counterinsurgency Center Blog.

General Mattis discusses risk at Slate

by Robert Haddick | Thu, 04/22/2010 - 10:34am | 2 comments

In a multi-part series on the subject of risk, John Dickerson of Slate interviews General James Mattis, USMC. Dickerson's essay, with themes familiar to the SWJ audience, discusses the paradoxes of risk management in irregular warfare.

Click here to read Dickerson's essay.

Counterinsurgency

by SWJ Editors | Wed, 04/21/2010 - 6:11pm | 0 comments

Continue on for the low-down on two new books on counterinsurgency...

New Report: Politics and Power in Kandahar

by SWJ Editors | Wed, 04/21/2010 - 5:44pm | 0 comments

Politics and Power in Kandahar - Carl Forsberg, Institute for the Study of War.

From the ISW press release:

As US, NATO and Afghan allies prepare for a new military offensive in Kandahar province this summer, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has released a fifth report, Politics and Power in Kandahar by Carl Forsberg from the highly acclaimed Afghanistan Report series. This report reveals ISAF's persistent inconsistencies in dealing with Ahmed Wali Karzai's consolidation of power and proposes a new political-military strategy that is necessary for successful counterinsurgency operations.

"ISAF must implement a coherent and coordinated governance strategy in both Kabul and Kandahar for kinetic operations to be successful in the long-term," Afghanistan scholar Carl Forsberg explained. "The popularity of Ahmed Wali Karzai has dramatically decreased in Kandahar because of gross mismanagement and lack of good governance; this only fuels the insurgency and gives legitimacy to the Taliban as an opposition."

The 2 page executive summary and 57 page report by ISW provides a detailed and authoritative overview of the historical governance structures in Kandahar, Kandahar's current powerbrokers, the serious weakness of government institutions and Afghan security forces in Kandahar, and the rise of the Karzai family.

Key finding and recommendations:

- Kandahar is strategic terrain for the Quetta Shura Taliban and the Karzai family, and a central focus of ISAF's 2010 counterinsurgency campaign.

- Ahmed Wali Karzai's influence over Kandahar is the central obstacle to any of ISAF's governance objectives, and a consistent policy for dealing with him must be a central element of any new strategy.

- While most actors in Kandahar call themselves tribal leaders, few influential actors in Kandahar derive their influence from this position. Control over guns, money, and foreign support have become more important as sources of power.

- Anti-government sentiments are exploited and aggravated by the Taliban. Many of the local powerbrokers who are excluded from Ahmed Wali Karzai's network see the Taliban insurgency as the only viable means of political opposition.

Read the full report at the The Institute for the Study of War.

Tanks for the Memories

by SWJ Editors | Wed, 04/21/2010 - 4:30pm | 1 comment

Tanks for the Memories: What Sort of Training Does the Army Need to Focus On? - Tom Ricks, Best Defense at Foreign Policy.

By chance, when I reached into my ragged black Land's End bag for my "subway reading file" during my commute home yesterday afternoon, out popped Military Capabilities for the Hybrid War: Insight from the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon and Gaza, by David E. Johnson of RAND Corp. I'd printed it out a few days ago and forgotten about it.

It is a good short summary piece, and speaks right to some of the questions I had after reading Col. Gentile's worries about the US Army's tank force. In Lebanon in 2006, Johnson concludes, the Israeli military "was largely incapable of joint arms fire and maneuver." Tank training especially had been neglected because it had been "deemed largely irrelevant." ...

End of an Embed, Beginning of a Storm

by SWJ Editors | Tue, 04/20/2010 - 12:01pm | 2 comments

Michael Yon's recent post on his

Facebook page regarding

the

end to his embed is causing a stir in the milblog community: McChrystal's

crew has declared an information war on me. No complaints here. McChrystal's attention

is welcome. It indicates that my posts have hit steel further underlines that McChrystal

is over his head...

Michael

Yon Wake Up Call, Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive writes: There comes a time

when you have to look in the mirror and accept responsibility. It is not a collection

of incompetent public affairs officers or some conspiracy to silence truth telling,

it is his own fault. He has broken the rules time and time again and then when that

bit him in the ass, he bit back.

On Armor: The Debate

by SWJ Editors | Tue, 04/20/2010 - 4:53am | 2 comments

The Death of the Armor Corps - Gian Gentile, Small Wars Journal

Is the Army's Armor Branch Defunct? - Tom Ricks, Best Defense

COINtras Off Their Game - Starbuck, Wings Over Iraq

COIN and Hybrid War: The Demise of Armor? - Judah Grunstein, World Politics Review

Helping Others Defend Themselves

by SWJ Editors | Mon, 04/19/2010 - 6:22pm | 2 comments

Helping Others Defend Themselves: The Future of U.S. Security Assistance - Robert M. Gates, Foreign Affairs.

The United States will continue to face security threats from failed states, writes Robert M. Gates, U.S. secretary of defense, but it is "unlikely to repeat a mission on the scale of those in Afghanistan or Iraq anytime soon--that is, forced regime change followed by nation building under fire." To face the threats of the future, then, Washington will need to "get better at what is called 'building partner capacity': helping other countries defend themselves or, if necessary, fight alongside U.S. forces by providing them with equipment, training, or other forms of security assistance." Currently, the resources to build partner capacity are spread across many parts of the government and military. What is needed, argues Gates, is a pooled fund for capacity building that is shared between the Defense Department and State Department. Such a fund would be able to deal with failed states more effectively and would "create incentives for collaboration between different agencies of the government."

"For the most part, however, the United States' instruments of national power-military and civilian-were set up in a different era for a very different set of threats. The U.S. military was designed to defeat other armies, navies, and air forces, not to advise, train, and equip them. Likewise, the United States' civilian instruments of power were designed primarily to manage relationships between states, rather than to help build states from within."

Read the full article at Foreign Affairs.

The Army's Starfish Program and an Emphasis on Decentralization

by Martin Dempsey | Mon, 04/19/2010 - 4:19pm | 6 comments

The past 8+ years of war has taught us many things as an Army. One particular lesson we've learned is that decentralized threats are best countered by also decentralizing our own capabilities. To adapt to what we've learned, the Army is training its leaders to think, act, and operate more decentralized. Now, through the promotion of mission orders, commander's intent and a new pilot program titled "The Army's Starfish Program", we are taking additional steps to promote decentralization as yet another tool to counter decentralized and networked threats.

The Army's Starfish Program evolved through an opportunistic collaboration between the USA Training and Doctrine Command and Ori Brafman, best-selling author of The Starfish and The Spider. A select group of leaders took part in the pilot program earlier this year and are now reaching out across the Army to share their insights from this unique experience. On 26 April, Ori Brafman will be joined by select students at a Town Hall Meeting at Fort Monroe in the post theater where they will discuss the tenets of the program, their experiences, and the results.

The Town Hall Meeting is open to all servicemembers, their families, and garrison personnel. For those unable to attend due to geography, it will be webcast at http://pl.pscdn.net/003/02467/live3.asx. For those unable to attend the townhall or see the webcast, a tape of the townhall will be hung on the TRADOC webpage in the days following the townhall.

We encourage you to join us to get a sense for how the Army is seeking to learn from its experiences after 8+ years of war.

GEN Martin E. Dempsey

-----

SWJ Editor's Note: General Martin E. Dempsey is Commanding General of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command.

What does Gates fear most about Iran?

by Robert Haddick | Mon, 04/19/2010 - 3:28pm | 5 comments

The weekend's big news was the New York Times leak of some details from Defense Secretary Robert Gates's January memo to James Jones, expressing Gates's concern that the Obama administration didn't have an adequate long-range policy for dealing with Iran and the consequences of its nuclear program. My colleagues at Foreign Policy (Blake Hounshell, Daniel Drezner, and Peter Feaver) have written their analyses of the Gates memo, all of which I recommend reading.

We already know that neither the Bush nor Obama administrations have gained any traction with this issue. According the NYT article, "the United States would ensure that Iran would not 'acquire a nuclear capability.'" None of the policy options aimed at preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power have much chance of success. Protected by China and probably Russia, the UN Security Council will not pass economic sanctions that will change the decision calculus in Tehran. Iran's mullahs appear to have crushed the Green movement, so regime change appears off the table. But those hoping for relief through a new government forget that Iran's nuclear program is very popular inside Iran; a new government is very likely to continue the program. Finally, even if some deal were to lead to an expansion of IAEA inspections, events from the past few decades have soiled the reputation of inspectors to thwart the aims of determined proliferators. Gates was at the top levels of the CIA and National Security Council when both his agency and the IAEA missed Iraq's nuclear progress in the late 1980s. Gross intelligence errors the other way followed 10-15 years later. As a career intelligence officer, Gates knows all too well the fallibility of that profession.

Starting with his service on the Iraq Study Group and leading up to the present, Gates no doubt believes his job is to extract the U.S. military from Iraq and Afghanistan under conditions resembling success. For him, this is undoubtedly a satisfying way to end a long career in government. Seeing how all other courses of action regarding Iran are doomed to fail, his January memo to Jones may have emerged from a fear that he and his department would soon be called on to execute "the last resort" against Iran, even when everyone knows that an air campaign would not be decisive but would result in another open-ended entanglement.

Having worked so hard to clean up the other messes, Gates undoubtedly doesn't want to end his career having ordered the start of another. Did his memo help avoid that? Maybe Gates will instead arrange his retirement before "the last resort" arrives on his desk.

Social Scientists Do Counterinsurgency

by SWJ Editors | Mon, 04/19/2010 - 10:01am | 0 comments

Social Scientists Do Counterinsurgency - Nicholas Lemann, The New Yorker.

... But if "global war" isn't the right approach to terror what is? Experts on terrorism have produced shelves' worth of new works on this question. For outsiders, reading this material can be a jarring experience. In the world of terrorism studies, the rhetoric of righteousness gives way to equilibrium equations. Nobody is good and nobody is evil. Terrorists, even suicide bombers, are not psychotics or fanatics; they're rational actors—that is, what they do is explicable in terms of their beliefs and desires—who respond to the set of incentives that they find before them. The tools of analysis are realism, rational choice, game theory, decision theory: clinical and bloodless modes of thinking.

That approach, along with these scholars' long immersion in the subject, can produce some surprising observations. In A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq (Yale; $30), Mark Moyar, who holds the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism at the Marine Corps University, tells us that, in Afghanistan, the Taliban's pay scale (financed by the protection payments demanded from opium farmers) is calibrated to be a generous multiple of the pay received by military and police personnel (financed by U.S. aid); no wonder official Afghan forces are no match for the insurgents. Audrey Kurth Cronin, a professor of strategy at the National War College, reminds us, in How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns (Princeton; $29.95), that one can find out about Al Qaeda's policy for coí¶rdinating attacks by reading a book called The Management of Barbarism, by Abu Bakr Naji, which has been available via Al Qaeda's online library. (Naji advises that, if jihadis are arrested in one country after an attack, a cell elsewhere should launch an attack as a display of resilience.) In Radical, Religious, and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism (M.I.T.; $24.95), Eli Berman traces the origins of the Taliban to a phenomenon that long preceded the birth of modern radical Islam: they are a direct descendant of the Deobandi movement, which began in nineteenth-century India in opposition to British colonial rule and, among other things, established a system of religious schools...

Much more at The New Yorker.

Want to Read Arab News in English?

by SWJ Editors | Mon, 04/19/2010 - 8:27am | 0 comments

Want to Read Arab News in English? Here's How. - Tom A. Peter, Christian Science Monitor.

Despite a post-9/11 surge of Westerners learning Arabic, the world's fifth-most-spoken language, English and Arabic speakers are still largely segregated on the Web.

A new translation website called Meedan aims to close that gap. Meedan ("public square" in Arabic) is creating a public forum for English and Arabic speakers to translate, read, and debate Middle East news.

"There was a real dearth of opportunities [after 9/11] for Arabic speakers in the Middle East and English speakers in the US and elsewhere to interact and share their viewpoints on world events and to see where those viewpoints diverged," says George Weyman, community manager for Meedan. "It's crucial that we open up channels of communication between the West and the Middle East."

Relying on a combination of machine and human translation, the site offers Middle East news on pages split between English and Arabic. When users comment on a story, responses are automatically translated into either English or Arabic...

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

Meedan - Bilingual News Sharing Site

More On Armor

by SWJ Editors | Sat, 04/17/2010 - 11:55am | 7 comments

COIN and Hybrid War: The Demise of Armor? - Judah Grunstein, World Politics Review.

... two other items serve as anecdotal illustrations of what I've previously flagged as another consequence of COIN-centric thinking, namely, the decline not so much of conventional warfare, as has often been posited, but of armor, in particular, as a central pillar of ground operations. According to Jean-Dominique Merchet, as part of a budget-induced reorganization of its armored regiments, the French army will be reducing some from four to three squadrons of AMX 10 RC light tanks. Meanwhile, Ajai Shukla reports that following successful tests against the Russian T-90, the Indian army will be increasing its orders of the indigenously produced Arjun main battle tank.

The contrast illustrates the kinds of environments in which tank commanders enjoy promising career perspectives. India and Pakistan seem like obvious bull markets, as does Russia. (Georgia, too, although the career perspective is somewhat mitigated by the less-promising outlook for life expectancy). But I'm not so sure the same holds for Western Europe or the U.S. Again, that's not to say that we no longer need to prepare for conventional war with a nation-state, but rather that even in the conventional wars we're most likely to fight, massive armored formations are unlikely to play a role...

More at World Politics Review.

Taliban Targets U.S. Contractors

by SWJ Editors | Sat, 04/17/2010 - 7:37am | 0 comments

Taliban Targets U.S. Contractors Working on Projects in Afghanistan - Joshua Partlow, Washington Post.

The Taliban has begun regularly targeting U.S. government contractors in southern Afghanistan, stepping up use of a tactic that is rattling participating firms and could undermine development projects intended to stem the insurgency, according to U.S. officials.

Within the past month, there have been at least five attacks in Helmand and Kandahar provinces against employees of U.S. Agency for International Development contractors who are running agricultural projects, building roads, maintaining power plants and working with local officials.

The USAID "implementing partners," as they are known, employ mainly Afghans, who are overseen by foreigners. The companies' role is becoming increasingly important as more aid money floods into southern Afghanistan as part of a dual effort to generate goodwill and bolster the Kabul government...

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