Blog Posts

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

Topics include:

1. Why the Taliban are watching the polls in Britain,

2. Adaptation means learning how to learn.

Editors Note -- the original announcement here has been edited to reflect the updated [original] content for the submission deadline and some of the verbiage in the topics. Be sure to look at the current and complete information posted here, including the detailed submission instructions referred to below.

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Papers are sought on the topics below. Winning entries and select others will be published in future special volumes of Small Wars Journal. For each of the two topics, a $3,000 Grand Prize and two $500 Honorable Mentions will be awarded. Hence $8,000 total purse.

Papers should be 3,000 to 5,000 words in length. Papers will be blind reviewed and judged primarily for clarity of presentation, relevant insights to the question asked, and overall significance of the key points made to the practice of small wars. No extra points awarded for length, name dropping, or how epic the incidents discussed were as distinct from the weight of the insights. Papers need not be OIF- / OEF-centric. Papers must resonate beyond a single silo, i.e. they must touch on at least some aspect of joint, coalition, interagency, multi-disciplinary, or cross-cultural significance.

Papers are to be submitted by midnight on November 30 [November 10], 2009, with winners to be announced in January, 2010. One entry per author per question. Standard writing competition mumbo jumbo will apply, we will publish a final announcement shortly with those gruesome details, including detailed submission instructions.

Gates Sharpens Rhetoric In Dispute on F-22 Funds - Greg Jaffe, Washington Post.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made an impassioned case Thursday for terminating the F-22 program after production of 187 planes, as the Obama administration sought to blunt a bipartisan push to add money to the defense budget for the fighter jet.

"If we can't bring ourselves to make this tough but straightforward decision -- reflecting the judgment of two very different presidents, two different secretaries of defense, two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the current Air Force secretary and chief of staff -- where do we draw the line?" he said in a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago. "If we can't get this right, what on earth can we get right?"

In recent days, House and Senate lawmakers from both parties have defied the White House and put money back into the $680 billion defense spending bill to keep the F-22 production line open, prompting President Obama to threaten a veto. It is not clear whether F-22 backers have enough votes to keep the program going. "It looks pretty close," Gates told reporters...

More at The Washington Post.

Text of Secreatry Gates' Address - DefenseLink

... Air superiority and missile defense -- two areas where the budget has attracted the most criticism -- provide case studies. Let me start with the controversy over the F-22 fighter jet. We had to consider, when preparing for a future potential conventional state-on-state conflict, what is the right mix of the most advanced fighter aircraft and other weapons to deal with the known and projected threats to US air supremacy? For example, we now have unmanned aerial vehicles that can simultaneously perform intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance missions as well as deliver precision-guided bombs and missiles. The president's budget request would buy 48 of the most advanced UAVs -- aircraft that have a greater range than some of our manned fighters, in addition to the ability to loiter for hours over a target. And we will buy many more in the future.

We also took into consideration the capabilities of the newest manned combat aircraft program, the stealth F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The F-35 is 10 to 15 years newer than the F-22, carries a much larger suite of weapons, and is superior in a number of areas -- most importantly, air-to-ground missions such as destroying sophisticated enemy air defenses. It is a versatile aircraft, less than half the total cost of the F-22, and can be produced in quantity with all the advantages produced by economies of scale -- some 500 will be bought over the next five years, more than 2,400 over the life of the program. And we already have eight foreign development partners. It has had development problems to be sure, as has every advanced military aircraft ever fielded. But if properly supported, the F-35 will be the backbone of America's tactical aviation fleet for decades to come if -- and it is a big if -- money is not drained away to spend on other aircraft that our military leadership considers of lower priority or excess to our needs.

Having said that, the F-22 is clearly a capability we do need -- a niche, silver-bullet solution for one or two potential scenarios -- specifically the defeat of a highly advanced enemy fighter fleet. The F-22, to be blunt, does not make much sense anyplace else in the spectrum of conflict. Nonetheless, supporters of the F-22 lately have promoted its use for an ever expanding list of potential missions. These range from protecting the homeland from seaborne cruise missiles to, as one retired general recommended on TV, using F-22s to go after Somali pirates who in many cases are teenagers with AK-47s -- a job we already know is better done at much less cost by three Navy SEALs. These are examples of how far-fetched some of the arguments have become for a program that has cost $65 billion -- and counting -- to produce 187 aircraft, not to mention the thousands of uniformed Air Force positions that were sacrificed to help pay for it...

Gates Warns Against Excess with F-22s - Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times

Gates and Congress Duel - August Cole, Wall Street Journal.

Defense Chief Criticizes Bid to Add F-22s - Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times

Gates Challenges Congress - Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor

More F-22 Fighters 'Far-Fetched' - Tony Capaccio and Allison Bennett, Bloomberg

Gates: Future Jet Supporters Risking Today's Troops - Noah Shachtman, Wired

Gates: DoD Must End Business as Usual - Samantha L. Quigley, AFPS

No More F-22s - Washington Post

Wasteful Defense Spending a Clear and Present Danger - Wall Street Journal

Happy Talk About War Doesn't Fly With Troops on the Ground - David Wood, Politics Daily.

... If we learned anything from conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is that war is uncontrollable. That it does not march to the drumbeats of rhetoric or the PowerPoint plans coming from Washington. That to some extent it is unpredictable -- except for the seldom-heard prediction that war will take longer, cost more and resolve less than hoped for.

Obama's comments brought to mind an off-the-cuff remark by President Bush in October 2006, when bloodshed in Iraq had gone off the charts and the Pentagon was desperately casting about for a new strategy.

Asked if "we're winning'' in Iraq, Bush blurted: "Absolutely, we're winning!''

Should presidents and their administrations be relentless cheerleaders after they send young Americans into combat? Or should they risk losing public support by passing on the bad news from their commanders? ...

Much more at Politics Daily.

Obama Administration Searching for an Exit Strategy in Afghanistan - Herschel Smith, The Captain's Journal.

... Nothing happens in counterinsurgency in short order, we observed, and thus his counsel to the President is poor. The Generals are indignant, and have retained the right in their mind to request the troops they believe to be necessary for the campaign. But this view has not been heard in Washington, and not only does Obama's counselors and advisers believe that the campaign can be turned in short order, but we now learn that Obama believes this - contrary to doctrine, contrary to the views of General Petraeus, contrary to the Generals, and contrary to the lessons of Iraq. Everyone wants an exit from war. No one likes to see the human cost of battle. The question is not one of exit - it is of when and how?

While issues of life and death play themselves out in Afghanistan and sons of America continue to lose limbs and lives, the administration blythely continues to believe in myths and fairly tales concerning war and peace, and fashion plans for Afghanistan that have no chance to succeed. The plans must change, but until they do, the question is what the cost will be in national treasure and blood?

Much more at The Captain's Journal.

Iran Simmers, America Moves On - Wall Street Journal editorial.

That didn't take long. President Obama last week gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an autumn deadline to negotiate over Iran's nuclear program. "We remain ready to engage with Iran, but the time for action is now," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. So much for waiting to see how Iran's post-election drama plays out.

Premature would be a generous description of this diplomatic outreach. Leave aside that this regime can't be trusted to negotiate anything. More immediately relevant is that millions of Iranians refuse to accept the "leaders" of the "Islamic Republic" (in Mrs. Clinton's words) that the Administration so eagerly aims to engage. Massive street protests roiled Tehran, Shiraz, Esfahan and other cities in the wake of the transparently fraudulent June 12 poll. The Basij and Revolutionary Guard goon squads got the people off the streets, killing an unknown number, and the regime blocked nearly all foreign reporting out of Iran...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Kicking The CIA (Again) - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

As other countries watch the United States lacerate its intelligence service - for activities already investigated or never undertaken - perhaps they admire America's commitment to democracy and the rule of law. More likely, I fear, they conclude that we are just plain nuts.

The latest "scandals" involving the Central Intelligence Agency are genuinely hard to understand, other than in terms of political payback. Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing a prosecutor to investigate criminal actions by CIA officers involved in the harsh interrogation of al-Qaeda prisoners. But the internal CIA report on which he's said to be basing this decision was referred five years ago to the Justice Department, where attorneys concluded that no prosecution was warranted.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress are indignant that they were never briefed about a program to assassinate al-Qaeda operatives in friendly countries. Never mind that the program wasn't implemented, or that the United States is routinely assassinating al-Qaeda operatives using unmanned drones. And never mind that Leon Panetta, the new CIA director - fearing a potential flap - briefed Congress about the program soon after he became aware of it. There was a flap anyway -- with a new hemorrhage of secrets and a new shudder from America's intelligence partners around the world...

More at The Washington Post.

The Surge: A Military History

By Kimberly Kagan

Book Description: Understanding the role of combat in the Iraq war is essential for both the American people and the U.S. military. Recognizing the objectives of both sides and the plans developed to attain those objectives provides the context for understanding the war. The Surge is an effort to provide such a framework to help understand not only where we have been, but also what happens as we move forward.

Book Review: Turning the Tide Of Battle - Brendan Simms, Wall Street Journal.

... "The Surge" challenges existing accounts in two ways. First, although Ms. Kagan is rightly respectful of Gen. David Petraeus, who led American forces during the surge, she avoids celebrating his genius at the expense of other important figures. She draws attention to the pivotal role played by Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, who commanded the day-to-day operations of the Multi-National Corps in Iraq. She shows him helping to ensure that co-operating tribal forces submit fingerprints, weapons serial numbers and family details that would make it difficult for them to take up arms again. It was Lt. Gen. Odierno who executed Operation Phantom Thunder in June 2007, synchronized operations that, as he told Ms. Kagan, aimed to "eliminate accelerants to Baghdad violence from enemy support zones." Other key players include Col. J.B. Burton, commander of the Dagger Brigade that drove the insurgents out of northwest Baghdad, and David Sutherland, whose combat team pacified the eastern province of Diyala. Ms. Kagan does not mention -- though she might have -- the analysts who helped the U.S. to rethink its counterinsurgency strategy, such as John Nagl and David Kilcullen.

Second, Ms. Kagan skewers the notion that the surge marked a shift from unreflective war-fighting to a "smarter" strategy that combined military and civil elements. This notion, in its extreme form, holds that the additional brigades were a relatively minor factor in a process driven primarily by a political change of heart among former insurgents. Ms. Kagan shows the opposite to have been the case...

Read more of the review at The Wall Street Journal.

What to Read on Fighting Insurgencies - Eliot A. Cohen, Foreign Affairs.

Interest in counterinsurgency comes and goes. During the 1950s and 1960s, soldiers, politicians, and scholars wrote voluminously on what was sometimes called "revolutionary war," a supposedly new mode of conflict that enabled nationalist and communist movements (and some combinations of the two) to thwart or even defeat seemingly stronger European colonial powers. The Vietnam War generated a rich literature on the topic, but attention waned with the U.S. withdrawal from Indochina and the American desire to avoid irregular warfare in the future. In recent years, however, hard experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have rekindled interest in the subject and caused even some experts to reconsider old ways of waging "the war of the flea."

Continue on for Eliot Cohen's recommended reading at Foreign Affairs.

Is It Worth It? - The Difficult Case for War in Afghanistan - Stephen Biddle, The American Interest.

The war in Afghanistan has been nearly invisible to the American public since its initial combat phase ended in early 2002, but it has rapidly come once again into view. Indeed, the war is now poised to become perhaps the most controversial and divisive issue in U.S. defense policy.

Managing this war will pose difficult problems both in Afghanistan and here at home. The strategic case for waging war is stronger than that for disengaging, but not by much: The war is a close call on the merits. The stakes for the United States are largely indirect; it will be an expensive war to wage; like most wars, its outcome is uncertain; even success is unlikely to yield a modern, prosperous Switzerland of the Hindu Kush; and as a counterinsurgency campaign its conduct is likely to increase losses and violence in the short term in exchange for a chance at stability in the longer term.

But failure is not inevitable. The U.S. military is now a far more capable counterinsurgency force than the Soviets who lost to the mujaheddin in the 1980s; the Obama Administration is committed to reforming a corrupt government in Kabul that the Bush Administration mostly accepted; and perhaps most important, the United States has the advantage of a deeply flawed enemy in the Taliban. The stakes, moreover, are important even though indirect: Failure could have grave consequences for the United States...

Much more at The American Interest.

Pentagon Deploys New Troops to Iraq, With a Twist - Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor.

The Pentagon announced new troop deployments Tuesday that begin to formalize the role of soldiers in Iraq as advisers to Iraqi forces instead of combatants gunning for insurgents.

This year and next, the Pentagon will deploy four new units called Advisory and Assistance Brigades to Iraq. The US military has been advising the Iraqi security forces for several years, but this is the first time the Defense Department has designed a training unit tailored to the needs of Iraq. It reflects the more prominent training role that is emerging for American troops there...

The deployment of the four new units of about 3,500 soldiers each will take place between this fall and next spring. Ultimately, the Pentagon will send to Iraq at least two more Advisory and Assistance Brigades, or AABs, which could deploy in separate units like the ones being deployed currently, infused into traditional combat brigades, or some combination of the two.

The units include more civil engineers, military police, and logistics personnel. They may also include military or civilian specialists to help foster Iraqi rule of law, governance, economic development, and cultural advising, defense officials say...

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

After suffering another humiliating defeat in local elections in Tokyo, Prime Minister Taro Aso has called for a general election for Japan's lower house of parliament to be held on August 30. Aso's Liberal Democratic Party has, except for a quirky two-year period in the mid-1990s, basically ruled Japanese politics since the country regained its sovereignty after World War II. Yet the LDP is predicted to lose power to the Democratic Party, an event which would be a watershed in Japanese political history.

Will it also be a watershed for the U.S.-Japan strategic alliance?

Last Saturday, Mexico's federal police and army paid the price for arresting Arnold Rueda Medina, a lieutenant in Mexico's La Familia drug cartel.

The urgent question is whether Mexico's institutions will be able to enforce the rule of law through accepted civil procedures. If not, will Mexico be forced to attack its drug cartels the same way Colombia brought down Pablo Escobar?

Jules Crittenden of Forward Movement e-mails:

OK, I'm confused. I thought that was what they were supposed to be doing. I'm pretty sure that's what Bill Clinton had in mind when he was lobbing cruise missiles onto assorted patches of desert and rocky crags in Afghanistan. I know that is pretty much was George Bush was talking about with his "dead or alive" speech. In fact, when the U.S. military blew up Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the CIA started lobbing Hellfires into Yemen and Waziristan, I thought that was the basic idea.

Of course he's talking about the big hush-hush secret that the United States plotted to kill AQ leaders as reported in today's Wall Street Journal. Go figure...

Striking a Balance - Frank G. Hoffman, Armed Forces Journal.

We are in another post-Iraq war debate about how to best posture our military investments for the future. The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review will center on the critical question about the evolving character of conflict. Exactly what kinds of wars are we expecting to fight, and how should we allocate scarce time and resources to maximize readiness and deterrence while minimizing risk? The not-so-subtle groundswell of resentment, if not outright bureaucratic resentment, coming from Defense Secretary Robert Gates' effort to allocate just 10 percent of the Pentagon's investment account for irregular warfare suggests that this will not be a simple matter.

Today's post-Iraq strategy and forces debate was first depicted in Andrew Bacevich's tart Atlantic Monthly essay, "The Petraeus Doctrine." He portrayed a stark choice between two competing camps in the U.S. military. At one end of the spectrum of conflict, he observed that there was a group which he derisively called the "Crusaders," who were promoting an emphasis on counterinsurgency and irregular threats as the proper focus for our armed forces. At the other end of the spectrum, he identified a competing school of thought, which he labeled the "Traditionalists." Bacevich personalized the ongoing debate by using two prominent contemporary authors, retired Army officer John Nagl and West Point's Col. Gian Gentile, as the polar protagonists.

This "black and white" option set created a false binary choice that is great for media consumption but represents a gross oversimplification and distorted conception of America's strategic options. It also created a caricature of the protagonists who offer much more sophisticated arguments when reviewed closely in context...

Much more at Armed Forces Journal.

Continue on for recent news and commentary concerning British operations in Afghanistan to include Helmand force levels, equipment issues and public support...

Carrots and sticks: When is poppy eradication justified?

By Allison Brown

The common Counter Narcotics term is "carrot and stick" -- incentives to diversify out of illicit drugs linked to a real threat to of negative consequences for people who resist change. Experience shows that incentives and threats are necessary parts of a comprehensive supply reduction strategy and that they are effective in locations where cropping systems are not managed by gangsters with guns.

The recent announcement that the USA will no longer push eradication in Afghanistan is a welcome one. The previous administration applied the stick before the carrot was in sight. Targeting politically powerless and impoverished Afghan farmers made the Afghan population very unhappy with many negative follow-on effects that are described elsewhere.

While it is correct to put eradication on hold for now, the firm commitment to rational eradication must also be present if incentive programs are to work. The key word here is "rational".

For the past few years the British government working on a set of science-based metrics to determine when and where poppy eradication should be conducted. The criteria are based largely on the work of David Mansfield and others who have been documenting poppy cultivation patterns in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region for a long time. See Economic Incentives and Development Initiatives to Reduce Opium Production - a World Bank report by Christopher Ward, David Mansfield, Peter Oldham and William Byrd - one of the finest works to be found on this topic. (Also search here for a series of six reports that has become known as the "Drivers Report" report)...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding the research and development of a four-legged "walker" vehicle known as the Boston Dynamics BigDog. A marvel of modern robotics technology, it has demonstrated incredible stability and maneuverability on steep, snow-covered slopes and even on ice. In many ways, it resembles a miniature version of the four-legged AT-AT Walkers from The Empire Strikes Back, although it appears to be far more stable (then again, I haven't seen anyone tie its legs up with a tow cable, so the jury is still out).

As we discovered in Iraq, an effective counterinsurgency strategy requires a significant number of infantry maneuvering about the battlefield on foot, as opposed to hunkered down in their vehicles. Although the forthcoming All-Terrain Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (in keeping with the Star Wars theme, AT-MRAP) might have its use in a number of areas, nothing will be able to replace the effectiveness of the infantryman patrolling on the ground. Indeed, during the Iraq War, the use of dismounted patrols as opposed to the "commute to work" philosophy which dominated American strategy during the early half of the Iraq War seems to have contributed, at least in part, to the decrease in violence.

No matter how far we advance in manufacturing technology, we increasingly seem to load our infantrymen down with more and more weight. In Afghanistan, where NATO troops are conducting dismounted patrols over steep, rocky mountains, a simple patrol requires immense physical effort, particularly at the higher altitudes, where the air is thin. Surely, a vehicle like the BigDog would be of use in Afghanistan to carry the bulkiest portions of combat equipment.

But leave it to the US Marines—always short of money and coming up with new ways to stretch their dollars—to come up with a much cheaper alternative to the BigDog, using mules as pack animals, just as the Taliban do. It may not be as sexy as the new BigDog, and they may be temperamenta at times, but they have gotten the job done for centuries. While the BigDog represents incredible technology which will undoubtedly be used in a number of different applications--military and civil--did we really need a mega-expensive walker to carry a few rucksacks when a mule would have done just as well?

The terrain in Afghanistan brings up a number of interesting issues. In order to get off the mega-FOBs and patrol the countryside, troops will need some sort of ground transportation. HMMWVs and MRAPs are, as of now, somewhat restricted in the terrain of Afghanistan. With foot marches being slow and tiring, why not outfit a good number of our troops with Four-Wheeled All-Terrain Vehicles? ATVs have been used in small numbers by the US military for quite some time. They would provide a level of mobility that our troops currently do not possess, and they would certainly not be as expensive as the million-dollar-a-pop MRAP, and considerably more mobile. In fact, an earlier SWJ article which laid out the capabilities of the now-cancelled Future Combat System included a description of a vehicle which was dubbed the "M-5 Tactical Segway" (based on an off-road four-wheeled Segway variant). I will be the first to admit that this project suffers from poor advertising (The words "Tactical Segway" give me the image of a platoon full of socially awkward losers whirring down the street on the two-wheel variant). However, a four-wheeled vehicle certainly looks as if it has many supporters within the military establishment.

Focus question for the SWJ crowd: What sorts of transportation systems would you want to see in Afghanistan?

Hat tip to the U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center (thanks John) for sending along this briefing presentation on the University of Kansas Community Tool Box.

The Community Tool Box is is "the world's largest resource for free information on essential skills for building healthy communities. It offers more than 7,000 pages of practical guidance in creating change and improvement, and is growing as a global resource for this work." It contains practical step-by-step guidance in specific community-building skills in over 300 sections. Best of all it is online and accessible to deployed units and personnel who might have a need for the varied skill-sets contained on the site.

Per the COIN Center - Applicability is evident for anyone working with Provincial Reconstruction Teams, Human Terrain Teams, Civil Affair Teams, Civilian Response Corps, Advanced Civilian Teams, etc., as well as general purpose forces that need just in time, internet based resources that can walk them/guide them through and improve their competency in such areas as negotiation, analyzing problems, building leadership, developing an intervention, evaluating an initiative, creating and maintaining coalitions and partnerships, increasing participation and membership and other competency areas critical to successful civil-military operations, humanitarian assistance and disaster response environments.

New Defense Department Plan on Strategic Communication and Science and Technology

By Matt Armstrong

Cross-posted at MountainRunner

A newly released report from the Department of Defense may be the first to specifically consider the role of science and technology (S&T) efforts supporting the broad range of Strategic Communication (SC) activities across the whole of government. The Strategic Communication Science and Technology Plan, April 2009, (596kb PDF) produced by the Rapid Reaction Technology Office (RRTO) within the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Director, Defense Research Engineering (DDRE), responds to direction in the Fiscal Year 2009 National Defense Authorization Act, which calls for the Department to leverage these efforts to designate an "S&T thrust area for strategic communication and focus on critical S&T opportunities."

Congress and RRTO has authorized publication of this report on MountainRunner.us...

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

Topics include:

1. Is Obama channeling Bush in Afghanistan?

2. Why insurgencies lose.

How to Win in Afghanistan - Brigadier Justin Kelly, Quadrant Magazine.

Military activity is never directed against material force alone; it is always aimed simultaneously at the moral forces which give it life, and the two cannot be separated.

--Clausewitz

General Sir Gerald Templar's admonition during the Malayan Emergency that "the answer [to the insurgency] lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and the minds of the people" has echoed through the ensuing half-century and has become the basic precept on which counter-insurgency campaigns are - or apparently should be - designed. Nowadays, hardly a day passes in which some journalist or general is not reminding us that there is no military solution to the war in Afghanistan. Echoing this proposition, in January 2009, the Secretary General of NATO argued that good governance "would suck the oxygen out of the insurgency". Similar statements were made about the war in Iraq; to argue against Bush's 2007 "surge" of troops and to emphasise that here lay a "quagmire" - dreaded by all in the US Congress and the New York Times - from which immediate withdrawal was the only solution.

This essay argues that aspects of the above propositions may be true - but they are irrelevant. That, in reality, there is no military solution to any war; that "hearts and minds" might hold the solution but they are beyond our immediate reach; that good governance (and its corollaries of law and order and national infrastructure meeting the physical needs of the community) might suck the oxygen out of an insurgency but is at best a secondary factor unattainable for many years; and that we are, in our timeless way, attempting to fit square Malayan pegs into round Middle Eastern holes. The essay concludes that until there is security there be no real progress and, as a result, we should be doing more fighting and fewer good deeds.

It is not clear from where our present woolly thinking emerged. It is a characteristic trait of humans that we try to understand events and decide on actions by the application of metaphor: "this situation looks like the one last week, Action A worked then, I'll try Action A again today". In many situations this works perfectly well, in some it does not. The present application of the "British Model" of counter-insurgency to quite different contexts may be an example of this approach to problem solving. Certainly, the media, the public and politicians find it easier to argue for the benefits of reconstruction, education, political reform - hearts and minds - than they do for the remorseless hunting down and destruction of insurgents.

Equally, perhaps, part of our problem may be that, because of some its specific attributes, the military has tended to conceptually separate counter-insurgency from the rest of its understanding of war, giving it a level of uniqueness which it does not warrant and perhaps clouding our understanding of it. Although in both Iraq and Afghanistan, on the balance of probabilities, we will eventually muddle through and bring the war to some kind of acceptable conclusion, it would be better if we understood what it was that we were about...

Much more at Quadrant.

Bonus - Brigadier Justin Kelly on How to Win in Afghanistan - Quandrant videos - six parts:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Commander to Seek Expansion of Afghan Forces, Officials Say - Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly arrived top commander in Afghanistan, has concluded that Afghan security forces will have to expand far beyond currently planned levels if President Obama's strategy for winning the war there is to succeed, according to senior military officials.

Such an expansion would require additional billions beyond the $7.5 billion the administration has budgeted annually to build up the Afghan army and police over the next several years, and the likely deployment of thousands more US troops as trainers and advisers, officials said.

McChrystal has not yet completed a 60-day assessment of the war due next month. But Defense Department officials in Washington and in Kabul said he has informed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, including in a status update this week, of the need to increase the Afghan force substantially. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss findings that have not yet been made public.

The Afghan army is already scheduled to grow from 85,000 to 134,000, an expansion originally expected to take five years but now fast-tracked for completion by 2011. Several senior Pentagon officials indicated that an adequate size for the Afghan force might be twice the expanded number...

Much more at The Washington Post.

Iraq's Premier Maliki Says He Plans to Thank US for Sacrifices - Gina Chon, Wall Street Journal.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki struck a conciliatory tone ahead of his trip to Washington, talking about his gratitude for US sacrifices in Iraq, and offering to negotiate a settlement between Iraq's federal government and the country's Kurdish enclave as tensions heighten between the two.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal as he prepared for a visit to the US on July 21, Mr. Maliki said he planned to thank America for its shared sacrifice with the Iraqi people in the tumultuous post-Saddam Hussein years since the US-led invasion in 2003.

"We have [achieved] a combined victory against terrorism, and there have been sacrifices from both sides that brought fruitful results and democracy to Iraq," Mr. Maliki said.

During the June drawdown of US troops from Iraqi cities, Mr. Maliki praised the Iraqi security services' ability to take over from American forces. But he shied away from offering praise or thanks to US soldiers.

Some American commanders have said they understood that Mr. Maliki's seeming slight was driven by domestic politics. Still, a gesture by Mr. Maliki acknowledging US sacrifice could help to placate some rankled American commanders on the ground...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

This is a sad but true story, many who contribute and visit here probably have opinions concerning this once "acknowledged guru" of our operations in Vietnam. Ben Steelman of the Wilmington Star-News has an update - sort-of - enough said.

I'll keep it short and simple - like us (SWJ) - the Center for Complex Operations (CCO) offers up a venue for substantive interaction amongst the diverse players critical to success in the interesting times we live and operate in.

Also like us -- and more on this later concerning SWJ -- CCO operates on a shoe-string budget -- but is kept alive by and large through the foresight and passion of its small cadre of dedicated personnel. Seems to be the norm right now -- those who offer up more on our most important issues -- operate on less resources and support -- or in some cases -- next to nothing.

With that I'll temporarily get off my soapbox as to draw your attention to a short but important CCO event:

Center for Complex Operations: 2nd Annual Conference

July 28, 2009

National Defense University

Washington, D.C.

The Center for Complex Operations Second Annual Conference will introduce the CCO's latest initiatives, including lessons learned collection efforts, a complex operations journal, and fourteen new case studies written for teaching and training.

Date and Time: July 28, 2009 at 2:00PM. The conference will be followed by a cocktail reception.

Agenda

1:30 PM Registration

2:00 PM Opening Remarks

Dr. Hans Binnendijk

Director, Center for Technology and National Security Policy

Ambassador John E. Herbst

Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, Department of State

Dr. James Schear

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Department of Defense

2:45 Keynote Address

Lieutenant General David W. Barno, U.S. Army (Retired)

Director, Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies

3:15 Break

3:30 Lessons Learned from the Three Ds

Moderator: Michael Miklaucic, CCO (USAID)

Panelist 1: Ambassador James Dobbins, RAND

Panelist 2: Colonel (P) H.R. McMaster, TRADOC, Army Capabilities Integration Center

Panelist 3: Dr. David Kilcullen, Crumpton Group

4:45 CCO Research Initiatives: Complex Operations Case Studies Series

Moderator: Bernard Carreau, CCO

Panelist 1: Colonel Peter Curry, Marine Corps War College (Invited)

Panelist 2: Dr. Volker Franke, McDaniel College (Invited)

5:30 Closing Session

Ambassador Robin Raphel, Senior Vice President, Cassidy and Associates (Invited)

6:00 Reception

Registration

Please RSVP to Jacqueline Carpenter at [email protected] or (202) 685-6348.

Location

Lincoln Hall Auditorium, National Defense University, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C.

For additional Information: Check the CCO Portal for event updates: ccoportal.org.