For those tired of the mainstream media's twisted presentation of facts and generally warped reasoning, pick up Ralph Peters' latest book. Anytime you are frustrated by the banal posturing of government officials and want straight-forward thinking, take a close look at Wars of Blood and Faith. It is a coherent assessment of today's most pressing threats and opportunities from Africa to India to the Middle East. So if you're a student of strategic affairs, a policy official enshrouded with the official view and want to break out of the blinkered pap you get from the party line, or simply an American citizen who wants to find insightful and at times brutally frank perspectives on current challenges, you don't need not to look any further. Ralph Peters and Wars of Blood and Faith provide the most penetrating assessment of what could be called the age of identity-based conflict.
I know I don't need to puff up the author's reputation, which was well established by his two decades of service to the Nation as an Army intelligence officer. His longstanding credentials as a fearless, perceptive, and accurate analyst are hard to beat. With more than 20 books to his credit, he somehow keeps up a prolific volume of quality material. In this anthology, Ralph extends his reputation even further as a writer. The opening section on the 21st century military begins with a biting essay titled "The Shape of Wars to Come." It's a searing intro to this era's religious-based violence, an era that will generate an "an unprecedented expansion in the varieties of organized violence."
Peters has lots to say about the new counterinsurgency manual. Some of this we have already hashed out on the journal's pages, but I think the discussion on the influence of religion on modern irregular warfare remains in play. I know some people have impressions from their exposure to current operations, and my own research is inconclusive, but there is something to this issue that bears detailed scrutiny. To Peters, we have exited a brief aberration of conflict and reentered a much longer era of fundamental struggles over God and blood. Now that the brief age of ideology is over, he thinks we are returning to the recurring tides of human history existence in which wars were fought over blood and belief, not over political systems or resource distribution. This is a profound distinction, and one that many politicians, officers and civilian experts cannot seem to fathom. "No matter how vociferously we deny it," Ralph notes, "our wars will be fought over religion and ethnic identity." The author leaves the reader with little doubt that those wars will be brutally savage and protracted.
For Peters, conflict over primitive faith and blood loyalties should induce alternations to the Maoist era counterinsurgency doctrine. The prescriptions in FM 3-24 claimed to have understood that today's era was different and clearly attempted to come to grips with the complexities of insurgents fueled by religious hatred and primal loyalties. Peters argues, persuasively to this reviewer, that violence stemming from the confessional or ethnic identity is profoundly different and not easily rectified or solved by our historically grounded counterinsurgency theory of the past half century. In the midst of violent struggles between intolerant religious factions and age-old ethnic rivals, Peters finds the new manual replete with outdated remedies. LtCol Peters emphasizes, "A Maoist in Malaya could be converted. But Islamist terrorists who regard death as a promotion are not going to reject their faith any more than an ethnic warrior can—or would wish to-- change his blood identity."
With regard to new insights on COIN theory, the influence of religion and conflict, I would also encourage readers to closely review Dr. Steve Metz's superlative new monograph, titled Rethinking Counterinsurgency, which is available on line at the Army's Strategic Studies Institute. I would also encourage readers to review the longitudinal data compiled and analyzed by Harvard's Dr. Monica Duffy Toft in the recent issue of International Security. Her essay, titled "Getting Religion?: The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War" (International Security, Spring 2007, pp. 97-131) amplifies on research I had cited in my earlier postings on this topic, and her conclusions (based off of 42 civil wars over a 60 year period) are that religious conflicts are more destructive, harder to stem, are four times as deadly, and last twice as long. Her analysis suggests that there are numerous contextual explanations, aside from pure spiritually motivated zeal and savagery.
Ongoing operations in Iraq may provide another data point on this issue. When we can step back and view the data critically and objectively, I hope we can produce some clearer conclusions. For now, I will abide with Wars of Blood and Faith. It is a stunning collection of provocative writing on current and future national security challenges and cuts to the chase on so many complicated issues.
LtCol Hoffman is a Research Fellow employed by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, and is also a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia, PA.
Comments
Prof. Metz,
I appreciate your contributions here at the SWJ. The professionals here are enriched, and the mere onlookers like me are both educated (by your thoughts) and entertained (by your whimsical humor). You represent academia well (in the good sense) in that you're always open to challenge, probing, questioning, and Socratic dialogue. Having said that, I find that I must challenge you on something you said. Before we begin, I didn't bring up the issue of religion and wars: someone else did. There will doubtless be the hysterical reader who chimes in that the sky is falling because someone has weighed in on this issue again (I fully expect it), but we will try to keep it on a professional and scholarly level nonetheless.
You said that "Claiming that all of Islam wants to "impose" its faith on others is not "being clear," its being fantastic and ideological. There is a fringe in Islam who claims to want this (just as there is in Christianity). But claiming this is some inherent element of Islam is just nonsense."
I will try to keep this related to war, warfare and counterinsurgency and any future wars that might be related in some small way to these issues, but I feel that I have to address both points. Definitions are indispensable. When you say "impose its faith," let's delineate between voting your conscience and promulgating your faith by the power of force or violence. Laws are by their very definition legislated morality. A law against theft is society's way of saying that it is morally wrong to steal and we won't tolerate it. Our society has as its basis a system of laws that itself has a basis, just as all nation-states do. I assume that you are not arguing against a vote of conscience and representative government, so it makes sense to jump to the next possibility.
Now to the use of force or violence to promulgate a faith. Again, for the sake of argument, let's define Christianity nominally as something like the following: adherence to the basic Trinitarian creeds (Nicene and Chalcedonian), with the soteriological skeleton filled out by a later creed such as Trent (for Roman Catholics, maybe plus Vatican I and II, or maybe not) or the Westminster Confession of Faith (for Protestants). The point is that one defining characteristic of Christianity is that it has throughout history been creedal and confessional. We aren't left to wonder what Christianity teaches. It is all put forward for us is clear terms, with the fundamentals similar in all sects or denominations, and agreed to by the councils in church history.
I am trained in religion / theology at the graduate level. I am extremely well read, and fairly well-travelled in these circles. I know of not a single group of people who meet the nominal definition of Christianity we have given above that either believes or claims to believe that they have the authority or right to promulgate the faith through violence or force. It would be directly contrary to the very nature of Christianity. I could line up the Biblical data for a week, but it would save time simply to trust me on this point. If you feel that you have contrary examples, then I would like to correspond off line to ascertain just who these people are and what exactly they might believe. It would be interesting.
Now. With Islam it just isn't that clear. Islam is not now and has never been creedal and confessional. It is loosely coupled and very diverse. A search of history for such creeds yields no fruit like the history of Christianity (if it did I would gladly spent much time in study). I am not making a value judgment here, simply an observation. The point of this observation is that when answering the question "What does Islam believe?" we have reversion only to (a) original source literature, and (b) its interpretation and application today (plus the history that can be determined to be accurate).
Here is what we know. We know that there is a large group of Muslims worldwide who do not believe that they have the right to hurt of kill you or your family in order to promulgate their faith, and they are quite happy with this hermeneutic. How large this group is is unknown. It might be the vast majority of all Muslims, or it may not be quite that big. We also know that based on the original source literature (quotes which I can line up a long time for you) there are ideas and quotes that are apparently amenable to a hermeneutic which interprets them to give Muslims the right and duty to promulgate their faith by violence and force. As best as I can tell, both hermeneutics live side by side every day in Muslim countries, with some aspects of each rubbing off on the other, and with this also being a source of controversy and tension in these countries.
So what I have said now is that their are competing hermeneutics within Islam, and that creedalism and confessionalism has not been and is not now a defining characteristic of Islam. These things present problems for us, as you can well imagine. To understand what Islam believes, you cannot refer to a confession. There is none. You can read the source literature and you can listen to its professed adherents as they speak.
The professed adherents who are of the Salafist / Wahhabist stripes, based on indisputable evidence, believe the later hermeneutic discussed above (and can point to numerous citations in the original source literature). While I understand that it is unfashionable to be religious in academia, and fashionable to make moral equivalency arguments comparing all religions to each other, it just isn't correct. There is no sect or denomination of Christianity comparable to the Salafists or Wahhabists. It doesn't help your argument to make the comparison.
As to Ralph Peters' book. I understand your frustration with some of his prose. He leaves you wanting for details much of the time. Yet for some reason I feel that I can get the general gist of his point without the detail. Perhaps I am seeing nuance when there is none there and being too gracious, but I do not see him as advocating the "mailed fist" approach as much as you do. Perhaps his chapter entilted "Why Clausewitz Had it Backward" (Previously published in the AFJ) reads like a contemporary version of Sun Tzu's The Art of War (perhaps with the additional sprinkling of "Unrestricted Warfare" by Liang and Xiangsui). He ends the chapter by saying "By refusing to instill a warlike spirit in other fields of our national policy, we only make 'real war' inevitable." Truer words were never spoken.
Perhaps Peters would say something like this: "The refusal to implement Clausewitz early and forcefully only ensures the full application and implementation of Clausewitz." Okay, enough of the riddles, as you want some details. Let me drum up some details (mine, not Ralph's). Let's take first the looting of the Baghdad Museum. Our ROE has been developed by lawyers to implement Geneva, the LOAC, and supplements like the deplorable Tennessee v. Garner SCOTUS decision. They are more applicable to a police officer called out to a domestic disturbance dispute in Smalltown - Anywhere USA than they are to men in armed conflict.
Upon the looting of the museum, Rumsfelf was left with chuckles, hanging head and demurral before a pouncing press. Of course, the opposite would have been true if we had shot the looters. The press would have had a nervous breakdown. But riddle me this? What would have happened if the looters had been shot?
Perhaps a looter was a poor man desperate to feed his family. No Soldier or Marine wants to gun down a man trying to take care of his family. But as it turns out, the looters were rich thugs trying to get richer (curators of the museum, some of them). And the portrait for the Iraqis was about as bad as it could possibly have gotten. The ROE prevents deadly force to protect property. Property was stolen and the U.S. forces stood idly by. The value of an AK-47 likely increased by one or two orders of magnitude when this happened, and the stock and currency of the militias went up as well. After all, families need security, don't they? And upon the picture shown to the Iraqis that the U.S. forces would not protect them and defend their property, how much of the disaster of the subsequent years was set in motion by that failure?
Victor Davis Hanson might mention the pullback from the first battle of Fallujah. I would add that I have given up on the coalition holding Sadr accountable for his crimes, and I am resigned to the fact that Iran now has their forces deployed in Lebanon (with Hasan Nasrallah) and Iraq (with Moqtada al Sadr). Upon leaving Iraq (if we ever do), there will likely be a bloodbath civil war between the Shi'a and Sunnis, with Sadr in the lead. So why were the Army and Paul Bremer able to convince the Marines to let Sadr go? How many will die because of this politically correct decision?
There are bright spots where the correct doctrine has been implemented. I have called the Anbar victory the greatest COIN campaign in history, and I believe it (and ... it didn't take ten years). We needn't debate the issues of religion, ROE, settling with the enemy, and so forth. They have been played out before our eyes in Anbar. It is best to try to understand what has happened there.
Peters correctly says that it doesn't take two sides to believe that there is a holy war for there to be one. It only takes one side. Just so. I know the boys of 2/6 Marines Golf Company, and I can tell you that not a single one of them deployed to Fallujah under the impression that their mission was to fight the Islamic faith on behalf of Christianity. How absurd something like that would be!
But a religious understanding went with their leadership, even if in the undercurrents. All throughout Anbar, the Marines have identified the followers of the religious belief that would force them to war against not only outsiders but other sects of Islam as well. This identification was hard, and may not have happened by direct religious identification, but perhaps by actions, negotiations, observation, etc. When identified, the Salafists / Wahhabists like AAS, al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, etc., had robust kinetic operations conducted against them. The Marines have been relentless in the pacification of Anbar. Hard negotiations with those who would settle with us have now turned the others against the extremists. These negotiations involved us turning back our tears to settle with an erstwhile enemy who had killed our brothers. They also involved them doing the same. And then there were U.S. forces dancing in the streets of Ramadi with Iraqis, the strong tribe of the U.S. along with the strong tribes of Anbar, locked in absolutely essential alliance.
The contrary example is the soft British ROE and their utter excoriation of our ROE and hard ways. Now Anbar is pacified and the Brits preside over a calamity of neverbeforeseen proportions in Basra. Riddle me this. Which approach, then, is the most compassionate and sensible?
I don't believe that Peters wants to see blood in the streets. I think he wants to avoid war at almost all costs, but engage when necessary without the toy perceptions of Generals and defense contractors who promise that it will be almost bloodless. Enter to win as quickly as possible in order to avoid the rivers of blood in the streets.
Maybe I am all wrong and being too gracious to Peters. Perhaps I see nuance when there it none there. But such are my thoughts on the matter.
Before commenting on Ralph's book, let me comment on Brian H's comment above. Claiming that all of Islam wants to "impose" its faith on others is not "being clear," its being fantastic and ideological. There is a fringe in Islam who claims to want this (just as there is in Christianity). But claiming this is some inherent element of Islam is just nonsense. I don't know any nicer way to put it.
Now on to Ralph's book. I haven't finished, but am about half way through. There are many points on which I have long agreed with Ralph. The most important one which he develops in the collection of essays in this book is the current American approach to counterinsurgency (which, as Ralph points out, was largely developed from British and French Cold War doctrine) is ineffective. I contend that it leads us to push for just enough change in states facing conflict to destabilize them further, but not enough to really alter the conditions that give rise to conflict.
But here's where I diverge from Ralph--while I feel that the most rational approach to internal conflicts is something akin to multinational peacekeeping (or, in cases where there is no multinational consensus for action, a hands off approach), Ralph wants to treat it like real war.
While that strikes an emotional chord, I have trouble fleshing out the details in my mind. Short of actually running a post-World War II occupation of the Islamic world, how is that going to work?
To the best I can figure it out, Ralph is arguing that we simply kill not just actual terrorists, but those who support them in some way (just as we killed civilians in World War II who supported the German and Japanese military).
OK, but if he wants to advance that idea, I feel Ralph is obligated to explain some of the glaring problems. How are we going to know who to kill? Is it all Mulims? Does the threat really justify what could easily become a genocidal strategy? They killed 3,000 of us so we'll kill 100 million of them?
I've left with the same feeling I have when I read or hear Ed Luttwak advocate his "mailed fist" approach--while it might have military utility, if we have to sell our soul--to alter what it is that makes us American--in order to quell the threat, we too have lost.
Frank,
Professor Toft does a fine job with description of the data, but in my opinion, gets much of the motivation wrong. It is the difference between observation and explanation. Her model becomes muddled, but I'll leave that for another time.
As to Ralph Peters' book, I informed my wife that she was getting this for me as a present and then I promptly went out to purchase it. Being unable to be patient, rather than ordering from Amazon I just had to find it locally. As it turns out, all bookstores were sold out except one. I think Ralph has landed on a bestseller.
The opening paragraphs are worth the price of the book. This is going to be an enlightening (and disturbing) read. Thanks for the recommendation.
Let's get specific here. In a fight for faith, at least one side is fighting to IMPOSE faith. And of all the religions of the world, only ONE authorizes, approves, and mandates that: Islam.
Thus, there will be no battles for faith or between faiths that do not begin and continue with Islam's attempt to IMPOSE faith on part or all of the unwilling world.
The Religion of Peace(ful Submission or Death).