Interview with Gen. Petraeus

Alas my poor neglected blog! During two weeks of simulating the Cuban Missile Crisis I found no time for posting here, or indeed other 'non-essential' tasks such as sleeping. I'm still catching up with what's happened in the real world.

I just came across this fascinating Spiegel interview with Gen David Petraeus, former head of 101st Airborne, now head of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, and one of the American generals who si generally agreed to 'get' counterinsurgency. Petraeus makes two points which I find especially useful.

The first, has to do with the ongoing cultural change in the US Army to viewing counterinsurgency as one of its primary tasks. Petraeus refutes a hoary old adage which has long bothered me that if you fight the high-intensity 'big' wars then you can more easily gear down to fighting low-intensity 'small wars', the latter being an example of what used to be called a 'lesser included contingency' or as dismissively 'operations other than war' in the sense of not being the proper job of a real army.

We used to say, that if you can do the "big stuff," the big combined arms, high-end, high intensity major combat operations and have a disciplined force, then you can do the so-called "little stuff," too. That turned out to be wrong.

Basically, the 'little stuff' is damned difficult too; getting it wrong costs blood and treasure and leaves pure 'warfighting' forces balanced on a knife-edge between tactical success and strategic failure.

The second, is a point that I obviously must agree with. Petraeus argues that counterinsurgency is 'war at the graduate level... thinking man's warfare'. And for that you need, naturally enough, thinking men (and women):

SPIEGEL: You propagate the idea that young officers should go to graduate school. Why does a soldier need a master's degree?

Petraeus: We're talking about how to react to unforeseeable, non-standard tasks, we're talking about environments that are very different to those we're used to. You have to work in a foreign language, you have to negotiate with people who come from another religious background or who don't even share what we would call the same core values. Now here you have a setting quite similar to graduate school, which takes you out of your intellectual comfort zone -- and that really is something a young officer should experience.

You know, we in the Army, we have to admit, that we're living sometimes a sort of a grindstone cloister existence. We work very hard; indeed, we have our noses to the proverbial grindsone. And we tend to live a somewhat cloistered existence much of our lives. So we have to try to raise, as one of my colleagues once put it, our sights beyond the maximum effective range of a M-16-rifle. Graduate school and other experiences that get us out of our intellectual comfort zone help us do just that.

Sounds like an endorsement for MA War in the Modern World to me. I must ring up the general and book an appointment.

Bolton resigns from UN

In case you haven't seen it, Bush accepts Bolton's U.N. resignation. I have been told by friends working at the UN and by others who've met Bolton that he is, well, kind of a jerk. Actually I recall this was the gist of what was being said by ex-subordinates and co-workers when he was first appointed. But then again I think he's the jerk the UN deserved. I'm much more relieved to see this guy on his way out. And the manner and style of his exit is entirely typical and predictable. A pox on 'em both. Good riddance.

Another PhD is born

On Friday my PhD student Tai Ming Cheung successfully defended his PhD thesis on the development of the Chinese dual-use defence industrial base. Great title: 'Leaping Tiger, Hybrid Dragon'. Tai Ming is rather brilliant and as a result was absolutely a dawdle to supervise. We'll be hearing a lot more from Tai Ming I think. Events in the Middle East have caused a lot of us to take our eyes off China's rise. That's going to change soon. There are few people better placed to interpret and explain developments in Chinese security than Tai Ming.

Borat Cultural Learnings of America...

Totally off topic. See the updated post below for serious thoughts on war. I went to see the Borat movie on Sunday evening. It has gotten very good reviews and I was rather looking forward to it. I rather liked the Ali G clips I'd seen on YouTube. Actually I thought they were clever in an idiotic sort of way. I did not like Borat, however. The thing which impressed me foremost was how polite Americans are. The preparedness to endure the crassest offences is pathological. They need help. In any other country it would have been a short movie. He'd have been throttled ten minutes in.

War Amongst the People

Theo has a great post on Cultures of COIN on his blog. Go read it if you haven't already. Then have a listen to this BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme which aired last night but you can listen to here (scroll down). Lots of good interviews about NATO and the challenge of fighting Wars Amongst the People.

Update: I've been meaning all week to flesh out this post by explaining what it was I thought interesting about this programme. Towards the end Francois Heisbourg, formerly director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, proposes a solution to a fairly fundamental problem. The West produces too few infantry soldiers for high manpower, low-tech, security generation jobs like stabilization. That being the case why not outsource to armies like India or Pakistan? After all if IBM can outsource its back office why can't the military?

I really like bold ideas. And Heisbourg is a serious guy. But this strikes me as a phenomenally bad idea on so many levels, above all that this not the equivalent of the back office it's the store front, the main business. I haven't heard it proposed in quite this way before; I hope that the fact it's coming from as respected a figure as Heisbourg is not an indication of how seriously it is being taken.

Mind mapping

I've been chatting with students about essay outlines recently. I always stress the same things:

1. start your research early
2. do not wait to begin writing until after you have finished researching; the two things should proceed in parallel
3. begin by interrogating the question: What is it getting at? What are its assumptions or embedded concepts?
4. answer the question as completely as you can in not more than two sentences. That's your thesis statement.
5. work to an outline

(Related earlier posts on the subject of essay writing and marking)

But many people find writing outlines difficult. Normally this is because they fail to resolve on a thesis before embarking on one which means as a result that the outline ends up more as a list of points related somehow to the question but not organized in a way which actually points to an answer. Personally, I tend to use a fairly linear list approach with my own outlines. However, non-linear mindmaps are frequently said to be a better way, although it takes some getting used to. On this site about mindmaps you'll find an on-line mind-mapping tool which looks potentially useful--though I wonder if doing it this way defeats the purpose of non-linear thinking, paper and pencil seems more appropriate. And there's also a tool for reordering lists if you prefer to go old school which looks very handy.

Pull out now!

The whole thing has been shoddily planned, launched on a false prospectus, and is going to cost us billions for nothing.

They won’t do it, of course; too many egos invested already, too much national machismo. Five billion pounds and rising . . . Where’s my wallet?

I'm not talking about Iraq. I'm talking about the London 2012. OK, off topic, but read the article.

I confess that I absolutely loathe the Olympics. IOC officialdom is a mix of pomposity, and corruption. The opening ceremonies are dreadful. The whole thing reeks of hypocrisy and greed. I view the prospect of the Olympics being held in my city much as I would view the prospect of a root canal. We ought to pull out of the thing entirely.

A side benefit: Paris was second place. Presumably it would fall to them.

But can we really 'Go Big, Bold' in Afghanistan?

There's a good article in the Globe and Mail by retired Canadian General Lewis Mackenzie in which he argues that in order to get the job done we need to send another 30,000 troops to the country. That seems low to me if, as has been widely argued, the occupation of Iraq (pop. 26,783,383, land area 437,072 sq.km.) needed something like 350,000 to be done right. Afghanistan is more populous with 31,000,000 people and larger (land area 647,500 sq.km.). Why would a force of ca. 70,000 (now there are 30,000 NATO troops, including 12,000 Americans, there already plus 11,000 Americans not under NATO command) be up to the job? Is the situation that much more benign in Afghanistan? But I defer to Mackenzie on this since he as a retired Major General is no doubt a better judge of this than I am as a 'retired' Master Corporal.

The number's not the issue, however; we can all agree it should bea lot bigger than it is now. Mackenzie, in my opinion, hits the nail on the head when he says NATO's future is...

hanging in the balance, fence-sitting NATO partners have to be convinced, coerced, intimidated to live up to their end of the contract they signed when they joined during more peaceful times. Failure to do so will signal the end of a 57-year-old alliance that failed when faced with its first real test in the field.

Too right. Sadly, I'm pessimistic about the chances of a greater contribution from the rest of Europe, either in quantity or quality. Will any of the EU 'core' France, Germany, Spain or Italy pony up more troops? Statements like this from the foreign affairs adviser to Socialist presidential candidate Segoline Royal make me very doubtful:

...the question the English have to answer is - do the English consider the English Channel to be wider than the Atlantic?

We on the Continent have the right to deplore the fact that Great Britain appears to consider the Channel wider.

Mackenzie accuses 'Old Europe', to use Don Rumsfeld's term, of fence sitting while 'Old Europe' reckons it's the British who are fence sitting and that the choice for Europe whether or not to be '...vassals of the United States, do we want to be a 51st state?'

Feh. With that being the atmosphere amongst the allies I have low expectations.

Zinni and Batiste on Iraq

Retired Generals Anthony Zinni and John Batiste have been prominent critics of the conduct of the War in Iraq. In fact in Zinni's case he was against going in in the first place. Both, however, have come out against troop withdrawals from Iraq.

Zinni argues that argues that any substantial reduction of forces would accelerate the slide to civil war.

The logic of this is you put pressure on Maliki and force him to stand up to this. Well, you can't put pressure on a wounded guy. There is a premise that the Iraqis are not doing enough now, that there is a capability that they have not employed or used. I am not so sure they are capable of stopping sectarian violence.

In fact, he argues for deploying more forces to 'regain momentum' in the effort of stabilizing Iraq, creating more jobs, fostering political reconciliation and developing more effective Iraqi security forces.

Batiste agrees, calling Congressional proposals for troop withdrawals 'terribly naïve.' Before considering withdrawal, the U.S. needs to take an array of steps, including alleviating unemployment in Iraq, securing its long and porous borders, enlisting more cooperation from tribal leaders, stepping up efforts to train Iraq's security forces, engaging Iraq's neighbors and weakening or destroying the militias. He also says we need to deploy more troops.

I don't disagree. I just wonder where these new troops are going to come from.

Update: Theo has a post on Sen Carl Levin's call for phased troop withdrawals which I believe is what Zinni and Batiste are referring to as naive.

It's not an addiction, they pay me to be here!

Here's an interesting article on Internet addiction. I can appreciate how this might be a problem for some. For my part, however, while I certainly qualify as an Internet 'heavy user' I don't see the downside.

Excessive Internet use should be defined not by the number of hours spent online but "in terms of losses," said Maressa Hecht Orzack, a Harvard University professor and director of Computer Addiction Services at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., founded in 1995. "If it is a loss [where] you are not getting to work, and family relationships are breaking down as a result around it and this is something you can't handle, then it's too much."

Of course I'm in the lucky position that being on-line actually is my work. Which means that I could make the argument that requiring me to come in to the College physically means I do less work. But it's more than that. My family and friends are spread all over the world yet I correspond with them on a regular basis via chat or Skype. For me it's all positive and no negative. Did I say I was lucky?

Resistance is futile, it is useless to resist
I think we're really at the very beginning of where the Internet is going to take us. For a glimpse of the future I highly recommend Charles Stross's novel Accelerando which is freely available online (despite being a best seller in hard copy--take a lesson publishers). In one scene, Manfred, the main character of the book which is set in the near future, is plunged into a crisis when he is mugged for his 'glasses' (actually the interface between his mind and the computers which he uses to connect to the web) and finds himself literally unable to think because so much of his 'mind', his knowledge and processing ability, actually exists outside his skull. I haven't gone that far obviously; but still there is an eerie resonance to this.

When I want to know something more often than not I hive off a mini-mind of sorts:

If it's a basic informational point I do a simple Internet search, which is to say I send out a little digital agent which collects all the information available, orders it in accordance with a certain logic set by me (usually the Google default), and presents it.

If it's a more complex thing I may search a bibliographic or other database such as IBSS.

And if it's really complex I might fire off a question on any one of a number of ongoing discussion forums or email rings which I'm a part of and see what comes back.

Essentially this is distributed thinking. Nothing new there you say. We did all those things, more or less, before the Internet. True, but now we do it faster, much faster. If you are connected then I can safely assume that if you do not know, say, the date of the Battle of Poltava, the size of the Chinese defence budget in purchasing power parity, or the basic outlines of the career of Field Marshal Slim, or whatever, then in a few minutes you will. Essentially, everyone is now that boring uncle who knew all the trivia about everything.

But there's more to it still: increasingly, I find myself using Google desktop search to find things on my computer which I myself have written or archived, which is to say I use it in a sense for processing my own thoughts.

Now clearly this is rudimentary stuff but the fact is that we're already mixing our consciousness with machines. At the present time the part of you, or me anyway, that works outside of my skull is a minuscule fraction of that which works inside. Yet given that computers are evolving many orders of magnitude faster than human beings, getting faster, more powerful, and more connected all the time, how much longer will it be before the 'meat-me' is the lesser quantity while the 'digital-me' does all the intellectual heavy-lifting? In other words, in a couple of decades we may be at a point where going offline will feel something like being thrust into a sensory deprivation chamber or having your head pounded with a rubber mallet.

Minus all the hardware (for rubber fetishists only, I reckon) I don't think I'd mind being this guy too much.



Bring it on, I say. Borg me.

Almost forgot...

Happy Birthday US Marine Corps

That didn't take long...

Why am I not surprised by this? I think it was right for Rumsfeld to go. He should have been fired long ago. But I've got to say stuff like this Donald Rumsfeld: The War Crimes Case makes my blood boil. What I'd really like to hear now is some clear thinking about how to turn things around in Iraq or, in lieu of that, how to get out. What we don't need is some kind of revenge of the granola-gobblers taking over public life until the next presidential election.

I told you turn LEFT!

I wonder how often this happened?

I hope they made it back. One always hears of bombers limping back minus chunks of wing or fuselage. Imagine being the tail gunnner. As if AAA and enemy fighters weren't bad enough, your own guys try to waste you with a 500 pound bomb.

Screw the headline just give me the footnote

Consider the following. A poll is conducted of Afghans concerning their attitudes towards 'democracy, security, poppy cultivation, and the 2005 parliamentary elections -- as well as attitudes towards governing institutions, the role of women and Islam in society, and the impact of media.'

The New York Times reports:
Afghans Losing Faith in Nation’s Path, Poll Shows

The Daily Times reports: Afghan optimism falls sharply, poll shows

Malaysia Sun reports: Poll says more Afghans becoming negative

Canada.com reports: U.S.-funded survey: Afghans losing confidence in their country's direction

But USA Today reports: Poll: Afghans express confidence in country's direction, security

So what are we to believe? Answer: none of them! Be your own reporter. Read the survey yourself. Make up your own mind. This is the reason why I can't watch the news without my laptop up and running anymore. In the information age 'fact-checking the media's ass' is basic self-defence.

This is a good thing

Rumsfeld replaced after poll loss

This is good too: Conn. Sen. Joe Lieberman wins re-election

Sadly, Lieberman would have been my choice to replace Rumsfeld.

This sucks!

In the spirit of a recent series of posts on Nick Dymond's blog about approaches of various arms and services to planning I offer this informed contribution to debate:

Blast from the past: How to spot a communist

Those of you studying the early days of the Cold War right now might find this interesting.

Iraq war games

You are all very familiar with the National Security Archives from your work on the Cold War in Module 2. If you haven't beeen back there lately have a look at the new addition to the collection: Post Saddam Iraq: The War Game

Excerpt from an article about it:

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue.

In its "Desert Crossing" games, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence officials assumed the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs.

The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information Act request by the George Washington University's National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library.

"The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops," said Thomas Blanton, the archive's director. "But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground."

Thinking is research too, Part 2

In comments on my previous post on this subject Theo commented:

True also for academics. How can you finish that paper, when you've not read that possibly crucial/probably irrelevant book on X!

Which is absolutely true. It's funny, I just pulled my copy of Leo Strauss's History of Political Philosophy off the shelf in order to look up something on John Stuart Mill. Each chapter of the book is dedicated to a particularly significant political philosopher and they are presented in chronological order as follows:

Thucydides
Plato
Xenophon
Aristotle
Marcus Tullius Cicero
St Augustine
Alfarabi
Moses Maimonides
St Thomas Aquinas
Marsilius of Padua
Niccolo Machiavelli
...

Let's stop there and consider that the printing press was only invented in 1440 so by the time Machiavelli died in 1527 there weren't that many books around to be read--and certainly not much on political philosophy. Therefore, I'm confident that I've read more about the subject than Machiavelli. In fact, I think I've possibly read more about it than everyone on that list combined--and political philiosophy is not my field. I think that this is a nice illustration that sometimes quantity does not have a quality of its own--indeed sheer quantity of reading is a poor measure of the quality of understanding. Don't get me wrong, there's a link between the two, but having read more than Machiavelli does not make me a shrewder political thinker! Professor Mats Berdal, a colleague here in the ddepartment told me once that his approach to teaching international relations to undergraduates was to get them to read one good book on the subject deeply, in that case The Anarchical Society by Hedley Bull. This has got me thinking, if I had to assign one book for a course on modern warfare what would it be? Hmmm... I haven't got a good answer for that. Any suggestions?

Exploring the Language of Post-Sept. 11 U.S. Policy

Here's quite a good series of interviews exploring the meaning of some terms which have come into common usage since 911: Jihad, Islamofascism, War on Terror, Imperialism and Democracy.

ED 209

Korean scientists have developed an armed robot. There're quite a few such projects in the works. I expect that we will see rather a lot more such developments in relatively near future.

Great Britons

Nick Dymond has a great idea:

Morgan Stanley are running one of their Great Britons Awards this year. As is usual it will probably be won by some 'celebrity' or other. However, the word on the UK Defence net is 'what if we get together and pull a team effort voting thing to get someone worthwhile nominated?', 'what if we all vote for that chap/chappess who routinely puts it all on the line in some of the most dangerous places on earth for seemingly little in return?'.

I am referring to the British Soldier of course. If you agree that the British Soldier deserves a bit of recognition, go to the Great Britons 06 website (link) and vote for 'Tommy Atkins' under the 'public life' section.


Wikepedia - 'Tommy Atkins'

Go vote!

Thinking is research too

Over on his blog Pip has a post about keeping up with all the reading and discussions. Have a look. My advice: take a walk. Seriously. It's easy to get so caught up in trying to keep up with everything that has been written that you don't stop to think about what it all means. That's not right. In your essays I always urge you when faced with a choice between depth and breadth to go for depth. Similarly when you are researching bear in mind that thinking is research too. The classic graduate student procrastination according to Mat Groening's classic 'Life is Hell' strip:

Statistics

Disraeli is reputed to have said 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.' And Andrew Lang wrote 'He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts-for support rather than illumination.'

I like these quotes, probably because I am instinctively sceptical of the sort of social scientists who claim special significance for their research on the basis of it being quantitative. I am a qualitative analysis man. It takes good technique and skill to measure something but the real genius is picking what's worth measuring and figuring out what it means. Still, it's good to be conversant with stats and very handy to be able to generate rough comparative measures with the click of a mouse.

Looking for a rough indicator measure of militarization? Try generating a table of armed forces personnel per capita using NationMaster, 'a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations.'

For more specific searches and comparisons try the Facts on International Relations and Security Trends database which is provided free on the phenomenally useful website of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Update:
Strange, the first thing I looked at after writing this post was this New York Times article 'Military Charts Movement of Conflict in Iraq Toward Chaos'. I've no quarrel with the veracity of the claim that Iraq is moving towards chaos. I just wonder how one quantifies 'hostile rhetoric' or 'problems with ineffective police'. And does assigning these things a number make the analysis more scientific?

Maps

You can illustrate a lot with a map. Here's a good one, for example:



I also use the Perry-Castaneda Map Library frequently.

The UN Cartographic Service is also excellent.

How to Cut and Run

I recently met William Odom at the IISS conference in Geneva. I have a great deal of admiration for him as a soldier and a scholar. He has been making the argument that the United States should cut his losses and get out of Iraq practically since the day the occupation began. He reprises it here: How to Cut and Run.

Odom is not your typical anti-Iraq war type, as you'd expect for a former head of the NSA and Army intelligence chief. Most untypically, he doesn't just say get out but discusses how to do it, it amounts to a four step programme:

1. admit that we screwed up
2. involve Iraq's neighbours
3. cooperate with Iran, drop resistance to its nuclear arms programme
4. focus on Palestinian issue as a foundation for Middle East peace.

I find it difficult to agree with him on points 2, 3 & 4. Iraq's neighbours are already involved. I think we don't know nearly enough about how Islam in general and Iran in particular understand the utility of nuclear force--put differently how they conceive of deterrence--to feel sanguine about an Iranian bomb. And as far as I'm concerned the less attention paid to Israel-Palestine by everyone the better. That conflict has been prolonged and exacerbated by every past intervention not hastened toward its resolution.

I am reluctantlly in agreement with point 1, however. As Odom argues:

'Rapid troop withdrawal and abandoning unilateralism will have a sobering effect on all interested parties. Al Qaeda will celebrate but find that its only current allies, Iraqi Baathists and Sunnis, no longer need or want it. Iran will crow but soon begin to worry that its Kurdish minority may want to join Iraqi Kurdistan and that Iraqi Baathists might make a surprising comeback.

Although European leaders will probably try to take the lead in designing a new strategy for Iraq, they will not be able to implement it. This is because they will not allow any single European state to lead, the handicap they faced in trying to cope with Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s. Nor will Japan, China or India be acceptable as a new coalition leader. The U.S. could end up as the leader of a new strategic coalition — but only if most other states recognize this fact and invite it to do so.'

One of the most disastrous outcomes of the war has been the collapse of Western unity. It's not as though it hasn't happened before but I don't think the split has ever been this profound.

Tenure denied, Dr Jones!

Geez, what does a guy have to do to get promoted around here? This made me laugh.

Thus begins an argument in War in the Modern World

Via Tim Blair

Virtual war

I'm fascinated by the way in which technological change is affecting modern warfare. By and large my research has focused on changes at 'the pointy end'. So, for instance, I've been writing a lot about the Revolution in Military Affairs and its derivative concepts Network-Centric Warfare and Information Warfare. But I'm more and more interested these days not just in how we fight wars but how we conceptualize them societally, which ultimately feeds back into the way we fight and vice versa. In other words, I'm thinking a little less about changes at the pointy end of the spear and a little more about how the spear as a whole is changing. Specifically, I'm researching two things which are a direct outgrowth of the IT revolution.

The first is the phenomenon of milblogging, ie a blog about war like this one, but written by a soldier in the field as opposed to an academic in a comfy London office. I think the impact of milblogging is significant in several respects. For one thing it makes it all the more difficult for theatre commanders to establish and control a narrative of the conflict. There's been a lot of discussion over the years about the impact of the media on warfare, but we are only slowly waking up to the fact that it is now conceivable for soldiers to simply 'cut out the middle man' and report directlly their experience through the medium of a blog. Indeed this is already somewhat the case, as you can see in this article by uber-milblogger Michael Yon in which he points out that there are just 7 embedded reporters in Iraq right now. I find that surprisingly low. We're not just talking about text either, soldiers post videos and photos. There's a vast and growing genre of such 'tribute' videos as this one, almost always set to Heavy Metal tracks it seems, army humour like this British minor classic, as well gun camera footage such as this (warning: graphic), over on YouTube . Most is pretty tame illustrative of the long recognized fact that 99% of the experience of war is boredom--sitting around waiting; some of it is pretty dreadful (link is to an article).

So what's new about any of this? Well, nothing and a lot, depending on your viewpoint. Dreadful things have always happened in war. Cameras small enough to fit in a soldier's pocket have been around for years. What's different is that in the Nokia Age images which in the old days might have ended up in a shoebox in the attic are now shared and infinitely reproduced digitally over the Internet. 'Warfare', wrote Andrew Marr writing after the publication of stories based on photos--fake as it turned out--about abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British troops 'has always depended on a rampart of silence, a wall of willed incomprehension, between civilians at home and those killing. In a small way, the arrival of digital photographs has broken through that wall.' We're beginning to see how this changes things. I suspect, among other things, a main effect we are seeing is maintaining political will. We already, according to some, suffer from a societal attention deficit disorder. This would seem to be a complicating factor.

The second, and related, thing which strikes me as potentially quite significant is the increasing sophistication of video games. There's a very practical military dimension to this: games are an increasingly invaluable training aid. But there's a nother dimension: computer games like 'America's Army' or, somewhat less so, XBox's 'Full Spectrum Warrior', play a role in society akin to the World War 2 Frank Capra series of films 'Why we Fight'. I wouldn't want to overstretch the argument here but at least in some respects there is an apparent convergence between war and video games. James Der Derian's Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment covers some of this ground, but is rather flawed . He's a good writer, for a post-modernist, but not terribly convincing on operational military matters . Ed Halter's From Sun Tzu to XBox: War and Video Games, is better though it's appeal is possibly greater to gamers than soldiers. But this US Army video about the Future Combat System is a nice illustration of the point. I wonder if army recruiters ask applicants if they play a lot of video games and if they do whether that's considered a good thing. I suspect it would. I read somewhere (can't remember) that soldiers who had played a lot of first person shooter games were ideal for operating the remote weapons on armoured humvees. They were less likely to get disoriented and more confortable with the constant scanning necessary for useful observation through a narrow field of view.

What's really interesting, however, is not the tactical shoot 'em up games but games such as the one described in thsi article which are more about real-world challenges involving moral complexity, problem solving and cultural understanding. I suspect that this sort of thing is more valuable in the long run. Actually, I think I'd like too do something like thsi in our programme!

Gloom all around

Niall Fergusson joins the doomsayers in the LA Times today with an article entitled 'America's Brittle Empire'. He argues that the US is a 'strategic couch potato' sufferinga crucial financial deficit, attention deficit, and manpower deficit. Thus he concludes,

In short, we seem doomed by domestic politics and demography to re-enact Vietnam in Iraq. The only question is what age the 300-millionth American will be when the last American is airlifted out.

I think the manpower deficit is crucial. Financial deficit is crucial too--but this can change rapidly. I'm confused by attention deficit though. His last line basically says we'll be there for another 18 years before we admit defeat which doesn't strike me as attention deficit disorder so much as repetitive brain injury caused by too much pounding one's head upon a brick wall.

In short, I'm unconvinced.

Happy UN Day!

Today is UN Day. Hurrah! A whole day to celebrate its achievements. Where to start? There's so many:

• its swift and decisive action to halt Rwandan genocide

• its stolid defence of the Srebrenica safe haven

• its scrupulously upright management of the Oil-for-Food scheme

• its gallantry towards Congolese refugess under its protection

Here's a proud moment:

Nice photo. I think it's particularly significant in light of the fact that yesterday was the 23rd anniversary of this event.

An attack committed by the precursor to Hezbollah headed by Nasrallah.

UPDATE 25 October 2006:

OK, I was harsh on the UN. Theo has promised to come by and correct me. In the meantime, let me get in another dig. There was a good joke going around when they were debating who would be the next General Secretary after Kofi Annan. Some wags proposed Tony Soprano:



He'd get more done and steal less!

But in the spirit of fairness I'll acknowledge that financial rectitude in Iraq hasn't exactly been improved that much since the occupation made Oil for Food redundant: Mother of all heists.

Wierder than wierd

Good Nyborg:

Canada troops battle 10-foot Afghan marijuana plants

I want to see the campaign medal for this one.

Memory lane

Over on Theo's blog I was chatting about non-standard uses of military technology which got me reminiscing a bit about a happy day in my my short spell as a soldier on the range with a heavy machine gun. Thankfully, I've never fired one in anger, let alone had anyone fire at me! I still think, however, that there're are few things more stress relieving than machine-gunning. Pounding a punching bag pales in comparison. Rather than repeat myself, go look if you've a mind to.

Anyway, I promised to post a picture if I could find it. I couldn't find the exact one I was looking for--that one was with a .50 cal which makes this one look like a bit of a pipsqueak. But I found this one of me on the same day with a .30 cal (actually rechambered for 7.62mm), ca. 1988 (I'm the trigger man):



But then while strolling down memory lane I came across this picture, me ca. 1974:



I'd forgotten about that one. This illustrates a few things about me, I think. For example, I'm morbidly goal-oriented. I generally end up where I intended going, eventually, even if I forget having resolved on a plan. The subconscious is a wonderful thing! This is also how I ended up teaching in the Department of War Studies. I decided just after that first picture was taken that I'd better go to university because soldiering in the Canadian Forces wasn't going to be very satisfying for me after all. I think what clinched it was that it's the same damn gun in both pictures, and it was old in 1974. I suspect I took the lesson that I was taking the idea of warfighting a little more seriously than the people paying me were. So, I managed to convince the army to pay for me to go to university where among the first books I read was The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy by Lawrence Freedman, Professor of War Studies. Now that's a cool thing, says I. Next thing I know here I am telling you to read something cool. If I could just get them to install a heavy machine gun in my office--I'd machinegun for peaceful purposes only, promise!--my life would be complete.

Hey, you army guys should invite me on a firepower demo. It might increase your grade. Wait. Damn! I'm teaching civilians and air force guys this term. Hmmm... if I get a ride in a jet I could perhaps an arrange a degree to arrive by first class post. ;)

Military history website

I thought I'd mention a website I visit fairly frequently and comment on occasionally: Blog them out of the stone age It was started and is still run by Professor Mark Grimsley, a historian at Ohio State University and alumnus of KCL War Studies, with the contribution now of Anthony Cormack, a current BA student in the department (very clever). It's a fairly eclectic site in terms of topics it covers but always interesting. Have a look.

Learning the lingo

In our discussion group we were talking about various military terms and concepts, particularly acronyms, which make it difficult sometimes for the layman to make sense of what is being said. Acronyms, which the military LOVES, are a particular pain in the neck. In the main, these are pretty obvious, eg., SAM (Surface to Air Missile), ICBM (InterContinental Ballistic Missile), C2 (Command and Control), or relatively straightforward to work out, eg., PGM (Precision Guided Munition), UAV (Unmannned Aerial Vehicle), but sometimes they can be pretty arcane/bizarre, eg., APFSDSDU, LANTIRN, C4I2SR, etc. It's useful to absorb some of this lexicon; in general, however, ignore the roccoco ones--they're often esoteric, change rapidly, and there's THOUSANDS of 'em! If you're really stumped and need to know you can check this glossary.

It's vastly more important that you familiarize yourself with military concepts for which this department of defense Dictionary of Terms is somewhat useful, if limited--the definitions are occcasionally sphinx-like in their terseness. What you really must do, if you've no direct military experience (actually, even if you do), is to read military history--lots of it. In the meantime this National Public Radio site is a good primer. There are some good interviews at the end too.

And don't be shy about encyclopaedias either. As I mentioned in an earlier post on Wikipedia they are often a good place to START your research (just don't end it there). You should all be very, very familiar with the ISS website by now. Have a look there now; this time click on 'databases'. Then search for 'Oxford reference on-line'. Go there with your Athens password. This is a very handy resource. You can just do a 'quick search'. For example, try searching for 'Revolution in Military Affairs'. The first hit should be an article in the Oxford Companion to Military History on 'Military Revolution'. Take a shufti.

Go back to the main page. You'll see subject references: military history, history, politics and social sciences, are all useful for us. But there's more: maps, quotations, dictionaries... I find the Timelines quite a useful reminder of the grand sequence of events. What I like particularly about on-line encyclopaedias is the ease with which linkages between concepts can be seen and explored. You start looking for Revolution in Military Affairs and three clicks later you're reading about the battle of Cunaxa. The on-line Oxford Companion to Military History is supremely handy in this respect.

Why is this important? Well, it's likely to contribute to your grade obviously. But it can also help you to look incredibly superior by pointing out the incredible incredulousness of many professional journalists do when talking about military matters. This is an important social service for you as specialists and also rather fun. Theo, in a recent post about the Korean nuclear test being a dud (which, incidentally, I bloggged yesterday. What's up with that Theo? You've got to be quicker with your blogbutton). I think this article describing a street battle in Kifl (via One Hand Clapping) is a lovely example of gullibility in action:

The officers said the tank unit fired two 120 mm high velocity depleted uranium rounds straight down the main road, creating a powerful vacuum that literally sucked guerrillas out from their hideaways into the street, where they were shot down by small arms fire or run over by the tanks.

Nork Nukes

So, the buzz of course is about North Korea's nuclear test. You've seen the news, no need for me to link to the main reports. You may not have seen this intriguing theory: the test was a dud; North Korean nuclear scientists are now officially the worst ever.

I don't know enough to judge the science in these claims. I've been meaning to ask Prof Peter Zimmermann here in the Department of War Studies who does have that knowledge. Unfortunately, he's busy talking to journalists who aren't asking the right questions. Damn typical journos! I await enlightenment.

In the meantime, I'm amusing myself with question what does it matter? Answer (thus far): less than you might think.

The thing is that having nukes is not really as useful a thing as active proliferators reckon it is. It doesn't really expand your strategic options much. For that matter it doesn't greatly enhance your tactical power either. Eventually someone is going to set off a nuke in some confrontation and find that it doesn't change the disposition of forces all that much. The dispersal of modern combat forces makes it hard to catch enough of them to make a permanent difference. If you're going to use one you'd better use a lot, but that puts you on the escalatory chain that ends with radioactive vitrified cities.

Having a few nukes is, however, a good way of allowing you to say this even louder which I think particularly in the case of North Korea is the main point. It's effectively a failed state already which extracts financial concessions on the basis of two things: its still potent conventional military power and the fact that its total collapse would cause problems for its neighbours which they'd rather not have. But conventional military power will dwindle eventually because starving soldiers don't tend to spend their time keeping up their equipment and training; and the power of moral blackmail will cease at the point those being blackmailed begin to reckon that the toll of innocents in the long-term will be less if the regime is allowed to/encouraged to collapse--short-term pain, long-term gain. A small nuclear arsenal maintains the status quo: effectively the answer, combined with some sort of blockade or inspection to prevent further proliferation, is to put the regime of Kim Jong Il on life support. For as long as he wants. The only 'wild card' here is China. Watch what they do. In the end though, beyond being publicly pissed off I don't think there's much that they can do either.

We can live with a nuclear North Korea--indeed, we have been for a while now, the tests confirmed what we'd already known. I'm not confident, however, that the same applies to Iran. 'Deterrence' works with North Korea in some form because the North Korean leadership doesn't want to die. Thank G*d for atheism! In the absence of an afterlife KJI would as likely as not prefer to go out the natural way: sipping cognac and watching tv in bed with company. This is not at all the attitude of Iran's leadership. The Ayatollah Khomeini put it clearly and chillingly:

'Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.'

My faith in deterrence in this case is not strong which inclines me to say 'Bomb Iran. Apologize afterwards' as Theo puts it. But there's a very good counter-argument (see this article, 'The Basis for Iran's Beligerence', by Shlomo Ben Ami, author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace) to this which causes me to think otherwise. I'm glad I'm not the one who has to make this call. I suppose that if I were, as much as I admire Ben-Ami, I'd have to err on the side of caution. Alas, bombs away.

Still, as Theo points out, '...there is no reason that a military strategy cannot be fashioned to try and reduce the fallout, in the UNSC and Iran, from bombing. The West could say: "sorry but we had no choice and we did warn you."' I think a part of that strategy is making it a little clearer to the Iranian people that in a proliferated world where the Ayatollahs have control of nuclear arms they’ve more or less declared Iran to be poste restante for nuclear terror--if ’somebody’ sets off a bomb in a city we’re quite likely to assume Iran’s culpability and therefore that the appropriate return address reads: Tehran via Abadan, Ahvaz, Bandar Abbas, Bushehr, Isfahan, Hamadan, Kerman, Mashhad, Rasht, Shiraz and Tabriz. In other words, no one should be more concerned about WMD getting to non-state actors than Iranians. A nuclera Iran is reallly not in their interest right now when itchy trigger fingers abound. That Iran’s current leaders do not always seem to see the need for caution and less millenarian rhetoric concerns me. It should REALLY concern them too.

Update: Here's David Aaronovitch in the Times. Great opener:

'THE NORTH KOREAN regime is apparently so bad that even George Galloway has never been there to offer his support. Or maybe that’s because it’s so broke.'

'End of History' and the 'Terrorism to Come'

In module 3 we've been having a discussion of the putative New World Order in the course of which wev've discussed, inter alia, Francis Fukuyama's End of History thesis. As so often happpens I have been reading something else which relates to that debate but not directly in a way that is appropriate for the ongoing discussion. But that's what thsi blog is for! I think some of you may find this Policy Review article interesting and enlightening of some of the things we've been discussing. The article discusses the work of the philosopher Alexandre Kojeve, a scholar with whom I was not previously familiar. The part which struck me as immediately relevant to us was thsi:

The philosophical basis for these deviations from Marxism is developed at length in Kojève’s treatise on law, Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, written during the Second World War but not published until the 1980s. There, Kojève points out that the End of History does not itself resolve the tension within the idea of equality — the ideal of equal recognition that is rationally victorious with the End of History embodies elements of market justice, equal opportunity, and “equivalence” in exchange (the “bourgeois” dimension of the French Revolution). But it also contains within it a socialist or social democratic conception of equality of civic status, implying social regulation, welfare rights, and the like. The Universal and Homogenous State — the consolidated global social and economic order — supposes some kind of stable synthesis between market “equivalence” and socialist equality of status. But it is not obvious, even to Kojève, when and how a permanent, stable, and universal (i.e., globally accepted) synthesis of this kind would come about.

This dimension of Kojève’s thought is of great importance in understanding his vision of the postwar world. One reason it has received little attention is the way in which Francis Fukuyama popularized and adapted Kojève’s notion of the End of History. As the Cold War came to an end, Fukuyama took Kojève’s notion of a global, universal political and social order as a basis for understanding the direction of current events. According to Fukuyama, the remaining differences between nations after communism signify different paces or degrees of movement towards a common culture of liberal capitalism. In The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992), Fukuyama uses the image of a long wagon train strung out on a road. He writes: “The apparent differences in the situations of the wagons will not be seen as reflecting permanent and necessary differences between the people riding in the wagons, but simply a product of their different positions along the road” towards the “homogenization of mankind.” From a Kojèvian perspective, Fukuyama’s mistake was to understand the collapse of communism as the triumph tout court of liberal capitalism. This turn of events instead signifies the superiority of capitalism to Soviet communism in one, albeit crucial, respect: Unlike Soviet communism and its aparatchiks, capitalism and its real-world agents, the commercial classes, proved capable of compromise. Thus, while Soviet communism proved unable to engage in market reforms and internal liberalization without collapsing, Western societies proved agile at balancing the justice of the market with a conception of substantive equality — the latter perhaps rather minimalist in the case of the United States but still of enormous social importance.

There's much more of interest there, including reflections on the EU, the boundaries of Europe and the conflict with Islam. Policy Review is an excellent journal. I find every issue has at least one article worth reading. The current issue also has a good piece by Walter Laqueur on 'The Terrorism to Come' . It's sobering reading. Laqueur articulates two points which I think are quite vital:

Two lessons follow: First, governments should launch an anti-terrorist campaign only if they are able and willing to apply massive force if need be. Second, terrorists have to ask themselves whether it is in their own best interest to cross the line between nuisance operations and attacks that threaten the vital interests of their enemies and will inevitably lead to massive counterblows.

PBS Frontline

There's a lot of interest in an upcoming episode of Frontline, the excellent documentary programmme from the US public broadcaster PBS, abbout the Taliban. Unfortunately, it hasn't been put up on-line yet but I for one am eager to see it. If you aren't familiar with Frontline you should be. It's a bit like the BBC's Panorama in the UK, only a bit lengthier and for my money usually better--although Panorama is also very good. You can view entire episodes on-line which is extremely handy. What's also very useful is that they often post extensive research materials with every programme including transcripts of interviews, links to documents and so on. It's a very good resource. Have a look.

Boche or blighty?

Over on his blog Prof Theo Farrell's had a post on US attitudes toward those in uniform as seen in a recent Budweiser advert. 'Naff or right on?' he asked. Have a peek at it. Read the comments too. Very interesting. Then come back and read this article 'Boche or Blighty?

Excerpt:

A paratrooper wounded in Afghanistan was threatened by a Muslim visitor to the British hospital where he is recovering.

Seriously wounded soldiers have complained that they are worried about their safety after being left on wards that are open to the public at Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham.

On one occasion a member of the Parachute Regiment, still dressed in his combat uniform after being evacuated from Afghanistan, was accosted by a Muslim over the British involvement in the country.

"You have been killing my Muslim brothers in Afghanistan," the man said during a tirade.

Because the soldier was badly injured and could not defend himself, he was very worried for his safety, sources told The Daily Telegraph.

A relative of the Para said the man had twice walked on to the ward where two other soldiers and four civilians were being treated without once being challenged by staff.

"It's not the best way to treat our returning men," he said. "They are nervous that these guys might attack them and, despite being paratroopers, they cannot defend themselves because of their injuries."

Quite the contrast, huh?

On Wikipedia

I love Wikipedia and I use it often. Not everyday, but certainly several times a week. There I've said it. I'm a 'full-grown' academic PhD in hand and I think Wikipedia is a fantastically useful thing. Use it. Better still contribute to it, for this is the really amazing thing about it.

But, there's always a but,

CAUTION: IT IS ALWAYS A BAD IDEA TO CITE AN ENCYCLOPEDIA IN ACADEMIC RESEARCH PAPERS.

Follow the link above. That's what Wikipedia has to say about its academic utility. I agree with everything said there and also with this Chronicle of Higher Education article and comments . Fundamentally, Wikipedia, like any encyclopedia, is only a starting for your research. To which I would add that owing to the way in which Wikipedia entries are authored they range in quality from exceptionally erroneous, even maliciously slanderous in at least one case, to exceptionally good. You must exercise critical judgment about what you read on Wikipedia--actually this is a good general rule but it's especially the case here. As it happens, I am impressed with the quality of Wikipedia entries in the areas in which I specialize. The problem more often than not is lack of depth and subtlety rather than factual inaccuracy.

There's an article by Marshall Poe in the September 2006 edition of the the Atlantic Monthly (subscription only, great magazine, you should consider subscribing) which I quote:

Wikipedia has the potential to be the greatest effort in collaborative knowledge gathering the world has ever known, and it may well be the greatest effort in voluntary collaboration of any kind.

I'm fascinated by the whole idea of the collaborative approach to knowledge-building which Wikipedia represents. I think it's a very big thing. Justt be cautious and sensible about how you use it and never rely on it exclusively.

Air Force Who needs it?

On my way home yesterday I noticed this letter in The Times. As an air power skeptic I've sometimes toyed with similar idea. So, why not? Why not disband the RAF?

Sound off in comments, if you will.

Iraq War in hindsight

Apropos of a discussion that's been going on over on Prof Theo Farrell's blog about the Iraq War I just came across this testimony by Maj Gen Batiste who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq for a year. I don't think I've ever heard a more devastating indictment of a superior in one's resignation letter. Absolutely shattering criticism of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Have a look.

How to read

Please excuse the patronizing title. I know you can read otherwise I'd not be worried you'd be offended by what I wrote. What I mean to point out is something hopefully more constructive and useful. In normal life we tend to think of reading as something which is done wholly and linearly. When we sit down to read a novel most of us start with page 1 and proceed all the way to the end in page order. We're less rigid about magazines and newspapers, perhaps selecting several articles of many, glancing around the sections to see what is most tempting, maybe reading the editorials, or sports before anything else, and so on. Academic reading is even less rigid than that: we rarely read anything wholly or linearly from pagge 1 to finish. I recall someone saying that for academic purposes reading a book is like 'gutting a fish'. The point is to rapidly strip out, understand and evaluate the structure of the argument (ie the 'bones'), identify the important sections of the text from the unimportant (ie the 'meat' from the 'guts')--what is important and unimportant will depend on what you need to get from the book, which will change. You don't start on page 1 of the text. First you do a 'smell test': do you recognize the author, who is the publisher? You check table of contents to get a sense of the structure. If your interest is piqued you may flip to and skim the introduction or the chapters that interest you. Or you scan the index to see what topics are covered and in what detail. You will want to makea judgment about the level of scholarship too which can often be gleaned quite quickly from looking at the extensiveness and appropriateness of the bibliography and especially the endnotes. Then you start to read the text skimmming some sections while reading others carefully, taking notes, cross-referencing within the work or with other texts. In short, academic reading is reading for a specific purpose: gaining information in order to build your knowledge and understanding. And to do thsi effectively you need to, first, employ the right 'tools' by which I mean the scholarly architecture of academic writings I have just described which tell you what kinds of data, theory and rhetoric is in the book and where, and, second, apply the appropriate technique by which I mean reading either very carefully, thuoghtfully and thoroughly with a view to commiting something to memory, making it a permanent part of your understanding, or preserving it (ie taking notes) for your own use later, or 'skimming' a text pulling out the crucial points, flagging areas for subsequent focus, or simply building a working familiarity with the author's main thinking. The trick is to be able to switch from one form to the other.

Personally, I read A LOT. And not just because it's a part of my day job. I read at home, at work, on the train. I read while I walk from Embankment station to the College on the Strand--the key is to know where you're going, keep one eye on the book, the other on obstacles 8-10 feet ahead (generally people get out of the way)--and I'd read on my bike on the way from Maidenhead station to my house if I could figure out a way to hold the book and the handlebars simultaneously. Basically, I read all the time I'm not doing something otherwise necessary to the sustainment of life which is a good habit to have for anyone interested in knowledge; but it's a practical necessity for MA students so if you are not similarly habituated you should work on being so. What's vital, however, is that you always ask yourself what am I reading this for? If it's general erudition then by all means read from cover to cover letting your mind wander and explore. Thsi is very pleasurable. But if you're reading to research an essay or doing a particular unit readings you need to be mercenary and unsentimental about it.

In other words, when you look at a unit's readings and see a half dozen articles, some book chapters and maybe a book or books to read in a week what is required is for you to make some quick judgments about what is to be skimmed and sampled. Unless you have extraordinary endurance and time on your hands do not sit down with a reading list systematically ticking off each item as you complete it. Also do not treat a reading list like the tablet handed to Moses by the Almighty. It's never the complete and final word. Always remember to browse around a subject. Unlike G*d you're teacher thinks more highly of you when you hand back the tablet saying 'thanks but I think you missed a few commandments; I've scribbled a few ideas in the margin...' Read, read, read. But read smart.

Information literacy

Students who are returning from last year may not have noticed in the 'home area' a new course on Information Literacy. I highly recommmend that you have a look at it. There's a lot of goood advicce in there concerning the use of ISS resources, doing bibliographic database searches and so on which you will find invaluable.

Inside Al Qaeda

This New Yorker article is very interesting reading on the internal workings of Al Qaeda.

It would seem that I am Polish at heart

I just came across this bit of harmless fun if you've time to kill before the start of term. I must not be very consistent. The first time I did it the result was a deadheat between Poland and Finland which is OK too. But 88% Italian? Please! I love Italy but I'm experiencing some cognitive dissonance from the clashing of stereotypes: on the one hand I've got Polish cavalry tipping their lances at tanks; on the other hand I've got Italian tanks with 1 forward gear and 4 reverse.

You scored as Poland. Your army is Poland\'s army. Your tenacity will form a concept in the history of your nation and you\'re also ready to continue fighting even if your country is occupied by the enemy. Other nations that are included in this category are Greece, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands. Poland 100% Italy 88% Finland 81% Soviet Union 75% United States 63% British and the Commonwealth 63% France, Free French and the Resistance 56% Japan 50% Germany 38% In which World War 2 army you should have fought? created with QuizFarm.com

Salaam and salutations

Hello all:
Well, 'school' is about to start again. I'm looking forward to it. I'm always grateful for a break but then I'm always eager to start on something new. I hope that you will all enjoy this upcoming course. The general pattern of it is similar to what we did last year but obviously we're looking at morer contemporary issues.

Some of you know me already (and vice versa) from last year. Others do not, so let me say a few words about myself. I'm Canadian by nationality but I've lived in the UK since 1998, did my PhD here, have had two kids here(Charlie 2, Lily 1) and bought a house here. If nothing else the mortgage payments on the last means that I can never leave, although to be honest I have no intention of doing so anyway. I love my job. I can't imagine teaching anywhere or anything else. Basically, I feel very British--mind you my accent remains resolutely Canuck, evidently some things do not change for some people.

My academic interest is generally focussed on the conduct of contemporary warfare and, more specifically, on the intersection of what is called the technologically-oriented 'Revolution in Military Affairs' which is, I would argue, the apotheosis of the Western way of war, and irregular warfare, or insurgency, which I tend to think of as the antithesis of the Western way of war. I get preoccupied by seemingly banal questions like 'how does war work?' because it strikes me that as a tool of policy right now it doesn't work very well at all. There are complicated reasons for this but for my part I think they can be boiled down in three ways:

1. significant changes in technology have vastly increased the capacity of high-tech militaries to 'kill people and break things';
2. but this does not mean that victory is easier or cheaper to attain because alongside technological change in the conduct of warfare there have been equally significant non-technological changes which can be crudely summarized 'the East has solved the riddle of the Western way of war'--not by matching its traditional strengths but by bypassing them;
3. and, at the same time, victory or 'strategic success' is elusive because the current zeitgeist of the West is ambivalent or hostile to the notion of war as an instrument of politics in any form because rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly, it feels that it is beyond the need for strategic choice.

This being the case the kinds of things which I research and write about are a bit of a mixed bag. I think a lot about military technology, doctrine, culture and training--and that mostly in terms of land warfare because, for one, that's where wars are decided and, for another, because as a former infantryman I'm biased. I love the infantry, basically. I have a major interest in counterinsurgency and irregular warfare, as well as information warfare, which I've been writing about recently. And finally, I have a new but growing interest in ethics of war and the Just War tradition which in the past I have tended to ignore because it struck me that the principles of Just War were more often than not applied as a bludgeon to delegitimize and undermine warlike policies with which people disagreed. I've come to realize, however, that people like me who are interested in making war 'work' as a tool of policy have no chance of doing that without engaging in debate with those who are ambivalent or hostile to the notion. Which, of course, means learning the terms of ethical debate on war--a steep learning curve for me!

Personal interests: I enjoy swimming, climbing and running and generally being out of doors in bad weather. I love the idea of sailing arouond the world; unfortunately the reality is I get seasick on the Thames River if the wind is up; thus it has always been my dream one day to cruise the world by Zeppelin or submarine--whichever is steadiest. I find painting military miniatures very stress relieving. Oh and I love beer in rather the same way as, for example, fish love water. Bear that in mind if you're ever in London around marking time!

That's enough about me. How about you?

Submarine surfacing

I just had a look at Nick Dymond's blog and noticed he had posted something about his summer reading. Have a look. It reminded me of my own neglected blog. To be truthful there's not much going on here. We are working on polishing up the new modules for next term and generally getting ready for the start of business. The summer has been uneventful for me--rather as I had hoped--a month of it spent in Canada. I am getting excited about the start of 'school'. For some reason I have always been boyishly enthusiastic about the beginning of the academic year. Which is why with a relatively short diversion I went from being a student to being a teacher--they're rather the same thing in many ways.

Marking in progress, still

As the deadline for the last major essay has been pushed back I hope that none of you are too terribly inconvenienced in your writing by the fact that I have not finished all the marking of short essays and group assignments. Sorry. I shall have it done by the end of next week. In the meantime, however, I think it worth reiterating a point I have made before both individually in my comments on your previous work and as whole on this blog. In general, I am very impressed by the standard of presentation and overall maturity of analysis in the written work of this group--it's somewhat better, certainly more of a pleasure for me to read, than the work of my face-to-face MA students . But there is one respect in which a small improvement would deliver an easy elevation in grade: reference to primary source material.

We are very fortunate with this subject to have access to a extraordinary wealth of primary resources on-line. I'd like you all to make a habit of googling all the speeches, official documents, treaties, and so on which you refer to in the secondary literature. A lot of it is available on-line and it you always get a better understanding of what actually happened and a better feel for the quality of the secondary literature when you consult the originals too. In the old days thsi was difficult; now it's easy. And it makes a difference in grade--simple as that. Also, I strongly recommend that whenever you sit down to write your assignments, in addition to whatever else you may have read, you consult these websites:

Digital National Security Archive
Cold War International History Project
Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact

On almost every essay topic you will find material on these sites which is highly relevant and useful.

Website of the day

This is my favourite website of today, maybe of the week... Click on 'Future War' and scroll through these amazing devices. Those of you who are professional military men tell me that you do not need the 'Gyro-Electric Destroyer' right now. Write to Gordon Brown demanding that funds be made available for this incredible machine. And while we're at it we might as well get a couple of 'Submarine-Land Dreadnoughts' for the Navy (or the Army? Good for both!) and the 'Jumping Jack Artillery Tower' also looks very handy.

Defence Secretary at King's

Today John Reid, Defence Minister, gave a speech at KCL called 'The Uneven Playing Field' which we've videoed and hopefully can make available to our on-line students. The gist of the speech was that criticism of the British military ought to be balanced by an appreciation of the enormous good works it has done and continues to do. The immediate context of the speech, for those of you not following the UK media is this. The deeper context, however, said Reid, is that the level of public understanding of the military has fallen drastically over the last decades as the proportion of the population with military experience has declined to a small fraction. What we have is an 'uneven playing field' in which our troops are highly constrained by a ubiquitous scandal-mongering global media in a battle against a totally unrestrained and media-savvy terrorist enemy--I'm paraphrasing. He went on to argue that war was being transformed by three things, as I recall:

1. The nature of the 'enemy' has changed; in the past our enemies wore uniforms and had aims and structures which we could understand; generally we shared with our opponents certain cultural conventions and norms; this is no longer the case.
2. The enemy 'uses our freedoms against us'--they employ asymmetric techniques 'making our strengths into our weaknesses'.
3. The rate of technological change has shifted seismically; we now have 'real-time media scrutiny of war' so that small tactical actions in the field can within minutes or hours be shown on television and debated in Parliament.

None of this is particularly new, actually. Nonetheless, it was a very effective tour d'horizon of the dilemmas of contemporary warfare. Which is why I feel somewhat disappointed by it. At times it sounded like an impassioned plea for the British public, more precisely the British media, to be fairer towards and more understanding of the unprecedented pressures under which the Army is now operating. Hear, hear, I say--I couldn't agree more. But this was the Minister of Defence, after all, not some random academic. I was rather hoping at the end to hear how much political capital the government would expend to defend their own soldiery; how far would he risk his own political neck? He didn't say. In fact what he said was something like this: 'we should be more understanding but when crimes are apparently committed we need to prosecute and hold to account...' (This strikes me as logically similar to the government's weaselly response to the furore over publication of cartoons depicting Muhammed: 'yes you have freedom of speech BUT you shouldn't exercise it when it offends people [in which case why have it?].')

In other words, the message to the British Army was, it seemed to me, 'yes, we hear your concerns and we appreciate what you're doing but if you make a mistake you're still toast.' The speech was videoed and I believe we are going to try and post it on the website. I'd be interested to hear what the rest of you make of it.

Well this isn't very good...

[This is an old post which I'd started on earlier and saved in my drafts folder. It's a bit outdated now but I think I'll post it anyway as there are still a few things relevant which you may find interesting. I've also linked to a number of articles which are worth reading for those interested in some dilemmas of contemporary warfare.]

Many of you will of course have heard no end of this already but I can't help remarking on it as it speaks to a number of things which I've been writing/thinking about lately.

First, it helps bring into focus one of the things which bothers me about this otherwise very good critique of the US in Iraq which has been doing the rounds: the implicit message that whereas the British Army has a sort of omni-cultural sensitivity that allows it to be more flexible in stability ops, the US Army is by contrast culturally deaf, if not ignorant, and as a result is hamfisted in its relations with the local populace. Don't get me wrong, there's a kernel of truth here--but it really ought not to be overstated. As we see after a day in the hot sun having home-made hand grenades and used hypodermics pitched at you by a braying mob British troops are not immune to the desire to lash out.

Which brings me to my second, somewhat more general, complaint about current events in Iraq. I find it increasingly difficult to say much about Iraq with the confidence of thinking I know all, or at least most, of the facts. There's a paradox here: we can see what has happened in these cases which gives us the illusion that we understand what is going on. The truth is that we do not. The recent episode is a case in point. Were the soldiers we saw part of the snatch squad we saw earlier in the clip or just opportunistic bullies? Were the guys they captured the riot's ringleaders or just the least fleet of foot? Was there an officer present? Where? A subaltern or a company commander. It's impossible to know from the clip. But it's crucial to understanding the event in context. I can fairly easily construct a hypothetical scenario around this which is consistent with everything on the tape and with which I have no great problems. British army position is continually harassed and attacked by organized local youths. Levels of violence are below that which would justify shooting back. But local police do nothing to stop/prevent riots (in fact, may be the among the main organizers) or capture ringleaders. Sergeant hatches cunning plan to snatch what he thinks are the most regular participants and give them a hiding. Officer says, I didn't hear that; I shall be in my tent. (No doubt this is why I should never hold a commission). On the other hand, you could construct an equally consistent narrative: soldiers hot, pissed-off, jerks who decide to take their frustrations out on a group of innocent local boys. The trouble is knowing which is closer to the case: generally what happens is that these things confirm and deepen whatever opinion the viewer had before they saw the clip. The clip from a year ago which showed a marine in Fallujah shooting a wounded insurgent in the head was even more marked in showing this contrast.

Third, I find it interesting that what has really upset people about the clip is not the beating being unleashed but the commentary by the soldier filming it. I recollect this old opinion piece by Andrew Marr (not someone I normally would link to) which captures something important, I think. Technology, specifically digital cameras and the internet, are changing something very fundamental about the way the Western world at least experiences war. As Marr puts it:

But warfare has depended for centuries on a rampart of silence, a wall of willed
incomprehension, between civilians at home and those killing. In a small way,
the arrival of digital photography has broken through that wall.

In the past, war happened 'over there' and while dreadful things were done, sometimes by one's own side, one tended not to hear about it until well after the fact, if ever. Now, the incomprehension remains but the wall is gone.

Inkblotto

There's been a lot of talk recently about 'how to win in Iraq'. A recent article in the Telegraph discusses the ink blot strategy. Have a look and go read the original piece in Foreign Affairs if you haven't already.

My first reaction was slightly harsh: why are you saying this now 2+ years after getting into this war!

Once I'd gotten over being irritated and settled down I found that I agreed with almost everything he had to say.

I still agree with almost all of it but not withuot reservations.

The strategy appears to rest heavily on the idea of that the British won in Malaya not by killing, capturing or driving out the communists but by taking control of bits Malaya in which they made life so good that people didn't want to fight the British any more and then expanding these bits like 'ink blots'. If we copy this strategy, so the argument goes, we can win in Iraq. First, I'm not so sure that this is really what the British did in Malaya. Yes, there were protected villages, yes there was tight coordination between civil and military action, but at the end of the day the British Army also went out into the jungle found, fought and killed or captured the insurgents. It wasn't a welfare project, in other words. For that matter Britain didn't have a lot of money in those days to give away. What I'm getting at, I think, is when people say 'Clear and Hold' is the answer, or 'Search and Destroy' is all we need to do I think: no, you need to do both and be sensitive to where and how the two interact. It's a bit like the manoeuvre vs attrition debate which often devolves into something quite primitive: manoeuvre good, attrition bad. But it's not either or. You can't manoeuvre withuot a holding force and unless you plan on holding indefinitely you've got to do some attacking.

The second thing that bothers me is the implicit assumption that the insurgents are fighting for better socio-economic conditions rather than something more ideological or religious. In Malaya the insurgents were fighting for communism and, as they were mostly Chinese, arguably for ethno-nationalist reasons. In Vietnam the same could be said of the VC. I find it hard to believe that someone in Iraq decides to become a suicide bomber because the water and electricity supply in Basrah is erratic. I understand that the recruitment of activists follows a linear pattern of disillusionment, isolation, subversion to becoming a terrorist actor and that we should be focussing on the first stage not the latter. However, it's not at all clear how one can address 'disillusionment' in the Muslim world. If four relatively well off and materially priveleged British muslims set off down this path culminating in the murder of 50 of their compatriots then what sense does it make to say that it is the state of the Iraqi infrastructure which is driving the insurgency there. It's got to be something else.

Moreover, the ink blot doesn't say anything about the neighbouring countries. If all of Iraq was an ink blot then you'd still have to come up with something to do about Syria and Iran not to mention the rest of the Middle East. The Coalition has to be a lot more globally-minded and less individually state-centred. Iraq is a battle in a larger war.

The third thing that makes me apprehensive is that going on the defensive will leave the non-ink blot areas of Iraq all the more easy for insurgents to organize and plan attacks in ink-blot land. What are the chances of really securing these blots? The Israelis have been trying to make something like this work for ages; up until the point they started separating their ink-blot physically witha fence they weren't having much success--and attacks still get through with the fence; moreover, the Iraqi insurgents are larger, more motivated and better armed than the Palestinians, it seems to me. We're not proposing to fence off parts of Iraq from other parts. On the contrary we're trying to encourage a federal state. So it is quite posible that the blots will shrink rather than expand.

Essentially I fear that the ink-blot strategy is a sign that there is insufficent will to win. Lately, I keep coming back to what Kissinger said about failure in Vietnam.

'We would not have recognized victory if it were staring us in the face, because we did not know what our objectives were.'

I don't think the real problem is the tactics on the ground in Iraq (which is not to say that there haven't been a lot of mistakes made). It's bigger than that. It's hard to come up with a strategy when you haven't got a clear idea what you want. Giving clear direction on some basic points would be useful.

Who's the enemy?
What do you want from them? How much do you want it?
What do they want from you? How much are you prepared to suffer from not letting them have it?

Marking done!

I've finished marking all your long essays at last. I'll post them back to you with comments via the platform and email (it's a trousers and suspenders thing) to you today. Some first impressions (rapid fire because I've got to go to a lecture in 5 minutes):

1. average mark is 62 which is quite high--particularly for a first effort. (American students refer to your Handbook if you haven't already familiarized with the differences between US and British marking systems. There's a marking table there which lays it all out plainly(!). As a rule of thumb add 20 percent.)
2. Thesis statement--as I've mentioned before I think this is the key to any essay. It's the essay's answer to the question and plan for proving it all rolled into one. It should be short, pointed, accurate, significant (ie., it shouldn't provoke me to ask 'so what?'), and engaging all at once. It should also be elegantly worded. Overall, I think more concentration on this is order in most cases. It's hard to get it perfect, admittedly.
3. Subsections and sign-posting--A few of you have employed subsections in order to break up your argument and make it more easy to follow. Good idea! It is sometimes hard to follow an argument not because what it says is inaccurate or uninteresting but because it is unclear why a point is being made here, in this manner and sequence and how it is contributing to the overall thrust of the paper. Usually the author has an understanding of that but sometimes it is unconscious or for whatever reason not evident to the reader. Try to signpost more effectively (withuot overdoing it!) by cross-referencing.
4. I'd like to see more use of journals! I note that a few of you have drawn on The Journal of Cold War History but there's much more available to you in the form of journal literature. Start using it too. Go to the Library website and browse the electronic journals there (you can search alphabetically--long but worthwhile-- or by subject area). Then look at the databases. Try using the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences to search for articles on a topic, for example. There are other tools to use but that's a good start. You MUST start exploring all the options available to you in terms of research. Books are wonderful things but they are not enough on their own. Do we need to have a discussion thread on this? I think so, perhaps. It's going to get more important in future. I'll start one on the platform.

I'll do a 'best of' compilation later. Must go teach non-digital students now!