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?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
There's always far more questions than answers aren't there? If only we could create solutions for this problem rather than simply identifying the problems.
There should be a class for politicians and mil strategists called 'Principles 101'. In it one would learn the principles of applying principles. As you say, there's no point simply applying a few of the principles of, say, COIN; you must give all of them 'adequate' attention. I wrote somewhere (my blog?) about COIN principles and highlighted the US' predisposition towards destruction of the insurgents before the other, equally useful, principles. Not that they haven't at least attempted applying the other principles. Indeed, wasn't 'strategic hamlet theory' basically the same as the ink blot idea? That failed becuase it didn't suit the situation.
This is the key, ones application of principles must be appropriate to the situation. As you say, there is no one size fits all solution and what was in fashion last year may not work next season.
David,
Thanks for this post; it interests me greatly. Apologies for not replying to it earlier. I seem to be adding responsibilities weekly. Now I have 3 full time duties excluding family and KCL. I am not sure how the Air Force (or myself for that matter) intends to manage with the current and future planned cuts in officers.
I agree with nearly everything you stated in this last post. I do however have some variation in thought on a couple of the points made.
First, I am in complete accord with your initial point on the necessity of doing both search and destroy ops and making life so good that people don't want to fight anymore. The complexity comes in, as you note, "where the two intersect". How do you raid a family's house and perhaps kill one or some of its inhabitants without alienating the rest of the family or neighbors and thus hurting the second track of the strategy? In the end it’s a messy way forward with plenty of time to question whether it's effective or not, but I think it’s the best choice. Seek out and destroy the insurgents while offering a better alternative to fighting as a solution to potential insurgents and their supporters. This better solution, involving both economics and politics, would make hosting insurgents less attractive as well, denying them a base to operate from. This brings me to the first difference in perspective, motivation.
The thing that really seems interesting about the Iraq insurgency is that it isn't just religious fanaticism or desire for socio-economic conditions. It is a mix of these as well as a couple others. The primary motives appear to be religious (mainly Islamo-fascist foreign fighters), political (Sunnis who having lost control of the country feel like a threatened minority) and socio-economic (those who feel that their conditions have worsened under coalition occupation). I think those motivated by socio-economic reasons are less likely to fight than the other two but, almost as importantly, are willing to turn a blind eye when insurgents set up shop down the street. What have they to lose? Life is worse off than under Hussein which probably creates a desire to get back at the coalition.
Now talk about complexity. In other insurgencies there was conformity in motivation but in Iraq you have at least 3. How do you eliminate an insurgency with 3 different reasons for fighting? The religious motivated fighters, primarily foreign, are a wider (outside Iraq) longer term problem which cannot be solved immediately. This leaves the political and economic motivateds. These 2 areas are conveniently addressed with democratization. Democracy allows the Sunnis to gain some control in the country's leadership (which they are demonstrating more and more interest in) and sets conditions for greater economic development (as demonstrated in several areas of Iraq). The successful democratization of Iraq will make the politically and economically motivateds less tolerant of foreign religiously motivated fighters in their communities as they will be bringing unwanted destruction with them. The ink blot strategy seemed attractive as it created growing stability and security which would accelerate the effects of democracy in Iraq. To me it seems to be a case of hunting and destroying the committed insurgents while simultaneously offering a clearly better choice for those in contemplation and in support.
I also agree with your statement that the real problem isn't the tactics on the ground. We do pretty damn good job with search and destroy/detain ops. But I don't necessarily agree that the problem lies in not knowing what we want. We want a democratic and peaceful Iraq as a democratic inroad to the middle east. It’s how to get that that administration has been slow to develop. One of the biggest frustrations for me was that from the very beginning this whole operation was a Department of Defense affair. Don't get me wrong as an employee of the DoD I can certainly say that I am a big supporter, especially when we produce military solutions to military problems. But as we have both noted an effective strategy in Iraq requires both a military and political focus. A quote by a senior army commander in Iraq from the Krepinevich article seems salient here: "[I] don't think we will put much energy into trying the old saying, 'win the hearts and minds.'(93)
I think it was almost an entire year before we went to war that the State Department worked tirelessly to produce a political strategy (State Dept. and politics seem to fit better than DoD and politics). Unfortunately most of this work went unconsidered as the administration handed the reigns solely to the DoD. The refocus on the political aspect is why I think the Krepinevich article made such a stir.
Sean
Post a Comment