Should armchair critics just cut it out?

I always start my on-line day day with a visit to this website run by the Canadian Forces College Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs. I highly recommend it because it is updated everyday and searchably archived. I also like the simple categorization (Canadian News/Canadian Commentary and International News/International Commentary). Being ethnically Canadian I am occasionally interested in sampling the Canadian debate. This article on Canada.com 'Armchair critics must halt drumbeat of defeatism over Afghan mission' caught my eye. As a self-confessed Armchair General I'm sensitive to the thrust of what he's saying here:

It's a golden rule of military operations that, unless you know what it is you are trying to do, you will fail -- at best suffering humiliation -- at worst needlessly losing lives.

There is another impediment to success, just as malignant. It's when you have a chorus of armchair observers shouting unsolicited advice, amplified by a gullible media.

At the risk of coming over all postmodern I think there is a tendency of the West to create a reality of defeat out of nothing but our tendency to jabber on in the endless societal echo chamber of which the Internet (case in point this blog) is a megaphonic amplifier. I sympathize with the urge of the author to scream 'shut up!' I paraphrase, actually what he says is:

Dithering politicians -- and blinkered academics -- are blurring the focus of the mission in Afghanistan.

In doing so, they risk weakening a military alliance that is a bulwark against terror for millions living in western democracies.

But my sympathy only goes so far. Frankly, I am apprehensive about the mission in Afghanistan as I wrote here. It seems to me that Afghanistan tends to be seen as 'the war that can be won' which is true but it could equally truly be called the 'war that can also be lost' if we repeat the mistakes of post March-April 2003 Iraq which it seems to me in some respects is happening:

• There are not enough troops on the ground and the ones that are there in the tough areas are so busy nailing insurgents while staying alive themselves that the goal of securing the population's support risks being compromised.

• The central government is weak and sectarian divisions (admittedly not of the Manichean proportions of the Sunni-Shiite divide in Iraq) pervade the country.

• Ungoverned regions of Pakistan (possibly with the compliance and/or tacit support of parts of the Pakistani security services) act as a staging point and logistical base for attacks inside Afghanistan.

• Suicide bombings are on the rise and the conflict is internationalizing with the arrival of enthusiastic Jihadis from all parts of the Islamic world eager to join the fight.

In short, defeat is a plausible outcome here. So with all respect to the author what I want to say is not 'Shut up!' but 'Wake up!' which is a very different thing. The problem is as Edward Luttwak once wrote that 'The West has become comfortably habituated to defeat.' (On the Meaning of Victory, Simon and Schuster, 1986, p. 289) This is civilizationally insanely suicidal. So, sure, let's cut the defeatism and start a real dialogue on how we can win--and for what it's worth I think his idea that what's needed is more firepower and more armour is the sort of short-termist band-aid-ism that leads to strategic failure. There's a debate to be had here to which even Armchair Generals like me can contribute. I fear, however, that the situation is even worse than the author acknowledges: the first step, and it's a big one, is shaking people out of their comfortable habituation with the idea that losing doesn't matter.

Update: Two good articles on Afghanistan from the On Point blog here

Prince Harry Going to Iraq

Very busy week, hence snail-like blogging rate. The report that Prince Harry will be deploying with the Blues and Royals to Iraq caught my eye, however. I can see many problems with this, particularly that Harry being the terrorist dream target puts others in graver danger than they would otherwise be by his mere presence. I think the argument against is well expressed here:

Harry's desire to serve is admirable. But if a single additional squaddie is harmed protecting him, his will be a deployment too far.

On balance, however, I'm for it. He's a soldier doing his job, his duty. It'd be worse if the 2nd in line were offered a free pass on combat deployment (as he obviously was) and took it. I think it speaks well of him and I hope his special attractiveness as a target gives his mates lots of opportunities to plink those who out of eagerness for a big kill attack unwisely.

Kernel of truth

Off topic, the BBC reports that at last night's Brit awards Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher laid into Tony Blair's record. Ho hum, blah, blah, blah... heard it all before. The late great sage Will Rogers once said 'there is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.' That goes double for pop idols and movie stars who unfortunately are constantly having microphones thrust at them and invited to extemporize on the weighty matters of the day. With very few exceptions the results are cringe-making. This bit caught my eye though:

David Cameron is no different from Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown is no different from David Cameron.

They're all cut from the cloth and it annoys me that the biggest political icon from the last 30 years has been Margaret Thatcher, someone who tried to destroy the working class... it freaks me out you know.

So I don't really think there's anything left to vote for. That's why people don't vote... why people would rather vote for celebrity talent shows than would vote for politics.

I beg to differ on Maggie, but otherwise I reckon he 's right . The terms of debate have narrowed so in this country that there doesn't seem much of a choice to be made.

Afghanistan: Losing Friends and Making Enemies?

The Senlis Council released a lengthy report yesterday on Afghanistan, 'Losing Friends and Making Enemies', based on 500+ interviews with average locals. I've only managed to scan the bulk of it this morning but the main thrust of it is sobering. As it says in the conclusion:

The International Community needs a reality check: we must fundamentally reassess the status of international community counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan The international community has failed to convince the local population that it is there to help and has failed to increase support for the Afghan government.

This has reinforced a situation in which the local Afghan population sees itself as being alone, faced on the one hand, by the international community and the government, and on the other hand by the Taliban and other insurgent groups.

The support that the international community enjoyed when it first arrived in the country has disappeared and must be rebuilt in order to provide a positive environment for the military to fight in and to build support for the Karzai Government in Southern Afghanistan.

We must acknowledge this reality and take immediate steps to turn around the dynamics between the international community and the local Afghan population. Despite the fact that counter-insurgency theory is normally understood to include many different policy areas, the counter-insurgency strategy used in Afghanistan is dominated by a military approach. The other elements of classic counter-insurgency responses such as humanitarian aid, development cooperation and infrastructure/institution building have been sorely neglected, under-funded and under-prioritized during the five years of international presence in Afghanistan.

This means that despite the significant military success in the south we are not able to establish government control in the south, nor can we establish meaningful security systems.

You can see the Canadian press on the report here which takes the line 'we're waging a losing war' and the British on the BBC here which takes a more equivocal view. My gut feeling is that the report slightly exaggerates the difficulty of the situation. I hear what David Kilcullen, Chief Strategist in the Office of the Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism at the US State Department, quoted in the BBC report, is saying 'The fundamentals, the bones of the situation, in Afghanistan are quite sound...Challenges remain and will have to be tackled but the prospect for success remains good.' But I can't help thinking AQ's chief strategist could well be saying exactly the same thing. There's really no room for complacency.

Putin's speech at Munich conference

I meant to blog about this earlier. Last week Russian President Vladimir Putin made a speech at a security conference in Europe which NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer described, in the most diplomatic words possible, as 'disappointing and unhelpful'. According to a BBC report Putin claimed,

The United States has overstepped its borders in all spheres - economic, political and humanitarian, and has imposed itself on other states," he said.

It was a formula that, he said, had led to disaster: "Local and regional wars did not get fewer, the number of people who died did not get less but increased. We see no kind of restraint - a hyper-inflated use of force.

Not surpisingly, the talk afterward has been of the 'new Cold War'. Ariel Cohen writes about 'Confronting Putin's Push' noting the Russian plan to spend $189 billion over the next five years on arms which sounds like a lot but should be taken with a large grain of salt. There've been half a dozen major reform and rearmament plans for the Russian Army since the collapse of its mighty predecessor none of which have amounted to much. The Guardian reports today that Russian conscripts have been forced to work as prostitutes which, if true, marks a low which surprises even me (I spent 1996 to 2001 researching and writing about the decrepitude of the Russian military in some detail).

So let's keep things in perspective here. Russia's important. But if the Soviet Union was accurately characterized as 'Upper Volta with nuclear weapons' , then Russia today is the smaller, poorer, more decrepit neighbour of Upper Volta--with nuclear weapons. Max Boot has it right when he writes 'Putin: the louse that roared'. Putin is a man who has famously played his cards as well as could be done. He's clever and he has his hand on Western Europe's gas valve which gives him some stick. But he's overplayed his hand here.

Update: Excellent article by Andrei Piontkovsky.

The attitude of the Russian political class to Europe, and to the West in general, over the latest three to four centuries has always been contradictory, hypersensitive, and extremely emotional. The best Russian political text on the subject remains, even today, Alexander Blok's 1918 poem, The Scythians, with its famous lines about Russia and its attitude toward Europe: "She stares, she stares at you with hatred and with love," and "We will turn our Asiatic snout toward you." Just as 300 years ago, and 200, and 20, Russians know perfectly well that we cannot do without Western technology and investments, and that autarky and an Iron Curtain spell economic and geopolitical disaster for Russia. We understand that Russian culture is an integral part of European culture.

And yet, the West seems to irritate us by the very fact of its existence. We see it as a psychological, informational, spiritual challenge. We are constantly trying to convince ourselves that the West is inherently hostile and malevolent toward Russia, because this flatters our vanity and helps to excuse our shortcomings and failures.

If you take any mainstream Russian publication and read the last 100 articles dealing with foreign policy matters, 98 will be full of bitterness, complaints, irritation, poison and hostility toward the West. This despite the fact that most of the authors of those articles like to spend as much time as possible in Western capitals and Western resorts, keep their money in Western banks, and send their children to study in Western schools and universities.

As in Blok's famous poem, a passionate declaration of love for Europe turns, at the slightest doubt as to whether it is reciprocated, into a threatening "And if you won't, there's nothing we can lose, and we can answer you with treachery!"

This is positive

According to reports this morning Moqtada al Sadr has left Baghdad for Iran. Not great for al Sadr's credibility--though there's nothing saying the departure is permanent. I don't imagine the Iranians are too pleased, however. For the last week the US has been trying to pin on Iran support of arms and men for the Iraqi insurgency--a charge which Iran has vigorouosly denied. But it's a little hard to maintain that suspension of disbelief when one of the top insurgent leaders pitches his tetnt in Tehran and announces he will henceforth general his army by phone from there, as well as in light of other evidence, for example the capture of .50 calibre sniping rifles sold to Iran a year ago in Iraq. On a related note, the BBC says this morning that 11 Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been killed in southern Iran by a roadside bomb. According to the report,

Iranian officials have accused Britain and the United States of supporting ethnic minority rebels operating in the Islamic republic's sensitive border areas.

If this charge is true, good; if it is not true, why aren't they?

So good I have to share

A witty student added this aside to an ongoing discussion on air power in our 'Strategic Dimensions... 'course. I think all will get a kick out of it:

Off topic but while we're on the subject of knocking the RAF I can't resist pointing in the direction of this article in last week's Sunday Times for an example of just how 'in touch' some members of the junior service really are:

utterly, utterly..

Are they trying to make themselves look bad or what? Is this some kind of reverse psychology recruiting method that I haven’t heard of?

As I read this the mental image I was forming of fthe author was this. Be sure to watch the video.

No one ever has enough books so go buy this one

As most readers of this blog (there are a few!) will know I teach mainly on the on-line MA War in the Modern World programme of the Department of War Studies at King's College London. We are lucky to have as one of our students on this programme Dan Ford. Why it has taken me so long to put together the name with the author of the book Incident at Muc Wa which was later made into the classic Vietnam War film Go Tell the Spartans I cannot comprehend. The penny dropped when asked, as one is sometimes, 'what's your favourite war film?' and I was compelled to consult wikipedia (as one does) in drawing up my short-list (again). So I looked around and found this site www.danfordbooks (couldn't be any clearer URL) where I purchased my own copy of Incident. I heartily recommend that you all do the same.

Dan, could I have mine autographed please?

A ray of light

In one of the courses I'm teaching this term we just concluded a unit on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was a lively discussion--as it almost always is with this group of students--full of quite sharp divisions on some points, which is natural enough given the subject. As I wrote there,

... I feel myself rather bleak about the situation. Assuming events in Iraq and Iran do not precipitate a wider conflagration which will subsume the Arab-Palestinian conflict--at the moment this seems to me the most likely eventuality--then Israel will complete its security wall which will work for the most part in keeping suicide bombers out. Palestinians will have a sort of state which will have none of the attributes of political stability or economic viability and all of the ingredients needed for a descent into its own miniature miasma of inter-communal violence, lawlessness and misery.

In other words I really don't see much chance for a peaceful settlement as such. My guess is that sooner not later there will be peace of a sort because the belligerents will be physically separated as the Israelis withdraw unilaterally subsequent to which, actually, as we are seeing in Gaza now, in parallel with, the nascent Palestinian state will violently and irrevocably collapse. But reading this article, 'A plea for peace from a bereaved parent', written by a Palestinian father mourning his ten-year old daughter, dead with a rubber bullet in her brain, causes a small ray of light to penetrate my dark pessimism. 'From small acorns mighty oaks grow.' May it be so.

Charge of the Professors

A PhD student in the department gave me a copy of this article this morning 'Officers with PhDs Advising War Effort.' Have a read.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals -- including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders -- in an eleventh-hour effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war.

Army officers tend to refer to the group as "Petraeus guys." They are smart colonels who have been noticed by Petraeus, and who make up one of the most selective clubs in the world: military officers with doctorates from top-flight universities and combat experience in Iraq.

Essentially, the Army is turning the war over to its dissidents, who have criticized the way the service has operated there the past three years, and is letting them try to wage the war their way.

"Their role is crucial if we are to reverse the effects of four years of conventional mind-set fighting an unconventional war," said a Special Forces colonel who knows some of the officers.

I have been lucky enough to get to know two of these 'Petraeus guys', Kilcullen and McMaster, a very little bit--which is more than enough to be deeply impressed by their clarity and insight about the situation we find ourselves in in Iraq and dedication and determination to find a solution. I am reminded of Napoleon's maxims:

Maxim 6--A retreat, however skillful the manoeuvres, will always produce an injurious moral effect on the army, since by losing the chances of success yourself you throw them into the hands of the enemy.

Maxim 15--in giving battle a general should regard it as his first duty to maintain the honour and glory of his arms. To spare his troops should be but a secondary consideration. But the same determination and perseverance which promote the former object are the best means of securing the latter. In a retreat you lose, in addition to the honour of your arms, more men than in two battles. For this reason you should never despair while there remain brave men around the colours...

I've no doubt of the seriousness of the consequences of defeat in Iraq and I'm apprehensive of the psychological momentum which will be lost to us (and gained by the other side in equal measure, as Napoleon points out). It has been argued by many that we should get out of Iraq so that we can avert defeat in Afghanistan by devoting more resources there. It seems just as likely to me, however, that having won in Iraq the resources of the global insurgency will shift to Afghanistan with far greater alacrity and enthusiasm than we will. In other words, I really, really want the 'surge' to work and if anyone can find a plausible solution it is these 'Petraeus guys'.

Unfortunately, the chances of success in Iraq are pretty remote. So this part of the article concerns me 'Essentially, the Army is turning the war over to its dissidents, who have criticized the way the service has operated there the past three years, and is letting them try to wage the war their way.' Iraq is a hot potato and when the music stops who will be left holding it? Probably not the guys who bollocksed it up in the first place, but the critical people who might have done it right given the chance. The Charge of the Professors looks a little like the Charge of the [too little, too late] Light Brigade. Ever heard the old adage 'Success has a hundred fathers but failure is an orphan'? If I were Petraeus that's what would be at the back of my mind right now.