Letter 61 to Friends and Familiares: counterinsurgency and why it does not work

This text is, in actuality, a response to a colleague's thinking through a new counter-insurgency framework designed to leverage the proven benefits of the free markets to address the failing counter-isnurgency in Afghanland.

by NedMcD | July 2, 2012 - 9:52pm

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Gentlemen,

As a life-long civilian, outside the tight culture of the active duty military and even tighter one of the Special Forces, I would like to make three points in my note.

1.     I appreciate the Army decision-making model, as a civilian who has worked with the State Department in Iraq and USAID in Afghanistan.

2.     The breadth of this Small Wars Journal article makes a succinct response impossible.

3.     One's conviction ought not to be assumed as arrogance.

Decision-making for the really dangerous real world. What outsiders often find surprising is the amount of open debate within the Army (and, by that, I mean all of the uniformed services). The chain-of-command applies far more to the implementation than to the conception. Yours is a great model for decision-making in highly uncertain, not to mention dangerous, atmospheres.

Missive Impossible. Over the last few days, I have written several drafts of this note; all end up being long and rambling because I try to answer specific points from the text. In desperation, I clipped thoughts verbatim from the article to narrow my view to the basics and ended up with two full pages. 

Don´t convict conviction. In writing you all, I really have to confess to strong disagreement with assumptions underlying the appended comments. The author's conviction reflects the world of finance from which he and I each came. The fact is, in that world, if an innovator displays tentativeness, both he and the idea are gone.

Defense of the vision underlying this proposal. We most assurèdly face the uncomfortable truth right now that the ‘whole-of-government’ mission in Afghanistan is not turning out the way we had hoped. Such a truth is understandably difficult to accept in the face of your comrades lost, our toil devoted and everyone’s treasure invested. Hopefully, facing this truth can set us free from narrow or desperate thinking.

That possibility does not make things easy. Part of modernizing (i.e., joining the world of and via globalization) entails ‘creative destruction’, not only of industries but of traditions along the way. This process has occurred over time and across time-zones in places as diverse as Europe, Africa and the Pacific Rim. Nonetheless, time takes time and, sadly, many transitions exact blood with the toil.

The transition from tribalism to globalism in Afghanistan will entail an eventual ascendancy to power of the middle and upper middle classes against static power structures. With two years left in Afghanistan, we are very fortunate to have this author with his strong sense of the ground truth there, elaborating a new counter-insurgency model. After all, almost all of the counterinsurgency literature out there is written by those who lost one or formulated their ‘cutting edge’ ideas on K-Street for money or in Cambridge for attention.

When one cuts through the essential details of this proposal, what we have here is something that addresses why most counter-insurgencies fail: modernization takes too long for kinetic adventurism. I am reminded of Viêt Nam. Within twenty-five years of the fall of the South Vietnamese, that society was beginning to resemble far more what we Americans had so wanted to see during our intervention. In a sense, we won through losing.

What! How is that? Our presence planted the seeds for that society's inner growth toward its cuturally reconciled version of capitalism, modernity and democracy. The best of the example we set remained with the people to be ingested over time and without the off-setting distraction of the presence of ‘occupiers’. That is exactly what this program can do: set an example of freedom and hasten the process of modernization through empowering a nascent middle class inside the villages to change the culture from the bottom up.

When enough villagers, born with that rare capacity of dual-minded decision-making, have the confidence to apply it, they may well begin to create a vanguard of change. How? By bringing up children as a new generation of entrepreneurs and by mentoring others of their generation. The diffusion of skills over time will present a more compelling model for counterinsurgency than what we see today. Call the process one of ‘cultural evolution’.

All this will take time, several decades in view of the country’s low education rates, for the newer middle class culture to emerge. That is what we should expect, not because Afghans are inert or stupid but because this modernization will have to come to terms with various deeply ingrained indigenous traditions to make a lasting change -- one that is likewise reconciled with the culture. That is why I like to say that the battlefield in situations like this one remains the future.

This proposal, then, enables select Afghans – an entrepreneurial segment – to bring modernization gradually, through a growing and uniquely Afghan version of a venture capital community at the country’s current center of gravity: the villages. The departing example set by the U.S. remains our choice. Nevertheless, the future of Afghanistan belongs to our host-country counterparts. This program widens their choice for an alternate, better, destiny.

Thank you for your patience.

Old letter from March 2003

TIME FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO DECLARE WAR FORMALLY (c. 15-Mar-03)

I remember sitting in front of my television in amazement at Hodding Carter III’s statement on a talk-show (“Night-Line”, I believe) almost a decade after he soothed so many of us every day as a foreign service officer briefing a frustrated, wounded nation on the Iran hostage ordeal. In this instance, Mr Carter made a casual comment on how the U.S. should react to Libya’s evident and lethal complicity in terrorism targeted against Americans. He stated something to the effect that Congress ought to declare war openly. What was amazing to me about Mr Carter’s comment was that it made so much sense yet held so little currency among his compatriots, including me.

These days, we, all of us, worry about the unknowable consequences of a war against Iraq. My support for this U.S. / U.K.-led aggression – and this invasion will be aggressive – lies in convictions that I have held for some time.

• Saddam Hussein is an odious man heading an atrocious régime with documented proof of a willingness to use poison gas and a reasonable presumption that, if the option were available, he would use nuclear weapons.
• His gangster régime has actively courted, condoned and sponsored terrorism, reportedly paying $25,000 to the families of suicidal murderers in the streets of Israel, the Middle East’s only enduring democracy and most vibrant, progressive society.
• With the co-precedent of Afghanistan, the downfall of Iraq’s régime – and the destruction of Iraq itself – will send a clear message across the world, beyond the Axis-of-Evil, that governments sponsoring terrorism face bloody consequences for their actions.
• Western democracy is under attack and if a religious or class-based war (more likely, both) is in the cards, it is almost certainly inevitable by now; that being the case, we have to win this war, a war we did not start.

Hatred of our country in the Middle East, and among many of the world’s one billion Muslims, is quite real, quite durable, quite deadly. Further, America has had several “wake-up” calls over the past generation as indicated by this incomplete list drawn from memory.

• The assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy by a Palestinian for R.F.K.’s supposed acquiescence to some imagined “Jewish” elite (1968);
• An attempted assassination by Iraqi agents of President George H.W. Bush shortly after his leaving office (1993);
• The murder of two U.S. diplomats, Cleo Noel and George Moore, in the Sudan by surrogates of Yassir Arafat (1973);
• An assassination of a U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Francis Meloy, in Beruit (1976);
• The taking of American citizens as hostages in Iran (1979-1981);
• The attack against and destruction of U.S. embassies and the murder of hundreds over two decades in Pakistan (1979), Lebanon (twice in 1983 & 1984) Kenya (1998), Tanzania (1998);
• More hostages taken by Hizbullah (1980s).
• The murder of 241 U.S. peace-keeping troops in Lebanon (1983);
• The deadly, unprovoked attacks on the U.S.S. Stark (1987) and the U.S.S. Cole (2000)
• The stark slaughter of 189 U.S. passengers on Pan American flight 103 (1988);
• Three attacks – two mass murders – against the World Trade Center (in 1993 and 2001);
• The attack against the Pentagon (2001); and,
• The murder of 93 passengers on the 9/11 United flight that crashed in Pennsylvania.

 When I wrote out and later documented this list of evil, I felt like someone had hit me up-side of the head: we are already in a war!

President Bush’s strong and blunt response is clear: America did not start this war but we mean to finish it. It is likely to be impossible for the U.S. to dismantle terrorist networks around the world; we will need help. Why not enlist the most effective allies of all: the nations that sponsor these killers? By holding these criminal countries directly accountable for their actions that their surrogates commit against humanity, we give them ample incentive to rein in their mercenaries.

While the Reagan Administration’s bombing of Tripoli seemed like a coarse response to Libya’s conspiratorial role in terrorism during the 1980s, it proved to be effective in abating Libyan sponsorship, at least in the short-run. It is important that we hand on a safe world to our children. Gangster régimes, like Saddam Hussein’s, cannot continue on as they have in the past, fettered or not.

Yet conviction and military might do not relieve the United States of America from the obligations of its moral leadership. And we shall remain accountable to these higher standards exclusively for a while until the euro becomes a global currency on par with the dollar and the European Union emerges as a super-power some time over the next five or ten years. The evident concern expressed by friend and foe alike about the fall-out of a possible invasion of Iraq is that the U.S. has lost its sense of proportion, that we are beginning to act with a sense of impunity.

There are grounds for such concerns. Every day, it seems, our media portrays the leaders of allies who disagree with us as somehow unequal to the tall order of statesmanship and manliness. The amount of proven reserves in Iraq, the U.S. consumption patterns of fossil fuels and the frank acknowledgement by Bush Administration officials of an extended occupation of Iraq arguably add up to an ulterior motive for this conquest: subsidized oil.

• Concerns of carpet bombings of Baghdad make me aware of the suffering of a populace devastated by ten years of sanctions that have increased infant mortality rates, under-nutrition and appalling health-care conditions. Collateral damage could degenerate into unilateral, if unintentional, slaughter.
• And, yes, the ghost of Viet-Nam still lurks amongst us: do we as a nation really want place in harm’s way so many of our fine young people? This war may end up being an urban war, one that is more costly in the lives of young Americans than was Desert Storm. These concerns deserve a fair and open hearing for many reasons.
• Germany, Russia and France are nations surviving a century of war; they host large muslim minorities.

Specifically, French President Jacques Chirac was one of the galvanizing forces behind N.A.T.O. finally intervening in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the mid-1990s.

Soon after 9/11, German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder gave a heartfelt speech proclaiming Germany’s solidarity with and affection for the American people, not a speech announcing an abdication of the responsibility of a great nation – and stalwart ally – to voice its reservations with U.S. policy.
The Supreme Commander of N.A.T.O. in its intervention into Kosovo – U.S. General Wesley Clark – views this imminent invasion as a colonialist endeavor.

As reported by Albert Hunt in his recent column in the Wall Street Journal, Marine General Anthony Zinni – often a trouble-shooter for U.S. interests in the Middle East – has cautioned wisely against head-long pursuit of military objectives without a clear and persuasive post-battle plan for Iraq.

• That the U.S. could re-coup the $200 billion magic-number price-tag for invasion with a 7-16% subsidy – akin to a traditional volume discount – on purchases of 20% of Iraq’s reserves precludes a simple dismissal of the “oil-grab” reservation.
• A precisely argued dissent by Scott Ritter, a former arms-inspector, of the current evidence presented by the U.S. that Iraq is re-arming remains unanswered.
• Also unanswered are questions relating to the potential detection capability of allied jet-fighters to provide sufficient reconnaissance while enforcing the no-fly zones.

While I sound like a detractor of our President’s policy, I do not mean to be. We are, however, embarking on a risky policy since, in this war, our loved ones will be vulnerable to the terrorist reprisals almost certain to follow an invasion of Iraq. Further, we place the principles of our republic, not to mention our humanity, at risk to the allure of empire and a grisly new ‘reality’ TV.

Nevertheless, democracies really are under attack and we all want to do our part, at least as each of us perceives it. And this challenge to each American reminds me of the wisdom of Hodding Carter’s comment on television so many years ago. If we are to start a war against Iraq and win it, we should do so rightly by…

1. …a full and open declaration of war against Iraq by Congress
2. …announcing any oil concessions expected by the U.S. / U.K. to recover the costs of régime change before the declaration of war passes Congres
3. …pivoting nation-building in Iraq on an independent and self-determined government.

These three principles would serve as a general guideline for attacks against national governments plainly backing terror against the U.S. We have to remember seductive euphemisms for Empire from the past such as “mission civilisatrice” or “the white man’s burden”, remaining mindful that nation building does not become a new velvet glove on the same old iron fist. Finally, we have to keep in mind that nation-building – which I interpret as implanting democracy in regions that have endured tyranny – may not work.

Pluralist societies flourish in those places where every group gives up something – that is: the prospect of complete victory or unrivalled use of resources – to gain a lot (i.e., peace and security). Some regions may simply not be ready to end the misery; at that point, we do what we can and leave.

An additional principle, not completely relevant to Iraq’s secular society, would also pivot nation-building upon a guarantee of universal liberties including the liberty…

1. …from fear (guaranty of rights to, and protection of, ethnic or religious groups, specifically, in this instance, the Shi’ites and the Kurds)
2. …from ignorance (guaranty of universal education)
3. …from superstition (guaranty of the re-education, re-empowerment and re-integration into the work-force of women).

Why?

Accountability is the life-blood of representative government. That means our Congress has to have the courage to declare war in a very public manner; we have to go forward as a reasonably unified society for we fight not only for stability of oil prices but to hold high the Wilsonian dream of leaving a world to our children that is truly safe for democracy. Further, our president and the leaders of the United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal have staked out a lonely, difficult and, I believe, terribly brave position. Each may be a marked man.

If we can not in good conscience – after two or three days of congressional debate, publicly televised on all networks – support an invasion of Iraq at this time, then our president needs to know that, now. If Congress and the Administration lack the confidence to make a quick, public and effective case followed by a prompt declaration of war, perhaps we ought to listen to our wary friends, this time, and stand down.

As a restive Johnsonian democrat, I would find it difficult to support any carping by my party after-the-fact, especially if such complaining included statements to the effect that this war was never declared. Congressional acquiescence last autumn was bi-partisan. We have the time – two days, if we work at it – to air the evidence and for Congress to declare a war in a manner consistent with the thoughtfulness recommended by our Constitution.

If the U.S. and the U.K. relent in the end, I hope that I can remember to give Messrs Blair and Bush due credit for the statesmanship required to place the welfare of their subjects – and of democratic liberties, everywhere – above their personal standing in the short-term. In the meantime, we would have to continue on with redoubling our preparedness.

For this war on terrorism, fraught with moral ambiguity as it is, is certain to be around for us to fight another day at a time when we are ready militarily, emotionally and morally. Notwithstanding the incessant publicity about Homeland Security, etc., we have a long way to go and need to apply more resources to firm our domestic flank. God-willing, we will not have to face another day-of-ignominy like 9/11 to get there.