Letter-91: Marketing doth make cowards of us all...

This essay discusses an interesting interview by Thomas Ricks, in Foreign Policy magazine (http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/02/12/kilcullen_speaks_on_coin_going_out_of_style_his_recent_book_syria_and_more), with David Kilcullen, the not-quite-through guru of counter-insurgency (COIN).  Please pardon my sarcasm.  While this practitioner’s answers, my friends, seem to be “blowin’ WITH the wind”, permit me to make some observations. 

1. The recent Kilcullen tome, Out of the Mountains (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/10548968/Books.html), is brilliantly timed to make a market in the shape of COIN to come against the likely NATO garrison of 10,000 troops in 2015.  That is, the police and army training crew left behind will cluster in the cities (i.e., Kabul, Mazar i Sharif and Kandahar) plus Bagram. Such placement will draw the Taliban and other anti-occidental (if not accidental) guerillas out of hiding in the hills and into the cities.  And, pray tell, just who will be the guy who thought of this seismic shift of guerrilla tactics? You guessed it: David Kilcullen, brandishing his new 300+ page marketing brochure in one hand and his ABA cash-transfer routing information in the other, followed closely behind by over-educated war-wonks falling all over themselves to proclaim his palatably profitable genius.

2. Of course, the Sons of Iraq – the Sunnis in Anbar and Ninewa provinces that rose up against Al Qaeda-Iraq in 2007 – were “huge” in the success of the U.S. troop surge of 2008. But they were not fortuitous.  COIN depends upon, as David Kilcullen correctly implies in the interview, the legitimacy of the host government.  Well, shucks, it is not that simple. In the case of Iraq, neither the governing Constitution, with its seeds of an eventual ethnic civil war unintentionally sewn into its fabric by AMB Bremer, nor the government were ever legitimate in our traditional sense of that word.  Yet al Qaeda-Iraq, under the blood-drunk leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, managed to make itself even less legitimate than the government in the eyes of the rightly frightened Sunni minority.  General Petraeus was smart in understanding that nuanced shift of relative legitimacy. Although we paid a cpnsiderable price in younger Americans lost, General Petraeus leveraged a 30,000 troop surge commissioned bravely and morally by President Bush with 100,000 Sons of Iraq to carry the day in Iraq. 

(As a quick aside, the current violence engulfing Iraq is NOT the loss of the peace by America, much as I would enjoy scape-goating the current U.S. leadership. People ultimately are responsible for their own fates.  I remain convinced that, notwithstanding the flawed Constitution and the ever more flawed straw-dictator, Iraq's moderate Muslims now understand democracy and its limitations as well as appreciate their God-endowed liberty sufficiently not to forfeit the liberation granted to a beleaguered people by the U.S.-led coalition. Obviously, only time will tell.)

3. No one whom I know argues for street fighting in Syria as Mr Kilcullen ‘wisely’ advises against our so doing.  Such advice to an audience versed in the subject under discussion seems as vacuous as recommending that people not drink sulfuric acid.  In this case, Mr Kilcullen plays the same trick as does President Obama with respect to Syria by collapsing the menu of options into a binary choice: nothing versus everything, with the latter being bloody house-to-house fighting in Damascus and Aleppo (David Kilcullen) or another invasion in the Middle East (President Obama).  It is important to note that Mr Kilcullen states as near-fact what many of us have sadly supposed all along: that many, probably most, of the humanitarian supplies are not getting through to the intended beneficiaries.  My suspicion is that those missing necessities are being purloined and re-sold at inflated process.  Many are likely finding their way to fighters on both sides.

(In another aside, the 'nothing-doings' can no longer fall back on the humanitarian assistance as a relatively just response to an absolutely appalling slaughterhouse. Going-forward, all interested parties should reasonably understand that, with or without a care-package, inaction will necessarily lead to increasingly dire conditions for millions of innocents, as that policy already has.  That is to say: to do nothing knowing evil will continue unabated undercuts the just intentions inherent in sending the aid.  The civilized world is on the hook, now -- like or not, we are already involved.)

4. The fighters we support in Syria do not wage a counter-insurgency but, as many in the ‘Small Wars’ community rightfully argue, a proxy war between Al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia arrayed against Iran and Shi’ite death squads shipped in from Iraq.  Christian, Druze, Kurd and other minorities are caught in the cross-fire together with the great majority of moderate Muslims.  Unfortunately, given the lethality and ubiquity of modern weaponry, the West can not simply wash its hands clean on the rationale, “We had these sectarian growing pains, let them have theirs…” These simmering superstitions currently boiling over pit one side having loads of chemical weapons in Syria (violent Shi'ites) and the other (i.e., radical Sunnis) with 150+ nuclear weapons in Pakistan.  Needless to say, with the Taliban wreaking havoc in Pakistan and Al Qaeda usurping leadership of the opposition in Syria – yes, even nastiness abhors a vacuum – we live in the most dangerous time in my own lifetime.

(As yet another aside, I wish people would contain the bellicose rhetoric against Iran about a hypothetical and approaching nuclear weapons capacity as well as the irredentist vituperation of Israel.  Unfortunately, with the exception of a Jordan increasingly under stress, these two societies may well be the two most advanced in the region.  Neither is likely to use a presumed or imminent capability.  Israel, if anything, can be the example of what civilized countries can do through that worst of all types of government -- save all others -- democracy.  That will require honouring the right of return and a one-state solution, both topics of which are comfortably beyond the scope of this essay.)

5. Mr Kilcullen’s critical re-examination of COIN, in this interview with Mr Ricks, and the current applicability of his 'new' thinking smacks of opportunism.  Admittedly, I have not read the new book; truth is, I got through only a half of The Accidental Guerrilla before I sobered up, tuckered out, and realized I was reading a 400 page résumé. In The Accidental Guerrilla, Mr Kilcullen made a  facile stutter-step from the traditional guerrilla strategy (of winning the country-side to choke the cities) to saying counter-insurgencies need to woo the population over to the embattled régime (i.e., win back the hearts-and-minds).  How do we do that? By making the government legitimate.  That is to say: win the counter-insurgency by removing its animating cause. 

6. At least Mr Kilcullen has the transparency to mention his private start-up in the interview. His re-think, however, is not a new-and-improved COIN doctrine but a brilliant political reversal FOR fortune.  His consulting group, Caerus, is evidently named for the god-let of youthful opportunity in Greek mythology (http://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Kairos.html). Thus everything falls into place.  Marketing doth make cowards of us all.  Far from a change of heart in Mr Kilcullen, we are seeing a marketer’s change in response to a new market climate defined by the current Administration and a war-weary electorate.  Mr Kilcullen’s rhetorical legerdemain almost echo the binary, and bogus, choice presented by President Obama.  Both solution-sets sound intelligent, except that innocents die by the thousands while millions more are displaced in a country that has had closer historical ties with the U.S. than most people realize (see AMB Michael Oren’s most readable book, Power, Faith and Fantasy; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/10548968/Books.html).

7. There is one point that Mr Kilcullen makes with which I agree: the need seriously to debate Syria in the public discourse.  Mr Kilcullen is a good man – of that, I have little doubt. Nevertheless, the existence of a consulting firm for so delicate a question as Syria shows why the debate over contingency operations (i.e. civilian-military or CivMil operations) – especially in their discussion and planning stage – may not be well-served by the private sector. 

(As a final aside, perhaps much of the implementation of that planning will end up being out-sourced. A permanent COIN force would make overwhelming the temptation to use counter-insurgency field-hands to bail out bungled civilian leadership. Additionally such an elite force, all dressed up with nothing to do most of the time, could, over a generation or two, degenerate into a praetorian guard smashing any threat calling out a naked emperor.)

8. H.R.-2606, The Stabilization and Reconstruction Integration Act of 2013 (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/whole-of-government-support-for-irregular-warfare-how-a-new-law-will-make-a-map-hit-the-roa), which fixes the CivMil responsibility clearly in the U.S. government, ought to be expedited into law so that the government, acting on behalf of its citizenry, can start to debate what to do, if anything, about situations like those unfolding in Syria, Mexico and elsewhere.  We, the people, deserve to have the full story, detailed with possible consequences of each option, presented intelligibly to us and debated in a public forum.  At least, then, we can take ownership of the position pursued by the U.S. government.  This CivMil capability could be amplified by an active commitment to that segment of special operations that permits the existence of U.S. military observers on call with the United Nations. Such a deployment of observers makes sense since many situations – including, as many seem to think, Syria and Mexico – lie outside of national security interests and do not embody existential threats.

Some voices calling for action have turned shrill these days with an increasing number of critics implying that President Obama is pusillanimous.  What to do in response to catastrophes that pose foreseeable long-term risks to U.S. security interests that simply are not yet existential threats to our country remains a mystery to me.  If anything rises to the level of cowardice, for me at least, it is not a perceived failure of President Obama to intervene militarily directly into Syria; indeed, such an action could be foolish. What is perplexing, again in my mind only, is the failure to discuss options on Syria honestly and openly.  Doing so would begin to voice the outrage of civilized peoples the world over toward the unapologetic savagery toward innocents displayed by both sides. If nothing else, jaw-boning would represent a start.