Your daily "hmmm..." (Middle East edition)

Fred Kaplan over at Slate has a take on the endgame playing out in Mosul, and how a lot of it revolves around not military strategy but political strategy:

"This is the biggest thing that Trump doesn’t understand and that few Western leaders grasp until they look at this conflict up close. “To everybody but us,” one senior military officer told me, “the defeat of ISIS is the least important goal.”

This is why, as the defeat of ISIS draws near, the lack of a coherent U.S. strategy — or, more precisely, Trump’s hesitation or refusal to accept, adapt, or do something with Mattis’ plan — is such a source of anxiety."

I wish I thought that this was another Tangerine-Toddler-specific problem. But IMO the entire history of the U.S. involvement in the Middle East, going practically all the way back to the hasty recognition of Israel in '48, is a litany of "what the fuck are we doing and why..?"

Back when he used to post and comment here Seydlitz used to insist that the U.S. political establishment doesn't really "do" geopolitical strategy, that there's no actual strategy or strategic thinking involved. This seems to be just a piece with everything else we've seen, all the way back to 2002 and beyond.

Mind you...given the unique incompetence of the Trump Griftministration I wouldn't be surprised to see things get MORE effed up!

But I see this not so much as a Trump Bug but as a U.S. Middle East Policy Feature.

Strategy and the Operational Art, a question for the readership.

This month's issue of The Journal of Military Operations has an article by Aaron Jackson of the Australian Defence Force discussing his assessment of one of the things that our contributor seydlitz often mentions; that many Western nations (and the United States in particular) seems to have a) lost the abolity to think and plan "strategically" and b) substituted, at best, the operational level of military planning for the classical concept of strategy.

Jackson is responding to an earlier article covering the subject, Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy, by Justin Kelly and Mike Brennan in the September, 2009 issue of the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.

The two articles are essentially making the same argument, that "(t)he subsequent expansion of the newly delineated operational level within the doctrine of English-speaking militaries led to it encompassing campaign planning. This led in turn to it ‘reducing the political leadership to the role of ‘strategic sponsors’, [which] quite specifically widened the gap between politics and warfare’ (Kelly & Brennan, 2009)."

Jackson (2014) says that:

"The core of Kelly’s and Brennan’s argument is that this expanded role for the operational level of war and operational art has not only dislocated military operations from strategy, but also from the original context in which Soviet theorists were writing about operational art. ‘The result’, they argue, ‘has been a well-demonstrated ability to win battles that have not always contributed to strategic success’. To remedy this, they suggest returning to the conceptual roots of operational art as limited to the sequencing of tactical actions. Campaign planning should be returned to the remit of strategic leadership and involve input from political as well as military strategic leaders."

Jackson's contribution to this debate is to claim that Kelly & Brennan (2009) has it backwards. The military leadership didn't expand operational planning to swallow traditional "strategy"; it was the political elites of the Western nations that wanted to separate politics and warmaking.

"...the prevailing Western cultural norm of civil-military relations, in which the separation of politics from military conduct is seen as both normal and desirable. According to this norm, civilian political leaders should stay away from the military aspects of campaign planning, and military leaders should steer clear of political issues, including those that relate directly to the establishment of national strategy. It is this norm, not the development of an operational ‘level of war’, that has driven a wedge between strategy and tactics. Something more than tactics is certainly required of military officers, but in the current system discussing the most fundamental elements of national strategy remains all but off limits." (Jackson, 2014)

Jackson (2014) then goes on to expand on this...a little. He says:

"This reason is the prevailing cultural norm of civil-military relations in Western democracies. The nature of this norm was famously laid out by Samuel Huntington in The Soldier and the State; however the more recent writing of Eliot Cohen offers a better summary. Describing ‘a simplified secondhand version’ of Huntington’s model as ‘the ‘normal’ theory of civil-military relations’, Cohen determined that this model calls for a sharp distinction between statesmen and military professionals. In line with this distinction, the former ought to be responsible for political matters, including the setting of the desired strategic end state, while the latter ought to be responsible for the execution of all military activities necessary to achieve this end state. Although Cohen offers an excellent critique of the normal theory, ultimately proving both that it does not function in practice and that it is undesirable that it should, he also concludes that it remains the system of civil-military relations that many Western political and military leaders strive towards achieving."

I would tend to agree with the statement that there seems to be a significant, and to a large degree dysfunctional, disconnect between the political processes in Western nations and the military adventures that proceed from them.

But that, in turn, leads me only to a blank wall, and a question.

Which is, simply, why would any political leader(s) want that?

Since presumably military force is still intended to "solve" political issues confronting political leadership (and I will add here that this presumption is not neccessarily a physical fact but, rather, the intellectual conceit of the leader(s) that some issues are both amenable to and require the use of force) then the natural corrolary would be that these leaders wish that force to be effective and economical; Sun Tzu's warning about prolonged war is no less valid now than when he (or someone, anyway) wrote it.

I can understand a polity dominated by the military to produce politicians wary of a "man on horseback"...but it has been generations since such a possibility presented itself to the Western polities.

So...regardless of how the Western way of war became, in effect, a glorified exercise in tactics...why wouldn't a perceptive leader or leaders recognize the futility of this and strive to re-integrate the military and political aspects of geopolitics and national strategy?

I know seydlitz has some theories on this, but anyone else willing to venture an idea or three?

Neither Art nor Science

Interesting little article over at the NY Times "Disunion" blog, Winning the Field but Not the War. The author's conclusion is that the reason that there were no "decisive battles" in the ACW was not technical or tactical but political and emotional:

"The system of pitched battle broke down because wars like the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War were fought over high ideals, and because they were fought by republics, not monarchies. The wars of the 18th century were legal procedures, fought over carefully stated legal royal claims to territory, and were justified by carefully formulated legal briefs. They were staged in orderly ways intended to symbolize the glory and civilization of royal courts. But in the mid-19th century the two Americans republics and the French Republic began to fight more bitter and more horrible wars, in the name of grander ideals. Hard though it is to accept, democratic idealism and widespread death began to march hand in hand."

Now I would begin by saying that I believe this analysis is flawed. Both the ACW and the Franco-Prussian War (along with WW1 and WW2) DID end with military victories. It's just that those wars, as did most of the industrial-era wars that followed the mid-19th Century, perforce required the "economic" defeat of the losing side (Update: or, as Sven points out in the comments section, at least in the Franco-Prussian War an period of "mopping-up" where the victor had to run around stomping out the remains of the loser's deadenders).

An industrial nation as well as a nation-in-arms couldn't be defeated by "destroying" the national army alone. So long as the economic base remained new conscript armies could be raised if the government had the political will to continue. So IMO what happened was that "pitched battle" became just part of the larger political and economic campaign to destroy the opposing nation's (or peoples') will to fight.

But I wonder...does the increasing number of inter-theological and inter-racial wars play into this increasing "complexity" and insolubility of modern war as well? Do the intractability of religious, tribal, and racial hate play into the long-simmering conflicts that seem to have troubled us so much since 1945? Is there not only just an issue of "grander ideals" but the collision of fundamental social, philosophical, and religious differences that make these conflicts nearly impossible to solve by military means short of outright genocide?

Sunni v. Shia in the Gulf region (and now Syria), Tamil/Hindu v. Sinhalese Buddhist in Sri Lanka, Israeli Jew v. Levantine Muslim in the former Ottoman Levant, Christian southern tribes v. Muslim northern tribes in Nigeria (where our old pals MEND are acting up again...), everybody and their damn tribal grandfathers in Afghanistan...it seems like we've reopened a box of very old troubles; Christian versus Muslim versus Jew, Arab or African versus Westerner, tribe versus tribe.

Our old friend Seydlitz used to like to talk about how so much of the problems faced by the United States around the world were because the U.S. had lost the ability to think cogently about national interests and how they translated into military strategy.

But...what if the biggest single part of the problem is that too many modern problems are no longer amenable to military strategy?

Or, rather, to military strategy alone?

What if, instead, the U.S. is faced with the dilemma that ancient Rome faced; an amorphously hostile "barbarian frontier" that is no more malleable over the long term to military defeat than the ocean is to bailing dry with a bucket. That there is always a sea of troubles, and that a nation that tries to defend everywhere ends up defending nowhere...in that you can end up throwing a hell of a lot of blood and treasure at problems that you can't solve without making a wasteland and calling it peace, or using nothing but complex combination of force, persuasion, bribery, treachery, local proxies...and pure indifference; picking your fights and choosing to walk away from those you can't do anything about?

So I think the question becomes...to what degree DO you expend blood and treasure overseas (or overland, in the case of Mexico where there are certainly enough elements of instability to cause at least a level of concern)? How do you calculate your "national interests" in such an environment, and determine which are amenable to diplomacy, which to a mixture of guile and force, which to force alone, and which to a combination of all?

And what are the "better options" to raw military force in places like these? Again, Seydlitz talked several times about the question of "soft power". Is such soft power an option, say, in places as different as Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Indonesia and to what degree where? What would such power look like, and what could it do? And to what degree would the velvet touch have to have a mailed fist cocked behind the U.S.'s back? Little? Much? Constantly? And what would make the application of force more useful, more directed, less likely to produce "collateral damage" and blowback?

And - MOST importantly, in my view - how do you develop a national ability to figure this all out?

I guess my thought is that this entire question is as much about "craft" as it is either the art or the science of "strategic thinking". And I think the problem inherent in the U.S. politico-military system as currently constituted is that our system a) emphasizes short-term domestic political bunfighting over long-term geopolitical thinking, and b) discourages people from staying in one place long enough to perfect their "craftsmanship"; that is, the integration of technical and intellectual learning with practical experience to develop the skills for this sort of thinking, and c) produces "leaders" that are good at a) to the detriment of bothering to pay attention to the relatively low-level craftsmen who are good a b) and thus intensifies the negative-feedback loop. The craftsmen aren't good at their craft but even when they are the "leaders" don't listen which, in turn, discourages the perfection of the craft which, in turn, reinforces the "leaders" willingness to listen to their prejudices and fears rather than the craftsmen who understand the localities...

I will be the first one to say; I don't have an answer but rather a wilderness of questions. Consider this an open thread to add your own, or anything you might have by way of answers...

But I do think that this will become an ever-increasing problem as the U.S. continues its slide back into Gilded Age oligarchy. One of the real problems with oligarchy is that the oligarchs tend to become obsessed with protecting the privileges of their class rather than the welfare of the polity as a whole. To return to the analogy of Rome, the tragedy of the Revolt of the Gracchi was that the senatorial class focused on protecting itself rather than the vitality of the Republic. That, in turn, led to reliance on long-term professional soldiers who owed their loyalty to their commanders instead of the nation.

And we all recall where the bridge across the Rubicon led.

Update: I should draw attention to Sven's post that addresses something of this subject over at his Defence and Freedom site. And the conclusion he's not afraid to draw is even more pessimistic than mine: This is 100% not going to happen, and that's a pity if not doomed to end in tragedy.

Yike.

Strategic Stupidity Incarnate?

Reaper Drone (aka Predator B)

On 8 October this month, FB Ali posted a thought provoking essay on the US use of drones and how that constituted "a new kind of war" . . . Please take the time to read FB Ali's essay which sets the initial stage for this discussion.

Coming from a Clausewitzian perspective of course I take a different view and don't see where war has changed at all . . . whereas warfare on the other hand goes through a constant process of change/innovation/reaction, the interplay of technology and technique. If it looks like war is changing, then it is the political glass we are attempting to gaze through that is distorting our vision, making it seem that the process of organized violence as a contest of wills has changed when in fact it is the politics/political relations which is/are simply confusing events, making us focus on the smoke, shadows, noise and flashes which distract us from realizing what is actually going on.

Military means used to achieve a military aim supporting a political purpose. Strategy - both in terms of decisions made and process experienced - can simply be defined as linking the military aim with the political purpose. Once the military aim has been achieved, or as Clausewitz tells us, military victory is the means to achieving the strategic end, we enter into the task of achieving peace, making it in the former enemy's interest to conclude peace through coercion/incentive and other non-military means available. War is the most serious undertaking a political community can take on and achieving the political purpose through the use of the military instrument is perhaps the most difficult undertaking in social relations, that is achieving a lasting peace with the political purpose attained.

I responded to FB Ali's post with this:

FB Ali-

Very much a thought-provoking post.

Just a few questions: First, are we not talking about "warfare" and not "war"? You use the terms interchangeably in your post but are they different concepts? War is the political instrument of organized violence of one political community at odds with another. Warfare is the utilization of the means of war for a particular epoch which is in turn influenced by the political conditions/characteristics of the entities involved.

Naval warfare is "without boundaries" and submarine warfare as practiced first in the First World War, expanded the dimensions possible even further. Could we see a parallel between the submarine of 1914-18 and the drones of today in that the machine/instrument achieves a level of autonomy which could endanger/run counter to the very political interests it is meant to serve?

Submarines at the time were considered "terror weapons", are drones by their very characteristics also "weapons of terror"?

Finally does not the employment of drones attack the legitimacy of the state the US is supposedly wishing to support? The basis of state legitimacy being its monopoly on the use of legitimate violence within its borders? By condoning the use of drones over its territory targeting its own citizens, does not the host state become by definition a "failed state"?

To which FB Ali was kind enough to respond:

Seydlitz89,

I think I used the two terms (war and warfare) discriminatingly. Space constraints prevented me from dealing with each separately.

The development of military robots will, in the future, create a new type of warfare, in which machines do the fighting and killing (and ‘dying’) instead of humans. To that limited extent, the development of this kind of warfare could be welcomed.

What I expressed concern about was the new type of war that these machines would make possible. Hitherto, the achievement of any significant results through military power required the exercise of considerable force across national borders, which also could not be concealed. The availability of highly capable, potent machines would tempt powerful countries to apply significant force against others without overtly violating borders, even secretly. This would invite a response in kind, if not degree, from states and even non-state entities.

If such a type of war were to become prevalent, it would tear up the present international order, and force even powerful countries to become ‘security states’.

To tie this all together allow me to make a series of statements which hopefully will indicate a coherent view:

First, drones are simply the latest and most advanced example of what technology has been able to achieve since around 1840. The development of steamships carrying cannon - the classic gunboat - and operating contrary to the elements and this type of weapon system since has provided political communities, specifically states, with this means of coercion for some time. These weapons systems allow the side with the technology to inflict pain and damage, but not to occupy or hold. There also exists a basic tension between this capacity and the achievement of the political purpose, since these systems can coerce and destroy, but only that. The British gunboat in China, the German Uboat in the mid Atlantic and the Reaper Drone over Yemen all share a basic autonomy which may or may not support the overriding political purpose. Thus there is a tendency for the capability to become the focus, not what this instrument is expected/suppose to achieve in terms of military aim/political purpose.

Second, due to this autonomy there is a tendency for this type of weapon to be seen as an instrument of terror. The simple fact that they apparently operate outside the norm reinforces this tendency. The negative propaganda associated with their presence has to be taken into consideration.

Third, the capability and character of these weapons invite inordinate responses from the side under attack from them.

For these reasons weapons of this type need to be deployed carefully with a clear intent in terms of strategy. There also exists the possibility that their employment actually creates more problems than are dealt with.

These above statements refer to these weapons as a class.

Specifically in regards to the drone wars currently being conducted by the present US administration, I have a series of specific questions:

First, specifically what military aim/political purpose are these weapons expected to achieve? How exactly?

Second, if the goal is simply national security, how does undermining the legitimacy of the host government where they are deployed, making them appear to be unable or unwilling to protect their own people, support US interests?

Third and finally in terms of evaluating effectiveness, it seems impossible to separate wishful thinking/endless claims of precision from operational security/legitimate secrecy, that is the line between foreign and domestic propaganda and/or actual reporting has been compromised. In other words, the spin is universal.

Fourth, drones are different from the other weapons of this type I mentioned above in that the future capacity for actual autonomy exists, that is there would be no human element at all. How exactly is this progress? Or is it rather hubris of a rather dangerous sort reflecting our political dysfunctions more than anything else? Given the possible flaws . . .

There is more I could add, but I'm interested first to know what ya'll think . . .

Postscript:

Seems that some US officials at least are worried about the unintended consequences of this weapon system . . .

Befehlstaktik

As an afterhought to jim's posts about the lack of strategic thinking in our civil government (i.e. the fairly clear evidence that if our political "leaders" were to be drafted less than a handful of them would have the mental horsepower to make a corporal competent enough to lead four privates to a whorehouse and issue instructions on the tasks, conditions, and standards expected of them once they got there) I thought I'd point you towards this interesting essay from John Robb. Here's his money graf:

"...an extreme concentration of wealth at the center of our market economy has led to a form of central planning. The concentration of wealth is now in so few hands and is so extreme in degree, that the combined liquid financial power of all of those not in this small group is inconsequential to determining the direction of the economy. As a result, we now have the equivalent of centralized planning in global marketplaces. A few thousand extremely wealthy people making decisions on the allocation of our collective wealth. The result was inevitable: gross misallocation across all facets of the private economy."

Gosplan, Comrade Koch?I don't always agree with Robb, but he may be on to something here. Certainly the mess we're making in our response to the Great Recession - with the experience of the original Great Depression right before out faces - suggests more than just incompetence. You'd almost have to suspect deliberate ignorance, arrogance, and ideological purity as culprits.

Although perhaps we really ARE that stupid. It's SO hard to tell...

US Recognizes Libyan Rebels . . .

Ya'll know my view on this . . . Why did we handle it so badly?

Or no surprise at all given the current state of US strategic thought . . . if this is any indication . . .

Harlan Ullman writes:

. . . For most of history, war was a contest between more or less like military forces. Defeating the enemy usually meant defeating his armies as a precondition for victory. Of course, insurgencies were as old as war. And, of course, insurgencies had relatively fixed geographic boundaries that, after the Duke of Wellington's brilliant peninsula campaign during the Napoleonic Wars, became known as guerrilla or small wars.

The American way of war remains firepower intensive. We won World War II, with the Soviet army, literally blowing away the Wehrmacht with our superior firepower.

As technology improved dramatically, so did mobility and maneuver. The Iraqi military was shattered twice by this onslaught first in 1991 and then a dozen years later. And the initial and stunning success in Afghanistan in late 2001 demonstrated the effectiveness of this technology in support of Northern Alliance ground forces in routing the Taliban, at least for the moment.

Unfortunately, Clausewitz's genius has been partially trumped by a critical question: How do even amazingly capable military forces defeat an adversary who lacks an army and uses insurgent, terrorist tactics, metastasized by a radical ideology in which suicide is a preferred weapon while possessing global reach manifested by the September 11th and other attacks against the U.S. and European allies? . . .

With all due respects to the father of "Shock and Awe", I think his history is a ways off. Perhaps some wars between Western armies have been between "more or less like military forces", but the wars between Western and non-Western (and there have been plenty of these) have been by definition "asymmetric".

The British and their little wars, the US in the Philippines and much later in Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan . . . but we could go back to Clausewitz's time as well and find the same thing. Napoleon went into Spain and Russia with the best army in the world at that time and was defeated in the end by decidedly second-rate forces. Even the Wehrmacht in WWII easily defeated the Yugoslav army in the spring of 1941 only to be faced later with Partisans who continued on the fight. Ullman's view of WWII is flawed. Sure the Red Army ground the Germans down, but at a terrible cost, perhaps five men for every German soldier they put out of action. Could our successes in Western Europe in 1944-45 have been achieved without this great blood letting, the recourse to "grand attrition" on the part of the Russians?

The invention of gunpowder allowed for distance between combatants, war was no longer necessarily up close and personal. Any additional technological improvements have not quantitatively changed that fact. War and killing have had a remote quality for some time. Is there much difference in this regard between "Big Bertha" in 1918 and the Creech Air Force Base drones of today? We're talking about an improvement of targeting perhaps, but not really a new way of war.

War remains subordinate to politics since it is politics which gives birth to war. The recent failures are all explainable in Clausewitzian terms, which is an uncomfortable fact for people like Mr. Ullman who would rather ignore the current political realities . . . and assume that we have blundered in to some new era of warfare. Sorry, but it has all to do with politics and we ignore that basic human fact at our own peril.

The US recognizes Libyan rebels . . .

Discuss . . .

The Quartering of Military Forces

Southwest US border, 1916

Quartering of troops is one of three essential elements of military campaigns, the others being operations and logistics. Quartering of troops: with this concept I wish to encompass everything from orders for military deployment to employment, which operations would control but be at the same time supported further by logistics, and quartering itself.

How do we deal with the subject of quartering US troops today in our various campaigns?

Funny that there is hardly any comment among all the various strategic thinkers on this very important aspect, but then in reality, not soooo funny at all.

Still, it has unsurprisingly a long history.

Colmar von der Goltz wrote about it . . .

A question inseparable from the consideration of marches and transport is that of quarters. The soldier who, after a fatiguing march, finds good quarters, rapidly recruits himself, and gains strength for the following day; whilst, if bivouacked in the open field, exposed to wind and weather, he would, perhaps, have become incapable of continuing his march. A prudent regard paid to the quartering of the troops is the best means of counteracting the chance of casualties on the march. We have now arrived at a pitch of civilization which permits us no longer to regard the wood as our night quarters and the moon as our sun.
If the troops, immediately on the outbreak of hostilities, were to be collected in camps, they would soon be decimated without a single battle. Let us only reflect how much our troops suffered during the first rainy days of August, 1870. These experiences have led to the reintroduction of light tents, which afford some shelter against the weather, without encumbering the baggage column.

The Nation in Arms, 1906, pp 147-8

The (re)birth of the shelter half?

But just as with Mitt Romney's father, we have lost what little sense of our own history we ever had: command neither that recent nor deep in the past.

For instance our own Declaration of Independence lists in its 14 6 15th paragraphs of British Crown offenses the following:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states.

Pretty heavy. Yet, where is the strategic theory discussion today, especially given that the quartering of troops in Iraq is such a hot, but hidden, political topic . . . ? This only but one of our current military campaigns all of which include this topic. Still Iraq is unique, considering that it is the war that officially we are attempting to leave . . . ?

Need we ask? . . . and by asking we actually define ourselves which is the greater part indeed . . .

Brown Water Navy

The idea for this post came up as I was discussing the Ignatius article cited in the preceding post with seydlitz. The exchange there went something like this:

seydlitz: (quoting Ignatius) "I come back to Shen, the Chinese analyst. He says that he's grateful that the United States is willing to spend so many billions of dollars to protect the sea lanes on which China depends for its global commerce. But instead of competing to build ships and tanks, he says, China will focus on the weapons that can cripple them. Somehow, we need to stop being the suckers when it comes to defense."

Seydlitz then continues, asking:

"Obviously lots of military spending is the answer as well as "protecting the sea lanes" from . . . from whom exactly? Do you get the feeling that the Chinese are playing us like we played the Sovs back in the 1980s? Of course the Sovs were - in spite of being far too focused on their deteriorating, but still highly vaunted military power - smart enough to see through a lot of it, but were in such an economic mess as to be unable to use this realization to any advantage . . . The notion of American Exceptionalism will be our undoing."

To which I replied,

"The U.S. is currently a global maritime power. While at times I think our commitment to global blue water hegemony is antiquated - our merchant fleet is, what, four RORO ships and an old surplus fleet oiler? - its a mission we've chosen to take on. We have also chosen to act as a power-projecting imperial nation (in the sense that we engage in conflicts not directly related to defending our own territory) and that requires a blue-water navy. As always, the "what" determines the "how", and blue-water navies include large surface vessels; "conventional fleets and bases around the world". You can argue whether we have too many fleet carrier decks, but not that a power-projecting, global blue water hegemony naval power doesn't need conventional fleets and bases.

China, OTOH, is today what it has always been; an Asian continental power. Its maritime power projection is limited to its immediate "near abroad", places like the Spratley Islands in the South China Sea. It doesn't need or want large conventional naval forces for that. Instead, it needs just what Chen says it needs; the ability to disable or deter a global navy from encroaching on those littoral areas.

Ignatius makes this sound like some nefarious yellow Red plot, when it's a simple A and not-A situation. The U.S. has certain maritime strategic needs and those needs dictate a certain naval force structure. China has very different needs, and can accomplish those with a very different force structure.

I don't think the Chinese are playing us. They're stating the simple reality of naval strategy; we don't care about the fucking Molucca Strait or the Somali pirates. We want the oil in the South China Sea, and all we need to defend that is enough patrol boats and submarines to sink one of your fleet carriers to make it unprofitable enough to deter you from challenging us."

But as I was writing that I was thinking over this article over at Danger Room, discussing the USN's purchase of the so-called "Littoral Combat Ship" or LCS.In the post David Axe discusses the many commentators, both inside and outside the Navy, who have problems with this vessel. It is built to commercial rather than naval standards, meaning that it is much less survivable when damaged. It has a exceptionally high top-rated speed; 50 knots, but at a huge cost in fuel. It is relatively underarmed, mounting a single 57mm cannon and carrying most of its offensive power in its deployable subunits such as aerial, sea-surface, and submarine drones. Its crew is listed at around 40-50, which many critics are saying is too small to fight the ship and perform damage-control duties, much less repel boarders(!).

Axe notes that at only about $500 million the LCS is a relatively low-cost platform, and observes that

"...(t)he Navy already has more than enough high-end, military-grade warships for any potential future showdown with, say, China. This force includes approximately 90 cruisers, destroyers and soon-to-debut stealth battleships. It’s the most powerful surface fleet in the history of the world, by far, and one that’s massive overkill in anything short of World War III. But, after retiring many of its minesweepers, patrol boats and frigates, what the Navy doesn’t have is enough low-end warships for all the mundane work of a busy, globally-deployed military. The LCS can help correct that imbalance."

So there's the pros and the cons.

My question would be: what is the mission we need to perform that needs this vessel?

I agree that if we're going to continue to be a global maritime power - and while there are legitimate arguments that the U.S. does not really need to patrol the South China Sea, or the Indian Ocean, and risk potential engagements with the regional powers there the bicoastal location of the U.S. makes it perforce a maritime power of some sort - then it needs the capability to work, and, if needed, fight close inshore. Navies have fought over the littoral since Agrippa's day and are unlikely to stop now.

Historically the blue-water navies, including ours, have operated to within miles of the beach. Old-school hulls, from destroyers and frigates up to capital ships, have operated within sight of land. So the creation of a new class of warship for that purpose - especially one that cannot be turned to other blue-water missions - seems superfluous.

It can sweep mines - but not as well as a minesweeper. It can hunt submarines - but not as well as an ASW platform. This vessel seems like an odd Swiss-Army-ship replacement for a helicopter carrier and a menage of small patrol craft. It cannot really operate with the fleet but is not as adaptable as the helicopter-and-PBR combination for inshore operations.The other realm of naval warfare has taken place inshore of the strand line. This "brown water" naval force has usually been composed of a swarm of very light vessels backed by a handful of larger hulls. The USN has a great tradition of this sort of riverine warfare, beginning with the monitors and gunboats of the Civil War through the gunboats and monitors of the 20th Century Asiatic Squadron and the PBRs and Swift boats of the Vietnam "Brown Water Navy"

But the LCS is much too heavy for this sort of instream work. Too big to get right into the mouths of rivers chasing pirate skiffs, but too small, light and frail to take on a Chinese frigate or a swarm of Iranian patrol boats by itself. And if it's going to be backed up by carrier aircraft...what can it do that the carrier's aircraft combined with its escorts cannot? It seems to lack (at least, the articles I've found suggest that it lacks) the capability to act as a tender for a small flotilla of modern PCF/PBR patrol craft. It is fast...but why? Its own helicopters are faster, and accompanied by a cloud of Zodiacs or small speedboats would seem to do the advertised job better without the need for the voracious fuel-devouring speed.In a sense, this thing is a sort of large Coast Guard cutter. But if then...why not just make it a Coast Guard cutter and give its drug interdiction and border patrol mission to the Coasties?

I keep coming back to the question; what is this vessel for that is HAS to be this vessel and none other? What can this platform do that existing vessels can't, and - more importantly - is that thing, or those things, really important to the national defense of the United States?

I don't have the answers.

But I think that now that we're on the verge of ordering 20-some of these vessels, it might be a good time for we the People to start asking some more questions. Because even at half a billion a hull, ten billion ain't no pocket change.

(One important part of the thinking that produced this post is Rob Farley's post over at LG&M, in which he says "I believe that, right now, progressives have evacuated the field on questions of military doctrine and technology (with a couple of important exceptions, as noted below), leaving the conversation to conservatives and “centrists”. I think that we are approaching a political reality in which real cuts to defense spending will become possible, and that staking out genuinely progressive positions on issues of military doctrine and technology actually have a chance of affecting the composition of US military forces." I agree, and so got to thinking about the conjunction between the Ignatius article and the non-debate-debate about the LCS. So, tip o' the hat to LG&M)

Winter Twilight, 2010

Niedersachsen in Winter

As 2010 wanes we consider the events and what they mean, what they could indicate for the future. Twenty-eleven is going to be an eventful year in that in all the mass assumptions that have survived up until now probably will have little currency a year from now. Things seem to be moving that quickly.

My recent trip to Germany provided a different perspective and fueled by what I've been doing on and off MilPub over the last year . . . boosted of course by the great input this, our blog provides . . .

So I have someone I would like to introduce:


Hermann Rauschning. A conservative, actually a monarchist German politician, who joined the Nazi Party in 1932, but resigned his office as President of the Free City of Danzig Senate in 1934. Campaigned against the Nazis in 1935 and left under threat of violence for the US in 1936. Had served as a German Army officer in World War I and was wounded in action. Rauschning is also credited with a masterpiece of anti-Nazi propaganda, Hitler Speaks, which was published 1940 in the US and portrayed Hitler as a sleazy, somewhat insane, cynical opportunist in his personal policy dealings, Rauschning claiming that he had had countless personal conversations with the Nazi Leader while in the Danzig Senate. Rauschning isn't dealt with by historians today mostly because of that, since he was a propagandist.

But he was also a political theorist of fascism since he had been part of the movement for awhile and saw clearly its actual nature (having initially mistaken it for something else), so it's this "second Rauschning" I'm talking about, rather the author of an earlier anti-Nazi book, The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West of 1938, that comes across today has both prophetic for his times and a strange warning - in that important similarities exist between his time in Germany and our time in the US - imo.

In The Revolution of Nihilism, Rauschning goes back to the collapse of 1918, the in-built fatal flaws of the Weimar Republic, the absolute failure of the Conservatives to do their basic duty (safeguard the Nation and people) and explains in detail the "deal of 1933" which brought the Nazis to power. His description of Hindenburg is also quite interesting. What Rauschning describes is a systemic failure of all the various institutions to deal with both the dissolving political situation brought on by the economic collapse (which in turn to a large extent was due to over reliance on foreign credit) and the revolutionary nihilism of the Nazis. Too many failed to take the Nazis seriously and after 1933 too many thought that their radicalism would be tamed and they would simply become the instrument for the return of the conservatives. The German Army of course misjudged the situation badly, and what Rauschning describes after 1934 is the relentless politicalization of the military. In the end it was no longer the heir of the old German Army, but Hitler's Army.

In Rauschning's view there were many turning points along the way, when the opposition (and there was potentially a serious one) could have stepped in and turned the tables on Hitler. What was really lacking was simply the "will" to do so - too many saw their economic/professional interests as being possibly at stake and it was easier to simply "go along" or "wait and see what happens". This of course refers exclusively to the German elites since the people were hopelessly confused and disoriented by the chaos of late Weimar and the dizzying pace of Hitler's decrees after 30 January 1933. Fear was a part of the air people breathed, violence a constant political weapon, systematic lawlessness by the new authority difficult to comprehend, while at the same time the old values and virtues were trumpeted, they were simultaneously undermined and destroyed. This since the Nazis understood that to implement their radical worldview would require the destruction of the old, conservative view, that of those who had made the opportunistic deal with them in 1933! While Hitler's successes were of course assisted by the fecklessness of the Western allies during 1933-38, the main reason for his success from the German domestic perspective was the collapse of German conservativism, according to Rauschning, which should have recognized the moral threat the Nazis manifested. In essence they should have seen the swindle and the "movement" for what it was . . .

For the very reason that we acknowledge the eternal values of the nation and of a political order rooted in the nation, we are bound to turn against this revolution, whose subversive course involves the utter destruction of all traditional spiritual standards, utter nihilism. These values are the product of the intellectual and historical unity of Western civilization, of historic intellectual and moral forces. Without these, Nationalism is not a conservative principle, but the implement of a destructive revolution; and similarly Socialism ceases to be a regulative idea of justice and equity when it sheds the Western principles of legality and the liberty of the person.
Today in Germany any criticism, even from the noblest and most genuine of patriots, is accounted one of the worst of crimes, and placed in the same category as high treason . . . xii-xiii

The basic problem in 1933 was the rejection by the ruling elites of dealing truthfully with the people, instead they lied to them constantly, painting rosy pictures of potential success, when ahead was only failure. The actual goal of the conservatives and the Nazis as well was power, but the conservatives misunderstood the nature of the tiger they were riding. Rauschning laments that this misunderstanding was the same as what had happened in 1918, when Ludendorff and the German High Command demanded "fixed resolve and unquestioning faith" in final victory, while viewing the people with a "contemptuous belittlement of the moral forces of the nation". In 1918, as in 1933, the conservative elites were mostly to blame for what followed:

But the nation that reveals this weakness of excessive capacity for illusion has a greater need than any other of criticism and plain speaking. "We have been lied to and duped" - such was the despairing exclamation, twenty years ago [1918], of no demagogue but the last leader of the old Conservative Party, von Heydebrand, when the truth about the terrible situation burst through the clouds of pseudo-patriotic propaganda. It seems our destiny to have to repeat the same mistakes with a berserker's infatuation. xiii

So, let's see, what we've got: collapse of conservatism as a political philosophy, systemic institutional failures, economic collapse linked with an irresponsible demand of foreign credit, the political focus on gaining and retaining power regardless of the means or damage, total contempt for truth and honesty in public communications, politicalization of the military, radicalism wearing the mask of conservatism, growing government lawlessness and suppression, confusion among the people exacerbated by relentless irrational propaganda (ie constant repetition of symbols, emphasis on fear), fostered unquestioning belief in future "success" by simply "going along", lack of a focused opposition and many missed turning points along the way, a political movement which is essentially a rejection of the Enlightenment/classic Western values . . . see anything familiar?

Of course history does not repeat itself, and I am not saying that the USA today is a repeat of Nazi Germany, but rather the situation that Rauschning describes in 1933-38 (remember the book was written before World War II had begun) does imo indicate certain similarities of a political resemblance. This should not be surprising since the most dynamic political philosophy in US politics today - Neoconservativism (actually the only political philosophy of note) - seems to follow a certain familiar pattern, but that's not surprising given Leo Strauss's private view . . .

In many ways the distinctions are more interesting than the similarities, but I'll comment on those in the postscript since I'm interested in any comments which will thus ultimately influence my conclusions, so this is hopefully an attempt at achieving a dialectic, a real dialogue.

There is one last point of many I could make. The predictions that Rauschning makes in regards to the coming war are many and most historically accurate: he uses the term "holocaust" at least twice although in a broader sense, predicts the quick collapse of France, the ultimate attack on the USSR, a policy of "depopulation" in regards to the Jews and Eastern Europe in general, that America will be drawn in, that Japan, Italy and Germany will be on the same side, etc. The point, however I would like to make concerns the actual political goal that the Nazis hoped to achieve. Here he relies on the thought of Karl Haushofer regarding geopolitics. Karl Haushofer is largely forgotten today, but in Edward Earle's The Makers of Modern Strategy of 1943, Haushofer rated his own chapter. Reading Haushofer today with his emphasis on strategic minerals, "heartlands", "renovating and resisting powers", and the need for a new "imperialism" one is struck by this obvious influence on what passes for US strategic thought today, yet none speak his name, obviously since no one with a few exceptions dare admit what US "grand strategy" actually is.

Rauschning provides an idea as to what the actual Nazi goal was and how Germany was not the aim, but the instrument for the achievement of that goal . . . sound familiar?

Germany's Role as a World Power

New rulership, would influence, world transformation, world hegemony - this is the direction of the principles of German foreign policy thus far considered. But they do not aim at a Greater Germany, they are not content with the place of Germany as an element of order in Central Europe; they are no by any means confined to "overland" conceptions, as Haushofer calls them. The "faith in a role of leadership in world policy" inspires the German activities. The "mystical faith in a world mission which at times of slowly crippling pressure throws itself into an unheard of inner strengthening and steeling, in order to be ready at the given moment for the highest achievement," is Haushofer's description of the actual nerve of the new German political purpose. "For we have not much more time to allow the energy of movement of the worlds Powers and the speed with which they are marching toward their immediate and remote objectives, and their thrust, already begun, though the old Great Power groups . . . to pass by, without being clear in our minds that in this approaching settlement the destiny of our people and Reich will be determined for centuries, perhaps for ever". The German situation leaves the nation no political choice. Dynamic movement is necessarily more important for us in world politics than a static condition, a condition of holding on. . .

The lesson the National Socialists draw from Germany's past is that dismemberment can only be prevented by rigid centralization. The developments of the British Empire seem to their historians to be a repetition of the error of the old German Reich. . . The essence of the German mission today is the universal task. Germany no longer menaces Britain; she is seizing the leadership only because the British nation has become feeble and weary. The young German imperialism of pre-war days was an attempt to solve our pressing population problems without suffering a continual loss by emigration; the new German will to world hegemony is the definite resolve to transform the world order under German leadership. pp 208-9

Gian Gentile's Strategy of Tactics and the Ghost of Reinhold Niebuhr

A matter of semantics has to be cleared up before preceeding further. It is unwise to concede to Mao Tse-tung that the revolutionary's opponent is a "counterrevolutionary", for this word has come to be synonymous with "reactionary", which has not always been, nor will it always be, the case. Therefore, one side will be called the "insurgent" and his action the "insurgency", on the opposite side, we will find the "counterinsurgent" and the "counterinsurgency". Since insurgency and counterinsurgency are two different aspects of the same conflict, an expression is needed to cover the whole: "revolutionary war" will serve that purpose.

David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, xii

Colonel Gian Gentile has produced a thoughtful - and I would add given the political siutation in the US - heroic interpretation of the current state of not only the US Army, but the whole US way of war, or what it has become. Today the all encompassing concept is COIN or population-centric counterinsurgency, which for Gentile is the problem.

Let me start with an outline of Gentile's main points and his conclusion with my own comments at the end. Gentile's article has 10 main points:

1. "Population-centric Counterinsurgency" or COIN has become an all encompassing concept for the Army which precludes choice as to other methods and approaches.

2. The American "way of war" (counter to Russell Weigley) has historically been of "improvisation and practicality", not an "ideological attachment to seeking out the next Austerlitz". The American way of war is thus pragmatic . . . not ideological . . .

3. COIN is not a military strategy, but at best an operational doctrine and at worst a "strategy of tactics", or simply an "intellectual straightjacket", which blinds the practitioner to not only other options, but its inherent limitations.

4. This total focus on a single method leads to self-deception: "appearing to apply David Galula's principles (Galula provides the "historical how-to text") while at the same time ignorance of military strategy.

5. What lead us to this crisis point was first of all a false (and for the Army self-serving) reinterpretation of the Vietnam War. Abrams the good (using COIN) following Westmoreland the bad (the conventional approach), but the politicians and public losing "their will" when the Army could have won in the end.

6. The second cause, and the more recent, has been the victory narrative associated with the 2007 Surge in Iraq, which Gentile describes as "hubris run amuck". Here he repeats his well-known argument that the Surge was simply one of numerous causes for the decline of violence in Iraq. The Surge did contribute to the change, but was not the main cause of it. He then implies a broader argument that the Surge in fact was a tactical measure that compromised strategic success.

7. The US military is unable to think in a historical context. The term the Army uses - "counterinsurgency" - is "so loaded with historical context, assumptions, myths, and absurdities that it has become almost meaningless". This can also hide a whole range of political purposes which are rather left unsaid, since COIN can be "used to define and judge any small war, imperial war, or insurgency".

8. Since 2006 there has been a lack of debate as to the way forward for the Army. Compared to 1976-82, when 110 articles appeared in Military Review, following the publication of FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, there have been only a series of articles "touting the triumph of the Surge, a narrative that has steamrolled the American Army into accepting this new way of war".

9. COIN is assummed by its supporters (who fancy themselves as the "Young Turks" of the Army) as being "more difficult than conventional warfare", "more demanding", even more "political", although COIN is executed at a much slower pace with much more reaction time for commanders. In COIN since one has E-5s interacting with local villiage elders, it is assummed that this approach is in fact more "political", but policy has always existed at the lowest tactical level, [as the Communists well understood with their emphasis on constant education for not only cadre, but potential supporters - lack of historical context once again]. This focus on the political in the tactical also promotes this total focus on tactics, making for a "strategy of tactics" with no consideration of the link between tactics and strategy as a means to a political purpose, let alone of considering strategic effect. Gentile approvingly quotes Clausewitz at this point.

10. With the total emphasis on COIN, the Army has lost track of its conventional skills, which is another of Gentile's old arguments. He sees this as an unacceptable risk which could lead to serious consequences should the Army be called upon to military action at the other end of the conflict spectrum.

In conclusion he says that the Army would be better off studying the history of the British Empire of the latter half of the 19th Century where, "if nothing else" they understood the essence of strategy, that being the link between resources and means and ends. The British then, unlike the COIN supporters of today, did not see military operations as ends in themselves. What COIN boils down to is a form of "total war", the remaking of societies through military means, a ceaseless series of "crusades" sold as "nation-building" but which actually require the remaking of political indentites by outside force. How this supports the nationl interest or is let alone achieveable, or what the long-term costs would be is lost in the maze of tactical considerations, COIN having in effect "buried strategy".

What to add?

I think Gentile's assessment very accurate from a Clausewitzian strategic theory perspective. I would howerver add a few points which make the COIN position even more dubious.

First, not only does the current Army way of war lack the historical context of counterinsurgency, it lacks the theoretical context, having in effect cut and pasted what they liked from David Galula to fit their purposes. A careful reading of Galula's classic Counterinsurgency Warfare, would indicate how precarious the US position in the actual "wars on terror" is. Referring to the Galula quote above, which exactly is the revolutionary side? Who is attempting to impose their view on the local population, the Taliban, or the US/NATO? Galula also assumes that the Counterinsurgency begins from a position of institutional strength, possessing all the elements of a state in being. Even a colonial power would have had a functioning state system, there is no place in his theory for the outside actor (posing as the "counterinsurgent") starting a new state from scratch and imposing it on the locals (even officials of the former state) who then are labelled as "insurgents". The point here is that certain strengths that Galula assumes belong to the counterinsurgency do not exist in the two (or three) conflicts where COIN is being applied today, ditto for the assumed weaknesses associated with the insurgency.

Also in line with Galula's view, the political context sets the stage for revolutionary war. Prior to 1938 (see page 22) there were no successful insurgencies against colonial regimes, rather it was the crisis that Western and Japanese imperialism underwent as a result of World War II that ushered in the era of successful insurgency. Without the actions of Japan, Galula argues, the Chinese Communists never would have succeeded against the Kuomintang. For this reason, a Western state, even the lone super power, invading and establishing a client state given the current political context would be an exercise in futility for Galula, something which simply is not going to happen, that is his theory, the basis of COIN today, would not allow for it.

Second, this crisis of American strategic thought goes back a ways. I've put the beginning point as 1991. I have also argued that the similar notion of 4GW was Ludendorff's concept of Total War stood on its head. That is that war from this perspective "absorbs politics" and becomes theoretically something autonomous.

Third, Rupert Smith in his book, The Utility of Force argues that the US way of war is frequently "less an art than a search for the technical solution and a process" (page 88). This being an industrial process, industrial warfare having been the US way of war since the Civil War with a few exceptions. I think this emphasis for a technological solution part of US strategic culture, but that would apply more to the practical view that Gentile argues than the ideological view he associates with COIN. Also is not this search for a technical solution also influenced by the understanding that war is a test of opposing wills, that is traditional strategic theory?

My last point concerns the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Why? Rev. Neibuhr has been in the news of late with President Obama being described as "Niebuhrian" in his approach to morality, especially his comments on "evil" and even becoming "a war president". With all this name dropping going around (how many Americans even know who Niebuhr was or what his views were?) there must be something going on . . .

If one actually reads one of Niebuhr's classics, The Irony of American History, then one comes across a very intresting connection with Gian Gentile's view, showing us who is a "Niebuhrian" and who is not . . .

Long before the New Deal radically changed the climate of American political life the sovereign power of government had been used to enforce taxation laws which embodied social policy as well as revenue necessities; great concentrations of power in industry were broken up by law; necessary monopolies in utilities were brought under political regulation; social welfare, security and health and other values which proved to be outside the operations of the free market were secured by political policy. More recently, housing, medicine and social security have become matters of public and political policy. All this has been accomplished on a purely pragmatic basis, without the ideological baggage which European labor carried. The development of American democracy toward a welfare state has proceeded so rapidly partly because the ideological struggle was not unnecessarily sharpened.
page 100

Niebuhr found our emphasis of pragmatism over ideology as a great strength, perhaps our greatest strength and something which ensured the continued health of the American body politic which he saw as a Republic. This pragmatism was reflected in how we did things and how the country developed over time, how would Niebuhr see the changes that have shook this country since 1951? or more specifically in the points mentioned in the quote since the 1980s? That is a re-emphasis on ideology which in reality masks narrow political interest and an abandonment of one of our key American virtues.

This abandonment of our better pragmatic nature for the promise of superficial ideology has also inspired the current popularity of a new "way of war" which masks uncomfortable political realities. The current confusion in our strategic thinking reflects the larger confusion of our politics.

What He Said

I refuse to link to the steaming pile of geopolitical crazy the Usual Kagans pooped out this weekend at the WaPo. But Gian Gentile does so I don't have to.

I think we all can pretty much agree with what he says here:

"Sometimes it does seem that “wicked” tactical and operational problems in a place like Afghanistan requires not necessarily more experts and “scary smart” army officers to tackle them, but clear, astute, and resolute thinking about strategy and national interests."

My bottom line is that in the larger sense we are actually spending very little - both in treasure and in blood - to police the Paimirs. But the very notion that a faction of my nation's political elite and punditry believe that this is a good idea and we should do more of it and for a longer time...this, to me, is a powerful indication of the rot and corruption settling in at the heart of our nation.

You can argue that this is no different than the sort of manifest destiny rhetoric spounted to justify the Mexican War, the native American Endlösung, the Spanish American War and any number of shitty little wars in Central America and the Caribbean. And you'd be right; we Americans have never been the type to sing kumbaya and love peace and quiet.

But for nearly 200 years we DID believe that the lands beyond the seas were Other People's Business, and that the business of the United States was here, no further than our own Near Abroad. Now we seem to have a significant public for the idea that we need to fiddle-fuck around in places like central Asia. This sort of imperial meddling is always tempting to Great Powers and it seldom ends up benefitting the Powers in the long run.

I'm glad to see COL Gentile slap him some Kagans upside the head. This needs to happen more often. Because, as he reminds us:

"Afghanistan is a country wracked with internal problems; tribal conflict, backwardness, corruption, tension that produces endemic violence, bitter regional disputes, dysfunctional national boundaries, etc. So why do we think we can solve their problems in a matter of a few decades through foreign occupation? Could any outside force have come into the United States in the 1850s and resolved its internal conflicts at the barrel of a gun? Actually, the British tried to resolve internal conflict in North America about 80 years earlier during the American Revolution and lost, or gave up trying because strategy demanded for them that it became not worth the cost of trying to do it."

You get some, colonel. Because we need to remember that just because a fool of a Kagan says something doesn't mean we need to be fools and hearken to it.

Strategery for the Pamirs

I apologize for breaking into our Labor Day discussion, but I have to recommend two well-reasoned posts that readers here might want to review.

The first is here, at Armchair Generalist, and does a competent job airing the issue of "strategic competence" and the effect of its dearth at the National Security Council level. The referenced CBAS study is well worth the time reading, as well.

And over at DNI, Bill Lind, whose geopolitical acumen I respect almost as deeply as I detest his sociological views, takes to task those who continue to insist that "we CAN win! in Afghanistan" without really understanding, or explaining, how this "win" occurs in a fragmented and corrupt Third World not-even-failed-because-to-fail-you-have-to-have-tried-to-be-a "state".

His nut grafs sum this up pretty well:

"The American senior leadership thus needs to undertake a serious and competent analysis of political and moral surfaces and gaps both in our opponent’s positions and in our own. Neither can be accomplished with blinders on. Both must be brutally honest.

It is just possible that such an analysis might offer a roadmap for political and moral maneuver, which is what we require if we are to escape the war of exhaustion. There is, of course, no guarantee; the complexity of a Fourth Generation environment may mean the task is beyond our ability. We may also discover that we can identify some surfaces and gaps yet lack the capability to exploit the gaps. This occurs not infrequently in purely military wars of maneuver.

I think nonetheless that this may be the most promising way forward. If it fails to identify political and moral gaps we can exploit with some hope of success, then logically it leads to the conclusion that we cannot escape a war of exhaustion and its inevitable outcome, our defeat. That too is useful, in that it should lead us to cut our losses and withdraw as soon as possible."

My reading? We have neither the willingness nor the perspicacity to perform the analysis he suggests. Which, in turn, suggests that we may be looking at an escalation in the short term and his "war of exhaustion" in the medium term.

What happens in the long term? You know my opinion - I think this fiddling about in Asia has a real potential to be our Dutch Wars. But that's just me.

Kings of Battle

I was waiting for my little girl to finish her everlasting evening potty business last night when I picked up one of the books in the commode-side reading basket. It happened to be Jeff Chandler's "Napoleon's Marshals", although, given the catholicism of bathroom reading in our house it could well have been any one of the others tossed in there: a Star Wars comic, "The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove", several Title 9 catalogs, and that paperback where the heroine's genitalia are referred to as her "burning center" (I suspect that Grandma left that one; not our style but very much in hers).

Anyway, as it happens, three things coincided; I was thinking about a piece I'd read earlier about our captain-general in the Hindu Kush, Stan McChrystal, I was also thinking about Seydlitz's earlier ruminations on military genius, and the page fell open to the chapter on Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte: soldier, officer, Marshal of France and King of Sweden.

What it got me to thinking about is the perils of confining our thinking of military genius to the purely kinetic elements of the art of war. First, let's look at Marshall Bernadotte's resume:

Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte
Born 1763
Enlisted 1780 (PVT)
Commissioned 1792 (LT), COL by 1794
Demi-Bde Cdr 1794-1798 (BG) (Theinigen, Passage of Tagliamento)
Ambassador, Austria 1798
Minister of War 1798-1799
Army Cdr 1800-1801 (Vendee COIN) 1801-1804 (Army of the West)
Corps Cdr 1804-1808 (Marshal) (Ulm, Austerlitz, Prussian campaign)
Governor, Hanseatic Towns 1808-1809 (Danish Islands)
Corps Cdr 1809-1810 (Wagram, Defense of Walcheren)
Crown Prince, Sweden 1810-1818 (Grossbeeren, Dennewitz, Leipzig, Bornhoved)
King, Sweden 1818-1844

And, by way of contrast, GEN McChrystal's:

Stanley A. McChrystal
Born 1954
Commissioned 1976
1/504Inf (Abn) 1976-1978 (2LT)
SF Officers Course 1978-1979
7th SFGA 1979-1980 (1LT?)
Off. Adv. Course 1980-1981
UNCSG-JSA S2/3 1981-1982
FSGA (1/19 Inf) 1982-1984 (CPT)
3/75Inf (Rgr) 1985-1989 (MAJ)
Naval War Coll 1989-1990
JSOC J-3 1990-1993 (MAJ-LTC) (Second Gulf War)
2/504 Cdr 1993-1994
2/75 Cdr 1994-1996
JFKSoG 1996
75Inf Cdr 1997-1999 (COL)
CFR 1999-2000 (BG)
82nd Div (Abn) ADC 2000-2001
18th Corps (CoS) 2001-2002 (MG)
Joint Staff J-3 2002-2003
JSOC Cdr 2003-2008 (LTG)(Third Gulf War)
ISAF/USFOR-A 2008-present (GEN) (Occupation of Iraq, XVIIth Afghan War)

The differences jump right out at you, don't they?

First, the Marshal starting as a private, the General as a cadet. Then, of course, the meteoric rise of Bernadotte's career in the chaos of Republican France, no surprise there. The heavy combat experience available in the late 1700's compared to the relative peace of the 1980's and 1990's.

But - look at their "mid-career" trajectory!

Bernadotte is all over the place: Corps commander, army commander, minister of war, governor, corps commander again, then, the weirdest twist of all - prince and king.

McChrystal, the Man Who Would Be King of Afghanistan, on the other hand, makes the typical US Army trot of command, staff and schools. Yes, there's the one year stint as military staffer for the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR). But there's no other exercise of political or geopolitical power. No civilian positions or outside-the-Pentagon political jobs. Minister of war (i.e. SecDef)? Governor? Ambassador?

And, of course, the relative lack of wartime command. Not McChrystal's fault - he didn't have the wars Bernadotte did. But, still...

And keep in mind that Bernadotte was far from being considered even among the upper third of Napoleon's commanders. He had a couple of good outings against the Austrians and Prussians in 1797-1804 and then against his old comrades Davout and Ney in 1813. But he screwed the pooch at Jena and Auerstadt, and his contibutions to Wagram were thought to be meager.

The thing is - all the Napoleonic Marshals' vitae look like this: they were not just troopers. And their enemies were pretty cosmopolitan as well: Scharnhorst and Gneisenau fight in the field, do much of the heavy lifting that reconstructs the entire Prussian Army after 1806, and then conspire to throw off the French occupation after 1812.

Wellington, you know.

These guys were doing grand tactics, operational art, strategy, grand strategy, even geopolitics. They had to negotiate treaties, bribe allies, threaten enemies, spy, suborn, cajole and encourage. These guys were all-rounders.

What is McChrystal? A highly-trained technician? An overpromoted trigger-puller?

So. I'm not trying to add Charles John (Bernadotte's king name) to the pantheon of military geniuses. But I am trying to get us to ask; we're putting people like McChrystal where we used to put people like Bernadotte. Are we preparing ours today as well as the armies and the rulers of Napoleon's time did theirs?

Strategy . . .

To start with I would like to thank those who posted on my preceding strategic theory thread, your comments have started a ball rolling here and this is the first if limited response. Over the years I’ve attempted to create a dialogue on strategic theory and have been assisted by capable interlocutors who may not have agreed with my position, but were patient and thoughtful enough to hear me out. I think we all share the desire to understand the current strategic situation the United States, and the West in general, finds itself in and wish that strategic theory be a clear and capable tool in this regard. Over the years I have benefited from discussions and comments from Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Chris Bassford, Chet Richards, Fitch O’Connell, Thomas Huynh, on Chicagoboyz (where I was part of a roundtable discussion on Clausewitz) and of course from my fellow bloggers here at MilPub.

What I am attempting with this post is to discuss the concept of strategy and contrast it a bit with strategic theory, but focusing more on how our concept of strategy is inseparable (or was) from certain concepts popularized by Clausewitz and others. I’ll attempt to connect this with certain changes that have taken place in US strategy formulation, or rather what passes today for strategy. Finally I’ll put this within a larger perspective of language and how it reflects a specific culture and changes in that culture.

How to start? When we think of the word “strategy” two related activities come to mind, the first planning – usually more long-term - followed by execution.

Webster’s defines strategy as “a plan of action encompassing the methods to be adopted from beginning to end of a task or endeavor, focussing on the general methods; contrasted with tactics, which is a plan for accomplishing subgoals of lesser extent than the primary goal. Thus, a strategy is a plan for winning a war, and a tactic is a plan for winning a battle.” Here we have the contrast of strategy and tactics which is important.

It is important to consider that words do in fact have meanings, contrary to the experiences of the last eight years in the US, that in times past they were considered to actually influence behaviour, that is influence how we acted in a complex world. The US has had, since the Truman Administration, a government body which is specifically tasked with analysing threats, considering policies and formulating strategy as defined above. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are part of this body – The National Security Council - and have no command authority precisely for this reason, they are to advise and provide the military’s role in strategy formulation, especially the connection between political purpose and military aim – more on this below - arguing when necessary that no connection exists, but do not actually command the troops in the field which is left to the civilian commander in chief.

Returning to our definition of strategy, there are still some important points missing, especially if we limit our definition of strategy to the implementation of state policy specifically (as in the NSC) and not just any plan of action.

Some time back on Thomas Huynh’s site a thread on defining strategy in one phrase came up. My definition was “focused adaptation over time in reference to a purpose through methodological theoretical construct” which sounds a bit intimidating and confused, but puts the elements I wished to in place, especially contingency and adaptation. There is also the implied distinction between praxis and theory since the adaptation is conducted “through a theoretical construct”. This need not be the case, one could simply do strategy as in praxis alone as the ancient Greeks saw it when they developed these various concepts: “strategia” being simply the conduct of the “strategos” or army commander. For Clausewitz as well, the military genius operates outside the realm of theory in dealing with the specific character of the conflict in question. Theory provides more a way of looking at the problem and a language for discussing/analyzing it. Here I’m referring to theory as aid to ongoing strategy, not theory as a means of historical analysis, or critique, which is something else altogether.

To tie together and expand on my definition and launch this post properly let’s proceed with a clearer and longer definition/description from Hew Strachan. This article is btw worth a careful read:

Strategy, as opposed to strategic theory, has two principal tasks. The first is to identify the nature of the war at hand. A misidentification is pregnant with consequences: it would be just as mistaken to fight a major war on the assumption that it is a smaller, more limited war, as the other way round. Moreover, what begins as one sort of war can turn into another. Recognising and understanding the nature of a war is a constant interrogative process, and one where strategic theory comes into play, not just something to be undertaken at the outset. The second task, once the nature of a war has been plumbed, is to manage the war and direct it. It is perfectly possible for the policymakers of one belligerent to decide to escalate a war, to make a local conflict into a global one. But neither common sense nor common humanity suggests that that is very sensible.

Strategy and the Limitation of War, 2008

You will notice that this definition sees a very close interplay between strategy and strategic theory, which is by definition here Clausewitzian strategic theory, or more specifically Clausewitz’s general theory of war. The first question deals with the complex and dynamic nature of war, so we require a theory that deals with this nature, defines it in some intelligible and useful way. If we do not see war has having any nature or a whole range of unrelated natures that are subjective and related to cultural proclivities, then strategic theory as an aide to strategy becomes very problematic. In fact strategy as commonly defined, or as approached in Strachan’s quote would not exist.

Strategy in this view concerns a balance of political purpose, military aim and military/political means connected in harmony and blending into one another. Strategy in other words is simply the application of military/political means in support of a military aim which instrumentally provides the situation where the political purpose can be achieved, this is the basic concept behind the establishment of the NSC in the late 1940s. Seen another way strategy works in tactical ways to achieve the means (military victory) for political ends. The goal of tactics is military victory, whereas the goal of strategy is the return to peace with the political purpose fulfilled. Thus strategic theory provides the fundamental elements of strategy, the language of strategy so to speak, defines the various elements and describes how they are related.

Without this strategic theory, strategy becomes simply a wishlist of goals disassociated from the nature of war, or a question of capabilities (or tactics) operating against identified target sets (but in essentially a political vacuum). What this all assumes is the unlimited capability for humans to change not only their physical, but social environment.

Ron Suskind documented this attitude clearly in his article, "Without a Doubt":

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." [my emphasis]

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: "Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you." When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, "Look, I'm not going to debate it with you."

Here we see that our traditional views of strategy and strategic theory were about limits, about the limits of humans to influence their own environment and how intentions – no matter how noble – could have totally unforeseen consequences. Strategy, going back to its Greek roots was firmly related to the basic tragic nature of human existence. It should also be noted here that for Thucydides, the break down of language, as in the meanings of words, reflected political turmoil (see Chapter 3 of link).

We see that the new concept of strategy is quite different and reflects profound political and cultural changes which have taken place even if they remain unacknowledged.

From what has been presented so far, I can develop a list of assumptions we have from the earlier concept of strategy and what it can tell us about US policy since 2001:

First, war has a complex and dynamic nature that is common to all wars. War is part of political intercourse, politics defined (following Max Weber) as “striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state”. Notice that we can replace “state” with “political community” or even “family” and this definition for politics would still apply. Weber’s definition for power is "the probability that one actor in a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests". Notice, there is a close similarity between “power” and “war” in that war is also defined as imposing our will on the enemy through organized violence. Using a metaphor to explain the subordination of war to politics, if we compare political relations to the weather, war would be violent weather, but not all weather.

Second, and this being a natural result of the first, changes in political conditions provide for changes in the nature of war. Each war is thus going to be unique, but still recognizable in terms of the complex nature that all wars share. Once again it is the assumed existence of this shared nature that makes not only strategy, but strategic theory possible. In addition, if one assumes that the nature of war has changed significantly, look to the changed political conditions between the hostile communities as to the basis for this change. Change can come from other sources – tactics, technology, psychology of specific leaders, new ideas – but will always take place within a specific political context. As Clausewitz tells us, it is within the context of the relationships between political communities that the embryo of war forms.

Third, war commences with the action of the defender. An aggressor achieving his goals without resistance is not war, nor is the aggressor slaughtering unarmed civilians, war starts when the defender resists. The attacker has the positive goal of conquering the defender, imposing his will, whereas the defender need only deny the attack his goal (a negative purpose) in order to win. An insurgency or guerrilla group need no political program beyond the defeat of the occupying force, that is the restoration of the status quo ante (however defined).

Fourth, strategy assumes a close interaction between tactics and strategy, the tactics used being supportive of the achievement of the military aim (military victory) which provides the means for the strategic aim (achievement of the political purpose and the return to peace). Success at the tactical level can lead to strategic success providing that the military aim supports the political purpose, but strategic confusion negates tactical success, while strategic clarity can compensate for tactical inadequacy.

Fifth, since not all politics is war, not all policy can be achieved through military means. Some policy goals are not achievable by military means in any way, rather are subverted and made impossible by the use of organized violence. This is the question for the political leadership to decide, does the political purpose lend itself to a military solution, or is this approach counter-productive? Obviously if the decision for war is based more on interest and opportunity than a threat assessment, this will influence planning. Also if the language used by the strategic culture in question requires a certain structure of discourse - the use of certain terms which may not fit the new political realities will only confuse the issue. The language itself can cease to have meaning.

Sixth, strategy assumes that there is an enemy or opposition which is human and interacts with our side over time, that is war as a conflict of opposing human wills. One cannot wage war against a “method” (Terrorism or Counter-Insurgency) or abstract concepts (Evil). Rather, such rhetoric obscures the actual political purpose and can confuse those tasked with implementing military strategy. Furthermore the character of the attacker's political purpose influences the level of resistance the enemy employs. A limited purpose would call on limited sacrifice, whereas a totally radical purpose, say the redefinition of the enemy's political identity would provoke extreme resistance and would demand of the attacker the dedication of significant moral and physical resources.

Seventh, each war is distinct. A war in one theater of operations must be handled as a separate war regardless of the fact that the same military is involved in both. Conflating regional conflicts into a global struggle confuses the issue and creates links which do not correspond to reality. Notice how this assumption is linked to five above.

And finally, there is a distinction between “war” and “peace”. This goes back to Thomas Hobbes, who in Leviathan saw the human situation as being essentially violent chaos which was only ended by people ceding power to a sovereign who held the monopoly of legitimate violence within the demarcated physical area (which we could refer to as the state). Absent this political entity we have (civil) war, or interstate war should the political entity be in armed conflict with other political entities. So war is not so much the absence of peace, but the absence of order which precedes the establishment of political authority. This would cover political entities which have never been states.

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