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Madhu
07-02-2012, 02:19 AM
I didn't realize this thing times out on you and lost a huge post (my fault for not saving it elsewhere and cutting and pasting.)

So, because I don't have time to recreate it now, I'll just post a few articles and return to the thread at a later date. Sorry, moderators, I am absolutely furious at myself for losing about an hours worth of work:mad:

1. http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/university-of-california-press/the-illusion-of-progress-e4cRc8JEqg

The Illusion of Progress: CORDS and the Crisis of Modernization in South Vietnam 1965-1968

2. Jacqueline Hazelton:
The mechanism at work is gaining the support of most of the populace. The HAM understanding of the solution to insurgency grows from the Cold War literature on modernization theory.

http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/4/9/8/7/7/pages498775/p498775-6.php

3. Bernard Finel blog:


Instead, they just assume that legitimacy is a function of the provision of goods services and government accountability. I have no idea where this comes from. It ignores, among other things:

(1) The role of shared foundational myths;
(2) The presence of an external enemy;
(3) The importance of charismatic leadership;
(4) The role of coercion (yes, coercion can contribute to legitimacy);
(5) Traditional power structures;
(6) Distributional policies;
(7) Local autonomy;
(8) Ethic, religious, and sectarian connections;
(9) The presence of “escape” mechanics to supplement “voice.”

http://www.bernardfinel.com/?p=1400

4. Reframing the Historical Problematic of Insurgency: How the Professional Military Literature Created a New History and Missed the Past, Gumz Jonathan E.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/jss/2009/00000032/00000004/art00003

5. Tony Corn: COIN in Absurdistan: Saving the COIN Baby from the Afghan Bathwater (and Vice-Versa)

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/479-corn.pdf

6. Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, Austin Long:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP200.html

(So what I lost were the various passages on modernization theory that I had culled, but you all can search for yourself....)


Sorry, everyone, I'll add more when I have a chance and try and tie the different strands together.

Madhu
07-02-2012, 02:47 AM
China is proof positive that the "Modernization Theory" is finally dead, for good.

The theory in its most basic outline postulated societies passing through certain stages in history, culminating with the "modern" age. The main transition was formulated differently by different theorists.
For Karl Marx, the crucial transformation was from the stage of Feudalism to Capitalism. For Ferdinand Toennies it was the replacement of Gemeinschaft type of society by Gesellschaft. And for the "Father of Sociology" Emile Durkheim, it was the progress from a Mechanical to Organic type of social solidarity and division of labor.

Two main variants of this theory (Marxist versus Structural-Functionalist) postulated different "constitutive elements" of modernity.

Marxists thought capitalist industrialization was what made "modern" societies so unique.

For Structural Functionalists it was a long list of other factors including literacy, urbanization, democracy, rationality, Protestant Ethics and bureaucratization (Max Weber), etc.

Marxists were certain that modern industrialization would trigger an age of revolution and the "dictatorship of the proletariat," which translated as "freedom for the masses" in their book.

http://www.culturefeast.com/china-the-last-nail-in-the-coffin-of-modernization-theory/


The book provides the first history of the progression of ideas that laid the groundwork for development of poor, postcolonial countries by the World Bank Group's IDA and copycat institutions; as such, it is indispensable for understanding how the world arrived at the juncture it is at today.

Long after modernization theory was discredited it continued to shape how institutions in wealthy countries viewed societies in poor countries and administered to them. Not all the resulting development/aid programs have been 'bad,' by any means. But the intellectual constructs that supported them were just that, so when met with the cold light of events in this past decade they were as castles of sand meeting the ocean's tides.

The above is another way of saying that a study of Gilman's work is the best talisman against the fear that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. One finds assurances within the pages of the book that the world is just doing what it's always done: going its own way, raucously independent of how social scientists and economists think it should behave -- a point shored by Gilman's study of black globalization

http://pundita.blogspot.com/2008/12/nils-gilman-on-black-globalization.html

So, my question to the probably two whole people that are interested in the topic, is how much did the general intellectual climate of our larger foreign policy intelligentsia find representation in current COIN doctrine? If these theories are discredited, why do we continue to interact with nations based on such theories? Is what I am postulating even true, and is it contributing to our current problems in A-stan?

Bill Moore
07-02-2012, 03:21 AM
So, my question to the probably two whole people that are interested in the topic, is how much did the general intellectual climate of our larger foreign policy intelligentsia find representation in current COIN doctrine? If these theories are discredited, why do we continue to interact with nations based on such theories? Is what I am postulating even true, and is it contributing to our current problems in A-stan?

Because these beliefs are part and parcel of our strategic culture, political culture, and even our media culture. It is hard to shed bad ideas when they're so intertwined with our culture at that level.

Bill Moore
07-02-2012, 08:03 AM
The Illusion of Progress: CORDS and the Crisis of Modernization in South Vietnam 1965-1968



Definitely worth reading, and ensure you read the footnotes. This should quiet the constant barrage of empty rhetoric from many who believe they are on the cutting edge of COIN because they're pushng a development agenda to indirectly defeat the adversary. This approach to some degree was pushed in the Philippines at the beginning of the last century, but it became the rage during the Cold War, and it didn't work then either.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=the%20illusion%20of%20progress%3A%20cords&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CEoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.viet-studies.info%2Fkinhte%2FIllusionOfProgress.pdf&ei=HkfxT_aZHdOl2AXU8rneCg&usg=AFQjCNFlbANx6HgK71S2KUIX3EELpD3Mjg

A few excerpts to wet the appetite.


Modernization theory gained policy and academic prominence
during the 1950s. Under the fog of fear and suspicion that defined the Cold War, it gave policymakers a dynamic theory of accelerated growth, based upon a hierarchy of measurable stages they could apply without conflict or contradiction across a broad spectrum of nations, races, and cultures.


Modernization theory also held that rational societies were intrinsically good, fundamentally alike, and perpetually dynamic. The theory’s assumptions spawned a gospel of development, with all the trappings of religious dogma. Moral certitude, however, concealed a dark side of the theory that made development such an abstraction that it excused human suffering as the unavoidable but acceptable price of growth.


examining the 1964 Special Operations Research Office (SORO), Project Camelot. The Army and Department of Defense created this program with a mandate to “determine the feasibility of developing a general social systems model that would make it possible to predict and influence politically significant aspects of social change in the developing nations of the world.


even Huntington extolled war as an appropriate precondition for modernization. The erosion of authority, social disintegration, human displacement, and infrastructural upheaval that accompanied war provided a clean slate for seeding development.


Military modernization’s danger, however, rested on its propensity to incubate despotism and to sanction what Nils Gilman has called the “indefinite deferral of democracy in the name of stability.


Komer remarked that he had to remind Johnson to focus on the realities of the conflict, at one point jesting, “Boss, why don’t we win the war first. Then we’ll turn on the lights.” In 1966, when CORDS was in its gestational stage, rural electrification was a ridiculous ambition, and Komer knew it. Nevertheless, it succeeded at framing Johnson’s vision for the region as he refocused on the Other War.


The CIA exacerbated Komer’s problems with a report that found increased communist insurgency against pacification in the backcountry

ganulv
07-02-2012, 01:31 PM
The theory in its most basic outline postulated societies passing through certain stages in history, culminating with the "modern" age. […] For Karl Marx, the crucial transformation was from the stage of Feudalism to Capitalism.

http://www.culturefeast.com/china-the-last-nail-in-the-coffin-of-modernization-theory/

I don’t know how deeply you want to dig into the intellectual history of this stuff, but if you do… Marx’s stages of history draw upon Lewis H. Morgan’s ethnical periods outlined in his magnum opus Ancient society.* Over the past century+ of ethnological/archaeological/historical research Morgan’s reconstruction of human history has been convincingly shown to be wanting, ergo the Marxist work based upon Marx and Engels’s work based upon it is in need of reevaluation.† And that’s just the Marxist stuff. Dig into non-Marxist ideas about modernization and you’ll find analogous (and maybe homologous!) stuff going on.


If these theories are discredited, why do we continue to interact with nations based on such theories?

Short memories? Group think? Laziness? I second Bill’s recommendation regarding having a look at the U.S.’s past half century of interaction in Vietnam. The fact that a development project for the Mekong based upon the TVA was in the pipes for years speaks volumes to me. As a native of Western North Carolina the most charitable thing I will say about the TVA is that it overpromised and underdelivered.

*If you are interested in the relationship of Morgan’s upon Marx and Engels’ understanding of human history I strongly recommend the 1964 John Harvard Library edition of Ancient society (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/497631) edited by Leslie White. A big part of the value White adds to this versus previous editions is in his discussion of the relationship of LHM’s work to M&E’s.

†Which in no way invalidates the roles of Morgan—whose work and life I have a great affection for (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtbradley/5265681455/) for a number of reasons—or Marx and Engels as great question askers. Some of their answers still hold up pretty well after all these years, too, just not on this particular score.

AmericanPride
07-02-2012, 07:42 PM
So, my question to the probably two whole people that are interested in the topic, is how much did the general intellectual climate of our larger foreign policy intelligentsia find representation in current COIN doctrine?

They are one and the same. The COIN doctrine is fundamentally neoconservative in its approach, with the same basic assumptions governing American foreign policy. There was a huge push to intellectualize our approach to the conflict -- professional soldiers had to justify subordinating their careers and principles to wars that quickly lost credibility among the American public. The decision was made first. The ideas and justifications came afterward. By the time Bush came to office in 2001, America was already basking in its superpower status, and all the privileges thereof in propagating its ideas and methods. The GWoT was preceded by the humanitarian interventions of Somalia, Yugoslavia, and Haiti and the hope to the end of history. We had unfinished business with Iraq and the inconvenience of Al-Qaeda's base of operations in Afghanistan, wars to be explained by the Bush administration that terrorists "hate our freedom". So of course, we end up in Iraq and Afghanistan, only to find to that there are inexplicably more legitimate grievances against Americans than hatred of freedom. But it can't be that these people are actually content with their way of life, or have values which differ from our own. It must be that rampant corruption, religious radicalism, and lack of legitimate government (I'm talking about Afghanistan, not Saudi Arabia), prevent these populations from enjoying the freedoms we have in America. Notwithstanding the evidence in Lebanon and Palestine (and possibly in Egypt), if only people were given democracy, they would come to love our freedom like we do. So we went about building new governments and norms and ethics for them in the hope they would find that inner American within themselves.


If these theories are discredited, why do we continue to interact with nations based on such theories?

In my view, these ideas are institutionalized in America's academies, agencies, and think tanks. American foreign policy is not rational -- it is not developed on the sole basis of pursuing universalized and idealized American interests. Instead, it is formed within the context of on-going political battles between numerous factions and private interests, all of them armed with deep pockets, friendly think tanks and media outlets, and influential friends. Our foreign policy is ad-hoc, short-sighted, subordinate to the prevailing partisan interests of the time, and some times the cart pulls the horse. But all of these are within a narrow range of acceptable ideological boundaries -- namely the orthodoxy of democratic capitalism. The language may have changed since the Cold War with the emergence of neoconservative triumphalism but remains firmly rooted in its militancy and the hostility towards "heretical" political and economic beliefs. The blow back of 9/11 and the shake-up of the on-going financial emergency have not stirred up any serious contender to the foundation of these ideas. And quite frankly, so long as Americans remain largely ignorant and immune (which won't last forever) of the consequences of our policies abroad, it doesn't matter if the ideas aren't credible since nobody knows any better.


Is what I am postulating even true, and is it contributing to our current problems in A-stan?

It depends what you define as the "current problems" in Afghanistan. Is it the existence of a fairly weak, thoroughly corrupt central government with a keen eye towards its own survival? Is it widespread underdevelopment? Is it the use of Afghanistan as a safe haven by terrorist organizations? Or the emergence of an international consciousness in Taliban ideology? Afghanistan was not a big deal in the 2008 election and it doesn't look like it will be in 2012 given the slow economic recovery and the death of OBL. Obama's national security credentials are essentially unassailable at this point, so I doubt Romney will bother bringing them up since he's going to be more focused on Hispanics, women, and the upper class (none of whom particular care for the conflict). So really, perhaps the "problem" is that the war is continuing on auto-pilot with a deadline of 2014 (for now) and there's no longer much at stake to change what will be a foregone conclusion of American withdrawal. The COINistas won the battle. But who lost the war?

slapout9
07-02-2012, 08:03 PM
During the late 50's and early 60's COIN(called Brush Fire Wars back then) was largely based on American Indian Wars, that is why all Army helicopters were named after them. Clearing was done by the Cavalry, Holding and Building was done by the American settelers. This theory morphed into what we are calling COIN today but with the belief that the lcoal population can be substituted for the original American Setteler and thus we would save the rest of the world from whatever we (USA) decided they needed to be saved from.

Steve Blair
07-02-2012, 08:14 PM
During the late 50's and early 60's COIN(called Brush Fire Wars back then) was largely based on American Indian Wars, that is why all Army helicopters were named after them. Clearing was done by the Cavalry, Holding and Building was done by the American settelers. This theory morphed into what we are calling COIN today but with the belief that the lcoal population can be substituted for the original American Setteler and thus we would save the rest of the world from whatever we (USA) decided they needed to be saved from.

Actually, Slap, for the most part the Army was dragged into areas by settlement patterns, not the reverse. In many cases the Army aided settlement, but it was a paired relationship (like a dog with fleas...the only question turns on who was the dog and who was the flea in this particular relationship). I tend to think that generic COIN ideas morphed more out of British Imperial practice combined with what we took away from the Philippines. The Army tended to be somewhat dismissive of the Indian Wars (remember that even at the time the leadership sent Upton to see if he could glean any lessons from the British in India...even though he came back with a strong admiration for the Prussian military system and wrote almost exclusively about that), and even now doesn't really study them in a practical or meaningful way.

ganulv
07-02-2012, 09:16 PM
During the late 50's and early 60's COIN(called Brush Fire Wars back then) was largely based on American Indian Wars, that is why all Army helicopters were named after them. Clearing was done by the Cavalry, Holding and Building was done by the American settelers. This theory morphed into what we are calling COIN today but with the belief that the lcoal population can be substituted for the original American Setteler and thus we would save the rest of the world from whatever we (USA) decided they needed to be saved from.

It might be a post hoc explanation, but I’ve read that the practice of using tribal names for Army aircraft stems from the importance of Fort Sill in the early years of Army Aviation. It makes sense, I guess; I spent a week or so in Fort Sill once and the only things I really remember about it are that there were a lot of Indians and that it smelled like cow####.

If you look at the career of Phil Sheridan you have someone who participated in the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Indian Wars and with Nelson Miles you have someone who participated in the Civil War, Indian Wars, and the invasion and occupation of Puerto Rico. Just with those two there’s a lot of grist for the mill. It would be nice to think there was some institutional memory of them. :rolleyes:

Steve Blair
07-02-2012, 09:23 PM
It might be a post hoc explanation, but I’ve read that the practice of using tribal names for Army aircraft stems from the importance of Fort Sill in the early years of Army Aviation. It makes sense, I guess; I spent a week or so in Fort Sill once and the only things I really remember about it are that there were a lot of Indians and that it smelled like cow####.

If you look at the career of Phil Sheridan you have someone who participated in the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Indian Wars and with Nelson Miles you have someone who participated in the Civil War, Indian Wars, and the invasion and occupation of Puerto Rico. Just with those two there’s a lot of grist for the mill. It would be nice to think there was some institutional memory of them. :rolleyes:

Part of the helicopter naming had to do with the projecting scouting role they'd play. Indian scouts and all that...

Sheridan was one of those who backed sending Upton on his world tour, although as I recall it was mainly Sherman's project. Sheridan had some vision regarding Indian fighting, but on the whole he was pretty conservative and didn't move much to change the Army as an institution. Miles...he was too wrapped up in himself to really make the sort of changes that would have been needed to preserve lessons from this period. After all, many of these guys were still fighting in print about who captured just how many cannon at the Battle of Cowflap Road during the late unpleasantness or worrying about the revolt of the working classes in the streets back East. Much of the Army's attention was focused elsewhere...perhaps the only "lesson" they preserved from this time...

TheCurmudgeon
07-03-2012, 01:33 AM
Modernization Theory was largely the creation of Seymour Lipset in a 1959 article "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy"(Seymour Martin Lipset,The American Political Science Review, Vol. 53, No. 1. (Mar., 1959), pp. 69-105. Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0554%28195903%2953%3A1%3C69%3ASSRODE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D ). It was a synopsis of a research symposium conducted to try to determine what conditions were necessary for democracy to flourish. Out of that article came a number of ideas, most of which were centered on the structural/functional aspects discussed above. But there were other ideas that were tossed around.

The most resilient one has been built on the idea of the economic capacity for a country to transition to and maintain a democracy. Work is still ongoing into this idea. The most vocal advocate of this idea is Adam Przeworski. (See for example "Modernization: Theories and Facts" http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/world_politics/v049/49.2przeworski.html or dss.ucsd.edu/~mnaoi/page4/POLI227/files/page1_13.pdf ). Przeworski's work ties a minimum per capita GDP to functional democracies of about $6,000 in 1985 dollars; about $12,800 in today's dollars. Below that level a democracy cannot survive. It might be worth noting that the CIA World Fact Book lists China's per capita GDP at only $8,400. Well below what Przeworski postulates is require to transition to democracy.

Another idea dealt with values. Certain values, particularly individualistic ideals, were tied to the transition to democracy. The cheerleader of that idea has been Ronald Inglehart. You can see some of his work at http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/. Of particular interest is his use of secular/rational values vs traditional values and survival vs. self-expression values to map world cultures with specific clusters for "modernized" democracies. A more in depth version of his theories can be found in "Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence" (http://www.amazon.com/Modernization-Cultural-Change-Democracy-Development/dp/0521846951).

Modernization Theory is not dead but the structural/functional version of it has been largely discredited. You cannot simply build democratic institutions and expect democracies to spring up. There must be a fundamental change in the society. This change seems to begin with a general increase in the opportunities available to the citizens due to an increase in their income level (per capita GDP) that is followed by a change in attitudes from a traditional, communal value set that is interested in surviving to an individualistic value set that is interested in personal self-expression and fulfillment. Those types of changes do not happen overnight and certainly do not happen because you built a school in a town where there is no disposable income.

To see more check out http://www.foreignaffairs.com/features/readinglists/what-to-read-on-modernization-theory

slapout9
07-03-2012, 03:33 AM
Link to US Army Big Picture histroy of Army Aviation....very differant concept from all the others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpFg9JVvyEE&feature=related

TheCurmudgeon
07-03-2012, 03:17 PM
So, my question to the probably two whole people that are interested in the topic, is how much did the general intellectual climate of our larger foreign policy intelligentsia find representation in current COIN doctrine?

I am not really sure about COIN doctrine in general, but American Coin doctrine that supports the policy objective of spreading democracy does not have to many other choices. Modernization Theory is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to exogenous (externally imposed) democracy.


If these theories are discredited, why do we continue to interact with nations based on such theories?

Two points here. The first is that there are no alternatives. There are really no other competing theories out there to explain how a state becomes a democracy.

The second point has to do with Modernization Theory itself. It is not really a complete theory. It is more a group of observations about what conditions have existed in a society when a country became or successfully continued to remain a democracy. There is really no coherant explination of why these things happen, just a lot of tables and charts that show that these things (education and literacy, wealth and a capitalist economy, egalitarian values, political activite citizenry, etc.) tend to coincide with democracy. It is kind of like claiming a theory of percipitation that states that when it is cloudy it rains. It is a largely accurate observation. But the theory does not explain why sometimes it is cloudy but it still does not rain or why, in places like Hawaii, it can rain from a largely cloudless sky.


Is what I am postulating even true, and is it contributing to our current problems in A-stan?

I would say that it is contributing to our problems in A-stan, but that question is larger than I can answer here. I would suggest you go back and read the original article if you can find it. You will see how Lipset discussed various ideas. He also concludes that democracy is only one possible consequence of the various social requisites. Others since, like Larry Diamond, have tried to push this idea as a simple causal relationship. It is that kind of thinking that can be damaging.

BTW, I am very interested in this topic and have spent the about four years now working through it. So you are not alone ... (insert theme from"The X-Files" here)

ganulv
07-03-2012, 03:29 PM
Modernization Theory is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to exogenous (externally imposed) democracy.

My own common-sense definition of the term ‘democracy’ involves the consent of the governed. Do I misread the irony in your statement? Or do you define the term differently?

TheCurmudgeon
07-03-2012, 03:46 PM
My own common-sense definition of the term ‘democracy’ involves the consent of the governed. Do I misread the irony in your statement? Or do you define the term differently?

Yeah, unfortunately, it is the policy types who miss the irony. But the idea of exogenous or imposed democracy is alive and well in the minds of some people. Particularly those who tie democracy with human rights. To ensure that all people live in a country that observes universal human rights the only way to accomplish it is by forcing democracy upon them.

There are also those in the security arena that believe the mantra that democracies do not go to war with each other and therefore, the way to secure peace is by ensuring that every country in the world is a democracy.

I do not share either view. I do not believe you can externally impose democracy or any other form of legitimate government. I also believe that a democracy will go to war (or engage in a "war of choice") with any other country under the right conditions.

TheCurmudgeon
07-03-2012, 11:11 PM
After reading the article "The Illusion of Progress: Cords and the Crisis of Modernization in South Vietnam, 1965-1968" I didn't quit see Huntington as deriding modernization, only the way it was being conducted by CORDS. In fact much on Huntington's concerns mimic Inglehart's current ideas on Modernization; that it is based in societal changes in basic values and not in simple infrastructure changes:


For Huntington, pacification illustrated a point that he had been considering for quite some time -- that modernization was a fact of human development and interaction. Consequently, to theorize an artificial process of development while not respecting the natural path of change missed the point and guaranteed failure From pp 46-7

Huntington still seemed to have faith in the principles of modernization. He just did not believe that it could be artificially accelerated.

TheCurmudgeon
07-05-2012, 01:15 PM
After a little more reading it has become clear that there are two parallel yet separate versions of Modernization theory. The one that seemed to garner the most favor with the Vietnam era crowd was Daniel Lerner’s version which was a vague, teleological concept of the stages that society pass through similar to Marx’s Historical Materialism. The more modern (pun intended) version of it that is advocated by the new generation of policymakers is the version that deals specifically with the transition to democracy. A short synopsis of it can be found at:
http://democracy.livingreviews.org/index.php/lrd/article/viewArticle/lrd-2009-4/13
Sorry if my ramblings created any confusion.

TheCurmudgeon
07-05-2012, 05:25 PM
If these theories are discredited, why do we continue to interact with nations based on such theories?

You proceed from a false assumption. These "theories" are two different theories. The Modernization Theory that could not be applied in Vietnam is not the same Modernization Theory that cannot be applied to Afghanistan.

Although the theories are different the hubris is the same.

Madhu
07-06-2012, 11:42 AM
This is a fantastic thread. I am definitely going to follow-up on some of the posted links.

@ TheCurmudgeon - I think you're right about the democracy bit. I've got more to post on that, but for now, more quotes on modernization that might be helpful to this discussion:

From a paper I linked above (History of Insurgency - How PME forgot history, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 2009, JE Gumz)


Another glaring historically transcendent assumption in the current COIN literature is its reliance upon mobilization, modernization, and development leading to democratic forms of governance and free market economies as the answer to insurgency. In this sense, we are truly returning to the Vietnam War yet as with most modernization theories, history is jettisoned to the side as an obstacle to be overcome. As many have argued, modernization theory tends to flatten difference and place countries on a universal trajectory of develoment. Thus, in the section on logical lines of operations in FM 3-24, some of the goals include 'support and secure elections,' 'support broad-based economic opportunity (micro to macro development) and 'support a free market economy.

Madhu
07-06-2012, 11:53 AM
....it's writing things up that I don't like very much. For all the fun I tend to make of "writing up papers instead of doing the hard thinking first", I actually respect scholarly research of value.

Hard Hearts and Open Minds? Governance, Identity and the Intellectual Foundations of Counterinsurgency Strategy, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 2008 M Fitzsimmons

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402390802024692#preview


The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of "modernization theory" in western academic and policy communities (also known as "political development theory"), a theory of development that emphasized a teleological convergence of societies through several stages of modernization from primitive "traditional" forms toward western style industrialization, secularization, and political pluralism. Legitimacy in this framework was earned by whoever could most reliably guide the society along these hypothesized paths of modernization, with their characteristic signals of good overnance - economic growth, political representation and efficient administrations.

From Counterinsurgency by David Kilcullen (page 21)


The RAND corporation established an Insurgency Board that brought together external researchers, along with RAND analysts, to examine the new environment through the lens of RAND's work on counterinsurgency since the 1950s. In some ways, RAND acted as an institutional memory bank for the new counterinsurgency movmement, in part because some veteran researchers, Steve Hosmer among them, had been present at the creation - in the 1950s, when RAND had played a crucial early role in developing classical counterinsurgency theory.

I started reading about all of this about 2009 on Abu Muqawama's blog. The comments section there sometimes spiralled out of control and the conversation on this topic became very bad-tempered at times. I do not wish to recreate those feelings and I have no interest in playing intellectual "gotcha." I simply want to learn. I don't regret that I was critical on that board, but the tone that I sometimes took was terrible.

TheCurmudgeon
07-06-2012, 02:29 PM
I do not wish to recreate those feelings and I have no interest in playing intellectual "gotcha." I simply want to learn.

Don't worry about me ... I am just happy someone else is interested in the topic.

I also learned a lot since I was under the impression that the Vietnam era ideas and the current ones were the same. It actually makes more sense now looking at it from the perspective that Vietnam era Cold war fight was with communism (to which our response was capitalism and a version of Modernization that espoused it) where the current Afghani fight is with a fundamentalist theocracy (to which our response is secular democracy and a different version of modernization that supports it). All of it backed by a simplistic belief that everyone in the world MUST share our "modern" value set and are just waiting for Westerners to provide them the opportunity to "advance" beyond thier "traditional" ways to become just like us.

Sparapet
07-06-2012, 08:30 PM
There is a certain point that comes invariably when I read through a topic like this that makes me wish we had the Prime Directive (Star Trek as philosophy is not a far stretch, is it?).

Reading through Wucherpfennig and Deutsch (Modernization and Democracy: Theories and Evidence Revisited) I can't help but feel that I am not learning anything. I am at a loss on how to use loaded and simplistic conclusions like "...for democracy to be stable it must come about from within, since it is the socio-economic conditions which create and maintain an environment for stable and enduring democracies". Really? And there I thought poverty and war were the engines of democracy.

ok, sorry for the diatribe, I'll be more serious now... Russia, Cambodia, Japan and China have done an excellent job of testing modernization approaches on human populations. Priceless laboratories IMO. Incidentally, as has Western Europe and the US. In these examples alone we see what the possible outcomes are when the pace of change is 1 generation, 2-3, and 3-5. Quite instructively in the 1-3 model lots of people tend to die. In the 3-5 model lots of people tend to see slow changes punctuated by a revolutionary change in social-norms on the order of once in a lifetime. (I promise to write a lengthier post with lots of citations if there is interest). And this is only when it comes to industrialization, followed by rapid urbanization.

This makes sense when one considers that socio-economic systems exist within a context of population density, food production, communal interdepence, and most importantly, political stability. Interestingly, democratization addresses only the last one of these factors, by introducing a system that is more prone to near-term instability than any other conceivable option. Even Ghaddafi was stable on the scale of a generation.

Complex reaction to a complex and mildly infuriating topic...

TheCurmudgeon
07-07-2012, 01:39 PM
There is a certain point that comes invariably when I read through a topic like this that makes me wish we had the Prime Directive (Star Trek as philosophy is not a far stretch, is it?).

Usually at some point in the conversations we get around to this idea. But its success rate is not much better. We left Afghanistan alone the first time and ended up with 2800 dead American's in New York. We could leave Iran alone ... not sure that would work out for us either.

The reality is that we meddle in the affairs of other countries all the time. That is why we have the Instruments of National Power (DIME). At least since 1945 and well into the foreseeable future we try to mold the actions of other countries to meet our desires. Iran wants a Nuke, we work with others to impose sanctions; North Korea tests a Nuke, we stop giving them fuel oil or food; China does something we don't like and we tell them please stop that:D. Why would it be any different just because we invaded the country or because we are involved in a stabilization or humanitarian operation in that country.

If it is our policy to promote democracy (which it was the last time I looked) then we might want to learn a little more about how and why that happens. Why are other paths chosen; what social, cultural, or economic conditions led to these choices and why did they work or fail?




Russia, Cambodia, Japan and China have done an excellent job of testing modernization approaches on human populations. Priceless laboratories IMO. Incidentally, as has Western Europe and the US. In these examples alone we see what the possible outcomes are when the pace of change is 1 generation, 2-3, and 3-5. Quite instructively in the 1-3 model lots of people tend to die. In the 3-5 model lots of people tend to see slow changes punctuated by a revolutionary change in social-norms on the order of once in a lifetime. (I promise to write a lengthier post with lots of citations if there is interest). And this is only when it comes to industrialization, followed by rapid urbanization.

I am not sure what Cambodia tried I would call modernization but you are right; there were a number of times social engineering was attempted with various levels of effect. I would also agree that a multi-generational model is probably the most realistic. I would argue that what Russia, China, and Japan did were all success of a kind. Russia when from a weak empire to one of the world's superpowers; China is an economic powerhouse; and Japan went from an island nation to controlling most of the Pacific. This kind of thing happens. The question is why did it work for them?

While the generational approach is more realistic (and even that requires managing) politicians are not going to wait generations for changes to occur in countries that make them more amenable to American desires. These political transitions happen. The trick is to figure out why and what the result is likely to look like. Look at the Arab Spring. Everyone is expecting democracies to emerge but there have been plenty of occasion where, once the people have been given the vote they freely vote for autocratic tyrants or theocratic systems. Egypt is already headed that way. I suspect Libya is not to far behind. It happened in Palestine. Democracy will not always yield a liberal political system which is really what the policymakers are talking about when they refer to a democracy.


This makes sense when one considers that socio-economic systems exist within a context of population density, food production, communal interdepence, and most importantly, political stability. Interestingly, democratization addresses only the last one of these factors, by introducing a system that is more prone to near-term instability than any other conceivable option. Even Ghaddafi was stable on the scale of a generation.

Complex reaction to a complex and mildly infuriating topic...

This is a very complex area. It is one that needs to be discussed, if for no other reason than for those of us in the military to be able to explain to our civilian masters why it is a bad idea to try this type of social engineering again.

Bill Moore
07-08-2012, 08:06 AM
This seems relevant to the discussion.

http://www.icrc.org/eng/war-and-law/contemporary-challenges-for-ihl/occupation/overview-occupation.htm


Part of the legal discussion about recent occupations has triggered reflection about the alleged inadequacy of occupation law to deal with situations of this kind. In particular, some authors have argued that the emphasis on maintaining the status quo ante, which precludes wholesale changes to the legal, political, institutional and economic structure of an occupied territory, was too rigid. In this regard, it has been contended that the transformation of oppressive governments or the redress of society in complete collapse by means of occupation were in the interest of the international community and should be authorized by occupation law. Moreover, it has been affirmed that existing occupation law does not sufficiently take into account the development of human rights law and the advent of the principle of self-determination. Recent occupations have also highlighted how difficult it can be to determine when an occupation begins and ends as well as to identify with certainty the legal framework governing the use of force in occupied territory. Eventually, the UN administrations of territory have raised the question as to whether occupation law could be relevant in such situations.

The legal challenges raised by contemporary forms of occupation have been at the core of the project undertaken by the ICRC on “Occupation and Other Forms of Administration of Foreign Territory”. The purpose of this initiative, which began in 2007, was to analyse whether and to what extent the rules of occupation law are adequate to deal with the humanitarian and legal challenges arising in contemporary occupations, and whether they might need to be reaffirmed, clarified or developed. Three informal meetings involving experts from States, international organizations, academic circles and the NGO community were organized with a view to addressing the legal issues in more detail.

TheCurmudgeon
07-08-2012, 04:44 PM
Yep, same idea, different forum.

"Moreover, it has been affirmed that existing occupation law does not sufficiently take into account the development of human rights law and the advent of the principle of self-determination."

Self-determination is rapidly eroding Westphalian sovereignty. A country can no longer do what is required with its citizens in order to secure stability and the common good. The individual trumps the collective in Western legal thought. It is just too bad for the rest of the world that they look at things the other way around.

On a separate but related note, I did get a kick out of reading that:
“Under occupation law, the occupying power does not acquire sovereignty over the occupied territory and is required to respect the existing laws and institutions of the occupied territory as far as possible.” … NOT!

We wrote Japan’s Constitution and the Soviets revamped Eastern Europe into little communist clones. Neither Germany nor Italy were allowed to remain Fascist states. You occupy a country for a reason. In the old days it was to secure resources or gain concessions. Nowadays it is also to make institutional changes that are appealing to the occupier.

ganulv
07-08-2012, 06:16 PM
[T]he Soviets revamped Eastern Europe into little communist clones.

And as we have all since learned, a dictatorship of the proletariat is just as hard to foist upon a society as is a participatory democracy.

TheCurmudgeon
07-08-2012, 06:31 PM
And as we have all since learned, a dictatorship of the proletariat is just as hard to foist upon a society as is a participatory democracy.

Although I would amend that statement to something a little more broad and neutral in conotation:

No form of government is likely to endure where the values actually pursued by the government and those embraced by a politically significant segment of the population differ substantially without the ability to enforce that system through coercion or bribery (and the resources, either from internal wealth or external support, to maintain that coercion/bribery).

TheCurmudgeon
07-09-2012, 10:32 PM
This is something I have been working on. More meaty than the other articles on modernization.

This is an excerpt, so to set the stage, I am discussing cultural values and their relationship to political preference. Schwartz created the theory of universal human values. What is important is at the end - Schwartz indepently confirms Ingelhart and Welzel's work on values and democratization:

Another researcher to find a connection between values and political preference was Shalmon Shwartz. Most well known for his Theory of Universal Human Values and the Schwartz Value Survey he has recently expanded his research into collective value systems. Schwartz identified ten universal values. Applying these to development and democratization he noticed a connection between certain values and democratization. Schwartz continued his work on values by examining collective value sets and systems. He identified seven collective values that are cross-cultural. These seven could be organized into three continuums; Autonomy versus Embeddedness, Egalitarianism versus Hierarchy, and Harmony versus Mastery. The two dimensions that had the stongest connection with political preference were the Autonomy/Embeddedness and Egalitarian/Hierarchy dimensions.

The Autonomy/Embeddedness dimension is similar to Hofstede’s IC dimension and overlaps with Inglehart’s secular-rational values. In cultures that are autonomous people express “their own preferences, feelings, ideas, and abilities, and find meaning in their own uniqueness.” In contrast in countries which emphasis Embeddedness “[m]eaning in life comes largely through social relationships, through identifying with the group, participating in its shared way of life, and striving towards its shared goals.” Schwartz’s Egalitarianism/Hierarchy dimension is similar to Hofsteade’s P/D dimension. People in Egalitarian cultures seek to “recognize one another as moral equals” where Hierarchical cultures accept inequity and an unequal distribution of power and property as desirable and “ascribe roles to insure responsible, productive behavior.” Schwartz’s Egalitarianism/Hierarchy dimension also overlaps with Ingelhart’s secular/rational values but to a much lesser amount. It appears that Ingelhart’s values are a combination of the both Hofstede’s and Schwartz’s dimensions.

In his analysis of the connection between his cultural values and political preferences Scwhartz also noted a connection between Autonomy and Egalitarianism and political preference. Using Freedom House statistics he noted a high correlation between a country’s civil liberties and autonomy and egalitarianism. This is to be expected. But what Schwartz also found was a causal relationship between socioeconomic development, values, and democratization. Using a different value set Scwhartz was able to confirm Welzel and Inglehart’s proposition that socioeconomic development led to a change in values that resulted in a greater likelihood of democratization. It also helped disproved the idea that democratic institutions created values that supported liberal democratic institutions. “The current analysis further demonstrates that the prior level of democracy has not impact on cultural values, once development is controlled.” Socioeconomic development has an effect on values but the existence of democratic institutions does not.

TheCurmudgeon
07-10-2012, 07:09 AM
Sorry, the references for the above section include

Shalmon H. Schwartz. National Value Cultures, Sources and Consequences, Chapter 7 in Huntington, S. P., & Harrison, L. E. (2000). Culture matters : how values shape human progress / Lawrence E. Harrison, Samuel P. Huntington, editors. New York : Basic Books, c2000.

Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy : the human development sequence / Ronald Inglehart Christian Welzel. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Hofstede, G. H. (1980). Culture's consequences, international differences in work-related values / Geert Hofstede. Beverly Hills, Calif. : Sage Publications, c1980.

Madhu
07-10-2012, 02:44 PM
....from each and every comment. :cool:

More papers for discussion:


All three groups—airpower theorists, adherents of the French Revolutionary War School, and the proponents of the new U.S. COIN doctrine—inverted the way military forces had traditionally fought wars. The first actions in wars fought between nation-states normally involved large battles between the military forces ofthe opposing sides. Depending on the nature of the war, at some point as the war progressed the civilian population might to some degree become involved in the fighting. But the airpower and counterinsurgency theorists reversed this process so that the first step in war would be to involve the people. For the airpower theorists, involvement would mean bombing them from the sky. For the counterinsurgency theorists,involvement would be securing thepopulation with military force in order to get at the insurgents. After this involvement between the people and the military, in either of the two cases, military forces might be engaged along the lines of more traditional warfare.

The Selective Use Of History In The Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine, Army History 2009, Gian P. Gentile.

I know I've screwed up the formatting in the above post but I don't have time to fix it now. I'll do it later.

Madhu
07-10-2012, 02:50 PM
....and sometimes you have to stop reading and synthesizing.

My synthesis would be along the lines of this: the narratives and histories we created about the Cold War periphery countries (in this case, South Asia) were incomplete. We attemped a historical re-do of the 90s in the 00s in our attempt to gain a strategic endstate that kept shifting in some sense.

Another potentially useful publication:

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceptualizing Threat and Response, Steven Metz and Raymond Millen

(I never list references properly. It's me and that whole "word" borderline dyslexia thing. I just don't like writing.)


http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=586

Madhu
07-10-2012, 03:13 PM
@ Curmudgeon,

This is in response to a comment of yours above and I will flesh my thoughts out a bit later:


I thought about this while reading a commentary in Army History (by Gian Gentile). I think we have a selective history of that region and it affected us in the 00s in terms of our military and foreign policy strategies. We forgot our own history there, it was selective and we interpreted it completely through the lens of our battle with the Soviet Union, and our confused thoughts about non Western countries and post WWII colonialism/neocolonialism.

It was the correct way to view our European security theater but not the correct lens with which to view the AfPak theater.

You see, the fomenting of insurgency, and our contributions and our allies contributions to it, licit and illicit both, caused a problem. And instead of going back to first principles, we focused on the Taliban insurgency without thinking it through.

I don't know. I change my mind sometimes.

Anyway, the problems all started with this bit of conventional wisdom: "we abandoned Afghanistan and look what happened."

Uh, no. We were there on and off. I can see why people don't like to talk about it, though.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/american-strategy-in-afghanistan-flunks-sun-tzu

Sparapet
07-10-2012, 04:16 PM
We left Afghanistan alone the first time and ended up with 2800 dead American's in New York. We could leave Iran alone ... not sure that would work out for us either.
The reality is that we meddle in the affairs of other countries all the time. That is why we have the Instruments of National Power (DIME). At least since 1945 and well into the foreseeable future we try to mold the actions of other countries to meet our desires.
I would say there is nothing wrong with that. My reference to the Prime Directive was less to pursuit of national interests than to non-interference in the manners of others. That is to say, there is nothing wrong with enforcing our interests and demanding acceptance of our goals. The wrong-headedness comes in when we decide that we are so fed up with our opponents that we will try to change them. By way of analogy - imprisoning a murderer vs. rehabilitating him and releasing him back in the hope he is reformed and useful. We can't seem to help ourselves from slipping from enforcement to rehabilitation. But just as with murderers, no one seems to know exactly how rehabilitation works or how long it takes.

If it is our policy to promote democracy (which it was the last time I looked)... Democracy will not always yield a liberal political system which is really what the policymakers are talking about when they refer to a democracy.
This is where there is a real ideological divide between us all. Those that see export of democracy as imperative, those that see export of liberal political systems as imperative, and those that seek neither. The true tension of the discussion is with which of these ideologies rests the burden of proof. Do the exporters have to prove to the non-intereference crowd that it should be done? Or do the non-intereference crowd prove to the exporters that it shouldn't? and so on. Note that I call all three ideologies.
Since we haven't been in the business of annexing territory in about 65 years or so, and we don't like to extend the privilige of being an American to just anyone, but at the same time we are obsessed with everyone seeing us as primus inter pares as some sort of ideal, we have ourselves a bit of conundrum. If we are to be among equals, all others must be made in our image. Yet if we do not convert them through annexation by fusing their socio-economic systems to our own, we must convert them through ideology. So we go forth, democratizing.

I would argue that what Russia, China, and Japan did were all success of a kind. Russia when from a weak empire to one of the world's superpowers; China is an economic powerhouse; and Japan went from an island nation to controlling most of the Pacific. This kind of thing happens. The question is why did it work for them?
The thing to remember with all three cases is the huge human toll. There is more than an ounce of discomfort with the proposition that these countries did much of anything worth emulating. Russia killed between 30 and 50 million people between 1905 and 1953 (not counting the 25-30 million from WWII). In that time the country went from looking like it was stuck in 1600’s to mid-20th century. That upheaval is titanic. China lost ungodly millions, again, apart from the benevolent Japanese occupation. And the Japanese, after upending their entire society, wound up killing and losing millions in endless wars of expansion as they sought to feed the economic machines they were modernizing with.
I do think that a lot of these issues result more from the intellectual challenge of reflection, compared with the intellectual ease of theorizing to personal satisfaction. Every human in history is subject to this.


socioeconomic development led to a change in values that resulted in a greater likelihood of democratization. It also helped disproved the idea that democratic institutions created values that supported liberal democratic institutions.
When they say “socioeconomic” to what extent to they distinguish it from cultural change. It seems that is the logical implication of this finding.

TheCurmudgeon
07-10-2012, 11:36 PM
Madhu ...

"Anyway, the problems all started with this bit of conventional wisdom: 'we abandoned Afghanistan and look what happened.' Uh, no. We were there on and off. I can see why people don't like to talk about it, though."

I don't believe that "being there on and off" quite constitutes a viable response. Nor do I proscribe to conventional wisdom very often. It is not that we abandon Afghanistan. It is that we helped to create a power vacuum and then did nothing to help fill it with a government that would be friendly to us. I would argue we did the exact same thing in the early days after the Iraqi invasion for very similar reasons. We believe that the population of the country should govern itself. We provided them the opportunity. They fell on their face. I am not sure we have learned anything. In Libya we helped topple a dictator and are pretty much leaving the people to work this out on their own. My gut reaction is that it will not end up much better than Iraq, France First Republic, Yugoslavia or maybe even Egypt. Countries that have had a strong government who have suppressed internal issues for years who suddenly find themselves controlling their own destinies do not have the values or the cultural systems to be able to deal with that.

A strong military can mediate that although most Westerners see that as a bad thing. Thailand has been working thought this for years, coup after coup, but they are getting closer to a functioning democracy every time.

TheCurmudgeon
07-10-2012, 11:59 PM
there is nothing wrong with enforcing our interests and demanding acceptance of our goals. The wrong-headedness comes in when we decide that we are so fed up with our opponents that we will try to change them. By way of analogy - imprisoning a murderer vs. rehabilitating him and releasing him back in the hope he is reformed and useful. We can't seem to help ourselves from slipping from enforcement to rehabilitation. But just as with murderers, no one seems to know exactly how rehabilitation works or how long it takes.

You missed the third option, the death penalty, or regime change.


This is where there is a real ideological divide between us all. Those that see export of democracy as imperative, those that see export of liberal political systems as imperative, and those that seek neither. The true tension of the discussion is with which of these ideologies rests the burden of proof. Do the exporters have to prove to the non-intereference crowd that it should be done? Or do the non-intereference crowd prove to the exporters that it shouldn't? and so on.

In my case I am not trying to prove the rightness or wrongness of either policy, interference or non-interference. I am a Soldier. I don't make policy. I see my job as being able to logically argue that, "yes Mr. Secretary, The military can change that regime and replace it with a liberal democracy. It will take fifty years of occupation and $500 Billion for the first ten years. Here is why. We also might have to kill a substantial part of the population either directly or indirectly. Are you sure you still want to pursue this option?"


The thing to remember with all three cases is the huge human toll. There is more than an ounce of discomfort with the proposition that these countries did much of anything worth emulating. Russia killed between 30 and 50 million people between 1905 and 1953 (not counting the 25-30 million from WWII). In that time the country went from looking like it was stuck in 1600’s to mid-20th century. That upheaval is titanic. China lost ungodly millions, again, apart from the benevolent Japanese occupation. And the Japanese, after upending their entire society, wound up killing and losing millions in endless wars of expansion as they sought to feed the economic machines they were modernizing with.

I was not making a moral argument. I was only noting that you could accomplish rapid modernization if you are willing to pay the price. It is that price I am trying to calculate.

Besides, how many people died while France was trying to get it right? How about Yugoslavia? How many do you think will die in Libya before they get it right.


When they say “socioeconomic” to what extent to they distinguish it from cultural change. It seems that is the logical implication of this finding.

Socioeconomic deals primarily with the set of norms, rules, and laws associated with the monetary and other systems of exchange in goods and labor to including labor and property rights and laws. Culture encompasses the entire social structure including all its norms, rules, laws and institutions.

I personally define culture as one societies set of solutions to the problems of meeting its members needs, wants, and desires while maintaining a cohesive social unit.

The point they are trying to make is that it is a multistage process. First you change the socioeconomic system to a level that allows for a change in the value structure of the society. That change in value structure creates a drive to change the political structure. It does not work the other way around. Changing the political structure does not create either the value set or the socioeconomic changes required to maintain that democracy ... so the democracy fails.

Dayuhan
07-11-2012, 01:30 AM
Countries that have had a strong government who have suppressed internal issues for years who suddenly find themselves controlling their own destinies do not have the values or the cultural systems to be able to deal with that.

The values and the cultural systems do not appear out of the void and they aren't presented on a platter by a foreign power. They have to grow from the inside. A "strong government" that suppresses that growth and imposes order at the expense of stability leaves those capacities underdeveloped, and they have to catch up. It's often a messy process.

The emergence of nations has typically been a messy process. The US fought an epic civil war, conducted one of history's great genocides, and fought wars of expansion against the Spanish, the Mexicans, and the Filipinos. The ever so civilized Europeans bashed the stuffing out of each other and anyone else they could get their hands on for centuries before exhausting themselves to the point where they had no recourse but to proudly embrace pacifism. Why would we expect Asians, Africans, or Latin Americans to be any different?

ganulv
07-11-2012, 03:48 AM
It is not that we abandon Afghanistan. It is that we helped to create a power vacuum and then did nothing to help fill it with a government that would be friendly to us.

I would assert that while friendly governments are great they are not necessary for our security. It seems sufficient to me that a government not pose a realistically assessed threat to us. U.S. foreign policy discourse has the habit of taking hostile rhetoric and ideological opposition as prima facie evidence of threat. Through the years our leaders have made the Cuban and Iranian revolutions out to be threats to domestic, international, and natural order. But do we need more than two hands’ worth of fingers to count the instances in which either government has done anything more serious to our country than made a station chief get all butthurt?

Dayuhan
07-11-2012, 04:24 AM
I would assert that while friendly governments are great they are not necessary for our security.

If a nominally "friendly" government is inept and unpopular with its own people, it can easily emerge as a strategic liability. Our desire to keep "friendly" governments in power can all too easily lead to expensive and generally pointless interventions. A "friendly" government that depends on our held to survive can be a greater threat to our security than a neutral or even mildly unfriendly government that stands on its own. As long as nominally unfriendly governments don't translate that unfriendliness into actual action against us, they aren't a problem, and at least we don't feel any obligation to protect and defend them when they make trouble for themselves.

TheCurmudgeon
07-11-2012, 10:43 AM
I would assert that while friendly governments are great they are not necessary for our security. It seems sufficient to me that a government not pose a realistically assessed threat to us. U.S. foreign policy discourse has the habit of taking hostile rhetoric and ideological opposition as prima facie evidence of threat. Through the years our leaders have made the Cuban and Iranian revolutions out to be threats to domestic, international, and natural order. But do we need more than two hands’ worth of fingers to count the instances in which either government has done anything more serious to our country than made a station chief get all butthurt?

I will agree that "friendly" was too strong a term. It is really the wrong term. I will work to come up with a better one ... although I do like your general criteria.

TheCurmudgeon
07-11-2012, 03:51 PM
The values and the cultural systems do not appear out of the void and they aren't presented on a platter by a foreign power. They have to grow from the inside. A "strong government" that suppresses that growth and imposes order at the expense of stability leaves those capacities underdeveloped, and they have to catch up. It's often a messy process.

Agreed ... and I have not real wisdom to add. These things are internal and take time. You could impose another "strong government" in order to preserve stability with the aim that it will, in a series of stages, cede power back to the people, but any single nation should not be the proponent of that solution. Something similar to what Bill Moore was talking about (http://www.icrc.org/eng/war-and-law/contemporary-challenges-for-ihl/occupation/overview-occupation.htm) .

The real world problem with that idea is that at least two members of the Security Council do not share the vision of popular sovereignty that the other members do. They are fine with the idea that the government can do whatever it needs to do with its population to keep order. Not sure they would back a plan that creates more countries that adhere to the idea of popular sovereignty.


The emergence of nations has typically been a messy process. The US fought an epic civil war, conducted one of history's great genocides, and fought wars of expansion against the Spanish, the Mexicans, and the Filipinos. The ever so civilized Europeans bashed the stuffing out of each other and anyone else they could get their hands on for centuries before exhausting themselves to the point where they had no recourse but to proudly embrace pacifism. Why would we expect Asians, Africans, or Latin Americans to be any different?

Agreed. This goes even deeper into the idea of whether the Western version of a Nation is or should be exportable. While I lean toward the idea that it is universal I am not set on that assessment.

Again I return to the question from a Soldier's perspective. What are the politicians, in response to public outcry, going to expect us to do in failed or failing states or in response to genocide or other war crimes? If we do intervene, do we just stop the carnage and withdraw? If not, what are the realistic options?

In another article someone proposed the idea that Green Beret, in addition to FID, be capable of teaching basic economics to villagers, so I don't think I am being facetious when I toss these ideas out for comment.

TheCurmudgeon
07-11-2012, 05:23 PM
... this does a good job of presenting the problem. I do not agree with the solution. I am interested in the idea of the SysAdmin Force.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace.html

TheCurmudgeon
07-11-2012, 09:34 PM
Madhu,

In response to the quote from the Gentile article:

"All three groups—airpower theorists, adherents of the French Revolutionary War School, and the proponents of the new U.S. COIN doctrine—inverted the way military forces had traditionally fought wars. The first actions in wars fought between nation-states normally involved large battles between the military forces ofthe opposing sides. Depending on the nature of the war, at some point as the war progressed the civilian population might to some degree become involved in the fighting. But the airpower and counterinsurgency theorists reversed this process so that the first step in war would be to involve the people. For the airpower theorists, involvement would mean bombing them from the sky. For the counterinsurgency theorists,involvement would be securing the population with military force in order to get at the insurgents. After this involvement between the people and the military, in either of the two cases, military forces might be engaged along the lines of more traditional warfare."

I disagree with this assessment. What Douhet (Air Power) was arguing was that a nation's will could be broken directly through bombing. It was revolutionary for two reasons. First, it recognized the power of the airplane to circumvent conventional ground defenses. But second, and more importantly, it recognized that modern nations draw their power directly from the people - popular sovereignty. Break the people's will and the country collapses. COIN is based on a similar concept often oversimplified into the statement that the population is the center of gravity in a fight. It is not a matter of sequencing. If the will of the people is broken there will be no subsequent military engagement.

The problem with COIN as applied in certain parts of the world, in my opinion, is that you are applying rules that might work in a nation that is based on popular sovereignty to a country where legitimacy is based on more traditional systems like tribal or religious affiliations. It proceeds ab initio from a false assumption.

Ken White
07-11-2012, 10:46 PM
I disagree with this assessment. What Douhet (Air Power) was arguing was that a nation's will could be broken directly through bombing. It was revolutionary for two reasons. First, it recognized the power of the airplane to circumvent conventional ground defenses. But second, and more importantly, it recognized that modern nations draw their power directly from the people - popular sovereignty. Break the people's will and the country collapses. COIN is based on a similar concept often oversimplified into the statement that the population is the center of gravity in a fight. It is not a matter of sequencing. If the will of the people is broken there will be no subsequent military engagement.Both assertions are questionable. the record of air power and / or COIN efforts at 'breaking wills' is less than poor -- it is one of constant failures. That is not to say that neither effort can be successful in some uses and forms, just that breaking of the will of populations has not been shown.

Dayuhan
07-11-2012, 11:26 PM
Again I return to the question from a Soldier's perspective. What are the politicians, in response to public outcry, going to expect us to do in failed or failing states or in response to genocide or other war crimes? If we do intervene, do we just stop the carnage and withdraw? If not, what are the realistic options?

I doubt that there will be any consistent set of available options; what's available (and more important desirable) will inevitably have to be decided on a case to case basis. Inevitably in the case of democracies, home front politics will always play a role in determining what's done, for better or worse... usually for worse I expect but it's still inevitable. IMO the first prerequisite for intervention should be a specific, concrete, achievable goal ("nation building" is none of the above) but I'm probably not being realistic there.


In another article someone proposed the idea that Green Beret, in addition to FID, be capable of teaching basic economics to villagers, so I don't think I am being facetious when I toss these ideas out for comment.

I saw that series of articles, and I find their conclusions very tenuous. I'm not convinced that villagers need to be taught basic economics, or that lack of knowledge (of economics or anything else) among the villagers is a major constraint on development. The idea that we can resolve other people's problems by enlightening the benighted is a peculiarly American conceit that has rarely led us anywhere beneficial. We're often better off trying to learn from the villagers, rather than teach them, as they generally know their problems better than we do.

TheCurmudgeon
07-12-2012, 12:45 AM
Both assertions are questionable. the record of air power and / or COIN efforts at 'breaking wills' is less than poor -- it is one of constant failures. That is not to say that neither effort can be successful in some uses and forms, just that breaking of the will of populations has not been shown.

I wasn't really arguing for the tactic as a suitable strategy. As I recall, Douhet was advocating dropping a combination of high explosives and poison gas in city centers in order to get the people to give in. It was a direct attack on the will of the population -- don't attack the armies on the ground, go straight at the population; that is the true source of power. From that perspective it was a different strategy. One that recognized a the shift in the political systems of the Western nations since the Glorious Revolution in England and the American and French Revolutions. COIN is based on a similar premise; that the people are the government's (or the insurgency's) base of power and therefore the true prize to be won. But neither, I believe, are based on the idea that you attack the will of the population first, and then bring in the Army.

I would agree that bombing's success is dubious and probably will remain so. My reasons have to do with a misinterpretation of psychology; that people will simply give up under such conditions. My belief is that it will have the opposite affect. It will harden their resolve. I also believe that it will have more subtle changes in attitude causing the population to band together against a common enemy -- essentially shifting their belief system away from a liberal system to something more like a traditional (nationalist) one. But it is just a guess.

I believe COIN suffers from a similar problem of misinterpreting psychology, but I am not as clear exactly where the mistake lies.

Ken White
07-12-2012, 02:52 AM
I tend to over react to most assertions, even if indirect, that a given tactic or techniques is universally successful...:o

None are, though most will work on occasion if well implemented and appropriate to the particular war or task at hand.

TheCurmudgeon
07-12-2012, 03:07 AM
I tend to over react to most assertions, even if indirect, that a given tactic or techniques is universally successful...:o

None are, though most will work on occasion if well implemented and appropriate to the particular war or task at hand.

Since no strategy -- including COIN, or Modernization, or Nation Building, or whatever you want to call it -- will work in every instance, we need a palette of options. Something that does not seem to be available in current American COIN or Stability Operations doctrine.

So I guess that is two things we agree on ... :D

Madhu
07-12-2012, 03:40 PM
I really do want to respond to some of the various points made upthread, but I have to wait until I've got time to write proper responses.

For now, though:


In the 1950s, theoreticians gained a more institutional role in society. In the RAND corporation, founded by the Air Force, scholars developed concepts such as game theory and organizational behavior to guide strategic thinking. Others, like Albert Wohlstetter, attempted to distill the lessons of Pearl Harbor into theories of “vulnerability” and “deterrence” in the nuclear age. However, their work carried little weight with President Eisenhower, who had an aversion to abstract theorization. Even the Air Force at that time generally ignored its RAND staffers’ suggestions, unless they justified requests for military budget increases. The decade thus marked a low point in the influence of these thinkers, and they would not bounce back until the election of Kennedy.

The 1960s saw a drastic increase in the attention paid to intellectuals, as many found jobs in the administration, but the result was not more effective policymaking. Kuklick’s prime example here is the Cuban Missile Crisis, which experts misinterpreted both during and after the event. First, Kennedy’s advisors failed to see the big picture, in that they did not see Soviet encroachments as a response to the possibility of American missiles in West Germany. Second, they glorified their own role in ending the crisis, attributing success to sound advice, rather than the fact that the Soviets had been bluffing. They misread the crisis as a victory for graduated escalation, and they applied the same formula in Vietnam, despite starkly different circumstances.

and


The final chapters recount intellectuals’ attempts to modify their theories out of self-interest. Those who had been most responsible for decision making now pointed to structural causes, not themselves, as the reasons for failure in Vietnam. Henry Kissinger, the paragon of realist foreign policy, tried to claim in his memoirs that he had aided the cause of the ideological hardliners. Robert McNamara expressed regret for his role in the war, but he attributed the Vietnam “tragedy” to a lack of “social knowledge,” a problem which no one could have solved (214). Thus, just as they and others had wielded their expertise to justify actions, now intellectuals used it to distance themselves from the outcomes of their own policies.

http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/reviews/reviewview.cfm?id=21

I have not read the book being reviewed.

I have never been in the military and as I've said many times on this board before, I am a practicing physician. We all have biases and lenses through which we view the world. As the child of an academic and the product of a college town, I have always been interested in the world of our intellectual movers and shakers. Plus, being the child of immigrants and growing up in the American Midwest, I always had various competing narratives in my head. I've watched as those competing narratives have come to a head during the 00s, especially in Afghanistan. I don't know anything about the mideast and so don't offer much opinion on Iraq. Sometimes, shutting up is the better part of valor. Even I know that.

Human nature - that difficult, beautiful, mysterious thing. And the desire to control and shape the behavior of others! Very human nature-y and very much a part of the nature of our intellectual classes. That's what I've seen, that's what I believe. Don't know how accurate my reflections are, but there you go.

As for "what should we do", much talk on these boards previously about working with groups naturally allied against the Taliban and keeping a small but steady presence, instead of attempting a grand reordering,, another Great Game.

Anyway, nothing can be perfect. I can't believe I used to kind of believe that, foreign policy-wise. How shallow. And yet, I believed it.:eek:

TheCurmudgeon
07-12-2012, 11:56 PM
From "Preparing for the Third Generation of Conflict, Stabilization, and Reconstruction Operations"
by Dave Dilegge

"There is a growing recognition of the need to move from a sole emphasis on state building and institution building toward a more pragmatic engagement with de facto authority structures, including nonstate actors and hybrid political institutions on the ground. This is particularly relevant in conflict-affected countries, where significant territory is often controlled by a nonstate actor or a rogue government official."

www.smallwarsjournal.com/blog/preparing-for-the-third-generation-of-conflict-stabilization-and-reconstruction-operations#comment-35458

Guess the academic elite no longer believe it is worth the effort to try to create little clones of the United States in every conflict area around the world. Wonder how long it takes before we forget this lesson ...

Madhu
07-13-2012, 01:03 PM
From "Preparing for the Third Generation of Conflict, Stabilization, and Reconstruction Operations"
by Dave Dilegge

"There is a growing recognition of the need to move from a sole emphasis on state building and institution building toward a more pragmatic engagement with de facto authority structures, including nonstate actors and hybrid political institutions on the ground. This is particularly relevant in conflict-affected countries, where significant territory is often controlled by a nonstate actor or a rogue government official."

www.smallwarsjournal.com/blog/preparing-for-the-third-generation-of-conflict-stabilization-and-reconstruction-operations#comment-35458

Guess the academic elite no longer believe it is worth the effort to try to create little clones of the United States in every conflict area around the world. Wonder how long it takes before we forget this lesson ...

I thought it paired up conceptually with the following articles/posts (in the sense of trying to categorize conflicts based on a complex set of motivations of the main actors):


US Army Special Operations Command and Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory National Security Analysis Department have put together a useful reference for small wars students and practitioners entitled "Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare Volume II: 1962-2009." The resource is available for download in PDF format here. If you are wondering where Volume I is, that government document covers post-World War I insurgencies and revolutions up to 1962 and can be downloaded in PDF here. The original was published by the Special Operations Research Office at The American University in 1962.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/casebooks-on-insurgency-and-revolutionary-warfare


In order to prepare for the future, we must first understand where we have been moving beyond individual articles of best practices and lessons learned. The intent of this essay is to provide the critique in order to promote an evolution in our thinking. The purpose is to better prepare those who will follow in our footsteps. Finally, we believe that this reform is a duty required from those who directly observed the costs of today's small wars.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/evolving-the-coin-field-manual-a-case-for-reform

I have no idea with the elite business :) I am terrible at the prediction business, and, apparently, so are most people--experts included. All that "knowledge problem" stuff.

Madhu
07-13-2012, 01:09 PM
From the twitter "feed" of Dr. Steven Metz:

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i162/ssif21/COINstrategies.jpg

http://twitter.com/steven_metz/status/220972129582186496

"The US needs four different COIN categories" (paraphrase) and the twitter links take you to the proposed categories.

We have been treating the various Talibans as one Taliban when it may be that only the Talibans with global power projection ambitions/intent are the real issue for our security.

I dunno. It's complicated.

Dayuhan
07-13-2012, 10:57 PM
I believe COIN suffers from a similar problem of misinterpreting psychology, but I am not as clear exactly where the mistake lies.

I can see several mistakes. First, the very construction "COIN" assumes that insurgency is by definition something that needs to be countered. I think that's a mistake from the start.

More specifically, a great deal of our current COIN practice seems to be built around the assumption that our people going into a conflict environment and building stuff or delivering services is going to "win hearts and minds" for a government we want the people to support. I don't think that's ever going to work very well. First, people clearly see the difference between our actions and those of the host country government (even when we put up a host country facade; people aren't dumb), and our activity can easily just underscore the host government's passivity and incapacity. Second, people don't take up arms against a government because that government isn't delivering infrastructure or services, especially in places where expectations of government are low. People take up arms against a government because they see that government as a threat to them. Building stuff and delivering services often doesn't address the causes of that perception, and if it's seen as a lever for insinuating government into local life can easily exacerbate that perception.


From the twitter "feed" of Dr. Steven Metz:

"The US needs four different COIN categories" (paraphrase) and the twitter links take you to the proposed categories.

Like anything from a Twitter feed that's a bit superficial, would be interesting to see how Dr Metz builds that case in a venue allowing more detail.

My first criticism would be, again, that these should be called "insurgency categories", not "COIN categories", because the moment we impose the term "COIN" we impose the assumption that there's something here that needs to be countered and countered by us. That I think is a bad place to start.

Second, I'm not completely compelled by the distinction between nations that do or do not share US priorities and objectives. Very few nations fall in one category or the other, most are somewhere in between, and categorizations may reflect the preferences of those doing the categorizing. Furthermore, the principal priority and objective of a government threatened by insurgency is usually survival. In the face of that threat they will typically claim to share the priorities and objectives of any nation from which they seek assistance, a claim that needs rigorous and cynical assessment.

Third, I think the model omits some critical distinctions, as a 4-part model must. Relative strength of insurgent and government and assessed survivability of host government are key. Even if a government shares (or claims to share) our priorities and objectives, if that government has minimal capacity and is clearly sinking, that has to affect our assessments. No point in trying to bail out a sinking ship. The extent of US interest in a given location also has to be part of any assessment on which US policy or action are to be based. Could go on, but that's enough...

TheCurmudgeon
07-13-2012, 11:36 PM
I can see several mistakes. First, the very construction "COIN" assumes that insurgency is by definition something that needs to be countered. I think that's a mistake from the start. I don't have a problem with that. You are either supporting the insurgency against a government or you are supporting a government against the insurgency (COIN). I think it is far to approach the problem differently depending on which side you are on.


More specifically, a great deal of our current COIN practice seems to be built around the assumption that our people going into a conflict environment and building stuff or delivering services is going to "win hearts and minds" for a government we want the people to support. I didn't see anything in Metz's system that said that winning hearts and minds was part of the plan.


Like anything from a Twitter feed that's a bit superficial, would be interesting to see how Dr Metz builds that case in a venue allowing more detail.

I do like the idea that you need a palette of options from which to chose, so DR. Metz's concept is a step in the right direction. But I also don't like his system of categorization.

I did like his distinction between whether it was a strictly internal matter or whether the insurgents had external backing. External backing provides the insurgency assets and support to keep the fight going. I have seen at least one paper that claims that every successful insurgency had external support, but that is probably a bit of a wild overstatement.



Second, I'm not completely compelled by the distinction between nations that do or do not share US priorities and objectives. Very few nations fall in one category or the other, most are somewhere in between, and categorizations may reflect the preferences of those doing the categorizing.

I also take issues with it. The assumption being that we are either supporting the government or the insurgency -- back to my first comment. I don't believe that we would find ourselves in a position to be supporting a government that we were not somehow aligned with. Or maybe that was the point.


Third, I think the model omits some critical distinctions, as a 4-part model must. Relative strength of insurgent and government and assessed survivability of host government are key. Even if a government shares (or claims to share) our priorities and objectives, if that government has minimal capacity and is clearly sinking, that has to affect our assessments. No point in trying to bail out a sinking ship. The extent of US interest in a given location also has to be part of any assessment on which US policy or action are to be based. Could go on, but that's enough...

I will have to go back but there was an article that discussed the critical aspects of successful counterinsurgency operations. That is probably a good place to start.

Dayuhan
07-14-2012, 01:52 AM
I don't have a problem with that. You are either supporting the insurgency against a government or you are supporting a government against the insurgency (COIN). I think it is far to approach the problem differently depending on which side you are on.

You can also decide not to get involved. The first and most important step in evaluating any insurgency situation is deciding if and to what extent involvement is appropriate. Starting out with the "COIN" term in mind creates, I think, a predisposition to assume that insurgency needs to be countered. That predisposition seems to me something that we'd do well to remove, and a start might be more emphasis on understanding insurgency and less on methods of counterinsurgency.


I didn't see anything in Metz's system that said that winning hearts and minds was part of the plan.

No, the first half of the post above did not refer to Dr Metz's system, that came about in the second half. I should probably stop replying to several posts in a single post. I do think that the assumption that "hearts and minds" can be "won" by building things and delivering services, rather than by fundamental changes in the nature of host governance, is fairly well entrenched in American COIN practice. I suspect that we often resort to projects and services when we haven't the capacity to reform host country governance, but I have serious doubts about the long-term effect.


I do like the idea that you need a palette of options from which to chose, so DR. Metz's concept is a step in the right direction. But I also don't like his system of categorization.

I like that idea too, as long as "just stay out of it" is included as an option.

Bill Moore
07-14-2012, 05:14 PM
Posted by Dayuhan,


You can also decide not to get involved. The first and most important step in evaluating any insurgency situation is deciding if and to what extent involvement is appropriate. Starting out with the "COIN" term in mind creates, I think, a predisposition to assume that insurgency needs to be countered. That predisposition seems to me something that we'd do well to remove, and a start might be more emphasis on understanding insurgency and less on methods of counterinsurgency.

Agree, and there are other options also.

Irregular warfare is not the "new" way, but rather a continuation of the most common form of conflict (throughout most of history). The vast majority of times we wisely (and sometimes not so wisely) choose not to get involved at all. If we decide to get involved there are multiple forms of involvement that do not involve the U.S. military directly conducting COIN. These include, but are not limited to:

1. Engage with diplomacy in hopes of reaching a diplomatic settlement

2. Provide financial assistance to the government

3. Provide military equipment with no trainers or advisors

4. Proivide intelligence support

5. Put pressure on external actors providing support to the insurgents

6. Conduct the full spectrum of FID (to include U.S. combat operations).

7. The most extreme (and the rarest) option is for the U.S. to take ownership of the problem.

If we decide to support the insurgents, there are multiple options with varying levels of support ranging from the Libya example to Nicaragua to simply providing internationl legitimacy to the insurgents.

I'm beginning to think that many of those who didn't practice or study FID/UW/COIN prior to 9/11 are viewing the world through a much too narrow spectrum of history. Of course I can't know, but I think that both OIF and OEF-A over time will be viewed as abberations in history instead of the norm. The conflict with non-state actors will continue for at least a couple more decades, but largely facilitated by special operations (small foot print operations conducted by people actually selected, trained, and organized to conduct these operations) in concert with interagency partners and of course foreign partners. GPF will provide critical support, and at times be required to conduct larger scale combat operations than SOF can conduct.

Frequently not a popular opinion on SWJ, but the era of state wars and larger non-state actor formations will require that GPF maintain their higher end major combat skills. I think it is dangerous if we continue to distract GPF from this focus after the military invested so much in SOF to get after the IW problem set. GPF will also be required for large scale stability operations like OIF, OEF-A, Bosnia, Kosovo, etc. We're all guilty of wanting to chase the shinny thing (with $$$ attached), but in general our tax payers invested over the years invested in a wide range of military capabilities to defend the U.S.. It makes little sense to evolve an organization over decades to conduct irregular warfare, and then give the mission to organizations that were largely focused on winning the fight against conventional forces. There is much SOF can't do, we can't win a fight against a conventional force (we can provide valuable support). The Army, Air Force, and Marines devastated the Iraqi military, SOF couldn't do that. The Navy secures the Persian Gulf, SOF can't do that, etc.

This is relevant to the topic, because we tend to go over board on what we think we can accomplish when we put a large GPF unit on the ground. Once the combat is over, we try to employ them in a social engineering role (or with our new doctrine, before the combat is over) and then we're surprised that this effort doesn't work.

davidbfpo
07-14-2012, 06:38 PM
Fuchs rightly posted on a separate thread, with my emphasis:
The Americans never really mastered this indirect rule and the setup of effective indigenous sepoy-like forces either.

Yes such forces would appear to be mercenaries and history shows that money was one factor in a sometimes complex equation. If the British in the imperial period could raise irregular units in the NW Frontier Province and FATA, with very few examples of mutiny or disloyalty, can this not be replicated? More recently and in a non-imperial context there were local units in Borneo, Oman, Namibia etc.

Are there not American examples post-1945? i am sure there are pre-1939.

ganulv
07-14-2012, 06:56 PM
Fuchs rightly posted on a separate thread, with my emphasis:

Yes such forces would appear to be mercenaries and history shows that money was one factor in a sometimes complex equation. If the British in the imperial period could raise irregular units in the NW Frontier Province and FATA, with very few examples of mutiny or disloyalty, can this not be replicated? More recently and in a non-imperial context there were local units in Borneo, Oman, Namibia etc.

Are there not American examples post-1945? i am sure there are pre-1939.

The U.S./Montagnard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degar#History) relationship, perhaps. I don’t know that the comparison isn’t apples and oranges, though. The imperial/provincial dynamic is distinct from the dynamic between a hegemon and an admittedly less powerful but nevertheless sovereign state. Mark Danner’s book The massacre at El Mozote (http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/50017/kenneth-maxwell/the-massacre-at-el-mozote-a-parable-of-the-cold-war) (one of my favorite books of any stripe) is a good case study in the latter.

Dayuhan
07-15-2012, 12:19 AM
Fuchs rightly posted on a separate thread, with my emphasis:


The Americans never really mastered this indirect rule and the setup of effective indigenous sepoy-like forces either.

Yes such forces would appear to be mercenaries and history shows that money was one factor in a sometimes complex equation. If the British in the imperial period could raise irregular units in the NW Frontier Province and FATA, with very few examples of mutiny or disloyalty, can this not be replicated? More recently and in a non-imperial context there were local units in Borneo, Oman, Namibia etc.

Are there not American examples post-1945? i am sure there are pre-1939.

Actually the US did exactly that, reasonably effectively, in the Philippines during their colonial enterprise there. Given that the American "sepoys" in the Philippines never staged an equivalent of the sepoy rebellion (though of course they weren't around as long) you could argue that the US did it more effectively. Of course the US didn't pursue that strategy on as wide a scale, because they didn't have as many colonies. It's not a strategy that translates accurately to the post-colonial proxy wars, in which the role was largely taken over by the national armed forces of our proxies.

Dayuhan
07-15-2012, 12:32 AM
GPF will also be required for large scale stability operations like OIF, OEF-A, Bosnia, Kosovo, etc. We're all guilty of wanting to chase the shinny thing (with $$$ attached), but in general our tax payers invested over the years invested in a wide range of military capabilities to defend the U.S.. It makes little sense to evolve an organization over decades to conduct irregular warfare, and then give the mission to organizations that were largely focused on winning the fight against conventional forces.

Yes, our taxpayers invested in a range of capabilities with the intention of defending the US. Unfortunately those capabilities aren't always used to defend the US, or at times the definition of "defending the US" has been stretched to quite absurd lengths to justify use of those capabilities.

I agree that GPF are necessary and that they should not be retrained as development workers or pseudo-SF: that would degrade their primary capacities and those capacities might be needed someday.

If we discover that we're involved in efforts that we think require huge numbers of armed development workers or large-scale efforts at armed nation-building, we may not need to question our force structure. Might be better to question how we got into that position in the first place, how we can get out of it, and how we can avoid getting into it in the future.

Post regime change COIN is, as you suggest, largely an aberration, and IMO it's not something we need to do better, it's something we need to stop doing. Why we so often insist on lumping it into the same category as traditional COIN (in support of a pre-existing government) is something I've never understood.

TheCurmudgeon
07-15-2012, 11:45 AM
Post regime change COIN is, as you suggest, largely an aberration, and IMO it's not something we need to do better, it's something we need to stop doing.

Here I am going to disagree with you. I don't see this shift as "largely an aberration". Unfortunately, I see it as a the lion's share of what we can be expected to do in the future. Far larger than great power war.

The world has changed since the end of WWII and again as the cold war fades into history. The ideals and expectations of the population of the Western powers is changing. I would trace this slow change all the way back to the enlightenment. It is a change toward placing the individual above the community. You can see it in the call for Universal Human Rights and a push in international law towards R2P. It is a social change that has already altered the way we fight. The expectation now is that we only kill the bad guys. Any civilian death is a tragedy (or a crime). This was not a general concern during WWII or Korea and started to become one in Vietnam.

Perhaps I am misreading history but I don't see fights to effect regime change followed by an attempt to alter the character of the next government as an aberration. It is more palatable to a liberal mindset to justify war as a quasi-religious fight to spread "democracy" (by which they really mean individual liberties or more correctly individual rights like women's rights). It is, for better or worse, the future.

Ken White
07-15-2012, 03:06 PM
Perhaps I am misreading history but I don't see fights to effect regime change followed by an attempt to alter the character of the next government as an aberration.The history IMO is unsettled but that is certainly one valid reading of it. A question is whether it is not an aberration but merely a current fad. R2P for example, has about as many detractors as it does supporters and it is possible for that meddlesome wind to shift...
It is more palatable to a liberal mindset to justify war as a quasi-religious fight to spread "democracy" (by which they really mean individual liberties or more correctly individual rights like women's rights).A less arguable assertion -- but one which, to say the least, has a proven track record of less than stellar success. The cracks in the theory are starting to show and grow.
It is, for better or worse, the future.Perhaps -- or we could get a bit smarter. No one has done that at all well and the US due to its political system performs more poorly than most. That "liberal mindset" that assumes it knows what is best -- usually for others but not the set mind's self -- is steadily working itself into a state of disrepute. the question is how quickly that fad is replaced by a return to pragmatism. We'll have to wait and see.

TheCurmudgeon
07-15-2012, 08:32 PM
The history IMO is unsettled but that is certainly one valid reading of it. A question is whether it is not an aberration but merely a current fad. R2P for example, has about as many detractors as it does supporters and it is possible for that meddlesome wind to shift...

I appreciate the open mind ... and you are right, only time will tell.

Can we afford to wait to find out that this was all a bad dream or do we start examining what kind of fighting force, strategies, and tactics we would need to actually engage in such fights -- all that DOTMLPF stuff?


A less arguable assertion -- but one which, to say the least, has a proven track record of less than stellar success. The cracks in the theory are starting to show and grow.

True, the cracks are there. And expectations will need to be curbed. But I don't think the mindset will change. And as I said, it is quasi-religious. People don't need much reason to fight over ideals that are held that dearly. It is almost a moral imperative. There was a time not too long ago when millions of people dying in country on the other side of the world would not even be news. Now R2P stretches the limits of international law in an attempt to enforce individual human rights in countries that don't necessarily feel compelled to abide by them. Countries in which we have limited or no real strategic interest other than the interest in maintaining the global systems themselves. We stretch the law to protect not just the lives of people on the other side of the planet but their rights.


It is Perhaps -- or we could get a bit smarter. No one has done that at all well and the US due to its political system performs more poorly than most. That "liberal mindset" that assumes it knows what is best -- usually for others but not the set mind's self -- is steadily working itself into a state of disrepute. the question is how quickly that fad is replaced by a return to pragmatism. We'll have to wait and see.

Baring an economic collapse, which will reign in all this egalitarian sentiment and force people to only be concerned with their own ingroups, I don't see the vector of Western social philosophy changing. How fast these changes affect the way we do business is hard to say. I believe it has changed them more than we realize. Fourth Generation Warfare my not be a change in the way we fight wars at all but a change in the way Western society interprets the appropriate time, place, and method to conduct war. It is a shift in the way WE view war as a political tool rather than anything really new in the way our enemies, or anyone throughout history, has actually conducted war against an overwhelmingly large and powerful opponent.

Too many ideas for one post. Time for a bourbon. ;)

Madhu
07-15-2012, 08:54 PM
....which is a good thing because I kind of like this civilian control of the military thing.

I guess my questions relate to the "once they decide you should go, how to operationalize?" factor.

So, it's a given that there is a certain amount of intellectual rot and hubris in the foreign policy community and even in the military defense literature (every scholarly literature has some rot, it's inevitable), but what does one do?

I understand that some have argued we need to re-engineer the army along pop-coin lines or that we need a SYSAdmin force or something like the colonial constabularies. I don't care for that idea, plus, I don't think it would work given our republican sensibilities and our democracy with changing administrations.

What other ways could we have done things after the 2002-2003 period when we thought we had the Taliban beat, but basically they were just licking their wounds elsewhere. I am aware that some governance stuff is popular with some scholars, like we should have written a different constitution.

What I wonder is did we take our eye off the ball and off of the enemy? Did we go to fast from the kinetic aspects and focusing on the insurgency to the "root causes" governance aspects? I know Robert C. Jones would say that is exactly backwards, and I am sympathetic to his arguments, but the thing is, I'm not sure we can effect the sorts of changes he suggests very well as a part of expeditionary COIN. Even if we had done a better job of balancing out Pashtun representation and Norther Alliance representation in the early period of 202-2003, the other Taliban animated by ethno-religious feeling or even just plain old criminality would have been there. Would it matter? Could we even do such things? Why is the military focused on that stuff? Why not a palette of options?

Once again, I just don't know. Just asking around from people that have actually done some of this stuff.

Madhu
07-15-2012, 08:56 PM
Maybe this is all really working but it is hard for me to tell from my outsider vantage point?

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/coin-center-interview

Maybe it's working after a fashion? I fervently hope so.

Dayuhan
07-16-2012, 12:38 AM
What I wonder is did we take our eye off the ball and off of the enemy? Did we go to fast from the kinetic aspects and focusing on the insurgency to the "root causes" governance aspects?

The idea of governance as a root cause of insurgency is not entirely wrong, but like most ideas, when it's applied without full consideration for context or without realistic assessment of the capacity of those attempting to apply the idea, bad things can happen.

Two problems:

First, looking at "governance" as a root cause of insurgency in post regime change situations overlooks a blue whale in the drawing room: regime change itself. When a domestic government is removed by external force and a subsequent government installed by the same force, the way that government governs is only a small part of its legitimacy problem. Very few people appreciate having governance of any sort imposed on them by foreigners, and thinking we can step around that hurdle by providing better governance is unrealistic. We're likely to find that the issue isn't governance, the issue is us. We're also likely to find that our capacity to serve as mediator between a government we installed and any other interests or factions is very limited, as we are (not unreasonably) perceived as anything but neutral.

Second, our interest in undercutting insurgency by improving governance has to be tempered by realization that our ability to conjure up good governance in other countries is intrinsically limited. The idea that good government can be "installed" and nations "built" by outside influence is inherently perverse and needs to be retired permanently. Good government isn't built or installed, it grows, through an organic, evolutionary process that often involves conflict. That process cannot be circumvented. If we feel that we must go about removing regimes we think inappropriate, well then I suppose we must, but we need to do it with full knowledge that we cannot simply install a functioning democracy afterward... a construct that calls up weird visions of a vast DoD warehouse with rows of crates labeled "Democracy, Functioning, One", all ready to be slapped into place like a light buld or a spare tire. Forget it. "Government in a box" is not going to happen, locally or nationally. If we want to try to get rid of bad governments and create better ones, we need an honest assessment of what we're trying to do, and of what it will require. I'm not sure we've had much of that lately.

Madhu
07-17-2012, 03:32 PM
I guess a link to this interview belongs in the thread:

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/coin-and-other-four-letter-words-interview-with-afpak-hand-major-fernando-lujan

(I left a rambling self-referential and possibly borderline nonsensical comment. Typical.)

Cheeky thought: Is the Barnett Gap-Core model kind of modernization theory or one of its off-shoots, too?

That's the problem with trying to study an intellectual "meme", you start to see it everywhere.

TheCurmudgeon
07-17-2012, 08:02 PM
Cheeky thought: Is the Barnett Gap-Core model kind of modernization theory or one of its off-shoots, too?

I think you might have to stretch it a bit to say that the Gap-Core model is a kind of modernization theory. It is probably closer to Huntington's "Clash of Civilization" than it is to Lipset or Lerner's Modernization theories. In my opinion Modernization involves a change in the nature of the society based on changes in either social complexity and/or economic growth associated with industrialization. It assumes a teleological progression towards a common cultural standard (which happens to be Western Capitalist Liberal Democracy). The Core-Gap distinction does not care what political or economical system you use -- all that matters is, are you tied into the global economic/communications systems. Under modernization China will eventually transition to Capitalism and Democracy. It is therefore a potentially unstable area that could see revolution in the future. Under Barnett we don't really need to worry about China, they are plugged in. They will not risk screwing up the system they are a part of. The two ideas are actually not in conflict, they are separate ideas. But they do identify the potential for future conflicts in different areas for different reasons.

TheCurmudgeon
07-17-2012, 10:14 PM
My last response (and some rum) brought up another thought -- that the idea that modernization is teleological (destine to happen) means, to certain people, that those of us who have passed through the trials and tribulations of industrialization to enter Valhalla somehow owe those who are striving to get here an obligation to help them along the way. Similar to the evangelical nature of some religions (read Christianity), if we are 'saved' then we owe an obligation to our fellow humans to save them. If they are all going to pass through those difficult stages of social development on the way to where we are don't we have an obligation to pull them through the tough times with as little pain as possible? Or is it our 'right' as a society that has made it to watch the rest muddle though ... like watching a drowning man from our position of safety on the dock without throwing out a life preserver?

Just a thought. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves...

Bill Moore
07-19-2012, 07:39 AM
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-future-violence-afghanistan-7207

The Future of Violence in Afghanistan


The failure of the American effort in Afghanistan should force a rethinking of the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine that has become canonical in Washington. This doctrine emphasizes building strong central states, attracting popular support through services and development and using military forces to control local populations. It is state building at the point of a gun: the government, as monopolizer of violence and focal point of politics, stands at the center of these efforts. Vast sums of American money and huge numbers of U.S. troops have been invested in trying to create a violence-monopolizing central state in Afghanistan.


In practice, successful monopolization tends to be a long and often brutal process of repression, co-optation and social control. The history of state formation in the United States and Western Europe shows that international war, internal violence and extraordinary degrees of resource extraction are intertwined with violence monopolization. Resistance must be overcome, citizens must be homogenized, key elites must be bought off and incorporated, and society must be penetrated and dominated by state institutions. The people in the state’s crosshairs may rebel or defy this project.

Unfortunately, this strategy has become conflated with counterinsurgency writ large. Many regimes have avoided thoroughgoing monopolization in the face of social violence because of its economic and political costs. Monopolization is difficult enough on a state’s own territory but becomes prohibitively challenging for overseas interveners.

TheCurmudgeon
07-19-2012, 11:49 AM
The article it interesting in that it places stability above monopolizing violence. From that perspective I see it as a step in the right direction in places where a single state may not be a viable solution. But it is a bit cavalier about the violence that is tacidly supported by the govenment that is trying to remain in power against an insurgent group.


When pursuing political favoritism, states repress clearly antistate insurgents but tolerate or actively sponsor paramilitaries and militias, armed wings of political parties that support the regime, politically connected criminal networks, and pro-state militants. Nonstate violence is directed to the advantage of the state: some groups are cracked down on, others are treated with benign neglect and others are supported.

By this does he mean supporting groups like the shabiha in Syria. I don't think that really promotes stability.


Containment is a common strategy of violence management, especially in large states with turbulent peripheries. This strategy seeks to hold social violence below a certain threshold but does not commit the massive resources necessary to destroy all nonstate armed groups, whether insurgents or pro-state forces. Some violence is accepted as a given cost of political rule; it is “priced in” to expectations about what governing coercion requires. State forces cut deals with insurgents to limit conflict, including ceasefires, collusive bargains and the communication of red lines above which nonstate violence will trigger retaliation. Pro-state armed groups and criminal networks are loosely controlled but have significant latitude.

This sound realistic, but it begs the question, "whats the point?" If all your government is trying to do is survive and you are not interested in the territory the groups hold, why continue to bargain over it? Unless the fear of that group provides you a distinct advantage in maintaining repression in the area you control in response to this non-state enemy.

... and probably our favorite: Divide-and-Rule


Monopolization, favoritism and containment all assume a coherent state structure that can—when directed—try to repress other actors and control society. But some leaders must manage violence without having this capacity. They may sit atop fractured regimes, divided or unreliable militaries and ineffective police forces, and they face a broad set of warlords, insurgents and other armed groups. This is a dangerous world. Rulers can respond with a divide-and-rule strategy by playing off different forces against one another. Leaders act as brokers trying to build and maintain coalitions of control. Warlords, insurgents, criminal actors and many other specialists in violence become wrapped up in building new orders.

Might be better if you tried to unite-and-rule, but whatever works.

All of these accept a level of violence in exchange for some stability. They present interesting options. How politically acceptable they would be to a US audience I am not so sure of. We don't really mind violence, as long as we are the ones doing it. Of course, if we are not overtly present (wink, wink), then most Americans won't care.

Dayuhan
07-20-2012, 12:44 AM
If they are all going to pass through those difficult stages of social development on the way to where we are don't we have an obligation to pull them through the tough times with as little pain as possible? Or is it our 'right' as a society that has made it to watch the rest muddle though ... like watching a drowning man from our position of safety on the dock without throwing out a life preserver?

Do we intervene to help others through tough times and throw out a life preserver, or do we intervene to advance our own perceived interests... or shall we pretend that the two are the same?

If we're going to appoint ourselves to escort others through an accelerated (and conveniently non-disruptive) process of modernization, that would suggest that we're very confident of our abilities to diagnose other people's problems and to prescribe and implement solutions for them. Do we have that confidence? On what is it based?

Ken White
07-20-2012, 01:16 AM
... the idea that modernization is teleological (destine to happen) means, to certain people, that those of us who have passed through the trials and tribulations of industrialization to enter Valhalla somehow owe those who are striving to get here an obligation to help them along the way..."us" is rather more inclusive than warranted, I think. I feel no such obligation and do not believe a majority of Americans do so. No question there are many that do believe that and some are in positions of power. Too many perhaps...

That said, there is little question that attitude has held sway in our foreign policy. To our general detriment, I would argue. We have little real good to show for that outlook.
...don't we have an obligation to pull them through the tough times with as little pain as possible? Or is it our 'right' as a society that has made it to watch the rest muddle though ... like watching a drowning man from our position of safety on the dock without throwing out a life preserver?Rather facile and quite slanted Hobson's Choice there. That's a false dilemma, there are many other options. The answer to your question is that we do not need to stand idly by nor do we have such an obligation. We have choices and we owe the American public a sensible selection of which to pursue on a by case basis. There is no one size fits all.
Just a thought. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves...Why, thank you. Such magnanimity is seldom seen, always appreciated. :wry:

TheCurmudgeon
07-20-2012, 12:02 PM
"us" is rather more inclusive than warranted, I think. I feel no such obligation and do not believe a majority of Americans do so. No question there are many that do believe that and some are in positions of power. Too many perhaps... I guess the "us" would be the US, Great Britain, France, and other Western (sorry Australia) powers. The ones that voted in the Security Council for intervention in Syria.


Rather facile and quite slanted Hobson's Choice there. That's a false dilemma, there are many other options. True, but I have found that when I am subtle I tend to be misinterpreted as a war mongering interventionist. It is difficult to make a point sometimes without taking the example to the extreme.



The answer to your question is that we do not need to stand idly by nor do we have such an obligation. We have choices and we owe the American public a sensible selection of which to pursue on a by case basis. There is no one size fits all. I agree that one size does not fit all. THAT is one of the few hard and fast rules I will stick to.

But the question is not really one of obligation. It is one of emotional attachment almost to the point of addiction. It is particularly acute in America as a nation whose identity is tied to an idea more than it is tied to a common heritage. To deny that the drive for freedom, liberty, and democracy are universal is to question the validity of the American experiment. To fail to assist others in that cause can be FELT to be a violation of those principles. It is an emotional addiction that "we" (not you) rationalize by any number of legal and political theories. Unlike others here I don't see this compulsion as going away based on our recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am not that much of an optimist.

If we look at American's emotional need to justify our experiment, then Modernization is the Holy Grail. It rationalizes our existence and success (to bring things back to the original concept of this thread).


Why, thank you. Such magnanimity is seldom seen, always appreciated. :wry:
That was the rum ... I would never encourage the rest of you to talk amongst yourselves ... you might all start to gang up on me:eek:

TheCurmudgeon
07-20-2012, 02:05 PM
Do we intervene to help others through tough times and throw out a life preserver, or do we intervene to advance our own perceived interests... or shall we pretend that the two are the same?

Of course it is based on our own self interest. There is nothing perceived about it.


If we're going to appoint ourselves to escort others through an accelerated (and conveniently non-disruptive) process of modernization, that would suggest that we're very confident of our abilities to diagnose other people's problems and to prescribe and implement solutions for them. Do we have that confidence? On what is it based?

You don't need to have confidence in your ability as a doctor to help a person who is bleeding to death by applying pressure to the wound. All you need is a desire (based on self interest) to help.

Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating this position. I am only making the point that certain people, either consciously or unconsciously, see this as a valid justification for intervening in the affairs of other nations.

Besides, the scientific method is the way we learn. We come up with a theory and we try it. We do this with medicine, engineering, chemistry, why would it be any different for political science. Are you suggesting that we should never do anything until we are absolutely certain we have the formula right? How would we ever know that if we did not try it first?

ganulv
07-20-2012, 04:14 PM
That was the rum ...

drivin’ you to drink, eh? :D

Madhu
07-23-2012, 03:13 AM
From a book I bought at random from a friend selling his second hand books on Amazon. It's not my usual reading fare and I know nothing--absolutely nothing-- about the subject:


As I began to understand this--and it wasn't difficult to understand; all the Phoenix advisers were telling me the same thing--I also began to understand why Colby was making the reports he was. For someone who wanted to go into the field and track down the process of reporting, figuring out what was going on was relatively easy. But Colby did not attempt to do this and consequently he did not know what was fact and what was fiction. When he visited a province he would buy the province briefing. In Saigon he would get the statistics across his desk, period. And what did he--or anyone else at CORDS--know about how they were developed? The district Phoenix committees would write up their phony statistics on captured and killed and report these to the province level, which gussied them up further and reported to the regional level, which reported to Saigon. Just what Major Jack Black had described to me my first day in Bien Hoa. And CORDS in Siagon compiled and reported these statistics as Phoenix casualties.

page 55, Slow Burn: The Rise and Bitter Fall of American Intelligence in Vietnam, Orrin DeForest and David Chanoff

http://www.amazon.com/SLOW-BURN-Orrin-DeForest/dp/0671739972



Operation Crabapple, Line of Departure (Carl Prine):

http://www.lineofdeparture.com/2011/06/22/operation-crabapple/



More LoD (Volney F. Warner):


During my assignment among the mighty at the White House of the 1960s we pacification staffers occasionally received Presidential guidance and directives.

On one such occasion, a Vietnam expert was selected from each arm of government: State, USAID, CIA, Pentagon, etc.

We sequestered at the Agencies’ Vint Hill Farms, and we were tasked to come up with a Dow Jones Index suitable to measure progress in Vietnam.

Correspondent Apple caused this by continually referring to the glass half full. However the President wanted a more precise, less liquid metric. I was the Palace representative for the group.

NSC Rules: No phones. No private automobiles. No external communication of any type. No telling where you are or what your mission. No liquor. Stay at it until you get it right. By order of!!!

We screamed. We verbally sparred. We almost came to blows. Two weeks went by with nothing to report other than sleepless nights and verbal bruising.

For example, we contrived equations such as corn/pig distribution numbers plus body count minus US casualties plus hamlet evaluation survey scores with K as an independent variable to represent all other unidentified variance.

We tried Chi-squared analysis of variance distributions.

We did regression analysis.

Those mathematicians among us had a ball educating us finger-counting word-mongers.

Finally, in desperation, after three weeks of argumentation without positive result, we entreated our CIA senior supervisor to let us return to the world. He relented and got an OK from the Palace to send White House sedans for our pick up and departure.

Just as in the real Vietnam: We tried everything. Nothing worked. So we just gave up and went home!

http://www.lineofdeparture.com/2012/03/22/the-men-in-the-palace/


Much of what I see discussed in the articles around here (at the Journal and Blog) relate to process, and much of the writing about how CORDS might relate to current conflicts seem borne of process, too. "Whole-of-Government" and all that....What shocks me is the sketchy histories about our (the US, I mean) time in that region. Another book I just finished detailed how much we were involved in regional politics in the 50s in that part of the world. It's as if this was rewritten from the "textbooks" and the conventional wisdom starts with our Soviet experience in Afghanistan. Curious and curiouser....

Dayuhan
07-23-2012, 04:15 AM
Of course it is based on our own self interest. There is nothing perceived about it.

Self interest is almost always variable according to the perception of the moment. Even at any given moment there's likely to be substantial debate over what course of action is actually most compatible with self interest. More than one state has taken actions it believed to be in its self interest only to later to conclude that they were not.


You don't need to have confidence in your ability as a doctor to help a person who is bleeding to death by applying pressure to the wound. All you need is a desire (based on self interest) to help.

Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating this position. I am only making the point that certain people, either consciously or unconsciously, see this as a valid justification for intervening in the affairs of other nations.

Certainly this argument is widely used... R2P and all that. At any given point, though, there's often very little clarity over what any outside party can or should do, and what the consequences of action might be. There's also often considerable doubt over the political will to carry actions through to their desired conclusion (if indeed that conclusion proves reachable).


Besides, the scientific method is the way we learn. We come up with a theory and we try it. We do this with medicine, engineering, chemistry, why would it be any different for political science. Are you suggesting that we should never do anything until we are absolutely certain we have the formula right? How would we ever know that if we did not try it first?

You don't need the scientific method to conclude that the consequences of sticking your putz in a working meat grinder are likely to be undesirable. It shouldn't take a full-blown experiment to suggest that "install a democracy" is an instruction that's likely to be a lot more complicated in the doing than it is in the saying.

Of course you won't have certainty. At a bare minimum you need:

- A clear, practical, concrete objective

- Reasonable certainty that the objective can be achieved with the means and within the time you're prepared to commit.

- An honest and favorable assessment of the potential for adverse unintended consequences.

I could probably think of a few more...

TheCurmudgeon
07-23-2012, 05:18 PM
I think we are wondering away from the original intent of this thread, so this will be my last post on the matter. But I get tired of "self-interested" discussions against meddling in the socio/cultural "progress" of a country or area yet we don't seem to mind messing with these systems in other respects. A case in point is Save the Children, UNICEF, and Africa.

Certainly this argument is widely used... R2P and all that. At any given point, though, there's often very little clarity over what any outside party can or should do, and what the consequences of action might be.

What about the consequences of saving children who would normally die.


“Every year, nearly 10 million children die before their fifth birthday and one half of these deaths occur in Africa,” http://www.unicef.org/media/media_44179.html

So we get involved and save them.


In 2010, Save the Children helped over 12 million African children with direct programs including health, nutrition, education, HIV/ AIDS, and more. http://www.savethechildren.org/site/c.8rKLIXMGIpI4E/b.6149699/k.B848/Africa.htm

A full blown experiment in socio/cultural engineering.


It shouldn't take a full-blown experiment to suggest that "install a democracy" is an instruction that's likely to be a lot more complicated in the doing than it is in the saying.

Of course you won't have certainty. At a bare minimum you need:

- A clear, practical, concrete objective

- Reasonable certainty that the objective can be achieved with the means and within the time you're prepared to commit.

- An honest and favorable assessment of the potential for adverse unintended consequences.

So in a system that already can barely support the normal population, what do you think the result is when you add millions of young adults who do not have jobs because, while you saved their lives, you have not altered the entire system so it is capable of maintaining these additional adults? Interesting unintended consequences? Perhaps more wars as people fight to control the limited resources?

And yet I hear no one screaming for us to use the "prime directive" and let these children die as they should to maintain the integrity of the natural system.

We make choices all the time. We make mistakes. I would prefer we learn from them. Seems to me a whole lot of people just want to forget that Iraq and Afghanistan (and Vietnam) ever happened or blame our failures on any number of other factors, like the initial decision to get involved, then to look at the whole system in its complicated depth (including our desire to meddle)... until we do it all over again ... which we will ... because it is in our nature to get involved.

ganulv
07-23-2012, 05:32 PM
And yet I her no one screaming for us to use the "prime directive" and let these children die as they should to maintain the integrity of the natural system.

Dropping all USAID–type funding wouldn’t really leave a natural system in place in Sub-Saharan Africa. The U.S. (and not just the U.S., of course) would still indirectly play a role in the local ecology via things like our funding and regulation of the pharmaceutical industry and such as that.

Dayuhan
07-23-2012, 10:24 PM
So in a system that already can barely support the normal population, what do you think the result is when you add millions of young adults who do not have jobs because, while you saved their lives, you have not altered the entire system so it is capable of maintaining these additional adults? Interesting unintended consequences? Perhaps more wars as people fight to control the limited resources?

"We" aren't saving millions of children or adding millions of adults to anything, even to the extent that UNICEF and Save the Children are "we". Maybe incrementally, over decades, but certainly not all at once.

We have no option to "alter the system" to make it capable of maintaining anyone, and if we try we're likely to end up with a system less capable of maintaining anything. Systems have to evolve to meet local conditions, and that takes time and often involves conflict. We cannot simply decide what a suitable system will be for others and then impose it, or alter existing systems to suit our preferences.

I certainly wouldn't suggest a policy of absolute non-interference. I would suggest that epic interference on the level of regime change and associated COIN are generally a costly and unproductive form of intervention. My suggestion would be, on the broadest level, to abandon ideas about installing governments, building nations, altering systems, and instead to treat these as organic processes that we may be able to help cultivate, but that we cannot and should not try to dictate.

Madhu
07-24-2012, 03:50 AM
"City, Empire, Church, Nation" by Pierre Manent in City Journal

We have been modern for several centuries now. We are modern, and we want to be modern; it is a desire that guides the entire life of Western societies. That the will to be modern has been in force for centuries, though, suggests that we have not succeeded in being truly modern--that the end of the process that we thought we saw coming at various moments has always proved illusory, and that 1789, 1917, 1968 , and 1989 were only disappointing steps along a road leading who knows where.

http://www.city-journal.org/

I'm not sure the process is illusory as much as fragile and at times reversible?

On the doctrine stuff--about which I know next to nothing if not less--I am interested in "options" as mentioned above and for two reasons:

1. The military doesn't get to choose and needs to be prepared,

and

2. The intellectual study of "options" countering an insurgency may help us in other ways, lead to other lines of productive inquiry, something like that.

At any rate, FWIW. I don't know, maybe if I were drinking rum I might not be so confused about all of this....

Madhu
07-24-2012, 04:57 AM
Steven Metz, World Politics Review


Counterinsurgency is very different. Victory requires not simply defeating an extant enemy, but changing a system. There is seldom a discrete moment at which the United States decides to undertake large-scale counterinsurgency. Involvement is usually gradual and nearly inadvertent until the United States finds itself embroiled in a type of conflict that it never intended to enter. Since successful counterinsurgency entails altering a political and economic system -- and sometimes even a culture -- it requires an integrated, holistic effort. Despite endless panels, commissions, studies, conferences and hand-wringing over the past decade about developing a whole-of-government counterinsurgency capability, this hasn't happened and isn't going to. The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development do not have the resources to undertake large-scale, protracted counterinsurgency. No part of the U.S. government has a robust, expeditionary capability to help build legal and intelligence systems in alien cultures without a tradition of rule by law.

and


In the broadest sense, the U.S. military must find a way to mothball its counterinsurgency capability rather than abandoning it outright. If done with skill, this will enable the United States to revive its counterinsurgency skills if they are needed again.

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/11248/counterinsurgency-and-american-strategy-past-and-future

That's it for me--for now--because it seems that I am becoming some sort of council and blog commenting addict, which is just weird....

Madhu
08-01-2012, 03:18 PM
I don't believe I've posted this upthread, but, if have, my apologies. Interesting reading:

Counterinsurgency: Strategy and The Phoenix of American Capability

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=333

Especially "in retrospect" and all that....

Madhu
08-14-2012, 01:57 PM
So I am years and years behind everyone else around here, it seems.


By Gian Gentile
Best Defense counterininsurgency critic

In general terms I would deconstruct the manual as it is now and break the singular link that it has with a certain theory of state building (known as population centric COIN). Once broken up I would then rewrite the doctrine from the ground up with three general parts: 1) would be a counterinsurgency approach centered on post-conflict reconstruction; 2) would be a counterinsurgency approach centered around military action to attack insurgent sources of military power (sometimes referred to as counter-terror or CT), but not linked to an endstate of a rebuilt or newly built nation state; 3) would be a counterinsurgency approach -- perhaps call it COIN light -- that would focus largely on Special Forces with some limited conventional army support conducting Foreign Internal Defense (FID).

The trick with this revised manual would be to present doctrinal alternatives for the U.S. Army when it goes about the countering of insurgencies and conducting stability operations with teeth. The trifecta trick would be to treat these three methods of countering insurgencies as operationally equal; that is to say, we would move away from the dogmatic belief currently held that anytime an insurgency is fought it must be of the population centric (FM 3-24, aka state building) persuasion, and that methods of CT and FID are subsumed within it and hence are seen as "lesser" operations. To reemphasize the key here is operational equality of the respective three.

from Rick's Best Defense (via a SWJ link)

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/15/gentile_how_i_would_revise_the_armys_counterinsurg ency_manual

Madhu
08-14-2012, 02:03 PM
I've always wondered about the origin of the term "capacity building" and its relation to Thomas Barnett's SysAdmin, Kilcullen's proposed global "CORDS" (via the Counterinsurgency book linked above), etc? From the UN originally?


Capacity Building Defined

FM 3-07 (Oct 2008) Stability Operations: "Capacity building is the process of creating an environment that fosters host-nation institutional development, community participation, human resources development, and strengthening managerial systems."

UNDP Definition (circa 1991): "the creation of an enabling environment with appropriate policy and legal frameworks, institutional development, including community participation, human resources development and strengthening of managerial systems; UNDP recognizes that capacity building is a long-term, continuing process, in which all stakeholders participate (ministries, local authorities, nongovernmental organizations and water user groups, professional associations, academics and others."

Ford Foundation Definition (circa 1996): defines "capacity building" as the "process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes, and resources that organizations and communities need to survive, adapt, and thrive in the fast-changing world."

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/call/docs/11-23/ch_2.asp

What was the scholarship or whatever behind the UNDP definition? Anyone know?

I'm just curious, that's all. I like to know where terms come from and the intellectual genesis.

Madhu
08-14-2012, 02:08 PM
History of Capacity Building
Since the early 1970's, the lead within the UN system for action and thinking on what was then called Institution Building was given to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and it has offered guidance to its staff and member governments. This involved building-up the ability of basic national organisations, in areas such as civil aviation, meteorology, agriculture, health, nutrition to allow them to perform their tasks in the best way possible. All UN specialised agencies were supposed to actively support capacity building in the areas for which they were technically qualified e.g. FAO in the rural sector and agriculture, WHO in health etc, but they achieved mixed results. By 1991 the term had evolved and had transformed into Capacity Building.

UNDP defined Capacity Building as "the creation of an enabling environment with appropriate policy and legal frameworks, institutional development, including community participation (of women in particular), human resources development and strengthening of managerial systems, adding that, UNDP recognizes that capacity building is a long-term, continuing process, in which all stakeholders participate (ministries, local authorities, non-governmental organizations and water user groups, professional associations, academics and others".(citation: UNDP).

http://www.coastalwiki.org/coastalwiki/The_Capacity_Building_Concept

Hmmm, did all of this stuff start "embedding" itself in your military doctrine during the 90s, when we started to think about a post Soviet world and our peacekeeping duties as the main purpose of the American Army?

Loaded question, I know, I know. Just wondering how it all "came about".

TheCurmudgeon
08-14-2012, 04:00 PM
http://www.coastalwiki.org/coastalwiki/The_Capacity_Building_Concept

Hmmm, did all of this stuff start "embedding" itself in your military doctrine during the 90s, when we started to think about a post Soviet world and our peacekeeping duties as the main purpose of the American Army?


If I had to guess, it came about as a result of the collapse of Yugoslavia and the wars and interventions that followed. Although the UNDP stuff predates that, so it could be part of the effort to assist newly free post-colonial states.

BTW, the methods used in Bosnia etc. were exactly the methods that the Rumsfeld Defense Department were working hard to avoid during the planning for Iraq. Might be part of the reason we were so far behind the power curve (but only part).

Madhu
10-30-2012, 10:25 PM
Defying expectations that it would drop into an ocean of public indifference, The Ugly American remained on the New York Times best-seller list for seventy-eight weeks, sold an astonishing four million copies, and was made into a block-buster movie starring Marlon Brando. The ensuing media frenzy put development on a par with the space race and created a new strand of populist internationalism that Senator John F. Kennedy seized to boost his presidential bid. Kennedy sponsored legislation to increase aid to India and announced the existence of an "economic gap" in Asia that was being filled by Soviet aid. In February 1958, Kennedy first met Rostow, and the modernization theorist moved into Kennedy's inner circle of advisers. Kennedy was drawn to the diagnostic precision of the CENIS model, and he adopted its language in his own critiques of foreign aid. The alliance of Rostovian theory and Kennedy-Johnson foreign policy ushered in the golden age ofmodernization theory in the 1960s. George Ball, undersecretary of state from 1961 to 1966, recalled in his memoirs the vogue for development economics in 1961 and "the professors swarming into Washington" who "talked tendentiously of 'self-sustaining growth,' 'social development,' the 'search for nationhood,' 'self-help,' and 'nation building.'"

In the first year of his presidency, Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps, Food for Peace, and the Agency for International Development (AID). He declared the 1960s the "Development Decade" and substantially increased the budget for foreign assistance. Modernization theory supplied the design, rationale, and justification for these programs. Stages had called for an expanded foreign aid effort organized exclusively around the development mission. Rostow implied and Kennedy had declared during the campaign that State Department bureaucrats used aid for short-run diplomatic advantage, making the separation of the Agency for International Development from State an essential first step. Likewise, Food for Peace took established agricultural surplus disposal programs and organized them around a develop-mental mission. Rather than dumping the excess produced by federal price supports (or using the surplus to alleviate famine), the program's primary purpose was the generation of "counterpart" funds that could be steered into social overhead investment. At the administration's urging, the United Nations put food assistance on the same basis in its World Food Programme.

The Peace Corps institutionalized a belief (traceable through The Ugly American to Lerner and Redfield) that exposure to modern personalities could induce change. Kennedy announced the Peace Corps during the campaign and asked Rostow and Millikan to draft the proposal. Volunteers were expected to create a catalytic effect by introducing ideas from a higher point on the developmental arc. The Peace Corps sought not specialists but "representative Americans" who could transmit values by example. Theory informed expectations of what volunteers should achieve. Performing their assigned jobs as teachers or agronomists was considered secondary to the task of catalyzing community involvement in a spontaneous project. Many volunteers experienced at first hand the chasm between the theory and reality of development.


http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/A-D/Development-Doctrine-and-Modernization-Theory-The-development-decade.html#ixzz2Ap6F7H8U

Has anyone at the Council noted the similarity between The Ugly American and Three Cups of Tea (haven't reviewed this thread in some time, perhaps it's somewhere here already....)

Madhu
10-30-2012, 10:29 PM
The analogy with religion becomes quite explicit when the authors move on to recommend what both countries need to do to realize good outcomes: “They must redouble their efforts to make sure that money spent on development achieves its intended result.” There is no analysis here of what has kept the countries from redoubling their efforts all these years or why they would want to change course at this point in time. All one is given is the following concession regarding the US: “One of the biggest failures of the current US approach is the lack of overarching vision.” Take it or leave it; there is no explanation for why with all the intellectual firepower at its disposal the US continues to lack an overarching vision. Or could it be that there is an overarching vision that is not visible to the authors blinded by their unquestioning faith?

http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/aid-as-religion/

Madhu
11-14-2012, 01:54 PM
The prime purpose of Oxfam and similar development agencies is to assist poor men and women in changing their situation and exercising their right to participate in the development of their societies. However, aid agencies that ignore peoples existing strengths may create dependency, and so make people more vulnerable than before. This book examines the concept of capacity-building and why it is such an integral part of development. It considers specific and practical ways in which NGOs can contribute to enabling people to build on the capacities they already possess, while avoiding undermining such capacities.

"Capacity-Building" reviews the types of social organization with which NGOs might consider working, and the provision of training in a variety of skills and activities, for the people involved and for their organization. The particular importance of using a capacity-building approach in emergency situations, and the dynamic and long-term nature of the process, are emphasized.

http://www.amazon.com/Capacity-Building-Approach-People-Centered-Development-Guidelines/dp/0855983663/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1352900334&sr=8-2&keywords=capacity+building

I am adding this title to the thread because I asked up thread when certain language seemed to become standard, especially in doctrinal writing and thinking.

A lot of current military/stability/development thinking might come from the 90s-era stability assignments and development theory of that period? Around the time of MOOTW?

Well, I don't know. Continue to be intellectually curious about all of this.

Madhu
11-18-2012, 07:47 PM
This has sort of morphed into a catch-all for international aid criticism but developmental and humanitarian aid seem to be important parts of international peace-keeping so I'll keep at it:


Economist William Easterly speaks with Hugh Eakin about the recent militarization of Western foreign aid policy, the dangers of this new "aid imperialism," and the role economists have played in its development.

http://www.nybooks.com/podcasts/issues/2008/dec/01/william-easterly-on-foreign-aid-militarization/

I suppose for intellectual honesty's sake I ought to go dig up articles by critics of the aid critics....

Madhu
11-27-2012, 04:14 PM
I proposed that the Mortenson book Three Cups of Tea was this generation's The Ugly American upthread but the following is a post with a different view:


I feel like I need to explain the background of “ugly American”-ness because, until I read Jon Krakauer’s essay Three Cups of Deceit, Mortenson fit into this mold. (Example: “We need more people like Greg Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute. He uses a budget of only a few million dollars to build hundreds of school. Imagine if the US could send hundreds of Greg Mortensens armed with tens of millions of dollars.”) An American with an inclination toward languages who could seamlessly blend between Pakistan and Afghanistan and America and builds hundreds of schools for several hundred thousand dollars each? Sounds like an “ugly American” to me, in the original, good sense of the phrase.

Unfortunately, it’s likely that Mortenson spends more time telling stories about his “ugly American”-ness then he does “ugly American”-ing. That, in short, is a shame.

So the question becomes, do Mortenson’s actions condemn the idea of “ugly Americans”? Does this mean that philanthropy and development and foreign aid are farces?

Not at all. If anything, good “ugly Americans” keep themselves out of the spotlight, which Mortenson clearly did not. And, more importantly, Mortenson will be replaced. As soon as the fiasco broke, Rye Barcott released his book, It Happened on the Way to War. Then NPR’s Planet Money podcast aired a few shows about their attempts to build a school in Haiti and the lessons they learned. And then the Economist ran an article about new, more intelligent ways to use philanthropic dollars.
http://onviolence.com/?e=450


On the other hand, I'm not sure that the two points are that far off. What does development mean and what is its place within "stabilization" operations, military or civilian? Perhaps the first question is whether to "do" development or not, does it help or hinder progress, however progress is defined?

http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2012/11/flogging-dead-strategies-when-is-problem-solving-no-longer-useful/

Madhu
04-29-2013, 02:57 PM
Petraeus's father-in-law, William Knowlton, had been involved in the most ambitious of these programs, known as CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support), which created "strategic hamlets"--distinct areas where the population could be separated (in some cases, physically resettled) from the insurgents--and then trained local self-defense units to stave off the insurgents' return. CORDS was led by a brilliant but wild-eyed White House official named Robert Komer, known to those who worked with him as "Blowtorch." (He didn't mind the nickname.) Knowlton had served as Komer's military deputy, and after Petraeus married Knowlton's daughter, the two talked at length about CORDS: how it operated and its similarities to other counterinsurgency campaigns that Petraeus had been studying.

- The Insurgents, Fred Kaplan

So, supposedly, the Army had forgotten lessons learned in Vietnam about counterinsurgency.

But the topic was kept alive, especially because the Army had an internal argument about who really lost the war and why?

I wonder if the better understanding is that the methodical institutional STUDY stopped, rather than it was entirely forgotten.

Better lesson learned: study on such topics must continue institutionally and be kept intellectually alive and informed by current developments? Intellectual study is a living thing, not simply a "lessons learned" thing?

The American military "Insurgents" (Kaplan book), then, had a point about unpreparedness regarding counterinsurgency but their ideas off the page did not bear fruit?

I personally still think we paid a price for not reviewing our own complicated history in South Asia, especially Afghanistan and Pakistan. (I don't generally talk about Iraq around here because I am not as comfortable with that topic).

I hope the institution corrects that error and studies its own history and its own SELF (if you see what I mean) in South Asia and China so that there is a better understanding of the region. If outside experts or State Department Hands are used, then something important is missing and a DC group think will continue about various regions, IMO. Some of the reading lists around here, on the larger strategic view of regions, is a bit worrisome. I will add to those articles at a later date.

Each institution with its own rigorous understanding may help.