Setting up effective, local security forces
On another thread I posted a week ago 'An option overlooked' after Fuchs rightly posted his succinct observation, with my emphasis:
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The Americans never really mastered this indirect rule and the setup of effective indigenous sepoy-like forces either.
This is an issue which has always interested me and IMO deserves its own thread. As always this opening post will drop down when other, earlier posts are copied here.
I am very aware that for the USA there has been a long history of involvement in setting up such local forces; post-1945 it became an SOF responsibility and in various modes is undertaken today.
The big difference in this thread is 'sepoy-like', so I mean locally recruited with expatriate officers and NCOs. Not advisory teams, embedded and more recent descriptive terms.
Well of course you don't.
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
I don't consider this in conflict with what I wrote.
You rarely do see such conflicts. On the rare occasions you do, you attempt to drive your bulldozer over them... :D
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Propaganda and other means shape perceptions, and Montagnards knew that defeat would cause repercussions for their people once they had joined the 'anti-communist' cause.
Most conscripts of European armies were in a "go along and get along mode" shortly before being sent to war. So what?
And the bearing of all this on your statement that the Montagnards were fighting for their tribes is precisely what? It would in fact seem to me that your statement they "...knew that defeat would cause repercussions for their people ..." which is true indicates a situation that would in fact deter them from fighting 'for the tribe' lacking some other incentive. As an Economist, you know money talks... :wry:
Note also that the Montagnards were neither European or conscripted -- the tribal leaders did not force their young men to fight for the Americans, they simply allowed them to do so. The men had a choice and they exercised it so that comparison is sorta specious, that's what. :cool:
Not that contradictory statements have ever deterred you, Lieber Fuchs... ;)
Well I can buy into those...
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
I have two pet theories about how to handle small wars as the one in AFG:...
But what are we going to do about the politicians???
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Meanwhile, the standard Western approach under U.S. leadership is to send relatively few occupation troops, rotate them and reinforce them if politicians get too much under pressure by poor news about the occupation.
In the US case, that's a forced error due to our personnel system and Congressional pressure -- unfortunately, US domestic political concerns outweigh both military and foreign policy issues. That does not mean the rest of a coalition has to do the same thing; that they opt to do so is a lick on them -- or also a function of their domestic political pressures...
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In parallel, indigenous puppet regime forces are being built from scratch, perform rather poorly and are unreliable for many reasons.
True. Never a good idea but it seems hard to break the mold.
True. It's also a feature, not a bug.
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Originally Posted by
JMA
The principal US problem is the short attention span.
Induced by size and traditions but most attributable to our political system and thus is unlikely to change. Many of the "cockups" you more or less correctly note are directly attributable to that feature. It should be considered by all 'strategists' and planners, particularly those in the US but it too seldom is. To ask that fact and feature be considered by observers is probably a step too far... :wry:
The foreign policy implications of Chine, Russia, Syria and Libya (as well as US aid in the search for Kony and the LRA...) that you surface are all examples of the fact that US domestic politics take primacy for a number of reasons, some bad, some good. Short termism r us... :o
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Not sure the US model in the DRC is the correct method.
It is not however it is short term (that "attention span...") adequate. The British and most of the Commonwealth as well as the Germans always strove for 'good'[ or excellence For the US, adequate has always been sufficient. So far...