CNAS on the NSP: Echos of El Sal
Posted on the SWJ Blog is an entry of CNAS' new paper on the National Solidarity Program in Afghanistan (by John Nagl, Andrew Exum, et. al.). There is also an interesting embedded video of Exum explaining the program. What is particularly interesting to me is that the NSP is little different from the final and, according to the first US MILGP commander to support the war, COL John Waghelstein, most successful of the three successive Salvadoran national plans, Municipios en Accion (Municipalities in action). This plan - designed by Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte and US Ambassador to El Salvador, Ed Corr - allocated funds directly to the elected municipal governments for projects that those governments had identified.Sounds to me exactly like the NSP.
This approach is clearly one important strain of development theory applied to COIN that has been highly successful in all contexts in which it has been tried. I would go so far to argue that it really is the best approach to development as well as to the developmental component of COIN and other Small Wars. It is essential to the achievement of Host Government Legitimacy.
Cheers
JohnT
Yes. Add to that the "All Politics are local"
fact and you've got a route to success. As CORDS found out in Veet Nam 40 years ago...
Or, even worse, as the US of A found out in its own west and in the Philippines. What's that old Pennsylvania Dutch saying? "Ve are too zune oldt und too late schmart..."
I'm not a CNAS fan but they've got this one right, I believe.
Alinsky, CAP, Peace Corps, etc.
JMM, interesting you should mention these but not Peace Corps. The Great Society CAP grew, to some extent, out of programs overseas, especially in Latin America - the Alliance for Progress in particular. Peace Corps, in tis early years - and again, especially in Latin America - focused heavily on community development. LBJ's war on poverty/Great Society incorporated the community development experience in the CAP programs, helped to support them with VISTA volunteers (domestic Peace Corps derivative). Many of the community organizers (where have we heard that term?) - especially the VISTAs - got their tactics from Alinsky's Reveille for Radicals. Some of the tactical learning was from the textbook; much was not - it was just in the air...
I was an undergrad and grad student during this time. 2 undergrad summers working community development in Mexico - 1 rural with the American Friends Service Committee, 1 urban with a bunch of Jesuits, seminarians, and secular college kids in Mexico City. As a grad student, I worked in rural Peru and collaborated with local governments and Peace Corps vounteers while I was researching my doctoral dissertation. So, the all politics is local notion was very much a part of what I was involved with and, I should point out, it was in my experience, a very successful development model.
Interestingly, and bringing this discussion back to where it started, Amb. Corr during this period, was detailed from the Foreign Service to Peace Corps staff where he was Peace Corps Country Director for Colombia. That experience clearly influenced the way he thought about development strategies when he was Ambassador to El Salvador.
Cheers
JohnT
Hey, John, no slight intended or implied ...
Quote:
JTF
JMM, interesting you should mention these but not Peace Corps.
it's just that I have lived with "CAP" for 40 years. Can't say the same for the Peace Corps, although a friend was one of its directors.
As to Alinsky, my preference is his later "Rules for Radicals", which is a more mature version of his methodology.
Didn't consider it a slight but
an excuse to expand on the theme. :cool: I, personally, liked both Reveille and Rules. Who says civilians don't have tactical doctrine manuals?
One of the things that I find puzzling is that Peace Corps - except for the period when it was lumped with a bunch of other agencies (which your friend took care of) has pretty much stayed the same - although its focus has changed over the years as the needs of the countries in which it operates have changed, the internal USG volunteer programs have changed their names and focus over the last 40 years including term of service. Alinsky might have hypothesized that the reason was the threat to local power elites posed by these organizations if they were allowed to become instituionalized.
Cheers
JohnT
Better revolutionaries ....
Quote:
from JTF
Successful COIN really means making a better Revolution than the insurgents can make.
Happen to agree with this - and did back in the early 60's, especially as to the Americas (Canada excepted since they are incorrigible :D). Apparently, you helped to make that happen in El Sal, which is a good thing.
The question I have had in reading the various pros and cons about Vietnam - which really don't discuss it very much among the arguments for and against "conventional" vs. "non-conventional" - boils down to this: Was it feasible for us (US) to make a "better Revolution" in SVN given the politics and "governance" of the GVN, whether under Diem or the Generals ?
My perception then and now was that the GVN was FUBAR (where the R word could be any of "Recovery", "Rehabilitation" and "Rescue", etc.). So, when I read such as Krepinevich or Nagl, I tend to say "so what" - that is, assuming we did all of what they say, the South Vietnamese villagers would still have been left with bad governance by the GVN - which the North could have exploited after we left upon "successful pacification" of the South.
Maybe someone with a more optimistic view of what could have happened in SVN should talk me down.
Somebody - Mike - came along
with a better explanation.:cool: I defer and agree, Still, it is clear from Mike's comments that the possiblity, even the probability, existed for the rVN to have won the war had we and they followed an effective pop centric strategy that addressed the legitimacy issues weighing down the GVN and not abandoned Thieu to his fate.
Cheers
JohnT
Underlying principles as bridges between approaches to irregular warfare…
I am going to tackle three of the five principles Mike in Hilo observed in Vietnam (and perhaps in parts of Latin America) and use them to discuss what I have seen in El Salvador, Iraq, and Nicaragua. Unfortunately/fortunately I was too young to see Vietnam on the ground; my views were shaped by carefully low crawling to the edge of the living room and remaining undetected in order to watch the evening news coverage of the firefights & bombing runs and Walter C’s commentary while wondering about what my Dad was up to over there…
My take on Mike in Hilo’s observations:
1) A deep cynicism on the part of the (insert country)’s populace toward democracy
2) Dismissing local governments as policy
3) A tactical military problem that compelled cooperation with the enemy
4) Excessive corruption government wide
5) The (oppositions) political message was Peace for the War-Weary
My observations:
1. Local politics was working at a certain predictable level in each of the three countries that I mentioned that I have worked in. I am going to use Taylorism, and its unending quest for efficiency, as a representative proxy for 1st World Western Capitalistic/Democratic philosophy. I’ll also state the obvious and note that life moves at a different pace and in a different way outside of the Golden Bubble that characterizes 1st World Western Democracies. The majorities of Hoi Polloi in the areas that I worked in did not see a favorable cost/benefit calculation in order to buy into and make the changes needed in order to score high on the litmus test of Taylorism. But, I would ask: How often do we show/explain by local examples, which fully take into account local cultural norms, the benefits of what we are in effect selling in order to change the outlook of the populace? Perhaps it is true that our 2-year and 4-year political timelines and the general hyperactive/ADD characteristics of our political and cultural landscape are not compatible with what the requirements of such a strategy. I think about the example of the 99-year lease on Hong Kong vs. the current level of cooperation we currently see in Washington regarding our economic crisis when I think about differing approaches to long-term strategy. Perhaps this is part of why we face cynicism when we push Democracy upon non-Democratic cultures?
2. We have played some role in dismissing the governments of communist challengers in El Salvador, Daniel Ortega, and Sadaam Hussein. As I have mentioned elsewhere IMO we shot ourselves in the ass in Iraq (if our objective was stability) when we fired the majority of the Iraqi populace from their jobs in civil service (Baathism/SOE’s, etc) and the military. By now we have more than enough experience and examples of the need to fully consider 2nd and 3rd order effects upon the populace (which are the center of gravity) of dismissing local governments as policy. Are we watching for/advocating the application of these hard won lessons in Afghanistan?
3. Cool and very lethal high-powered weapons, high-tech walkie-talkies, the anonymity of soul concealing celebrity-style sunglasses, short attention spans, and simplifying powerpoint briefings are stereotypical images associated with the American Soldier. Does the application of just short-term force result in long-term changes to a society? Can we kill our way to victory? Our opponents use local knowledge in order to systematically apply a mix of lethal force and social service arms in order to discredit local governments not in line with their views. They try and use a longer timeline than we like to their advantage (although overall we did relatively well with the Cold War timeline). What, if any, are the stereotypes of Americans who successfully use local knowledge to sway a populace by a mix of lethal and non-lethal means over long time periods?
More questions than answers this Saturday…