Could Someone Please Explain the "Surge Strategy" to Me
I'm flummoxed. I've spent most of the past five years analyzing, thinking about, writing about, and speaking about the Iraq conflict so I think I'm at least modestly conversant in it. But I just don't understand what the "new" strategy is or how it is "new."
I'm a regular reader of publications like the Weekly Standard. In fact, I just finished reading Tom Donnelly's essay in the most recent issue. Problem is, that one, like most there, spend all their time making the point that everyone who takes issue with the "new" strategy is an idiot or evil (or an evil idiot), but I have yet to see a cogent explanation of how the new strategy will lead to success.
The administration (except for Gates who seems to have the most nuanced view of Iraq) and the Weekly Standard crew (incuding Donnelly, Fred Kagan, and Bill Kristol) seem to feel there are only two options in Iraq: "victory" which means that the existing Shiite dominated government eradicates AQI, all the Sunni sectarian components of the insurgency give up and become compliant, and the Iranian backed Shiite militias go out of business. Or "defeat" which is everything else.
What I need is for someone to connect the dots for me and explain how the surge gets us toward that definition of "victory." The Weekly Standard crew likes to slam the "failed Casey-Abizaid strategy" which focused on ramping up Iraqi security forces to replace American ones but how, for the love of pete. is the "surge strategy" different? Assuming we won't sustain the surge for ever or ramp it up even further, what comes next if NOT exactly what Casey and Abizaid sought?
At an even deeper level, I question the core logic of the "surge strategy." To me (and I'll admit that I don't understand it and could be wrong), it is based on three assumptions: 1) secure areas can be kept secure; 2) eventually the whole country can be kept secure without a massive increase in American troops; and 3) the insurgents will simply lose their will and give up if they can't penetrate the secure areas (resulting in "victory").
Again, I just don't get it. How will the current surge lead the insurgent to give up? Someone help me!
Maybe I have missed the plot, and maybe Steve is just stirring the pot..
but one of the recurrent things that has been thrust at me for the last 2.5 years of 'book learning' is that the mil effort in COIN is just 20% (ie , 1 in 5 parts ) of the overall effort in a COIN fight.
Accordingly, the 'surge' , if we are serious, cannot be the 'strategy' - by accepted definition in the literature it is only (at most) 20% of one.
So, before I would even presume to try and guess or deduce an answer to Steve's provocative question, I think I need to know what the other 80% of the strategy is comprised of. Trouble is, I haven't come across any explanation of what that is.
One thing I am pretty sure of is that the body of historical example to date tells us something. No matter how good an effort GEN Petraeus (and any number of clever military COIN adviser folks) come up with within the mil tactical and operational realm, it will not be enough. Without commensurate effort in the Strat Pol, Civ and Societal realm it will, at best, only delay the inevitable. Bizarrely, the public debate has ignored this, continually laboring under the misapprehension that the military effort alone can deliver 'victory'.
Maybe I'm seeing it all wrong, but
the term "new strategy" when applied to the "surge" is simply a political term. If memory serves, the administration first annouced an intent to "surge" because it began to believe that more troops were needed to accomplish the mission, i.e. the same mission as before the surge.
In an effort to paint a different picture of Iraq, and possibly deflect some political heat (you don't hear Bush saying stay the course anymore), this "new strategy" term was applied so that republicans could distance themselves from the fallout that was/is generating. Every wanted change, so change was invented.
BTW, I out "surge" in quotes because I don't really see it as a surge per se. Estimates of troops needed were in the neighborhood of 400,000 and we now have about 150,000. We're still deficient.
Quote:
But in ethnic/sectarian insurgencies, people don't decide which side to support based on the provision of development, security, and reform. Loyalty is more primal.
Does this mean that "winning hearts and minds" isn't really possible in Iraq?
Kilcullen's statement of the "surge" strategy
Dave Kilcullen's blog statement, quoted in part below, is as succinct a description of the "surge" strategy - at least the security part of it - as any. It is different from what the US and the Iraqi government have done before. But, it is hardly new. In some ways, it is a classic inkblot approach focused on the human terrain.
"These operations are qualitatively different from what we have done before. Our concept is to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously, in order to prevent terrorists relocating their infrastructure from one to another, and to create an operational synergy between what we're doing in Baghdad and what's happening outside. Unlike on previous occasions, we don't plan to leave these areas once they’re secured. These ops will run over months, and the key activity is to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them. The really decisive activity will be police work, registration of the population and counterintelligence in these areas, to comb out the insurgent sleeper cells and political cells that have "gone quiet" as we moved in, but which will try to survive through the op and emerge later. This will take operational patience, and it will be intelligence-led, and Iraqi government-led. It will probably not make the news (the really important stuff rarely does) but it will be the truly decisive action.
"When we speak of "clearing" an enemy safe haven, we are not talking about destroying the enemy in it; we are talking about rescuing the population in it from enemy intimidation. If we don't get every enemy cell in the initial operation, that's OK. The point of the operations is to lift the pall of fear from population groups that have been intimidated and exploited by terrorists to date, then win them over and work with them in partnership to clean out the cells that remain – as has happened in Al Anbar Province and can happen elsewhere in Iraq as well.
"The "terrain" we are clearing is human terrain, not physical terrain. It is about marginalizing al Qa’ida, Shi’a extremist militias, and the other terrorist groups from the population they prey on. This is why claims that “80% of AQ leadership have fled” don’t overly disturb us: the aim is not to kill every last AQ leader, but rather to drive them off the population and keep them off, so that we can work with the community to prevent their return."
I believe this can be read that the major effort must come from the Iraqi government with coalition help. Yet, I am concerned that I have not seen in any statements coming from Gen Petraeus or Dr Kilcullen that explain how an insurgency led by and mainly manned by Sunnis who were the core supporters of the Saddam regime (according to Abu Buckwheat who makes this case extremely well) has morphed into an AQ (AQI?) dominated insurgency. Is this merely propaganda - not untrue but not the whole truth either - or have they deceived themselves or did it really change in this way?
JohnT
What is the objective of those seeking a change in Iraq strategy
Many opponents of the current strategy have said they want to change the current strategy. I'm not sure they even comprehend the current strategy, but the change that seems to be proposed is a return to the "pre surge" (sorry) position of placing US troops in secure Forward Operating bases in Iraq or Kuwait or Kurdish Iraq, and have they sally forth to chase al Qaeda. As an alternative strategy you have to aspect what the objective of such a strategy is. Is it a force protection strategy? How will this strategy separate al Qaeda from the people? Has anyone seen a coherent statement of what the proposed alternative strategy is suppose to accomplish?