Excessively long response, part 1
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Originally Posted by
Bob's World
My message is to stop meddling, not to meddle.
I refer to this:
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First is to assess every nation with which the U.S. engages for how the major groupings within their populace perceive their own governance in terms of Legitimacy, Justice, Respect and Hope. Second is to ensure that the form of U.S. engagement is designed so as to be least likely to create perceptions of preemption of Legitimacy by the U.S. (remembering that this is as viewed through the eyes of those populaces; need only be perception and not fact; and that the perception of U.S. policy makers as to the intent and nature of said engagement is completely immaterial). Lastly is to encourage Hope; to tell the people of the world not to despair, while at the same time applying carrots and sticks as required to the governments of the same to engage their populaces and to make reasonable accommodations on terms acceptable within their unique cultures, to give the people a legal means to voice their concerns.
That, to me, is an open prescription for meddling. When we bring out the carrots and the sticks to get others to do what we think they ought to do, that's interference in the internal affairs of others. That's meddling.
I do believe that the Jones Model is an accurate description of many (not all) insurgencies, and that it can be a useful tool. It can also be a very dangerous tool, because it is so easy to interpret it as a justification to interfere: they need better governance, they don't seem able to deliver it themselves, we'd better go and help them, or do it for them. There's a very strong suggestion here that interference is acceptable - and even desirable - as long as it's "good" interference.
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Originally Posted by
Bob's World
I've always said the only perception of good or bad governance is that of the governed populace. You always try to twist that, and I don't know why.
Why is very simple: the moment we speak of good or bad governance, we impose our own standards and our own values. When we assess we do it through our lens, with our prejudices and our assumptions. We can't do it any other way. We don't know what any other populace thinks or wants. We can't know, we're not them. Sure, there are people who claim to speak for the populace. Often there are lots of them, all saying something different. The guy with the loudest voice doesn't necessarily speak for the populace. The guy with a bomb doesn't necessarily speak for the populace.
Certainly in some circumstances we can deduce that a populace is upset, but the moment we set about trying to ascertain why they are upset or what needs to be done about it, we invariably bring our own perceptions and our own prejudices to the table.
What I see you recommending above is that we should assess another nation's internal politics, we should decide what we think is bothering the populace, and we should pressure that government to do what we think is needed to improve its relations with its own populace. There's a whole lot of "we" in that picture.
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Follow the trails of foreign fighters back to where they come from and then research there first. Follow the trail of AQ "terrorists" back to where they come from and research there as well. Study how those populaces perceive the legitimacy of their governments. Study how they perceive the role of the US and the West in their countries. Study how they perceive their justice systems; or if they believe there is equal opportunity for all. Study how much control or influence they believe they have over their governance or even their personal fate. We've gotten into the middle of some messy situations.
I don't see the foreign fighter picture as being terribly relevant. You can't deduce an insurgent population from a few hundred angry young men, and if we assume that the foreign fighters speak for the populace, we push assumption beyond rational bounds.
The assumption that foreign fighters are fighting because of what they perceive to be malicious US influence in their own countries is not entirely compatible with evidence. For one thing, substantial numbers of foreign fighters come from countries (Libya and Syria) where the US has no significant presence and with which the US has had a generally antagonistic relationship. On top of that, we have already seen that AQ was able to successfully recruit foreign fighters for their jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the US. In short, I think you're seeing a backlash against the US because that conclusion is compatible with your assumptions. All I can deduce from the foreign fighter issue is that the "expel the infidel from the land of the faithful" narrative still has sufficient legs to recruit a few hundred people across the Muslim world to fight, regardless of what specific infidel is involved. I see no reason at all to assume a US-specific cause. If we want to resolve the foreign fighter problem we don't have to make everyone in the Muslim world like us, we have to wind up our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. They can't travel to join the fight if there's no fight for them to join.
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Originally Posted by
Bob's World
I'm saying we need to back out, not dig in. Not cut and run, but cut off the blank check of blind support and urge reforms be adopted if continued support is desired.
Where does this "blank check of blind support" exist?
I think you drastically overrate the ability of the US to promote reform by threatening to withdraw support. As I said above, it won't work in Libya or Syria, because they don't get any US support. It won't work in Saudi Arabia either; they don't receive or require assistance from the US... if anything, we need assistance from them. Even where US assistance is substantial (Egypt, Yemen) the degree of reform that could be generated by a threat to withdraw aid is highly debatable. The use of aid conditionality as a tool to press for reform is nothing new, it's been tried many times, generally with mixed results, and it's been debated in the aid community for a long time. It's not necessarily a bad idea, but it's not a panacea either... and of course it can achieve nothing in states that don't get US aid.
I think overall you're assuming that the US has far more influence in these environments than it actually does. Overestimating one's own influence is often risky.
Things I'll be thinking about during the Kabul 1/2 Marathon this morning
All of this is complex stuff. The Model I have worked up is intentionally designed to provide a simple, general framework to help sort through all of that complexity to focus on what is really important.
Also obvious, is that we all look at these problems through our own lenses, burdened by our own baggage. I certainly include myself in that assessment.
Take Wilf for example (please, god help me, somebody take Wilf!!:D ) We all know that he sees insurgency as war, and that popular discontent is only insurgency once it goes violent. At which point the military is sent in to defeat the violence. No more "insurgency." On the Jones mode I recognize that all of this happens on a continuum; and that there are, I believe, common factors, (as measured by the populaces perception, and yes, Dayuan, at some point one does have to make an assessment themselves of how it is they understand that popular perception to be).
So as governance gets more "Poor" the natural trend is for violence to rise. A leader of the dissident groups may opt for a non-violent approach, as Dr Maria Stephan advocates in her work. History shows that it is twice as likely to produce change where no legal means for change exists than violent approaches are. Or a governmental leader may have such charisma, like Mr. Obama, that the populace is temporarily satisfied with what would otherwise be assessed as poor; or greater external threats, like a WWII going on, may cause a populace to accept greater poorness; or the military may suppress violence and create a perception of goodness.
So, yes, the British Empire was very much an economic empire, of which the US Empire is derived. Cost/Benefit analysis and spread sheets driving decisions. Did the China or India become less productive? Did the Middle East begin to produce less oil or the Suez canal become less important? Did the American Colonies become less productive and show less potential? No on all counts. Sure, not all moved all the way up the Jones model into full blown, in your face classic insurgency. Some only moved so far as to make the Juice no longer worth the proverbial Squeeze. The Costs of occupation exceeded the Benefit of Occupation. Certainly factors at home, like the great costs and disruptions of WWI and II factor in, but if the colony could have contributed to digging out of the hole it would have been retained. Those major disruptions served to shift the equation adequately so as to allow the suppressed to make the cost exceed the benefit and prevail.
Now, Dayuhan says how can Saudi Arabia (The decisive point for GWOT IMO) be brought into such conversations, they receive no support from the US, the opposite is true he says. Really? The Saudis sell us discount oil in exchange for our commitment to defend them against all threats, foreign and domestic?? I know the Gulf War was a while ago, but I still remember. The Saudis have three great fears: 1. Iran. 2. Shia in general, but particularly the large oppressed Shia populace whose lands lay within Saudi Arabia atop half of their oil. 3 There entire oppressed populace as a whole. When it comes to countering insurgency, the Saudis never let the grass grow too tall. The should be pros at this, they have been doing it since their inception. Now they get to do it with the full blessing and sanction of the US because they call it "counterterrorism."
Now, entropy points out the importance of control. But I think you really need to assess just what you mean by control. Is control the ability of the state to prevent popular action, or is control the willingness of the populace to submit to government policy and rules????
Does a jockey "control" his horse? Yes, but the horse could turn and kill the jockey whenever it chose to do so.
Does a single police officer in an intersection "control" traffic? Yes, but again, only so long as the populace driving the cars consents to submit to his rules.
Bottom line is that control is a tenuous thing, and is really more of a misnomer than most of us probably think about when we use the word. I am sure I could plot another line on my model to show how much effort must be exerted by a government to "control" as governance moves from "Goodness" to "Badness."
Oh, and yes, I do use "Despotism" interchangeably with "Poor Governance." I am a huge fan of the American story, of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and our Bill of Rights. These documents are ground zero for anyone who wants to study Insurgency and COIN. If they are not on your shelf next to your Galua and Kitson, you missing some critical links in your chain of knowledge.
The US was born of insurgency. We formally recognize the duty and right of a populace to rise up in insurgency when faced with Despotism. Powerful stuff. Then we added a Bill of Rights that when one reads with the eyes of an insurgent/counterinsurgent, one sees how it was designed to specifically prevent a government from doing things that were key to the causal perceptions of Poor Governance going into the revolt with England; and also in preserving key powers and rights in the populace to allow them to always be so informed, so strong, as to keep any government in check.
Good input guys.
You are arguing with an example of how to operationalize, not with the model
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Originally Posted by
Entropy
Col. Jones,
By "control" I generally mean the ability to enforce your governance (whatever it is) and prevent competitors. In your example it's not enough, in my view, to simply provide a justice system - even one that's perceived as superior to the Taliban's - one must also have the capacity to enforce adherence to that system's decisions as well as to credibly prevent competition ranging from vigilantism to a full-blown shadow government.
In other words, building a system of justice is not the same thing as actually providing justice. For the latter you need much more than judicial institutions. "If you build it, they will come" does not apply.
We can build courthouses, we can train people to operate a judicial system and teach them the concepts of law, etc. All that is wasted if the Taliban can come in, post a bunch of night letters and assassinate a few judges as examples. If you can't prevent the Taliban from doing that, then what credibility do you have with the populace? Why should they trust your justice system if you can't even do that?
So I'm skeptical that it's possible to focus on one discrete part of government (ie. Justice) and work only on that. I'm skeptical that one government good can be singled out and improved or implemented without improving the governance system more generally. Governance is probably more interrelated that it initially appears.
Read the paper. There are 4 causal perceptions as assessed through the eyes of the populace. Does the populace perceive that the system of law as applied to them to be just. In the example the way determined to help build this perception is through providing quality justice workers, retaining them through good pay, keeping them safe in secure homes and offices, and putting them where the populace has access. It's just an example, not a universal cure for perceptions of injustice. You must assess all perceptions and strive to work all of them.
I would argue, however that you have "control" as a first order effect or even a task; whereas I see it as a second order effect. So you might put is in the CR box, I would have it in the CC box. IF one can produce Good Governance, then one will have "control" over their populace. One can have very Poor Governance indeed, and exert extreme control (task) over the populace to keep them in line. That is no state I want to live in. You just described a dictatorship. Oh, like the Saudis. They control the populace. No place I'd want to be a citizen of.
Here in Afghanistan we don't focus on building perceptions of Justice, in fact we are focusing on imposing "Rule of Law" instead. God how I hate that phrase, and I am a former Prosecutor. It smacks of the "control" you speak of. I for one do not want to live in a state that exists to control my behavior. Obviously they all do to some degree, or it is Anarchy, but it is all in the degree and the means applied. Good Governance is a nuance one must always be tuned into, or you can quickly find that what once worked is no longer producing the same effect and you are slipping in the wrong direction.