Tentative Guidelines for building partner armies post conflict

Hi all,
I've been working away on the PhD thesis and have developed a number of guidelines for creating or recreating indigenous armies in a post conflict, post intervention environment.
I'm not sure whether I've missed something obvious or whether I've got something wrong, so thoughts from older heads with more wisdom would be much appreciated.
Does this list sound right -
Preparatory considerations
The first area is preparatory considerations before the process gets underway.
*The first is the state of peace and war in the country, which will have a dominant effect on the environment in which reconstruction takes place.
*army reconstruction not just into a broader SSR programme, but within civil institutional redevelopment of a wider nature still.
*Third, national security and defence planning needs to be incorporated into wider national development documents.
*Fourth, the OECD guidelines on SSR and repeated experience indicates the need for an overall army strategic and budgeting plan. The South African example of making the responsibilities of the government to the armed forces clearly understood, including making available sufficient resources, is a good one to follow.

Army reconstruction process
*First, Southern African experience shows the need to set realistic, rather than unobtainable, transition goals within the armed forces.
*Second, if foreign models must be utilised, they should not conflict. Zimbabwe shows the difficulty of applying differing systems (British and North Korean) in the same army.
*Third. retraining the entire new force may not be necessary; officers and NCOs only may be sufficient.
*Fourth, the army itself when being reconstructed should be designed to be all-inclusive, to avoid factional dissatisfaction. As shown by the crisis in East Timor, internal tensions need to be carefully managed until they can be resolved.
*Fifth, the creation of a reserve force should be carefully considered. Such a force might employ those people who would benefit from having an occupation to avoid them causing trouble, but are unsuitable for the regular army.
*Sixth, after individual and unit training, major exercises need to be scheduled to maintain skills and keep soldiers busy.
*Seventh, logistics, administration and maintenance need particular attention. This applies doubly when a force is being transformed from a guerrilla into an institutionalised army.
*Eighth, automatic transferral of sophisticated bureaucratic procedures and computer/information systems should be resisted. Cf. 10 Division British advisors '..it is better that they be allowed to adopt the elements of our systems that suit their needs,' SWJ article on problems in Iraqi Army intelligence, and my personal experience in East Timor
*Given the need for large numbers of advisors in teams like ETTs and MiTTs, consideration needs to be given to ways to improve the prestige of advisor assignments.
*Care should be taken to restrain pressure for higher quantities of new army personnel over higher quality personnel.
*U.S. private contractors such as DynCorp, PAE and new Protection Strategies Inc. seem to be best suited to U.S. ‘train and equip’ type reconstruction efforts. Eg MPRI in Nigeria, yet, DynCorp in Liberia handled a complex programme well.
*U.S. legal restrictions which prohibit U.S. funds from being spent on non-U.S. equipment can hamper acquisition of cheaper, less sophisticated equipment. It also requires a potentially long supply line back to the United States.

Comments and violent disagreement very welcome.

Hi Colin--

Only a couple of bones to pick with you. First, it does not appear that you give enough attention to what mission(s) you are giving to the security forces in the context of the threat(s) they face. Panama and Haiti chose to have only police forces after inteventions. In Panama's case, however, the threat is larger than a police force alone can handle so there are some interesting adjustments that have been and are still being made ad hoc. So, a threat analysis coupled with a mission analysis is a critical early step.
Second, what is the military tradition of the country? If there is an indigenous military tradition, how does one best exploit it to meet the threat and achieve the objective? If there is no real threat, is not having a military a viable option given the indigenous military tradition? El Salvador is a good example of such a case. While there is no longer a real military threat, not having a military would violate Salvadoran tradition and national pride, etc. So, how do they make best use of that tradition without their military becoming a threat itself?
Third, I would take minor issue on the use of technology - especially computers. Again Salvador provides a useful example. One of the major problems through the whole war was that the ESAF had no personnel record management system. This had all sorts of major negative consequences. Toward the end, we put an advisor with the C1 (Pers & Admin) of the joint staff and developed a personnel records sytem. This became essential to the ESAF reserve system that grew out of the aftermath of the war and critical to the reserve call up during the Hurricane Mitch disaster.
Finally, I would take major issue on philosophical grounds with you on the use of PMCs. IMO there is far too much policy involved in developing a security force to entrust it to a private entity no matter how patriotic are its principals and staff. Organizing, training, equipping, and sustaining a security force is inherently a governmental activity and needs to be undertaken by the host and supporting governments. While there is a role for contractors, it is, IMO, small and entirely one of supporting the govts involved. It is, for example, fine for a contractor to provide the mess hall; it is not fine for the contractor to train the police or military. It is fine for the contractor to set up and maintain a computer system; it is not fine for the contractor to tell the govt what it should use the system for or to maintain its military/police personnel records.

So much for my opinions.;)

Cheers

JohnT

John,
Thanks for your input. Of course, as the British would put it 'selection and maintenance of the aim' should be right up front. I should have seen that, despite all the reading of the OECD Security Sector Reform handbook I've been doing.
A modern bureaucratised army does definitely need a personnel system. But when, for example in Afghanistan, half the officers are illiterate, not even to mention computer-illiterate, does this need to be computerised? As New Zealanders, we ran our bit of the First and Second World Wars, along with everybody else, on physical files, and secretaries. What do you think about not loading indigenous armies initially upfront with computerised bureaucratic systems - they could always be introduced later on.
Thanks for your thoughts about PMCs. I tend to agree, and so says one important interlocutor who was personally involved in Liberia with DynCorp. For the moment, barring any other evidence, I think I will write that U.S. PMCs should be limited to training and equipping forces - thus DynCorp's and PAE's role in Liberia was an inappropriate extension of PMCs' role.

Cheers
Colin

One other minor question. I'm intrigued at the Salvadorian use of 'C' for a joint staff post. Was there a reason why 'J' was not used?
Thanks again

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Originally Posted by Colin Robinson

*Fifth, the creation of a reserve force should be carefully considered. Such a force might employ those people who would benefit from having an occupation to avoid them causing trouble, but are unsuitable for the regular army.

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Also, a reserve force may be wholly adequate, depending upon the security situation. Consider the American experience with Minutemen and not having a standing Army.

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Originally Posted by Colin Robinson

*Sixth, after individual and unit training, major exercises need to be scheduled to maintain skills and keep soldiers busy.

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Soldiers know when they are being given busy work and it is a morale killer. If there is a concern about idle Soldiers, then I think the leadership should begin by asking, "what is it we're afraid the men are going to do if they are too idle?" Then choose an appropriate course of action from there. I suspect there will be many alternatives less costly or complicated than major training exercises. Exercises are also not necessarily something that keeps the Soldiers occupied as one would expect (and I'm only speaking from the experience of seeing some jaw-dropping idiocy occur during US Army training exercises).

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Originally Posted by Colin Robinson

*Care should be taken to restrain pressure for higher quantities of new army personnel over higher quality personnel.

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If you are just standing up an Army, I would think you could tend toward quantity in the short term, just to ensure enough young, able-bodied men have employment. Once the situation stabilizes, then you can focus more on quality.

Thanks for your thoughts Schmedlap. I've revised the exercises section already. Appropriately sized exercises rather than major exercises, though, I believe you have to at least work the command staff to make the formations operation in the right manner in the field. Maybe CPXs instead of with troops.
Case in point is the new Armed Forces of Liberia 23rd Infantry Brigade (named for the 23rd president of Liberia). As far as I can tell, the AFL has never operated a brigade headquarters in the field, though the Nimba campaign of early 1990 may be an exception. They need to get some practice.

Very good point about reserve forces only. This was backed by British advisors in E Timor who wondered about only having militias post-2001 rather than a standing army. But only Switzerland seems to do it nowadays. Nevertheless, I will add it in as well.

Thanks again for your thoughts. Hope all is well downrange.

Regards

Just one small comment (secondary to time constraints):

Private contractors such as DynCorp need to ensure a consistency of quality and experience (both in terms of the general tasks at hand and also in terms of theater contextual specificity) of their trainers. The commentary on the performance of DynCorp trainers made by Seth Jones (2008) are more likely than not generally applicable for both military force, paramilitary and police training.

References:

Jones, S. (2008) Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. RAND Counterinsurgency Study: Volume 4. Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation.

Joint, in Spanish. ;) I think you are right about using the old M1A1 paper files with literate secretaries. My point was simply not to reject computerization (or other technology) out of hand. The problem, most often, runs the other way - technology is the solution so we have to have the very latest, forgetting, of course, how long we did without it and how well. As the "unsung hero donkey" thread keeps pointing out, there are many very useful adaptations of old "technology." Last, while I would rather do without PMCs for most things, it can't happen overnight. We need their capabilities and will continue to need them for a while even if we decide that certain functions need to be returned to the govt.

Cheers

JohnT

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

Second, what is the military tradition of the country? If there is an indigenous military tradition, how does one best exploit it to meet the threat and achieve the objective?

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This point underscores a problem that we all too often dodge around: in many cases the "indigenous military tradition" in the environments where we're trying to build military/police forces is that the guy with the gun gets to do whatever he wants and the whole point of a military/police position is the ability to use it for personal/family/clan/faction advantage - up to and including taking over the country. Trying to counter that sort of tradition is a major challenge. Of course people will sit through our lectures about civilian supremacy, human rights, and military/civil relations, and of course they will nod their heads and recite the mantras at every full stop - if that's a prerequisite for getting the hardware. What they do when they're out on their own is likely to be another story altogether.

Not saying I have a solution, but the problem deserves more attention.

Dayuhan, you cite one of the problems but it has another side. Most military cultures have common elements and similar aspirations for "professionalism." These can be exploited by the interveining power even when dealing with "warlords." As an example, one could seek to discover Dostum's military ideal and pick charateristics of that individual that Dostum admires with the intention of encouraging him to adopt those characteristics and behaviors. The key is knowing the culture and the guy you are advising and getting him to make your ideas his own with him getting ALL the credit.

Cheers

JohnT

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

Dayuhan, you cite one of the problems but it has another side. Most military cultures have common elements and similar aspirations for "professionalism." These can be exploited by the interveining power even when dealing with "warlords."

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Possibly I am overly cynical, but I can't help feeling that when abstract aspirations of professionalism come up against material self-interest something's gonna be set aside, and it ain't gonna be self-interest. We also have to consider the almost unlimited human capacity to reconcile the irreconcilable in our own perceptions. I've had abundant opportunity to observe a military force where sale of weaponry, protection of criminal enterprises, profitable side-deals with corrupt politicians, gratuitous human rights abuse and much more are commonplace. Many members of that military would react with absolute righteous fury to any suggestion that they were anything other than a professional force. I've never been quite sure how they work that out in their own minds, but they seem able to do it.

Complicating the matter is that in many of the environments in which we try to develop forces, primary loyalties are to family/clan first, tribe/ethnic group second, religious identity third... and the abstraction of "nation" somewhere way down the hierarchy. Even when individuals would like to embrace the sort of conduct that Americans see as "professional", family pressure and the expectation of favoritism may be impossible to overcome. Complicating the situation even more is that in many cultures the root perception of what a military or police force (or for that matter a government) is and does is... shall we say slightly different from ours. Or possibly more than slightly.

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

As an example, one could seek to discover Dostum's military ideal and pick charateristics of that individual that Dostum admires with the intention of encouraging him to adopt those characteristics and behaviors. The key is knowing the culture and the guy you are advising and getting him to make your ideas his own with him getting ALL the credit.

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I always worry when I hear Americans talking as if we are the ones shaping and manipulating. The people we're dealing with ain't silly putty, they have their own agendas and they actively pursue them. Americans, alas, have a well-earned reputation for being very easy to manipulate, and much of the time when we think we are the ones doing the shaping we are actually being worked. While we sit around talking about knowing the culture and getting them to make our ideas their own, they are sitting around their own campfire reminding each other to tell the rich Americans whatever they want to hear, parrot their own words back at them, make them think we're adopting their ideas, show 'em just enough leg to keep the goodies flowing, and take 'em for every damn thing they've got while doing exactly what we want to do.

We don't play this game very well, and we get worked a lot.

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Originally Posted by Dayuhan

...Americans, alas, have a well-earned reputation for being very easy to manipulate, and much of the time when we think we are the ones doing the shaping we are actually being worked...whatever they want to hear, parrot their own words back at them, make them think we're adopting their ideas, show 'em just enough leg to keep the goodies flowing, and take 'em for every damn thing they've got while doing exactly what we want to do.

We don't play this game very well, and we get worked a lot.

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Amen. In WW II we got worked some but also did some decent (or indecently successful, viewpoint dependent) working. However, I cannot think of an international affair since with a major US commitment where we did not get taken to a considerable extent that generally made our effort far less valuable than it could or should have been. Not one.

Every nation, every nationality with whom I've worked has produced people who noted our propensity to get suckered. Every one.

Some Americans play the game very well; most don't. Neither do most Brits, Canadians, Frenchmen, Russians, Japanese, Chinese...:p But some of them do play it well. Two classic Ameican and Brit examples are Edward G. Lansdale and T. E. Lawrence.

Nor do I think that host nations are eminently maleable - we manipulate and so do they. Sociologists dub this a "social exchange mechanism." But my point, probably poorly developed, was that when working with a HN military (or civil govt) it is essential to help them achieve what they want - if what they want can advance our goals. If not, then we should not assist, in general (although I can think of circumstances where it might be in our interest to do so). Of course, if what they want actually runs counter to our goals then that is another story and there probably isn't any room to bargain.

Cheers

JohnT

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

Some Americans play the game very well; most don't. Neither do most Brits, Canadians, Frenchmen, Russians, Japanese, Chinese...:p But some of them do play it well. Two classic Ameican and Brit examples are Edward G. Lansdale and T. E. Lawrence.

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Wilf, who knows the story better than I, would say the Lawrence legend is much inflated, and from a Philippine perspective I'd have to say the same of Lansdale.

To get back to the OP, though, the points I'm trying to make re the problem of building armies would run something like this...

1. The nuts and bolts of building military skills and military systems is only half the battle, and probably the easier half. Assuring that these skills and systems will be applied to national objectives, rather than personal or extranational objectives, is far more difficult, especially where there is a long tradition of using military and police positions for personal or ther non-national (clan, tribe, faction, whatever) gain.

2. From the level of design and planning down to the level of the actual advisor there must be constant awareness that many, in some cases most, of the individuals we deal with will have agendas and objectives other than those they reveal to us. The national leadership will attempt to pack the leadership with loyalists who will try to keep them in power. Warlords and tribal leaders will try to maneuver their own people into key positions. Even among the ranks there will be many who joined with the assumption and expectation of using their position for personal gain.

3. People will attempt to manipulate us. When the people we deal with learn our jargon and tell us exactly what we want to hear, that doesn't mean they get it. It means we're being worked. The guy who challenges you, questions your doctrine and ideas, and has a tendency to do things his own way is probably a lot more honest - and probably a better candidate for cooperation - than the guy who parrots our own words back at us.

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

Some Americans play the game very well; most don't. Neither do most Brits, Canadians, Frenchmen, Russians, Japanese, Chinese...:p But some of them do play it well. Two classic Ameican and Brit examples are Edward G. Lansdale and T. E. Lawrence.

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Originally Posted by Dayuhan

Wilf, who knows the story better than I, would say the Lawrence legend is much inflated, and from a Philippine perspective I'd have to say the same of Lansdale.

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"Played the game well" and "inflated legend" are not mutually exclusive.

Must agree with Schmedlap about Lawrence. I would go further regarding Lansdale. Although I never met him, I do know people who did and found him impressive on a personal level. His book, In the Midst of Wars rings true to me regarding his experiences advising both Magsaysay and Diem. I say "rings true" from the perspective of one who has spent much of my career both as a soldier and a civilian in advising roles in Latin America. This is not to say that Lansdale was always successful at a strategic, operational, or tactical level. he had his failures as we all have. Success as an advisor, I would define, as being able to achieve a rapport with one's counterpart and mor often than not come to agreement on courses of action that advance both your causes.

Regarding your points 1 -3: I agree. I would only add that my experience with number 3 is that we all have our agendas and my goals were to advance those of my counterpart that advanced my own/my country's.

Cheers

JohnT

I've no doubt that Lansdale was very charismatic, and Magsaysay was of course eminently malleable. The defeat of the Hukbalahap, though, was I think less a consequence of Lansdale's ability to manipulate Magsaysay than of the inherent weakness of the Hukbalahap: unsophisticated, unskilled, internally divided, poorly led, geographically restricted, devoid of foreign support. The legacy left to the Philippine military was far from positive, and similar tactics applied in more challenging environments proved less than successful.

Dayuhan, IMO the issue is not whether or why the outcome of the conflict was successful but whether a solid advisor relationship can contribute to a successful outcome. From my reading of Magsaysay, I would not use the word maleable to describe him - nor does Lansdale paint such a picture. But clearly, Diem with whom Lansdale also worked was not a maleable character yet Lansdale was able to build a successful advisor relationship with him. Note that the long term outcome of Diem's tenure was not a success but that was due to factors well beyond Lansdale's control.

But, again, I don't want to make this thread a defense of Lansdale. Rather, I would make it a defense of the way he did the advising business (according to his writing and that of others who knew him and worked for him - Rufus Phillips in particular). The essence of what Lansdale says is that the advisor needs to treat the people he is advising with respect. Building a relationship is a two way street - as I've suggested in other posts. Furthermore, advising is like leadership, an art. Indeed, it is a special kind of leadership where the leader/advisor has no power, only the ability to convince his partner that what he believes is the right thing to do is right for the partner because it is in his interest. (See Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power). While the US military insists that leadership can be taught, what can be taught are leadership techniques. Likewise, advising techniques (writ very large) can be taught but putting it together on the ground is always an art - and arts are based on natural talent which can't be taught. Talent can be developed but if you don't have it, you can't learn it. So, it is with advising. I taught in the old FAO course and I well recall a number of students who really had no talent for relating to foreign cultures. Most, found out quickly enough and moved on to other kinds of military careers but with an "appreciation" of the difficulty of dealing with a foreign culture (and advising counterparts). At least one went on to a successful career in the FAO field but one in which he was able to avoid any real interaction with counterparts. In his penultimate assignment, his lack of empathy for foreign cultures caught up with him and made him much less successful than he could/should have been in dealing with his American colleagues in an organization populated by FAOs.

Backto the source of all this: I hope that these discussions are helpful to Colin in addressing the problem he originally posed.

Cheers

JohnT

Ok, point taken... though it would be interesting at some point and in some more relevant place to compare the perceptions of the Lansdale-Magsaysay relationship that endure in the US to those that endure in the Philippines. Also worth noting that arguably Magsaysay and Lansdale were effectively worked by the feudal landowners of central Luzon, who created the entire mess in the first place. They emerged with exactly what they wanted: no more Huks and nothing beyond cosmetic reform. Of course they also ended up with another insurgency and a rather more durable one... but that too is another subject!

How do we define an "effective adviser relationship" if not by its outcome?

Many of those we advise are stuck between a rock and a hard place: they talk to us and we have a set of expectations and recommendations, then they talk to their own people, who may have a rather different set of expectations and recommendations. If we think our influence is greater, we're generally fooling ourselves.

The point, of course - again trying to return to something that might be vaguely useful to the OP - is that our tendency to focus on the mechanics of skills, systems, and material is often based on an assumption that we're all basically pulling in the same direction and accepting the same general idea of what needs to be done and how. That assumption is not necessarily valid, and we have to maintain continuous awareness of the other agendas that are in play.

I would respond to your super question that the advisor relationship is only a part of the story. The underlying issue is whether we (and they) have a strategy that effectively addresses the threat. If so, what part does the advising relationship play in it? Advising is never an end in itself. It is a way (in the ends, ways, means paradigm - a method for achieving the ends). the advisor is a means, a resource and an expensive one at that. Moreover, he can, as I said above, not be made but his talent can be developed. So, we measure advising effectiveness, IMO, by asking first if advising is an appropriate way. Then, we ask if it is having the effect on HN performance that we want it to have. Then, we go from there, modify....

So, I would treat your question in terms of the analysis of the strategic problem and the development of a strategy. You, of course, can see that my view is that advising is one of the most useful tools in our kit bag but a difficult one for senior leaders (civilian as well as military) to use effectively. The Lansdale story in Vietnam is a cautionary tale in this regard.

Cheers

JohnT

Since the last time I replied, I've been busy following up some comments from my supervisor and trying to get hold of a number of other experts. So I haven't been following this discussion.

I very much appreciate your thoughts, and most of them will go into the thesis.
The point on the consistency of contractors echos something else I've been told by a U.S. army officer with Liberia experience, and later points Dayuhan about Westerners getting manipulated seem to be the same in Africa: Gerard Prunier: 'in thirty-seven years of studying Africa I have seen more Westerners manipulated by Africans than the other way around.' In Security Sector Reform terms a la the OECD, we need to prioritise local ownership. The problem is that Western style army reconstruction simply does not.

So, interim conclusions:

Drawing on set of cases including Zimbabwe (1980-), NAmibia, Mozambique, South Africa, Bosnia-Herzegovina, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia, DR Congo, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, and Nepal.
I can go through the list of key principles/framework in which I will add the ideas here and others I'm seeking from France and Africa.
But, after that:
*if Namibia does not have an effective army (data insufficient)
*then there are no cases in which a Western style / Western standard army has been sustained over the long term without large scale continuing Western financial and human assistance
*Underscores the reasonably obvious truth: very difficult to build Western standard armies in non Western countries
*Key difference, thanks to Mark Malan and Herbert Howe's book (Ambiguous Order: Military Forces in African States): There has to be a sense of urgency.
The only capable army in SSA apart from the South Africans is the Rwanda Patriotic Army, and they were faced with annihilation if they lost. Corroborated by Israeli and possibly apartheid-era South African experience
*Potential cases that disprove this argument are Namibia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Kenneth Pollack's book proves that Iraq has a history of very poor tactical performance. I have insufficent evidence to say whether the Iraqi Army now has improved it's strategic, operational, and tactical performance.
*Returning to the main reason for my dissertation: creating security for development to take place? Possible in two circumstances:
*For foreseeable future, only with incredibly disproportionate Western levels of effort. We should achieve much more, but because these are non-Western political systems, we cannot achieve half as much.
*Beyond? Only when there is a change in the nature of who the state serves, the wider masses rather than the politico-military elite. And/or when a functioning bureaucratic structure is put in place.

*What can we do about it now? This is not about armies, it's about the political evolution of the state - statebuilding. One has to improve the nature of the state before we can improve the army.

My focus is mostly on Africa, and many of these ideas reflect what I understand about African reality. Whether they reflect Iraq or Afghanistan is another matter.

Thoughts welcome.

I fully understand that the answer is arbitrary but for sake of argument, the late Samuel Huntington posited the following civilizations:
Islamic
Sinic
India
African
Latin American
Western

If memory serves, I have probably missed one or misstated but the general idea is there. I tend to think that Huntington was wrong in detail about his cultures/civilizations but his arbitrary list is as good as any. If he is right - or we simply use his list - then none of the cultures except the Western can possibly succeed in taking good advice. If he is wrong and Latin American culture/civilization is simply a Western variant (as I believe) then why have they been so unsuccessful in learning the Western way of war? Or have they?

Cheers

JohnT

I'm mostly an Asia guy, so we're coming from all over. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if we're looking for large-scale trends.

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Kenneth Pollack's book proves that Iraq has a history of very poor tactical performance.

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Iraq is not alone in this. I suspect that in many cases the cause of consistent poor performance is the selection of military leaders on the basis of personal loyalty to the national leadership, rather than on the basis of competence. When leaders view their own military force as the primary threat to their position, as is often (and often justifiably) the case, this is a natural evolution. In many cases it works adequately, as long as the military in question is only expected to impose internal security against fragmented opposition. Once that military comes up against a capable foreign antagonist or a competent insurgency, it collapses like a watermelon hit by an SUV.

It's easy for the Western adviser to look at this type of military and see exactly what needs to be done to make it effective. The national leadership, on the other hand, is likely to be less concerned with effectiveness than with preserving personal loyalty and personal control. The national leadership may see this as a necessity for its own survival, and may actively seek to undermine reforms that could promote effectiveness but reduce personal loyalty. Just an example of how an adviser's perception of need can vary from the host country counterpart's perception.

Americans in particular often base assessments of efficiency, effectiveness, capability on different criteria than those applied byt local counterparts. All of these are simply measures of the degree to which a system accomplishes its purpose. If we assume that the purpose is "national development" or "national security", a system may seem inefficient. If we understand that the actual purpose of the system is to preserve the wealth and position of the governing elite, everything changes. The point, simply, is that we cannot assume a common purpose... and when divergence of purpose becomes extreme, it may be better just to walk away.

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What can we do about it now? This is not about armies, it's about the political evolution of the state - statebuilding. One has to improve the nature of the state before we can improve the army.

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I've done this rant before, but I think it's relevant.

We can't build states. Nobody can, because states aren't built, states grow. The difference may be semantic, but it's significant: when we speak of "state-building" we slant ourselves toward an engineering proceess, one that only requires the right plans, tools, and execution. That's not realistic, and I think if we draw our metaphors from agriculture rather than engineering, and think of cultivating rather than building, we emerge with a more accurate perspective on what we're trying to do.

We also have to accept that the process by which states grow is often very messy. The US fought one of history's bloodiest civil wars and carried out one of history's great genocides on its way to nationhood. The ever so civilized western Europeans... well, we all know what they went through on the way to where they are. Why should we expect today's emrging nations to sort out their external and internal problems in an orderly and peaceful fashion when we couldn't do it ourselves? We may at times be able to mitigate the mess and prevent it from overflowing... but we're deceiving ourselves if we think we can make state-growing anything but an uncertain and sloppy process.

Rambing off topic, time to stop!

JohnT: My criteria for 'non-Western' is non US, Europe to NATO boundary line inc Baltics, White Commonwealth (NZ/Aust/SA/Canada, basically ABCA+), and, without thinking much about it, yes Latin America. Basically on Latin America the Portuguese and Spanish built it their way, industrialised = Western.

My level of knowledge on Latin America is low, but I would argue the Argentinians in the Falklands proved they knew the Western way of war, just weren't very good at it (...all arguments about Falklands flow.. conscripts vs Brit regulars etc) War of the Pacific was a 'conventional' war, Arg/Chilean standoff is 'conventional' etc. Uruguayans do OK in the DRC with MONUC - better than Ukrainians/Russians in Bosnia!!

Dayuhan I've just run your lat/long coordinates, and I realise I really need to reread American Caesar again. Then we could have a long discussion about the readiness level of the Phil National Guard and McArthur's decision to prioritise the Guard over the regulars up to 41. But sticking on topic, yes, I'm looking for people from all over and thus am very grateful to get an Asian expert.

Your 'rant' is bang on topic. It reflects my brief and sketchy research on the origins of professionalism in the US and British Armies... Upton's reforms (thankyou Samuel Huntingdon & Soldier & the State) and the abolition of purchase of commissions in the British Army. Even so, Isby suggests that only the Wehrmacht was really competent in 1939, and we (the World War II Western alliance, headed by US and UK) our armies had to learn from the way the Germans did things. Apparently the British Army officer selection system was copied off the Germans after the end of the Second World War by British psychologists.

So states have to evolve.. and we can't do it for them. Thus the question is, does it all come down to the slow evolution of indigenous democratisation?
And what the flying f*** does that mean for our agenda in the worst case, the DR Congo?

Hi Colin,

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Originally Posted by Colin Robinson

So states have to evolve.. and we can't do it for them. Thus the question is, does it all come down to the slow evolution of indigenous democratisation?

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Why assume that governance structures will flow towards democratization in any form? Democracies have a lot of functional requirements (education, leisure time hence decent economy, fairly open communications) and they are stricter for the modern democracies (universally applicable legal system, large bureaucracy hence an even more productive economy to support it). Democracies also have a fairly lousy track record of lasting in any efficient form, usually devolving into mobocracies (Athens, Syracuse), oligarchies (Rome and, possibly, the US), bureaucratic oligarchies (Byzantium, China, Canada & the EU).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Colin Robinson

And what the flying f*** does that mean for our agenda in the worst case, the DR Congo?

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Don't try to create a "Western state" or a "western" army; build a force that matches the stablest state form achievable, which may be a mutated form of a tribal confederacy, albeit with the mandatory democratic trappings.

A lot of this goes back to working with, rather than against, the local culture both civil and military.

Cheers,

Marc

Colin --
I wrote a paper here somewhere giving the "Reader's Digest (r)" version of some of the issues you discuss.

My BOG experience is in Afghanistan and Estonia, although I have done security assistance work elsewhere at the staff level.

I began my experience with SFA as a non-believer. Formal SA and FID were "good enough". However, as I dug into the issue, I became a rabid convert, zealous to the point of St. Paul.

A coupla observations.
1. When you say armies, I believe that you are talking about joint forces in US parlance. Even with this expansion, SFA has to eventually expand to other security forces -- police, constabulary, ICE, etc. This was one of our failings in the past. By focusing on the military, we sometimes created conditions that were not sustainable in a "western" context, e.g. civilian control of the military, military fighting (or deterring wars), police enforcing laws, etc.

2. I believe that Korea is an example of things working well over time. When the north invaded in 1950, ROKA forces with their American advisors did not perform well. By 1967, the ROKA had defensive responsibility for the entire de-militarized zone with the north, with the exception of a relatively narrow front along MSR 1. Additionally, they were able to send 2 divisions to Vietnam, Tiger and White Horse if memory serves (it often doesn't, so look everything up). Now the US plays no real tactical role there at all.

3. By focusing on military forces, we sometimes neglected the infrastructure it takes to sustain the effort. Training and equipping tactical units turns into a never-ending process. Somewhere along the line, sustaining organizations and capabilities need to be added to the mix -- manning, training, equipping, maintaining, etc.

4. By focusing on military forces, we sometimes set up conditions for military dictatorships, some under the guise of pseudo-democracies. This occasionally became an embarassment, especially in Latin America.

Now, you can expand all of the above, implement vigorously, and still be unsuccessful. Why? I would submit that many of the resulting shortcomings are the product of inadequate advisor development and lack of deep enough engagement with the host nation/organization. There are probably others.

SFA is a powerful weapon, but it is not fire and forget.

Bring it on.

Hey Colin,
Thanks for the emails and interesting read !

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Colin Robinson

So states have to evolve.. and we can't do it for them. Thus the question is, does it all come down to the slow evolution of indigenous democratisation?
And what the flying f*** does that mean for our agenda in the worst case, the DR Congo?

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The only thing I can add at this point similar to our correspondence is, Western technology and ideals will never fix the DRC. If the Africans don't do it on their own terms and time, it will never happen.

IMO, the single most common denominator in all our failures is our lack of understanding...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by marct

Hi Colin,
Don't try to create a "Western state" or a "western" army;...
A lot of this goes back to working with, rather than against, the local culture both civil and military.

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For more than a decade I watched millions dumped into a bottomless pit and the results were as follows...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Old Eagle

4. By focusing on military forces, we sometimes set up conditions for military dictatorships, some under the guise of pseudo-democracies. This occasionally became an embarrassment...

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You'd make a good Army NCO :cool:

Regards, Stan

Hey Stan,

What can I say? I've been reading Tom Kratman's latest :D!

Leaving that aside (totally unpaid advert, but The Lotus Eaters is worth it!), the idea that we can go in and "fix" a culture is just laughable to me. F&#k it up, yeah, but turn it into something like us? NFW. I just wish that some of my PC colleagues would realize that free will (and free choice) means that people can choose to live as they like rather than how some ideologue supposes that they should.

TTFN

Marc

ps. Stan, wish you had been in Ottawa a couple of weeks back, Absolute kick-ass concert; Victoria 1605 Requiem, Allegri's Miserie mei, plus other "stuff". You would have loved it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Colin Robinson

And what the flying f*** does that mean for our agenda in the worst case, the DR Congo?

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An obvious starting point would be to ask what exactly is our agenda in the DR Congo, or anywhere else we contemplate involvement. What exactly are we trying to accomplish, and why? Are these goals achievable with the resources we have available for the task?

Fairly obvious questions, but they need to be asked and realistically answered.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Colin Robinson

I really need to reread American Caesar again. Then we could have a long discussion about the readiness level of the Phil National Guard and McArthur's decision to prioritise the Guard over the regulars up to 41.

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Well, since tomorrow is the anniversary of the Bataan surrender (national holiday here)... you could argue that MacArthur's involvement with the Philippine Commonwealth was an early example of an American advisory relationship, and thus that it's relevant to the discussion. Beyond that, of course it's a difficult slice of history to examine clearly, especially based on secondary sources... hard to tell where the legend and the ego leave off and the reality begins. There are certainly many criticisms that can be aimed at MacArthur's preparations (I've been known to make them myself), but the underestimation of Japanese capacity was hardly limited to MacArthur, and it's by no means clear that other courses of action would have had materially better results, given the available time and resources.

Another interesting early attempt at the advisory role would be the relationship between Stilwell and Chiang Kai-Shek... again, one where it is easy to criticize and difficult to convincingly establish that another approach would have done better.

To relate that tangent to the DR Congo... selecting unachievable goals is an excellent prescription for failure. If we insist on sending someone out to ride a unicycle up Mt Everest we shouldn't expect a triumphant return.

Thanks guys.. lots of stuff to chew through.
MarcT: Great stuff.. fantastic for my conclusions thinking. My prospective external examiner writes on democratisation and security, so these extra perspectives are great.
Old Eagle - one small point, I understand most of the acronyms and figured out BOG, but not ICE unless we're talking modifications to German F-4s which I believe we are not. What is ICE? No, my thesis specifically focuses on armies as armed state land forces, not joint Air/Land/Navy/Marines/SOF, or other security forces. Could you point me at your paper - it would be really useful. What's the title? I have incorporated the need for institutions etc, maint/logs, it's one of the main points from Zimbabwe from 1980 onwards. I have noticed the tendency of the United States to focus on building up armies and armed forces as opposed to police, health, other government departments etc. Can someone fill me in on why the US focuses on the army and armed forces so much? As a Kiwi yes I'd believe that often the army is the wrong institution to start with.
Stan - voice with multiple years of rubber-hits-the-road experience in a very bad place welcome. My time in Kinshasa and Kisangani was limited to two weeks. Would like to go back some time. Question, for the East, is French or Swahili better? And where would be best, if Swahili is best, to learn Swahili?
Dayuhan - as ADP 1 Land Operations puts it, Selection and Maintenance of the Aim. Always important

Hi John,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

I tend to think that Huntington was wrong in detail about his cultures/civilizations but his arbitrary list is as good as any. If he is right - or we simply use his list - then none of the cultures except the Western can possibly succeed in taking good advice. If he is wrong and Latin American culture/civilization is simply a Western variant (as I believe) then why have they been so unsuccessful in learning the Western way of war? Or have they?

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Well, as you know, I have a pretty low opinion of Huntington's work; too close to that of de Gobineau for my taste. I think that Huntington make a quintessential error in assigning causality via a black box to genetics, rather than looking to the environment as a second primary cause. This leads to his confusion of culture [area], which is a symbolic interface of a group of people with their environment and daily life, with something "absolute" and essentialist; ideal types which may be rank ordered on a singular line of "perfection". Admittedly, Huntington doesn't go quite as far as de Gobineau, but the base flaw is still there.

When we are talking about a "way of war", we are talking at multiple levels: philosophical, strategic, operational, technological and social to name some of them. The crucial ones, IMHO, are the philosophical, technological and social, with the strategic, operational and tactical flowing from them.

The philosophical defines the purpose of the game - why do we fight? when do we fight? to what ends do we fight? - and is bound up in a more generalized stance towards "reality". It also tends to place relative moral valuations on both the act of fighting (in any setting) and on those who fight.

The social level defines the general ways in which a group can fight, and is highly connected with the technological means of both fighting and, more generally, the use of technology within a society. These two, in turn, feed back into the philosophical level and change it over time.

So, when we speak of a "way of war" what are we actually talking about? It isn't, and really can't be, some "thing" that can be laid out and described in static detail since its components are constantly changing (well, at least for the past 12,000 years or so). What we can see are quasi-stable equilibrium points where we have relatively stable changes in the social, technological and philosophical roots of a "way of war".

Just to get back to your specific questions / ponders about Latin America, what answers would we get if we dumped Huntington's fatally flawed model and looked at reality instead? Probably the key areas would be the social and technological. Put simply, there is just no way that any of the Latin American states could (or would) become industrialized nations; their environments don't force them to (which, BTW, is what happened in England and the US, albeit for different reasons). Without mass industrialization and the consequent economic surplus to support massive bureaucracies, expensive militaries, large public school systems (for literacy), etc., you can't actually field the type of force that we tend to assume is "Western". Perhaps more importantly, without 100+ years of social organization around that industrial model, you don't have cultural expectations of "rightness" surrounding that way of war (actually, it's an exaptation of social organization between the social and military spheres).

Anyway, 'nuff of that - I'm going to get some more coffee and try and wake up ;).

Cheers,

Marc

Colin --

Immigration & Customs Enforcement -- so non-military, non-beat police security forces.

Colin - I generally agree with your non-Western class except that I would put Japan into the Western states.
Dayuhan - Agree that nation building and state building are poor shorthand. What we are really trying[/U] to do is assist a state in achieving some mutually agreed upon goal(s).
Marct - free will, yes. choice, yes. Best achievable goal, yes (which may be sub-optimal from what we would desire). Democracy: my experience and research indicates that most societies and cultures have institutions that are compatible with political democracy. The trick is to identify them and work with the hosts to strengthen those insititutions in an attempt to move toward democracy over time. Although, over a long period of adaptation the institutions are not likely to look like the Canadian Parliament or the US congress, if successful, they will begin to play similar roles in making decisions and holding leaders accounable to followers. Brazil, a quintessentially Latin American state is, today, an industrial powerhouse.

Cheers

JohnT

Hi John,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

free will, yes. choice, yes. Best achievable goal, yes (which may be sub-optimal from what we would desire).

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Yup - humans is just ornery folks :D.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

Democracy: my experience and research indicates that most societies and cultures have institutions that are compatible with political democracy. The trick is to identify them and work with the hosts to strengthen those insititutions in an attempt to move toward democracy over time. Although, over a long period of adaptation the institutions are not likely to look like the Canadian Parliament or the US congress, if successful, they will begin to play similar roles in making decisions and holding leaders accounable to followers. Brazil, a quintessentially Latin American state is, today, an industrial powerhouse.

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Some really good points, John. One of the problems I have with a lot of the assumptions about "building a democracy" is that function follows form, so that if "we" impose a social structure on a group "they" will become like "us". Pretty naive stuff, but it is often unchallenged.

Personally, I think it is much better to look at the desirable set of social relations that we wish to encourage. Do we want leaders held accountable for their actions and, if so, how and by what mechanism(s)? Do we even want "leaders" in the Western sense of the term, i.e. people who hold an office which, by virtue of holding that office, have the social right to act in certain situations? Maybe the culture we are looking at has different criteria for becoming a leader, and different checks on their powers.

One of the problems I've seen with imposed democracies is that they tend to break the cultural controls on leaders without having the time to bring in the types of cultural controls that we have developed over centuries, and this has some pretty serious implications.

Let me just play out one example and try and tie it more closely into Colin's project.....

How would / should we go about advising a military that is based in a culture with a clan based "aristocracy"? Well, leadership is generally determined by blood rather than office, but there are almost always narratives that define what a "good" leader is. Perhaps more importantly, most such societies have three forms of class mobility: one (usually) "religious", and two based on para-kinship systems (marriage into a clan and adoption into a clan).

These forms of class mobility, in turn, act as controls upon the power of leaders. Often, the "religious" form acts as the conscience of the leader and, in some cases, has the power to destroy their legitimacy. As an example, think about the effects of excommunication in, say, the 12-13th centuries which voided all oaths of fealty.

The two para-kinship forms function somewhat differently. Adoption allows for people from outside the class who are really good at doing something that is a characteristic of the "leadership class" to be brought into that class. So, for example, if you happen to have someone who was born as a peasant who shows an true talent for leading in a military setting, you can adopt them and retain the characteristic of military leadership for that class. Usually, this is justified as a case of (the) God(s) testing us but, functionally, what it does is to provide a way for talented people to get into the social roles they should be in: a Human Resource Management system that works :cool:.

Marriage into clans may act either as a surrogate for adoption, i.e. by bringing in a talented person, or it can act as a way of establishing linkages between clans, thereby providing kinship based mechanisms for dealing with inter-clan conflict that otherwise might spin out of control.

Okay, so what type of a military system would this type of social system produce?

Well, for one thing, "officers" would be drawn almost exclusively from the leadership class, and there would probably be a class-based ceiling on promotion for people outside of that class that could only be circumvented by marriage or adoption. You might see commissions being bought, or the establishment of a tradition of service from the great families. You would probably see a fairly flattened promotion scale as well with a lot of long term NCOs etc. (think "family retainer" style, although that's just one variant).

The simplest way to modify such a system would be to construct some mechanism that would ritually "count" (in the very broad sense) as a third type of para-kinship connection, probably based around a particular military unit or institution. So, for example, establishing a military academy for promising people primarily from the non-leadership class for those who have been recognized as having leadership talent. A good case in poit is the Brit derived traditions that make a man a "gentleman", which is a social class, by fiat upon commissioning.

Since these cultures also tend to be historically bound in time (unlike the US and Canada which are more future oriented), you could also see the establishment of a parallel NCO academy with preferred access for the children of current / past NCO's and an emphasis on individual skills development.

I haven't really talked about the "religious" form of class mobility yet, but that actually does play into it in three ways. First, in this type of a culture, you are going to find a long term relationship between families and units. That could be a regimental system, or it could be broader than that (In Thailand, for example, it is based more around armies than regiments). Regardless of the system, some type of military unit organization becomes a para-kinship system and network in its own right, and that system has obligations to its members that go beyond the purely "military" ones. That needs to be systematized and upheld.

The second "religious" function lies in having a class that stands outside of the clans / great families which has the power (usually influence, but sometimes outright fiat power), to force them to non-kinetic forms of conflict resolution. In "our" systems, this is the control of the military by the civilian government (Parliament and Congress both have a quasi-religious status; cf Durkheim and Mary Douglas on this). That type of quasi-religious status probably doesn't exist in a clan society where the great families / clans will control both the government and the military, so some other quasi-religious institution is necessary: it might be a Church, it might be the Ancestors, it might be the Ummah, it might be freely available Sorcery. Regardless of its form, however, there has to be something that can act as a check on the leaders of the great families / clans.

The third "religious" function is what we might call "philosophical" or "ideological", and its effect is to construct, maintain and promulgate an ontology, an epistemology and a metaphysics that supports the clan system (again, this gets back to Durkheim's notion that "religion" is society worshiping an idealized form of itself). This ties in with my earlier point that in order to "tweak" a military organization, one has to construct ritually acceptable substitutes that will "count", e.g. the creation of military academies. I would also suspect that the concept of a "calling" or "vocation" would probably be emphasized.

So, what would this mean in terms of advising on a re-organization? Well, for one thing, you couldn't use the "cookie-cutter Captain" approach so beloved of the US military; that's based on a bureaucratic office ontology that is totally at odds with the much more individualistic "calling / vocation" ontology. Second, whatever HRM system you put in place would have to be both more individualistic and more unit focused aimed at long ties rather than placements.

Third, you are likely to see a really heavy class based distinction on service choice. Given current technologies, I would expect that air forces would be the highest status, especially since they are the most costly. There is a danger that the higher status services will suck up too much of whatever limited capital is available, and that has some serious implications for other forces. I can think of several ways around this problem, but I just haven't thought them though enough yet to put them down. Maybe later :wry:.

So, back to "democracy".....

If we define the ostensive function of a democracy as providing the greatest good for the greatest number regardless of the actual form of governance structures, then this type of advising should help a culture move towards that. Obviously, this is a really general set of comments and any particular situation would have to be shaped to fit the realities on the ground.

Cheers,

Marc

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Colin Robinson

Apparently the British Army officer selection system was copied off the Germans after the end of the Second World War by British psychologists.

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I'd take all that with a huge pinch of salt. Based on some years of study I'd attribute German tactical skill to the devolvement of mission success to the lowest possible level (individuals) and giving them very simple conceptual tools with which to work. It really is that simple.

Training world class infantry (and thus Armies) is easy to do. What stops us doing that is all the stuff folks think is important, rather than what we know is. A lot of what folks things makes good armies and good training is faith-based.

There is good evidence that Armies built on Individual Responsibility, Merit and Shame and that prize results over process are usually a lot better than those that do not.

know about "an officer and a gentleman by Act of Congress.";) We (the US) borrow a whole lot from the Brits but have modified it in any number of ways. The American military officer corps has always seen itself in larg part as a vocation but that view is complicated by the militia, the Volunteers (1845 - 1900), and the Reserve (and Nasty Guard). What is interesting about the American military in this regard is that there is no way you can tell by looking at a soldier, sailor, airman, Marine (or officer in any of those services) whether one is regular or reserve component.

What does any of this have to do with what Colin is talking about? Well, culture matters both in terms of what we perceive and what our counterparts perceive. Our SF in el Salvador saw a failure on the part of the ESAF to have an effective first line management which they attributed to a lack of a professional NCO corps. But an NCO corps was seen by the ESAF as a threat tot their officer corps so they resisted that as the solution. BTW, we never solved that problem, although given time, intensity of focus, and consistency of players, we might have come up with an answer as long as it met Salvadoran perceived needs.

Finally, I like Wilf's notion of merit + with the qualification that it adopting such a system must fit within the frame of reference of the host.

Cheers

JohnT

Quote:

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

Agree that nation building and state building are poor shorthand. What we are really trying[/U] to do is assist a state in achieving some mutually agreed upon goal(s).

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True, but our assistance generally takes the form of large quantities of money and material, which is seen as desirable, and advice, which is often seen as not desirable. This creates a powerful incentive to nominally "agree" to goals that a party may have no desire or intention to pursue, assuming they can us the money and the material to their own ends while ignoring the advice.

We need to be careful about the incentives we set up. If it becomes clear that we are going to shower funds on whoever agrees with our goals, we can expect a whole raft of people announcing solemnly that they share our goals. A bit of cynicism may be called for in assessing such claims.

Dayuhan, I hear what you are saying and all too often you are right. But what I mean by advice - and this is the way I practiced it as a civilian USG type, soldier, and free lance researcher - is that my advice to my counterparts was just my best guess as to what would work to achieve their goals. I never claimed to have a monopoly on truth and I always listened to their views. Sometimes their views would come out on top; sometimes mine; most often some amalgam of both brought out by mutually respectful discussion during which there was quite a bit of disagreement. My experience was that this worked and whenever I saw this approach tried, the outcome tended to be good. What didn't work was a "my way or the highway" approach. that only pissed the counterpart off. The other thing that never worked was not listening to one's counterpart's analysis of a problem and assuming that you (your guys) understood the problem. Mostly, they (and you) didn't. That is often the source of your observation that the counterpart will simply agree with you in public while continuing to do the thing his own way - which rarely advances a solution to the still incorrectly defined problem. One of the reasons for our continuing to make this kind of mistake is the relatively short term assignment policy. A one year tour is simply too short to get a solid grounding in all the situational and personality quirks. Two years would be much better with, generally, return to the same area after going home for "reblueing." Still, as with all such generalizations, this won't work all the time and needs to be modified to fit circumstances.

Cheers

JohnT

Colin,

I have read through the thread, but have we not missed those countries where post-conflict and post-intervention there has been a long term relationship between the West (generally) and the national military?

A few examples come to mind: RoK and Taiwan (with the USA); Kenya, Oman and Malaysia (with the UK). Some of these relationships have lasted, others like Taiwan have been ceased.

Hey Marc !

Quote:

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Originally Posted by marct

Hey Stan,

What can I say? I've been reading Tom Kratman's latest :D!

ps. Stan, wish you had been in Ottawa a couple of weeks back, Absolute kick-ass concert; Victoria 1605 Requiem, Allegri's Miserie mei, plus other "stuff". You would have loved it.

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I hate you - As I pine away with a balmy 5 degrees of Estonian Spring listening to renditions of the Grateful Dead on the radio :D Sounds like something I would have indeed enjoyed ! Seems Tom Kratman (and Odom) has disappeared and no doubt on another journey.

Hey Colin,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Colin Robinson

Stan - voice with multiple years of rubber-hits-the-road experience in a very bad place welcome. My time in Kinshasa and Kisangani was limited to two weeks. Would like to go back some time. Question, for the East, is French or Swahili better? And where would be best, if Swahili is best, to learn Swahili?

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As you already have French under your belt (and would have to be retaught Belgian French to comprehend the Zairois (and truly infuriate the real French) :rolleyes: ), I would recommend Lingala over Swahili regardless of the region. Even in Rwanda I got by with Lingala. I learned Lingala mostly by default working with the military in Gbadolite and Kinshasa, but it came in handy all over. You may have also noticed that even with Lingala or Swahili, they still use much of the French language merely to borrow words especially during bartering. I know some humanitarian deminers that found they were lost with just French and began learning Lingala too.

BTW, a General in DIA call Zaire "one of the most inhospitable places on earth". I often referred to the country in message traffic as it was always known --- The Heart of Darkness.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by davidbfpo

I have read through the thread, but have we not missed those countries where post-conflict and post-intervention there has been a long term relationship between the West (generally) and the national military?

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David's got a good point. We have some post-intervention success stories that rarely make the press. Makes me wonder what recipe we used then, that obviously aren't working now.

Thanks all.
David, the reason that I haven't been looking at those type of armies is my case restriction for the PhD - basically post 1990 and after UN and other intervention forces. My 14 + 1 case studies are: Zimbabwe 1980 -, Nambia (UNTAG) 1990, Mozambique (ONUMOZ) 1993 -, South Africa (nobody/BMATT), 1994 -, Bosnia-Herzegovina (1, MPRI, 2, Defence Reform Commission etc), 1996-, East Timor (INTERFET) 1999, Sierra Leone (British & UNAMSIL) around 1998-99 -, Afghanistan (OEF) (2002 - ), DR Congo (2003 - ) Iraq (2003 - ), Liberia (UNMIL) (2004-), S Sudan (2005-), Nepal (2006) -, and Kosovo (KFOR) (2008-). The key question is how to provide security for development, with an African bias because Africa is usually under-examined.

Thus places like Korea are not included because they're Cold War and now developed. That does not mean that there are not valuable lessons to draw.

Stan, thanks. But what about Lingala in N Kivu / S Kivu? Still applies? The thing is that if one goes as a English-language teacher / foreign language student, which is one of the things I'm idly considering, Tanzania is much easier and safer to learn Swahili in. Never mind, these possibilities are years away - but good to get views on the options.

Colin,

Thanks for the clarification, which was what I suspected.

How about Rwanda? I am aware that the RPF was Uganda-based and after victory became the new RPA. I know the UK has been involved in SSR there, although without any details.

A long time ago the UK had a small BMATT in Uganda, IIRC after Idi Amin's fall and they may not have stayed for long - due to the lack of security.

What has been the impact on Kenya of a continuing UK military presence since independence? The presence is ostensibly for the training of UK troops and as the US Embassy attack showed there was a UK engineer capability available. I understand there is often an infantry battalion in country all year.

Another aspect is the deployment of 'new' armies in UN / AU peacekeeping, what impact does that have on a national military? Three African countries on your list have participated: Namibia, Zimbabwe and RSA (I include the DRC World War).

Just a few thoughts.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

Dayuhan, I hear what you are saying and all too often you are right. But what I mean by advice - and this is the way I practiced it as a civilian USG type, soldier, and free lance researcher - is that my advice to my counterparts was just my best guess as to what would work to achieve their goals. I never claimed to have a monopoly on truth and I always listened to their views. Sometimes their views would come out on top; sometimes mine; most often some amalgam of both brought out by mutually respectful discussion during which there was quite a bit of disagreement.

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I agree that's the ideal way to do it... i just feel that our approach often makes that ideal more difficult to attain. The perception that "shared goals" are a precondition to US support creates an incentive for our partners to conceal goals that may not be shared and exaggerate those that are. At the same time, Americans often assume that our goals are universal and of self-evident virtue, and may not perceive that the other party may have divergent goals.

Disagreement, in these cases, is a good thing and one to be encouraged: it means that the goal divergences are out in the open and being discussed, and can likely be managed. If there's no disagreement, either everyone is on exactly the same page and pulling in exactly the same direction (yeah, right) or the goal divergences are not being recognized, which is not so good: they've a way of emerging to bite us on the ass at critical moments.

Of course there are times when there's outright manipulation. Lots of people wistfully remember the good old days (for them) when the word "communist" was the key to the US treasury. Then that stopped working, and all of a sudden here's the word "terrorist".... ka-ching. Of course that's not always the case, but it's something that we need to be alert to, and in general I'd say our people need to be more aware of the reality of divergent goals and the need to address and manage them.

If there's one piece of advice I'd give an adviser-to-be it would be this...

If you see people doing things that make no sense to you, don't assume they're stupid, irrational, or deranged. Assume that there is some factor in the picture that you don't see - because there always is.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

A one year tour is simply too short to get a solid grounding in all the situational and personality quirks. Two years would be much better with, generally, return to the same area after going home for "reblueing."

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With this I'd agree completely, but would add an additional concern with rapid turnover: Americans are typically comfortable with institutional relationships, but many of the cultures we work with think in more personal terms, and a relationship with one individual may not be inherited by a successor simply because they both represent the same institution. Of course rotation is inevitable, but we need to be more aware that a counterpart may see their relationship as one with an individual, not with the US Government, and this may take time to rebuild.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Colin Robinson

The key question is how to provide security for development, with an African bias because Africa is usually under-examined.

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That of course brings us to the question of what development is, and how to provide it, which is often even thornier than the problem of achieving security! Hopefully you don't have to deal with that one...

Nah, I'm still around, but if I have nothing to say on a given subject then there's no sense saying it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stan

Hey Marc !



I hate you - As I pine away with a balmy 5 degrees of Estonian Spring listening to renditions of the Grateful Dead on the radio :D Sounds like something I would have indeed enjoyed ! Seems Tom Kratman (and Odom) has disappeared and no doubt on another journey.

Hey Colin,



As you already have French under your belt (and would have to be retaught Belgian French to comprehend the Zairois (and truly infuriate the real French) :rolleyes: ), I would recommend Lingala over Swahili regardless of the region. Even in Rwanda I got by with Lingala. I learned Lingala mostly by default working with the military in Gbadolite and Kinshasa, but it came in handy all over. You may have also noticed that even with Lingala or Swahili, they still use much of the French language merely to borrow words especially during bartering. I know some humanitarian deminers that found they were lost with just French and began learning Lingala too.

BTW, a General in DIA call Zaire "one of the most inhospitable places on earth". I often referred to the country in message traffic as it was always known --- The Heart of Darkness.



David's got a good point. We have some post-intervention success stories that rarely make the press. Makes me wonder what recipe we used then, that obviously aren't working now.

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Originally Posted by marct

Gesnippt

Just to get back to your specific questions / ponders about Latin America, what answers would we get if we dumped Huntington's fatally flawed model and looked at reality instead? Probably the key areas would be the social and technological. Put simply, there is just no way that any of the Latin American states could (or would) become industrialized nations; their environments don't force them to (which, BTW, is what happened in England and the US, albeit for different reasons). Without mass industrialization and the consequent economic surplus to support massive bureaucracies, expensive militaries, large public school systems (for literacy), etc., you can't actually field the type of force that we tend to assume is "Western". Perhaps more importantly, without 100+ years of social organization around that industrial model, you don't have cultural expectations of "rightness" surrounding that way of war (actually, it's an exaptation of social organization between the social and military spheres).

Anyway, 'nuff of that - I'm going to get some more coffee and try and wake up ;).

Cheers,

Marc

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If by "fatally flawed" you mean Huntington's writing off or Latin and Orthodox civilization as distinct from, and generally inimical to, Western Civlization, I am inclined to agree with you. I think I know why he did it: Because with those two in our camp, and portrayed on a map, it looks like we are well poised to dominate the world for the next couple of thousand years, but without them, it looks as if we're on our last legs.

Conversely, I don't know how one argues against the notion that, historically, conflict along civilizational lines among peers and near peers tend to be particularly intractable and bloody, since it usually is.

I'm inclined to disagree that Latin states "cannot" become industrialized, in part because some of them seem to be, in part because some of them have been for some time, and in part because the opportunity is opening for them as the core west deindustrializes and shifts ever more to service. This is not to say that they will industrialize well, or honestly / without massive corruption, or efficiently, or anything along those lines. But, if you look at countries capable of building, say, tanks - not bad measures of industrialization - among the few countries that can, can because they have, are Brazil and Argentina. (Though, admittedly, the TAM was rather light and based on a German design.)

has made any number of very good aricraft that are being bought by the US among others.

Dayuhan, accord at last!:eek:

Cheers

JohnT

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Originally Posted by Tom Kratman

This is not to say that they will industrialize well, or honestly / without massive corruption, or efficiently, or anything along those lines.

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If dishonesty, corruption, and inefficiency - or to add a few, environmental devastation, sweatshop labor, union-busting, etc - are signs of not industrializing well, then I'm not sure anyone has ever industrialized well. All of these and more were present in abundance during the early stages of industrialization in the US and Europe, and in industrializing Asia.

Political, economic, and military transitions are rarely smooth and elegant, and those who expect the transitions of others to be smoother and more elegant than ours were are likely to be disappointed. There are few things as strange to me as hearing, say, Western Europeans wonder
why the emergence of nations and the settlement of international and intranational disputes in Africa is so complicated and so often violent. I seem to vaguely recall that the same process in Europe produced just a wee bit of mess, possibly even more.

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

Dayuhan, accord at last!:eek:

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There goes my reputation...

Hi Tom,

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Originally Posted by Tom Kratman

If by "fatally flawed" you mean Huntington's writing off or Latin and Orthodox civilization as distinct from, and generally inimical to, Western Civlization, I am inclined to agree with you. I think I know why he did it: Because with those two in our camp, and portrayed on a map, it looks like we are well poised to dominate the world for the next couple of thousand years, but without them, it looks as if we're on our last legs.

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Oh, it's flawed at that level, too, but that wasn't what I meant. His entire thesis is based on a fatal flaw which, at it's root, is the association of a "civilization" with a genetic grouping. In reality, there are three fatal flaws in it. The first is that he doesn't understand genetics and uses "culture" (actually "civilization") as a proxy for it. The second is that he doesn't understand genetic variances and the interplay between genetic groupings and cultural groupings. The third fatal flaw is that he doesn't understand the relationship of culture as a selection criterion in natural selection.

Given those three flaws, I would have to chcracterize his exclusion of the Latin and Orthodox "civilizations" as a minor peccadillo :wry:.

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Originally Posted by Tom Kratman

Conversely, I don't know how one argues against the notion that, historically, conflict along civilizational lines among peers and near peers tend to be particularly intractable and bloody, since it usually is.

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It's a theoretical distinction that flows from his flaws. Given his model, it's the only possible solution. However, his model cannot account for the rise of trans-civilizational actors or intra-civilizational ones either.

Hmmm, let's see: how would Huntington account for the rise of the Cosmos? What "civilization" would they be part of? (Note: for those who don't know what I'm talking about, this is a scenario that is playing out right now that Tom examines in some of his books)

At best, Huntington's model would have to assume that such groups were a) part of a "civilization" and b) were diasporic in some sense. He would have to model them, since he uses an organicist analogy for civilization, as an "infection" of some type (cf Mein Kampf, Book 1, Ch. 11 for an example of this).

Getting away from the flaws in Huntington's model for a minute, and back to your observation about peer and near peer competition, sure they happen and, you're quite right, only a twit would argue against that. Of course, "competition" doesn't necessarily mean conflict, it could be economic, it could be status oriented (think about the monumental architecture of the early Sumerian city states), etc. I'm not saying that it won't be conflict, just that that will not be a constant.

Furthermore, it is likely that in any long run of peer / near-peer competition, sets of "conventions" governing both competition and conflict will appear as a way of reducing the risk of total annihilation. A good example of this was the development of the Five Empires agreements (~1800 - 1300 bce) between some pretty different "civilizations who were all peers / near peers. On the flip side, sometimes they just end up annihilating one another...

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Originally Posted by Tom Kratman

I'm inclined to disagree that Latin states "cannot" become industrialized, in part because some of them seem to be, in part because some of them have been for some time, and in part because the opportunity is opening for them as the core west deindustrializes and shifts ever more to service. This is not to say that they will industrialize well, or honestly / without massive corruption, or efficiently, or anything along those lines. But, if you look at countries capable of building, say, tanks - not bad measures of industrialization - among the few countries that can, can because they have, are Brazil and Argentina. (Though, admittedly, the TAM was rather light and based on a German design.)

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Tom, I've got to agree with Dayuhan here:

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Originally Posted by Dayuhan

If dishonesty, corruption, and inefficiency - or to add a few, environmental devastation, sweatshop labor, union-busting, etc - are signs of not industrializing well, then I'm not sure anyone has ever industrialized well. All of these and more were present in abundance during the early stages of industrialization in the US and Europe, and in industrializing Asia.

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Can they industrialize? Sure they can, that really isn't the question for me at least. For me, it's more a matter of how they industrialize, using what relational model. Britain (and the US) industrialized along a Robber Baron mode of relations which, in the case of Britain, had already been a cultural vector for several hundred years before the invention of the Watts engine (the Enclosure Movement). The key problem, at a social level, is how do you bring industrialists into a beneficial relationship with the rest of society? In Britain, they did it in part by creating new Peers of the Realm. and intermarriage with the great families. In the US, they did it by letting industrialists control large parts of the political process, although I don't think that option is as stable as the British one.

So, how is it being done in Brazil and Argentina?

Then there is the issue of capability vs. utility. Sure, both Brazil and Argentina can produce tanks, but should they? What are the social relations of their society likely to produce if large numbers of tanks become standard equipment?

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Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

has made any number of very good aricraft that are being bought by the US among others.

Dayuhan, accord at last!:eek:

Cheers

JohnT

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Embraer, yes. Seems to me I recall some others. Being a gruntish type, I'm usually inclined to think ground equipment. My flaw, I know.

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Originally Posted by Dayuhan

If dishonesty, corruption, and inefficiency - or to add a few, environmental devastation, sweatshop labor, union-busting, etc - are signs of not industrializing well, then I'm not sure anyone has ever industrialized well. All of these and more were present in abundance during the early stages of industrialization in the US and Europe, and in industrializing Asia.

Political, economic, and military transitions are rarely smooth and elegant, and those who expect the transitions of others to be smoother and more elegant than ours were are likely to be disappointed. There are few things as strange to me as hearing, say, Western Europeans wonder
why the emergence of nations and the settlement of international and intranational disputes in Africa is so complicated and so often violent. I seem to vaguely recall that the same process in Europe produced just a wee bit of mess, possibly even more.



There goes my reputation...

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They may well do it worse than us, and are perhaps unlikely to do it any better, but yes.