Tentative Guidelines for building partner armies post conflict

[Dayuhan]

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.

[John T. Fishel]

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

[Colin Robinson]

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.

[John T. Fishel]

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

[Dayuhan]

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

[Colin Robinson]

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?

[marct]

Hi Colin,

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?

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).

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

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

[Stan]

Hey Colin,
Thanks for the emails and interesting read !

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?

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...

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.

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

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...

You'd make a good Army NCO

Regards, Stan

[Dayuhan]

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

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.

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.

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.

[William F. Owen]

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

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.

[marct]

Hi John,

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?

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

[Old Eagle]

Colin --

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

[John T. Fishel]

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

[Tom Kratman]

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

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.)

[John T. Fishel]

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

Dayuhan, accord at last!

Cheers

JohnT

[Dayuhan]

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

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.

Dayuhan, accord at last!

There goes my reputation...