The Clausewitz Collection (merged thread)

[Dayuhan]

HN must be out front. Sorry not to state something so obvious. In fact, best if the HN is doing this all by itself, all the time, and never requiring any outside assistance what so ever.

Which goes to my points that COIN is no more and no less than the continuous process of governance by the HN for its own populace.

Having this same discussion on another thread, I guess that's not too unusual.

It may be obvious that the HN government must be out front, but it seems equally obvious to me that if the HN government had the will and capacity to be there, there wouldn't be any need for our presence. If we're in the picture, the HN government probably lacks that will and capacity in the first place.

This is why I caution severely any (and this is most) who think they are doing COIN when they go to another's country. To take such a perspective on your role is to set yourself on a course of inappropriate actions and mission creep. And I don't see the fact that one invaded and removed the existing government as an excuse unless you also annexed the country and claimed it as your own and intend to keep it as such. Otherwise, you are back in the FID role again and need to work diligently to not take on too much of the role of the sovereign, nor to create too much of a perception that the new government draws its legitmacy more from you the invader than from the populace of that land. Tricky business all around.

A very tricky business. In our current case, the perception that the host government draws its legitimacy and existence from us is already there. We choose between trying to take on responsibility ourselves, and possibly undermining the government we wish to succeed, or passing responsibility to a government that often has neither the will nor the capacity to use that responsibility to achieve what we believe to be the necessary goals. It's a thin line to walk and in some cases there may be little or no space between those poles.

[Bob's World]

Having this same discussion on another thread, I guess that's not too unusual.

It may be obvious that the HN government must be out front, but it seems equally obvious to me that if the HN government had the will and capacity to be there, there wouldn't be any need for our presence. If we're in the picture, the HN government probably lacks that will and capacity in the first place.



A very tricky business. In our current case, the perception that the host government draws its legitimacy and existence from us is already there. We choose between trying to take on responsibility ourselves, and possibly undermining the government we wish to succeed, or passing responsibility to a government that often has neither the will nor the capacity to use that responsibility to achieve what we believe to be the necessary goals. It's a thin line to walk and in some cases there may be little or no space between those poles.

As a LT in West Germany, at the end of a 6-week Graf-Hohenfels rotation there would be long lines of tanks and APCs across the motorpool, waiting to get on the washrack so that they could be cleaned and loaded onto the train back to Mannheim.

The warning was always "never cut between the vehicles, either go around, or go over, but never between." Everyone understood the dangers of getting between two such dangerous forces, yet most also rationalized that getting crushed was something that happened to others who weren't nearly as capable of crafty about executing such a maneuver as they were.

Yet every so often another soldier would be crushed or cut in half giving it a go. The benfits were obvious, and the odds low, thought the consequences high.

Nations intervening in the insurgencies of others is very similar in many respects. And I am sure all are quite surprised when the find themselves suddenly, and often fatally, trapped by the decision.

[Dayuhan]

Nations intervening in the insurgencies of others is very similar in many respects. And I am sure all are quite surprised when the find themselves suddenly, and often fatally, trapped by the decision.

This is certainly true, as we learned (one hopes) in the cold war. It's worth noting, though, that our current engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan do not really fall into this category. In neither case did we intervene in the insurgency of another. These were cases where we intervened to remove governments that we found distasteful. In both cases the removal was relatively straightforward; the difficulty came in the aftermath.

Removing a government creates a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum, in politics as much as in physics. We built our interventions around the assumption that once national governments acceptable to us and the international community were installed, the vacuum would be filled. That assumption proved overly optimistic. In my view what we see in Iraq and Afghanistan is less insurgency than continued armed competition over the right to fill the vacuum left by the removal of the previous governments. We may have declared that vacuum filled by the installation of the governments that now exist, but that declaration has not halted the competition.

[Bob's World]

These things take time to sort out. I actually was thinking about my poor governance definition when I woke up this morning (I know, sadly this is in fact what I was thinking about as I rolled out of the rack at about 0430 to hit the gym on a Christmas morning...)

I decided to modify the first part of my test. I am keeping "disrespect" and "injustice" as major causal factors of insurgency, but am dropping one I was never really satisfied with of "outrage" and replacing it with "illigitimacy." When a populace feels that it is being disrespected by its governance, receiving injustice from its governance, or that its governance is illigitimate; AND they feel they have no legitimate means of recourse to address the problem; then you have "poor governance" and causation for insurgency.

This is much better.

So, going to Iraq and Afghanistan; our invasions may have done much to address issues in those countries prior in regards to injustice and disrespect; but, and this is the big but, how does one overcome the perceptions of illigitimacy that are the natural side product of any externally driven change of governance?? In the near term, not much.

This is why I think the key to success in Afghanistan lies in the Loya Jirga. While any government enabled by the coalition will lack legitimacy; and any government formed by western-style voting coupled with Afghan-style manipulation will lack legitimacy; the Loya Jirga is well recognized across the populace as legitimate. We must tap into this source of legitimacy to really have a chance to free the government here from the stench of Western illigitimacy.

The issue becomes one of control. Western policy is rooted in exerting control of outcomes (or not recognizing outcomes that are outside that control and contrary to Western desires). This is the catch-22. We cannot enable the legitimacy requried to strike at the roots of the insurgency without first relinquishing control of both the process and the outcomes.

Do we have the moral balls to do the right thing? I don't know. I fear that we don't, but I hope that we do.

[slapout9]

These things take time to sort out. I actually was thinking about my poor governance definition when I woke up this morning (I know, sadly this is in fact what I was thinking about as I rolled out of the rack at about 0430 to hit the gym on a Christmas morning...)

Sounds like good Airborne training to me Merry Xmas.

[Bill Moore]

Bob,

Merry Christmas!

I have been dwelling on the political-military nexux of conflict also, and I'm finding it difficult to identify any motivations for violence that I can't tie to what Thucydides identified as the motivation for war (or conflict): fear, honor, and interest

Ethnic hatred is usually fear, but can touch interests and honor

Economic viability is interest

Disrespect is honor

If a government can address their constituents fears, maintain their honor and look after their varied interests I would call that legitimacy and suspect there would be relative peace. This is not easy, or even possible when there are numerous warring groups with conflicting interests, pride and fear abounds. In this case, the government can't address the issue (I guess you could call it root causes) and it will likely boil over into violence.

I think our challenge is identifying ways to establish relative stability without depending on government legitimacy, but to that will require substantial changes in the international and our system on how we respond (to include forms of what will look like colonialism, redrawing borders, and in extreme cases warring against select populations when it is determined that they are hopefully hostile and it they're a danger to high value national interests).

I'm sure there is a better way to put it, but legitimacy is a complex condition that is constantly shifting and Thucydides seems to me to have captured a lot of it. If he is right, then are situations where we will have to fight, and hoping to obtain peace through digging wells, building schools, etc. will remain a pipe dream.

[Bob's World]

Bob,

Merry Christmas!

I have been dwelling on the political-military nexux of conflict also, and I'm finding it difficult to identify any motivations for violence that I can't tie to what Thucydides identified as the motivation for war (or conflict): fear, honor, and interest

Ethnic hatred is usually fear, but can touch interests and honor

Economic viability is interest

Disrespect is honor

If a government can address their constituents fears, maintain their honor and look after their varied interests I would call that legitimacy and suspect there would be relative peace. This is not easy, or even possible when there are numerous warring groups with conflicting interests, pride and fear abounds. In this case, the government can't address the issue (I guess you could call it root causes) and it will likely boil over into violence.

I think our challenge is identifying ways to establish relative stability without depending on government legitimacy, but to that will require substantial changes in the international and our system on how we respond (to include forms of what will look like colonialism, redrawing borders, and in extreme cases warring against select populations when it is determined that they are hopefully hostile and it they're a danger to high value national interests).

I'm sure there is a better way to put it, but legitimacy is a complex condition that is constantly shifting and Thucydides seems to me to have captured a lot of it. If he is right, then are situations where we will have to fight, and hoping to obtain peace through digging wells, building schools, etc. will remain a pipe dream.

One certainly discounts the importance of Ethnicity and and Honor to one's peril in Afhganistan. And in a recent poll, nearly twice the percentage of Kandahar City cited "Economy" as cited "security" as their number one concern.

The Taliban offer young men a paycheck to fight foreign invaders. That hits all three of Thucydides' points. Any competing coalition plan must do the same.