SWJ Small Wars Survey 2012

[Jack_Gander]

1. Great powers (and the US is certainly one) tend to privilege stability or order over justice or just relations. To maintain order and stability the US has supported dictators and regimes that if we had privileged justice we would not have supported. We know the argument that one does what is possible. But justice deferred becomes a festering sore and source of instability eventually. So rather than having to choose between inappropriately interfering in the life of another country or being isolationist and concentrating only on ourselves, how do we creatively engage the larger world so as to increase justice?

I attended a very interesting presentation at Brookings last year on innovation. There was a panel discussion with CEOs from GE, AT&T, etc… One of the CEOs noted that large trans/multinational corporations have a great deal of influence in global stability. I am not an economist but it would appear that with the current state of the global economy, TNCs could be leveraged to improve conditions that may undermine regional stability. The track record of TNCs has been not been great if you consider BP in Iran and others but I think there is potential in this area.

Another consideration of how to address this issue can be found in the Y Narrative. I realize it is light on recommendations but there certainly are some issues worth considering in light of your question. I’ve heard the authors speak at NDU and they provide an excellent argument that goes far beyond what is in the paper.

3. Are their gaps and disconnects between what the United States says and what it does, how it wants to be perceived, and how it is perceived?

This question directly relates to other discussions on the power of the state. The internet and other forms of IT are changing the way large masses of people around the globe communicate, daily. Your question is not as relevant today as it was during the Cold War since individuals and groups around the world are communicating daily. America's strategic communications are being conducted by our citizens despite of what the USG says or does. Consider in 04/05 when the USG was attempting to gain coalition support for OIF and US organizations and individuals were sending the message of immediate withdrawal to a global audience.

Two good references on this topic are:

The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations

The Digital Disruption

5. Outside of the United States mlitary, what other institutions MUST be fixed in order for the United States foreign policy to be successful?

I know others, such as American Pie, have differing opinions on how to define US National Security but I like the simple definition offered by George Kennan (although I haven‘t been able to find the original reference):

"the continued ability of the country to pursue the development of its internal life without serious interference, or threat of interference, from foreign powers"

Bergen and Garrett from Princeton offer an excellent follow-on discussion of this definition.

“George Kennan's definition of national security has became a starting point for deliberations on the meaning of national security. However, transnational threats and globalization force us to broaden the categories of sources of "serious interference" in our "internal life" beyond rival states.

U.S. national security policy operates to secure primary public goods that are at the heart of the social contract between the people and its government: economic prosperity, governance continuity, ideological sustainability, military capability, population well-being, and territorial integrity. The environment that influences the production of these primary public goods is critical, and the United States must understand how radically different the context for producing these goods is in the 21st century compared to the Cold War. The structure and dynamics of Cold War international politics have given way to the “networked anarchy” of globalization.”

IMO the Critical Infrastructure model (not to be confused with the DHS program) may provide a useful starting point to examine what “internal life” may look like.

"Critical infrastructure are the assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, public health or safety, or any combination thereof."

I provide this information to get to the actual response to your question. I think Foreign Policy is just a small component of a larger system that needs to be overhauled. National Security provides an umbrella term to capture many of the sub-components, national defense, intelligence, law enforcement, diplomacy and homeland security. EO 13434 was an excellent initiative that would have brought these communities of practice together but was bogged down by the federal bureaucracy. The USG must take a more balanced investment approach in the entire national security enterprise. Of course, in the current era of fiscal austerity this may mean less $$$ for DoD. Any effort to decrease funding will result in myriad of responses of why this line of reasoning is flawed and why we must preserve the present system.

[AmericanPride]

1. Your question implies there is a distinction between 'stability' and the US' perception of 'justice'. As is often the case, the big fish considers the devouring of the little fish as justice because it needs to do so to survive. So, the question really is: can the US "creatively engage" the world to "increase justice" while maintaining its superpower status?

2. The instability in the international system is not rooted in either security or political imbalances, but in a gross economic inefficiency in the structural formation of the entire global regime. The United States must restore effective regulatory controls over financial capitalism, reinvigorate the American middle class and its productive capacity, and ensure that nationalism and patriotism triumph over elite profiteering. This, of course, assumes that the nation-state is the preferred method of the distribution of political power and legitimacy.

3. Absolutely. But this is a consequence of operating in a global real-time media environment monitored by a global politically active liberal middle class in Europe and the United States. There will always be political opposition to every decision and every interest. The real problem in my opinion is the disconnect between the public interest and private political interests, which leads back to my commentary in the previous point about financial capitalism.

4. To supplement diplomatic initiatives in the pursuit of national interests.

5/6. The US must restore the draft. The draft will create an immediate stake in America's foreign policy for all classes. The decision for war will face much higher scrutiny by the public and will require a higher level of legitimation. The defense economy will be required to make readjustments to its structure and relations in order to properly train and equip a conscript force within limited means (even though those means nearly match all other countries combined). The large influx of a diverse population in skills, languages, and background will break the southern Christian messiah complex taking root in the services (at least in the Army) and provide a robust roster of people capabilities to use. Lastly, it would be the only institution in which all citizens participate (except the Superbowl), channelizing public energy and identity into a national union. It is my firm belief that national service is the only long-term viable means to preserve the American way of life, its democracy, and its role in the world.

[DJL]

Mike,

Great questions to set our orientation as we pass the artificial line of departure known as the New Year...


1. The powerful protect their own power, and the powerful protect the powerful. What you have to do is to convince the powerful that their position of power is unsustainable in the near term unless significant changes are made - you must create the sense of urgency that comes from a belief that crisis is imminent unless change is made. Perhaps this is done my adding preconditions to your cooperation that "nudge" those behaving badly in a specific direction, but I think the most effective way to do this is to convince them that the internal forces in their own system won't support the status quo much longer, and that they won't be able to keep their selfish and hypocritical practices out of the public eye any longer, no matter what the US says or does. And I think you have to clearly spell out limits to what you can look the other way on - there's no way we could support Saudi Arabia if they were doing what the Syrian government is doing to their people on a similar scale...

2. Even counterinsurgency done imperfectly sends a huge message - you don't want to be the next country that Uncle Sam stumbles into. That said, a full occupation with 3-24 doctrinal counterinsurgent ratios isn't necessarily needed to put a former leader in the docket or in the streets with those he formerly crushed with impunity, as we've seen recently. Each situation is specific and unique in a complex world. But the US can't "restore" an order that hasn't emerged yet, it can only help to steer bottom up movements in certain directions, and occasionally take some steps that apply pressure from the top down. No blanket answers for this one - the proper orientation going into the problem is more important than specific recommendations ahead of time.

3. Yes. This is an almost inevitable product of our internal political processes and reward systems even more than it is from our external policies. There are always overlapping priorities in play along different timelines and levels of scale - we like to pretend that we can present a unified coherent set of policies that address all of our interests at the same time, but in practice this is impossible. Half is how well you manage the balancing act, the other half is how well you spin the balance you've chosen to various audiences with different interests.

4. In general, it must provide a credible and capable threat to impose physical force in a wide range of scenarios. We must maintain the reputation we've earned as a professional, capable force that you don't want to tangle with force on force, and you think twice about engaging with assymetrically, and do so because it's your only realistic option.

5. By asking to "fix" institutions, you're suggesting that we understand the "problems" in the first place, and also that a fix in one will solve problems from that perspective without causing a whole lot more from other perspectives. As above, it's a balancing act in which you can "never do one thing", and in the real world, it's not a matter of "fixing" so much as it is managing the balance as best you can by "nudging" the system with the levers of influence available to you.

6. There is no real reform in a bureaucracy until the reward systems change - the current status quo of funding and rewarding (i.e. promoting) the services in separate bins has created some useful overlaps and variety that has helped the joint force cope with various unforeseen contingencies, but with the coming austerity such surplus and replication will be unsustainable. I'm not even getting into the mix between the DoD, Congress, and special interests here...The question is this: will real change, which means change in the fundamental DoD bureaucracy, come before or after a significant crisis? Can we all agree that the "boom" is coming so we can act to the left of it, or will we play the same "musical chairs" game that our government is playing on a larger scale, betting that we can get what we need to serve our own parochial interests before the "music" stops, and we realize that more than one chair got yanked while we were running circles around each other?

In closing, I'd like to say that it's a very good sign for 2012 that there are people out there like you who are asking these questions on the morning of Jan 1st instead of nursing their hangovers. Thanks for creating this forum, and staying continuously "on watch" even as others celebrate (and recover from) the freedom that we hope to preserve with the insights you're seeking here.

Cheers, and Happy 2012 to the entire SWJ community,

Sugar