We need less Chemo and Surgery and more "Voom."

[davidbfpo]

I don't like the apparent simplicity of Secretary Panetta using a medical analogy, for several reasons. Such an analogy may suit a domestic and friendly audience, like CNAS. I also fear that what he said is actually policy and indicates how he and others perceive the issues.

The conflict against some terrorism waged by AQ and its affiliates by the USA, allies and friends is above all an ideological, political competition. AQ plus have via their message been able to mobilise and motivate a tiny minority to wage a violent Jihad. Many others, still a minority, have provided non-lethal support and waged the non-violent Jihad.

Several times AQ's message has been rejected and still is by the vast majority who it is aimed at.

Political mobilisation abroad for the USA, allies and friends can be hard to understand, let alone anticipate. Nor does it come from amassing data, viewing the world via a VDU and relying on the "men in black" aka SOF.

Dayuhan is right:

Don't be stupid

Secretary Panetta's speech does not help.

[Dayuhan]

The conflict against some terrorism waged by AQ and its affiliates by the USA, allies and friends is above all an ideological, political competition. AQ plus have via their message been able to mobilise and motivate a tiny minority to wage a violent Jihad. Many others, still a minority, have provided non-lethal support and waged the non-violent Jihad.

Several times AQ's message has been rejected and still is by the vast majority who it is aimed at.

Political mobilisation abroad for the USA, allies and friends can be hard to understand, let alone anticipate. Nor does it come from amassing data, viewing the world via a VDU and relying on the "men in black" aka SOF.

Certainly there's a political and ideological competition going on, but I'm not at all sure it's a competition between us and AQ, or even between us and our allies and AQ. I see it more as an internal competition in the Islamic world, a competition between a more progressive Islam that is willing to coexist with the west (while not subservient to or even totally enamored of Western agendas) and a fundamentalist Islam that sees the West purely as an antagonist. I wouldn't say we have no part in that competition, but we have to accept that we're not one of the competing parties, and we aren't necessarily trying to build our influence. Trying to hard to push our own influence can actually work against us, it feeds the narrative of the fundamentalist and the perception that we are trying to dominate the Islamic world. We're trying to support the competitive position of the groups that are most willing to coexist, even though they are not necessarily friends or allies. That requires subtlety, which has never been our strongest suit. We cannot credibly position ourselves as the champion of the oppressed Muslims, and we will step on our collective putz if we try. We can and should demonstrate that if people attack us we will kill them, but we have to separate that from anything that looks like an attempt to control Muslim countries or impose western ways on Muslims.

The comment that this will be a long fight but it needn't be a long war was perhaps based on an overly civilian view of what war is, but I think that view exists among those who make decisions as well. Call it a war and we immediately conjure up visions of large forces, of campaigns, of overwhelming force. I don't think that's what we need. While this fight - war if you will - will need action, that action will best come from law enforcement in places where there's law, from SF operations where there isn't. Large operations of the sort generally thought of as "war" need to be avoided whenever possible IMO. Even when they succeed they feed that narrative of Westerners conquering Muslims and provide a discrete target for jihadi recruitment and fundraising.

[Fuchs]

Is AQ still about errorism or isn't it long since about loudmouthing, coupled with undermining of Arab regimes in hope for a theocratic caliphate?

Shouldn't it be possible to be a less obvious or at least less enticing target for their PR stunts than said regimes?


AQ in person of UBL declared 'war' and sought its battles, it got those battles in AFG and fled. It got battles in Iraq after they were invited to play there and they lost.
I suppose AQ's interest in PR stunts / battles is not cast in stone; it might be malleable.


The whole AQ / errorism thing changes entirely once you don't assume their tendency towards PR stunts against you and your kind as cast in stone.


AQ transformed from a small terror group and civil war international mercenary group into an ideological movement. Why still treat it as a terror group only?

[Dayuhan]

I'm not sure the attacks can be considered PR stunts.

Undermining Arab regimes has been tried, and has failed. AQ and associated fundamentalist groups have never been able to muster anything close to a credible threat to any significant Arab government. The main target was Saudi Arabia, and they failed miserably there. Many Saudis are perfectly happy to support AQ as long as they are fighting infidels somewhere far away, but when they propose to take over Saudi Arabia the support dies.

The only narrative that's ever really worked for them is the jihad against the foreign invader, and without a foreign invader to fight their status and credibility wane rapidly, as they did after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Seems to me the attacks aren't just PR, they're an effort to bait the US into coming after them. Of course AQ won't win those battles, but keeping the battles going keeps them relevant, and they may think they can wear us down and win the war.

[Bob's World]

Another term for "jihad against the foreign invader" is resistance insurgency.

I think Dayuhan raises several good points in his posts. Consider this. Classic resistance is when a foreign invader physically occupies one's homeland. They have defeated one's formal military forces and forced the formal system of governance to surrender or flee. Only the populace is left in the fight. Often such populaces receive assistance from some outside source. In US doctrine that is called "unconventional warfare" or "UW."

In the Middle East I think in many countries and among many populaces we have a virtual form of foreign "occupation" going on. The West post-WWI, and the US post-WWII have applied a mix of physical and virtual occupation by policy; shaping governance in ways that suited those foreign governments and that left the populaces of the region powerless and irrelevant. When there was a greater threat, in the form of a Soviet desire to replace that Western influence with their own, those populaces generally tolerated that external influence. After all, they had tolerated the Ottomans for several hundred years.

But once that Soviet threat faded, and once the empowering effects of modern information tools connected and empowered these many diverse populaces in unprecedented ways, the people began to move on long suppressed resentments. AQ formed to leverage that latent energy toward their own ends, and employed those same information tools to show that a fairly small non-state group could conduct UW just like, or even better than, large powerful states such as Great Britain, Russia and the US.

Now, if one is that foreign power and wants to exercise complete dominion over some place and people, one must simply wage war and crush the people. It works. But, if on the other hand one simply wants to have influence and ensure flow of critical resources and keeping major sea lanes open, then one would be foolish to wage war. The other way to make a resistance go away is to remove the proverbial thorn from the lion's paw. This is a problem of policy. Not the Ends of policy, but rather the Ways and Means.

We must evolve to the world we live in today. This is the essence of "Voom."

[Entropy]

The $64,000 question is: Where is Cat Z, and what is "voom"?

We must evolve to the world we live in today. This is the essence of "Voom."

Have you read the book? In the book, the Cat shows up uninvited and helps himself to a bath. His bath leaves behind a bathtub ring which the Cat tries to clean. He cleans the tub, but in doing so, he creates another, slightly worse problem. He then tries to "clean" that. After several iterations the dirty "ring" grows and becomes too big for the Cat, so he enlists the cats in his hat. They only make the problem worse and worse. What started as a bathtub ring has grown to cover everything. At last the Cat releases the magic of "voom" which, in an instant, fixes everything.

The "essence" of voom is what everyone who royally F's up fantasizes about - it's the magic cure-all that will make it all better. It's the Dr. Seuss version of the Staples "Easy Button." (Or, rather, the "Easy Button" is the Staples version of "Voom.")

The long and short of it is that there's nothing that will magically come and save us from our mistakes. Sorry for the buzzkill.

"Oh the Places You'll Go" is probably a better Seuss book to use since its central lesson is about overcoming adversity.

[Dayuhan]

Another term for "jihad against the foreign invader" is resistance insurgency.

That would be insurgency against a foreign invader in your own country. Fighting in or funding insurgency in in another country is perhaps something different.

We must evolve to the world we live in today. This is the essence of "Voom."

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "voom", but if anyone expects anything to pop out of a hat and clean up all the mess they are sadly mistaken. I don't see any quick or clean solution to this.

Of course we must evolve. We are evolving. So is everyone else, including our antagonists. Evolution isn't going to provide any absolute answer or any quick fix; it is a slow and messy process that must be continuously refined. The question now is not whether to evolve or not to evolve, but what direction evolution should take and how best to pursue the selected direction.

In the Middle East I think in many countries and among many populaces we have a virtual form of foreign "occupation" going on. The West post-WWI, and the US post-WWII have applied a mix of physical and virtual occupation by policy; shaping governance in ways that suited those foreign governments and that left the populaces of the region powerless and irrelevant. When there was a greater threat, in the form of a Soviet desire to replace that Western influence with their own, those populaces generally tolerated that external influence. After all, they had tolerated the Ottomans for several hundred years.

But once that Soviet threat faded, and once the empowering effects of modern information tools connected and empowered these many diverse populaces in unprecedented ways, the people began to move on long suppressed resentments. AQ formed to leverage that latent energy toward their own ends, and employed those same information tools to show that a fairly small non-state group could conduct UW just like, or even better than, large powerful states such as Great Britain, Russia and the US.

This I think is largely a speculative construct, and I don't see much real evidence to support it. AQ and its predecessor organizations have had considerable success in drawing recruits and funding to fight direct foreign military occupation of Muslim nations, forst by the Soviet Union and then by the US. Without such occupation they rapidly lose relevance and support. I see no evidence at all to suggest that people who travel to fight in faraway insurgencies or send money to support those insurgencies are doing that to change the pattern of governance in their own countries.

Now, if one is that foreign power and wants to exercise complete dominion over some place and people, one must simply wage war and crush the people. It works. But, if on the other hand one simply wants to have influence and ensure flow of critical resources and keeping major sea lanes open, then one would be foolish to wage war. The other way to make a resistance go away is to remove the proverbial thorn from the lion's paw. This is a problem of policy. Not the Ends of policy, but rather the Ways and Means.

Depends on what you mean by the thorn in the lion's paw. If you mean the lasting irritant of large scale US military presence in Muslim countries, I agree. If you think the thorn in the lion's paw is the way Muslim countries are governed... well, that's certainly a thorn but it's not our thorn and trying to mess with it is only going to make matters worse.

[jmm99]

Here's another little matrix, which illustrates the flexibility of the War Paradigm - when it is applied correctly:

Hartigan Fig 1, Direct-Indirect Matrix.jpg

from 2009 Hartigan (thesis), Why the Weak Win Wars - A Study of the Factors That Drive Strategy in Assymmetric Conflict.pdf.

See also, 2007 Mauldin (thesis), Analysis of the Inability of U.S. Military Leaders to Provide an Adequate Strategy.pdf, who gets too carried away with the "Indirect Approach". BTW: the "indirect approach" (as used by Hartigan and Mauldin) is not vintage, pure Liddell Hart. It is more Andre Beaufre and others thinking independently.

The bottom line is that a "Strong Power" (e.g., USA) must be prepared to use both Direct and Indirect Strategies in what in actuality will be a mixed War and Peace Paradigm - the pure forms of those paradigms died a long time ago.

Regards

Mike