Dare I address this yet again, only to be accused of reciting a mantra? :-)That's particularly relevant in the Arab heartland: what specifically would you have us do with regard to, say, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States?
Look, the "tactics" of what precisely needs to be done in any particular place is always going to be unique, and must be shaped to the specifics of the problems, cultures, types of governance, nature of grievances, types of active revolutionary and pre-revolutionary organizations, any outside state or non-state UW or FID actors, etc. Oh, and then of course shaped by what, if any, national interests we might have in that place or the issues taking place there.
Good tactics must be based in the details of how things/people are different. Good strategy, however, must be based in a good understanding of how things are the same. My focus is on strategy, as that is, IMO, where our problems lie.
To apply an indirect fire or navigation comparison: An error is tactics is like a location error, a 10M mistake at the start equates to equal 10M errors regardless of range; but an azimuth error of a single degree is a 17.7 Meter error at a 1,000 meters and continues to grow by that same amount every 1000M farther out one goes.
We have made tactical errors throughout our response to 9/11, that happens and they are easily addressed and recovered from. But we have made azimuth errors in our strategic framing that send us farther and farther from where we want to be every day we continue to pursue them. But with these three countries you name, a similar strategic understanding and framework applies:
1. All have high conditions of insurgency (that are unique in how they manifest and how active they are etc).
2. All are primarily Muslim.
3. All have systems of governance that are, or have been until recently, highly reliant upon their relationships with powerful external partners
4. All have been "targeted" by AQ as sources of funding, sanctuary, recruits, etc
5. All are tied to long-stated US national interests as either a producer of, or controlling a crucial LOC for movement of vital energy resources.
6. All were under Ottoman and European control prior to the Cold War, and all were locations the US/West worked diligently to maintain or gain the role of primary security ally (rather than the Soviets) throughout the Cold War; and then worked to sustain those relationships through the comfortable certainty of sustaining particular people, families.systems of governance in place post-Cold War.
7. US will continue to have interests in these places for the foreseeable future.
8. The populaces of these places are, I suspect, much more comfortable with their own values and concepts of what proper governance is than they are with the US brand version of those things our NSS directs that we should promote.
9. The status quo is increasingly unsustainable at acceptable costs (though the Saudis and the Gulf States are pouring in increasing amounts of bribes, security, etc as their fear of revolution grows).
10. As Morsi is finding out, the people do not want to trade one dictator for another. These populaces have evolving expectations of governance that are more liberal than what they have had, but not nearly so liberal as what we promote. Grabs of excessive powers by new governments will be resisted (regardless of the ideology of the new government) just as clinging to excessive powers is resisted now.
11. Everyone is better served by evolution of governance far more than they are by revolution of governance or simple suppression of the problem, either one. The tendency in governance, however, is to resist change until change is forced.
So:
The US has an opportunity to be a agent for peaceful, evolutionary change on the terms of the people, cultures and governments actually involved. But so far we have demanded to cast this on our terms in our context. Step one is to abandon our context and embrace theirs. This is there problem, it must be their solution.
1. We need to mediate or facilitate mediation in as neutral a way as possible.
2. We need to set redlines for both governments and populace groups in terms of violence, and other activities counter-productive to the process.
3. We need to encourage populaces to embrace non-violent tactics for their insurgent movements, and then deter governments from applying excessive violence against such activities.
4. We need to use our full DIME(but light on the M) to get these governments to hold true, substantive talks with their many diverse populace groups.
5. We need to stop conducting CT operations against elements of these revolutionary populace groups simply because they are talking to AQ. We need to incentivise them to work in the context of our concept for supporting evolution, rather than in the AQ context of supporting revolution. So long as we support status quo or Western values AQ will win this competition for influence.
There are, I believe 5 broad, fundamental perception of governance that we should use as our guideposts. All of these are as perceived by the actual populaces we are working with in the context of their unique cultures and situations. What we perceive is moot.
1. They need to feel that governance is acting in a manner consistent with evolving perceptions. As example, there is significant voice in Saudi Arabia that they would like a judicial system not totally under the King's control. That is the type of issue that needs to be on the table. We don't need the al Saud family run out of town, but we do need them to listen (they need to listen even more than we need them to. We can always work with whomever runs them off, but if we allow that we will need to compete with the Chinese, Russia, various European, etc for what we have there now, and we should avoid that if possible).
2. The people need to recognize the right of their government to govern them. If current regimes have tarnished legitimacy, they need to work to repair that. This will most likely mean they will need to relinquish some of their near total power. But better to be forced at the negotiation table (yes, I realize Kings don't negotiate, they prefer to be beheaded) to transition to a parliamentary monarchy than to lose the whole thing attempting to cling to what is no longer sustainable. They need to sort this out for themselves. The UN cannot 'grant' or bestow legitimacy, it must be earned.
3. They must fine-tune law enforcement approaches and policies to be perceived as more just. A lot of work for all of these countries on this one. Just stepping back for attempting to force the status quo of governance will help. if the government is not dedicated to the suppression of popular opposition, they do not have to be nearly as heavy handed in their law enforcement.
4. Respect and dignity. The Shia in the gulf, Christians in Egypt, etc all must perceive that they have equal treatment and opportunity under the law as other similarly situated segments of the populace (this all applies in Israel-Palestine as well, by the way).
5. And lastly is some system of official empowerment. These governments must find what works for them (as assessed by their people) to ensure that within the context of their culture they have systems in place for the shaping of governance that are perceived by the people as being trusted, certain and legal.
If we can convince these governments to do this; if we can accept the risk associated with the uncertainty of change; if we can step back from pushing our own ideology or fearing the ideology of others; if we can come to the realization that we have our over characterization and response to "terrorism" must be toned way back, then we can do this.
There are a lot of "ifs" that good tactical approaches tailored for each place will need to address. But all of those tactics must be in synch an over-arching strategy similar to what I lay out here. To date we set tactical metrics, and then get so focused on putting up big tactical numbers that we lose sight of what we are actually trying to do. Time to put good strategy in the lead, and let intel and tactics follow. My opinion.
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