Lost Lessons & Fresh Thinking: a challenge for SWC

[Madhu]

Last point: In my recent review essay in the Journal (w/Amb Ed Corr) we noted the difference between assisting a funtitoning government and military and having to create one because we have destroyed what previously existed and are now the occupying power. We noted that this situation was analogous to what Callwell called Imperial Policing or what the Marines later practiced in the Banana Wars. We agree with Neustadt and May (Madhu, see their THINKING IN TIME) that analogies must be used with great care but we also cannot escape their use. If we are the occupying power then WE must nation build - an obligation under the laws of war. If we are a supporting power then the host government must nation build if it does not want to see an insurgency return. How we and our allies undertake those tasks is a question that is always frought with peril. I would simply add that we did reasonably well in these tasks in both set of circumstances in Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, and Peru between 1983 and 1995. All 4 are reasonably well functioing democracies two or more decades later.

Cheers
JohnT

I'm pretty sure the other kind don't eat much and so don't need feeding.

Sorry, bad joke. And the following is not about the SWORD model, but a more generalized comment on the fascination of a British imperial history without a more full rounded study of what other colonial contemporaries said, colonial population histories and viewpoints, and newer research based on declassified materials.


I understand the need for models but what I don't understand is the return to people like Calwell without adding more current information to the mix. Models need to be updated from time to time and reviewed from the vantage point of more current information.

The entire second half of the twentieth century into the twenty-first in South Asia is all about nation building, what is this fascination with British imperial policing? If you are interested in nation building, then you have to understand more about it than models frozen in a point in time.

It's hard to build a nation when its educated classes are sometimes targeted for assasination and some of this too via some proxy effort that is ignored for a variety of reasons.

There is current research that taps into a broader range of information on the subject of nation building and, yet, the models discussed here seem frozen in time.

I listened to Rufus Phillips on the John Batchelor show once (I think it was him) and the understanding of the region sounded like the 1980's.

When the strategic endstate is viewed differently by at least one ally in the mix, you can't just outsource some of your counterinsurgency work through that very military. And, the history shows that attempts to change the national calculus fails time and time again. That was the point of the Komer quote I included to your article.

The literature is rich on the subject of nation building in South Asia, it's gone far beyond 90's era peacekeeping literature and all I'd like to see is some of this included in the discussion.

Occupations, colonial imperial policing, wars of conquest (Indian wars), how do these relate to the medium sized wars of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan?

The models shove too many different types of conflicts together, we can't do some of the things we did during the Indian wars or during colonial times. That doesn't mean we don't study them, but it does mean you understand their limitations as models for contemporary conflict.

And you have to first know something about the world into which you are introducing the model. Ignorance of the basic strategic set up is not a good way to go. That's why I say the discussion becomes thin. People are not interested in this and yet it is vitally important.

As Ken White said, we do small and large wars pretty good, it's our history with medium wars as an expeditionary third party that are problematic.

The models should make this distinction. Maybe they do.