How To Win

[slapout9]

This is from the SWJ blog and one of the best documents I have read. We could even use it here at home USA (United States of Alabama)



http://smallwarsjournal.com/mag/docs-temp/121-jones.pdf

[Eden]

It's hard to criticize the basic idea that spreading good governance is a better long-term solution for the world's ills than just killing bad guys. After all, that has been a basic tenet of the National Security Strategy for the last decade. But COL Jones, I think, depends too much on the assumption that troubled states share our belief that government exists for the good of the governed.

Many states - I won't be so cynical as to say most - are organized for the good of the governors, not the governed. Where we have become involved in counterinsurgency, the supported state will pay lip service to our values and stated goals because they want our money, manpower, and killing power. They will give nominal and often half-hearted support to our initiatives in good governance. But...the institution of good governance practices would work against the ability of the elites to maintain their power and sources of income. Even amongst the exploited populace our ideas of good governance often do not resonate, or are seen as positive threats. They welcome the material largesse we bring, but resist the softer aspects of what we consider good governance ( a strong central government, protection of minority rights, rule of law as opposed to customary privilege, etc).

So, a populace-centric as opposed to a threat-centric (not my terms but his - I hate any idea incorporating the pseudoword 'centric') strategy would certainly be as problematic in counterinsurgency.

[William F. Owen]

But COL Jones, I think, depends too much on the assumption that troubled states share our belief that government exists for the good of the governed.

Exactly.

Populace-Centric Engagement (PCE): A holistic family of engagement that places primacy on understanding and facilitating meeting the requirements of a target populace for good governance, as shaped by its own unique culture and values. PCE is driven by the key concepts that governance is of, by and for the people; that populaces have the right to choose the form of governance which suits them best; and that insurgency occurs when governance fails.

This is pure western/white thinking. Try explaining this to some very influential middle eastern families, or talking about this in Africa. It's the quickest way to chase folks into the hands of China and anyone else who just wants a baggage free beneficial relationship.

...and why is a Colonel writing about Strategic Level foreign Policy? He is more than qualified and entitled, but ultimately it's nothing to do with him. The spanner does not tell the plumber how to fix the leak, any more than the brick layer tells an architect how to built a house.

[Tom Odom]

...and why is a Colonel writing about Strategic Level foreign Policy? He is more than qualified and entitled, but ultimately it's nothing to do with him. The spanner does not tell the plumber how to fix the leak, any more than the brick layer tells an architect how to built a house.

As a Lieutenant Colonel, Wilf I was intimately involved in strategic level policy on central Africa. I wrote the campaign plan for the area in Kigali for US European Command and it was picked up virtually word for word. Your methaphor is both inaccurate and misleading. Inaccurate in that the trades have a direct effect on the total design because the design can only use what a trade can provide. Misleading in that there are any number of colonels, majors, and captains who have had strategic effect.

Tom

[slapout9]

1-What does his rank have to do with anything? A good idea is good idea.


2-Here is some white man/western thinking. In another article Colonel Jones talked about an International Civil Rights Act that correlates to our domestic Civil Rights Act. Both based upon our Constitution and used to guide our Domestic and Foreign Policy.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS4Qw4lIckg


Link to SWJ original article by Colonel Jones
http://smallwarsjournal.com/mag/docs-temp/46-jones.pdf

[Ken White]

I noticed the same item Wilf highlighted:

"...PCE is driven by the key concepts that governance is of, by and for the people; that populaces have the right to choose the form of governance which suits them best; and that insurgency occurs when governance fails."

but took it differently, I cued in on this portion "...that populaces have the right to choose the form of governance which suits them best..." as meaning stick our big nose in only where it's wanted but do not try to manipulate that want and at all costs do not try to impose a form of of government that is alien or inappropriate * on another nation.

* As it appears we tried (are trying???) to do in both Afghanistan and Iraq and is flat not going to happen...

The principal benefit of his paper to me is that it espouses removal of DoD from de facto primacy in foreign affairs and accurately points out that this:

Threat-Centric Engagement (TCE): A program of engagement designed to defeat a specific enemy or alliance of separate enemies. TCE is driven by the key concept that ultimate victory is achieved by defeating the threat.

is not the best way to look at the rest of the world bar a potential existential threat.

I gotta agree with Slap; "What does his rank have to do with anything? A good idea is good idea." I'm about as rank as anyone and I have some good ideas. Occasionally. Well, rarely...

Added: Wilf chimed in ahead of this with:

"My fear is that you end up with soldiers telling diplomats and politicians what the end state should look like, instead of preparing to deal with the cards as they fall."

I agree. Being de facto Johnny on the Spot has worked fairly well for the US Armed Forces and DoD since the late 50s in the foreign policy business -- that does not mean that all has worked well for the United States in that business or that such is an ideal state and I, for one, do not think it is.

[William F. Owen]

1-What does his rank have to do with anything? A good idea is good idea.

You are signing (get it?) to the choir. Rank has nothing to do with it. Sometimes the lower the rank, the better the idea.

As a Lieutenant Colonel, Wilf I was intimately involved in strategic level policy on central Africa. I wrote the campaign plan for the area in Kigali for US European Command and it was picked up virtually word for word.

Probably because you were the best qualified in that circumstance, based on proximity and experience. You were doing what countless British Army officers have done for generations, all over the empire, usually with beneficial strategic effect.

My fear is that you end up with soldiers telling diplomats and politicians what the end state should look like, instead of preparing to deal with the cards as they fall.

"War is the setting forth of policy with an admixture of other means."

[Presley Cannady]

It's hard to criticize the basic idea that spreading good governance is a better long-term solution for the world's ills than just killing bad guys.

I'll take that bet, and I'll start by pointing out that the term "good governance is a better [insert anything you've predetermined to be not in keeping with good governance here]" is tautology. Try it out for size. Once you weed out the weasel words that presumably fix the statement to a set of facts on the ground, you could read the sentence "good is better than bad."

The piece doesn't go much farther in fleshing out a notion of "good governance" beyond some "[s]elf [d]etermined government formed from and by the populace of the region that is served by that governing body." You could phrase this as "good governance is government that looks like democracy when people are happy with it." If people aren't happy with it, it's not the institutional structure that's at fault--you're just doing it wrong.

So here's a question. What does a "population-centric" victory look like when what makes people happy isn't liberty and democracy, but kicking it with their homies around the tribal goat pen, stoning their sisters and daughters should a man even touch them the wrong way, and wondering if the new guy in town is a Jew or not? Elections or not, whatever passes for county life from North Africa to Central Asia isn't going to bloodlessly surrender millenia of custom any time soon.

If victory requires transforming the society that currently occupies the battlefield into one that finds happiness of a Western fashion, then let's swallow the pill and eradicate the ideology and culture underpinning it. If not, then the only question is who and how many you have to kill or bribe to get enough of the local jefes firing on the enemy more often than us and each other. Hell, you might even get enough of them to work with you and each other to fix something that looks like a lasting peace. But if you're not up to spilling how ever much blood and treasure it takes to remake thousands of clans and millions of families in your image, then give up on the good governance canard.

[Ken White]

Not least because he reinforces my long standing point that Goldwater Nichols and the "We won WW II" mentality have given the Geographic CinCs way too much clout in setting national foreign policy -- by default, admittedly but it still needs to be corrected.

Every person in Congress and all their staffers should be forced to read this.

State, with all its flaws needs to lead our foreign policy effort worldwide...