Pakistani internal security (catch all)

[Bob's World]

One point I've made several times about the Pakistani tribal areas are that they more resemble colonies than parts of a whole "Pakistani" state. Pakistan sure treats them more like colonial possessions. If this view is correct, does it make any difference in terms of insurgency and COIN?

Absoulutely. It goes to both of the key elements of COIN: Goodness and Legitimacy.

If the populace does not view themselves primarily as "Pakistani," but rather as "Pashto" or some other tribal affiliation, then they will not grant/recognize the legitimacy of the Pakistani government over their tribal governments, more as a supplementary overlay rather than a primary ruling role. This affects very much both what they expect from the government and how they will react to engagement by the government.

This leads neatly into the concept of "goodness." Different expectations will absolutely color what a popualce perceives as acceptable governance or not. A COIN campaign waged in the Indus valley would be very different in nature and approach than one waged in the mountains. Different populaces and different perspectives and expectations of governance.


As to WILF's comments, I would simply say that you appear to be taking my comments as "absolutes." While I do believe that there are some fairly absolute truths rooted in general human nature that shape all insurgencies, application is alway a matter of degree tailored for the situation, culture and populace one faces. It appears quite clear that the majority of the Pashto populace does not desire Taliban rule and wants very much for that problem to go away. But I suspect they also are very suspect of how the Pakistani government is going to apply that help. If applied too heavy-handedly, it can have the negative effect of expanding the popular support for the Taliban among the Pashto. If done right, in a supporting effort to the tribal leaders in a manner sensitive to the culture of the region, it can be very effective.

I just don't see a history of cultural sensitivity here, so my concern is that out of our fear of failed states and loose nukes we may push the Paks to launch a campaign that is all thrust and no vector.

As to Ken's comments, I never said conventional guys can't do COIN, I said he was expressing a very conventional approach. To me at least, the difference is considerable.

[William F. Owen]

As to WILF's comments, I would simply say that you appear to be taking my comments as "absolutes."

Not my intention. Apologies if it came off that way.

If applied too heavy-handedly, it can have the negative effect of expanding the popular support for the Taliban among the Pashto. If done right, in a supporting effort to the tribal leaders in a manner sensitive to the culture of the region, it can be very effective.

Agreed, and just so as we are quite clear Mr President, when you say "go away" you mean "kill."

[Ken White]

...As to WILF's comments, I would simply say that you appear to be taking my comments as "absolutes."

Wilf is not alone, many of your comments seem to be absolutes which when and if questioned, are modified.

It's sort of like throwing a Grenade in the room. If it kills all the bad guys, good enough. If it does not, then you adjust. Nothing wrong with that, it's a technique that adapts well to boards like this. Many of us do that and make no bones about it, mostly because everyone can figure it out as well as we can...

That, however, can lead to 'misunderstandings' like this:As to Ken's comments, I never said conventional guys can't do COIN, I said he was expressing a very conventional approach...Actually, what you said was:

"He sounds like an excellent conventional officer.

Which is an innocuous comment on the surface but coming from one who takes great pride in his branch and who has routinely derided the 'conventional' approach can come across as an insulting comment. At least to me and I'm sure not the target of the comment, I just read it on a discussion board...

When you follow that with this:

"If given free reign to execute this within the paradigm he describes, the actions of the Pak army would do far more than the actions of the Taliban to destroy his country. Like all armies, they need to focus on the insurgent, not the insurgency. But only if the Civil leadership understands the difference and has divided the civil and military tasks accordingly. Only if the Civil leadership is focused on the insurgency itself in a wholistic approach.

Which is certainly a valid opinion but something of an absolute and not really all that much at odds with what Durrani wrote, it makes the initial comment at least suspect if not a bit more of a derisory comment...

To me at least, the difference is considerable.

To others, perhaps not so much.

Conventional and unconventional are neat, facile and really sort of silly and much overused buzzwords; using them implies that only the properly anointed (or funded and manned) can do one or the other.

The hard truth is that the decently trained can do both with equal facility.

[Surferbeetle]

...this one in particular:

Conventional and unconventional are neat, facile and really sort of silly and much overused buzzwords; using them implies that only the properly anointed (or funded and manned) can do one or the other.

The hard truth is that the decently trained can do both with equal facility.

Tom Rick's Blog The Best Defense got me started on looking for (a link would have been appreciated, but it's a great blog just the same) Mr. Gates' comments on hybrid warfare at his 18 June Press Conference:

Q Mr. Secretary, the department is engaged in the Quadrennial Defense Review, department-wide review of strategy, weapons systems. And I take it from your public comments in recent months that the framework is that the U.S. should be focusing, at least right now, on the current conflicts it's engaged in, conflicts of the irregular type that could last into the foreseeable future.

There are officers in the military who at least privately express some reservations that large numbers of conventional forces for an open-ended commitment in a place like Afghanistan or -- perhaps less so -- Iraq is the way the United States should be looking at the world in terms of its defenses.

If you do this review, will that construct itself be under review? In other words, will you analyze whether or not this type of operation is what the U.S. should be focusing on for the next decade?

SEC. GATES: Those who believe that is what we are trying to do, and that that's what I believe, do not understand what we are trying to do or what I believe.

The reality is, the vast preponderance of the Defense Department procurement budget will still be for large systems used and sophisticated systems useable against near peers and that will continue to give us a technological edge for the next 20 to 25 years.

What I am trying to do is simply get a place at the table, when resources are passed out, for those who are fighting today's wars, and to institutionalize what we've learned about counterinsurgency, so that we don't forget it like we did after Vietnam.

So this notion that I'm tilting the scale dramatically against conventional capabilities, in order to fight irregular or whatever, asymmetric wars or whatever you want to call it, is just not accurate.

You know, $1 trillion for the Joint Strike Fighter, a fifth generation fighter that has some capabilities the F-22 does not, is not a trivial investment in the future. Neither is -- I have hardly read about the fact that we're initiating the replacements for the Ohio-class SSBN with this budget.

So the notion that we are not taking seriously the range of potential future conflicts, I think, frankly is just a misunderstanding of what we're trying to do. It derives from my view that the old way, of looking at irregular warfare as being one kind of conflict and conventional warfare as a discreet kind of warfare, is an outdated concept.

And my belief, that conflict in the future will slide up and down a scale, both in scope or scale and in lethality. And we have to procure the kinds of things that give us -- the kinds of equipment and weapons that give us the maximum flexibility, across the widest range of that spectrum of conflict.

Every Marine is a rifleman is a really great one: we need to come up with something similar which encompasses our ability to cover down on hybrid warfare

In order to facilitate everyone's Friday night thinking about how to define conventional/unconventional solutions I submit this this 235 pager from NDU which is linked to from SWJ:

Chapter 1 concludes that complex operations encompass 6 broad categories of missions, with 60 associated tasks, 48 of which in 5 categories are probably best performed by civilians. This chapter finds that 5,000 deployable, active-duty government civilians and 10,000 civilian reserves would be needed to perform these 48 tasks on a sustained basis in one large, one medium, and four small contingencies. In today’s global security environment, structuring civilian and military capabilities to meet this 1–1–4 standard is prudent. This requirement substantially exceeds current executive branch planning assumptions, which call for 2,250 active-duty civilians and 2,000 civilian reservists.

[Bob's World]

Surferbeetle,


Who can ever top the simple genius of "every Marine a rifleman" that lies at the core of that great organization? Not a slogan, but a commitment to a clear and simple priority.

Today in SOF a phrase rolling around is "3-D Warrior." Different organization, different mission, different ethos, and thus different priorities. The 3 D's talks to the three aspects of engagement: Defense, Diplomacy and Development; Warrior talks to the essence of the SOF operator that is out there working in varying degrees in all three of those 3-D aspects. (Ken is firing up his reply now to take on the choice of the word "warrior" and make that case that a good soldier beats a good warrior - though history has certainly shown that too firm of a belief in that can get you massacred, be it on the plains of North America or Africa...). As a joint command of Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen a generic "3-D Serviceperson" just lacked pizzazz, so "warrior" it is.

More importantly we also attempt to make the case that none of us, be one from State, Aid, or the Military, can simply say "I just do development" or "I just do defense" or "I just do diplomacy." The primary message of the concept is that in these complex, populace-based conflicts we all must work together, and clear delineations are not helpful.


Beyond that though, my larger concern is that we as we have arguably become overly engaged with military presence that we look to becoming equally overly engaged with civilian presence to create balance. My theory is that this is because as Americans, where we have Democratic and relatively effective government, and little popular conflict; we draw the flawed conclusion that the creation of democracy and effective government elsewhere will resolve populace-based conflicts there.

My theory is that we lack these conflicts because we have self-determination of governance and "goodness" of governance. That because Americans believe with certainty that no matter how dissatisfied they may be with their government, that they have the legitimate means to change it.

I believe that the much smaller mission set of enabling self-determination and goodness of governance is far more likely to produce the results we desire than the far more labor intensive and difficult mission of forcing democracy and creating "effectiveness" (by our terms) in places that may well have little need or desire for either one...

[John T. Fishel]

have been around a long time now. We used them in SOUTHCOM in the 80s along with the fourth D - democracy. I would not get rid of that D but i recognize that it has a number of problems and is a difficult "sell" in many places in the world. Moreover, it is often defined only free elections without all the other governance elements that make for effective democracy. So, while democracy right now might well be a bridge too far, it should remain an explicit goal to be achieved by focusing in intermediate governance objectives.

Cheers

JohnT

[Bob's World]

Someone way smarter than me once said:

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

-Ecclesiastes 1:9

If we could just stay current on all of the smart stuff that has been figured out over the years, and avoid all the well-traveled pitfalls! This is one that is coming around again. At the end of the day its just a snappy slogan, but hopefully it helps us rebalance a governmental approach that has trended far too heavily toward the military of late.

But then I guess we wouldn't be human if we always did the right or smart thing. As to the 4th D, I wish that is one band wagon we would have never gotten on. Democracy is a great form of government, but it is patently un-American to promote ANY single form of government. Self-determination leads to all kinds of messes, but it beats any situation that someone elses forces upon you.

"Self-determination is defined as free choice of one’s own acts without external compulsion; and especially as the freedom of the people of a given territory to determine their own political status or independence from their current state. In other words, it is the right of the people of a certain nation to decide how they want to be governed without the influence of any other country."

What could be more American than standing up for the right of people everywhere to enjoy what we demanded for ourselves?

[John T. Fishel]

How American is it to promote self-determination when the self-determining group is determined to impose its will on everybody in the country it disagrees with (the Bolsheviks, Nazis, Ayatollahs, Hamas, and Hugo Chavez)? How American was it to wash our hands of responsibility when the Shi'a and Kurds took Pres G. H. W. Bush's advice and tried to overthrow Saddam in 1991?

There are any number of reasons to promote democracy. Many are normative but this one is purely empirical: Since 1945 no democracy (meaning a state that regularly changes government by free, competitive elections, has effective freedom of expression and organization, has an independent mechanism for the settlement of disputes) has gone to war with another democracy that meets the same criteria. Hence, the more such democracies there are in the world, the more peaceful the world is likely to be. Democratic Peace Theory (DPT) has not been falsified although it would be easy to do so. As such, it stands up as well as does the Theory of Evolution or the Big Bang, although it is obviously much narrower in scope. Still, it provides a powerful argument for a foreign policy that promotes effective democracy.

In the end, democracy promotion is a policy that has its roots deep in Western philosophy. the origins of DPT are found in Immanuel Kant's theory of Perpetual Peace and were an essential part of American foreign policy under Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK, Ronald Reagan, among others. My problem with democracy promotion is when it is seen too narrowly as elections or we try to promote it only from the top down without taking into account local cultural conditions (such as the role of tribes). My disagreements are not with the goals of such a policy but with the way it has often been implemented.

Cheers

JohnT

[Ken White]

(Ken is firing up his reply now to take on the choice of the word "warrior" and make that case that a good soldier beats a good warrior - though history has certainly shown that too firm of a belief in that can get you massacred, be it on the plains of North America or Africa...).

the key is 'good.' The less good -- and there are a number of them about with a few years service -- are no better than the other amateurs and die off rapidly. Belief has little to do with it; competence has a lot to do with it...

However, the motto is not a prob to me, 'Warrior' does indeed work well in your slogan -- and as John said, the multiple Ds were popular in the 80s and in the 60s.

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised at you innovative fighters being sort of pedestrian in your choice of a slogan. No insult and no snark intended, really. However, as in recent times, it was said a short while ago:

"...Meeting those 21st-century challenges will not occur through military power or any other means alone, but will require the full integration of defense, diplomacy, development assistance, democracy promotion efforts, free trade and the work of the private sector and society...LINK

I know you don't like that last add-on but it was tagged in there. Same thing, almost, was said even earlier LINK. Not like you guys to opt for the flavor of the day...

However, it's most recent use will put you in good with Madam Secretary LINK and in synch with current thinking all the way around. I guess that's always good for the Command.

Personally, I like this one better: LINK -- but then, I'm old and crotchety and there's not a lot of new age stuff that appeals to me...

[Bob's World]

Always liked "Quiet Professionals" myself as well.

De Oppresso Liber,

Bob

[Surferbeetle]

From Zenpundit's blog: The Management of Savagery