Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
It doesn't really come out in this essay, but does in his other writings (and in conversations with him). At the risk of oversimplifying, Ralph basically says write off the wahabi/Arab element of the Islamic world right now, and solidify our ties with the other parts--India, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. He is a great fan of the Kurds and believes strongly the U.S. should remain their protector.

While I haven't discussed it with him recently, I think he's conflicted on the Iraq conflict writ large. He is certainly takes more of a "mailed fist"/Roman/German/Luttwak approach to counterinsurgency. Personally, I think that illustrates the great bifurcation of thinking on counterinsurgency today: Ralph, Ed Luttwak, etc. believe it is, in fact, war, and that we hurt ourselves by stressing "hearts and minds." The other school, descended from the British and French approaches of the 20th century, believe that the combat component is secondary and stress legitimacy and "hearts and minds."

Increasingly, I don't fall into either camp. I don't think the United States can be very good at either approach. The first takes a bloodlust we simply don't have (and which would destroy our leadership among the rest of the world as other nations increasingly loath and fear us). The second takes a degree of cultural acuity and patience that we do not posses. Thus I favor a strategy which says we will do FID/hearts and minds in those very rare cases where it is likely to work with a reasonable degree of effort and within our short attention span (e.g. El Salvador). Otherwise, we should either participate in a multinational trusteeship if the world has the stomach for it; otherwise, simply contain and cauterize insurgencies.
I've always been rather intrigued with what Peters REALLY thinks as opposed to some of his rather exaggerated writings.

I happen to agree with you about the United States not being especially suited for either approach to COIN. Part of it, perhaps, boils down to our political system, which has never been known for cultivating patience. With a low-scale revolution every two years, the majority of elected policy makers just don't focus on one thing long enough.

It's important to remember that its "democratization" has come hand in hand with a ruthless "de-Islamicization" campaign started by strongman Ataturk.
And AA, Ataturk was a "strongman" to the Turks in the same sense that Washington was a "strongman" to the United States. Tom's written some about this before, but to classify him as a "strongman" does not even begin to capture what he means to Turkey in general and the military's role in that nation in particular. And one could also argue that France's "democtratization" came with a ruthless "de-Royalist" campaign headed by a number of people. I believe the roots of Britain's democracy is also littered with a fair number of corpses. Our own beginnings also involved a certain amount of activity against Loyalist elements within the colonies.

History is not black and white in most cases, no matter how much we may wish that it was so. Quite often the blacks and whites are hidden by multiple shades of gray.