Paper and COIN: Exploiting the Enemy's Documents

[marct]

Hi Tom and Ted,

I still say what I just said. I understand your instinct to do otherwise as you are trained to think that way. I was an intel officer as was Jed. Real world in environments like Rwanda or Iraq--the circle of trust is very small.

Sure, that's definitely part of it. Ted's distinction between sympathy and empathy really does get to the core of the differences. Believe me when I say that I do understand why that circle of trust has to be small in the intel world .

On your question about safeguards and potential extraction--absolutely necessary. that was what I meant by "take care of them". But I have been down the road on seeing local hires inside the decision-making cycle in embassies--only to have them pop up later as members of the HN government.

Doesn't surprise me at all. More on this later in response to Ted's post...

You let them "in" only as far as the mission requires.

Okay, I think that is fair enough. Just out of interest, is the mission defined / described to them? I don't mean this at all in a confrontational way - I'm trying to understand the process involved, and you guys have the experience.

You can think of this as the difference between empathy and sympathy. To develop a good working relationship, it is essential to understand the perceptions and concerns of your local hires, to listen to them, and to take of their needs within appropriate boundaries. But once you cross that line of sympathy and bond emotionally with the indig, you have compromised your position. This is very difficult for many people to grasp (other than lawyers and salesmen), because we want to be liked, and we like making friends. Addressing this effectively really requires strong leadership on this issue down at the unit level where it impacts (whether it is a military unit, or the civilian leadership at a PRT).

BTW, I really like the distinction between empathy and sympathy and I'll probably end up using it in a lecture (with citation of course ). I think in some cases, it goes well beyond any particular desire to be liked - certainly it's something that cultural Anthropologists are actually trained to do (i.e. establish an empathic relationship even with people you don't like).

I will point out that, for the most part, Anthropologists are aware of the potential dangers of empathy - "going native" as it were - and try to train around it. It certainly doesn't always work .

Because of difficulties in vetting and monitoring indig employees, we have to consider that they are all "turned", reporting to one faction or another. Any other mindset is unacceptable.

Always assume the worst? Hmmm, probably the only realistic option you have in the intel field.

And although you are definitely describing a worst-case scenario, I do agree that there should be contingency plans for evac of certain indig personnel in the event of catastrophe. However, I also strongly believe it is foolish to state up-front to indig employees that the US promises to safeguard and evac them and their families in case of mission collapse. In the end, they must feel that they are working for stabilization of their country - not working for the US.

Oh, I agree it was a worst case scenario. I also agree that such a guarantee if given up front might have a negative effect - in fact, it probably would have one. I do think it is important to establish a tradition of loyalty to your allies and, if things fail completely, that would include having a tradition of evac'ing them. You are right about the importance of feeling that they are working for their country, not the US.

The difference between empathy and sympathy is in the head of the US servicemember. It is not overt discrimination, nor should it translate into poor treatment of the indig translator, or a failure to provide basic security measures to ensure that he and his family are not endangered by working with us - it is a mindset that is simply a continual awareness that the indig may not be what they seem, and although they are partners, they are not "read on" and some things must be kept compartmented. Mission focus.

I do think that is probably the best mindset, but I am also aware that it can become a somewhat dangerous one unless the reasoning is spelled out very well. Let me toss out an example of an analogous situation from the social sciences.

After World War II, almost everyone in the social sciences abandoned anything that might smack of biology influencing culture/society. This happened largely as a result of most peoples reactions to the NAZI's eugenicist ideology. In the mid 1970's, we started to see a bit of a comeback in the idea that biology might influence culture / society (e.g. E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology). And, what with all sorts of new discoveries coming out in the 70's-today (e.g. neurotransmitters, brain modularity, MRI's sequencing the human genome, etc.), it does, to my mind, make a lot of sense to reintegrate biology into the study of culture and society, especially if we could always hold in our minds the difference between genotype (absolute DNA sequences) and phenotype (how those DNA sequences interact with the environment to produce the current "person"). That simple distinction allows us to say it is both Nature and Nurture. So, we have a big movement in sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, et al. to re-introduce biology into the study of culture and society.

The next part of the story comes about 8 years ago when a good friend of mine (Jerome Barkow) is invited to give the keynote address at a conference for this crowd. Jerry was one of the people who really got behind the movement to reintegrate biology into the study of culture and society and his book Darwin, Sex and Status is one of the classics in the field. So, he is wandering around the conference listening to papers and getting increasingly bothered by some of the stuff he is hearing. By the time he is to deliver his keynote address, he throws it out and starts lambasting people for reverting to a crude form of biological determinism similar to what was showing up in the 1930's. I asked Jerry, when he told me about this, why he thought it had happened, and he told me that he thought a lot of people just got mentally lazy and dropped the distinction between genoype and phenotype.

So, tying this back into local hires, when I see comments like Tom's

Local hires are --- local hires. Use them. Take care of them. But watch them and as the Fokker's say, "keep them outside the circle of trust."

I get a touch concerned. NOT, I should point out, that I have any worries about Tom's (or your or most people's here) understanding but, rather, because I am worried about how someone not in the intel / FAO area might interpret it . I'm afraid that it is too easy to go from "don't bring them totally inside" to "don't trust them at all".

Marc