Withdrawal from Iraq

[Nat Wilcox]

T. Jefferson wondered:

If the goal is to demonstrate that effective military action will bring about fruitful negotiations, then this point needs further amplification.

I thought this an interesting question, especially since one story we are being told by some media is the opposite: That tribal leaders sick and tired of AQI shenanigans started negotiating with one another and us, and that this then led to success against AQI (in Anbar say).

In any case, answers were:

The point strikes me as elementary.

Historical examples of effective military action bringing about fruitful negotiation abound

Maybe. But let me play devil's advocate: Someone should when everyone starts agreeing, right?

Suppose for instance that there is some third thing--call it "enemy relative strength"--that contributes (negatively) to both our probability of battle success and the enemy's probability of negotiating with us. Suppose also that enemy relative strength has (at least some) unique causal factors that are not simply due to past battle successes or negotiations (that is, it has at least in part its own independent dynamics). Under these circumstances, independent dynamic changes in enemy relative strength will generate a positive correlation between our battlefield successes and negotiation with the enemy, even if there is no direct causal link between the former and the latter. We or for that matter the historian would observe a relationship between the two, but it wouldn't be because one caused the other. Rather there would be an independent underlying third thing driving both.

Don't get me wrong; I suspect Ken White and Jones_re are right in their interpretation of such evidence. But what "story" would make it right? The obvious theoretical story--I'll bet the one that Ken or Jones_re have in mind, and that I would too--would be that enemy decision makers only know their own relative strength imperfectly, that battlefield failures cause them to revise their own estimates downward and that this then causes them to have a higher probability of negotiating. But that is just a theory: The mere fact of a correlation between enemy losses and willingness to negotiate isn't clear evidence about that theory.

Sorry for being a pain-in-the-butt empirical inference wonk. I can't help it.

[Ken White]

T. Jefferson wondered:
. . .
Maybe. But let me play devil's advocate: Someone should when everyone starts agreeing, right?

Suppose for instance that there is some third thing--call it "enemy relative strength"--that contributes (negatively) to both our probability of battle success and the enemy's probability of negotiating with us. Suppose also that enemy relative strength has (at least some) unique causal factors that are not simply due to past battle successes or negotiations (that is, it has at least in part its own independent dynamics). Under these circumstances, independent dynamic changes in enemy relative strength will generate a positive correlation between our battlefield successes and negotiation with the enemy, even if there is no direct causal link between the former and the latter. We or for that matter the historian would observe a relationship between the two, but it wouldn't be because one caused the other. Rather there would be an independent underlying third thing driving both.

Don't get me wrong; I suspect Ken White and Jones_re are right in their interpretation of such evidence. But what "story" would make it right? The obvious theoretical story--I'll bet the one that Ken or Jones_re have in mind, and that I would too--would be that enemy decision makers only know their own relative strength imperfectly, that battlefield failures cause them to revise their own estimates downward and that this then causes them to have a higher probability of negotiating. But that is just a theory: The mere fact of a correlation between enemy losses and willingness to negotiate isn't clear evidence about that theory.

Sorry for being a pain-in-the-butt empirical inference wonk. I can't help it.

oughta be the first rule.

In this case we are dealing with international terrorists, mostly but not all Islamic; most but not all of of the Muslims with a rather fanatical adherence to certain tenets (not all faith based) and a vastly different approach in the sense of western norms to the attack of institutions with whom they have disagreements. Spiders and Starfish both abound in that milieu. Thus even knowing that enemy is an extremely complex undertaking and firm, operable knowledge is unlikely to ever be fully achieved.

There are, however, looking at the ME, a few extremely simple precepts of which one should always be aware:

Children are raised permissively, they only rarely hear a 'No' and thus get pouty and prone to react adversely when denied. I think that means two things; don't try to get directly directive (redundant but to convey the western sense of directive...); and don't reply to anything with a direct 'no.' Everything important in the ME is done behind the scenes or under the table. That is a very difficult concept for Westerners, particularly the media and legislators, to grasp.

The "My friend against my enemy, My cousin against my friend..." bit is well known and should never be ignored.

Compromise -- in public -- is looked upon as weakness. This is so much in opposition to western norms that it is, apparently, quite difficult for some to grasp

Face is as important as it is in the far east (or in the west, we just don't like to admit it). There is a subsidiary to this; if you and a local resident end up close to blows, he will look around and if he can crawl, beg, run or escape a fight in any he will do so as long as no one he knows is in view. If there is someone he knows in view, he will fight, sometimes to the death. Therefor it behooves one to be sensitive to the requirement to not embarrass anyone. This means that if, for example, the Shia Prime Minister says he has done 'X' then no American should say he's done 'Y.' Conversely if the opponent say he has done 'A' and any American who wants to say "Nay, not so, they did 'B'" should just show, indirectly, that 'B' was in fact done and say nothing; let the evidence speak for itself as opposed to embarrassing the opposition and thus drawing dislike for doing so (the dislike engendered by violating societal norms in that one should avoid embarrassing another). The second observation means, of course that as previously mentioned, everything of consequence that occurs in the ME is shrouded from view -- and a win is never openly bragged about....

In the ME most stores do not affix price tags to anything; haggling is a regional sport. He who is unwilling to haggle -- and most Americans are not -- will lose. Every time.

Add to all that the longstanding dislike of the Colonial efforts of the west, normal American arrogance and egos and you have a recipe for what the Brits call a cockup. We had one.

The really dedicated are not going to negotiate in good faith no matter what pressure we bring to bear. They will have to be killed. Negotiation will only be possible with the less than deeply committed as they just get worn down and tired (as is occurring in Iraq now); in that sense the number of their dead or wounded mean little to them; the living tiring of the hard work and failure to succeed just wears them down.

All that is an awful long way of getting to the point. The opposition's relative strengths in the ME and Afghanistan are those cultural differences plus their knowledge and exploitation of our cultural predispositions. That could be turned around fairly easily but we weren't and possibly even today aren't smart (or mean enough...) enough to do that.

The counter to those strengths should have been an unexpected effort -- Afghanistan succeeded initially in that respect due to the methodology -- and while Iraq was an unexpected (for a while) effort, it succumbed to conventional US methods. And we got embarassed -- in both nations because we tried to fight a land war in Europe while elsewhere...

If I may say so, you fall prey to the same western thought process; "The mere fact of a correlation between enemy losses and willingness to negotiate isn't clear evidence about that theory." Losses mean absolutely nothing to these guys (nor, in the day, did they mean much to North Viet Nam, Korea or China) -- to some, they're even a plus; these guys have no infrastructure or population to protect, that don't want to destroy our military power -- or really, even though they say so, our economic power. They want to destroy our will power -- and they're doing too good a job at it, IMO.

Military success is simply stopping the other guy from doing what he wants. Losses are only very rarely effective in achieving that goal.

Thus, we need to attack their will power.

We will never stop terrorism, it's too cheap and easy a tactic -- but we can stop massive Islamic support of or tacit assent to terrorism aimed at the west by using their culture as they have used ours. Any 'negotiation' by the opposition will be a facade, accept that and negotiate anyway but never make a concession. Respect their pride while hunting down with no fanfare and killing each potential leader of an amorphous terrorist grouping in the region -- quietly and without attribution unless it can, hopefully, be blamed on a rival group. Gotta sew hate and dissension, turn the overly committed against the semi-committed and so forth. Kill enough leaders and charismatics and the job appeal diminishes. Killing the followers is irrelevant (probably does more harm than good, in fact). They're pretty pragmatic over there.

Never announce a success -- but release a video on You Tube that can't be traced.

Accept the fact that haggling and baksheesh are a way of life there and play the game. To insure we do not get the blame for flawed contract execution, all contracts should be done by area governments, NOT USAID or the CE. Judicious buying of opponents in that neighborhood kept Byzantium in business for quite a while.

Inimical to western values? Sure, but for the most part,we aren't fighting westerners. We keep trying to and we'll lose.

It's not existential, just do the math -- but It's critical to deter them before they do something more stupid than they've already done and ignite Europe or really get us hacked off. Then it could become existential and while again the math is not in their favor, it'll be a long and bloody conflict. Not the best approach to solve the overpopulation problem.

[Nat Wilcox]

much of that was very interesting to me. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

I suspect that you and I are having a semantic difficulty here which is my fault. I need to remember that "losses" probably denotes something very specific in your professional lexicon. I should have defined what I meant by "losses." Did you think I meant enemy casualties or KIA? That seems to make sense of your response to me. If so, I am sorry and I didn't mean anything so narrow as that...but if so the confusion produced some extremely interesting commentary from you anyway, so no big deal.

In my decision making lexicon, "losses" means "outcomes below some aspiration level of outcomes", where the relevant aspirations and outcomes are whatever they are to the decision maker in question, in this case "the enemy". Both "losses" (low outcome relative to aspirations) in this sense, as well as the term "the enemy", were meant by me to be taken in a general sense, as I meant to be addressing general lessons one might draw from many historical episodes in general. The relevant outcomes would be different for different enemies; so would the aspiration levels of those outcomes.

There's nothing particularly Western about what I said, understood in these senses. All humans (indeed, experimental evidence shows us that this extends deep down into the animal kingdom) perceive reality relative to adaptive reference points. What we perceive as dark depends on whether we were just out in the sunshine for an hour or working in the basement. That is as true for Sreenath, Chien and Mahmoud as it is for me. Similarly, what we perceive as a loss depends on what outcomes matter to us and what levels of those outcomes we were expecting or hoping for, frequently called an aspiration level. Prospect theory, the theory of the valuation of risky altneratives that I have in the back of my head when I think about decision making, has been tested using subjects the world over, not just students at Berkeley but also peasant farmers in South America, India, etc....there is nothing particularly Western about this general conception of the perception of gain/loss in decision making, evaluation of outcomes and learning.

Take my meaning of "enemy losses" to simply mean "preventing the enemy from achieving whatever outcome he aspires to." Take me meaning of a "battle success" for us as simply creating "enemy losses" in that very general sense: That could simply mean keeping the enemy from bringing down the electric grid as often as he aspired to. That is a very general and admittedly nonstandard meaning of "battle success." Sorry about the confusion. My fault entirely.

Now, am I still misunderstanding you?

[Ken White]

'losses' implying people, terrain or structure. As I mentioned, the former are of little or no concern to them and the latter two they do not possess.

Given your definition of loss, I certainly agree that's fairly universal and not culture specific.

That doesn't change the fact that tactics or techniques that fail to consider the opponents culture are likely to be erroneous or even really bad choices.


For example, I realize you used it only as one simple example but ability to preclude bringing down the electric grid would not impose a loss of any significance at all in Iraq (even aside from the fact that we do not have and will not have the capability to do that, ever. Or that such is not even a concern in Afghanistan, there is no grid). The lack of an overweening bureaucracy and the large number of small, discreet and disparate groups with various goals in a very flexible aggregation -- it is not an organization -- enables another target to be rapidly selected and adjustments to be made.

Thus, in their eyes, inability to impact the grid can actually be an opportunity as resources devoted to that (that's universal for sure; everybody and everything consumes resources of one type or another to some degree) to be shifted to something else. That other target or target grouping may be lesser or more effective in affecting the populace or the media than were attacks on the electrical distribution system. If less, they can rapidly shift; if more they will pile on. Given our heirarchial organization and the excessive bureaucracy that we are forced to endure, our ability to react as flexibly is severely hampered.

My point was that both our culture and theirs must be taken into account in any discussion of what constitutes a loss. In the current case, their flexibility and innovative ability allow them to preclude or even evade losses (your definition). My subsidiary point was that our approaches thus far are the western way of war and regardless of all the experts and scholars who will happily tell you there is no difference in warfare between east and west; there is such a difference. They are fighting their way and we've been fighting ours. I suggest that we are not having much success. We do not have to fight their way; we do have to know how they will fight and what their probable reactions will be to our efforts and it would seem to me that logically, we should tailor what we do to that reality and adjust our strengths to hit their weaknesses. The only way to impose losses you describe on them are to remove their funding -- extremely difficult for many reasons -- or remove the pushers and charismatic leaders. There are a couple of minor things around the edges and we are doing a lot of things to counter those items -- and doing so fairly effectively after a regretful but necessary time to build the required capabilities and obtain the needed intelligence information.

The successes increased when we started getting less concerned about causing losses to the opposition and more concerned about getting into their heads -- attacking their will...

[Nat Wilcox]

My point was that both our culture and theirs must be taken into account in any discussion of what constitutes a loss.

Completely with you on this.

The successes increased when we started getting...more concerned about getting into their heads -- attacking their will...

I'm not sure I would describe it that way (as "attacking their will") but it doesn't matter; what you previously elaborated after that, I mean the disruption of networks, turning people against one another by sowing discord and so forth makes a lot of sense to me.

When I read Robb's book, it struck me that in spite of his obvious sophistication about the strengths of adaptive parallel networks, he seemed to not see (or chose not to discuss?) their weaknesses. I thought, gee this guy is such a technowonk, you'd think that metaphors of viruses, trojans, worms and spyware--the things in the IT world that exploit the vulnerabilities of such networks--would have occurred to Robb quite obviously. It seems to me that what you advanced is (metaphorically) exactly that...figuring out what the military equivalents are to such network disrupters when confronting such an enemy (if you'll forgive the singular noun here).

Be that as it may, it seems to me that actually you share my skepticism whether any observed correlation between whatever we label a tactical success and whatever we label a negotiation implies any causal relation between the two. Your skepticism seems deeper, however, in the specific case of the ME: You think any such correlation (whether it exists or not) is simply irrelevant to strategy. Would that be a fair assessment? If so, I can appreciate your view.

[Jones_RE]

In my example I posited negotiations between two enemies. However, the situation in Iraq is more complicated. What appears to be happening are negotiations between two enemies to defeat a third.

Before Operation Torch (U.S./U.K. invasion of North Africa), secret diplomatic maneuvers were attempted to get Vichy troops to switch sides or at least remain neutral during the invasion. However, Vichy troops initially fought, sometimes stubbornly, against allied invaders. Once Algeria was firmly in hand, these French forces switched sides in droves. Their participation was essential to the later fights in Tunisia and Free French forces aided greatly during the war. Without the credible military presence of thousands of US and British troops the French military wouldn't endanger their lives and their families while violating their service oaths. Once allied troops were present in force, negotiations were far simpler.

I believe the relevant perceptions are those of third parties. AQI and the Mahdi Army (and Hamas and Hezbollah paramilitaries) will never negotiate with the United States in good faith. They can be killed. It may be possible to neutralize them by enlisting the support of the right third parties. It may be possible to weaken them by convincing their supporters not to recruit or donate money.

The third parties we need in Iraq are violent Baathists, Sunni Sheikhs and Shiite militia leaders. They have de facto control over the country at large. With their assistance, we can eliminate the real enemies. However, they're not going to help us unless we can show that we are capable of doing the job. They won't take the risk of angering al Qaeda (who will torture them to death) for an incompetent occupier. My take on the situation is that local commanders have done an excellent job of negotiating with some very nasty customers - and that a great deal of force (directed mainly at AQI) was needed to make those negotiations come off.

[Ken White]

Completely with you on this.
. . .

When I read Robb's book, it struck me that in spite of his obvious sophistication about the strengths of adaptive parallel networks, he seemed to not see (or chose not to discuss?) their weaknesses. I thought, gee this guy is such a technowonk...

Be that as it may, it seems to me that actually you share my skepticism whether any observed correlation between whatever we label a tactical success and whatever we label a negotiation implies any causal relation between the two. Your skepticism seems deeper, however, in the specific case of the ME: You think any such correlation (whether it exists or not) is simply irrelevant to strategy. Would that be a fair assessment? If so, I can appreciate your view.

With respect to Robb and the book, haven't read it and do not plan to do so. However, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment. Having visited his web site numerous times and disagreeing more than agreeing...

With respect to those who hold a differing opinion, war is, IMO, an art, not a science and the techno - 'generational' - scientific approaches to war generally leave me in less than awe. Usually cause some giggles, in fact...

Apparently I'm not saying this well. My apologies for lack of clarity. I'm not skeptical that successes (tactical, operational or strategic) have a causal effect on the profitability of negotiation to include on third parties. In fact, just the opposite; I'm firmly convinced that they are necessary for successful negotiations most places if an armed conflict is involved and I believe this is particularly true in the ME; the folks there do strength...

In the ME today there are a number of 'successes' that are below the radar screens of our incompetent media and that are not well known There are a few that are known -- such as the decision of some Sunni tribes to affiliate (almost no one in the ME will 'ally' with a westerner) with us for there benefit at this time -- as I said, the folks over there are pretty pragmatic.

What you see in the ME is rarely what you get; things are almost never as they seem. Yet, based on talking to friends and acquaintances and e-mails back and forth to both theaters, I'm pretty comfortable that things are going well. I've predicted since mid-2003 that it would take five years to get much US troop drawdown and marginal stability (ME style) in Iraq, that'll be next summer, mid-2008; also figured fifteen years to the rule of law, 2018; and thirty years to pretty much full achievement of objectives -- that would be 2033. Perhaps in 2023 or so, Iraq will be fully functioning state (according to world, not western, norms). Nothing thus far has caused me to recast my figures, though I admit to getting worried in late '04.

I think the correlation does exist but that it has little overall effect on what I think is the long term (20-50 years) strategy. Ideally, we would achieve a satisfactory outcome in Iraq (there will be no win; never is in an insurgency) but lacking that I suspect little adverse impact on the strategy will occur. In fact, there might even be a long term plus in that for us in the form of better future planning, diplomacy, force structure and capabilities though there will be a short term downside in the sense of lost prestige, diplomatic scrambling and some enouragement to the Islamists and their acquaintances..

[Nat Wilcox]

...war is, IMO, an art, not a science...

Guess what? IMO, science is an art, not a science.

Anyway, thank you both for the conversation.

[Ken White]

Deleted - double post