Indirect and Direct components to strategy for the Long War

[Eden]

Will Rogers was asked how he would defeat the Nazi U-boat menace. "Simple", he said, "just raise the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean to the boiling point." The reporter agreed this would destroy all the enemy submarines, but wondered how Will would heat up the ocean. With his famous self-deprecating grin, Will replied, "I'm a concept man, not a detail guy."

It is hard to find anything objectionable in your indirect approach. In some ways it is a larger version of classic COIN strategy - dry up the sea that the insurgent fish swim in and they will be, at the least, inconvenienced. And while we have been doing some version of this for decades, our modern system of combatant commands should facilitate a measured, consistent, long-term approach to applying such a strategy. Finally, world-wide stability in the most basic sense - i.e., the absence of violence in normal civil society - is a goal only various lunatic fringes would oppose.

A couple of questions arise.

First, I wonder if there is a direct link between failed or vulnerable states and terrorism. Taking a long view, some of the most persistent, dangerous terrorist movements arise from stable, powerful, even enlightened states. Japan, Spain, Germany, and the UK have all generated significant home-grown terrorist threats. No one can accuse Saudi Arabia of being enlightened or, in most senses, modern, but it does have a pervasive and stable security apparatus. Yet as a society it supplied money, leadership, organization, motivation, and recruits to our current set of foes. I guess there is some harm done and mischief generated in places like the Horn of Africa and parts of Central Asia, but it seems to me that their importance as training bases and sanctuaries are overblown. Terrorists (as opposed to your garden-variety insurgents) have access to sufficient training, money, and weapons within modern stable states; they don't need secret bases in some God-forsaken hellhole. In fact, I suppose, one could argue that terrorism is a peculiarly modern product of increasing stability. It is a tactic of last resort when you have no other outlet, or when your cause is so unpopular you can never gain support for it through legitimate means. Is it possible to imagine that, were Saudi Arabia a participatory democracy, Osama would be running for office rather than running for his life?

Secondly, in your slides you show SFA as nested within larger political and economic efforts. One could argue that it would, in many areas of the developing world, be working at cross-purposes rather than supporting the other elements of national power. In essence, as presented we would be strengthening security forces in societies that are otherwise undergoing radical political, cultural, and economic changes. It seems to be a Metternichian approach to preserving order.

[John T. Fishel]

my computer is not bringing up the link to the slides.

That said, you might find the case study CHDS published last year through NDU Press/Potomac Press, CAPACITY BUILDING FOR PEACEKEEPING: THE CASE OF HAITI, edited by John T. Fishel (yeah, that's me) and Andres Saenz (now Deputy Director of Colombia's DAS - intel service) - a project of the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies. The book is a compendium of papers from a workshop we held in late 2004. Most of them are from countries other than the US that participated in the Haiti mission and the majority are translated from Spanish and one from Portuguese. Unfortunately, the book is not available online, however, the original papers were published in a special issue of CHDS' online journal, SECURITY & DEFENSE STUDIES REVIEW (Spring 2005) in the original languages with abstracts in the other two. If you are an official USG user, you should be able to get a copy of the book either from NDU Press or CHDS. This should also apply to any of the countries that participate in CHDS programs. Marc, Canada is a special case and I'm not sure the above applies to you but since all Canadian universities are public institutions... nothing ventured, nothing gained. New hardcopies can be ordered at Amazon among other places and cheaper used copies are available online.

Sorry for so shamelessly promoting my own work - not really, as this is a USG product and I get NO royalties

Cheers

JohnT

[Steve Blair]

First, I wonder if there is a direct link between failed or vulnerable states and terrorism. Taking a long view, some of the most persistent, dangerous terrorist movements arise from stable, powerful, even enlightened states. Japan, Spain, Germany, and the UK have all generated significant home-grown terrorist threats. No one can accuse Saudi Arabia of being enlightened or, in most senses, modern, but it does have a pervasive and stable security apparatus. Yet as a society it supplied money, leadership, organization, motivation, and recruits to our current set of foes. I guess there is some harm done and mischief generated in places like the Horn of Africa and parts of Central Asia, but it seems to me that their importance as training bases and sanctuaries are overblown. Terrorists (as opposed to your garden-variety insurgents) have access to sufficient training, money, and weapons within modern stable states; they don't need secret bases in some God-forsaken hellhole. In fact, I suppose, one could argue that terrorism is a peculiarly modern product of increasing stability. It is a tactic of last resort when you have no other outlet, or when your cause is so unpopular you can never gain support for it through legitimate means. Is it possible to imagine that, were Saudi Arabia a participatory democracy, Osama would be running for office rather than running for his life?

Gotta agree with the terrorist argument here. You also need to consider the changing face of many of those organizations (after all, the anti-globalization folks were the first true trans-national terrorist group, and the majority of them come from pretty settled and stable regions). Failed and failing states provide a fertile recruiting ground or a cause around which the terrorists can initially rally, but I do think they're much more likely to originate in societies that are relatively stable and there's an intellectual (or would-be intellectual) class with time on its hands and an ax (or two) to grind. It's also more likely in societies (IMO) that are more based on traditional cultural ideas. This can help explain why the West Germans produced so many terrorist groups in the 1970s and into the 1980s, and also why they seem to be a constant (if small) feature in Japanese society (going back to at least the 1920s).

There are, as always, exceptions to this framework...which points out the danger in any "one size fits all" framework.