Could Someone Please Explain the "Surge Strategy" to Me

[SteveMetz]

MG Mixson and I go back to when we were young lieutenants in 2-505. He is a frank, thinking man. Yesterday he said that if the troop levels were not sustained he would not be able to sustain security improvements in his AO.

You are correct in the assumptions; it is rather like we were in September 2005 watching this huge spinning storm called Rita head toward us. We preferred to assume it would loop and go elsewhere. It did not.

Insurgency, global insurgency, civil war, and old fashion crime swirl in the current mix of conflicts. Looking from the outside with an experienced eye, I see 2 as dominant: insurgency against the coalition driven by the fact that we are there and civil war driven by the resurgence of long present schisms exacerbated by war. The fight against AQI--the global insurgency--is by all accounts a third tier, but one that dominates both official and news media reporting. Underlying all of this, crime provides a connective tissue between insurgent and ethnic/religious forces. The extent of tribalism's influence on that phenomenon I suspect is quite large. Current efforts to use the tribal disenchantments with AQI to our advantage show short term success; how feeding tribalism serves establishing a functioning central government is one of those questions left unanswered.

Taking apart the insurgency is a challenge in itself as we all know. But taking it apart in a civil war ratchets perhaps up that difficulty beyond the doable. In a COIN, you are supporting a government against an insurgent movement. In a civil war, you have a society at war with itself. In Iraq that is occuring on three main levels with secondary conflicts played out on intervening steps along the way. Choices in a civil war amount to: A. Get out and let it fight itself out; B,. Pick a side and work for that side's victory; and C. Stay neutral and hope you won't get caught in a crossfire. The dilemma in Iraq is that fighting the insurgency dictates picking a side in the civil war, one that we know has much larger implications in the region, that is backing the Maliki government and validating Shia ascendancy. Meanwhile we simultaneously court the support of the Sunni tribes, going so far as to arm them because they--right now--have turned against AQI. So we have picked a side in the civil war but we use an element that has opposed us (and the government) in the insurgency to take on our enemies who represent a golbal insurgency (AQI). And finally in regards to the Kurds, we have remained "neutral" as they continue to establish themselves as an independent entity nominally within the state of Iraq.

All of this affects just how long we can sustain the surge as we call it; that is the long pole in the security tent we call Iraq. We debated on here whether the surge was an escalation or a surge because the latter does not imply sustained numbers. We keep watching this storm spin and we keep hoping it will turn back somehow, based on the wishful assumptions you list.

Best

Tom

I guess I'm just frustrated because Donnelly, Kagan and, to a lesser degree, Kristol are friends of mine and they just keep beating the drum of the new strategy but I have yet to see a cogent explanation of what it is. A troop surge is an operation, not a new strategy. Rather than explain how the new strategy will better to lead to "victory" (or exactly what that is), they just spend all of their time lambasting anyone who isn't on board.

In a broader sense, I'm afraid that the conceptual underpinning of the "new strategy" is the idea that Andy Krepinevich and others were espousing that says that population security should be the central factor in counterinsurgency. In my tiny little mind, that is one more example of extrapolating general lessons from Cold War insurgencies. In Vietnam, El Salvador, etc., the "people" were "undecided" so the counterinsurgency campaign was designed to win them over with development, security, and reform. But in ethnic/sectarian insurgencies, people don't decide which side to support based on the provision of development, security, and reform. Loyalty is more primal.

Take the Palestinian insurgency. Nothing the Israelis can do will win the "hearts and minds" of the people. They understand that. But we're mucking around in Iraq with this Cold War conceptual framework. Hence we've designed a strategy based on providing development, security, and reform. As an American, I sincerely hope it works. As a student of insurgency, I doubt it will.

I buy the idea that what is driving the conflict is the simultaneous desire for sectarian security and domination by Sunni Arabs. If that is true, the only strategies that might work are either to truly subjugate the Sunni Arabs (and solidify Shiite domination), or play the role of mediators and peacekeepers.

[selil]

The surge according to my aging father....

"Son what you have here is a classic throwing good money after bad money. Only people bleed in this here situation".

[120mm]

The surge according to my aging father....

"Son what you have here is a classic throwing good money after bad money. Only people bleed in this here situation".

I am slowly coming around to this point of view. But then I was never for any sort of occupation. I personally think that wrecking a despot's government and then leaving chaos has a utility, but then I understand that is a point of view that can be seen as heartless and politically incorrect.

Personally, I would've liked to seen Iran intervene in late 2003 as we pulled out, and then Iran could be facing the morass we are currently involved in.

[John T. Fishel]

Dr. Jack's point is well stated. We all understand strategy as the relation of ends to means (through ways) or some similar phrasing. Moroever, Dr. Jack points out that the President did articulate a grand/national strategy for the war in ends, ways, and means terms. Of course, calling the "surge" a strategy is absurd. It confuses strategy with one of its components, in this case one of the means (resources) to achieve its goals. But this is not what Kilcullen did.

In the section of his blog I quoted he articulates strategic ends as
1. Provide security for the people.
2. Marginalize insurgent groups from the population
3. Achieve the required political and economic development
This will be achieved by the following Ways
1. Simultaneaous operations to clear and hold
2. Actitivies to rebuild infrstructure, provide government services, and local security
3. Building partnerships with Iraqi institutions at all levels from local to national
Means
1. US troops (the 'surge")
2. Iraqi troops
3. Iraqi police
4. Intel assets both US/coalition and Iraqi
5. Iraqi government programs
6. USAID
7. International aid organizations

My point is that Kilcullen's blog has all the elements of a military strategy in it and many of the components for a political/economic/military strategy. Operations are, of course, the ways that means are applied to achieve ends.
Kilcullen said it well. The question is whether it will work or perhaps, whether it will have time to work. Another critical question is whether the military strategy will be undermined by the failure of the political/economic strategy on which it depends.

Too bad that Ambassador Ryan Crocker doesn't have his own Kilcullen to articulate what he is trying to do in both strategic and operational terms as well as analyze the effects of the pol/econ efforts.

[Merv Benson]

Many opponents of the current strategy have said they want to change the current strategy. I'm not sure they even comprehend the current strategy, but the change that seems to be proposed is a return to the "pre surge" (sorry) position of placing US troops in secure Forward Operating bases in Iraq or Kuwait or Kurdish Iraq, and have they sally forth to chase al Qaeda. As an alternative strategy you have to aspect what the objective of such a strategy is. Is it a force protection strategy? How will this strategy separate al Qaeda from the people? Has anyone seen a coherent statement of what the proposed alternative strategy is suppose to accomplish?

[jcustis]

the term "new strategy" when applied to the "surge" is simply a political term. If memory serves, the administration first annouced an intent to "surge" because it began to believe that more troops were needed to accomplish the mission, i.e. the same mission as before the surge.

In an effort to paint a different picture of Iraq, and possibly deflect some political heat (you don't hear Bush saying stay the course anymore), this "new strategy" term was applied so that republicans could distance themselves from the fallout that was/is generating. Every wanted change, so change was invented.

Bingo...I'm in total agreement that the issue has been confused to a large degree, and primarily by the PR folks kicking terms around to see what has the most sticking power.

[Tom Odom]

In an effort to paint a different picture of Iraq, and possibly deflect some political heat (you don't hear Bush saying stay the course anymore), this "new strategy" term was applied so that republicans could distance themselves from the fallout that was/is generating. Every wanted change, so change was invented.

jcustis: Bingo...I'm in total agreement that the issue has been confused to a large degree, and primarily by the PR folks kicking terms around to see what has the most sticking power.

Agreed. What was tactical level "whack a mole" has become "operational level whack a mole," neither of which constitutes a strategy beyond meeting the immediate demands. Mark O'Neill raised it earlier in this thread; the military/security aspects of the current and previous efforts are the supporting/shaping operations for what must be done at the political and social levels to move forward. If MG Mixson says he cannot maintain the successes he has achieved without a sustained "surge", then without forward political progress we are just marking time.

At this stage such political progress is very doubtful. Steve Metz posted a quote from Fouad Ajami in which Ajami essentially lamented that naive Americans were somehow taken in by Arabs who had the cheek to act like Arabs. Given that Ajami was born in Arnoun, Lebanon (a small village on the northern slope of the mountain made famous by Chateau Beaufort) and lived there until nearly 18 when he came to the US, Ajami seems disingenuous at best in portraying Americans as naive when he actually argued for the war. But in the quote posted by Steve, Ajami makes some cultural comments that are accurate. He lists "despotism, sectarianism, antimodernism, willful refusal to name things for what they are" as salient issues for the current state of affairs. He does not list tribalism as the hand maiden for Arab sectarianism, at lest in that particular quote and that is a gap of great significance.

The zero sum game of sectarian and tribal conflict is at play; making progress on the political front means the players would have to agree to sharing victories and splitting costs. The game is simply not played that way. The irony with regards to Ajami is that the only Arab state that has gone beyond the "zero sum" game was post-independence Lebanon with its confessional political system. The interjection of the Palestinians into that delicate mchine destroyed it and the result was the 1975 Civil War, which still echoes today. It is fashionable to look at Saddam as a monster: that is certainly true but he was not an anomaly. He emerged under the conditions of the same zero sum game and he played it to its (his) closing minutes. There are plenty of Iraqis looking to do the same today.

Best

Tom

[Mark O'Neill]

I guess I'm just frustrated because Donnelly, Kagan and, to a lesser degree, Kristol are friends of mine and they just keep beating the drum of the new strategy but I have yet to see a cogent explanation of what it is. A troop surge is an operation, not a new strategy. Rather than explain how the new strategy will better to lead to "victory" (or exactly what that is), they just spend all of their time lambasting anyone who isn't on board.

In a broader sense, I'm afraid that the conceptual underpinning of the "new strategy" is the idea that Andy Krepinevich and others were espousing that says that population security should be the central factor in counterinsurgency. In my tiny little mind, that is one more example of extrapolating general lessons from Cold War insurgencies. In Vietnam, El Salvador, etc., the "people" were "undecided" so the counterinsurgency campaign was designed to win them over with development, security, and reform. But in ethnic/sectarian insurgencies, people don't decide which side to support based on the provision of development, security, and reform. Loyalty is more primal.

Take the Palestinian insurgency. Nothing the Israelis can do will win the "hearts and minds" of the people. They understand that. But we're mucking around in Iraq with this Cold War conceptual framework. Hence we've designed a strategy based on providing development, security, and reform. As an American, I sincerely hope it works. As a student of insurgency, I doubt it will.

I buy the idea that what is driving the conflict is the simultaneous desire for sectarian security and domination by Sunni Arabs. If that is true, the only strategies that might work are either to truly subjugate the Sunni Arabs (and solidify Shiite domination), or play the role of mediators and peacekeepers.

Full agree, you are deadly right.

It comes down to what you think 'strategy' is. The 'surge' does not fit my requirements for the label. To paraphrase what Colin Gray said in his 'Can the US adapt?' SSI monograph, strategy is not 'saying what you are doing'.

Of course, the fact that the notion that the surge is an operational conops rather than a strategy hasn't been challenged because of the fact that most of the polity and commentariat are strategically illiterate.

[LawVol]

the term "new strategy" when applied to the "surge" is simply a political term. If memory serves, the administration first annouced an intent to "surge" because it began to believe that more troops were needed to accomplish the mission, i.e. the same mission as before the surge.

In an effort to paint a different picture of Iraq, and possibly deflect some political heat (you don't hear Bush saying stay the course anymore), this "new strategy" term was applied so that republicans could distance themselves from the fallout that was/is generating. Every wanted change, so change was invented.

BTW, I out "surge" in quotes because I don't really see it as a surge per se. Estimates of troops needed were in the neighborhood of 400,000 and we now have about 150,000. We're still deficient.

But in ethnic/sectarian insurgencies, people don't decide which side to support based on the provision of development, security, and reform. Loyalty is more primal.

Does this mean that "winning hearts and minds" isn't really possible in Iraq?

[SteveMetz]

Does this mean that "winning hearts and minds" isn't really possible in Iraq?

I personally don't think it is in the traditional, Cold War terms of "winning over" the "undecideds" by providing things to them. I think Americans gravitated to that idea because we wanted to understand the unfamiliar--cultures that work on patronage and primal ties--through a lens we understood. We conceptualize politics as a process where the dedicated cadres of each side try and win the support of the undecideds by providing (or promising to provide) things they want, whether projects, jobs, or policies.

I don't think all of the world operates like that.

So, to your question. I don't think Americans can win "hearts and minds" in Iraq. It has frustrated us because we reel off the number of school we've built, and people are still shooting at us. I just don't think people are going to support us because we provide goodies. Plus, they know that eventually we'll be gone and the insurgents will not. I think most people caught in insurgencies pursue survival strategies--they attempt to stay out of the mess. When that is not possible, they "support" whoever is most likely to hurt them.

So, this leads me to conclude that we've approached the Iraq insurgency with an inapplicable conceptual model.

[LawVol]

Okay, assuming that "winning" in Iraq means the establishment of stability (rather than US-style democracy), how do we win?

Hezbollah provides goodies to the populous and win them over. I'm sure the Mahdi army does the same. So it would appear to work, just not for us. Perhaps its the religious aspect of this fight? Our other COIN efforts have involved political ideology rather than religion. The old adage blood is thicker than water comes to mind. So if we can't win them over, what is our next move?

One other thought: if we'd have established immediate human security (i.e. freedom from crime) as Baghdad fell, would we even be at this point? In other words, would winning hearts and minds have mattered?

[SteveMetz]

Okay, assuming that "winning" in Iraq means the establishment of stability (rather than US-style democracy), how do we win?

Hezbollah provides goodies to the populous and win them over. I'm sure the Mahdi army does the same. So it would appear to work, just not for us. Perhaps its the religious aspect of this fight? Our other COIN efforts have involved political ideology rather than religion. The old adage blood is thicker than water comes to mind. So if we can't win them over, what is our next move?

One other thought: if we'd have established immediate human security (i.e. freedom from crime) as Baghdad fell, would we even be at this point? In other words, would winning hearts and minds have mattered?

But Hezbollah is not using "goodies" to overcome a lack of affinity. The affinity already exists. They just augment it with social services. (They also have the advantage of being seen as heroic protectors of the downtrodden. I don't think an infidel can play that role in an Islamic society).

This suggests that the Iraqi government might be able to win "hearts and minds" (if it could transcend the image that it only advances the interests of those who already support it rather than the "undecideds") but we can't. So, the solution would be to just funnel resources through the Iraqi government and be willing to tolerate the fact that a significant portion of them are going to be "lost" in the process. This has another advantage--keeping the government dependent on us to fuel its system of patronage gives us some leverage to modulate their more egregious transgressions. We might have to, for instance, overlook corruption but not tolerate human rights abuses.

[John T. Fishel]

Dave Kilcullen's blog statement, quoted in part below, is as succinct a description of the "surge" strategy - at least the security part of it - as any. It is different from what the US and the Iraqi government have done before. But, it is hardly new. In some ways, it is a classic inkblot approach focused on the human terrain.

"These operations are qualitatively different from what we have done before. Our concept is to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously, in order to prevent terrorists relocating their infrastructure from one to another, and to create an operational synergy between what we're doing in Baghdad and what's happening outside. Unlike on previous occasions, we don't plan to leave these areas once they’re secured. These ops will run over months, and the key activity is to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them. The really decisive activity will be police work, registration of the population and counterintelligence in these areas, to comb out the insurgent sleeper cells and political cells that have "gone quiet" as we moved in, but which will try to survive through the op and emerge later. This will take operational patience, and it will be intelligence-led, and Iraqi government-led. It will probably not make the news (the really important stuff rarely does) but it will be the truly decisive action.

"When we speak of "clearing" an enemy safe haven, we are not talking about destroying the enemy in it; we are talking about rescuing the population in it from enemy intimidation. If we don't get every enemy cell in the initial operation, that's OK. The point of the operations is to lift the pall of fear from population groups that have been intimidated and exploited by terrorists to date, then win them over and work with them in partnership to clean out the cells that remain – as has happened in Al Anbar Province and can happen elsewhere in Iraq as well.

"The "terrain" we are clearing is human terrain, not physical terrain. It is about marginalizing al Qa’ida, Shi’a extremist militias, and the other terrorist groups from the population they prey on. This is why claims that “80% of AQ leadership have fled” don’t overly disturb us: the aim is not to kill every last AQ leader, but rather to drive them off the population and keep them off, so that we can work with the community to prevent their return."

I believe this can be read that the major effort must come from the Iraqi government with coalition help. Yet, I am concerned that I have not seen in any statements coming from Gen Petraeus or Dr Kilcullen that explain how an insurgency led by and mainly manned by Sunnis who were the core supporters of the Saddam regime (according to Abu Buckwheat who makes this case extremely well) has morphed into an AQ (AQI?) dominated insurgency. Is this merely propaganda - not untrue but not the whole truth either - or have they deceived themselves or did it really change in this way?

JohnT

[Granite_State]

Okay, assuming that "winning" in Iraq means the establishment of stability (rather than US-style democracy), how do we win?

Hezbollah provides goodies to the populous and win them over. I'm sure the Mahdi army does the same. So it would appear to work, just not for us.

Bear in mind they are only winning over their people. Most Christian and Sunni Lebanese hate Hezbollah is my understanding. And certainly most Iraqi Sunnis hate and fear the Mahdi Army.

[Tacitus]

Gentlemen,

As best as I can follow things, the plan is to put more troops in Al Anbar province and selected neighborhoods in Baghdad. This will result in a decrease in violence, which will then allow Prime Minister Mailiki’s government to have some “breathing space” (I’ve heard that term used several times by our government, but it is not clear what they mean by that). This then will then create the conditions enabling the Iraqi Parliament to pass a law to share oil revenues, and begin the political reconciliation of the various factions in Iraq.

I’m not sure that amounts to a strategy, either. We just sort of assume that these additional American troops will deliver calm in key places, which then triggers this great political compromise among Iraqis. But isn’t Al Sadr the muscle behind Maliki’s coalition government? Why is he all of a sudden going to bury the hatchet with his internal enemies, and vice versa? Heck, he’s part of our problem over there, not a catalyst to a solution.

I don’t know whether our government and high command believes its own rhetoric, or not. It is as if all this negative karma has been built up to date over there, despite our good intentions, that things just HAVE to work out okay because…well, if you do good things, then good things will happen to you. Call it a Hindu faith-based strategy.

It feels like more of a political strategy to me, to prolong our efforts in Iraq beyond the 2008 elections. How many times have you heard, “Hey, we can’t pull out now, we haven’t give the new “surge” strategy a chance to work”? The idea is to leave it to the next guy/gal in office to deal with the ultimate resolution of the policy there. Then, if things collapse, you can blame it on them.

[Granite_State]

I guess I'm just frustrated because Donnelly, Kagan and, to a lesser degree, Kristol are friends of mine and they just keep beating the drum of the new strategy but I have yet to see a cogent explanation of what it is. A troop surge is an operation, not a new strategy. Rather than explain how the new strategy will better to lead to "victory" (or exactly what that is), they just spend all of their time lambasting anyone who isn't on board.

In a broader sense, I'm afraid that the conceptual underpinning of the "new strategy" is the idea that Andy Krepinevich and others were espousing that says that population security should be the central factor in counterinsurgency. In my tiny little mind, that is one more example of extrapolating general lessons from Cold War insurgencies. In Vietnam, El Salvador, etc., the "people" were "undecided" so the counterinsurgency campaign was designed to win them over with development, security, and reform. But in ethnic/sectarian insurgencies, people don't decide which side to support based on the provision of development, security, and reform. Loyalty is more primal.

That's a great, great point, and I kind of feel like an idiot that it never occurred to me in that way. Thanks.

Only question is, what happened to the supposed mass of secular, well-educated Iraqi professionals? My guess is the majority have left or are leaving for Syria, Egypt, Jordan, etc.

[Culpeper]

When I first saw the term, "The Surge", for the latest offensives I was sort of baffled myself by the name they chose. It just appears to me that someone making decisions finally read, "Counterinurgency Warfare", by David Galula while waiting in the lobby for a dentist appointment.