Small War on Basilan (catch all)

[Bob's World]

Well, where you see me making over-simplified points, I see you agonizing over details that are not material to forming a strategic understanding of the nature of the problem at hand.

Once one has a strategic understanding of the nature of the dynamic of insurgency (with historic western biases captured in all of the COIN literature, histories, governmental lessons learned and doctrines, etc distilled out to the degree possible) one get gets a basic framework for understanding that then allows them to look at any single specific situation with all of its unique facts, cultures, history, etc and begin sorting out where to begin and what to focus on. I shift the focus from the insurgent (for those in the war is war, just kill the threat camp) and from the populace (for those in the "win the hearts and minds", "control the populace," and development camps) to one that focuses on the government. Not to make any government more "effective" (which too often leads to long, expensive programs of building security force capacity, massive development programs, massive rule of law programs, etc) but rather on what I simply call "goodness." Those critical, intangible aspects of human nature that are so fundamental to human happiness that when abused or ignored by some government lead to growing "conditions of insurgency" or despair and frustration and anger that lead good honest citizens to be willing to act out illegally against their own government to seek change.

Governments don't like this. Far better to blame others, or to blame the economy or other factors beyond their control. "goodness" is always totally within the control of any government and typically costs little if anything to implement, adopt or repair. Populaces inherently understand this, and it contributes to why it is these conditions that fuel the fires of insurgency. They realize that these conditions exist because the government either intentionally wants them to exist, or simply does not care about them enough to make minor changes required to address them.

Arab Spring events are merely the latest major move by these populaces, and are indeed connected to the major moves the 1906 and 1908 constitutional revolutions in Iran and Turkey. The conditions of governance across the region are untenable and are changing. Evolution of governance can relieve this pressure, or those same governments can ratchet up the security and public bribes in efforts to reduce popular pressure so that they can retain the status quo that they are happy with. AQ indeed did not cause the Arab Spring revolts, but to say it was "without them" misses that AQ has played a role in this over all dynamic of helping to people to understand that they can act out, that they can stand up. I doubt many want what AQ is selling, or want to live in a Caliphate controlled by AQ. But they want liberty, self-determination, respect, justice under the law. They also want to feel that their government answer to them and to God as they see appropriate (not as some Western power sees appropriate based on completely different values, culture, etc).

Is the totality of this overwhelming in details? Certainly, but there is a common essence that allows us to make sense of it all and focus on the right things. Plus the beauty of my approach is that it can be no less effective than other approaches, and will always be far less expensive, dangerous or intrusive to implement.

[davidbfpo]

A general point and heard repeatedly a few years ago in London at an Islam seminar, which I'd filed away until reading Bob's last post:

...they want liberty, self-determination, respect, justice under the law. They also want to feel that their government answer to them and to God as they see appropriate (not as some Western power sees appropriate based on completely different values, culture, etc).

Nearly all those speaking, mainly from the Middle East, wanted ACCOUNTABILITY. Yes, we want other non-material things, but what we want will not be what you prescribe or have followed. We will follow our own path.

[Bob's World]

Dave,

Excellent add. The US used to promote self-determination and take the position that we had no right to levy moral judgments onto others, and certainly no duty to intervene in small conflicts where we had little direct stake at risk.

Then came our emergence to the top of the heap following WWII, and our series of policy and prinicple compromises made over the course of the Cold War; our belief that those compromises and our efforts "won" the Cold War; to where we are today.

A country that has been too quick to apply military force, a country that has become so convinced of its "rightness" that we proclaim our values to be "universal" and call for a "new world order" under US leadership in our National Security Strategy. We push for Democracy as we see it and presume ourselves to have a "responsibility to protect" popualces seeking to sort out their own futures in far away lands. Until we turn and look back to where we came from, we will never realize how far we have drifted.

Said another way, we have grown up and become our parents; and frankly, we were not much pleased with them when they acted in this same way....

[Dayuhan]

Bit of rush at the moment, will have more to say re previous post, but I have to ask about this...

The US used to promote self-determination and take the position that we had no right to levy moral judgments onto others, and certainly no duty to intervene in small conflicts where we had little direct stake at risk.

When exactly was this the case?

[Ken White]

1801???

:d

[Bob's World]

1801???

:d

I suspect Ken might have been at that particular cabinet meeting, so I defer to his assessment...

But the true sea change was as we came to realize post-WWII that it was not going to be all sunshine and roses with our good allies, the Soviets and the Chinese, and found ourselves in a bi-lateral contest for influence that came to be divided along ideological lines.

You can't argue "self-determination" when the insurgency you are trying to stop from throwing the puppet government of your Colonial French pals out of power are employing a Communist ideology that will likely expand the influence of our own opponent and reduce our influence at the same time. So we switched to selling "Democracy" as a counter. Sorry to all you nations in the buffer between East and West, self-determination is now off the table.

Earlier, when we were competing with the Brits for influence over the Saudi Oil market, and the Brits were making a stink over the Saudi prractice of slavery and offering a very low ball price based on what they were "stealing" oil from the Iranians for; we offered a much more attractive price and assured the Saudis that we had no right to comment on slavery or offer any other moral judgement.

A slippery slope....time to put our climbing spikes on and get back up to the high ground that we imagine ourselves to still be standing on.

[Dayuhan]

But the true sea change was as we came to realize post-WWII that it was not going to be all sunshine and roses with our good allies, the Soviets and the Chinese, and found ourselves in a bi-lateral contest for influence that came to be divided along ideological lines.

You can't argue "self-determination" when the insurgency you are trying to stop from throwing the puppet government of your Colonial French pals out of power are employing a Communist ideology that will likely expand the influence of our own opponent and reduce our influence at the same time. So we switched to selling "Democracy" as a counter. Sorry to all you nations in the buffer between East and West, self-determination is now off the table.

Again, when was self-determination ever on the table? That little Philippine escapade in 1898, was that about self-determination? Or our repeated pre-war forays into Central America? Ask a Nicaraguan or a Honduran when the US was ever concerned with self-determination. We might have paid lip service to the idea when trying to criticise some other colonial power, but it's not something we ever paid much regard to in our own sphere of influence.

The only thing that changed after WW2 was we were messing around in a larger area.

Well, where you see me making over-simplified points, I see you agonizing over details that are not material to forming a strategic understanding of the nature of the problem at hand.

Trying to formulate a response in a specific situation armed primarily with a generic "strategic understanding" and insufficient awareness of local detail can cause problems. In a vague and passing attempt to keep on topic, the recently failed effort at peacemaking in the Philippines is a good example. The reflexive assumption that insurgency is a matter to be resolved between government and insurgents led to the exclusion from the process of the other concerned populace, which in turn led to the failure of the effort and general waste of our already limited credibility and influence capital in the area.

Once one has a strategic understanding of the nature of the dynamic of insurgency (with historic western biases captured in all of the COIN literature, histories, governmental lessons learned and doctrines, etc distilled out to the degree possible) one get gets a basic framework for understanding that then allows them to look at any single specific situation with all of its unique facts, cultures, history, etc and begin sorting out where to begin and what to focus on.

I'm not sure a prior commitment to a generic "strategic understanding" is actually an advantage in assessing a specific situation. As with any prior assumption, this can blind us to reality on the ground. Certainly if we're assessing a problem we call "insurgency" we should be aware of the possibility (or likelihood) that governance is a major part of the problem, but approaching with the fixed assumption that governance IS ithe problem and that peace can only be made by the government addressing the insurgents concerns and negotiating peace with the insurgents... well, that's just as bad as approaching the situation with any other base of fixed assumptions.

To me the key is to approach with awareness of multiple possibilities and without any fixed assumptions in place. I agree that the previous set of fixed assumptions was defective and caused all manner of trouble, but I don't think replacing it with a new set of fixed assumptions is an answer.

Not to make any government more "effective" (which too often leads to long, expensive programs of building security force capacity, massive development programs, massive rule of law programs, etc) but rather on what I simply call "goodness." Those critical, intangible aspects of human nature that are so fundamental to human happiness that when abused or ignored by some government lead to growing "conditions of insurgency" or despair and frustration and anger that lead good honest citizens to be willing to act out illegally against their own government to seek change.

Governments don't like this. Far better to blame others, or to blame the economy or other factors beyond their control. "goodness" is always totally within the control of any government and typically costs little if anything to implement, adopt or repair. Populaces inherently understand this, and it contributes to why it is these conditions that fuel the fires of insurgency. They realize that these conditions exist because the government either intentionally wants them to exist, or simply does not care about them enough to make minor changes required to address them.

Here I think you stray into troubled waters. First, there's an assumption that your definition of "goodness" is universal and universally sought. This is pretty tenuous. For a whole lot of people in a whole lot of troubled places politics are defined in terms of us and them: "goodness" is "we rule, they don't" and "badness" is "they rule, we don't".

If "goodness were so easy to achieve, and required such minor changes and minimal costs, there's be a whole lot more of it in the world. It is in fact very difficult to attain, and can generally only be achieved through extended internal conflict, often involving violence. We cannot make other governments "good".

the beauty of my approach is that it can be no less effective than other approaches, and will always be far less expensive, dangerous or intrusive to implement.

How is trying to change governance in other nations anything but intrusive, especially when we're the ones deciding what changes are needed?

I think your theoretical framework breaks down rather badly when translated to actual policy recommendations. Either it comes down to trying to use "influence" - even when we haven't any - to change the way other governments govern, or as trying to impose ourselves as uninvited and generally unwanted "champions of the populace". Either course has abundant potential for unintended adverse consequences.

The least expensive, dangerous, and intrusive response to another county's internal conflict is neither "suppress the insurgency" nor "make the government good". The least expensive, dangerous, and intrusive response is to mind our own gottverdammt business.