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The Free Congress Commentary On War #241 William S. Lind One reason parts of Iraq have quieted down, at least for a while, has received widespread attention: the Sunni split from al-Qaeda. AI-Qaeda's own tactics alienated its base, which is usually a fatal political mistake, and for once we were wise enough not to get in the way of an enemy who was making a blunder. But there has been little comment on an equally important reason for improved stability in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr's stand-down order to his Mahdi Army militia. Just as it seemed we were headed straight for a war with the Shiites, they sheered away. We now appear to be doing the same; at least the papers here no longer report daily raids and air strikes on Shiite areas. That too suggests we may have learned something. But it does not explain the Mahdi Army's quiescence. I have no secret agent in the Desert Fox's lair, so I cannot report what Mr. al-Sadr is thinking. I doubt he is afraid of a confrontation with the U.S. military. Fighting the Americans is more likely to strengthen than weaken his hold on his own movement. So what gives? The Sunday, November 18 New York Times made passing mention of a possible clue. It suggested that the Mahdi Army and some other Shiites have backed away from confronting the U.S. because Iran asked them to. If that is true, it bumps the same question up a level. Why are the Iranians asking their allies in Iraq to give us a break? I doubt it is out of charity, or fear, although elements within Iran that do not want a war with the United States seem to be gaining political strength. Here's a hypothesis. What if the Iranians had determined, rightly or wrongly (and I suspect rightly), that the Bush administration has already decided to attack Iran before the end of its term? Two actions would seem logical on their part. First, try to maneuver the Americans into the worst possible position on the moral level by denying them pretexts for an attack. Telling their allied Shiite militias in Iraq to cool it would be part of that, as would reducing the flow of Iranian arms to Iraqi insurgents and improving cooperation with the international community on the nuclear issue. We see evidence of the latter two actions as well as the first. Second, they would tell their allies in Iraq to keep their powder dry. Back off for now, train, build up stocks of weapons and explosives and work out plans for what they will do as their part of the Iranian counter-attack. Counter-attack there will certainly be, on the ground against our forces in Iraq, in one form or another. In almost all possible counter-attack scenarios, it would be highly valuable to Iran if the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias could cut the Americans' supply lines running up from Kuwait and slow down their movements so that they could not mass their widely dispersed forces. In John Boyd's phrase, it would be a classic Cheng-Chi operation. Again, I cannot say this is what lies behind the Mahdi Army's stand-down; Zeppelin reconnaissance over Iran has been inconclusive. But it is consistent with three probabilities: that the Bush administration has decided to bomb Iran, that the Iranians plan in response to roll up our army in Iraq and that Muqtada al-Sadr and other Iraqi Shiite leaders coordinate their actions closely with Tehran. In past wars, quiet periods at the front have often preceded a "big push" by one side or both. Such may prove to be the case in Iraq as well, at least as far as Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army are concerned. If so, in view of the situations in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Lebanon and the almost certain failure of the Tea Lady's Annapolis initiative, 2008 may see the Islamic world in flames from the Himalayas to the Mediterranean. To paraphrase Horace Greeley, buy gold, young man, buy gold. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #240 William S. Lind Like most militaries, most police departments are not famous for their intellectual attainments. Doughnuts, it seems, are not brain food. Fortunately, that is beginning to change. Police are starting to understand that they, not the military, are on the front line of Fourth Generation war, and they need to think about what that means for them. Up until now, the leading police agency in thinking about 4GW has been the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department. That is not surprising; cops in L.A. face 4GW on the streets all the time, in the form of war between ethnically-defined gangs. But the east coast is waking up. The New York City Police Department has just put out an interesting study of the most dangerous variety of 4GW, the local kind. Titled Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat and written by two NYPD Senior Intelligence Analysts, Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, this monograph is an important contribution to the slowly-growing corpus of 4GW literature. The title is slightly and unintentionally misleading. The study reflects just one kind of homegrown 4GW threat, the Islamic variety. I'm sure the NYPD recognizes that there are many other domestic sources of 4GW beyond Islam, but it might want to clarify that point in a future edition. Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat [2.1 MB PDF] proceeds from one unstated but critically important assumption: if police are acting as "first responders," after an incident has occurred, they have failed. Success in defending civil society requires not first response but prevention. Prevention can only be done by police, because only police, not the military, are sufficiently integrated with society to get the "tips" prevention usually requires. The need for such integration in turn explains why police should never allow themselves to be militarized, despite most cops' enthusiasm for military gear. Militarization automatically separates police from civil society, which leaves them blind and deaf. The study begins with an observation by NYC Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly:
The bulk of the study seeks to identify a pattern these homegrown 4GW fighters follow in their self-development.
The NYPD shows its grasp of the realities of 4GW by not seeing the enemy as a structure or organization:
For those who believe the "terrorist" threat is waning, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat should provide a needed wake-up call. Al-Qaeda may today be less able to carry off 9/11 style operations than it was when it had its Afghan sanctuaries, but it has replaced that operational model with a model based on "leaderless resistance." The "leaderless resistance" model is less vulnerable to counter-attack by state armed forces and may, over time, also be more deadly. The good news here is that unlike the military, the cops get it. Perhaps that should not surprise us. Several years ago, I gave my "Four Generations of Modern War" talk to a police conference. I did not modify the talk for a police audience; I told them I did not know enough about policing to be able to do that. They had to translate it from military to police terms themselves. While perhaps 10% of the average military audience gets what I am saying, 90% of the cops got it. For cops, the real world is the street, not the internal world of promotion and budget politics that absorbs most American military officers. Outward focus, it seems, makes a difference. Note: There will be no “On War” column Thanksgiving week. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #239 A Question for Would-Be Presidents William S. Lind As the Presidential debate wallow their sorry way through a sea of inanities, leaving in their wake 600 million glazed eyes, a novel thought occurs: what if some mad cur introduced a real question into one of them? At the very least, it would be fun to watch the puppets' strings snap (each party has a single candidate who is not a Punchinello, Ron Paul for the Republicans and Dennis Kucinich for the Democrats). I have just such a question at hand, one that happens to be central to the future of our republic: How, dear sir or madam, do you propose, if elected President, to avoid a long war? Wouldn’t it be fun to watch Senator McNasty and Lady MacBeth, the Great Chicago Vacuum and the Little Brooklyn Duce wrestle with that? Make no mistake, the Washington Establishment intends our future will be defined by a long war, with all that entails. Commentator/Cunctator Fabius Maximus wrote on July 24, 2007,
Fabius cites as evidence the opening lines of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review:
As usual in Washington, the names are changed to protect the guilty. Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland wrote on October 21,
What' s wrong with this picture? Sun Tzu said it succinctly: "There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare." Acceptance by any Presidential candidate of a "long war" or "persistent conflict" is an admission of grand strategic imbecility. Which, just possibly, ought not be the highest qualification for public office, all appearances notwithstanding. Our first, recently concluded long war should serve as a caution. Philip Bobbit said,
In 1914, America was a republic with a small federal government, a self-reliant citizenry, growing industry, an expanding middle class, an uplifting culture and exemplary morals. By 1990 and the end of that long war, we had become a tawdry and increasingly resented world empire with a vast, endlessly intrusive federal government, a population of willingly manipulated consumers, shrinking industry, a vanishing middle class, a debauched culture and morals that would shame a self-respecting stoat. Where will another long war leave us? We need not speculate at random. The Newspeak "Patriot Act," a plunging dollar, $2 trillion for one lost war and the devil knows how much for a second, a flood of Third World immigrants and cultural Marxism rampant in the highest places all point to the answer. What's left of America won't be worth a bucket of warm spit, or however you say that in Spanish. A long war, or "persistent conflict," is not inevitable. It is ours only if we choose it. There are alternatives. A defensive, rather than an offensive, grand strategy is one. Closing our borders and minding our own goddam business is another. Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sudan, wherever can stew in their own heathen juice. So how about it, all you would-be Presidents: what do you intend to do to keep America out of an inevitably disastrous long war? If you cannot answer that question, you shouldn’t be running for dogcatcher of Dogpatch. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #238 William S. Lind In an article in the November issue of the Atlantic Monthly, "America's Elegant Decline," Robert Kaplan reminds us of a geostrategic reality we can easily forget in the face of Fourth Generation wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: we are inescapably a maritime power. When Kaplan says that "Hulls in the water could soon displace boots on the ground as the most important military catchphrase of our time," he engages in navalist hyperbole, unless he is anticipating the general Resurrection when the sea will give up her dead. We face no credible blue-water naval challenger. The Pentagon’s threat inflators keep trying to puff the magic dragon, but the Chinese Navy remains merely a collection of ships. We do not need naval supremacy because, as Kaplan writes, “'Regular wars' between major states could be as frequent in the 21st century as they were in the 20th." If states are so foolish as to fight "regular wars," they will find most are won by non-state, Fourth Generation elements as defeated (and sometimes victorious) states disintegrate. Rather, we need naval supremacy because in a world where the state is weakening, water, and transport by water, grow in importance. People today think of land uniting and water dividing, but that became true only recently, with the rise of the state and the development of railways (which can only function in the safety and order created by states). From the dawn of river and sea-faring until the mid-19th century, water united and land divided. It was easier, safer, cheaper and faster to move goods and people by water than by land. So it will be again in a 21st century dominated by Fourth Generation war and declining or disappearing states. Already, in places such as the Congo, the only way to move is on the rivers. A country that can control waterways anywhere in the world will have a great strategic advantage. Given our maritime geography and our long and proud naval tradition, that country should be the United States. Unfortunately, we are not developing the naval capabilities we need to do that. The reason shows once again the importance of military theory. The U.S. Navy has to choose between two naval theorists, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan and Sir Julian Corbett, and it has chosen wrongly. Kaplan writes,
Kaplan gets Mahan right, but not Corbett. Mahan in essence wrote naval theory for children; I was much impressed by The Influence of Sea Power on History when I was fifteen. Corbett in contrast writes for adults, focusing not on great naval battles but on the use of sea power in a larger context. That larger context is strategy suited to a maritime power, which expresses itself in amphibious warfare directed at a continental enemy’s vulnerable peripheries. Corbett's two-volume history, England in the Seven Year's War, is probably the deepest study of amphibious warfare ever written. Where Kaplan really goes wrong is when he writes, "By necessity, the American Navy is turning from Mahan to Corbett." On the contrary, if you look at the U. S. Navy's shipbuilding program, it is almost purely Mahanian. Today as throughout the Cold War, the U.S. Navy is building a fleet perfectly designed to fight the navy of Imperial Japan. If someone wants to contest control of the Pacific Ocean in a war between aircraft carrier task forces, we are ready. Unfortunately, no one does, absent that general Resurrection when Shokaku and Zuikaku, Soryu and Hiryu will rise from their watery graves. Were the U.S. Navy really to turn to Corbett, it would build lots of ships designed for operations in coastal waters and on rivers, often with troops on board. But such ships are small ships, and the U.S. Navy hates small ships. Some thirty years ago, when the Senator I worked for was trying to push the Navy into buying some small, fast missile boats, the PHMs, the then-Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Holloway, said contemptuously in testimony, "The U.S. Navy has no place for little ships." That attitude has not changed. Kaplan quotes a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, Jim Thomas, as saying, "The Navy is not primarily about low-level raiding, piracy patrols, and riverine warfare. If we delude ourselves into thinking that it is, we're finished as a great power." Those are precisely the missions we need a Navy for in a Fourth Generation world -- a world in which, as I have noted before, the term "great power" has no meaning. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #237 William S. Lind The Pentagon last week floated a trial balloon suggesting that all U.S. Marines might pullout of Iraq and head to Afghanistan, while the Army would do the opposite and concentrate on Iraq. The rationale was mere administrative efficiency or neatness, which hardly justifies the turmoil the proposal would cause. I would personally be happy to see my Marine friends leave Iraq before the roof there falls in, but trading Iraq for Afghanistan is little more than a jump out of the frying pan into the fire. If, however, a Marine Corps takeover of the war in Afghanistan were used as an opportunity to change the way we are waging that war, then it would be more than justified. What would meaningful change entail? First, we would have to adopt a realistic strategic goal, one that might be attainable. The present strategic goal of turning Afghanistan into a modern, secular, capitalist state with "equal rights for women" and similar claptrap lies in the in realm of fantasy. The most Afghanistan can become is Afghanistan in its better periods, which is to say a country with a weak central government, strong local warlords, endemic tribal civil war, a drug-based economy and a traditional Islamic society and culture. The dominant tribe, controlling the central government in Kabul, will be the Pashtun, because it always has been. There are two possible strategies for attaining this goal, neither of which guarantees success, but both of which have a potential for success, unlike what we and NATO are doing now. The first is to split the Pashtun from the Taliban, making the Pashtun our allies instead of our enemies. Since the Pashtun always win in the end, we must be allied with them if we are not to lose. The second possible strategy is to split the Taliban from al-Qaeda and similar ethnically Arab 4GW entities and make a deal with them in which they would again get Kabul and the government. That central government will, as always in Afghan history, be weak, so we are not giving up all that much. This strategy has the advantage that it would reduce the pressure on Pakistan, which remains a de facto ally of the Taliban. If Pakistan goes, and it is going, our position in the region collapses overnight. Of the two strategic options, I think the second is more likely to work. It gives us a central authority to make a deal with; other than the Taliban, who can deliver the Pashtun to the alliance we need? The same lack of an alternate legitimate authority—the Karzai government is not one—makes splitting the Pashtun from the Taliban a tall order. Most probably, attempting to do so will leave us enmeshed in endless local politics we can neither understand nor bring to any sort of useful conclusion. While we would have to swallow some of our (overweening) pride to give Kabul back to the Taliban, the Taliban is not in and of itself any threat to America, so long as it is not in bed with al-Qaeda. Both strategic options require a radical change in American tactics, from "winning battles" defined by "kills" to the tactics of de-escalation. The FMFM-IA lays out in detail what a tactics of de-escalation means. Suffice it here to say here that it includes an end to airstrikes, trying to capture rather than kill those Pashtun we have to fight (and treating prisoners very well, as future allies), and replacing the American addiction to firepower with good light infantry tactics. If the Bush administration is able to adopt these strategic recommendations, then handing Afghanistan over to the Marine Corps makes sense. The Marine Corps has generals who can think in strategic terms (if the Army has any, it has not sent them to Afghanistan). It is perhaps slightly less addicted to firepower than the Army, though Marine aviation may be a problem. While Marine infantry tactics are little if any better than the Army's, it would be easier to retrain Marine infantry in true light infantry tactics, if only because the Marine Corps is smaller. Perhaps most importantly, Marines have learned something of the tactics of de-escalation in Anbar province in Iraq. Had they not done so, Anbar would still be an al-Qaeda stronghold. The choke point, as always, is the Bush administration. The Marine Corps on its own cannot change our strategy in Afghanistan. It can advocate a change. Perhaps it can line up DOD and the State Department behind such a change. But in the end, only the White House can make the change. Will it? Only if it learns from experience, which so far is has shown no ability to do. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #236 William S. Lind Major General John Kelly is one of the Marine Corps' most thoughtful and most able leaders. Many who hope to see the Marine Corps' doctrine of Maneuver Warfare someday become real instead of just words on paper pray he has a bright future. When, as a major, he was commander of Infantry Officers’ Course at Quantico, he did what every Marine school director should do: he hauled all the old, Second Generation lesson plans out into the courtyard, poured gasoline on them and burned them. I have known him since that time, and I regard him as a personal friend. In late September, speaking to the San Diego Military Advisory Council, General Kelly said:
I have to reply, not so fast, John. I have no doubt the situation General Kelly found in Anbar Province is much quieter than it was just a short time ago. That means fewer casualties, for which we are all thankful. But in the inherent complexity of a Fourth Generation situation, it does not mean we are winning. If we put the improved situation in Anbar in context, we quickly see there is less to it than first meets the eye. That context begins with the fact that Anbar is quieter primarily because of what al Qaeda did, namely alienating its base, not what we did. We enabled the local Sunnis to turn on al Qaeda by ceasing or at least diminishing our attacks on the local population. But if al Qaeda had not blundered, the situation would be about what it had been since the real war started. We have not found a silver bullet for 4GW. Nor is the war in Iraq a binary conflict, America vs. al Qaeda, although, that is how Washington now portrays it. Al Qaeda is only one of a vast array of non-state actors, fighting for many different kinds of goals. If al Qaeda in Iraq disappeared tomorrow, Iraq would remain chaotic. The fact that some Sunni tribes have turned on al Qaeda does not mean they like us. It just means we have for the moment become the #2 enemy instead of #1, or perhaps #3, with the Shiites ranking ahead of us. Some think the Sunnis are just getting whatever they can from us as they prepare for another, more bitter round of the Sunni vs. Shiite civil war. But the biggest reason for saying "not so fast" is that the reduction of violence in Anbar does not necessary point toward the rise of a state in the now-stateless region of Mesopotamia. As I have argued repeatedly in this column and elsewhere, we can only win in Iraq if a new state emerges there. Far from pointing toward that, our new working relationship with some Sunni sheiks points away from it. The sheiks represent local, feudal power, not a state. We are working with them precisely because there is no Iraqi state to work with (the Maliki government is a polite fiction). From a practical standpoint, there is nothing else we can do to get any results. But our alliances with Sunni sheiks in effect represents our acceptance, de facto if not de jure, of the reality that there is no state. The sheiks, we must recognize, do not accept the Shiite puppet government in Baghdad (nothing illustrates its puppet nature better than its inability to expel Blackwater) or its armed forces, which are mostly Shiite militias who get government paychecks. The Baghdad government recognizes this fact. A story in the October 1 Cleveland Plain Dealer quotes Prime Minister al-Maliki's United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite) as condemning
Rightly, the ruling Shiites fear that what we are actually creating is new Sunni militias, which will fight the Shiite militias. Finally, as if all this did not throw enough cold water on any notion that we are winning, just as the Marines are ramping down our war with the Iraqi Sunnis, in Anbar, the U.S. Army is ramping up a war with the Shiite population. Almost every day we read about another raid on the Shiite, all too often one where we have called in airstrikes on populated Shiite neighborhoods. A story in the October 6 Plain Dealer, U.S. raid north of Baghdad kills 25," was typical:
If we have not enjoyed fighting the 20% of the Iraqi population that is Sunni, how much pleasure will we find in fighting the 60% that is Shiite? Of course, an American attack on Iran will only intensify our war with Iraq's Shiites. So no, we are not winning in Iraq. The only meaningful definition of "winning" is seeing the re-emergence of a real Iraqi state, and by that standard we are no closer to victory than we ever were. Nor can I see anything on the horizon that could move us closer to such a victory, other than a complete American withdrawal, which begins to look as unlikely under Hillary as under George. All we see on the horizon of Anbar province, sadly, is another mirage. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #235 William S. Lind Colonel John Boyd, America's greatest military theorist, never wrote a book. But as a Marine friend of mine said, Col. Frans Osinga's new book, Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd, is the book Boyd would have written if he had written a book. (As someone who worked with Boyd for about 15 years, I think the reason he did not write a book is that he loved giving his briefings, and he feared that if people could find his work in a book they would not ask him to brief.) The central point Osinga makes is that, contrary to what is widely believed, Boyd's work cannot be summarized in the concept of the OODA Loop. The OODA Loop concept says that in any conflict, all parties go through repeated cycles of Observing, Orienting, Deciding and Acting, and whoever can go through the cycle consistently faster will win. At the tactical level, this is often true. But as Osinga points out, as soon as one moves up into the operational, strategic and grand strategic levels, Boyd's theory grows far more complex. There, accuracy of observation and especially of orientation become at least as important as tempo. Attaining accuracy requires far more than "information." In Boyd's own less-than-simple words,
To make sense of all this, and more, Osinga begins by studying what Boyd studied. He works his way through Boyd's vast bibliography, which includes not only military history but also scientific thought and epistemology. Boyd immersed himself in multiple disciplines, applying his own prescription of analysis and synthesis, intellectual openness and constant cross-referencing to the creation of his military theories. Osinga then proceeds to describe, discuss and analyze Boyd's vast briefings in chronological order, that is to say in the order in which Boyd developed them. Boyd's most famous briefing was Patterns of Conflict, with its contrast between attrition warfare and maneuver warfare. Again, Osinga notes that there is far more here than speed through the OODA Loop. Of key importance to Fourth Generation war, Boyd introduces his three levels of war: not the traditional tactical-operational-strategic but physical-mental-moral. As Osinga writes,
Boyd's next briefing, my personal favorite, was Organic Design for Command and Control. It offers a devastating implied critique of the way the U.S. military is using technology to "improve" command and control. Boyd argues that, from a maneuverist perspective, you don't even want command and control, but rather appreciation and leadership. From this point on to the conclusion of Boyd's work, each briefing becomes more theoretical and abstract. He offers one of the few useful definitions of strategy: "The Strategic Game is one of Interaction and Isolation." He describes a "conceptual spiral" that leads to a deeper understanding of how we can cope with uncertainty. Finally, he offers "the real OODA Loop," which is far too complex to present here but supports Osinga's assertion that there is more to it than speed, at least above the tactical level. The John Boyd who emerges from this outstanding book is the John Boyd I knew. He was the opposite of the narrow technician, the type our armed services seem to prefer and promote. He ranged across a vast intellectual landscape, drawing from the most unlikely places ideas he could assemble in new ways to reveal more about the nature and conduct of war. (I must relate one anecdote, one of the few occasions where I saw Boyd get shot down. Over dinner with General Hermann Balck, Boyd thought to pay Balck a jocular compliment. He said to him, "General, with your extraordinarily quick reactions (still evident despite Balck's 80+ years), you would have made a great fighter pilot." Balck instantly replied, "Ich bin kein Techniker"—I am not a technician!) I say unreservedly, "Buy this book!" Yes, it costs more than $100. But Col. Osinga (Royal Netherlands Air Force—truly, no prophet is honored in his own country) told me that if he can sell just a few more, his publisher will bring it out in paperback. So let the kids go hungry for a few nights and plunk down the cash. If you have any interest in war, this is a book your library cannot do without. Just as America cannot do without John Boyd's ideas, although our military has not yet figured that out. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #234 William S. Lind I returned at the end of last week from the Imperial fall maneuvers, held this year in Ostland. His Majesty's forces prevailed, for much the same reasons that Blue usually wins in American war games. As someone who has led Red to victory in several senior-level games conducted in Washington, I can assure you that isn't supposed to happen. I don't think it possible for any historian to visit the Baltic countries or the rest of Central Europe and not reflect on the catastrophes World War I brought for that part of the world. Communism, World War II, National Socialism, the extinction of some communities and the expulsion of others, wholesale alteration of national boundaries, all these and more flowed from the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914. One pebble touched off an avalanche. It did so because it occurred, not as an isolated incident, but as one more in a series of crises that rocked Europe in its last ten years of peace, 1904-1914. Each of those crises had the potential to touch off a general European war, and each further de-stabilized the region, making the next incident all the more dangerous. 1905-06 witnessed the First Moroccan Crisis, when the German Foreign Office (whose motto, after Bismarck, might well be, "Clowns unto ages of ages") compelled a very reluctant Kaiser Wilhelm II to land at Tangier as a challenge to France. 1908 brought the Bosnian Annexation Crisis, where Austria humiliated Russia and left her anxious for revenge. Then came the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1911, the Tripolitan War of 1911-1912 (a war Italy actually won, against the tottering Ottoman Empire) and the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. By 1914, it had become a question more of which crisis would finally set all Europe ablaze than of whether peace would endure. This was true despite the fact that, in the abstract, no major European state wanted war. If this downward spiral of events in Europe reminds us of the Middle East today, it should. There too we see a series of crises, each holding the potential of kicking off a much larger war. There are almost too many to list: the war in Iraq, the U.S. versus Iran, Israel vs. Syria, the U.S. vs. Syria, Syria vs. Lebanon, Turkey vs. Kurdistan, the war in Afghanistan, the de-stabilization of Pakistan, Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and the permanent crisis of Israel vs. the Palestinians. Each is a tick of the bomb, bringing us closer and closer to the explosion no one wants, no one outside the neo-con cabal and Likud, anyway. A basic rule of history is that the inevitable eventually happens. If you keep on smoking in the powder magazine, you will at some point blow it up. No one can predict the specific event or its timing, but everyone can see the trend and where it is leading. In the Middle East today, as in Europe in the decade before World War I, the desperate need is for a country or a leader to reverse the trend. Then, the two European leaders most opposed to war, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, were able to do little more than drag their feet, trying to slow the train of events down. That was not enough, and it will not be enough today in the Middle East either. Where do we see a leader who can turn aside the march toward war? Not in the Middle East itself, nor among American Presidential candidates, only two of whom, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, represent a real change of direction. Not in Europe, whose heads of government are terrified of breaking with the Americans. Not in Moscow or Beijing, both of which are happy to see America digging its own grave. No matter where we look, the horizon is empty. Where vision is wanting, the people perish. As they did in Central Europe in the 20th century, by the tens of millions. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #233 William S. Lind
It is reasonably clear that, contrary to the White House's claims, the "surge" had little or nothing to do with the improved situation in Anbar province in Iraq. That security there has improved is a fact; a Marine friend who just returned told me the whole province is now quiet. If we look past the Bush administration's propaganda and ask ourselves what really happened, we may find something of great value, namely a "seam" in Islamic Fourth Generation forces that we can exploit. As is widely known, the key to turning the situation in Anbar around was a decision by the local Sunni clans and tribes to turn against aI-Qaeda. We did not make that happen, although we did make it possible, not by what we did but what we stopped doing, i.e., brutalizing the local population. Once U.S. forces in Anbar adopted a policy of de-escalation, the sheiks had the option of putting al-Qaeda instead of us at the top of their enemies list. De-escalation was, to use a favorite military term, the enabler. As is also widely recognized, al-Qaeda itself then provided the motivator by its treatment of local Sunnis. Its error was one common to revolutionary movements, trying to impose its program before it had won the war. Worse, it did so brutally, using assassinations, car bombings that caused mass casualties and other typical terror tactics. Some reports suggest the final straw for Anbar's Sunnis was a demand by foreign al-Qaeda fighters for forced marriages with local women. Again, in itself this is nothing new. Where we may begin to perceive something new, a potential seam in Islamic 4GW operations, is in al-Qaeda's response to its own blunder. It has refused to change course. When other revolutionary groups have alienated the population by unveiling their program too soon, before they consolidated power, their leadership has quickly ordered a reversal. Mao had to do so, and so did Lenin, in the famous NEP of the early 1920s. Competent leadership usually understands that a "broad front" strategy is a necessity until their power is so great it cannot be challenged. Why doesn't al-Qaeda's leadership do the same? Here is where it starts to get interesting. Perhaps they have not done so because they cannot. Unlike Bolsheviks and other revolutionary parties that acted within a state framework and modeled themselves on the governments of states, Fourth Generation entities based on religious or "cause" appeals cannot practice what the Marxist-Leninists called "democratic centralism." They cannot simply issue orders from the top and have those orders obeyed. Their organizations are too loosely structured for that. The leadership can inspire and give general guidance, but it cannot do much more than that. It cannot get its fighters to do things they don't want to do, or stop doing things they very much do want to do. Here we may see a flip side of the de-centralization that makes 4GW entities so difficult for states to fight directly. One of state armed forces’ favorite tactics, going after the leadership, has been shown over and over again not to accomplish much because local 4GW fighters do not depend on that leadership. But just as they do not depend on it, they also do not have to obey it. Their autonomy cuts both ways. I am assuming that the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Osama himself are wise enough to want to reverse course in Anbar province, de-emphasize their extremist program and return to a broad front strategy. That assumption may be in error. They may be as detached from reality as their fanatical fighters, moved by the same fanaticism to enact their program prematurely. If so, our job of defeating them in Iraq will be all the easier (which does not necessarily move us closer to seeing a state re-emerge in Iraq). But if my assumption is valid and al-Qaeda's leadership wants to change course but cannot, we may have found a seam in 4GW entities we can exploit. It will not exist in all 4GW organizations; gangs, for example, often have tight top-down discipline. Where they are de-centralized, however, this dynamic of imposing their program prematurely may prevail widely. If that proves to be the case, then these entities will carry within them the seed of their own destruction. Our strategy, in turn, must allow this dynamic to play itself out, which means we must de-escalate and take the pressure off. As is true of most Fourth Generation theory, it is too soon to know if this insight is valid. But if we are to learn how to defeat Fourth Generation enemies, this is the sort of question we must continually ask about Fourth Generation war. We must constantly seek seams in our opponents that allow us to fold them back on themselves, or permit them to fold back on themselves with us careful not to get in their way as they do so. It is greatly to the credit of the Marines in Anbar province that they have learned that inaction is a form of action. Making that realization part of our doctrine for 4GW could in turn represent a real step forward. Note: There will be no new On War columns
for the next two weeks, as I will be off for the usual Imperial fall
maneuvers, this time in the Baltikum and Ostpreussen, focusing on Operation
Albion. The sight of S.M.S. König steaming off Oesel Island should
be an inspiring one. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #232 Truth-tellers William S. Lind
As good news continues to flow from the "surge" – some of it true, some of it false and all of it spun – it is easy to forget the bottom line. The bottom line is whether or not we are beginning to see the re-emergence of a state in Iraq. Three recent news stories throw some light on that question, and it is not a favorable light. The first, by Steven Hurst of the AP, ran in the August 26 Cleveland Plain Dealer under the title, "Sectarian violence in Iraq nearly double '06 level." Relying on the AP's own figures, the story reported that:
Taken together, these figures illustrate an old saying about counter-insurgency, namely that it is like trying to pick up mercury. When counter-insurgency forces surge in one place, as we have in Baghdad, the insurgents roll someplace else. Meanwhile, the insurgency as a whole continues to grow. The second story, "Militias Seizing Control of Electricity Grid" by James Glanz and Stephen Farrell, ran in the August 23 New York Times. It reports that:
The use of the term "fiefs" is a truth-teller of some importance. The rise of fiefdoms and the transfer of loyalty to local regions are signs of movement away from a state, not toward the re-emergence of an Iraqi state. That has already happened in Iraq with regard to security. The fact that it is now spreading even into distribution of electricity from what was once a national grid is not good news. Arguably, it tells us more about the general direction of Iraq than do claims of success from the "surge." The third story, "Children Doing Battle in Iraq" from the August 27 Los Angeles Times, points to further long-term disorder in Iraq:
As we have seen in Africa, when children become fighters at an early age, they provide a pool of men who for at least a generation cannot do anything but fight. It is difficult to "de-program" them into peaceful citizens. In turn, this leads to what we might call "supply-side war," war driven largely by the presence of men who want to fight. This kind of half-war, half-brigandage swarmed over Europe during the interval between the end of the Middle Ages and the rise of the state. After Westphalia, the state put an end to it by rounding up the brigands and hanging them. In Iraq, where the fictional state cannot even round up kilowatts, supply-side war suggests that disorder will be rampant, and a state non-existent, for quite some time. When Congress comes back into session in September
to hear General Petraeus's report, we may hope that it will pursue these
indicators and other truth-tellers like them and not confine itself
to what the general tells it. Truth may be found more at the margins
of what General Petraeus says, or in what he chooses not to address.
For once, we need Members of Congress to think like statesmen, not like
lawyers.
On War #231 William S. Lind
September approaches, and with it the supposed watershed in the Iraq war that General David Petraeus's report to Congress will represent. In reality, the report will make little difference in what the Democratically-controlled Congress does, because it has already decided what it will do, namely pretend to try to end the war while actually ensuring its continuation through the 2008 elections. That strategy seems to offer the best promise of electing more Democrats. Nonetheless, much of the country eagerly wants to hear what General Petraeus has to say. What he says about the progress of the war in Iraq, however, is a secondary question. The primary question is, how credible is his report? Will it be a real military analysis, honest and forthright, or will it just be more kabuki, political "spin" dictated by the Bush White House? If it is the latter, then its content is immaterial, because it is not credible. I do not know General Petraeus, and I therefore cannot judge his character. What I have seen of his work is certainly better than that of his predecessors. His attempt to move our forces in Iraq out of their bases and into the neighborhoods where counter-insurgency must be fought is laudable, if hopelessly too late. A story in the August 16 Cleveland Plain Dealer by AP's Steven Hurst unfortunately brings General Petraeus's credibility into some question. Hurst wrote:
The willingness of some Sunni tribes and insurgent groups to work with U.S. forces in al Anbar against al-Qaida is significant locally, However, all my sources state emphatically that the Sunnis who are now willing to work with us do not accept "the new Iraq," which is Newspeak for the al-Maliki government in Baghdad and Iraq's future status as an American satellite with large U.S. forces permanently based on its soil. As is usually the case in Fourth Generation war, the U.S. – Sunni local alliances are temporary tactical expedients, nothing more. The Sunnis we are working with make quite clear their continuing rejection of al-Maliki, Baghdad and the "New Iraq" at the same time they also reject al-Qaeda’s terror tactics (including against Sunnis) and its goal of a puritanical Islamic theocracy. This is just one slip on General Petraeus’s part, and given the way the U.S. military invents good news to pass up the chain, it may reflect what he is being told. At the same time, the term "New Iraq" is a Bushism. So does its use reflect what is corning up the chain or what is coming down? It is the latter possibility that is troubling, because it is the norm, not the exception. As American military officers gain rank, they soon learn that the absolute worst political sin is "committing truth." Any time they say something that contradicts what is coming out of the White House or the Office of the Secretary of Defense, they find themselves in very hot water. If they persist in the annoying practice, they discover they do not quality for senior commands. If General Petraeus is to present a genuine military report in September and not a "cooked" political document, he will have to buck the system. It should be fairly easy to judge whether he has done that or not, because if he has, the White House will howl. The gap between the reality in Iraq and the administration's rhetoric is so wide that it should show dramatically in any genuine military analysis. If it does not, and if the White House regards his report complacently, with just a few quibbles as part of the kabuki, then it amounts to nothing more than one of Napoleon's bulletins – from which we got the phrase, "to lie like a bulletin." Come September, we will find out what General Petraeus is made of. Depending on that, we may also find out something about the war in Iraq. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #230 Importing More Fourth Generation War William S. Lind
One of Fourth Generation war's more effective Trojan horses is refugees. They arrive on someone's shore desperate, pathetic, deeply grateful for the smallest crust or copper flung their way. Only a Scrooge could have a heart so cold as to turn them away. Regrettably, in a Fourth Generation world, Western countries need lots of Scrooges in charge of their immigration policies. A story in the July 15, 2007 New York Times by Theo Emery, "In Nashville, a Street Gang Emerges in a Kurdish Enclave," tells an all-too common story:
This particular imported 4GW problem – gangs are a major source of Fourth Generation war – comes from a group of refugees who are, on other counts, models. Kurds are generally hard-working, competent, family-oriented people who quickly become members of the middle class. Again quoting police officer Mark Anderson, the Times story notes that
The Times also notes that most Nashville Kurds are deeply distressed by Kurdish Pride. It quotes Kirmanj Gundi, a professor at Tennessee State University in Nashville:
The root of the problem, as is usual in Fourth Generation war, is loyalty. As the Times story says, the Kurds, like virtually all refugees from other cultures, are "bound by a common language and ethnicity." Those bonds are stronger than formal American citizenship, and they provide a rich soil in which 4GW can grow. In America 's poisonous popular culture, the necessary seeds are quickly planted among young men by the same rock and rap music, video games and examples from the culturally disintegrated black community that have overwhelmed Hispanics and other immigrants. As always, the cultural Marxists fly cover over the whole diabolical mess, labeling any serious discussion of the problem "racism." Once a state faces 4GW springing from a community of refugees, its options are limited. It can adopt a variant of the old Ottoman millet system, and demand that the community police itself, or it can try to attack the problem directly through the police. Both approaches usually founder on the same bonds of a common language and culture that provide the alternate primary loyalty. The millet system also accepts the weakness of the state as a given, which in turn accelerates the state’s decline. In the real world, as opposed to the dream world of "multiculturalist" ideologues, there is only one way to prevent refugees from other cultures from serving as Trojan horses for Fourth Generation war: do not admit the refugees. They are carrying a plague for which states have no cure. It may seem heartless to turn plague carriers away at the door, but it is also necessary to survival. When the state's fundamental peace, security and order are at stake, the head, not the heart, must be the governing organ. America is particular must learn this lesson fast – for much of Europe, it is already too late – as cries grow to admit hordes of refugees from Iraq. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #229 One Step Forward, Two Steps Back William S. Lind The "surge" in Iraq continues to generate good news, at least in the American press. Today's Cleveland Plain Dealer includes a typical story, in this case by Robert Burns of the Associated Press:
To the degree the good news is true, it probably has more to do with the last sentence quoted above than with troop numbers. It may also reflect a large dose of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. Some of the decline in violence in Baghdad is due not to U.S. troops but to the fact that the Shiites have completed the ethnic cleansing of mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods. A good portion of the improvement in Anbar province is a product of Al Qaeda blunders, which have alienated part of its base. While adoption of classic counter-insurgency techniques by U.S. forces is genuine good news, we should not assume events in Iraq are solely or even primarily a result of our actions. We are one player among many, and not always the most important. It is also easy to forget the strategic measure of effectiveness, i.e., whether or not we see the re-emergence of a state in Iraq. Such American successes as are real stem largely from accepting the fact that there is no state and filling the void with local alliances. As Mr. Burns writes,
That is what American commanders should do, because it is all they can do. But it is a step away from, not toward, a restored Iraqi state. That strategic step backwards is accompanied by a large and dangerous operational step backwards, namely moving toward a war with Iraq's Shiites. The August 6 Plain Dealer, in a story by AP's Kim Gamel reported that
This is a danger sign that should engage the urgent attention of senior American commanders. If we replace a war against Iraqis Sunnis with a war against the Shiites, we will not only have suffered a serious, self-inflicted operational defeat, we will endanger our whole position in Iraq, since our supply lines mostly run through Shiite country. I say such a defeat would be self-inflicted because Shiite attacks on Americans in Baghdad seem to be responses to American actions. In dealing with the Shiites, we appear to be doing what spurred the growth of the Sunni insurgency, i.e., raids, air strikes and a "kill or capture" policy directed against local Shiite leaders. Not only does this lead to retaliation, it also fractures Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army as he tries to avoid fighting us. Such fracturing works against, not for, the potential re-creation of an Iraqi state. A return to practices we know are counter-productive in dealing with Iraq's Shiites raises the question of motive. Are we so bloody stupid that at the same time we seem to have learned something about counter-insurgency against the Sunnis we are making the same old mistakes with the Shiites? Perhaps. But perhaps something else is going on here. According to the story by Miss Gamel, General Odierno blamed not his own actions but Iran for the rise in Shiite attacks on Americans. Is a war with Iraq's Shiites a prelude to war with Iran? For the sake of the army we have in Iraq and our strategic position in the region, let us hope not. Sometimes, sheer stupidity is the most reassuring explanation for our actions. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #228 America’s Last Successful Mideast War William S. Lind Americans who know any history – there may be a couple of dozen left – are all familiar with America's first Mideast war, that against Tripoli under President Jefferson. Far less well known is our war with Algiers in 1815. A nicely-written new book, The End of Barbary Terror (well, for a while, anyway) by Frederick C. Leiner fills the gap. The most surprising aspect of this splendid little war – there were such things, once – is that the United States was able to wage it. In l815 we had just gotten our pants pretty well kicked by the Brits, Washington was in ruins and the Treasury was empty. Nonetheless, in response to the seizure of one small trading vessel by Algiers, we declared war and dispatched not one but two powerful naval squadrons to the Mediterranean. It turned out that the first squadron of three frigates, one sloop of war, four brigs and two schooners, under the command of one of America's most brilliant naval commanders of all time, Stephen Decatur, was enough to do the job. Despite their fearsome reputation, the Algerine warships proved to be sitting ducks. Decatur quickly took two of them, including the best of the lot, the frigate Meshuda, whose crew fled below and hid in the hold after two broadsides. In a preview of Arab state militaries of today, one U.S. officer "expressed amazement that the Algerine navy was ‘a mere burlesque’ with ‘miserably contrived' equipment, poor gunnery and poorly disciplined crews." (In fairness, it should be noted that the shore defenses of Algiers were formidable and well-manned.) After its initial defeats at sea, Algiers quickly came to terms. Beyond the doubtful quality of Arab navies, does our last successful Mideast war offer any lessons for our own time? In the face of our all-too-often wretched generalship in today's Mideast wars – perhaps now improving in Iraq, still rock-bottom in Afghanistan – Decatur’s example certainly recommends itself. But behind what Decatur did stands something more: the selection of Decatur as commander of the first squadron. Then as now, seniority played a great role in selecting men for top commands. Decatur was 36 years old in 1815. We had, of course, a young navy, but five captains were senior to Decatur. The Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin W. Crowninshield, and President Madison, should, had they played the game as the system intended, have chosen someone more senior. They might have selected, for example, the most senior officer in the Navy, Alexander Murray. Mr. Leiner writes,
Or, they might have chosen Hugh Campbell, tellingly known as "Old Cork" in the service …
Any resemblance between such figures and senior American military leaders today must remain conjectural. It is historical fact, however, that Madison and Crowninshield cut through the system to find a leader in his mid-30s, rather than his 50s or 60s. It is perhaps as much to Crowninshield as to Decatur that we should look for a lesson for our own times. A larger question at which Mr. Leiner is too good a historian to more than hint – and then perhaps at the desire of his publisher – is whether Decatur's slam-bam approach to dealing with Muslim "terrorists" tells us anything. Could a similar way of dealing avail us more today than the de-escalation Fourth Generation theorists usually recommend? Here we quickly see the difference between yesterday’s terrorists and today's. If there is one thing Old Osama has, it is legitimacy. The heads of government of Algiers and the other Barbary states, in contrast, had none. While nominal vassals of the Ottoman Sultan, they were in fact nothing more than gang leaders. They were chosen, kept in power and regularly removed from power and from the ranks of the living by small bands of Janissaries, who in turn ran the Barbary states. Those Janissaries were terrorists to Christian seamen and local Moslems alike. No one outside their ranks gave a fig what happened to them. With essentially no base beyond their racket, Deys of Algiers were easy pickings. Take a frigate and a brig, and they had to deal. Osama, in vast contrast, has a base that numbers in the tens or hundreds of millions of people, in Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, but equally in the suburbs of Paris, in Birmingham and in Detroit. It will take more than a squadron of frigates, or our whole Navy of iron ships and wooden men, to squeeze a deal out of him. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #227 William S. Lind
For many years, critics of us critics have often said, "You are good at talking about what the American military does wrong. But what would you do instead?" In fact, some of us associated with the Military Reform Movement of the 1970s and 1980s have offered our solutions all along. Gary Hart and I offered a whole book of alternative policies in the 1980s, America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform. The question occurs again now with reference to the war in Iraq. Had our advice been taken, America would never have attacked Iraq. But it did, and now our troops are bogged down in a hopeless quagmire. How can America get out other than by accepting defeat? I offer what I hope is a constructive answer to that question in the July 30 issue of The American Conservative, in a piece modestly titled "How to Win in Iraq." The key is re-thinking what we mean by winning. The Bush administration's maximalist strategic objectives are not attainable, and they never were. They are the product of fantasy, not strategy. But if, as President Bush repeatedly says, we are fighting to defeat al Qaeda and other "terrorists" — meaning the non-state forces of the Fourth Generation – then victory can realistically be defined as seeing the re-creation of a state in Iraq. Our invasion and subsequent blunders, such as sending home the Iraqi army and civil service, destroyed the state in Iraq. Iraq currently has a government of sorts, cowering in the Green Zone, but it is a Potemkin government because there is no state. A stateless Mesopotamia is a huge win for Fourth Generation, non-state forces such as al Qaeda, because they flourish in such statelessness. Conversely, were a state to be re-created in Iraq, they would lose. That is true almost regardless of the nature and orientation of a new Iraqi state. States do not like competition, and any real Iraqi state would quickly roll up the non-state forces on its territory. The fact that an Iraqi state would almost certainly be Shiite-dominated while al Qaeda is poisonously Salafist makes that all the more certain. The central strategic question, then, is, how can a state be re-created in Iraq? There is no guaranteed answer; it may not be possible. What is guaranteed, however, is that the United States cannot do it. The problem is legitimacy. To be real, a future Iraqi state must be perceived by Iraqis as legitimate. But anything the United States, as a foreign invader and occupier, creates, endorses or assists automatically thereby loses its legitimacy. What the U.S. must therefore do is get out of the way. When elements in Iraq move to re-create a state — and those elements must be independent of the current al-Maliki government, which, as an American creation, has no legitimacy — we have to let them try to succeed. There is, in turn, only one way for us to get out of the way, and that is to get out of Iraq, as rapidly as we can. As the elephant in the parlor, our presence cannot be of no effect. If we work against proto-state elements in Iraq, we make their job all the harder and their success less likely. If we work for them, presto!, there goes their legitimacy out the window. To put it as plainly as possible, so long as we are present, no one has a chance of re-creating a state in Iraq, which is to say we have no chance of winning. The icing on the cake here is that our withdrawal from Iraq, under the strategy I propose, is no longer the retreat of a beaten army. It is, precisely, a strategic withdrawal, a withdrawal required by our strategy as necessary to accomplishing our strategic goal. In a short column, I cannot cover all that is in the article in The American Conservative; it includes, among other things, the matter of a "win" by Iran. The July 30 issue is on the magazine counters, and anyone intrigued by the idea that we might still win this miserable war can pick up a copy. But if we define winning correctly, as defeating Islamic 4GW elements including al Qaeda, and if for once we can accept the fact that America's power is limited and we need an indirect approach, I think we might yet snatch a few chestnuts from the fire. After almost 4000 dead, tens of thousands of wounded and a couple trillion bucks down the drain, it would be nice to leave old Osama, like Snidely Whiplash, having to say, "Rats! Foiled Again!" William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #226 By William S. Lind Last Friday's Boyd Conference at Quantico was the best-attended to date, and, thanks to a visitor from across the pond, one of the most encouraging. That visitor was a delegation from the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy in Bergen, Norway, a handsome and historic town I have had the pleasure of visiting more than once. I am sure I was not the only person surprised to find the Norwegian Navy manning the registration desk when the conference opened. It was a nice touch, and a commentary on the U.S. military's total lack of interest both in John Boyd's work and in Fourth Generation war, which was the focus of this conference. As usual at such events, almost all the U.S. military participants were Marine Corps captains, among whom the Boydian flame still flickers. In marked contrast, Boyd is Big Stuff in Norway, as is 4GW. The Norwegians made their presentation at an informal second session of the conference on Saturday, and it was the best news many of us have heard in a long time. Quite simply, the Norwegian Navy is completely recasting the curriculum of their Naval Academy based on Boyd's work. At present, their efforts are focused on the cadets’ first year, which is exactly correct: if the academy can develop the right mind-set at the beginning, when the cadets' minds are most open, they will have largely won the battle. The key to that, in turn, is to put cadets in situations full of ambiguity and uncertainty, situations for which they have not been prepared, then help them more or less as needed (the less, the better) to find their own ways out. That is just what the academy is doing, in a wide variety of ways. Many of the practical exercises are done ashore, which is fine; mind-sets can be developed anywhere, not just at sea. The Norwegians impressed all of us with a lesson they had learned inadvertently. At the beginning of their reform of the curriculum, they said, things got screwed up unintentionally more than once, as is inevitable with major change. The cadets had to unscrew it themselves. Doing so proved to be such a powerful learning experience that now the faculty creates deliberate screw-ups. We could hear John Boyd cackling his approval and delight; the faculty as well as the students had learned how to learn. I shared with the Norwegians an idea I had come up with during a visit to the U.S. Naval Academy, where the education is as rigid as it is fluid in Norway. How about paintball at sea? Like all naval schools, the Norwegian Academy has small sailboats in which cadets learn basic seamanship. If a paintball gun were mounted on each broadside so the elevation could be changed but not the aim, the sailboat would become an 18th century warship. Naval paintball battles would require the cadets to rediscover and employ 18th century naval tactics, for both single ships and fleets. At least in Great Britain's Royal Navy, those tactics were highly fluid by century's end; maneuver warfare was actually developed at sea before it was born on land. The Norwegians loved the idea and said they would do it; at Annapolis, the midshipmen I suggested it to also loved it but said it would never happen, because they aren't supposed to have fun. The Norwegians told us they faced a different challenge in extending their Boyd-based curriculum revisions into the academy's second and third years, where much of the instruction is in regular academic subjects such as ,mathematics and English. In teaching English, I suggested, there is one easy solution: have the cadets learn English by reading and writing about naval fiction that teaches maneuver warfare thinking, such as C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series and C. Northcote Parkinson's excellent naval novels, both set in the age of sail. Could mathematics also be taught with reference to naval tactics, without becoming Jominian? It is a question someone more skilled in math than myself might want to consider. I have no doubt that along with John Boyd, Norway's greatest naval commander, Tordenskjold, is looking down on the revolution underway at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy and smiling. The Boyd-based curriculum the academy is implementing might end up producing lots of Tordenskjolds, a man noted for breaking the rules and thereby getting results. While Norway's navy is small compared to that of the United States, it is pioneering a path which the U.S. Navy would do well to follow. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #225 By William S. Lind On Friday, July 13, a Boyd Conference at the Quantico Marine Corps Base will devote a day to the subject of Fourth Generation war. As a panelist for one session of the conference, I have been asked to answer the question, "As one of the original authors and principal proponent of the 4GW concept, how well is it understood and acted upon by the West? By our adversaries?" I will leave the second part of this question until Friday. As to how well the West grasps the concept of 4GW, the news, sadly, is bad on every level. At the level of national governments, Western states not only do not grasp 4GW, they avert their eyes from it in horror, pretending it is not happening. In part they do so because they are the state, and the state does not want to admit that its own legitimacy has come into question. As Martin van Creveld said to me a decade or more ago, "Everyone can see it except the people in the capital cities." In larger part, they ignore the reality of 4GW because it contradicts their ideology, commonly known as "multi-culturalism" but actually the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School. That ideology says that all the world's cultures are wonderful, happy, peaceful cultures except Western culture, which is oppressive and evil and must be destroyed. In fact, Western culture is one of only two cultures in human history that has succeeded over millennia (the other is Chinese). 4GW theory warns that we now face a world of cultures in conflict, that we must defend Western culture and that many, perhaps most, other cultures are threats, especially when they flood Western countries with immigrants. Cultural Marxism welcomes immigrants who will not acculturate precisely because they are threats to Western culture. Western militaries are as blind to 4GW as are the governments that direct and fund them. They see themselves as knights in shining armor who exist to fight other knights like themselves, not low-born musketeer "terrorists." Conveniently, fighting other knights requires buying lots of armor, in the form of Aegis ships, "stealth" aircraft and "Future Combat Systems," all of which keep the bags of gold coming. 4GW is fought largely with weapons that can be made in somebody’s garage. Garages offer few Board of Directors positions to retired generals. Western military intellectuals also mostly misunderstand 4GW. Here, too, the reason is partly ideological. Some of those intellectuals are cultural Marxists, while others are simply afraid to defy cultural Marxism, knowing the penalty for doing so can be high. Beyond ideology, intellectuals, like lesser beings, are prone to pour new wine into old bottles. It is comforting to say 4GW is nothing new (or so old as to have been forgotten). So we hear that 4GW is just insurgency, that all we have to do is re-learn stock counter-insurgency doctrine, dig out old "Small Wars" manuals, etc. Combine that with stiffening the backs of politicians so they "stay the course," and we can win Fourth Generation wars as surely as we won in Algeria and Vietnam. As I have said before and will say many times again, Fourth Generation war is far larger than the insurgency/ counter-insurgency problem, as difficult as that problem is. Even for that relatively small aspect of the challenge (massive immigration of Third World people into Western countries is a far greater threat than anything we face in Iraq or Afghanistan), the old bottles will not hold the new wine. Counter-insurgency in a 4GW environment, with its ever-expanding multiplicity of players, is very different from counter-insurgency against a single enemy. As the students in my seminar at Quantico concluded early in our sessions last year, we now face many different models of insurgency, not just the Maoist model. That fact requires us to have many different models of counter-insurgency, most or all of which we may have to apply simultaneously in a single conflict. What might have worked against Mao or in Vietnam will not work in 4GW. No, the West does not get 4GW, not in conflicts overseas and, much more dangerously, not on its own soil. To Hitler's question, "Brennt Paris?", 4GW answers "oui." And not only Paris, but London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Los Angeles and a host of other Western cities and lands as well. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #224 By William S. Lind In the 1989 Marine Corps Gazette article where I and four colleagues first laid out the Four Generations of Modern War, we foresaw two potential futures. One, the way the world has gone, was 4GW. The other, the direction the Pentagon has taken, became known as the Revolution in Military Affairs, or, more recently, Transformation. This vision of future war, a vision anchored in hi-tech, high-price "systems," is, I am happy to report, militarily dead. While its corpse still twitches in Iraq and Afghanistan, its obituary was published in April, in Israel, when the Winograd Commission published its report (is Winograd, one wonders, the city in Galicia where old Polish generals go to die of cirrhosis?) On May 29, a summary of its findings by Haninah Levine was made available by the Center for Defense Information. The defense industry fat cats must have read it and wept. The Winograd Commission was established to examine the Israeli debacle in Lebanon last summer. According to the Levine summary, its first lesson is, "Western militaries are in active state of denial concerning the limitations of precision weapons." Speaking of the then-IDF Chief of Staff General Dan Halutz — Israel's first and, I suspect, last Chief of Staff drawn from the Air Force — Levine writes:
In how many valleys of Afghanistan is the same sad lesson being taught? In how many towns of Diyala province in Iraq, or streets in Sadr City? Levine continues,
This lesson, I think, can be extrapolated in two useful ways in the American context. First, the strategic or more precisely doctrinal, trap set by the RMA has long been recognized. The trap, quite simply is that for the RMA to succeed, it had to contradict the nature of war. The RMA reduces war to putting fires on targets. It promises to use new technology to make everything targetable. But this means it also promises to eliminate uncertainty, to make war transparent, to eliminate the quality that defines war, the independent hostile will of the enemy. In other words, it is bunk. The fact that it is bunk was evident to a great many people from the outset, even people in Washington. Why, then, did it get as far as it did (it remains DOD policy even today)? Here we can extrapolate again from the Winograd Commission's finding: the RMA's hi-tech systems are indeed magically "game changing." But the game they change is the budget game, not war. The RMA has given the Pentagon such magical results as bomber aircraft that cost more per unit than the Navy's ships (the B-2), three fighters for one billion dollars (the F-22), and the most magical system of all, the Army's Future Contract System, a system no one can describe but costs more than any program in any other service. Boy, that's magic! Even the Wizard of Id must be jealous. The fact is, Pentagon policy has nothing to do with war, which has a great deal to do with why we are losing two wars. The Pentagon is the last Soviet industry. It is not about producing a product, least of all a product that works. It is solely, entirely, about acquiring and justifying resources. That the RMA does supremely well. The defeat in Lebanon seems to have confronted the RMA in Israel with the unpleasant reality of the outside world. Will two defeats have the same effect on Washington? Perhaps, but don't bet on it. Half a trillion dollars a year can buy a great deal of political magic. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #223 Legitimacy, Toujours Legitimacy By William S. Lind Over the past several weeks, another state has failed. In this case it was a proto-state, the Palestinian Authority. Following a Hamas coup in Gaza, the PA has been reduced to the West Bank, while a non-state, Fourth Generation entity now rules in Gaza. Here we see the setting for a head-on clash between states and a non-state force, Hamas. How it turns out may be an important indicator for the development of Fourth Generation War theory. On the surface, the PA and its governing party, Fatah, seem to hold all the cards. Both Arab governments and the international community have rushed to support Fatah. Money, lots of it, will quickly flow into Fatah’s coffers. The PA President, Mahmoud Abbas, is to meet today in a prestigious regional summit with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah of Jordan, and even Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It is clear what side states are on. Hamas and Gaza, in contrast, are effectively under siege. People cannot get out of Gaza, and most goods, beyond a trickle of food and medicine supplied by NGOs, cannot get in. Fatah is moving to cut off the cash going to Hamas, by requiring all non-governmental groups in its territory to get new operating licenses. It is safe to say Hamas’s application will get lost in the mail. Steven Erlanger of the New York Times described the states' strategy in a piece printed in the June 17 Cleveland Plain Dealer:
To this grand ambition, Fourth Generation theory says, lots of luck. It may work to some extent in the short term, if the people in the West Bank actually see some improvement in their conditions. Given the corruption of Fatah, that may or may not happen, however much money states pour in. But in the long run, 4GW theory is betting on Hamas. The reason, as always, is the core of the Fourth Generation phenomenon: legitimacy. Nothing could do more to de-legitimize Fatah and PA President Abbas than open support from Israel and the United States. Such open support may have played a role in Fatah's defeat in Gaza. Some months ago, the U.S. publicly announced a major grant, in the millions of dollars, to Fatah's armed forces. That allowed Hamas to call those forces a “Jew-American army” during the fighting in Gaza. How many Gaza residents, one wonders, wanted to support an army paid by America? The Bush administration, as usual, refuses to learn. It is now busy undermining Fatah's legitimacy in the West Bank. According to a piece in the June 20 Plain Dealer by LA Times reporter Paul Richter, describing Israeli Prime Minister's White House visit last week,
One can almost hear what is left of Fatah's legitimacy gurgle away into the sands of the desert. Here we see displayed in all its naked glory what may be the main reason the state cannot stem its crisis of legitimacy: it refuses to perceive it. As Martin van Creveld said to me years ago, "Everyone sees it except the people in the capital cities." By rushing to embrace Abbas and Fatah, with money as well as praise, Bush and Olmert may help them at the physical level of war, but at the moral level, it is the kiss of Judas. The gnostic gospel of Judas suggests that he, too, saw himself as a saint. Speaking of the course of the Fatah-Hamas struggle to date, Steven Erlanger wrote in the previously-mentioned piece,
Until Washington comprehends that Fatah's defeat was it least in part because of, not despite, that open advice and aid, we should expect to continue to reel, if not in the short term then certainly in the long. PS: A reader, Markus Gruber, wrote to ask, "Could you recommend a book(s) on Light Infantry Warfare as per your latest FMFM1-A?" Far and away the best work on present-day light infantry is Steven Canby's Classic Light Infantry and New Technology, which was published in 1982 as a monograph done under DOD contract (and subsequently ignored by DOD). It should be posted sometime this summer on the U.S. Marine Corps' Expeditionary Warfare School website, which will also carry some of the work on 4GW done by the students in the school's Advanced Warfighting Seminar. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #222 Some British Thoughts on Maneuver Warfare By William S. Lind
I recently received a thoughtful letter from a British officer just back from commanding a company in Iraq. His subject was not 4GW but 3GW, maneuver warfare, and the British Army's attempts to institutionalize it as doctrine. Like the U.S. Marine Corps, the British Army formally adopted maneuver warfare as doctrine in the late 1980s (their usual term for it is Mission Command, one possible translation of the German term Auftragstaktik). As this British major notes, however, formal adoption of maneuver warfare doctrine and actual institutionalization of it are two different things. Let me quote some of his observations and offer some comments on them (I do not mention his name for his own protection; the British Army has a long and proud tradition of preferring its young officers not to have ideas).
This is similar to the situation in the U.S. Marine Corps. The central maneuver warfare concepts are commonly used, but mostly as buzzwords. Young officers receive classes on the concepts, but when their training moves to the field, they quickly see that what is done is mostly top-down, rigid, 2GW. I cannot count how many U.S. Marines, junior officers and NCOs, have told me, 'What the Marine Corps says is great, but it is not what it does."
Here, it is helpful to return to the source, namely the German Army. Not only did World War II German companies have no staff, neither did German battalions. At more senior levels, staffs were very small; a Panzer division staff had about twelve officers. Looking at it from a German perspective, our problem today is not lack of staffs (quite the opposite!) but, too often, a failure to choose the right kind of people as commanders. The Germans understood that you need a different type of person as a commander from those you assign to staff our work. Commonly our commanders are, like our staff officers, "process men," and it is rarely possible to make sound military decisions by following some rote process.
This is precisely the situation in the U.S. Marine Corps, which also takes about a year to develop an infantry lieutenant. Time is part of the problem -- in the old German Army, it took five years to become a lieutenant but what is done with the time is a larger factor. Little is spent in developing military judgment, most in learning techniques. Free-play exercises, tactical decision games, map problems, staff rides etc. made up most of the German curriculum, but not ours. The last observation hits at the heart of the matter. Maneuver warfare is not just a change in tactics, it is a change in military culture, from the 2GW culture that is inward-focused on rules, processes, orders etc.; centralized; prefers obedience over initiative; and depends on imposed discipline to a 3GW culture that is outward focused; de-centralized; prefers initiative to obedience; and depends on self-discipline. The U.S. Marine Corps has not made this cultural transition -- nor have the other -- American services -- which means it also turns Mission Command into a drill, i.e., into its opposite.
I agree with all these observations. The most important is the first: maneuver warfare is a way of thinking, not a mechanism. Wherever it is reduced to mechanism, it is also reduced to 2GW, regardless of the buzzwords applied to the latter. A sheep in wolf’s clothing remains a sheep. As to the other two points, I refer again to the German example. German World War II commanders stressed that the degree to which they could use Auftragstaktik depended entirely on the degree to which their subordinates had been developed. As the war went on and the quality of replacements fell, they had to revert increasingly to Befehlstaktik. Mission Command is not a magic wand you can wave over a herd and presto! They become competent military decision-makers and leaders. The German officer selection and development process was rigorous because it takes rigor to find and develop leaders who can do it (see Martin van Creveld’s book Fighting Power for how the Germans selected and developed leaders). This British officer’s thoughts are important because if the British or the American armed forces are ever to succeed in Fourth Generation war, they must first make the transition from the Second Generation to the Third. That requires a massive change in military culture. On this side of the pond, that cultural change has yet to occur. I wish the British Army better luck, though given the historic rigidity of the British Army command system (see C. S. Foster’s The General), I suspect the challenge is just as great. William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation. On War #221 By William S. Lind Looking idly at the front page of last Wednesday's Washington Post Express as I rode the Metro to work, I received a shock. It showed a railroad station in Iraq, recently destroyed by an American air strike. So now we are bombing the railroad stations in a country we occupy? What comes next, bombing Iraq's power plants and oil refineries? How about the Green Zone? If the Iraqi Parliament doesn't pass the legislation we want it to, we can always lay a couple of JDAMs on it. It turns out the bombed railroad station was no fluke. An AP story by Charles J. Hanley, dated June 5, reported that
Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the "surge" is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: it isn't. Worse, the growing number of air strikes shows that, despite what the Marines have accomplished in Anbar province and General Petraeus's best efforts, our high command remains as incapable as ever of grasping Fourth Generation war. To put it bluntly, there is no surer or faster way to lose in 4GW than by calling in airstrikes. It is a disaster on every level. Physically, it inevitably kills far more civilians than enemies, enraging the population against us and driving them into the arms of our opponents. Mentally, it tells the insurgents we are cowards who only dare fight them from 20,000 feet in the air. Morally, it turns us into Goliath, a monster every real man has to fight. So negative are the results of air strikes in this kind of war that there is only one possible good number of them: zero (unless we are employing the "Hama model," which we are not). What explains this military lunacy, beyond simple desperation? Part of the answer, I suspect, is Air Force generals. Jointness demands they get their share of command billets in Iraq, and with very few exceptions they are mere military technicians. They know how to put bombs on targets, but they know nothing else. So, they do what they know how to do, with no comprehension of the consequences. In fact, the U.S. Air Force recently announced it is developing its own counter-insurgency doctrine, precisely because "some people" are suggesting air strikes are counterproductive in such conflicts. Well, yes, that is what anyone with any understanding of counter-insurgency would suggest. The Air Force, of course, cares not a whit about the realities of counter-insurgency. It cares only about protecting its bureaucratic turf, its myth of "winning through air power" and its high-performance fighter-bombers, which truly are its knights in shining armor, useful only for tournaments. Once again, we see the U.S. military riding the perfect sine wave. It will seem as if it is beginning to get things right, only to ride the wave back down again into the depths of unknowing. It brings t |