Rethinking Security

RTJ Gems

Two new great articles have been posted on Red Team Journal.

First, Chris Flaherty has a new look at assessing topography in urban operations planning for domestic counterterrorism missions. Although people having been sour on geometric approaches to analysis since Jomini went out of style, he has an intriguing criticism of the common approach to "mass space:"

"[I]n any major city we see complex spaces, and the diffusion of many vulnerabilities and potential targets spread three-dimensionally through urban settings. Thus, along urban linear routes (roads, transport, or building thoroughfare) an attacker moving along these can threaten multiple targets. Again, this raises the basic tactical problem of the 2007 Haymarket attack–namely, military, security, or police forces are kept strategically off-balance, unable to protect any one potential target, and spread too thinly to protect all assets effectively from attack."

Flaherty has many other interesting articles examining operational issues on his page at the Archer Ball consultancy.

Second, Tim Hsia takes a look at a much-heralded Malcolm Gladwell article and draws some conclusions about tactical surprise and asymmetry. This paragraph is especially rich:

"Tactical surprises are commonplace, and underdogs seek to employ them at every opportunity. In a sustained campaign, however, events that were once deemed surprises can quickly become viewed as commonplace events (for example, the use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs). Therefore, underdogs often need more than tactical surprise to achieve strategic victory. Even in the basketball game analogy, a full court press can possibly win a game, but to win the season requires more then just a team that employs a surprise tactic."

Tim has published widely at the Small Wars Journal on a host of operational issues and has published on strategic analysis at Red Team Journal, most recently on North Korea and mirror-imaging.

Police Response in Counterterrorism

John P. Sullivan and I have a piece in the June issue of USMA (West Point) Combating Terrorism Center Sentinel. It covers some issues in counterterrorism response illustrated by the Mumbai attacks.

Somalia and "Post-COIN"

Looking at strategic analogies and Somalia at RTJ.

Israel and Persistent Conflict

One of the phrases that you hear often in DoD doctrinal publications is that the current (and coming) era is one of "persistent conflict" or, in its more family-friendly iteration, "persistent engagement." What does "persistent conflict," however, look like? Ariel Siegelman argues in an article for the US Army Combined Arms Center's COIN Colloquium that Israel's experience in Gaza provides a view of the future. It is a thoroughly interesting read, mostly because it upends what we would traditionally understand as "victory" and "defeat;"

"There is no such thing as winning in this new kind of war. The war is ongoing, with periods of more violence and periods of less violence, during which the enemy regroups and plans his next attack. When we feel that the enemy is getting strong, we must be prepared to make pre-emptive strikes, hard and fast at key targets, with viciousness, as the enemy would do to us. Only then can we acquire, not peace, but sustained periods of calm."

There are, however, multiple problems with this view. The first is theoretical---it takes Israel's strategic situation and extrapolates it to a supposedly new kind of war. The larger question that Siegelman raises is this: are we doomed to an era of persistent conflict, attacked at every turn by irregular forces whom we can only hope to ward off, or is something resembling "victory" possible? If so, is John Nagl's idea of a global counterinsurgency viable? Or, to take the argument of Andrew Bacevich, is such a situation of "persistent conflict" a consequence of inept interventionist grand strategy?

These questions are at the heart of today's grand strategic debate--and the divide is much more complex than the simplistic duality of "crusaders vs. conservatives."

Iraqization

Interesting NYT article on withdrawal process:

"No doubt, many Iraqi military and police units are competent enough to operate on their own, but most military analysts who have studied the matter will concede that many if not most still are not. 'We need to extend the SOFA' — the Status of Forces Agreement between Iraq and America — 'to 2020, 2025,' said Qassim Daoud, an independent Shiite legislator and former national security adviser.

He said he believed that the current deadline for total withdrawal, the end of 2011, is unattainable, even though Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki insisted on it when the agreement was negotiated with President George W. Bush last year. 'I just hope the prime minister realizes we don’t have competent security forces yet.'"

As a famous American once said, you make do with what you have. As usual, there is the dodgy historical analogy (Vietnamization) inserted in. It would seem based on past precedent that the risk is not so much a Vietcong-style takeover (no one is able to play the role of North Vietnam, something that those making the analogy to seem to forget) but a protracted low-grade sectarian and factional struggle among competing power centers. In such contests influence over security forces is an important objective, perhaps equal to more so than control over oil revenues.
Among the security forces, the Iraqi government does have an important ace in the hole: specialized units absolutely loyal to the executive branch that could be quickly operationalized for dirty war.

CT Capacity Building

Defense News reports that many countries are demanding specialized counterterrorism training facilities, fueling a boom in contracted consulting for planning and managing these high-end bases. Not particularly surprising given the global ramp-up of paramilitary forces--an ongoing trend in both military and law enforcement since the late 60's. But many Middle Eastern, West African, and former Soviet states are seeking to create high-quality counterterrorism units capable of dealing with a rising threat and more sustained missions.

The Saudis in particular understand the value of such trained forces. The failure of general-purpose forces to retake the Grand Mosque during the 1979 Siege of Mecca led to the Saudis having to ask the French GIGN counterterrorism unit for assistance. There is some dispute about the extent of the assistance GIGN rendered, but the fact remained that the Saudi general purpose forces' failure to resolve the situation elongated it and compelled the Saudis to bring foreigners into the engagement. The article also notes that a flurry of facility-building may be underway in India as well, for obvious reasons.

COIN and Grand Strategy

Zenpundit throws down the gauntlet to COIN theorists:

"Operational doctrine is not enough. It is untethered. It will float like a balloon in a political wind. It is crisis management without a destination or sufficient justification for expenditure of blood and treasure. If these blanks are not filled in, they will be filled in by others."

Counterinsurgency isn't the only operational doctrine that has reached prominence. Counterterrorism, which has largely guided American grand strategy, is itself a kind of operational doctrine that was transmuted to the level of grand strategy. The larger issue, as Joseph Fouche suggests, is that America has never been very good at creating grand strategies. Grand strategies are abstract and complex, difficult things to be instrumentalized by a constitutionally divided government governing amid a chaotic landscape of various forms of interest politics. They also, as Fouche argues, tend to be produced by exemplary individuals rather than industrial bureaucracies.

What we as Americans excel at are technical solutions and innovations. Modern counterinsurgency doctrine is an brilliant technocratic solution, a factor that largely explains its bipartisan popularity. Abu Muquama, after all, regularly guests on Rachel Maddow. Modern counterinsurgency was instrumentalized as a solution to irregular conflict, drawn from British and French military intellectuals of the 60s and 70s and enhanced by modern social science and the bitter experience of Iraq and Afghanistan. It is, as Zenpundit noted, a purely operational doctrine and has never pretended otherwise.

The fact that counterinsurgency become so celebrated is a commentary on the American love of technocratic solutions and innovations and the problems we face in creating and implementing abstract and complex long-term visions. The American narrative is one of progressive innovation and triumph over adversity. This is a helpful narrative and we should celebrate our talent for innovation. But Zenpundit rightly argues that operational innovation isn't enough.

What's the solution? Lots of ink has been spilled about creating grand strategy based on both present and future geostrategic conditions. Thomas P.M. Barnett, on the other hand, is correct to look at American identity instead as the source of grand strategy. Ultimately a grand strategy is a shared vision that originates from a dream of a nation's place in the world--and a nation's vision of itself. Yet few are looking at identity as a source of strategy. We should expend more energy conducting this kind of analysis instead of purely geopolitical or threat-based analysis.

Strategic Analogies

New post on the interwar analogy on RTJ.

Casting Aspersions

Agree with Abu Muquwama about the rather overheated "dirty war" meme being spread around about General Stanley McChrystal. In general, no one really wants to wait to hear McChrystal himself explain what kind of approach he is going to take. Instead, there's just speculation from all corners about what McChyrstal just might do. It's reverse Kremlinology and it probably won't be that accurate.

Building Police Networks

Short comment on transnational police networks at Red Team Journal.