I recently saw on a friend's social networking page that he was in Washington, DC to attend a conference about Iraq and strategy. My interest was piqued by a post made in reply, stating: 'That is so 2008'. Subsequent posts echoed the theme that Iraq was either 'over', 'old news' or simply 'unfashionable'. 

Despite the US 'surge' of 2007, Iraq remains an unstable place. Deaths among Iraqi civilians and security forces are still averaging over 200 a month. The outcome of the recent (successful) elections offer little reassurance about the long-term prognosis for stability and governance. The enduring strategic aim of the American effort in Iraq since 2003 — lasting stability — still remains in the balance. The important strategic aim has not changed, yet the 'so 2008' comment highlights that something else has.

Carl von Clausewitz suggested that the character of war (and by implication, strategy) was influenced by 'the spirit of the age'. This 'spirit' is more than just the zeitgeist; what also matters is the way contemporary political, social and culture ideas and values are developed, transmitted and received. The posts on my mate's webpage hint at what the 'spirit of the age' may have done to what passes for contemporary strategy. 

Strategy is, and has always been, irrevocably tied up with politics and the expedient use of war and other actions to achieve desired results. The 20th century strategist Andre Beaufre referred to it as the 'dialectic of the battle of the wills'. Yet in the 21st century, strategy is becoming less about the dialectic and more about the expedient. The comment that Iraq is 'so 2008' reflects the growing dissonance between the policy expediency that informs such a perception and the underlying strategic imperative that still sees US forces committed to Iraq until at least 31 December 2011.

Soldier Z, Soldier X and Peter Leahy effectively pose the same question. It is unlikely to be answered directly and in the manner they hope for. The 'spirit of the age' has reduced strategy (grand or otherwise) among Western nations to the expediency of the sound bite.

Photo by Flickr user purpleslog, used under a Creative Commons license.

Whenever I read a piece by Paul Kelly, it reminds me how rare good writing seems to have become among the contemporary Australian broadsheet newspapers. Kelly has the ability to cut through opinion, spin and the conventional wisdom to succinctly present the essential elements of an argument or position.  

His piece in yesterday's Australian regarding Prime Minister Rudd's management of the US-Australia relationship and his Government's response to President Obama's Afghanistan 'surge' is an example. Kelly's discussion of the Government's Afghanistan position offers little hope to those who argue for an increased Australian military commitment to the counter-insurgency conflict in Afghanistan.

There are, however, several reasons we should not assume that Australia can soon go back to studiously ignoring the problems associated with counter-insurgency. 

Prime Minister Rudd's announcement in Washington that Australia will 'surge' police and civil aid efforts in Afghanistan is sound policy.

Much of the recent focus on Afghanistan has understandably been on President Obama's announcement about strategy and troop numbers. But although sound strategy and sufficient troops are essential, they are rarely enough to secure success.

My recent Lowy Institute Paper, 'Confronting the Hydra: Big problems with small wars', described how important both a 'whole-of-government' approach and the establishment of appropriate police capability are to countering insurgency. Two of the paper's policy recommendations point towards the direction announced by the Prime Minister in Washington:

• Identification, training, education and deployment of a cadre from across relevant government departments to enable a true whole-of-government approach to counterinsurgency. Implicit in this recommendation is the requirement to prepare such a group for possible employment alongside ADF, Coalition and Afghan National Government organisations.

And:

• A greater role for the Australian Federal Police in counterinsurgency campaigns, beginning with the present campaign in Afghanistan.

Let's look briefly at both of these in turn.

Andy Butfoy is wrong. The leaders he refers to have earned 'our' trust – whether Bush, Obama, Howard or Rudd. The fact that they were elected is proof of that trust. It is a factor of democracy and the universal franchise for citizens that still applies in the US and Australia (as Winston Churchill said, 'the worst from of government, except for all of the others').

And as for Petraeus and his ilk? Once again, they only serve at the pleasure of the executive government, which is elected by the people, for the people.

To my mind, Butfoy's issue is less to do with his concerns about Bush, Obama or any other elected leader (or their military, cabinet or civil service appointees), and is more about his contempt for the democratic choice of the citizens of the US and Australia.

Peter Wilson’s post correctly highlights the complexities of counterinsurgency campaigning. However, his assertion that '(t)raditional military campaign plans…are woefully ill-equipped to manage such complexity' is baseless. 

Military campaign plans are developed precisely because of the requirement to manage complexity. The campaign plan is the vehicle whereby the elements of strategy – method, means and political ends — are orchestrated to produce a harmonious effect. 

Sound military campaign plans are exhaustingly comprehensive. The relative success of the surge in Iraq under General Petraeus was not delivered by any combination of 'counterinsurgency experts' (surely a questionable title worthy of further detailed analysis), 'security sector reform experts' or developmental agencies.  It happened through the development and execution of a 'traditional military campaign plan' under appropriate leadership.

Having denied the utility of the campaign plan, Wilson’s proposed solution is:

We need a cross-disciplinary approach, involving counter-insurgency and security sector reform experts and learning from specialists in institutional development, change management, strategy and economics who have long studied the challenges of making strategy in complex environments. 

This will do absolutely nothing to address the most immediate and fundamental imperative of any counterinsurgency campaign – the provision of secure environment. Nothing is possible without it. And it has never been delivered, in any conflict, without an adequate campaign plan. Which is why experts talk of security sector reform and COIN professionals speak of security and campaign plans.

Photo by Flickr user keith stanski, used under a Creative Commons license.

The weekend’s news about the aerial attacks on the Sri Lankan capital by the Tamil Tigers provides a timely reminder that the normal rules of ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ are suspended in insurgency warfare. 

Recent reporting from Sri Lanka has described the significant territorial losses by the Tigers in the face of a sustained government offensive. This in turn has led to claims by senior Sri Lankan Government and military figures that the Tiger’s ultimate defeat is imminent. 

The weekend’s aerial attack suggests just how wishful this thinking may be. The attack itself was relatively inconsequential in military effect. It is in the nature and timing of the attack where the true consequences lie, highlighting yet again that while ‘possession’ of terrain is imperative for the counterinsurgent, it can be an optional activity at various stages of an insurgent campaign.

Robert Taber’s description of guerrilla warfare as the ‘war of the flea’ highlights the problem confronting the Sri Lankan Government:

The guerrilla fights the war of the flea, and his military enemy suffers the dog’s disadvantages: too much to defend; too small, ubiquitous, and agile an enemy to come to grips with.

Over the last few decades, the Tamil Tigers have ruthlessly demonstrated both familiarity and deadly competence at the ‘tactics of the flea’. What point does this highlight? That ‘victory’ against an insurgency rarely comes from just securing ground. Indeed, if the government makes missteps among the population in doing so, ‘victory’ may well aid the enemy in the information war that is a critical part of any insurgency.

The paradox for the Sri Lankan Government is that defeat of the Tamil Tiger objective of an autonomous homeland will not come from occupation of the contested territory. The record of insurgent warfare tells us that ‘victory’ only comes about in two ways: defeat of the ‘idea’ proposed by the insurgent, or a compromise of the idea that is ultimately acceptable to both sides.

Hugh White and Jim Molan are both right in a way in their views about the surge – but I think neither of them has it quite right.

Like Jim, I believe the surge ‘worked’. And Hugh is right that there has not yet been a definitive study that analyses precisely what happened, and whether the actions that took place actually had a causal effect on the progress made (although, like Jim, I do not hesitate to recommend Linda Robinson’s Tell Me How This Ends for a good account of the operational and strategic machinations behind the surge).

However, there are some ready answers to Hugh’s question: how precisely did the increase in US forces and the change in operational concepts contribute to the political changes we have seen?

First, and most obvious, the increase in ‘boots on the ground’ – both US, and ultimately more significantly, Iraqi – led to a degree of pacification of the ethnic, communal and religious violence that was literally tearing lives and neighbourhoods apart. The political effect of this was rapid and threefold: More...

More news is emerging about the results of the 31 January provincial elections conducted in Iraq. A recent report from the International Crisis Group noted that:

In the face of undeniable enthusiasm surrounding the elections (expressed in the large number of candidates and active campaigning), it would be both unfair to underestimate and wrong to overestimate their importance. 

It would also be wrong to infer a great deal from the lack of major violent incidents. The voter turnout of only 51% hints at the perceived importance of provincial elections among people whose only ‘muscle memory’ of strong government is that of the Saddam’s centralisation of power at the national level – the benefits of fighting for the provincial level of power are perhaps still to be established. 

A significant factor in the lack of violence is also the fact that the ‘surge’ broke the back of the Sunni insurgency in many areas. And the Iraqi Army has developed (in size and capability) incredibly over the last two years. The slip towards secularism in politics described my colleague Anthony may have also deterred the use of violence by radical Islamist parties at this stage. 

These factors, combined with the intensive security operations conducted for the election, clearly suggest that any attempt to foment widespread violence was unlikely to succeed. The uncertainty lies in what happens next. More...

Hold the ad campaign. It seems attacking New Zealand, like some Australian advertising executives suggested, might be an even dumber idea than it first appeared. (More on this in a moment.)

Sam Roggeveen has categorised Australia as a ‘weak’ land power and Indonesia as a ‘strong one’. Even allowing for playing creatively with the stats, this idea does not stack up. 

On percentages, Australia and Indonesia have an almost identical figure of people under arms in their land forces – Indonesia’s population of just over 237.5 million sustains an army of 303,000, while Australia’s 21 million population supports an army of just over 27,000. That gives each a percentage of army-to-population of just 0.12% and 0.128% respectively. By way of comparison, the land force powerhouse that is Sri Lanka has a percentage of 0.76%.

Sam could claim that raw numbers are misleading and other qualitative factors come into play. And he would be right. More...

I am envious of the diversity in Allan’s reading list. Almost all of my reading this year has related to my day job. Much of it happened on various interminable waits for aircraft, sitting around sundry helipads in Iraq. I quickly realised that the prudent modern military commuter in a war zone always leaves room in his rig for a book to fill in those long, slow hours. Slim paperbacks fit nicely into the pocket on your body armour next to where the ballistic inserts go.

My book selection this year was driven by three motivators: getting a good handle on the Iraq war, and research for both my forthcoming Lowy Paper and my UNSW dissertation. So it will perhaps be no surprise that the majority of my favourites have a counterinsurgency theme. 

The one I enjoyed most was a re-read of Frank Kitson’s Bunch of Five. As well as sage advice on the practicalities of COIN from a man who was both practitioner and theorist, Kitson serves up a no nonsense ripping yarn of a British Officer fighting his nation’s small wars in the sunset of an empire. Look for a copy in your library, as it is out of print and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have lead to second hand book dealers realising a hefty premium on any copy that they can get their hands on.More...

The Commander of the US Army’s Combined Arms Center, LTG William Caldwell (who may be more familiar to cable news junkies from his frequent TV appearance in his former role as spokesperson for the Multinational Force in Iraq), released Field Manual (FM) 3.07 Stability Operations in early October. Angst about the manual's ‘hidden meaning’ for American strategy has been kicking around in the US since then.  

Much of that angst revolves around the idea that ‘if they know how to do it, then they will’, echoing Andrew J. Bacevich’s recent concerns expressed in The Atlantic, and previously discussed on The Interpreter.

The pertinent fact to take away from all of the noise is that FM3.07 is not grand strategy. It is not even a strategy. It is essentially a ‘cook book’ that provides US Army personnel in simple, easy to understand format, concise information about what they should do when in a stability operation. And this is useful, since they actually have a few of these on their plates at the moment, and it is probably better (for all of us) if they can pull them off successfully. More...

I recently attended a workshop at All Souls College, Oxford, conducted by the Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War. The workshop, sponsored by the French Army’s École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, was investigating the doctrinal approaches that regular armies take in response to irregular threats. My primary task at the event was to present a paper about the development of the Australian Army’s new Counterinsurgency Manual, published earlier this month.

The discussion at the workshop was fascinating and wide ranging – frankly, it needed to be in order to stop the continual distraction offered by All Souls’ amazing architecture, which dates back to the early 15th century. 

The body of the workshop was conducted under the Chatham House rule, so I cannot report on the detail of the presentations, suffice to say that they were by highly credible people and were extremely interesting to a student of counterinsurgency. The Director of the Changing Character of War Programme, Hew Strachan (also the Chichele Professor of the history of war) went on the record with some interesting observations during the day’s summation.

One observation was that the day’s discussion had highlighted again the imperative for contemporary counterinsurgents to have sound information operations campaigns both within the operational theatre and linked to the home audience. The 2008 Lowy Institute Poll result, showing a decline in public support for our involvement in the Afghan conflict, reinforces the argument that creating a compelling narrative to explain the conflict to the ‘home front’ is an important issue in countering insurgencies. More...

I have been in the USA since Saturday afternoon, but I'm more than happy to leave the serious, detailed analysis and commentary about the presidential election to my colleague Michael Fullilove. His latest Lowy Analysis paper, Hope or glory? The presidential election, US foreign policy and Australia, offers insight into what a President Obama or President McCain might mean for Australian interests. 

Rather than the wealth of political analysis and commentary, it is the contrasts with the conduct of elections in Australia that have made an impression on me. More...

Sam’s call that the so called ‘small war'school within the US military is in ‘ascendency’ because of the recent publication of  US Army Field Manual (FM) 3-07 Stability Operations is overstated. One of anything is not ascendency. When put into the context of the literally hundreds of doctrinal publication issued annually every year by the US military, it is not even a weak trend.
 
Consider this: in the six years since the US became heavily involved in ‘stability’ operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has issued only two major pieces of doctrine dealing specifically with the subject – FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency and FM 3-07 Stability Operations. Such is the US military’s doctrinal response to an enterprise that has cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars.  

I wonder what people would consider as failure for both the ‘small war' school and the ongoing efforts to describe and understand what is occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan if two publications in six years constitute an ‘ascendency’ of thought. 

Reflecting on the eleven rounds of student debate recently hosted on this blog about what should be in the forthcoming Defence White paper (to see all 11 posts, enter 'white paper debate round' into the search box above), I was astounded that only one of them (this post by my Colleague Rodger Shanahan) mentioned the ongoing wars that Australians are involved in.

Australian Service personnel are engaged in combat in Afghanistan. Despite the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, a number remain in various roles in that country, and our naval forces continue to play a significant role in security operations within the upper Persian Gulf.  

What could be more important to our strategic environment or defence policy than the fact that we are at war? More...

An article (subscribers only) on page 10 in today’s AFR ‘Special Report’ on Defence by Shane Nichols caught my attention. Nichols asserts that ‘as global combat forms evolve, a debate is growing about whether the infantry must rethink its role’. Nichols cites an interview with APSI’s Andrew Davies and  his recent ASPI Insight Paper, Asian military trends and their implications for Australia in support of this claim. 

For those who missed it, Davies’ paper contains powerful echoes of the ‘Defence of Australia’ (DOA) conception of Australia’s strategic future. He describes a future where the physical defence of the Australian land mass against a large, Asian, conventional threat is the key determinant of our national security interests. Davies goes on to advocate a ‘two tier’ Army, consisting of a cadre of Special Forces troops for ‘war fighting’ and another tier of troops for ‘regional stabilisation’ missions. 

We should be naturally cautious with respect to highly proscriptive solutions to the uncertain or unknowable – as the future certainly is. There is more than a grain of truth in strategist Colin Gray’s maxim, 'The future is not foreseeable: Nothing dates so rapidly as today’s tomorrow'. It is a matter of record that the defence force capabilities and structure that DOA left us very nearly came unstuck in what proved to be the relatively benign tactical circumstance of East Timor. Advocacy of proscriptive defence posture must be critically and skeptically evaluated in light of three criteria: the guaranteed uncertainty of the future; prudent military experience and knowledge; and the likely cost of ‘getting it wrong’.  Against these criteria it is apparent that any implementation of Davies’ advice with respect to a ‘two tier’ army would be poor public policy.

A final point regarding Nichol’s piece. I was surprised by the use of the term ‘growing debate’. Where is this debate taking place?  I am bemused by the idea that a journo quizzing a physicist working at a strategic think tank might constitute ‘growing debate’ about the future role of Australia’s infantry. If I can get Sam Roggeveen  to interview me about (pick a subject), could The Interpreter then reasonably claim a ‘growing debate’ about the subject?

Photo (of Speaker's Corner, London) by Flickr user StefZ, used under a Creative Commons license.

The Prime Minister’s speech to the RSL in Townsville last week led to an outbreak of opinion pieces and commentary from defence commentators. Much of the discussion has centred on the interpretation of many commentators that the PM has flagged a significant expansion of the Royal Australian Navy. 

My colleague here at the Institute, Professor Hugh White, seized upon this first point to call, on national radio, for the expansion of the Australian submarine fleet. He further elaborated on what he meant by a ‘bigger submarine fleet’ in the Australian Financial Review last Thursday (not online), where he called for the purchase of another six submarines (and the scrapping of the Government’s approved plan to purchase three Air Warfare Destroyers). What Hugh has not explained is how this would meet the Prime Minister’s stated aspiration to ‘secure our sea lines of communication’. 

The number of submarines required to persistently cover tens of thousands of kilometres of sea-lanes far exceeds the twelve on Hugh’s wish list. Nor did Hugh explain how the submarines would be manned – not such a simple task considering the acknowledged difficulties we are having manning the six submarines we now have. Moreover, this also assumes that the submarine is in fact the right tool for the task envisaged – which is in itself highly contestable.

Photo by Flickr user Cristiano Caniche, used under a Creative Commons license.

Reading Patrick Walters’ piece from Baghdad in today’s Australian got me thinking n about how ‘conventional wisdom’ is often neither ‘conventional’ nor ‘wise’.  Walters reports, accurately, that the security situation in Baghdad has improved remarkably. This is not news to those who have been dealing with Iraq intimately. But for those whose information source has been the ‘conventional wisdom’ about the war in Iraq it may appear astounding. 

As I prepared for my deployment to Iraq last November, many of my friends, colleagues, acquaintances and the inevitable taxi driver expressed degrees of concern for my involvement in what they regarded as a hopeless situation. I encountered similar sentiments on my return home in June. The situation I encountered during my time in Iraq (which coincided with the second half of the ‘surge’) in no way resembled the hopelessness conventionally depicted back home.

While the situation was not ideal (clearly, 135,000 foreign troops assisting in a sovereign nation is indicative of problem), things were obviously better than had been depicted. I spoke with many Iraqis (troops and civilians) and Coalition members across the breadth of Iraq, and the message they had was consistent – things were improving. More...

A colleague recently drew my attention to ‘The Folly of ‘Asymmetric War’, in The Washington Quarterly. The author, Michael J. Mazarr , equates ‘insurgency’ style warfare (of the type occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan) with ‘asymmetric warfare’ and argues against any marked changes to US defence priorities to meet requirements to fight such wars. 

Anyone who has read anything about military strategic affairs over the last decade will have come across the term ‘asymmetry’ – its use has become so common that it is often cliché. Elements of Mazarr’s argument are sound, yet he fails in his task of convincing of the folly of ‘asymmetric war’ because he clearly misses the point about asymmetry. More...

Sam’s rebuttal suggests we are in overall agreement that the utility of the new ships is far broader than just the conduct of defence operations. 

However, we must be careful not to equate the broad range of capabilities offered with the need for broad command and control arrangements for their employment. ‘Unity of command’ is a central tenet of military operations. Complex tasks are best executed with a unitary leadership system, informed by an appropriate common cultural and doctrinal perspective. The type of missions that the new ships might undertake, military focus or not, certainly would be complex. It follows that a broad interagency committee would not best serve the principle of ‘Unity of Command’ with regard to the ship’s employment and direction. More...

Sam's assertion that labeling the amphibious ships as ‘warships’ is a ‘fiction’, based on the low probability of their use in ‘war', provides a precedent for any number of things. For example, if we recognise the ‘fiction’ of runway safety zones at our international airports, we would have the space to build much needed child care centres (after all, the probability of a plane crash is almost zero, right?) The mind boggles to think of all the uses we might put ambulances to when they are not actually tending to an emergency. The bottom line is that the idea is seriously flawed, and apparently underpinned by several misapprehensions. More...

The correspondents from both The Economist and The Atlantic Monthly who Sam mentioned in his post on roads and counterinsurgency yesterday are late to the party. Their ideas were presented in earlier work by Australian counterinsurgency theorist David Kilcullen. The Small Wars Journal blog published this piece from David  on 24 April.

Despite the apparent attractiveness of the idea that roads diminish insurgencies, the relationship between the two is at best tenuous. More...

The recent suggestion by Airpower Australia’s Carlo Kopp that Australia needs to harden its Northern airbases is truly risible, not least because of the threat assessment issue that Sam Roggeveen described. And while Sam’s observation that concrete is relatively cheap is accurate, it is also largely irrelevant to the issue of protection of infrastructure against modern aerial attack.

I suspect that amongst its other ‘interests’, Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party had a monopoly in concrete production. The former Iraqi regime spent a lot of time and money using literally millions of tonnes of reinforced concrete to protect infrastructure. And the US shattered most of it. Twice. Using the very weapons that Kopp is fearful of in our region. More...

The opinion piece by Scott Burchill that recently featured here at The Interpreter highlights a growing phenomenon — commentary on counterinsurgency and war by those obviously unencumbered by an understanding of counterinsurgency warfare theory and practice.

Burchill’s attempted characterization of the current war in Afghanistan as a nationalist insurgency is wide of the mark. The Taliban represent the interests of a segment of Afghanistan’s largest ethnic minority group, the Pashtun. The Taliban are so unrepresentative of whatever may pass for ‘nationalist identity’ that prior to the 2001 intervention there was a significant number of other ethnic groups united in an insurgency against their rule. Andrew Zammit’s email correctly points out that the Taliban insurgency is directed at the sovereign government of Afghanistan. 

The recent attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul is cited as evidence that little progress has been made in the conflict in Afghanistan. Application of the same logic to the Second World War would suggest that the Allies had made little progress by the winter of ‘44/’45 because the Germans could mount their offensive in the Ardennes. More...