Winning the Right War

Philip Gordon has an essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs on how to win the War on Terror. It’s a good read and a clear eyed analysis of both the nature of the war and what victory would look like. Mercifully he avoids the sarcastic Bush bashing that so taints much criticism of current administration policy. I don’t agree with everything he has to say but he presents well reasoned arguments and is right on in most of his conclusions. He does set up a few straw men, suggesting for example that we are about to conduct a WWII style mobilization and invade half the Muslim world. Who’s advocating that? He seems to think, like a lot of policy wonks do, that everybody else has it wrong and if we would just do as he suggests everything will come out roses. He also thinks invading Iraq was a mistake. Of course there are other views, including mine. Still, the essay is well worth reading and I ordered his book. Straw men do have their uses. Gordon’s central insight is the need to avoid falling into the trap of over reaction. He uses the extreme case to make the point, noting that al Qaeda’s fundamental strategy is to provoke a heavy handed response, produce chaos, and ultimately step in as a last chance for order in the style of the Taliban after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. He makes the case that victory will come when Muslims turn away from the ideology behind al Qaeda style extremism. No acceptable amount of force can make them do that. Muslims will have to decide for themselves.

Gordon’s arguments are as well articulated as they are well reasoned but with the exception of his point that it is unrealistic to expect complete eradication of terror, I’m not sure how much of it is really new. Even that point has been made before. George Bush famously commented that the War on Terror might not be winnable in the conventional sense but was forced to “clarify” when he got a frenzied reaction from the media. People are going to have to eventually come to grips with the idea that the draconian measures required to insulate us entirely are not worth the cost. More public discussion like Gordon’s could help with that.

The notion that invading Iraq was counterproductive rests on the assertion that it has served as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda and caused increased anti-American sentiment among Muslims around the world. It has done both but al Qaeda has been discredited in Iraq, partly because of brutality directed at fellow Muslims, and far more importantly because they have failed. Young radicals were attracted to them because they saw an opportunity to defeat another superpower. Bin Laden told them God would lead them to victory as He did against the Soviets in Afghanistan. At this point Americans appear to have a clear cut victory within the grasp and foreign suicide bomber infiltration through Syria has slowed to a trickle. Much could still go wrong but so far God hasn’t taken the field. As for anti-American sentiment, I’m not sure how much worse it could get beyond the level that produced 911. Our efforts to defend ourselves with “moral authority” are an exercise in futility.

Ironically Iraq may yet serve to dramatically shorten what has been called the Long War. Retired General Barry McCaffrey concluded after a recent field trip that Iraqis are tired of the bloodshed, especially women. That’s what happened to prompt Afghans turning to the Taliban. Iraqis may now be ready to come together in support of government security forces if they conclude they are the winning side. It’s hard to think about complex political issues when your family is in mortal danger.

I get the sense something like that may be happening around the world. Terrorism isn’t getting anybody anywhere. Only the weak resort to it in the first place and because they are weak, they tend to settle for so called “soft” targets, meaning civilians. Sometimes that’s just to make noise and instill a feeling of chaos. Sometimes it is a devise to intimidate a local populace into supporting insurgents. Sometimes it’s directed at a foreign power to erode public support for a cause not seen as important enough to justify the cost. In any case the strategy isn’t likely to win many hearts and minds, especially if it doesn’t seem to be working. Lots of Muslims around the world might like to see America get its comeuppance but not at the expense of having to live under the thumb of such brutes, and especially not if America doesn’t seem to be getting said comeuppance. Terrorism has already produced a backlash among Muslims. Most Muslims never bought in to the ideology behind it. Many of those who did have begun to look for a better way. Growing prosperity, sizeable middle classes, and emerging democracy in Muslim countries as diverse as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia could well be that better way.

Philip Gordon is right. It’s time to start thinking what a victory in the War on Terror might look like. It may be closer than we think. There is one big caveat. Another incident with anything like the drama of 911 and all bets are off. That could still happen, in a western city or at a major Muslim shrine. Lets all hope it doesn’t.

Counterinsurgency Tactics

I have recently been seeing journalists refer to a deteriorating security environment in Afghanistan. It’s a mischaracterization. Theaters in both Iraq and Afghanistan are in fact seeing marked reversals in insurgent capabilities. The classic successful insurgency, ala Mao’s 1949 takeover in China, begins with a small, poorly armed, organized, and equipped group of rebels who start out with a campaign of terrorism to intimidate the population into supporting them. If it works they slowly escalate into a more sophisticated force that can seize and hold territory, eventually evolving into an army able to engage in conventional maneuver warfare. What we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan is the reverse of that, with insurgents no longer able to conduct normal military operations and resorting almost exclusively to suicide bombing and random acts of terror. The trick now is to separate them from the population, in Lyndon Johnson’s hackneyed phrase to “win the hearts and minds of the people”, principally by providing them with security. That’s always the key to ultimate success. It is a principle well understood by American military officers at least since the Indian Wars. The 64 dollar question is just how you go about doing that. Tactics employed against 19th century Indians would be anathema to a twenty first century American public. There are more civilized models from 1950s British operations in Malaysia and French in Algeria but both Britain and France were colonial powers at the time. Americans don’t want to be seen as occupiers let alone colonists and we can neither order forced relocations as the British did, nor used coercive interrogation techniques on civilians as the French did. There is one idea to borrow from both British and French however and it figures prominently in General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency manual. You disperse your troops among the people, get to know them, and give them the local security they need. It is often said that there is no military solution to an insurgency and there is an element of truth to that. Troops ultimately have to become more like policemen than soldiers. There are a couple of flies in the ointment though. Petraeus calculates a requirement of 25 counterinsurgents per 1000 population. That’s a lot of troops and police and after four years in Iraq (five in Afghanistan) we are only just now reaching those force levels. Another problem is that troops need security too. Dispersed troops are vulnerable to an enemy who can selectively attack in force. That was the American problem in Vietnam. When I was there in 1965 we had to be constantly on the move, never staying two nights in the same place unless we could defend it in force. If we did, North Vietnamese regulars could scout our positions from secure sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia and attack in overwhelming numbers. There is a moral issue too if you are a foreign power trying to suppress a domestic rebellion. To be successful you must solicit local support. If you fail your supporters will pay a heavy price. You must be able to assure them that you are there for the long haul, a serious concern for our current allies in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end it was the cause of French failure in Algeria, and American failure in Vietnam. French troops could deal with rebels. They could not deal with French public opinion and the anti-colonial tide of history. American troops could win every battle on the ground in Vietnam but still lose in Washington. Those are the real lessons to be learned. They will determine the outcome of current and future conflicts.

Culture Shock

Religious historian Karen Armstrong recounts a story of a Christian monk in Andalusia who wanted to become a martyr. He walked into a market place crowded with Muslims and began loudly denouncing Muhammad as a misogynist, lecher, and false prophet, still today a good way to get oneself killed in certain parts of the world. Authorities arrested him before a riot could start and, not wanting to make too much of it, offered to let him go if he would recant. The monk only became more strident, giving them no choice but to summarily execute him. I am reminded of that story as we see one headline after another regarding intemperate Muslim outrage over any perceived slight from non-Muslims or any departure from tradition among their own. This week it is a Muslim girl from Toronto killed by her father for not wearing a head scarf. Last week it was a Saudi woman sentenced to jail and lashes for having been in a car with a former boyfriend when they were both abducted and raped. The week before it was an angry mob in Sudan calling for the head of an English school teacher who allowed her class to name a pet Muhammad. Many Muslims join the rest of us in condemning such attitudes as gross overreactions representing fundamental disregard for basic human rights. Others tell us to mind our own business or insist that the intolerance is un-Islamic and can’t be used to judge the community as a whole. Still, the incidents occur regularly enough to remind us all just how deeply mired many Muslims are in medieval attitudes, struggling to resist adapting to a world that has moved beyond them. They are like the Luddites of early nineteenth century England, trying to stop the industrial revolution. But Ned Ludd and his followers were just trying to protect their jobs by destroying looms. Modern Muslims are trying to protect a culture that is not serving them well. Both groups were and are acting in futility. It isn’t just intolerance. David Galula describes offering medical clinics to impoverished Algerian villagers in 1956. A big obstacle was a deep sense of fatalism that often kept mothers from seeking help for sick children. They came around as they realized help was there for the taking but it was slow and difficult. Galula thought, and I think it was a trait characteristic of the region. The recent Jones Report to congress on the status of Iraqi security forces describes two major cultural challenges in building an effective Army. One is an ingrained disdain for preventive maintenance on equipment, a large part of a greater problem in logistics. Another is a lack of a tradition for a non-commissioned officer corps and a reluctance to delegate authority. No wonder Arab armies can’t beat Israelis. Similar accounts are coming out of Afghanistan. Times are changing though. NATO advisors taught Bosnians the value of competent NCOs and Iraqis will learn too. Even Saudi women are becoming well educated. King Abdullah is building a 12.4 billion dollar university complex in the desert to catch Saudis up with the west in science and technology. It will be walled off from the rest of Saudi society because he wants to attract the best western minds and that requires academic freedom and gender equality. It will be a porous wall. Dubai wants to become the Singapore of the Middle East and that means increasing emphasis on a free market economy and rule of law. It is already a major tourist destination for Europeans. Libya wants to integrate into the world economy and to that end has dismantled its nuclear arms program and renounced old links to terrorism. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, is dragging itself up out of historic poverty, and is emerging as a democracy in the process. This week’s murder notwithstanding, Muslims in the US and Canada are assimilating quite well and are beginning to have an impact on their ethnic origins. Canada is a major destination for Iranian immigrants and the community there is characterized by entrepreneurs who maintain ties and influence in Iran. And so it goes across large swaths of the Muslim world. The world is changing faster than at anytime in history and many Muslims are being dragged kicking and screaming along with it. They have no choice. The effects of globalization make the rest of society at last impossible to ignore. There is nothing in Islam that requires Muslims to remain forever poor. A lot of Muslims have already figured that out and a lot more are beginning to come around.

Death Wish

Four and one half years ago Saddam Hussein went to war with a vastly superior power to defend a weapons program he didn’t even have. The madness cost him his head and now it appears his next door neighbors have been playing with the same fire. The good news this week is that the American intelligence community has concluded Iran suspended development of nuclear weapons sometime in 2003. The National Intelligence Estimate doesn’t say why, only that it was in response to “international pressure.” Some pundits have pronounced the development a triumph of diplomacy over threat of force, and at the same time point to it as further evidence of unreliability in intelligence estimates. That inconsistency aside, I’m not sure what diplomacy they think has triumphed. The big international news in 2003 was Saddam’s demise coming on the heels of a Taliban collapse in Afghanistan and George Bush’s Axis of Evil remarks in his 2002 State of the Union address. For a time there it looked like the Ayatollahs might be next. That would seem to be the obvious source of international pressure. 2003 also saw another regional pariah suspend his nuclear activities. Libya’s Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhafi admitted to his own program and agreed to allow the US and Britain to dismantle it under the oversight of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The part I don’t understand is why Iran would risk providing the United States with the same provocation that cost Saddam so dearly. If they were going to suspend development, why not follow Qadhdhafi’s lead and reap the benefits of international reconciliation? Current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sounds a lot like Saddam in his belligerence and appears to be taking his country down the same path. But the clerics who hold the real power in Iran are rational men. Surely they know that the nuclear threats only serve to further isolate them, and present the very real possibility of preemptive western military action. The handwriting was on the wall long before Americans invaded Iraq. The Ottoman Empire has been dismembered and it isn’t going to be restored. No new bellicose anti-western power is going to be allowed to become a hegemon in a region as vital to world economies as the Middle East, nuclear or not. Iran has a lot to gain from being a peaceful neighbor. In the days of the Shah they were one of the more progressive players in the region. They had a pretty good university system and a growing middle class. Many of us remember Ross Perot’s daring rescue of EDS executives from an Iranian prison. Most have probably forgotten what took them there to begin with. They were working to implement a social security system sponsored by the Empress Farah, a lady who had also worked to make Iranian women among the most emancipated in the Muslim world. Not all of that has been undone by the Ayatollahs. Iranians are still relatively well educated, they still have a sizeable middle class, and their women are still pretty independent. Those factors, oil, and a well connected Diaspora position Iran to benefit hugely from the modern growth in world prosperity but all this talk of war and sanctions is bad for business. There was never much chance of war with Iran and the new NIE report makes it less likely than it has been in years. We aren’t going to be on good terms though until, as President Bush insists, they come clean about the nuclear weapons and begin acting as responsible world citizens. I don’t understand what’s keeping them. One shoe appears to be on the floor. They need to let the other one fall.