One of the most interesting analyses I have read.
Thought provoking.
I would change the title slightly and say, "War is Cruelty, and You Cannot Refine It, If You Want to Win It." Otherwise, we can just continue muddling through and taking ineffectual half-measures while dodging victory.
TR
War is Cruelty, and You Cannot Refine It
A Thought Experiment on the Hegelian dialectic towards 'Total' Strategy Development
https://medium.com/the-bridge/war-is...t-2f97785aac94
This post was provided by Jeremy Kotkin, a US Army strategist and professional devil's advocate. The views expressed in this piece are his alone and do not represent the US Army or the Department of Defense.
Let's talk counterinsurgency and ISIS. Not the "population-centric" fantasy of hearts and minds made popular by FM 3-24, David Petraeus, and liberal American idealism, but real counterinsurgency. Now that a cohesive group of psychotics and organized criminals has thrown the Middle East yet againinto a cauldron of seething and violent cultural atavism, what should the world, and the U.S. specifically, do about it? Yet the question is not simply about ISIS. We should not be debating a limited American conflict over two murdered journalists, a 'Responsibility to Protect' a displaced Iraqi minority group, or a fantastical Jihad domino theory. The fact that we've already, and yet again, framed the problem to such short-sighted issues belies the dearth of our strategic depth and coherence. What do we do about the chronic, endemic issue of which ISIS is merely the latest manifestation?
To answer that question, we must first look at our left and right limits of strategy and risk. What is on the table? What is off the table? What are we really trying to achieve and will it be worth the costs? The new American way of war seems to be to trickle into a fight, muddle our way through it with nebulous and often competing goals, and assume at some point - hopefully not too long after the arrival of boots on the ground or airpower overhead - that our enemies will come to their senses, lay down their arms because they suddenly see things our way, and promise to be good little citizens for time immemorial. I give you Iraq, Afghanistan, and most other every major military engagement back to Vietnam. In all cases, we either failed miserably or artificially delayed what would naturally occur anyway absent our short-termed presence. Similarly, does anyone really think the Dayton Peace Accords forced an enduring settlement between the Croats, Serbs, and Bosniacs considering that Bosnia has provided more volunteers per European capita for the Syrian Jihad than any other country in Europe? There are clear and present dangers we choose to ignore while we enact and enforce artificial peace through the force of our Western arms where no voluntary peace has been organically achieved.
Yet how does that square with geopolitical realities? How should we judge the threat and response to ISIS? It can be argued that most, if not all of the issues today can be encapsulated with the old Polish proverb that reads, "Not my circus, not my monkeys." This is largely true. What occurs in the larger Middle East is largely not our problem. What occurs in the tribal valleys of Afghanistan is not our problem. What occurs during a trade war between China and Vietnam on the high seas (or between China and Japan over a few unpopulated rocks) is not really our problem. And, most certainly, how a group of criminals and terrorists threatens two nations who are certainly not our friends (Syria and Iraq) unequivocally is not our problem. Even if they became an existential threat to countries beyond Iraq, to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, we would somehow, someway still get our oil. And that's all that really matters from there.
If you, the reader, are sensing a cold, hard Realism (which has been absent from our foreign policy for far too long) to the above argument, you are correct.
Nevertheless, the prevailing counterargument will always breathlessly go something like: "we have to nip ISIS in the bud because 9/11!" "We have to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here!" "The radical Islamic Domino Theory!" That's all alarmist and unsupportable bunk. White (ungoverned) spaces on a map are not a threat to us or our interests. They never were. The arguers of such tripe can offer no empirical or historical support to substantiate this claim. It does not square with international relations theory and it does not square with human nature.
Although ungoverned, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Waziristan in Pakistan were not terrorist hotbeds until after we, in response to 9/11, pressured Pakistan to try and extend their writ of sovereignty to those areas. That's when all hell broke loose there, for Pakistan, Afghanistan, and U.S. troops in the region. We forced the creation of a terrorist magnet there; a theme, counterintuitively, running through our global efforts at counterterrorism.
With these considerations, and being that a military-only solution will most likely be untenable for various reasons to be explained, I will now inform a more reasonable course of action which, while requiring equal levels of systemic thinking, coordination, and effort, is more suitable, feasible, and acceptable. I will present to you the thesis and the antithesis to get to the synthesis of strategy.
Thesis
There are many other catalysts that give rise to terrorism and eventual threats to the homeland beyond the myth of ungoverned spaces or discrete and mythically monolithic terrorist organizations. Namely, they are poor governance by sitting corrupt governments, economic disenfranchisement (enabled by those same poorly-governed states), and (a perceived or real) lack of social justice (again, because of those same corrupt or incapable governments). Obviously, there's a trend here. Even more obvious is that we not only ignore that trend, but we enable it. Look at our "allies." Saudi Arabia. Bahrain. Qatar. Nigeria. Yemen. Afghanistan. Pakistan. The list goes on, but all share a common thread. They have something we want, so we shore up the sitting governments no matter how wildly corrupt or malfeasant they are. And there are repercussions we have to deal with piecemeal because we refuse to see the forest for the trees. Our strategy is akin to standing outside and mopping up the rain....during a rainstorm. But this, although important, is getting into a different and tangential argument. What we are now dealing with and debating is the "immediate" threat, again, of Islamic terrorism in some far off place. Even though we have declared ISIS an enemy of the United States, the direct link to vital national interests cannot be defined. What, if anything, to do about that right now?
ISIS obviously isn't the first group of its kind. But given our new American way of war, it is unlikely to be the last. We're already trickling troops into Iraq. Pin-prick airstrikes are ongoing. Special Operations Forces are undoubtedly carrying out targeted strikes on high-value targets. Short term "success" (disconnected from any longer-term strategy) might even be realized. And we will also allow ISIS a certain level of political if not geographic safe haven, just as we did for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Just as we allow our "allies" in the Gulf States to keep funding terrorism from the thrones of their opulent presidential palaces.
We'll keep fighting this cancer with one hand tied behind our back. Yet cancer requires a wholesale attack. Even "targeted" anti-cancer therapies try to root out the cancer from the starting place - the genetic source. We have never attempted and will probably not attempt to do this. We're afraid of backlash. We're afraid of unintended consequences. We're afraid of global public opinion. Yet the way we've handled our Global War on Terrorism has been a failure.
Something new is needed; something systemic and something complete. Unless, that is, we determine the cost-benefit analysis says it is cheaper to deal with global Jihad and Islamic extremism in the same piecemeal manner we currently do. It would need to tell us that playing "whack-a-mole" as threats pop up seemingly out of nowhere to threaten our long-term globalized prosperity forevermore is better than dealing with the cancer in a coordinated, wholesale way. Our cost-benefit analysis must be informing us that simply "hoping" someday Islamic governments in the Middle East will miraculously become enlightened to the needs of their populaces is a better course of action.
So what to do. Beyond all the handwringing at State and Defense about what is too little or too much, or messaging, or narratives, or soft power, or population-centric strategies that focus on the human element, the answer always was right in front of us.
What follows is a thought experiment on a different course of action and a different strategy. We can either sit back on the defensive, following the terrorists' lead (be they AQ, ISIS, al-Shabab, etc), or we can take control and we can determine our next move. The latter alternative will require an international coordination, agreement in principle, and effort we have not seen since our last effective global strategy of containment against the USSR. What follows is a game-changer and, as distasteful as it may initially seem, it represents a course of action, albeit extreme, to deal with an extreme and lasting problem. So, what to do? Beyond all the handwringing at State and Defense about what is too little or too much, or messaging, or narratives, or soft power, or population-centric strategies that focus on the human element, the answer always was right in front of us.
(Cont. at Link)
Linear Mode
