It is sad that the media has continued to spread the misconception that Mexico's ongoing civil war is all the fault of the American gun industry. Hello! Why aren't we taking the Mexican border police to task for not clamping down on the gun smuggling?! Is it America's fault that Mexican customs agents are slacking off?
In other news, Dr. Gates said, over the weekend, that the US military will start helping Mexico in fighting its civil war.
It is sad to see that the Obama administration has not learned anything about the post-Cold War world we live in. He spouted some rhetoric about using America's "soft power" to meet our challenges. Yet, with the Second most dangerous threat to American security, [first is Pakistan], Obama has reacted instinctively with the Defense Department, again. "Hope and Change" in the case of US foreign policy is now, "Hope the Military Can Change".
The only "soft power" Obama has done with regard to Mexico is a call to Congress to re-enact the Assault Weapon Ban, a cause for the Brady Campaign. Rahm Emanuel said, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Indeed.
Hat tip to Galrahn for noting this.
PS: updated the tags to include Obama, 30APR2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Fight the New Assault Weapon Ban
If you want to fight the new Assault Weapon Ban from the Obama administration, you need to start writing your Congress people (House and Senate). I have included a sample letter you can adapt and modify as you see fit below:
Mr. [Congress Person],
I am writing to you to oppose any gun control measures from the current administration. Specifically, I am opposing any thought of a new assault weapon ban.
Attorney General Holder recently said that, because of Mexico's current gun violence, the administration will propose a new, permanent assault weapon ban. That is an illogical conclusion. The reason Mexico is having gun problems is because Mexico chooses not to secure its own borders against gun traffickers. The BATF is assisting Mexico by investigating and arresting gun dealers who violate the law, and that is good. However, to conclude that we need to constrain the rights of law-abiding Americans because of the ineptitude of the Mexican government is simply absurd.
Moreover, the firearm industry is providing many well-paying manufacturing jobs in the United States, jobs that are disappearing from the rest of the economy. If you support the Assault Weapon Ban, you will be destroying well-paying manufacturing jobs in your district, deepening this recession. You will be contributing to your own electoral loss at the next election.
Thank you for your consideration,
[Insert Name]
Mr. [Congress Person],
I am writing to you to oppose any gun control measures from the current administration. Specifically, I am opposing any thought of a new assault weapon ban.
Attorney General Holder recently said that, because of Mexico's current gun violence, the administration will propose a new, permanent assault weapon ban. That is an illogical conclusion. The reason Mexico is having gun problems is because Mexico chooses not to secure its own borders against gun traffickers. The BATF is assisting Mexico by investigating and arresting gun dealers who violate the law, and that is good. However, to conclude that we need to constrain the rights of law-abiding Americans because of the ineptitude of the Mexican government is simply absurd.
Moreover, the firearm industry is providing many well-paying manufacturing jobs in the United States, jobs that are disappearing from the rest of the economy. If you support the Assault Weapon Ban, you will be destroying well-paying manufacturing jobs in your district, deepening this recession. You will be contributing to your own electoral loss at the next election.
Thank you for your consideration,
[Insert Name]
Monday, February 23, 2009
A Design to Improve Canine Effectiveness in Arid Climates
The military employs military working dogs in bomb detection. Therefore, working dogs can help us avoid mines and improvised explosive devices, and detecting the female suicide bombers currently in vogue in Iraq. However, the dogs are not effective in OIF and OEF because it is too dry over there.
A dog's nose is a mucous membrane with sensors all over. The sensors bind to the scent particles in the air through the mucous membrane. If the nose dries out, the sensors are not as effective in binding to the scent molecules. Because the air is so dry in Iraq and Afghanistan, it dries out dog noses rapidly. The bomb detection dogs were only effective for much less than one hour before needing to take a break and re-wet their noses.
When I was deployed, I wrote up a proposal to build a humidifier for a working dog, to extend his working time. To accomplish this, you can take a spritzer to spray water onto his nose directly, for a low tech method, interim capability.
My design was: Mount the spritzer by the dog's head, and aim it to a point 3 inches in front of his nose. The spritzer would automatically spray water toward this point periodically, to moisturize the air as he breathes in. The exact configuration and timing will require experimentation, for which I did not have the money, personnel, nor assets to do.
Alternatively, we can spray moisturized air, instead of water spray, into the air. This might be more effective, but it would also be more complex.
Anyway, I submitted the proposal to the local counter-IED working group. They forwarded it to some people in the K-9 community. And I never heard back from them again. Story of my life, eh? :)
This proposal will make a great college/backyard engineering project if you want to build it. All you need is a dog, some dry weather, and some time to tinker with. It is not technically sophisticated, but you do need to program that motor controller.
So that is another one of my engineering ideas as I was sitting in the Fallujah contracting office doing paperwork. We need to get more working dogs into the military because they are so useful. In Vietnam, soldiers used to patrol the jungle with working dogs. The dogs could smell and hear the boobytraps, and were great sentries at night. Dogs also are good at reading body language and help us separate good guys from bad guys. In the new population-centric warfare we are fighting, working dogs are a crucial tool that we are not using effectively.
A dog's nose is a mucous membrane with sensors all over. The sensors bind to the scent particles in the air through the mucous membrane. If the nose dries out, the sensors are not as effective in binding to the scent molecules. Because the air is so dry in Iraq and Afghanistan, it dries out dog noses rapidly. The bomb detection dogs were only effective for much less than one hour before needing to take a break and re-wet their noses.
When I was deployed, I wrote up a proposal to build a humidifier for a working dog, to extend his working time. To accomplish this, you can take a spritzer to spray water onto his nose directly, for a low tech method, interim capability.
My design was: Mount the spritzer by the dog's head, and aim it to a point 3 inches in front of his nose. The spritzer would automatically spray water toward this point periodically, to moisturize the air as he breathes in. The exact configuration and timing will require experimentation, for which I did not have the money, personnel, nor assets to do.
Alternatively, we can spray moisturized air, instead of water spray, into the air. This might be more effective, but it would also be more complex.
Anyway, I submitted the proposal to the local counter-IED working group. They forwarded it to some people in the K-9 community. And I never heard back from them again. Story of my life, eh? :)
This proposal will make a great college/backyard engineering project if you want to build it. All you need is a dog, some dry weather, and some time to tinker with. It is not technically sophisticated, but you do need to program that motor controller.
So that is another one of my engineering ideas as I was sitting in the Fallujah contracting office doing paperwork. We need to get more working dogs into the military because they are so useful. In Vietnam, soldiers used to patrol the jungle with working dogs. The dogs could smell and hear the boobytraps, and were great sentries at night. Dogs also are good at reading body language and help us separate good guys from bad guys. In the new population-centric warfare we are fighting, working dogs are a crucial tool that we are not using effectively.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Follow up on Nation-State Paradigm
Here is a response to the Nation-State paradigm article that I want to highlight.
Grandma wrote in to say that this is a dangerous course of action because we have no business intervening in other people's business. It is a common sentiment, and I feel the need to address this sentiment here. I wrote:
Grandma wrote in to say that this is a dangerous course of action because we have no business intervening in other people's business. It is a common sentiment, and I feel the need to address this sentiment here. I wrote:
Grandma,
It is true that, in practice, the US had done quite a bit of "bottom-up" intervention in the past century. However, you will notice that I mentioned "the CIA shenanigans" in my discussion.
There are two components to your arguments, which I will address separately:
1. "Who are we to intervene in other people's affairs"
That is an artifact of the Nation-State, Westphalian paradigm I discussed. I agree that we should not intervene in Sovereign States' internal affairs. For example, Spain effectively exercises its sovereignty over the Basque County, so the Basque question is a purely internal Spanish question and none of our business.
However, what about Somalia? Should we respect the "Ambassador" sent by the non-functioning Somalian Transitional Federal Government? Or should we accord more respect to the ambassador from Somaliland, which is actually a functioning government? If we start talking to Somaliland directly, wouldn't that disrespect the TFG? Does the TFG matter?
You can see where I'm going with this. Our respect for the international legal regime (aka UN) (which is based on the nation-state paradigm) is preventing us from recognizing reality. The reality is, Somalia does not exist. Rather, we have a bunch of principalities and fiefdoms, whose borders shift everyday. They sometimes band together in the TFG, but othertimes go to war. However, we have no legal way to deal with/engage these somewhat sovereign entities, because we have to honor our laws on nation-states.
So that is what I am saying here. If we stop looking through the Nation-State glasses like we are, and step back, we can see that Somalia is really not a disaster like the news make it out to be. Rather, there's only parts of it that's bad, where people are suffering. The other parts have law and order, but we can't give them foreign aid because we have to funnel the money through the TFG.
2. "Pawns of an Evil Empire"
Yes, CIA shenanigans, banana republics. The fact is, we have done a lot less of it for the past 40 years. Transparency is good. Conspiracy is bad.
Generally, the State Dept has not been involved in these shenanigans. However, DoS's embrace of the legalistic paradigm of international relations is preventing it from seeing the world as it really is. Theory is good only as far as it helps us understand reality, and in the post-Cold War world, the Nation-State theory is rapidly losing coherence with reality.
Just to give an example: the Montagnard people of south east Asia. They have generally been prosecuted by the plains people. In the Vietnam War, we allied ourselves with them. Yet when we withdrew from Vietnam, we cut them loose and left them on their own to the slaughter and cleansing. Was that morally right? Could we have carved out a small sanctuary in Vietnam for our allies there? To minimize bloodshed, nation-states be damned?
Part of this post is: How can we do the right thing, the moral thing, when international law on state sovereignty is keeping us from our morality [moral compass]. That is something we can probably agree on.
Budget Cut: Military Healthcare Costs
The Defense Department has to cut some money in its FY10 budget. It's not much of a cut, though. DoD will make most of the cut by not keeping up with inflation. Regardless, this is the start of the budget reckoning I have talked of before. If you are interested in the Defense budget, you should check out Holding the Line, edited by Dr. Cindy Williams. The book is a product of the 1990-era strategic confusion, so there's a lot of maintaining status quo, aka "Holding the Line". However, the authors made a nice case of where we can cut and hedge our strategic bets.
Over at Abu Muqawama, I made a comment on the military healthcare costs. The military healthcare is the fastest rising sector of defense spending, just like the rest of the US economy. In FY09, the DoD requested $42.8 billions for the Defense Health Program. If you add in the Veterans' Administration, it will be even bigger. The brass are having to decide between guns (weapon acquisition) and butter (personnel cost) directly now. [As opposed to just DoD vs everybody else.]
This may be unfortunate for those of us in the military-industrial complex, and for the generals and admirals. However, this healthcare problem is largely the result of the military culture. The brass has known about the problem for years, but ignored it because it's not sexy.
For example, back in the '80s and '90s, the most common cause of injury (or conditions preventing duty performance) for male soldiers is intramural sports. During physical training or unit-wide sports competition, they played too hard and hurt their knees or break bones. [Don't have the data but the sports injuries should be true for the Regular Army pre-AVF as well.] This directly drives up our healthcare cost because:
1: Soldiers are getting medical treatment for something that's prefectly preventable.
2: They will develop chronic conditions later on, requiring knee surgeries and other expensive treatments.
3: Due to reduced mobility from the chronic injuries, they will get fat and develop type 2 diabetes.
So, all because the leaders are having too much fun on the sports field, we now do not have enough money to buy the F-22, FCS, etc.
Or, to take another example: Hearing loss. We do a lot of loud stuff, firing weapons, drive tanks, blow stuff up. However, the leadership does not do a good job with hearing protection. These days, they at least hand out foam earplugs and make an effort to raise hearing awareness, but back in the day, they did not even do that much. For years, the Army has said that electronic hearing protection is too expensive, even though they would be more effective than foam earplugs. Yet when OIF started, Army suddenly had enough money to buy the electronic ear muffs for the line units. Years later, the now veterans file for disability because of military duty-related hearing loss, and the brass has to pay for it.
So, to the American people: Please demand better accountability from your generals and admirals when they come to you asking for more money. Make them find money from smarter healthcare decisions. It is their own stupidity that their healthcare cost is eating up their budget pie.
Edited to Add: Here are a couple of articles that add to this: Andrew Exum's article on soldier's load, and 3 years later, his predictions coming true.
Over at Abu Muqawama, I made a comment on the military healthcare costs. The military healthcare is the fastest rising sector of defense spending, just like the rest of the US economy. In FY09, the DoD requested $42.8 billions for the Defense Health Program. If you add in the Veterans' Administration, it will be even bigger. The brass are having to decide between guns (weapon acquisition) and butter (personnel cost) directly now. [As opposed to just DoD vs everybody else.]
This may be unfortunate for those of us in the military-industrial complex, and for the generals and admirals. However, this healthcare problem is largely the result of the military culture. The brass has known about the problem for years, but ignored it because it's not sexy.
For example, back in the '80s and '90s, the most common cause of injury (or conditions preventing duty performance) for male soldiers is intramural sports. During physical training or unit-wide sports competition, they played too hard and hurt their knees or break bones. [Don't have the data but the sports injuries should be true for the Regular Army pre-AVF as well.] This directly drives up our healthcare cost because:
1: Soldiers are getting medical treatment for something that's prefectly preventable.
2: They will develop chronic conditions later on, requiring knee surgeries and other expensive treatments.
3: Due to reduced mobility from the chronic injuries, they will get fat and develop type 2 diabetes.
So, all because the leaders are having too much fun on the sports field, we now do not have enough money to buy the F-22, FCS, etc.
Or, to take another example: Hearing loss. We do a lot of loud stuff, firing weapons, drive tanks, blow stuff up. However, the leadership does not do a good job with hearing protection. These days, they at least hand out foam earplugs and make an effort to raise hearing awareness, but back in the day, they did not even do that much. For years, the Army has said that electronic hearing protection is too expensive, even though they would be more effective than foam earplugs. Yet when OIF started, Army suddenly had enough money to buy the electronic ear muffs for the line units. Years later, the now veterans file for disability because of military duty-related hearing loss, and the brass has to pay for it.
So, to the American people: Please demand better accountability from your generals and admirals when they come to you asking for more money. Make them find money from smarter healthcare decisions. It is their own stupidity that their healthcare cost is eating up their budget pie.
Edited to Add: Here are a couple of articles that add to this: Andrew Exum's article on soldier's load, and 3 years later, his predictions coming true.
Monday, February 2, 2009
US Army MTOE: Rifles, Pistols, & PDWs
One thing the US Army needs to fix is the way it assigns weapons in the MTOE.
OIF/OEF has exposed some of the problems with Army thinking on this subject. The following rules describes the current situation:
1. One soldier, one weapon. Except for special situations such as military police or special forces, who gets both a pistol and a long arm per soldier.
2. Company Commanders get pistols. Lieutenant Colonels and above (and most Sergeants Major) get pistols always. Majors may get M-16/M-4s if necessary. Everyone else gets M-16/M-4s or machine guns.
3. Some Corps and EAC units will get more pistols due to the (supposed) reduced threat environment.
The above rules made the pistol a status item in the military: If you carry a pistol, you must be important. Nevermind that the pistol is only good in special situations. The soldier who has only a pistol is under-protected by the Army.
In OIF/OEF, however, the special situations come up all the time for the line infantry and ad hoc infantry: In close-quarter combat, pistol is crucial as a backup. When your M-16 magazine is almost empty, it may be faster to draw your pistol and keep firing, as opposed to taking the time to change out the magazine. Snipers and machine gunners also need a pistol for close defense.
At the same time, many staff officers carry pistols as their only weapon. However, a pistol has limited range and cannot penetrate body armor. In the modern 360-degree, non-linear battlefield, a soldier with only a pistol has a limited chance to survive.
However, the status symbol of the pistol meant that, at the beginning of OIF/OEF, there was a critical shortage of pistols for the line companies. The US Army has bought more M9 Berettas to fill the requirement, and the real MTOE, as opposed to the official one, for most active duty line companies now include more pistols.
At the same time, staff officers need to give up their pistols and pick up a personal defense weapon or carbine. Everyone in the Army needs to be ready to defend themselves against an enemy soldier.
OIF/OEF has exposed some of the problems with Army thinking on this subject. The following rules describes the current situation:
1. One soldier, one weapon. Except for special situations such as military police or special forces, who gets both a pistol and a long arm per soldier.
2. Company Commanders get pistols. Lieutenant Colonels and above (and most Sergeants Major) get pistols always. Majors may get M-16/M-4s if necessary. Everyone else gets M-16/M-4s or machine guns.
3. Some Corps and EAC units will get more pistols due to the (supposed) reduced threat environment.
The above rules made the pistol a status item in the military: If you carry a pistol, you must be important. Nevermind that the pistol is only good in special situations. The soldier who has only a pistol is under-protected by the Army.
In OIF/OEF, however, the special situations come up all the time for the line infantry and ad hoc infantry: In close-quarter combat, pistol is crucial as a backup. When your M-16 magazine is almost empty, it may be faster to draw your pistol and keep firing, as opposed to taking the time to change out the magazine. Snipers and machine gunners also need a pistol for close defense.
At the same time, many staff officers carry pistols as their only weapon. However, a pistol has limited range and cannot penetrate body armor. In the modern 360-degree, non-linear battlefield, a soldier with only a pistol has a limited chance to survive.
However, the status symbol of the pistol meant that, at the beginning of OIF/OEF, there was a critical shortage of pistols for the line companies. The US Army has bought more M9 Berettas to fill the requirement, and the real MTOE, as opposed to the official one, for most active duty line companies now include more pistols.
At the same time, staff officers need to give up their pistols and pick up a personal defense weapon or carbine. Everyone in the Army needs to be ready to defend themselves against an enemy soldier.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Paradigm Shift: The US Foreign and Security Policies in Flux
This is something I've been meaning to talk about for awhile now. I will just sketch out my idea for now.
The US foreign and security policies/strategies are at a historical moment right now, the moment of paradigm shift. The paradigm is this: Nation-State Centric versus Nation-Tribe Centric.
Failures of Nation-State Centric Paradigm
US policies used to be, and still nominally is, Nation-State centric. Everything the United States does has to be channeled through states and official governments. For example, we know that terrorists reside in, say, Sudan. However, we can't just go in and grab them. We have to petition the Sudanese government for extradition, even though the Sudanese government does not have that much control over the terrorists. Once the terrorists get the wind of an impending extradition, they can use bribes and their contacts in the government to get out of Sudan. And there's nothing we can do about it [except the CIA].
Or, another example, the Iraqi Oil-For-Food program. Right after Gulf War I, we embargoed Iraq's trade. Officially, Iraq was not getting anything through the UN embargo. Unofficially, smugglers moved oil out of Iraq and food/medicine into Iraq. Saddam Hussein and his people were getting a handsome cut of the smuggling trade. But he chose not to give the food and medicine to his people, because he knew that the suffering of his people made great TV. And it did. The UN started the Oil-For-Food program. Iraq now could export as much oil as necessary to feed its people. However, Iraq never came close to its export quota. Saddam chose to sell less oil than he could so that his people would continue to suffer privation. Critical medicine remained short in Iraqi hospitals. On the black market, however, Saddam continued selling oil to line his coffer and buy some weapons.
Because of our Nation-State centric paradigm, the United States (and the UN) could not go into Iraq and run the Oil-For-Food program directly. We had to wait for Iraq to sell however much oil it wants to. Give Iraq the food and medicine. And watch the Iraqi government divert food/medicine shipments away from its people, and into the black market. We also ccould do little to stop Iraq's black market oil export, because Saddam was exporting his oil to countries like Syria and Turkey, our putative allies. We had to depend on the grace of the Syrian and Turkish governments to police their own black market activities.
Iraq and Afghanistan
Nation-State paradigm is the main reason our strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan were not working for much of the 21st Century thus far. The paradigm dictates that our policies have to go through the state governments of Iraq and Afghanistan. So for the longest time, we waited for the Iraqi national government to dither about its constitution, then waited some more as they stood up the ministries and carved up patronages. We knew, in the back of our minds, that the Iraqi parties don't have much representation on the ground. That the Iraqi parties were antagonizing the more popularly based insurgencies. However, we could not go against the Iraqi government. If the governing coalition refused to bring more Sunnis into the government, then the most we could do is talk some more.
However, it is also Iraq that has spurred the paradigm shift that we are undergoing. Sometime in early 2006, the US military came to a concensus that we needed to ignore the national parliament and start engaging the local insurgents politically. In the Anbar province, we started negotiating with the sheiks ourselves. We paid the "Sons of Iraq" to provide local security. We paid the sheiks to clean the streets and dig ditches. We dragged the mayors and police chiefs with us to meet the sheiks, sometimes. And everything flowed from that Anbar Awakening.
The difference here is a bottom-up approach versus top-down in imposing security. Before the Awakening, we were recruiting Iraqi soldiers and policemen from a national perspective. We looked at the overall number and depended on the Iraqi ministries to recruit. If the recruiting drive missed, say Fallujah, there was nothing we could do. We gave the ministries Iraqi and US money, and if the ministry bureaucracy does not apportion funds equitably, the most we could do is complain.
In the bottom-up approach, we by-passed the ministries and engage the local level directly. If the recruiting drive missed Fallujah, we could work with the local dignitaries to put security on the street. Americans could hire Fallujan rent-a-cops if there are not enough Fallujan cops.
Because we are in the midst of this paradigm shift, we do not have a clear policy and strategy. The US State Department had always depended on the Host Nation bureaucracy to execute US aid and assistance. Today DoState is trying to stand up Provincial Reconstruction Teams on an ad hoc basis without clear direction. It cannot find enough people to staff these Teams, even though they are a national priority.
Many commentators have commented negatively on the various Awakening movements. They noted the improvements in local security, but always worried that we are undercutting the authority of the Iraqi central government; that we are embracing former Baathists; that we are setting up local warlords. Their concerns generally stem from the Nation-State centric paradigm: if Iraq does not have a strong central government, then the government cannot impose security on its people. Our original policy and strategy was to stand up the central government, able to guarantee internal security, which would allow the US to stand down in Iraq. The Awakenings conflicted with that policy by setting up alternate centers of power. However, the central government had not been able to impose security. The Shiite insurgency and the Sunni insurgency were signs that the Iraqi people did not accept a central government staffed by Iraqi expatriates. We had to grow the local centers of power, co-opting them and steering them in a peaceful direction, thus pressuring the central government to accede to local demands. In embracing the Awakening, the US military adopted a bottom-up tactic when the national policy and strategy remained top-down. The result is strategic confusion, as planners try to reconcile policy with tactic.
The same thing is happening in Afghanistan, tho more slowly. We rushed to set up the central government and the army, without much focus on the local government nor police. The warlords carved up the country and controlled the provinces as they like. Karzai could count on their nominal support, but they always kept high their own interests and those of their constituents. Afghanistan has a more severe problem than Iraq because there are many more factions in Afghanistan, with more regional sponsors. With the "Awakening"-approach, we're again trying to apply bottom-up tactics without seriously reviewing our top-down policy. People like those at Abu Muqawama say that we don't have a clear strategy for Afghanistan. Of course we wouldn't if our tactics and policy conflict with each other.
Paradigm Shift Implications
So it is clear that we are struggling our way through this paradigm shift. Eventually we will have to update our policy to account for bottom-up, non-state approaches. But as the world is full of nationalist feelings and semi-functioning state bureaucracies, we will have a hybrid policy for years to come. We will start with bottom-up, Nation-Tribe approaches toward failed states and semi-failed states (which have nominal state governments).
[In a sense CIA has always practiced a version of this Nation-Tribe approach. However, their shenanigans in the 50s soured the taste of bottom-up paradigm for everyone. A major part of the reluctance to engage in nation-tribe paradigm stems from that historical lesson.]
The Nation-Tribe paradigm is dangerous on the international stage because it directly threatens the governments of the Non-Aligned Movement, namely China, India, and thugs like Mugabe. If the Tibet question comes up for the United States, for example, the nation-state paradigm says, it's an internal problem for China, tho we will protest human rights abuses. The nation-tribe paradigm, on the other hand, can say something like this: We support Tibetan self-determination, and will actively support a process that can lead to Tibetan independence. That is an unlikely outcome of the paradigm, as we need to balance other interests, but that would be foremost on the mind of Chinese leaders as they oppose our paradigm shift. India shares many US strategic goals, but they too have many separatist movements and will oppose a Nation-Tribe paradigm.
A Nation-Tribe paradigm, tho, can lead to a powerful outcome in dealing with humanitarian crisis [edited: crises] like Zimbabwe. For example, we can de-recognize the Mugabe regime as it does not represent all of Zimbabwe. We will carve out a sanctuary on Zimbabwe territory, by force if necessary, internationally preferrably, where the MDC is in charge. We will then provide humanitarian assistance and set out to make the sanctuary self-sufficient in food production. If the MDC decides to raise an army and invade Mugabe territory, we would not intervene. If Mugabe attacks the sanctuary, we will defend. The policy goal is humane governance in Zimbabwe, with the sanctuary as the example and training ground on local governance.
[Yes, this is similar to the Kurdistan model we set up after Gulf War I.]
As we move further into the 21st Century, failed states will proliferate. As John Robb commented, Mexico is sinking inexorably into failed state territory and becoming the US's numero uno security challenge. The nation-tribe paradigm will be essential in dealing with the 21st Century Mexico, as the nation-state pradigm failed in dealing with the 20th Century Mexico. If Iraq is where the US military learned the tactics of bottom-up security, and Afghanistan will be [hopefully] where the US military learns the strategy of bottom-up security/governance, then Mexico will be where the US federal government learns to formulate and execute bottom-up policy in pursuit of US interests. Or we will get to practice COIN tactics on our own soil. Let us hope that we learn fast enough.
Edited to Add: One useful way to think about this shift is on the question of sovereignty: We used to be on the "Theory of Sovereignty", that we assumed every government had full sovereignty, even if reality conflicts with that claim. Now we will operate on "the Test of Sovereignty", where we only acknowledge your sovereignty after you have demonstrated it credibly. To use a dated example, we will acknowledge Indonesia's sovereignty over East Timor only if Indonesia can exercise its sovereign powers over East Timor.
Thanks to Joe for the link.
The US foreign and security policies/strategies are at a historical moment right now, the moment of paradigm shift. The paradigm is this: Nation-State Centric versus Nation-Tribe Centric.
Failures of Nation-State Centric Paradigm
US policies used to be, and still nominally is, Nation-State centric. Everything the United States does has to be channeled through states and official governments. For example, we know that terrorists reside in, say, Sudan. However, we can't just go in and grab them. We have to petition the Sudanese government for extradition, even though the Sudanese government does not have that much control over the terrorists. Once the terrorists get the wind of an impending extradition, they can use bribes and their contacts in the government to get out of Sudan. And there's nothing we can do about it [except the CIA].
Or, another example, the Iraqi Oil-For-Food program. Right after Gulf War I, we embargoed Iraq's trade. Officially, Iraq was not getting anything through the UN embargo. Unofficially, smugglers moved oil out of Iraq and food/medicine into Iraq. Saddam Hussein and his people were getting a handsome cut of the smuggling trade. But he chose not to give the food and medicine to his people, because he knew that the suffering of his people made great TV. And it did. The UN started the Oil-For-Food program. Iraq now could export as much oil as necessary to feed its people. However, Iraq never came close to its export quota. Saddam chose to sell less oil than he could so that his people would continue to suffer privation. Critical medicine remained short in Iraqi hospitals. On the black market, however, Saddam continued selling oil to line his coffer and buy some weapons.
Because of our Nation-State centric paradigm, the United States (and the UN) could not go into Iraq and run the Oil-For-Food program directly. We had to wait for Iraq to sell however much oil it wants to. Give Iraq the food and medicine. And watch the Iraqi government divert food/medicine shipments away from its people, and into the black market. We also ccould do little to stop Iraq's black market oil export, because Saddam was exporting his oil to countries like Syria and Turkey, our putative allies. We had to depend on the grace of the Syrian and Turkish governments to police their own black market activities.
Iraq and Afghanistan
Nation-State paradigm is the main reason our strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan were not working for much of the 21st Century thus far. The paradigm dictates that our policies have to go through the state governments of Iraq and Afghanistan. So for the longest time, we waited for the Iraqi national government to dither about its constitution, then waited some more as they stood up the ministries and carved up patronages. We knew, in the back of our minds, that the Iraqi parties don't have much representation on the ground. That the Iraqi parties were antagonizing the more popularly based insurgencies. However, we could not go against the Iraqi government. If the governing coalition refused to bring more Sunnis into the government, then the most we could do is talk some more.
However, it is also Iraq that has spurred the paradigm shift that we are undergoing. Sometime in early 2006, the US military came to a concensus that we needed to ignore the national parliament and start engaging the local insurgents politically. In the Anbar province, we started negotiating with the sheiks ourselves. We paid the "Sons of Iraq" to provide local security. We paid the sheiks to clean the streets and dig ditches. We dragged the mayors and police chiefs with us to meet the sheiks, sometimes. And everything flowed from that Anbar Awakening.
The difference here is a bottom-up approach versus top-down in imposing security. Before the Awakening, we were recruiting Iraqi soldiers and policemen from a national perspective. We looked at the overall number and depended on the Iraqi ministries to recruit. If the recruiting drive missed, say Fallujah, there was nothing we could do. We gave the ministries Iraqi and US money, and if the ministry bureaucracy does not apportion funds equitably, the most we could do is complain.
In the bottom-up approach, we by-passed the ministries and engage the local level directly. If the recruiting drive missed Fallujah, we could work with the local dignitaries to put security on the street. Americans could hire Fallujan rent-a-cops if there are not enough Fallujan cops.
Because we are in the midst of this paradigm shift, we do not have a clear policy and strategy. The US State Department had always depended on the Host Nation bureaucracy to execute US aid and assistance. Today DoState is trying to stand up Provincial Reconstruction Teams on an ad hoc basis without clear direction. It cannot find enough people to staff these Teams, even though they are a national priority.
Many commentators have commented negatively on the various Awakening movements. They noted the improvements in local security, but always worried that we are undercutting the authority of the Iraqi central government; that we are embracing former Baathists; that we are setting up local warlords. Their concerns generally stem from the Nation-State centric paradigm: if Iraq does not have a strong central government, then the government cannot impose security on its people. Our original policy and strategy was to stand up the central government, able to guarantee internal security, which would allow the US to stand down in Iraq. The Awakenings conflicted with that policy by setting up alternate centers of power. However, the central government had not been able to impose security. The Shiite insurgency and the Sunni insurgency were signs that the Iraqi people did not accept a central government staffed by Iraqi expatriates. We had to grow the local centers of power, co-opting them and steering them in a peaceful direction, thus pressuring the central government to accede to local demands. In embracing the Awakening, the US military adopted a bottom-up tactic when the national policy and strategy remained top-down. The result is strategic confusion, as planners try to reconcile policy with tactic.
The same thing is happening in Afghanistan, tho more slowly. We rushed to set up the central government and the army, without much focus on the local government nor police. The warlords carved up the country and controlled the provinces as they like. Karzai could count on their nominal support, but they always kept high their own interests and those of their constituents. Afghanistan has a more severe problem than Iraq because there are many more factions in Afghanistan, with more regional sponsors. With the "Awakening"-approach, we're again trying to apply bottom-up tactics without seriously reviewing our top-down policy. People like those at Abu Muqawama say that we don't have a clear strategy for Afghanistan. Of course we wouldn't if our tactics and policy conflict with each other.
Paradigm Shift Implications
So it is clear that we are struggling our way through this paradigm shift. Eventually we will have to update our policy to account for bottom-up, non-state approaches. But as the world is full of nationalist feelings and semi-functioning state bureaucracies, we will have a hybrid policy for years to come. We will start with bottom-up, Nation-Tribe approaches toward failed states and semi-failed states (which have nominal state governments).
[In a sense CIA has always practiced a version of this Nation-Tribe approach. However, their shenanigans in the 50s soured the taste of bottom-up paradigm for everyone. A major part of the reluctance to engage in nation-tribe paradigm stems from that historical lesson.]
The Nation-Tribe paradigm is dangerous on the international stage because it directly threatens the governments of the Non-Aligned Movement, namely China, India, and thugs like Mugabe. If the Tibet question comes up for the United States, for example, the nation-state paradigm says, it's an internal problem for China, tho we will protest human rights abuses. The nation-tribe paradigm, on the other hand, can say something like this: We support Tibetan self-determination, and will actively support a process that can lead to Tibetan independence. That is an unlikely outcome of the paradigm, as we need to balance other interests, but that would be foremost on the mind of Chinese leaders as they oppose our paradigm shift. India shares many US strategic goals, but they too have many separatist movements and will oppose a Nation-Tribe paradigm.
A Nation-Tribe paradigm, tho, can lead to a powerful outcome in dealing with humanitarian crisis [edited: crises] like Zimbabwe. For example, we can de-recognize the Mugabe regime as it does not represent all of Zimbabwe. We will carve out a sanctuary on Zimbabwe territory, by force if necessary, internationally preferrably, where the MDC is in charge. We will then provide humanitarian assistance and set out to make the sanctuary self-sufficient in food production. If the MDC decides to raise an army and invade Mugabe territory, we would not intervene. If Mugabe attacks the sanctuary, we will defend. The policy goal is humane governance in Zimbabwe, with the sanctuary as the example and training ground on local governance.
[Yes, this is similar to the Kurdistan model we set up after Gulf War I.]
As we move further into the 21st Century, failed states will proliferate. As John Robb commented, Mexico is sinking inexorably into failed state territory and becoming the US's numero uno security challenge. The nation-tribe paradigm will be essential in dealing with the 21st Century Mexico, as the nation-state pradigm failed in dealing with the 20th Century Mexico. If Iraq is where the US military learned the tactics of bottom-up security, and Afghanistan will be [hopefully] where the US military learns the strategy of bottom-up security/governance, then Mexico will be where the US federal government learns to formulate and execute bottom-up policy in pursuit of US interests. Or we will get to practice COIN tactics on our own soil. Let us hope that we learn fast enough.
Edited to Add: One useful way to think about this shift is on the question of sovereignty: We used to be on the "Theory of Sovereignty", that we assumed every government had full sovereignty, even if reality conflicts with that claim. Now we will operate on "the Test of Sovereignty", where we only acknowledge your sovereignty after you have demonstrated it credibly. To use a dated example, we will acknowledge Indonesia's sovereignty over East Timor only if Indonesia can exercise its sovereign powers over East Timor.
Thanks to Joe for the link.
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