DOD Global Strategy: Gone with the Iraqi Wind

There was a window when the entire ISIS was stretched out on the Iraqi road system in pickup trucks.  We could have devastated them from the air.  But the president was pretty involved in golf and chasing donations in CA, so that moment passed.

Now we have sent about 600 troops (perhaps 300 more – the numbers are hard to follow), to set up joint operations centers and “evaluate” what additional training and weapons the Iraqi Army needs. Suffice it to say they won’t need any track and field training.  They run just fine.  Especially after throwing down and leaving behind all the expensive equipment we gave them.

So now our two most dangerous enemies in the world – Sunni radicals and Shia radicals – are squaring off.  I think there is something to be said for letting the cannibals eat each other.  Opponents to that line of thought fear that this will become a regional conflict.  My answer:   Soldiers from the US, Canada, Australia, GB, Germany, Poland, the Philippines, Italy and other nations have died in Iraq in the last decade.  Not one soldier from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council).  It would not bother me a bit to see them put a bit of skin in the game, while we stand by to pick up the pieces. Let’s open some Saudi VA hospitals for a change.

But either way it goes, what we may be seeing is the end of DOD's newly developed strategy for the world -- convert the American Regular Army into a training force, regionally oriented, and focused on creating reliable military forces in every unstable nation, while Special Ops whittles the bad guys down to size.

First test -- with years, lives and billions invested -- was Iraq.  Total failure. 

Secretary of State Kerry said: “Nobody expected” the Iraqi Army’s wholesale desertion.  Uh –h-h-h – actually a lot of people did.

We are trying to make a national army in places that are collections of tribes, and hoping the military force will not only defeat the terrorists, but act as the backbone and catalyst for turning the tribes into a nation that values democracy and diversity.  "Hope" being the operable word.

What we saw in Iraq was revealing.  The plan worked as long as the US Army was on the ground and the USAF was overhead -- as long as somebody was ensuring fair and competent leadership of the indigenous forces. As long as they had reliable fires on call, and medical help standing by, and somebody who could not be bought off was answering the radio in the ops center.

Soon as we left, so did the empty dream of turning a national army into a nation.  The elected leader of Iraq saw the Army as a rival to his power. He fired competent officers and hired cronies. He turned a blind eye to corruption.  He used the military to oppress minorities.  Result -- the national army melted at the first whiff of gunpowder.

Next big test is Astan . . . unless Yemen or Nigeria or Jordan or some other place collapses first. 

Nobody else seems to have recognized the global implication of the melting of the Iraqi Army. But it is there and it is big.  Remember, you heard it here first.

Nicely done. But dangerously inadequate.

          On June 19^th, 2014, guest columnist Roger Cohen penned an article in the NYT called The Diplomacy of Force (see http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/opinion/cohen-the-diplomacy-of-force.html?_r=0 ).  It is about as solid and clearheaded an analysis as I have seen from a traditional perspective about how power works, and why American diplomacy and use of force is off track. Cohen’s article is so good that I hesitate to attempt a summary. But in short he argues that by insisting on waging diplomacy without the force to change the balance of power, President Obama has violated a fundamental principal of statecraft.  If you don’t bring a big stick to the negotiating table, bad people refuse to be reasonable.  It is a great point. 

          But it is also wrong -- or maybe more accurately, inadequate -- for the same reason that all the major theories of diplomacy since WW II have recently come a cropper.  They failed to properly account for the nature of man.

          They either assumed that man is RATIONAL (the central theory is called Realism) and will make a rational analysis of the balance of power.

          Or that man is REASONABLE, (the Yen to Realism’s Yang is called Liberalism) and doesn't really want war and destruction, if we could just get rid of bad leaders and the bad ideas they teach.

           These approaches are both mistaken. Men -- all men -- have some really bad ideas of their own.  Some of those bad ideas are really attractive -- even contagious. Pretending that bad ideas always bow in the face of superior power is dangerously wrong.  Pretending that men will let go of bad ideas if power is shared is just as dangerously wrong.

           And these two concepts are at the core of pretty much every military, diplomatic and economic theory, strategy and policy in the West today.

          The seed of this failure does not reside in democrats or republicans, or even the foreign policy elite. Nor even with the bureaucrats who seem to be spinning out of control all on their own.  They are just adapting the theories that best serve their own interests.  The seed of failure lies with the priesthood that has generated those ideas, and preaches them to the masses and the acolytes alike. And that is the tenured professorial class.  The worse their theories have performed, the more sacrifice they have demanded to the false gods of equality, diversity, and universality. But somehow these offerings don't seem to appease our opponents, or get them to the negotiating table, with either threats or promises.

          So nice try Roger Cohen. Very solid reasoning from a traditional perspective.  But dangerously inadequate. Shifting the balance of power against the ISIS while empowering the Shia lunatics who oppose them is not the solution. At this point, bad theories generated by academic theorists have backed us into a terrible corner. Nothing short of actually understanding the nature of our enemies is likely to help us get out.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

“A nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you.” (lyrics from Simon and Garfunkel, 1967).

Where has ThinkingEnemy been?

Ten months ago I suspended writing and publishing my blog, ThinkingEnemy. I had originally intended the blog as a simple series of responses from a strategic perspective to publications by others on issues of national significance. I quickly let the blog grow to the point that I was trying to produce several thousand words of high quality original strategic analysis each week. That’s a fine goal if it is part of your work, or if you do not have more pressing duties.

But in September of 2013 I began teaching several new graduate courses in homeland security and risk management, while trying to make headway on more than one book project.  Meanwhile, the Federal government accelerated the rate at which it was screwing up our strategic interests at home and abroad. As a commentator on strategic issues, I just couldn’t keep up. I had to prioritize. And top priority went to my students.

Well I am caught up with requirements, so I am bringing ThinkingEnemy back on line. I will return to my original intent with the blog – primarily strategic commentary on other writers, with a few original pieces as I have time. Hope you find the results interesting and worthwhile.

Joe DiMaggio (aka, Dave McIntyre)

Thinking Again about Cyber War

Several recent media articles suggest that any physical attack on Syria would be preceded by cyber attacks. That is, the initiation of a kinetic war would begin with acts of cyber war. 

I first began thinking about, and engaging experts on, cyber war issues in the mid-1990s, when the National Defense University created a small school to serve as a sort of "Cyber War College."  Main stream faculty (I don't mean that in a bad way -- the people best respected as voices of accepted strategic thought) rejected the approach out of hand.  They just did not see cyber as a big issue in current or future military operations.  Remember -- this is the period where we were having a bitter debate about replacing the 35mm projectors in every classroom with computers and PowerPoint slides. 

            I took a different approach.  I supported the guys running the cyber learning experiment and learned as much about it as I could . . . but was very skeptical of what I saw developing, for three reasons.  

            First, I sensed a traditional American belief that we were going to create and control this technology and dominate everybody else.   That's not the way defense technology has worked in the past.  Ask J. Robert Oppenheimer, “The Father of the Atomic Bomb,” and he will tell you that, “if you build it, they will build it too”.  In fact, while our Department of Defense has been developing world-class cyber capabilities for the military, our cyber defenses of industry, finance and critical infrastructure have been losing ground.  Any cyber counter-strike will come against the American economy, and impact the American people more than the American government. The result is not likely to be pretty on our end.

            Second, the concepts I saw emerging were primarily operational with very little strategic thought.  No one seemed to be asking “once we develop and use cyber weapons, what happens next?” What would be the consequences, and the unintended consequences?  General Eisenhower initially thought of nuclear weapons as just bigger bombs.  But  President Eisenhower, quickly realized that the use of a nuclear weapon requires thinking about much more than the size of the explosion. He had to think of the Soviet response . . . what would happen next?  Nations have spent centuries developing schools of strategy for the use of conventional weapons. Modern politicians, strategists, and citizens have spent six decades developing and publicly debating strategies for using (and deterring the use of) nuclear weapons.  But all discussion of using cyber weapons has been classified and confined to the relatively few operators involved. Almost none of our citizens, traditional defense experts (think tanks, academic researchers, congressional and military staffs, etc.) OR THE MEDIA have been involved in thinking about how to use these weapons, and what will happen next. This means that what happens after we use our cyber capabilities will come as a surprise to everyone . . . including us.

Third, what disturbs me most about this new approach to warfare is that we can never know ground truth about what weapons exist and what weapons are used. If you think sorting out who used chemicals in Syria is hard, try determining:

-- Who turned off the electricity to a hospital and killed patients?

-- Who open the gates of a hydroelectric dam and flooded villages downstream?

-- Who seized control of a nuclear reactor and caused the core to melt and explode?

Last spring an American general claimed that the US could enter an enemy command and control network and prevent the launch of a missile with a nuclear warhead. A rational listener might wonder if we could just as easily enter the system and launch that missile on our own. If Iran ever launches a nuclear weapon against Israel, I expect them to go to the UN immediately and claim that US cyber experts actually did the dirty deed.  Who do you think the world would believe? How would we prove our innocence?

I am not against developing or using cyber capabilities. Defensive cyber capabilities, in particular, are absolutely essential in today's world. And I am not against operational secrecy.  There is no need to telegraph our punch when we are preparing for war.

But an unpredictable, invisible, untraceable, and poorly understood weapon is a dangerous weapon. Before we turn enthusiastic operators loose to experiment with acts of war in the volatile Mid East, I would like to see a bit more discussion of the capabilities, rules and constraints of cyber war with the people who will ultimately pay the price for either the success or failure of this venture.

That would be the citizens of the United States.

Rip van Winkle and a War of Choice

ThinkingEnemy is back. Unexpected personal and academic responsibilities interrupted my production of this blog for 90 days. Thanks to those who contacted me to say they missed it.

            I feel like I have awakened to find myself in a future that looks like some weird version of a bad dream from the past. The Secretary of State is standing before the world proclaiming he has no doubt that a foreign leader has chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction and is willing to use them – actually has used them on his people. And we MUST act against this moral outrage. 

            Except the foreign nation did not use WMD against us, and has not threatened to do so. And no independent source has confirmed the incident or who did it.

But the Sec State has the “slam dunk” intelligence – really – if we will just trust him. Surely no pressure on the Intel community to “cook” any answers, right?

            And the Secretary of Defense is saying that the military is ready to go – except it is not clear what the military would do. “Punish” a dictator fighting for his life and that of his minority tribe and allies? Which, in this case, includes indigenous Christians, and the Russians, and the Chinese.  Who would ever think we could get those three groups to cooperate . . . against us?  Quite an achievement.

Is the intent of our action to shift the balance of power in the war?   In favor of which side? The collection of lunatics and thugs who oppose the dictator?   This is not about supporting brave French Resistance fighters trying to oust  their enemy and ours, the Nazis. Or even helping Afghans of questionable pedigree against our Cold War enemy, the Russians.  This is more like the Bloods and Crips, skinheads and Black Panthers, white supremacists, anarchists, drug cartels, and Al Qaeda all dividing into two sides to fight each other, and asking us to support one of those sides. What good thing could possibly happen next?

Of course, there are some differences between the last bad dream and this one. For example, when the US attacked Saddam, we had a fully prepared, fully equipped, and fully funded force. The mightiest military in the world hit Saddam with the strongest blow it had, short of nuclear weapons.  That effort ultimately failed because America did not understand the mess we would inherit if our plan succeeded. This time, however, we are bearding the lion and his allies in his den with a much depleted force. Two-thirds of our flying squadrons were grounded last summer.  Most of our Army has been told to plan for a permanent reduction in readiness.  And the Navy has no carrier to commit to this fight today because it had no money to send a battle group to sea three months ago. So the message we seem to be sending Assad is:  “You better fight this war and lose under our rules, or else . . . well, just don’t you make me say what else!”

Another difference between this “war of choice” and the last is that in 2003 our UN ambassador was ready to explain to the world how the dictator we opposed threatened us and the world order. This time our UN rep has said . . . well, she hasn’t said anything.  In fact, where is our UN representative? Do you really believe the lame story that she is touring Ireland with family? And the world press is unable to find her – and doesn’t want to because she deserves her privacy? Where are the paparazzi when we need them?

Whether you agree with her or not, you must admit that Representative Samatha Power’s entire life has been devoted to establishing and maintaining international norms to prevent atrocities against civilians. So in the crowning moment of her life – with the US about to use its military to enforce international norms she has championed -- she is on vacation?   I don’t think so. I suspect that our UN rep is somewhere negotiating something with someone in secret. Why doesn’t that make me feel better? 

Maybe in the best possible case, UN Rep Power will step forward from behind the curtain (from where we are leading), and announce Assad’s peaceful departure. Surely the rebels would not commit any “moral obscenities” that require our severe frowning as they take control of the country. Surely they would not make Syria a base to project the hate they have spewed toward the US and Israel in the past.

A final weird thought floating though this waking-dream is that maybe Congress might have a role in the decision to launch a military attack against a foreign regime that has not attacked us. I’m not going to trot out the old “War Powers” argument, which the different political parties invoke when it suites their political ends, and ignore when it does not. Actually, I suspect that many in Congress are happy not to have their fingerprints on this one. If it works, great – they called for it.  If it doesn’t – tisk, tisk, they didn’t vote for it. Congressional involvement would delay any action until Congress opens after Labor Day, or require Congress to convene early for this specific issue.  But I am not proposing any specific Congressional response, I am just asking, for the good of the country, should the President really go out on a limb like this without the support of the nation’s elected officials? In what sort of a dream world is that a good idea?

Now here is the last bizarre twist in this bizarre dream, where we threaten an act of war against a country that has not threatened us, and that fact is secondary news behind the shaking of Hanna Montana’s furry underwear. Russia and China must be scratching their heads over our behavior. We do nothing in response to a million deaths by machete in Rwanda, and take no action when our Ambassador is murdered in Benghazi, but commit an act of war in response to an unproven use of chemicals by somebody in an incident that touches no American life. I understand that there is an academic logic in calling for collective action in support of international norms. But there is a long stretch between that theory and the reality of sending troops and killing people on the other side when no direct national interests are involved. If I were Putin, I would be looking at the US the way the US looks at North Korea.  What will the Rogue State do next?

(The logical response for the Russians, by the way, is to build more military force, draw brighter “Red Lines,” and fire the occasional warning shot. I suspect the era of “resetting” relations with Russia is over.)

I guess I am fully awake now. And that means I have to deal with one more reality of this situation – Assad’s response. Every action against an opponent generates a response – sometimes a preemptive response. The best case, or course, is that Assad resigns and departs. He would have to leave behind his fortune and his people to the tender mercies of the worst of the rebel opposition. (Remember the rebel who killed and ate a Syrian soldier on YouTube?) And he would have to trust someone’s guarantee that he will not end up in the dock facing war crimes prosecution in The Hague. I guess it could happen.

More likely, I suspect, would be a decision to double down his bet, maybe even using whatever chemical weapons he has on hand before he loses them. He is winning now. He knows that the cost to America of a serious, long-term intervention is high. And there are plenty of players on his team who might even strike back at us and our global interests directly. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has suggested, there will be unanticipated consequences to any American action.

So . . . here we are. Our own dreamers with theories about collective action and policies that create international norms have backed us into a corner where we must put up or shut up. It is a life or death moment for our decades of talk about chemical weapons treaties and humanitarian behavior in war. And that makes it a life or death moment for Assad and his regime and his friends.

           There is no “win-win” solution to this mess. This is not a strategic dream.  It is a nightmare.