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A pleasant downstream effect of having blogged for a while is that readers will send you interesting things from time to time. Like the following…

Check out: The Complex Terrain Laboratory

Snippets:

This is muddled and confusing. Human Terrain is “an emerging area of study”? No it’s not. Human “terrain” is a label, a metaphor, for guess what? History, geography, anthropology, sociology, psychology, communications, etc., etc. It’s “major goal is to create operational technologies”? No it’s not. That’s what mathematicians and engineers can deliver on multimillion dollar DoD contracts. Human terrain is, just in case anyone hasn’t read a newspaper or wireclip over the last few years, about people, what they think, their perceptions, their loyalties, the consequences they bear in wartime, the support they may or may not provide to insurgents, the physical, cultural, and informational spaces they create and occupy in  times of conflict and crisis. 

Freaking mad scientists. They’re everywhere. Technology is a tool, not the answer

and

What is really meant by ‘fragile’ states is ones that have acquired legal sovereignty but that have lost, or more probably never acquired, the effective powers attached to that status. There are more and more such states. How many depends on one’s definition of fragility. The United Kingdom’s government development agency, the Department for International Development (DFID), one of the smartest outfits in the business, estimates that 46 states, over one quarter of the world’s total, fall within its definition of ‘fragile states’. The population of these 46 states is over 870 million. DFID bases its definition of fragility on a state’s record in combating poverty. Others define fragility not by reference to poverty, but to security. Referring to the slightly different concept of ‘failure’, in the United States’ 2002 National Security Strategy, President Bush stated that America ‘is now more threatened by weak and failing states than…by conquering ones’.

“Human Terrain Mapping” is one of those relatively new concepts I’ve been meaning to investigate and CTLab – run by a distinguished trio of scholars and authors Stephen D.K. Ellis, Michael A. Innes and Brian Glyn Williams – fits the bill. Definitely a “blogroll-worthy” site for all of the Intel/COIN/IO/DIME/Foreign Policy bloggers and of interest to the history blogosphere as well since two of the three gentlemen are professional historians.

I look forward to many enjoyable and profitable visits.

UPDATE:

Mike Innes has written in to explain that CTLabs is still expanding their team of SME’s as well as the working on the aesthetic and functionality aspects of the site itself, which will be formally “rolled out” with a higher level of interactivity and collaboration.

My schedule recently did not permit much in the way of my normal, extensive, blogsurfing  that is the genesis of my regularly scheduled Recommended Reading posts. I would however, like to highlight Matt Armstrong’s recent, in depth, post on AFRICOM. Much like 7-Up, if the vision pans out, AFRICOM is to be “The Un-Combatant” Command. Sys Admin from the inception, interagency “jointness” in conception. But will that actually happen in the real world?

AFRICOM: DOA or in need of Better Marketing? No and Yes.

By Matt Armstrong

Like Mark Twain’s “death” in 1897 (he died in 1910), reports of AFRICOM’s demise may be exaggerated.  Concerns that AFRICOM hasn’t been thought out or is unnecessary aren’t supported by the actions and statements of those charged with building this entity.  However, based on the poor marketing of AFRICOM, these concerns are not surprising.

I attended USC’s AFRICOM conference earlier this month and between panel discussions and offline conversations, I came away with a new appreciation (and hope) for the newest, and very different, command. 

This is not like the other Combatant Commands (one DOD representative said they dropped “Combatant” from the title, but depending on where you look, all commands have that word or none of the commands include that adjective).  Also unlike other commands, this is “focused on prevention and not containment or fighting wars.”  This is, as one speaker continued, is a “risk-laden experiment” that is like an Ironman with multidisciplinary requirements and always different demands (note: thank you for not saying it’s a marathon… once you’ve done one marathon, they’re easy, you can “fake” a marathon… Ironman triathlons are always unpredictable, I know, I’ve done five.).  The goal, he continued, was to “keep combat troops off the continent for 50 years” because the consensus was, once troops landed on Africa, it would be extremely difficult to take them off. 

General William “Kip” Ward realizes that only once in several generations is there the opportunity to stand up a new command.  General Ward has worked hard to create something new and unique that addresses modern security dilemmas.  Modern communications and the vastness of Africa make a singular location for AFRICOM impractical.  For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone is nearly 1/4 the size of the U.S. and has 130 million people alone.  Across the continent political boundaries on the map mask tremendous language and cultural variations. 

The goal, as it was laid out in the conference, is to divide AFRICOM into four tiers because it is “easy to overwhelm our African partners in [both] enthusiasm [and] size.”

Read the rest here.

“If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans” – Otto von Bismarck

“I think what we did in Kosovo was profoundly important.” – Bill Clinton

A new nation declared itself today after close to a decade as a UN protectorate; a fragment of a fragment of an extinguished artificial state once built upon the polyglot ruins of European empires and Muslim sultanates. This particular geographic node, Kosovo, has a quality that all of it’s larger forerunners lacked – the cultural unity of identity that will make the nation the primary loyalty of the overwhelming majority of it’s citizens. A fact on the ground that trumps diplomatic protests over the finer points of international law or the mythic appeal of seven hundred year old Lost Causes.

Kosovo’s declaration of independence is ultimately rooted in an overwhelming demographic reality that could have only been altered by Kosovar Serbians having had larger families three and four decades ago than their poorer Albanian neighbors; and the Yugoslavian and Serbian governments having given rural Serbs some kind of economic incentive not to migrate to Belgrade or the larger towns of Serbia proper. As such, Kosovo’s declaration is worrisome to all multiethnic states plagued by separatism where the majority population is in decline – from the windows of the Kremlin, Serbia today must look hauntingly like Russia writ small.

However demographics alone was probably not enough here to explain Kosovo – Kurds, Shan, Tamils, Basques, Tibetans, Palestinians, Uighurs, Baluchis, Pushtuns and in previous centuries, the Irish – all thoroughly dominate their respective homelands but are not yet being welcomed into independence by great powers. What hapened is that the adversaries of the Kosovar Albanian, the Serbians nationalists, also morally de-legitimized themselves under Slobodan Milosevic, with years of atrocities and ethnic cleansing in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Milosevic and his murderous policies had considerable popular support until the very end; they still retain support from a not inconsiderable, defiant, hardcore as evidenced by the inability or unwillingness of Serbia to bring Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to justice. As the Germans bade farewell forever to East Prussia and Silesia in 1945, Serbians today can reflect on Sarajevo’s impact upon their legal claim to sovereignty over Kosovo.

That being said, events can be handled well or poorly. Kosovar independence would have gone down better in a world where Russia was a prosperous, democratic state, thoroughly integrated into the Core and a regional strategic partner of the United States instead of a bitter, increasingly paranoid, plebiscitary “soft” dictatorship that views America with grave suspicion and the EU with contempt.  That was not an outcome that Washington could have created alone but a relationship that three administrations might have attempted to build with Russia but elected not to do so. Benign neglect mixed with pressure toward Moscow was a deliberate choice on our part, one that might have made Berlin, London and Paris happy in the 1990’s but it wasn’t to our long term strategic benefit.

Independence is good for the Kosovars and in the last analysis, inevitable; but our statesmen should be arranging matters so that the United States profits from inevitable events rather than simply bearing the diplomatic costs.

Kosovo Links:

Coming Anarchy  ,  Duck of Minerva,   TDAXP,  Aqoul,  Outside the Beltway,   Centerfield,   John Robb,  Matthew Yglesias   Catholicgauze – New!,     Weekly Standard -New!

UPDATE:

The United States government has formally recognized the independence of Kosovo via the State Department but, significantly, with an accompanying statement by President Bush.

MountainRunner gets a special, solo, Recommended Reading today.

Matt Armstrong at MountainRunner – “Departure Assessment of Embassy Baghdad”

This is simply an utterly amazing “must read”. An excoriating, damning and devastating cri de coeur  by an insider, leveled at the institutional culture of the State Department bureaucracy and Foreign Service that has not had a top to botom, clear the decks, clean slate, reform since the 1920’s. Kudos to Matt for printing this document – it should be a far bigger story than it is. Had an equivalent arisen in the Defense Department over Iraq, it would be front-page news in The New York Times for a week. Easily. A few excerpts:

….After a year at the Embassy, it is my general assessment that the State Department and the Foreign Service is not competent to do the job that they have undertaken in Iraq. 

….Foreign Service officers, with ludicrously little management experience by any standard other than your own, are not equipped to manage programs, hundreds of millions in funds, and expert human capital assets needed to assist the Government of Iraq to stand up.  It is apparent that, other than diplomacy, your only expertise is your own bureaucracy, which inherently makes State Department personnel unable to think outside the box or beyond the paths they have previously taken

…. Likewise, the State Department’s culture of delay and indecision, natural to any bureaucracy, is out of sync with the urgency felt by the American people and the Congress in furthering America’s interests in Iraq. The delay in staffing the Commanding General’s Ministerial Performance initiative (from May to the present) would be considered grossly negligent if not willful in any environment.  I would venture to say that if the management of the Embassy and the State Department’s Iraq operation were judged by rules that govern business judgment and asset waste in the private sector, the delays, indecision, and reorganizations over the past year, would be considered willfully negligent if not criminal. In light of the nation’s sacrifice, what we have seen this past year in the Embassy is incomprehensible.

Read the rest here.

Count me as somebody who believes that the State Department is grossly underfunded for the tasks at hand and that the public is too seldom aware of the dirty and dangerous jobs that FSO regularly undetake, far from glamorous and comfortable European postings. However, systemic reform of State and the Foreign Service is several decades overdue and this post screams as to why. When your net effect ranges from useless to obstructive, it’s time to go.

John Robb had an interesting post at his personal blog “Right On: For Nations, Small is Beautiful“, arguing that smaller nation-states have an advantage over larger rivals:

“Gideon Rachman writing for the Financial Times:

The World Economic Forum’s competitiveness index suggests that five of the seven most “competitive” countries have populations of less than 10m. The Human Development Index – which ranks countries by measures such as life expectancy and education – places only one large country in its top 10: Japan.

Look at almost any league table of national welfare and small countries dominate. The International Monetary Fund’s ranking of countries by gross domestic product per capita shows that four of the five richest countries in the world have populations of less than 5m. (The US – placed fourth in wealth-per-head – is the exception.) The Global Peace Index, produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranks nations by criteria such as homicide rates and prison populations and it too makes pleasant reading for pocket-sized countries. The most peaceful place on earth is, apparently, Norway (quite cold, though) and eight of the 10 most peaceful countries have populations of less than 10m.

Roll out economic portability and collective security and why not get small? The political buffet awaits…”

Hmmm. I’m not sure that small size or size at all is the critical variable here.

Looking at the WEF Report list , the only “multicultural” nations in the top twenty are the U.S., Switzerland, France, Singapore, Canada and Belgium.

Of these, Singapore is an efficient autocracy that severely punishes ethnic agitation; France, the U.S. and Switzerland have political systems whose legitimacy goes back centuries that are respected by citizens of all ethnicities; while Canada and Belgium are merely bicultural. All of these states are strongly committed to the rule of law and all of them, save Singapore, are tolerant, liberal democracies.None of these states resembles the ethnosectarian crazy quilts that are Nigeria, Russia, Lebanon, Iraq, India and so on. Or suffers from a paralyzing level of systemic corruption that plague so many potentially viable states that languish on the edge of failure and civil war.

Perhaps relative homogeneity intersecting with legitimate rule-sets is the key?

ADDENDUM:

I agree with Shlok, take a look at “Becoming a Micropower“