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I just received my review copy of If We Can Keep It: A National Security Manifesto for the Next Administration by Dr. Chet Richards ( thanks Chet!). 

I will tackle this book and write a proper review once the Osinga Roundtable comes to a close but in casually flipping through the pages just now, I can say that it is tightly written and that Dr. Richards was unsparing in asking tough questions about the geopolitical-military subjects that interest many readers here. We’ll have to see if his answers are as radical as those he offered in his previous work. Looks quite good though.

Stay tuned.

I am seconding Younghusband in recommending the post up at The Strategist as well as the subsequent discussion:

“Who and Where are Today’s Military Thinkers”

Quentin recently asked if there are people in western militaries who are “thinking outside the square” about strategy and warfare.

It’s a good question and one that I don’t have a ready answer for. Over the last 200 years there have been a number of great thinkers, like Carl von Clausewitz, Alfred Mahan, T E Lawrence (pictured), Basil Liddell Hart, J F C Fuller, and John Boyd. They developed general theories about war or thought deeply about the nature and shape of future warfare.

There were also military officers who operationalized radical ideas and thinking. They include Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian, the German pioneers of armoured warfare, along with Orde Wingate and David Stirling, the Brits who trail-blazed the use of special forces in WW2.

These thinkers thought deeply about their subjects. Their ideas were backed by experience, or they tested and refined their ideas in the field. They tended to be outsiders and were often regarded by the military establishment as odd, unorthodox, even dangerous. Some, like Fuller and Guderian, gravitated towards experimental military areas. To paraphrase Boyd, they tended to ‘do something not be someone’. 

What about today? Who are the thinkers in western militaries? In the US, John Nagl comes to mind for his work on counterinsurgency. As Zenpundit and Armchair Generalist point out, Nagl recently left the army for a job with a think tank. The British have Sir Rupert Smith, who wrote The Utility of Force after he retired from the British forces.

Other than these people, I’m struggling. Any nominations? Or are we more likely to find today’s military thinkers in universities and think tanks (e.g., Martin van Creveld and Willam Lind), in aid agencies and private military companies, in IT companies, or, heaven forbid, in the blogosphere?

Join in the discussion here.

Abu Muqawama – “LTC John Nagl to retire”

Thomas P.M. Barnett – “Flunk the SysAdmin, lose the Leviathan”

The Washington Monthly -“The Army’s Other Crisis: Why the best and brightest young officers are leaving”

I enjoyed reading and was impressed by LTC John Nagl’s Learning How To Eat Soup With A Knife and I heartily recommend it. I have no doubt that he has been given a better offer – probably a much better offer financially and one more in line with his demonstrated abilities – than rolling the dice and sticking with a career in the “up or out” U.S. Army.  I’m also certain that Col. Nagl will be contributing to the war of ideas long after he ceases to be a uniformed part of the war and that Nagl probably made the best decision possible for himself and his family. Anyone who believes that a post-Iraq U.S. Army won’t restructure itself by downsizing it’s most talented warfighters in favor of career desk jockeys simply wasn’t paying attention during the 1990’s.

As the links demonstrate, Nagl is merely the well-known face of an ominous trend. When an institution – be it military, educational, corporate, civic, religious – reaches a point where it is merely a farm team that regularly sends it’s best and it’s brightest elsewhere then it is an institution on it’s way out. There is something worse than “breaking the Army”; broken armies get rebuilt because restoring them to health is a national priority. No, the real danger for the U.S. military is an Army that “embraces mediocrity” because if mediocrity becomes entrenched it will not be removed by anything shy of a near-total housecleaning of the general officers. Can you see America’s “no-accountability” Boomer elite doing that ? Or even recognizing if it needed to be done?

I can’t.

ADDENDUM:

Fabius Maximus -“Recommended reading: transforming the Army, the hard way” and “The Army is losing good people. That is only a symptom of a more serious problem.”

Intel Dump -“John Nagl has left the building”

SWJ Blog – “Nagl to Leave Army”

Kings of War – “High-Profile Officer Nagl to Leave Army, Join Think Tank”

Neptunus Lex -“Brain drain?”

Armchair Generalist – “Nagl Leaving the Army“

One result of Dr. Chet Richards converting Defense & The National Interest to DNI Blog is that I get to be the first blogger to award a coveted ” Hat Tip” to the notoriously technophobic, pipe-smoking, “Father of Fourth Generation Warfare”, William Lind ,for pointing to the new book Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict: Debating Fourth-Generation Warfare .

Read William Lind’s review here.

Fellow member of  The Small Wars Council  , Dr. Steven Metz, visted here the other day and left a comment on an old post where his most recent SSI monograph, Rethinking Insurgency, had appeared with some critical commentary from me. Here was Dr. Metz’s response, since the sidebar plug in for comments did not let readers hop into the archives (possibly because the post was at my old site and archived here in a category):

“I’m not sure the distinction between my position and Tom Barnett’s is as stark as you suggest.  AFRICOM will mostly be focused on preventative measures.  I’m greatly in favor of that.  I was, for instance, an early supporter of the African Crisis Response Initiative. 

I would only warn that we resist any urge to unilaterally undertake major counterinsurgency support from any African government unwilling to address its systemic problems. 

I did, on the other hand, advocate military disengagement from the Arab world.  Having spent time in both places, my impression is that American security assistance provokes hostility in the Arab world and does not, at least to the same extent, in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Nice blog, by the way!”

Thanks, and a fair criticism of my post . As a result of Steve’s comment I decided to give Rethinking Insurgency another read without the AFRICOM context being the foremost concept  in my mind as it was at the time when I wrote that post. Here’s my second take.

There’s a lot to like in Rethinking Insurgency. I was particularly impressed with how Metz dealt with militias ( loyalist paramilitaries) and their permutations in terms of sophistication, their origin and relationship to states and/or criminal organizations and the risks such forces present. Metz presents an extensive analysis of the interrelationships of non-state actors (militias, insurgents, OC, PMC’s) in a conflict zone with one another, the state and foreign entities that readers here will find quite engaging.

Another twist that readers here will like is Metz’s take on ” fourth forces” – media, IGO’s, NGO’s and transnational corporations – and how they impact what Boyd termed the “mental” and “moral” levels of warfare, usually to the disadvantage of the state and complicating the already delicate dynamics of counterinsurgency operations. Even the most benevolent intervention by fourth forces can be an unsettling variable. According to Metz:

“….External humanitarian efforts, while exceptionally valuable to alleviate suffering, may leave a state unprepared to take over the provision of services when the conflict ends or subsides. Hence the widespread involvement of international or nongovernmental organizations in an insurgency increases the chances that conflict will reemerge once the shortcomings and weaknesses of the state provide political space for insurgents or other violent actors….what seems best -the alleviation of suffering- may increase the chances of renewed suffering at a later date”

With insurgency often being a contest of will and popular perceptions of political legitimacy, having conflicts “burn out” naturally with higher intensity will often be preferred by states to letting them drag on for decades. It may be, to use SEA as an example, that the Indonesian military’s attempt to block relief to hurricaine victims in rebellious Aceh or Thailand’s more recent appointment of the admired and feared General Pallop Pinmanee, run to this line of thinking argued by Metz. Countervailing pressures of a globalized environment and communally-oriented actors though will, according to Metz, force most regimes to settle for ” sustaining a controllable conflict” rather than inflicting a decisive military defeat on their enemies. Insurgency, in a certain light, becomes one of the costs of doing business as a state.

I recommend that you read Dr. Metz’s paper in full, which can be downloaded here at SSI.