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Amigo of ZP blog, West Point military historian Colonel Gian Gentile, throws down the gauntlet in his review of Lewis Sorley’s new biography, Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam, in The National Interest:

The Better War That Never Was

DID GENERAL Westmoreland lose Vietnam? The answer is no. But he did lose the war over the memory of the Vietnam War. He lost it to military historian Lewis Sorley, among others. In his recent biography of William C. Westmoreland, Sorley posits what might be called “the better-war thesis”—that a better war leading to American victory was available to the United States if only the right general had been in charge. The problem, however, is that this so-called better war exists mostly in the minds of misguided historians and agenda-driven pundits.

In the battle over the memory of the Vietnam War, Sorley annihilates Westmoreland and leaves his character and reputation in smoldering ruins. Yet Sorley’s victory in the fight for the memory of Vietnam has not brought us a balanced historical biography of Westmoreland.  

 ….The better-war thesis argues that if only the U.S. Army had concentrated from the start on building up the South Vietnamese armed forces and winning the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people through limited applications of military force, we would have won the war. But the question remains: Precisely how could tactical adjustments early in the war have overpowered the political constraints placed on the army by the Johnson administration, which kept it from taking the fight to the North Vietnamese? Or the dysfunctional nature of the South Vietnamese government and military that precluded them from standing on their own? Or the declining popular support and political will in the United States as the war dragged on without a decent end in sight? Or, perhaps most importantly, how could tactical adjustments toward better methods of counterinsurgency have overpowered a communist enemy that fought the war totally while the United States fought it with limited means? In his Westmoreland biography, Sorley essentially ignores these questions.

Could the United States have prevailed in Vietnam? Yes, but it would have had to commit to staying there for generations, not a mere handful of years. The Vietnam War was an attempt at armed nation building for South Vietnam. Nations and their societies, however, are not built overnight, especially when they are violently contested by internal and external enemies. Thus, to prevail in Vietnam, the United States would have needed the collective will that it mustered to win World War II and would have had to be able to maintain it for generations. That kind of will—or staying power—was never a real possibility.

In war, political and societal will are calculations of strategy, and strategists in Vietnam should have discerned early on that the war was simply unwinnable based on what the American people were willing to pay. Once the war started and it became clear that to prevail meant staying for an unacceptable amount of time, American strategy should have moved to withdraw much earlier than it did. Ending wars fought under botched strategy and policy can be every bit as damaging as the wars themselves.

Well worth the read, not least for Gian’s model of how one historian carefully dismantles the thesis of another.

We are a mere three years from the fiftieth anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War, less than two years from the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy that brought LBJ into power and a year from the fiftieth anniversary of the infamous coup d’etat against American client, President Ngo Dinh Diem, that JFK had approved. Finally,  fifty years ago, Kennedy drastically increased the American military advisory mission to South Vietnam to just under 10,000 men and signed off on clandestine operations against North Vietnam.

All those fiftieth anniversaries amount to a golden jubilee of rancor.

The bitterness sown by the lost war in Vietnam still burns in American politics like red hot coals. Less bright perhaps than the open flame of 1968, but if you scratch the surface, you will find with no less heat. The war spawned division and polarization that twisted our politics and poisoned public debate to this day, echoing now as farce as much as tragedy.

During the 1980’s, Vietnam historiography was virtually a cottage industry. It was the subject that ate the profession as a generation of academics who cut their academic teeth during the era of antiwar protest on campus acquired tenure, middle-aged paunches and lost hair while nursing their political grievances in their scholarship. I personally recall, as an  undergraduate, the war being referenced (usually along with vitriolic abuse of Ronald Reagan) in every humanities class, no matter how remote the course, with some professors being known for the quality of their off-topic rants.

While Westmoreland bears heavy responsibility for his part in a losing a war, even as theater commander in Saigon he was only an executor, not a maker, of strategy, much less national policy. Westmoreland did not lose Vietnam in a stunning battlefield capitulation, so Gentile is right to defend “Westy” from being scapegoated for the poor strategic reasoning hatched in the Oval Office. Where Westmoreland was at fault was in his inability to either intellectually comprehend the bigger strategic picture in which he found himself struggling (most likely) or if he did, to effectively articulate the strategic environment in Southeast Asia to a domineering President who was stubbornly determined to brook no contrary advice (possible). Had Westmoreland tried, he likely would have failed (Brute Krulak’s effort in this regard got him physically ejected from the Oval Office by the seat of his pants by Johnson himself. I am dubious that LBJ would have been any happier with contradiction of policy from Westmoreland).

Gentile, much like my professors of yore, is deeply interested in the congruence between events in his own time with those of the Vietnam era., in particular, the salience of counterinsurgency doctrine in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. There is, of course, some continuity between the Vietnam era and today present, a historical thread seized by the COINdinistas themselves in their veneration of Galula and slurping knife-blade portions of soup, but the continuity has limits. I suspect a Millennial generation vet of Kandahar or Fallujah, should they venture to become a historian, will frame and seek to explain their wars without much reference to the societal touchstone that is Vietnam.

Perhaps by then, for American society, Vietnam will have finally ceased to bleed.

Fourth Generation Warfare and William Lind was the topic of a critical essay by Major Lincoln Farish at Small Wars Journal. The article was interesting, despite my disagreement with the author on most points, because he was wrestling with important questions related to insurgency and COIN at a time when FM 3-24 is undergoing revision and the role of COIN itself in US Army operational culture is being questioned. Tight defense budgets= Musical chairs at the Pentagon. 🙂

Unfortunately, the article contained, in my view, significant problems in terms of understanding 4GW or strategy in general.Here is the article. It isn’t overly long. I am going to be commenting on passages that caught my attention and I invite readers to do the same and check out those made by Ken White and Slapout in the comments section at SWJ:

The Quest for Legitimacy 

According to The U.S. Army Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual an insurgency is “an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government.” FM 3-24 continues with, “political power is the central issue in insurgencies and counterinsurgencies: each side aims to get the people to accept its governance or authority as legitimate.” Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) advocates propose fighting insurgents with small cadres of highly-trained infantry, avoiding the large footprint of earlier generations of war created by command and control echelons above the company. Even if the 4GW proponents are correct on the tactical level, their proposed methods will not be successful in defeating an insurgency strategically as 4GW does not offer a legitimate alternative to the insurgents at the strategic or national level.

Premises here are incorrect.

First, while I do not speak for Mr. Lind, any fair reading of his many columns, articles and posts of the past decade (!) would demonstrate that he was, as Ken White and Slapout indicated, strongly opposed to expeditionary COIN adventures unless they were absolutely unavoidable.  His 4GW grand strategy was for the US to scrupulously avoid “centers of disorder” and view all states, even ideologically hateful misfits, as potential allies against 4GW forces. Where required, the US would instead rely on “punitive raiding” against such 4GW entities but not hunker down in the mud with them on a permanent basis.

William S. Lind, the architect of the 4GW concept, argues for units to become “true light infantry.”  He writes, “virtually all Fourth Generation forces are free of the First Generation culture of order; they focus outward, they prize initiative and, because they are highly decentralized, they rely on self-discipline.” Discipline is a key issue here; a company commander only has the authority to punish soldiers up to the (U. S. Army) rank of Sergeant (E-5). This is to protect not only the soldiers, but to give the commander the ability to maintain order and discipline commensurate with his position and abilities. A company is usually composed of only three to four officers, and they have little ability to conduct an investigation without disrupting combat operations….

…. Clear, codified, equitable discipline is one of the features that separate a military from a street gang or an insurgent movement…..

….It [4GW forces] should be trained and equipped to use cash to draw on the local infrastructure for most of its needs.”  Lind expects a company to handle most of its logistical needs with a minimum of support from a higher echelon, in other words, Lind is advocating an autonomous company.

One of the assertions of 4GW theory is that a large military with a  2GW culture organization based on hierarchy, micromanagement. limited or no autonomy of subordinates will go down to defeat ( or at least protracted stalemate) with a smaller, but more agile, adaptive 4GW force. Secondly, that counter-4GW units should be retooled to “mirror” these advantages in initiative and flexibility because the disciplined firepower of conventional military trumps those of irregulars (who of course, lack tanks, attack helicopters, cruise missiles, FOBs with food courts that include Pizza Hut and other hyperexpensive brontosaurian logistical tails). This combat advantage of light infantry over guerrillas is the reason for Lind’s advocacy of “Jaegers“.

H. John Poole, another disciple of 4GW, goes even further. Poole advocates using fire teams (a 3-4 man team) to perform deep interdiction to deny an enemy maneuver room, destroy minor camps, supply areas, and staying in place for up to three months at a time. In this scenario, how is it possible that the team effects the capture of prisoners? Would the team have to allow surrendering personnel to escape? How would enemy causalities be treated? Would the team leave enemy wounded, and how would that be portrayed to the media and world-wide? Whatever flaws there may be with 4GW, the biggest one is with legitimacy.

Poole is a tactical expert, which I certainly am not, even in terms of historical study. As I am not qualified to debate the utility of fire-teams vs. platoons or companies, I will simply note that in a different strategic context, both the Soviets and NATO contemplated and prepared for very deep, behind the lines, operations, by small, pre-positioned, sleeper cells. We also have scouts and a variety of special forces units and CIA clandestine operatives running around AfPak and the Horn of Africa – how do they currently handle these problems? Does SEAL Team 6 usually return home from a raid with 50+ prisoners?

A Western democratic government is considered legitimate if its rule is primarily derived from the consent of the populace. An illegitimate government would be one that ruled by coercion. Legitimate governments are inherently stable. They engender the popular support required to manage internal problems, change, and conflict. A lack of legitimacy in a constituted government results in a lack of popular support, and an end to the government’s actions.

Well, while I understand the point of contrast the author is making, and I’m deeply in sympathy with the inherent Lockeanism, the idea that liberal governments who have the consent of the governed do not regularly exercise coercion is fundamentally and empirically incorrect. This is easily demonstrated by refusing to pay one’s taxes, or attempting to sell unpasteurized milk, engage in sedition, build a house at variance with local zoning or in a myriad of ways. States enforce law where they do not have voluntary compliance and that enforcement, or threat thereof, constitutes coercion in a very real sense. If a state cannot make use of coercion in time of need, then it has failed as a state.

What states with consent of the governed have is a comparative advantage. Their greater legitimacy permits their actions of coercion- unlike that of a a hated, mad, tyrant – to take place less frequently and then with with less friction when they do. Enjoying greater voluntary compliance, more legitimate states have moral leeway and the political benefit of the doubt of the populace, when confronting lawbreakers and applying coercion to other challengers to the state’s authority. It is this very moral authority possessed by the state that 4GW forces seek to erode.

 Conrad Crane proposes six possible indicators of legitimacy:

– The ability to provide security for the populace.

– Selection of leaders at a frequency and in a manner considered just and fair by a substantial majority of the populace.

– A high level of popular participation in or support for political processes.

– A culturally acceptable level of corruption.

– A culturally acceptable level and rate of political, economic, and social development.

– A high level of regime acceptance by major social institutions.

While this is a good guide from a western view of what constitutes a “legitimate” government, not every group in the world would agree, and legitimacy is in the eyes of the beholder. What was legitimate in earlier times may now be unacceptable, what is legitimate in one area of the world is not in another.

Crane’s indicators are usefully pragmatic in a heuristic sense, but probably not sufficient in themselves – “legitimacy” is a huge subject and has many aspects or facets in terms of internal politics, external diplomacy, cultural identity and both positive and international law.  While “legitimacy” is difficult to define to the mutual satisfaction of military leaders, lawyers, statesmen or academics, populations seem to “know it when they see it” (and more importantly, when they don’t). The rub with pop-centric COIN theory, from a 4GW perspective, is that it is extremely difficult (though not always impossible) for armed outsiders to bestow or shore up legitimacy of a state.

I suspect that gambit works most effectively with new or emergent states also seeking acceptance or peace with neighboring states and aid from the international community and less well in cases of purely civil strife.

Insurgencies that are trying to develop legitimacy have integrated themselves locally into the social and political fabric of societies worldwide. They establish a “shadow government,” first addressing the needs of the local populace. Insurgents establish themselves as organizations capable of addressing the everyday problems of the local population. Insurgent groups have set up schools, medical clinics, sports clubs, and programs for free meals. Hamas and Hezbollah have also become powerful political parties within their respective governments. The key difference is that to be seen as legitimate, the insurgent only needs to appear legitimate in the area they are operating in and in accordance with the mores of the local populace.

Much of this passage is actually in concordance with classic 4GW thinking. I would hedge in that many 4GW entities, for example, criminal-insurgencies or loyalist paramilitaries (4GW entities acting in support of the state) have no interest in becoming a “shadow government”. Some, like Hezbollah and HAMAS do, but an across the board assumption is an effort to intellectually shoehorn all insurgencies everywhere into the Maoist model – that they seek to replace regime as the state’s new rulers- and that is one of the major flaws of pop-centric COIN assumptions.

Atrocities committed by insurgents, even if they were reported could be easily ignored.  International opinion matters little to an insurgent organization that is local, and is not subject to, or concerned with, international laws.

No.

Atrocities by irregulars may or may not be ignored. Largely that is the fault of policy, our elite’s decided lack of will in consistently pursuing their publicity, condemnation and where possible, exemplary punishment. That said, whether atrocities by irregulars are ignored or not and whether leaders of non-state forces hold international opinion in contempt, as parties to an armed conflict they are indeed subject to the laws of war and international law. Breaking laws does not mean that therefore, you are somehow above them.

The national government, on the other hand, has to appear legitimate at the international level, the national level, and at the local level. At each level there may be different beliefs as to what does or does not constitute “legitimate” governance. The counter insurgent has an even more difficult time, as they must be seen as “legitimate” in their home country, the host country, internationally, and at the local level. There is a difference in what actions and processes are seen as legitimate by these successive levels and the counter insurgent must not only be cognizant of these expectations and restrictions, but abide by them as well.

Generally correct, but all levels of legitimacy are not equally important all of the time.

The context of situations matter a great deal – first of all, the shooting part of war does count even in 4GW or COIN. It does not help to be scrupulously legitimate in all OF your actions if you lose the war to insurgents and are captured, tortured lavishly and displayed in a cage before being executed on live television.  Appealing to the sense of legitimacy of generally adversarial and distantly located foreign elites may or may not matter vs. appealing to the primary loyalty of villagers in guerrilla country. Or it might.

It is important to remember that in terms of legitimacy, the counterinsurgent  has an audience of overlapping political communities, but communities of unequal importance to the outcome. All actions in counterinsurgency warfare have political trade-offs. The bias is to ruthlessly accept those trade-offs that methodically and irrevocably advance the COIN side to victory and eschew ones where the costs greatly exceed any potential gain. To quote John Boyd, when considering conflict and threats, we should only undertake operations and policies that:

• Support our national goal, which at the highest level involves improving our fitness, as an organic whole, to shape and cope with an ever-changing environment
• Pump-up our resolve, drain-away our adversary’s resolve, and attract the uncommitted
• End the conflict on favorable terms
• Ensure that the conflict and peace terms do not provide seeds for (unfavorable) future conflict.

To continue:

The 4GW method of COIN does not properly account for legitimacy. Following the 4GW method, insurgent groups will be able to use the need for legitimacy by the counter insurgents to disrupt operations. If a charge is made that the 4GW forces have committed an atrocity, there will be a lot of interest in that story by outside groups. The media will want information, and human rights groups will bring political pressure for a full and complete investigation to be conducted, something a company commander will not have the resources to do.

I find this passage to simply be strange, given the emphasis that various writers of the 4GW school placed upon the mental and moral levels of war. Whether you agree with 4GW and William Lind or think that both = horseshit, it remains a fact that concern with legitimacy is one of 4GW’s central tenets as a theory or school of strategic thought. See, there’s this guy, an Israeli military historian, named Martin van Creveld and……

The problem, I suspect, is with how the author approaches legitimacy and the division of responsibility for questions of tactics, operations, strategy and policy. Bill Lind’s advocacy of of jaegers never seemed to me to imply that a master sergeant or captain out in the backcountry would be running an international level IO on his own. In his area of responsibility, with locals, sure – just not when Lara Logan or Dr. Jakob Kellenberger of the Red Cross shows up.

If the alleged atrocity is not investigated properly, regardless of the veracity, legitimacy for the operation and popular support at all levels will be at risk. The insurgents will be able to use the incident as a rallying cry against the counter insurgent forces. The lack of a full and complete investigation will give credence to their claims, and there will be allegations of “cover ups” and “obfuscation,” by those sympathetic to the insurgent cause. Outside neutral groups, like NGOs and the media, will not be able to quickly and easily refute these allegations, further reinforcing the insurgent’s claims. These claims harm the legitimacy of the counter insurgent operations and degrade popular support. Without popular support the U.S. Army would be forced to leave, allowing the insurgents to reoccupy the area. Tactically the insurgents may have been beaten at every turn, but strategically they have won. Given the proposed structure of 4GW forces, small 3-4 man teams, out of direct contact with higher headquarters for extended periods of time, with a minimum of command oversight- how would an investigation occur? How would media requests be handled, or investigations by human rights NGOs? How would the team or the company even be able to demonstrate that they were not responsible for the alleged crime? Do 4GW adherents believe that the US Army would be given the benefit of the doubt by the international press?

Wow.

First of all, all of what the passage describes occurs now, under the present system, beloved by Big Army, of top down micromanagement of company and platoon leaders by senior field grade or, remarkably, general officers. Any incarnation of 4GW COIN operations have not failed in the way Farish described but every major media failure that has happened in the war can be attributed in part, to the current institutional culture, climate and structure that produced such slick American IO moments as Abu Ghraib and “the Runaway General“.

Admittedly, as it is untried, a 4GW style COIN operation might not do any better than this, but really, it could hardly do worse.

The current mass of command and control, while cumbersome and at times inefficient, exists to protect the soldier and to allow him to conduct his mission with minimal disruption. To try and strip that away to a “lean fighting force” is to invite tactical success, but strategic failure. 

Top-heavy, slow moving, risk-averse, military bureaucracies ensure strategic victory?  Administrative process defines or formulates strategy? WTF?

With the loss of a robust command structure and the protection it brings from outside agencies, it will be easy for the insurgents to portray soldiers as cold-blooded killers, rampaging throughout the land with no oversight and no regard for international law, the UCMJ, or legitimacy. Without the appearance of legitimacy popular support will erode, without popular support counter- insurgent forces will be forced to cede the battlefield to the insurgents.

Move….out…of….your….comfort zone.

In general, military history and strategic thinking need to be taught earlier in the career arc of professional officers than the War College level as a counter to the habits of mind inculcated by organizational culture. The relationship between tactics, strategy and policy is always holistic, not distributed between “tactical leaders”, “operational planners” and civilian “policy wonks”. Strategy does not live way up at HQ or in the White House but should be a ladder or chain of implications that reach down to guide tactical decisions and upwards to a national or grand strategy.

 Octavian Manea continues his excellent series at SWJ, interviewing the leading theorists, practitioners and critics of pop-centric COIN.  This most recent interview is with Dr. John Nagl, formerly president of CNAS, author of Learning how to Eat Soup with a Knife and currently a professor at the Naval War College.

Nagl has been, it hardly need be said, one of the major proponents of pop-centric COIN and an important figure in the debate over the “Surge” in Iraq and it’s second iteration in Afghanistan:

COIN Is Not Dead: An Interview with John Nagl 

Q: Have we basically relearned, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the old lessons and principles in countering an insurgency? Are the broad historically proven principles of countering an insurgency, still valid guidelines for today?

Nagl: History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. I am currently teaching a course at the US Naval Academy on the history of modern counterinsurgency campaigns. And it is interesting to see how the same principles continue to present and reassert themselves, that the same mistakes are made early as armies adapt to the challenges of counterinsurgency and they learn the same lessons time and time again. They learn lessons like the importance of being keenly sensitive to the human terrain, of understanding its hierarchy of needs, of comprehending the culture, the ethnicity, the religion of the insurgents and of the population. Protecting the population is the key to success. It is important to get the population on your side in order that you can derive intelligence from them on who the insurgents are. It is important that you reform governance to give people hope that if they do side with the government and the counterinsurgents, their lives will be better. It is important to provide inducements to the insurgents. Very rarely are you going to kill or capture every insurgent, although you may coerce some of them away from the fighting. All of those lessons could be drawn from the headlines of the past few weeks on the fight in Afghanistan. I am increasingly convinced that the classic historically tested counterinsurgency principles broadly apply across cases and they continue to apply today, although with variations for the particular country, region, ethnicity, and grievances faced by the population.

[….]

Q:What would you respond to the many critics that point out that pop-centric COIN is just a “collection of tactics” and techniques not a strategy in itself?

Nagl: I would say that they missed the first chapter of the FM 3-24. The strategy is to strengthen the government while weakening the insurgents in order to reach an end state in which the government with minimal outside assistance can defeat internal threats to its security. There are a number of tactics required to achieve that, both the killing and capturing of insurgents, strengthening host nation security forces, and improving governance. It all adds up to diminishing the strength of the insurgency, increasing the capabilities of the government and its forces and reaching a crossover point where the host nation forces can carry on with minimal outside assistance. We are about to test this hypothesis in Afghanistan over the course of the next two years.

Read the whole interview here.

It may be that Dr. Nagl uses the word “strategy” in a different sense than I do, or perhaps in a much narrower, context.

Strengthening a third-party government could be a broad US policy expressed in a variety of ways.  Or it may mean, the US military training and equipping certain host nation agencies for particular tactical skills, or leading these allies in counterinsurgency operations.  By itself, “strengthening” appears to me to be better described as a form of “Ways” in the classic “Ends-Ways-Means” triad of strategy. It may or may not be the best option to take – some governments are truly their own worst enemies.

Whether it is a good idea for the US to take upon itself the task of strengthening the host nation state in the first place, is a more strategic question.

Discussion has been emerging in the foreign policy blogosphere of   late  regarding sovereignty and the other day, Afghanistan scholar Antonio Giustozzi opined on coercion, a necessary tool of a state seeking to wield a monopoly of force.

Theory is good and the discussion is an important one with implications for US foreign policy, but it helps when debate is informed by empirical examples from practitioners.  Quesopaper, a blog by  someone out in the field  in Afghanistan has been dormant for a while, but sprang alive again with a timely post:

Rule of Law, The Afghan Springer Show 

….Rule of Law is one of the key aspects to “fixing” Afghanistan. When the Taliban dominated the country, they controlled the “courts.” As Taliban influence waned, the US and partner nations have sought to create a more traditional court system. I can’t speak intelligently on why “WE” decided to create a more western form of law in Afghanistan, but I can say, it’s not the correct approach.

I work in a remote district. It’s over an hour to the main provincial (think state) government center. The difference between the two places is about as extreme as possible. The villages, even the district center (think country govt) lack ANY essential services. There are no plumbing systems, no electricity, no garbage service…nothing. Yet, the people here survive; and dare I say? Thrive.

Like most farming folks, the people here like to be left alone. The people appreciate the Govt–Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan aka “GIRoA”–but they only want so much help. Rule of Law doesn’t fit into their needs.

So, how do rural locals settle disputes?

I just recently worked with a local governor as he negotiated the resolution of a 25 year dispute. Dispute doesn’t really describe what happened…feud is more appropriate. Each side had multiple murders, one family had 1300 fig trees destroyed. Decades of money in dispute. The feud was complicated enough that the Taliban failed to resolve the issue in nearly seven years of negotiations. Negotiations require buy-in from many parties…I could go on about this, but I doubt I can make it any clearer…

Land disputes are among the thorniest local civil society issues in Afghanistan, and one where the generally corrupt and inept Karzai regime draws a particularly poor comparison with the Taliban insurgency’s ability to provide “rough justice” where the richer, more influential party to the dispute does not automatically win through bribery. Land claims are blood issues in peasant-agrarian societies in general and all the worse in honor cultures that tolerate vendettas – that the brutal Taliban could not force a settlement in this case, or did not dare to try – speaks volumes.

….Finally, our district (county govt) governor is called upon to start the process of reconciliation. This BTW is MAJOR progress for the legitimacy of GIRoA. It means the people trust this man to handle this dispute. It might become national news (for Afghanistan) though you will never hear this story on any US network or .com site (except quesopaper.com). After weeks of massaging each side, pulling out their story, commitments (commitment to settle is vital in these things) and “evidence.”

An aside about evidence…in a society that is mostly verbal and illiterate, nearly anything written can become something that it is not…WTF are you talking about Pietro? What I mean is, give someone who can’t read a document. That paper is written in a foreign language, with foreign letters. Tell him its a deed to a piece of land…wait 35 years. Now, tell that man’s grandson that the land he’s been farming for 10 years; that his family has worked for generations, isn’t actually his.

Now he has nothing; he can’t provide for his family. Tell him, his paper is a receipt for a Persian rug, not a deed…explain that he owes the real land owner for the use of that property and revenues generated. Let me know how that goes…if you smell cordite it probably didn’t go to well.

For very poor people who live at the margins of subsistence, the stakes could not be higher, which can make rolling the dice on private violence attractive (this is also why land reform programs are only a short term stopgap in economic development and reform. Agrarian population almost always exceeds arable land and as the plots get smaller, they are less productive).  Dying on your feet with a weapon in hand looks a lot more honorable to a hard-pressed farmer than watching your children waste away from starvation as the other villagers gossip about your plight.

A state with legitimate authority can preempt or suppress such private violence, but is also expected to solve the problem.

….Back to our story…The governor calls in Sharia/Islamic law experts and elders from both tribes and other community elders. Mix that group into a bunch of small rooms and start shifting groups from room to room…hours of discussions (which looks like arguing to me). Don’t forget, this thing hasn’t been settled before, it’s serious business, and here serious business is settled with an AK. At anytime the whole ordeal can melt into violence.

Success is fleeting. I have a gun, no fooling…I’m armed….

Go to quesopaper to find out what happened next. 🙂

Part of the problem is, as quesopaper indicates, our Western framework. We began experimenting with rule of law to settle property claims and commons rights starting, oh, in 14th century England with land enclosures and we did not really finish for good until after Reconstruction in the very late 19th century. That’s 500 years for the “Rule of Law” as we understand it to become the standard for 100 % of the population, 100% of the time.

And along the way, there was blood. Rivers of it. From the Highlands of Scotland, to the piney woods upcountry of Appalachia to the Black Hills and the great Western Range Wars. The gavel of the judge had to be preceded by the soldier’s rifle, the settler’s six shooter, the rebel’s musket and knives used in the dead of night.

Are Afghans in far rural villages closer to a Manhattan attorney or an English tenant whose access to the pasture has been closed off by his noble lord against all custom and ancient right? What quesopaer is seeing is “state building” from scratch, from the bottom up. Slow, painful, difficult to be certain, but more likely to be durable than imported abstractions imposed from the top down.

We are leaving Afghanistan, it is clear. Any state that we leave behind that can resist the Taliban must be able to stand behind and enforce a rule of law as Afghans understand and accept it.

Leaving the world no poorer, Kim Jong-il, sybaritic monster and sociopathic dictator of North Korea,  is dead.

The following is a reprise of a post from last February from a Wikistrat simulation:

Wikistrat: If Kim Jong-il Died…..

Wikistrat is running an interactive futurist simulation on possible pathways of change and regime change of theDPRK. I am participating alongside Thomas P.M. Barnett and HistoryGuy99 and the Wikistrat analytical team. Join us here.

Tom’s take:

New Simulation – The Death of King Jong-Il

…We have just launched our first open community simulation, where our analysts and subscribers explore a shock in the form of the sudden death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Join our subscribers to engage in this live simulation, explore potential scenarios, aftershocks the various impacts of this event on countries’ interests. You can then play the Prime Minister and plan potential strategies for the United States, China, South Korea and many more.

Current ruler Kim Jong-Il turns 70 this year and is allegedly battling pancreatic cancer (very low five-year survival rate) and diabetes, as well as the obvious lingering effects of a stroke that occurred in 2008.

Starting in mid-2009 and culminating in a special party event in the fall of 2010, Kim positioned his under-30 third son, Kim Jong-Eun as his clear successor, although it is widely believed that Kim Jong-Il’s brother-in-law Chang Sung-Taek will play the role of regent for some indeterminate time.

North Korea’s recent military aggressiveness (e.g., ship sinking, artillery barrage of disputed island) suggests a determined effort to speedily credentialize Kim Jong-Eun among the military leadership that now controls much of the government, economy, and – most importantly – mineral exports to, and humanitarian aid from, patron China. Kim Jong-Il was publicly groomed as “founding father” Kim Il-Sung’s successor for roughly a decade-and-a-half, whereas Kim Jong-Eun will likely have had only a restricted public persona for 3-4 years at the time of his father’s death.

When Kim Il-Sung died in 1994, Kim Jong-Il nonetheless was unable to fully claim leadership status until three years had passed.

ADDENDUM:

Interesting article (Hat tip Col. Dave)

N.Korean Protesters Demand Food and Electricity

Small pockets of unrest are appearing in North Korea as the repressive regime staggers under international sanctions and the fallout from a botched currency reform, sources say. On Feb. 14, two days before leader Kim Jong-il’s birthday, scores of people in Jongju, Yongchon and Sonchon in North Pyongan Province caused a commotion, shouting, “Give us fire [electricity] and rice! “A North Korean source said people fashioned makeshift megaphones out of newspapers and shouted, “We can’t live! Give us fire! Give us rice!” “At first, there were only one or two people, but as time went by more and more came out of their houses and joined in the shouting,” the source added.

The State Security Department investigated this incident but failed to identify the people who started the commotion when they met with a wall of silence.

“When such an incident took place in the past, people used to report their neighbors to the security forces, but now they’re covering for each other,” the source said.