zenpundit.com

2012 US Army War College Strategy Conference is under way. Fortunately, the major events are being videotaped and uploaded to Youtube.

Keynote address by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage:

One of the nice things about this blog is that periodically, smart folks will send me their unpublished material for feedback and private commentary. This comes in a wide variety of formats – manuscripts, articles, book chapters, powerpoint, sometimes an entire book or novel! It is flattering and almost always informative, so I try to help where I can or at least point the sender in the direction of someone more appropriate.

Recently, I was given a peek at a very intriguing paper on “Transition Operations” by Dr Rich Ledet, LTC Jeff Stewart and Mr. Pete Turner, who blogs occasionally at quesopaper.  Pete has spent a good chunk of the past ten years in a variety of positions and capacities in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he currently is with American troops in a remote rural district and it was he who passed their draft to me. They have taken a fresh look at the subject.

While I can’t give away their “secret sauce” in detail,  I particularly liked the fact that while the  focus and advice for executing transition operations is aimed at field grade officers and their civilian agency counterparts, their vision is in sync with the ideal of having policy-strategy-operations and tactics as a seamless “whole-of-government” garment. If only we could get our politicians to think in these terms, half the battle would be over.

Their paper is now headed to a professional journal; when it is published ( as I think it will be), I will definitely be linking to it here and hopefully, that will be soon.

My reason for my bringing this up – I have the permission of the authors to do so – is that the trio have put their finger on the major doctrinal problem faced by the United States military in Afghanistan – “transition operations” being a politically charged topic, laden as it is with implied foreign policy decision making by heavyweight policy makers, is treated in very scanty fashion by FM 3-24. Compared to other aspects of COIN, very little guidance is given to the the commander of the battalion or brigade in the effort to coordinate “turnover” of responsibilities and missions to their Afghan Army, police and government allies.

This at a time when the “readiness” of Afghan units and officials to accept these burdens in the midst of a war with the Taliban is questionable, variable, controversial at home and politically extremely sensitive in Afghanistan.

And at a point where, ten years after September 11, the US State Department is no more able in terms of personnel and vision or sufficiently funded by Congress, to step up their game and take the lead role in Afghanistan from the Pentagon than it was on September 10, 2001.  SECSTATEs Condi Rice and Hillary Clinton deserve great praise for making State do more with less, but State needs wholesale reform to fit the needs of the 21st century and the money and budgetary flexibility to split foreign policy tasks more equitably with the Defense Department.

State is not going to be playing a major role on the ground in our transition out of Afghanistan, which makes guidance to our majors and colonels – and in turn to their company and platoon leaders stationed there-  all the more important.

A.E. Stahl, the publisher, kindly sent me a note today to alert the readership that Infinity Journal has just released their latest issue:

Infinity Journal

Feature article by Colin S. Gray: “Strategy: Some Notes for a User’s Guide”

T.X. Hammes: “Offshore Control: A Proposed Strategy”

Frank G. Hoffman: “The Myth of the Post-Power Projection Era”

Gur Laish: “The Amorites Iniquity – A Comparative Analysis of the Israeli and Hamas Strategies in Gaza.”

Dan G. Cox, Thomas Bruscino, Alex Ryan: “Why Hybrid Warfare is Tactics Not Strategy: A Rejoinder to ‘Future Threats and Strategic Thinking’”

Bruce Fleming: “Military Self-Definition as Strategy.”

As always registration is free!

Berlin 1945

I have been reading The End by Ian Kershaw and it struck me that the story therein of Hitler’s Reich going down to total destruction is really a recurrent phenomena.

It is interesting that Kershaw, who began his earlier 2 volume biography of Adolf Hitler with the hypothesis that the Fuhrer was more the opportunistic vehicle of grand historical forces, in this study of the Nazi Gotterdammerung has accepted that the pull of Hitler’s inexorable authority over  Nazi and traditional German elites was charismatic, personalized and beyond challenge, even when Hitler was encircled by Soviet forces in his subterranean bunker and hours from suicide. Kershaw details how Hitler and his die-hard Gauleiter apparatchiks repeatedly demanded not only the militarily impossible, but the nonsensically insane, from the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS and the German people themselves. Virtually everyone struggled to comply.

This story is far from unique.

The Imperial Japanese, it must be said, surpassed even their Nazi allies in stubborn refusal to accept empirical reality and determination to fight to uttermost ruin. After the destruction of their Navy, loss of 100,000 men in Okinawa (their entire army there, minus a handful, fought to the death), the ruin of their cities, approaching famine, exhaustion of aviation fuel and gasoline stocks, the declaration of war on Japan by the Soviet Union and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima – Imperial Japan’s war cabinet deadlocked on a vote to surrender. The Kamikaze enthusiasts among the flag officers proposed a battle plan for their home islands to the war cabinet picturesquely titled “Honorable Death of 100 Million”, with gruesome implications for Japan’s civilian population.

Emperor Hirohito inspects Hiroshima after the atomic bombing

Many years later, Prime Minister Nakasone, who had been conscripted as a mere boy to meet invading American soldiers and Marines on the beach with a sharpened bamboo stake, credited the two atomic bombs with having saved his life. Without them, Japan’s warlords, with the tacit approval of their Emperor, would have coerced the Japanese nation into a gloriously genocidal defeat. A policy that while irrational,  faithfully followed the cultural spirit of Bushido and Japan’s mythic 47 Ronin.

Then there was the ancient example of Masada, the defiance of Titus by the Jewish Sicarii in 73 AD, as described by Josephus:

…. Miserable men indeed were they, whose distress forced them to slay their own wives and children with their own hands, as the lightest of those evils that were before them.  So they being not able to bear the grief they were under for what they had done any longer, and esteeming it an injury to those they had slain to live even the shortest space of time after them,-they presently laid all they had in a heap, and set fire to it.  They then chose ten men by lot out of them, to slay all the rest; every one of whom laid himself down by his wife and children on the ground, and threw his arms about them, and they offered their necks to the stroke of those who by lot executed that melancholy office;  and when these ten had, without fear, slain them all, they made the same rule for casting lots for themselves, that he whose lot it was should first kill the other nine, and after all, should kill himself. Accordingly, all these had courage sufficient to be no way behind one another in doing or suffering;  so, for a conclusion, the nine offered their necks to the executioner, and he who was the last of all took a view of all the other bodies, lest perchance some or other among so many that were slain should want his assistance to be quite dispatched; and when he perceived that they were all slain, he set fire to the palace, and with the great force of his hands ran his sword entirely through himself, and fell down dead near to his own relations. So these people died with this intention, that they would leave not so much as one soul among them all alive to be subject to the Romans.

….Now for the Romans, they expected that they should be fought in the morning, when accordingly they put on their armor, and laid bridges of planks upon their ladders from their banks, to make an assault upon the fortress, which they did,  but saw nobody as an enemy, but a terrible solitude on every side, with a fire within the place as well as a perfect silence So they were at a loss to guess at what had happened. At length they made a shout, as if it had been at a blow given by the battering-ram, to try whether they could bring anyone out that was within;  the women heard this noise, and came out of their underground cavern, and informed the Romans what had been done, as it was done, and the second of them clearly described all both what was said and what was done, and the manner of it:  yet they did not easily give their attention to such a desperate undertaking, and did not believe it could be as they said; they also attempted to put the fire out, and quickly cutting themselves a way through it, they came within the palace,  and so met with the multitude of the slain, but could take no pleasure in the fact, though it were done to their enemies. Nor could they do other than wonder at the courage of their resolution and the immovable contempt of death, which so great a number of them had shown, when they went through with such an action as that was.

What does the phenomenon of bitter-end political leadership mean in terms of strategy?

To the extent that war is a contest of wills or a form of bargaining between two political communities, the fanaticism of bitter-enders simplifies strategy while often complicating the warfare necessary to execute it.  Strategy is simplified because, to borrow a term from labor relations, the “last, best offer” has been refused. No bargaining is taking place – one or more sides refuses peace at any price short of total victory (“unconditional surrender”) or complete defeat. This represents movement away from a limited war for limited ends closer toward Clausewitz ‘s theoretical “Absolute War” by becoming, for the losing party, an existential conflict. The implicit threat to fight to the bitter end in any war – assuming the resources and will to make good on the threat exist – is really a primitive form of psychological deterrence; most states seeking limited objectives will avoid getting trapped in this dynamic.

This means the strategic calculus is altered by such a stance. The war itself and the driving need to wage it to it’s ultimate conclusion may have come to outweigh the value of the original “End” over which the conflict began; perhaps a policy concession or bit of territory or admission by a state’s rulers of a subordinate place in the diplomatic pecking order. While adopting a “bitter-end” position logically seems disadvantageous to the weaker party, it presents the enemy with a new set of problems. The “Means” or costs required to wage a war of conquest and lengthy occupation may be economically or attritionally prohibitive, or even physically impossible. Israel has a fine military and nuclear weapons but the Jewish state is too small to subdue and rule over the Arab states; Imperial Japan, for all it’s martial ferocity and cruelty, could not swallow the vastness of China, divided by civil war and fighting without allies, even before Pearl Harbor. Reach can exceed grasp.

Likewise, the moral burden and diplomatic friction of waging war not only against the opposing army, but the enemy population as well – of bombing or blockading into starvation women, children and the elderly – may be more than a political community or it’s leadership are able to bear and remain unified. As callous and narcissistic leaders of great countries usually are, few of them (fortunately) aspire to follow in the footsteps of Hitler, Stalin or Mao and openly spill an ocean of blood.  The impressive firepower of the bombing campaigns of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon did not break Hanoi’s will to fight the Vietnam War, they broke the Eastern Establishment’s will to pursue anticommunist Containment by force in Vietnam or elsewhere. The brutal counterinsurgency tactics of the French Army in the Algerian War destroyed the Algerian rebels militarily, but it shattered the Fourth Republic politically.

Insurgency, the “war of the weak”, is powerful because it inherently contains elements of bitter-endism. To rise up against one’s own society usually is an act of politically burning your boats and wearing, so far as the state is concerned, the mantle of treason and all that it entails. A desperate act by desperate men and conversely,  many of the leaders of states, being tyrants, are in no better position. Tyrants are widely despised; the Gaddafis or Mussolinis know that their power is their only guarantee of safety and their fate, if they fall into the hands of their people, would be terrible, so any rebellion must be crushed immediately, lest it gain traction. The Shah by contrast, was a congenital coward but a realist. He knew what might happen if he and his family fell into the hands of his political opponents, so the Pahlavi dynasty preemptively fled at the first sign of trouble (twice).

Finally, a word must be said about the position of a people under the leadership of  bitter-ender rulers in a war. Caught between a rock and a hard place, they essentially have three choices, none of them attractive:

1. Make a supreme effort to win the war.

2. Make a supreme effort to overthrow the government and sue for peace.

3.  Desert the cause as quietly as they can on an individual basis and hope for the best.

The best almost never happens. Kershaw’s history of the fate of the Germans in 1945 would have been well understood by Thucydides, even if the Melians were as blameless as the Germans were deserving of their fate:

….About the same time the Melians again took another part of the Athenian lines which were but feebly garrisoned. Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the command of Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.

If you want the bitter end, be prepared to drink the last drop.

[by J. Scott Shipman]

.

During a recent trip to London, I took along John McAuley Palmer’s Washington – Lincoln – Wilson Three War Statesmen. Previously I reviewed Palmer’s excellent and informative America in Arms, so I’ve been looking forward to this follow-up. While I’m not finished with Washington (on about page 90), this one is a much tougher read than the first, but I’m going to press on as I can make the time among competing work and books.

What I wanted to share with you was an excerpt from Palmer’s remarks on Baron Von Steuben’s Prussian military background.

.

Von Steuben, in many respects was Washington’s ace at organizing, equipping, and training the army—a job for which Von Steuben was eminently qualified. His was the latest training in the methods of Frederick the Great and his vaunted what was to become his Prussian General Staff. (many thanks to Seydlitz for correcting my error)

For training, Frederick used what he called the “applicatory method.” This sounds a lot like Fred Leland’s cutting edge law enforcement training and Don Vandergriff’s work with the US Army. Here are a few quotes:

“He found that military success depends, not upon profound theoretical knowledge, but upon sound judgement and quick resolute decision under stress. Directing a successful attack is therefore not the same thing as writing an essay about it. It is a question of grasping a situation, making a practical decision, and issuing intelligible orders to the several parts of a military command. It is a question of not merely knowing but of doing. (emphasis, Palmer, pages 42-43)

“This led Frederick to form the habit of giving himself tactical problems in his daily walks and rides. Carlyle gives us the following interesting glimpse of the great king after he had become a distinguished and successful general:

For Friedrich is always looking out, were it even form the window of his carriage, and putting military problems to himself in all manner of scenery. What would a man do, in that kind of ground, if attacking, if attacked? With that hill, that brook, that bit of bog? And advises every officer to be continually doing the like. That is the value of picturesque or other scenery to Friedrich. (emphasis mine)

“From making this a method of self-culture to making it a means of instructing others is but a step…It is the continual test of judgement, of decision, and of facility in issuing effective orders.” (Palmer, page 43)

Frederick also used this training method as a “tactical measuring rod” to help determine the competency of his leadership.

Von Steuben proved Frederick’s methods with Washington’s army. But what struck me was the simple power of establishing and maintaining good habits that promote, practice, enable coping with dynamic environments, and the exploitation individual curiosity and action. Frederick institutionalized his “self-culture” into his meta-culture and so did Von Steuben in turn.

This type of practicing; the continual maintenance of good habits will help ensure a competitive posture in just about any field. Further, Frederick practiced ad hoc—wherever he was, he was thinking through the lens of his profession and asking relevant questions of himself and his subordinates—further lessons for today’s leaders, regardless the profession.

Looking, paying attention, and thinking is free—so even in declining budgets we should follow the example set by Frederick and Baron Von Steuben in his turn.

Cross-posted at To Be or To Do.