Our friend Madhu has requested that I post poems here on occasion, and this particular poem made me think of her and her request, so here it is:
A copper and gold koan
.
The world happened, the world is drifting away,
the farther away the world floats the deeper into the mists.
In Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, the remains
of a buddhist monastery already eroded by time are adrift,
a sitting buddha is floating into the mist,
headless, gold paint still on his knees and robe,
the devotion has drifted, lifted its focus
to the one without a second, the buddha left
whatever he left in memory, lingering, to gather aromas
of other ideas, realms, dust, archaeology, oblivion,
there is change, ceaseless change,
and adults must decide: is the wealth implied by the copper
beneath the buddha worth more than a trace of halo,
as the moon moves once again across a brilliant night sky.
. Koans are those brilliant paradoxes zen buddhism uses to pry the mind open, I think they’re important aids to handling complexity, and I have a post about them coming up shortly. Here, it’s enough to say that the issue of copper mining vs archaeology in Mes Aynak seems to me to be a living, breathing koan.
**
It’s awkward, when you write an “ekphrastic” poem, a poem about a painting or photo, to have the image right there when the poem is read, because it trammels the reader’s mind in much the same way that a film can trammel the mind of a reader into “seeing” only the film-maker’s Gandalf, no longer her or his own.
And I’m going on at some length about this, because next up is the image from which that particular poem was built, but I’d like the image to be, as they’d say in the newsprint world, “below the fold” as you read the poem.
So here it is, #4 in a fine series of photos in a Foreign Policy photo essay which I recommend, although I’ve taken this particular (smaller) version from a CNN page, since the subtitle in the lower right corner explains the basic situation handily:
You can hear the archaeologist Brent Huffman, who took the photo, talk about the situation here — local reactions pro and con, who the Taliban are shooting at, the likelihood that the Chinese operation will in fact benefit the locals and more:
The koan of balancing material with immaterial values remains, but in this circumstance the likelihood of local Afghans receiving litter or nothing from the mining project likely tips the scales.
If we had a real media, they might ask President Obama and Governor Romney about this. Or our Secretaries of Defense and State. However it seems that the goal of the MSM is to not let nasty foreign news interrupt the scripted rhythm of the presidential campaign, even if, you know, an embassy gets sacked and burned and our ambassador murdered by a terrorist-led mob.
Yesterday a concerned father forwarded to me a letter from his son in Afghanistan. I confirmed authenticity, and republish with permission:
Dad,
I am fed up. I cannot believe the lack of attention the recent changes in this war is receiving by the media or the country. I think I saw one thing on CNN about the following subject, but I had to dig extensively to find it. The purpose of this letter is to let you know of the garbage that our soldiers are going through right now. With this knowledge, I hope that you take action by writing your congressmen.
First, because of the recent green on blue incidents or “insider threats” as the new buzz phrase dictates, all coalition forces in Afghanistan have completely stopped partnering with the ANA, AUP, and ALP in order to prevent the death of anymore CF casualties by ANSF or Taliban disguised as them. This is also greatly spurred by President Karzi’s indifferent attitude and lack of action to take measures to prevent further insider attacks.
….To the second point: I don’t think that the American citizens would be happy if they knew that their soldiers were being prohibited from defending themselves in any way because of politically driven orders, but that is precisely what is happening in this war right now even as I write this letter. The soldiers of the U.S. never engage the enemy unless we know that we have will always have the tactical advantage in defending ourselves, that advantage is the use of close air support and air weapons team. To take those weapons away from us is to level the playing field for the enemy and thus exposing our soldiers to more danger. In the school house they teach us that the minimum ratio that we are to engage the enemy with, is a 3:1 ratio. In other words, we have the highest probability of winning because we don’t fight fair. The sound tactical principles behind this teaching have saved lives. The very presence of aircraft over our foot patrols has also saved lives and now our chain of command is being told by our political leadership that this is now not allowed. If we are not partnering with the ANSF and we are not actively patrolling to prevent our enemies from massing their attacks on our COP and we can’t drop a bomb on the enemy that we have positively identified, than what the hell are we doing here?
What indeed?
It seems the same physically safe DC political insiders who made the call for no security for our diplomats in Libya are now writing ROE that turns American soldiers and Marines into Taliban target practice.
….Revolutionary military concepts like armored warfare and strategic bombing were created in the 1920s, a time of limited defense budgets, small militaries and a less frenetic operational pace that gave military theorists time to think and experiment. The United States appears to be entering a similar time, opening the door for revolutionary ideas. This may free military robots from their supporting role, as theoretical revolutionaries invent radically new ways to use them in innovative, robot-centric formations.
It’s not hard to imagine the advantages of robot-centric military formations, particularly for conflict on land. A roboticized Army or Marine unit could have as much or more capability than a current one, with significantly fewer humans. This would both lower the chances of U.S. casualties and save some of the massive costs represented by recruiting, training, educating, housing and feeding troops, as well as providing medical care and post-service benefits to members of the military. It also could ease a potential recruiting crisis as the annual cohorts of 18-year-olds get smaller.
Let’s start with a recap of Fuller’s concept of grand strategy. This is laid out in Fuller’s own detailed style in his The Reformation of Warfrom 1923. Fuller starts with a pyramid of military forces comprising land, sea and air forces which together constitute “a very complex and unstable organization”, in all force results from the integration of all three, so a political community could still extert force without air or naval forces, although this application of force would be of a more limited scope. The base of this pyramid rests on “the moral of the civil population and the commercial and industrial resources at their disposal”. Fuller likens this base to “fire” with the military forces being “earth”, the naval forces “water” and the air forces “air”. These four elements together produce a fifth which Fuller describes as the “national will to exist” and “the driving force of all military activities”. This “national will to exist” includes an ideological componentincluding the soldierly virtues present in society (“integrity, honour, justice and courage”). I would include with this something that Fuller assumes, that being best described as the German termOpferbereitschaft, or the willingness of the individual to sacrifice themselves in the interest of the political community. Fuller concludes, “This control and direction of the will to win and all the means whereby this will may be expressed I will call grand strategy.”Before getting to what Hew Strachan has to say, let me point out one more very important point – for Fuller, this grand strategy is contingent. The totality of moral and material elements exerts force which is then resisted by the enemy, who have in turn their own totality of elements that resist. It is the interaction of force and resistance which characterizes the war in question, making each war unique.
….When we think in terms of blocks of time, it takes pressure off the need for immediate production. We don’t mind going slowly the first few days because we know we’ll hit our stride in a week or two.
Starting slow does something else that is not often appreciated. It sends a message. A low-pressure Day One tells the muscles, “Wake up, work is coming.” It doesn’t make the muscles panic. It just gets them in the mood. When we up the pace on Day Two, the muscles get the picture. They start to prepare.
Our imaginary colt does not dread running. He wants to gallop. The trick, for us the trainer, is not to give him his head too soon.
So we zoom out. We push the horizon back. We think in blocks of time.
Week One, we accomplish X.
Month One, we accomplish X+Y.
By New Year’s, we have nailed X, Y, and Z.
I recognize that what I do for a living—writing long-form pieces—is not analagous to what many people do. But the long-run mindset is a valuable one to master, even if you’re in the business of git-’er-done-now.
….As a result of the narco-violence refugees and internally displaced persons are also reported in contested areas with some estimates suggesting as many as 230,000 persons have fled the cartels’ ‘social cleansing.’ Journalists, police, and mayors are often targeted with assassination. In the case of journalists, the death toll ranges from 45-67 killed during the drug war; some estimates are higher. The goal of much of this violence is to remove opposition from rival gangsters and the state. Persons interfering with cartel operations are at risk. Again accurate numbers are hard to find.
….Barbarization and narcoculturago hand in hand. Narcoculturais a social phenomena that glorifies narcotrafficking. The narcos become heros worthy of emulation for the many “ninis” or youths without jobs or education. Think of it as Mexican gangsta rap on steroids. Two threads emerge: 1) the narco as hero; and 2) narco-folk saints like Jesus Malverde and Santa Muerte to bond narcos into a cohesive social structure that provides justification for their actions and spiritual protection for their deeds. Narcomantas (banners), corpse-messaging (leaving a message on a corpse), narcomensajes (messages or communiqués), and narcopintas(graffiti) accompany acts of violence and brutality to extend the cartels’ message in a form of narco-information operations. Such imagery can be a powerful social bond.
….There can be no doubt that Pakistan’s unrelenting support for the Afghan Taliban and allied militant organizations, of which the Haqqani network is just one of many, has made any kind of victory — however defined — elusive if not unobtainable for the United States and its allies. The crux of the matter: The United States and Pakistan have fundamentally divergent strategic interests in Afghanistan. America’s allies, such as India, are Pakistan’s enemies, while Pakistan’s allies, such as the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban, are America’s enemies. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s ongoing support for these groups has become an altogether easy hook on which the Americans and their allies have hung their failures in Afghanistan.
But even if Pakistan were not actively undermining U.S. and allied efforts in Afghanistan, would the country be any more stable than it was on Sept. 10, 2001? The United States and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan have stumbled from one strategic disaster to another. The delusional belief in population-centric counterinsurgency is simply the latest chimera that plagued international efforts to bring Afghans a modicum of peace and security. The various national missions strewn across Afghanistan under the ISAF banner have been a disjointed disaster; more like a militarized version of Epcot Center than a cohesive effort. Some of the best development projects these national partners have undertaken have been restricted to their own bases and provisional reconstruction teams (PRTs). One of my most memorable moments during a 2009 visit to Afghanistan occurred at a German PRT, notable for its perfectly paved and LED-lit sidewalks, sleeping quarters equipped with duvets and duvet covers and individually heated commodes.
….We have already condemned Jones’ actions to little effect. Anger instead should be directed at the criminals who violated diplomatic norms by assaulting the American embassy in Cairo and the consulate in Benghazi. Anger should also be reserved for the foreign governments that shirked their sovereign obligations to protect US diplomatic property and personnel. This is not say that we should toss out the entire idea of information operations, public diplomacy, or military information support. Any tool the United States can employ to realize its interests should be used, and IO, PD and MISO all have valuable roles to play as instruments of national power. But we should be realistic about what they can achieve.
And if we are talking about sending the wrong message, the image at the beginning of this post sends one that certainly damages the United States brand in ways that many often underrate. From 1979 to tonight, we have a troublesome habit of allowing rent-a-mobs of armed “students” and “protestors” to gain access and control over US diplomatic facilities. Perhaps the consistent failure to secure these facilities, prevent entry. and exact costs on governments that fail to protect them plays a role in their continued seizure?
I co-wrote with Nick Ottens, a Wikistrat supervisor and Dutch journalist who specializes in globalization reportage.
This crowdsourced simulation, conducted in real time on Wikistrat’s online platform during the course of three weeks, discussed the sustainability of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and forecasted dozens of scenarios for its collapse or survival. In addition, analysts explored and evaluated a range of policy options for the United States, Russia, Iran, Israel, Turkey, France and other actors. The simulation saw the participation and collaboration of over 120 Wikistrat analysts from all around the world. The following is an excerpt from the simulation’s executive summary, available for download here.
Like the opening moves on a hundred million square kilometer chess board, great and smaller naval powers have once again begun to maneuver for Indian Ocean and Western Pacific naval infrastructure. The Southeast Asian underdogs in this match are outgunned and outspent so creativity is the order of the day. As various nations modernize and build up combat forces in the Pacific, it is worthwhile to examine alternatives to conventional naval power which could be used to thwart any real or perceived PRC threat. For an illustration of this creativity using irregular warfare, see this article penned by NWC Professor James R. Holmes analyzing an idea to establish a Vietnamese naval militia in order to defend the Paracels. Here, J. Noel Williams suggests another alternative to a new bilateral naval arms race. ….
…. Simply looking at carriers ability to dispense aerial firepower, however, is insufficient to understanding their value. Carriers project power, not just firepower. Bombers can support troops in contact in Afghanistan, sure, but Afghanistan isn’t exactly the height of the A2/AD challenge (and you can see plenty of F/A-18s providing airstrikes there too). Indeed, with the exception of landlocked countries, anywhere that the U.S. is providing close air support to American troops in contact, it will likely have a naval presence nearby. Indeed, if access to theater basing for tactical aircraft is diminishing, than projecting a ground presence into an area is more, not less, likely to necessitate a carrier. Carrier Battle Groups will likely need to integrate their operations more with strategic bombers and tactical aircraft, to confront A2/AD challenges, but for some kinds of crisis response, strategic bombers likely won’t cut it.
A neurohistory is a new kind of history, operating somewhere near the intersection of environmental history and global history. There are probably as many definitions of it as there are practitioners, but one important branch of the field centers on the form, distribution, and density of mood-altering mechanisms in historical societies. These can be foods and drugs like chocolate, peyote, alcohol, opium, and cocaine. But the list of mechanisms also includes things we do or endure: ritual, dance, reading, gossip, sport, and, in a more negative way, poverty and abuse. Every human society, past and present, arguably has its own unique complex of mood-altering mechanisms, in the same way that each society has distinctive family structures, religious forms, and other cultural attributes. Neurohistory is designed to explore those mechanisms and explain how and why they change over time.
My last post has been up for a while and I was very pleased with the comments that came from it. I’ve had a bit of time to consider the various points made so here are my conclusions:First, there seems to be a good bit of disagreement as to what “literacy” actually means. Is it being able to read labels on medicine bottles, or read and understand books, or is not reading/text required at all? From a Western perspective, I think we link literacy with reading/text/the written word. Other cultures may combine literacy with orality, but Western cultures do not, that is there is a distinction. To this I would add that this form of Western literacy was a requirement for much of our history since the invention of the printing press. Without this form of literacy, science and rational capitalism (as opposed to traditional capitalism) would never have changed the world the way they have. Without this literacy it would have been impossible for the modern world to exist as we know it.
Second, there seems to be a strong link between literacy, as in the ability to read and understand complex texts and the possibility of mass democracy. As I.F. Stone writes in his book, The Trial of Socrates….
You find someone in your organization with vision and strategic acumen. In Palpatine’s case, that person is Moff Milhuff Tarkin. Tarkin’s a man with a plan. He thinks that Palpatine should rule through fear of force rather than force itself. Tarkin understands deterrence. This is a man that recognizes that the Empire cannot kill its way to victory, but it can intimidate. This is counterinsurgency and stability through deterrence, based on a credible, overwhelming threat. That credible, overwhelming threat is the Death Star. Palpatine’s promotion of Moff Tarkin to Grand Moff, an entirely new rank, is evidence that 1) Palpatine recognized that Tarkin had a strategic vision and 2) the Empire heretofore lacked a military strategic vision. Palpatine rose to power through Machievellian politics and deception rather than military force. He didn’t defeat the Jedi clone army, he co-opted it. He defeated the Jedi through betrayal and deception, a skill set that may not work in the face of a galaxy-wide insurgency.
Palpatine, at some level, must recognize this as Tarkin, during the events of A New Hope, is the Stonewall Jackson to Papatine’s Robert E. Lee. Yes, Vader is present on the Death Star but he’s not in charge. Tarkin gives the order to destroy Alderaan after all. All Vader does is torture a prisoner and then reacts to the rebel assault by joining the fight himself. Both tactical level actions. …. ( Hat tip Westphalian Post )
….While it seems the Jedi would be the only institution competent in warfare after thousands of years of peace, they were the worst possible choice on many levels. What institution within the Republic retained any practical knowledge of warfare? Some private institutions and individual planetary governments, such as Naboo, had their own modest security forces, but the Republic seemed to lack any other institution capable of employing coercion on behalf of the state. This study will elide the political, policy and civil society aspects and focus on explaining why the Jedi Order were a uniquely poor choice to lead the Grand Army of the Republic. Although it superficially appears the Jedi are the only ones capable of taking on this burden, they suffered from numerous institutional biases and a philosophy that impeded their ability to understand what was happening or adapt to realities of their new role. Leading a massive Army was not a linear extension of the skills the Jedi possessed, and they lacked the ability to gain those skills.
Although the Jedi were renowned diplomats and keepers of the peace, they were not politicians or strategists, and never critically examined the Separatist’s grievances to identify the root causes of the conflict. Without understanding the causes of conflict, they failed to develop a theory of victory. Without this, they merely continued to pursue of the Separatist leaders and the destruction of their army after the first engagement. They failed to reframe from their roles as individual combatants to leaders of an Army for a multitude of reasons explored below.
The much talked about post of the week where science fiction meets strategic analysis.
One of the themes of the corporate reform movement is this:
“We know what’s best for other people’s children but it is not what’s best for mine.”
Many of the leading corporate reformers went to elite prep schools and/or send their children to them.
Schools like Exeter, Andover, Deerfield Academy, Sidwell Friends, the University of Chicago Lab School, Lakeside Academy (Seattle), Maumee Country Day School (Toledo). At these schools there are beautiful facilities, small classes, experienced teachers, well-stocked libraries, science laboratories, and a curriculum rich in the arts, sciences, languages, and other studies.
I hope you read this post about Chicago billionaire and school board member Penny Pritzker. She sends her children to the University of Chicago Lab School, which has the best of everything, but feels no embarrassment that the children of Chicago who attend public schools that she oversees do not have the same advantages.
This reader thought about what Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants for his own children. Why doesn’t he want the same for all Chicago’s children?
Good charter schools tend to be based upon delivering a different, innovative, curriculum well or serving a specific, generally disadvantaged, student population (the original, largely forgotten and abandoned, justification for charter schools). The founder is usually there on site, putting in long hours, leading by example, working with children, because their educational vision is a mission and labor of love. Their own kids are usually their first students.
Unfortunately, that has little or nothing to do with the Corporate Ed Reform pushed by both President Obama and Governor Romney, which rides on the reputation of the mom & pop charters but frequently fails to live up to it because their mission is a profit-maximizing business model devised by and lobbied for by hedge funds and private equities firms to divert public tax dollars to investors at the lowest delivery cost possible. That model is not compatible with quality education and isn’t intended to be. If it were, the owners and investors would be enrolling their own children in the highly regimented, rote-learning script, worksheet based schools and “virtual charter” scams they are pushing on states, cities and school districts.
….It also became clear that the belief that removing Saddam Hussein or the Taliban from power would strike a mortal blow against al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations was unfounded. If anything, the war in Iraq added to the terrorism problem by radicalizing thousands more terrorists and giving them an opportunity to acquire training and experience. Even the demise of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, though it forced al-Qaida to relocate and reorganize, was not the body blow to terrorism that the Bush administration hoped. Rather than deterring extremists, it motivated new ones.
Terrorism, it turned out, was not a nail after all.
But a strange thing happened along the way to this simple discovery: The United States developed a different form of offensive military action — reliance on invisible or less-visible actions such as strikes by special operations forces and unmanned aerial vehicles — which held more promise. While they might not have led to a decisive and unambiguous victory over terrorism, these approaches certainly degraded the extremists’ capabilities.
Google lends it’s analytical heft and cool graphics in a not so subtle effort to aid supporters of the UN Small Arms Treaty. Some of the stats for third world nations, or major arms exporters like Russia, appear impossibly small or are absent. For example, somehow, I think Afghanistan has imported some weaponry in the past twenty years. Click through and see if you agree.
Zenpundit is a blog dedicated to exploring the intersections of foreign policy, history, military theory, national security,strategic thinking, futurism, cognition and a number of other esoteric pursuits.
