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COMING UP…

Working on a number of posts that I would like to resolve during the long holiday weekend, including the conclusion to “Foreign Policy and the American Elite” ( many thanks to those who offered criticism, comments and advice on the series, including Bruce Kesler and reader Jacob H. ) and the ” Wave theory” offered by Dave.. I also will have a comment soon on the general’s war over Donald Rumsfeld.

In the meantime go read the el grande post on Iran at The Adventures of Chester.

NUCLEAR RIVALS IN TEHERAN

It has been little remarked in the crisis but Iran’s nuclear program is a pivotal political football in elite factional intrigue within Iran’s ruling hierarchy.

Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and an opposing candidate to President Ahmadinejad in the las election heads the powerful Expediency Council that mediates between the elected government and the unelected clerical elite. Rafsanjani used that position Tuesday to steal some of the limelight on the nuclear issue by preempting his rival, Ahmadinejad’s announcement.

The two men are bitter rivals as Ahmadinejad’s campaign theme against corruption was obviously aimed at Rafsanjani whose family grew very wealthy during the former president’s time in government. Both men were ardent disciples of Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini though the machiavellian Rafsanjani is a cleric and Ahmadinejad, whose power base is in the Pasdaran and among radical extremists, is not.

“COUNTERINSURGENCY IS ARMED SOCIAL WORK”

I just finished reading a remarkable and fluidly written distillation of counterinsurgency principles that had been recommended by Dave Dilegge of the Small Wars Journal and Dr. Tom Odom. Entitled ” Twenty-Eight Articles”, ( PDF) it’s author is Dr. David Kilcullen, a retired colonel in the Australian Army and a special adviser to both the U.S. Department of Defense and the State Department on irregular warfare and counterterrorism.

Tom Odom has summarized the article here and interesting discussion follows but I strongly recommend reading it for yourself. A few tidbits of Kilcullen wisdom:

“..focus on the population, build your own solution, further your game plan and fight the enemy only when he gets in the way “

“How would you react if foreigners came to your neighborhood and conducted the operations you planned? What if somebody came to your mother’s house and did that ?”

” ‘Hearts’ means means persuading people their best interests are served by your success; ‘Minds’ means convincing them that you can protect them and that resisting is pointless. Note that neither concept has to do whether people like you.”

“..’normality’ in Kandahar is not the same as in Kansas”

“…stop your people fraternizing with local children…children are sharp-eyed, lacking in empathy, and willing to commit atrocities from which their elders will shrink. “

” Exploit a single narrative “

“…there is no such thing as impartial humanitarian assistance”

Impressive.

ON THOUGHT, PRESENTATION AND CONNECTION

William Lind, writing at DNI about dysfunctional Pentagon culture, has an essay “ The Fourth Plague” that concisely explains how institutional scenarios can encourage or discourage creative thinking. Some excerpts and my commentary:

“The plague of senior officer contractors has effectively pushed those still in the military out of the thought process. Meeting after meeting on issues of doctrine or concepts are dominated by contractors. The officers in the room know that if they wave the BS flag at the contractors, they risk angering the serving senior officers who have given their “buddies” the contract. Junior officers, who have the most direct experience with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are completely excluded. They have no chance of being heard in meetings dominated by retired generals and colonels.”

This is a bad set-up on a whole number of levels as Lind correctly has observed. Experienced practitioners, regardless of the field- the military, medicine, law, education,whatever – are repositories of deep insights and lessons learned born out of painful experience. To be most useful as advisers, teachers or mentors to their juniors, they must remain in regular contact with their field’s emerging developments in order to make their lessons highly relevant. That means being “in the trenches” (in the case of the military, literally) periodically themselves or in direct contact with those who are. In the case of the U.S. military, that there would be an intentional disconnect of this kind between company and brigade commanders and senior advisers on doctrine is stunning. It is also a terrible signal to send in terms morale as well as ensuring that the OODA loop will be corrupted. Subordinates are not encouraged to tell the truth by this kind of set-up.

“The plague of contractors reinforces one of the military’s (and other bureaucracies’) worst habits, formalizing thinking. Concepts and doctrine are now developed through layer after layer of formal, structured meetings, invariably organized around PowerPoint briefings. Most attendees are there as representatives of one or another bureaucratic interest, and their job is to defend their turf. PowerPoint briefings not only disguise a lack of intellectual substance with glitzy gimmicks, they inherently work against the concept of Schwerpunkt. Slides usually present umpteen bulletized “points,” all co-equal in (lack of) importance. In the end, what is important is the briefing itself: the medium is the message.”

Here I will agree and disagree with Lind.

He’s absolutely correct about the “formalized” process being obstructive to clear thinking and negative toward new ideas that question comfortable assertions. The effect that would be derived here in such a hierarchical setting is the construction and continual affirmation of the official ” box” in which all thoughts must occur – exactly the opposite of the brainstorming, horizontal thinking, informed speculation and analytical challenges to sacred cow premises required for an insight-generating, creative, debate. The likely end-product from this kind of process would be group-think and increased isolation since the social incentives would be built-in to make potential options narrower ( “safer”), rather than broader (“risky”).

On the other hand, Lind is putting far too much emphasis on Powerpoint as a cause of the lack of innovative thinking. Powerpoint has its strengths and weaknesses like any other tool or format for the presentation of ideas. Plenty of mediocre, muddled, empty or damn fool ideas have been committed to paper or were presented orally and were nonetheless considered persuasive by virtue of their eloquence. Bad powerpoint briefs might still easily be translated into bad journal articles and we’d be no better off. The failure in either case stems from a failure to think effectively and an undue passivity on the part of the audience that should approach orthodox ideas of their institutional ” received culture” with as much skepticism as they do new ones.

What powerpoint does well is communicate deep ideas quickly and effectively by engaging the visual centers of the brain by offering representational models. It enhances cognitive “connection” to concepts. Anyone who has taken physics or geometry, certainly fields with as much depth as military theory knows the importance of the diagram in teaching concepts -although poorly explained visuals can also mislead (recall your elementary school diagram of an atom as a miniature solar system). Powerpoint slides can make poorly conceived ideas “look” better, no argument, but they cannot change the substance.

John Robb had some important comments on Lind’s essay today:

“Here’s how to break this: an open source movement within the junior ranks. Put the seeds of new doctrines in wikis and build a community to flesh it out. Build blogs to share ideas. Network them. Technology can be of service here to build a knowledge network that outpaces the formal network in quality, speed and flexibility by an order of magnitude or more. Route around the gridlock by making the efforts public. Get congressional sponsors. You could even get individual and corporate sponsors to pay for the platform development (under the condition that they leave it alone) — there are patriots out there that care.”

I agree. Along those lines, check out GroupIntel Blog and The Small Wars Council.

NEW YET OLD: MAOIST GUERILLAS START TO GO GLOBAL IN NEPAL

Curzon at Coming Anarchy has drawn attention to the increasingly vicious civil war in Nepal that pits the reactionary regime of an absolute monarch, King Gyanendra against the Maoist rebels who seek the King’s overthrow in order to establish a Communist dictatorship. Democratic and parliamentary parties have recently allied themselves with the rebels who make up the armed wing of Nepal’s Communist party in order to pressure the King into restoring democratic rule. The Maoist rebellion, however, long predates King Gyanendra’s “autogolpe” and was actually launched in 1996 by the Communist Party against Nepal’s previous democratic regime.

The Royal Government, something of an international pariah for the restoration of absolute monarchy, has made little headway against the rebels and has been much criticized -accurately- for suppression of political freedoms, human rights abuses and civilian casualties. The fighting spirit of the army is uneven and they lack the resources, external support and political competence to wage an effective counterinsurgency war. Curzon also excerpted from The Atlantic, reporting from Robert Kaplan, in an earlier post:

“This was all bad news for the Royal Nepalese Army, I thought, though Colonel Cross was careful not to make explicit political statements, given his circumstances: the Maoists are in the hills nearby, and government forces are down the street. The fact is that the Maoists come from the same sturdy hill tribes that Cross recruited for decades, while many of the RNA’s forces are softer plainsmen and can’t employ artillery, because even a handful of civilian casualties would ignite protests from the international community. Moreover, the Maoists are fortified by “the mystic dimension of service and the sanctity of an oath,” whereas RNA recruits—aside from some specialized units—join for a salary and a career.”

Brutal, hesitant and uncertain is a bad combination for any army. State forces in Nepal suffer a string of disadvantages and deficits whether you look at them from the perspective of Clausewitz or John Boyd. While losing the conflict to the rebels in the political and moral spheres they are not efficient or effective in the purely military operational or logistical aspects either.

The Maoist rebels have, overall, been far more astute combatants but they represent a fusion of old and new.

Despite a horrific human rights record of their own that includes atrocities, torture, use of children as soldiers and condemnation from international human rights organizations, major American news outlets continue to recycle Nepalese Communist Party propaganda about its leader Prachanda as a one-time “kind-hearted boy”, concerned for ” the poor of the village”. Rebels have skillfully enlisted parliamentary parties as allies to press political and media campaigns against the autocratic government which has drawn favorable attention in the Western media.

Ideologically disciplined, with throwback “human-wave” tactics, and hoary ” final offensive” rhetoric, the rebels have also recently tapped into ” the bazaar of violence” to begin evolving tactically, making use now of IED’s and swarming. The rebels are shifting from the classic three-stage Marxist insurgency of Mao and Giap toward becoming more like a modern 4GW or Global Guerilla movement.

Whether Communist Party discipline can hold the rebels together or if counterinsurgency efforts and natural battlefield evolution causes decentralization and reemergence of Maoist forces as a scale-free network structure, will effect the outcome for Nepal. In the latter case, you would have a scenario much like Iraq with military groups fracturing into competing blocs and ongoing, low intensity warfare and state failure lasting, probably, for decades.

In the former situation, if the Maoists succeed in overthrowing the King and establishing a state, then the historical track record of other Maoist movements like the Shining Path, Khmer Rouge and in China itself bodes poorly for the 27 million people of Nepal.