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RECOMMENDED READING

A very meaty and militaristic edition today. Thankfully, friends and readers have sent me so many good links that I had to break nary a drop of sweat this Sunday:

Top Billing !: Kilkullen vs. Luttwak on Counterinsurgency Warfare:

Dr. Edward Luttwak – “Dead End“

LTC. David Kilcullen – “Edward Luttwak’s “Counterinsurgency Malpractice“

(Hat tip to SWJ Editor and all around good guy, Dave Dilegge.)

Dr. Thomas H. Henriksen – “Security Lessons from The Israeli Trenches“

(Hat tip to Chicago Boyz eminence grise, Lexington Green – now back to blogging!)

Dr. Andrew J. Bacevich – “Warrior Politics” ( beware, Atlantic online subscription wall)

Max Boot – “The Military’s Media Problem“

(Hat tip to blogfriend and impassioned commentator EB at Hidden Unities .)

John Robb – “HOLLOW STATES“

Soob – “Online 5GW? Online 4GW?”

The Russians may not have invented, strictly speaking, “Disinformatsiya” but they certainly were good at it back in the day. We still have idiots running around who believe that J. Edgar Hoover wore a dress or that the CIA/Pentagon created AIDS, as a result of KGB memes.

( Hat tip to Curtis at Dreaming 5GW)

Matt at MountainRunner – “Readings on civil-military relations” and “Who should manage US public diplomacy, State or Defense?“

Mountain Runner is one of those rare blogs that consistently punch above their weight in terms of quality. Highly recommended for blogroll addition if you are looking for one that covers national security issues.

That’s it!

JACKSONIAN AND OTHER RESPONSES: EXTENDING THE CONVERSATION

Bruce Kesler at Democracy Project asked me to respond in greater detail to the critical feedback that the post on Modern Foreign Policy Execution sparked, in particular, Dave Schuler’s post that I linked to yesterday and to a detailed treatise by Kurt Hoglund at The Jacksonian Party. Bruce has kindly put my remarks up in his post “The Difficult We Do Today; The Impossible Just Takes A Little Longer” where he expounds on the need for reform of foreign policy structure to be a task for which we must take the long view but for which steady pressure must be applied. Bruce explains:

“Schuler’s skepticism is warranted, but self-limiting. As we used to say in the Marine Corps: The Difficult We Do Today; The Impossible Just Takes A Little Longer. That’s not meant to infer that our foreign policy become Marine-like in spirit, but to suggest that focus and organization coupled with faith in mission will overcome.

….I believe that although difficult, and the impossible will take a bit longer, that one inevitable result of our current troubles will be the development of a flatter interdepartmental foreign policy and execution that will be much more informed, prescient, coordinated, and effective.”

I agree. This is going to be politically difficult because we are proposing taking some power away from senior Washington mandarins – both in the positive as well as the liberum veto sense – and moving it to the experienced field hands who will be collectively given the financial independence ( perhaps by initiating ” foreign policy block grants” instead of line-item departmental appropriations) and tasking authority to accomplish foreign policy objectives. If ever seriously proposed by a president ( even in watered down form), there will be an epidemic of apoplexy inside the beltway and every knife will come out to stop this reform from becoming a reality. Nevertheless, the weight of cultural evolution, technological innovation and globalization will continue rushing forward in the world whether bureaucrats like it or not. Networks are here, friendly and hostile and they must be engaged.

Regarding Mr. Hoglund’s post, the “Jacksonians” occupy an aggressive but “swing” position in American politics according to the taxonomy developed by Walter Russell Mead ( a subject Dave has previously explored in his informative posts here and here). Their attitude might be epitomized by the military writer Ralph Peters – they are seekers of clean and clear victories and have scant patience for the building of nations. Despite my being more ” Wilsonian” than is Hoglund, he has keyed on to the same problem that I have discerned (frankly, the current foreign policy process is going to produce mediocre results regardless of whether the president is a neoconservative adventurer or a dovish isolationist – the bureaucracies pursue their agendas under every president). An excerpt from “Taming the Turf Wars “:

“The topics cited in the Article I cover in Reforming the Intelligence Community, which looks at the massive and internecine ‘turf wars’ as the main problem for the IC and getting the best cross-specialization INTEL available for multi-level analysis and then synthesis of knowledge. This would require not only a complete overhaul of how work is approached, but remove the Agencies from the ‘product ownership’ area and put them into a ‘skills management’ role. By enforcing the idea that certain types of INTEL can stand alone, the entire IC is dysfunctional as there is no lower level cross-agency working system. Thus each Agency gets its own view of the INTEL it *has* but no ability to synthesize across many Agencies and outlooks. Here non-traditional INTs such as economic and agricultural forecasting would also come into play for a full synthesis of necessary knowledge types available. By removing the Agency fiefdoms and making INTEL gathering and analysis a shared Community Level activity, the internecine turf wars are removed and Agencies are judged on how well they manage contributed skills within the Community at large, not how much work product and viewpoint they turn out. This does require moving clandestine ops back to something directly under Presidential control, like the old OSS. They can be sent to gather specific INT needs, but only with full knowledge and approval of the President.”

Aside from my remarks that Bruce has published, the National Intelligence Council is supposed to help in the synthesizing process and was somewhat more aggressive in doing so, reportedly, under NID John Negroponte. Assuming that was the case, that synthesis is being layered on top of the analytical process, like frosting on a cake, rather than occurring in the mixing of the batter by the analytical ” cooks”. There people out in the blogosphere with direct experience working in the IC and the NIC who are better placed than I to comment further here.

A further point on synthesis, I had envisioned these field teams be appropriately IT-networked so as to allow continuous virtual as well as F2F collaboration. Critt Jarvis at Conversationbase, himself a former member of the IC community, responded with a post “Modern foreign policy execution needs mass collaboration“, tying my idea to the principles enunciated in the networked book Wikinomics and to Dr. Barnett’s A-Z Ruleset. Further and deeper exploration of the topic of the intersection of the IC with the tools of IT can be had by diving into the archives of Haft of the Spear and Kent’s Imperative, both of which I heartily recommend.

STELLAR FEEDBACK

Most bloggers are pleased when a post generates some decent traffic and an intelligent remark or two in their comments section or email box. Therefore, it was quite gratifying to see how many thoughtful and incisive thinkers took the time to critique “Modern Foreign Policy Execution” at Democracy Projectthe other day. ( I’d also like to thank Bruce Kesler for kicking my butt into gear).

While I keep email correspondence private unless the author indicates otherwise, I’ve gathered some excerpts of the rebuttals that have appeared online below:

Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye– “And Never the Twain Shall Meet“:

“Bureaucracies are not networks. And never the twain shall meet. Bureaucracies are hierarchical, rules-based, static, slow to adapt, and have a single, constant imperative: survival. Networks are flat, conventions-based, highly adaptable, and, consequently, varied. They can spring into existence when a need arises and vanish when the need has ended. Networks are a challenge and a rebuke to bureaucracies.

….I think that Mark’s proposal, while interesting, is doomed. The existing bureacracies will fight any change tooth and nail simply because it is a change, simultaneously insisting that any new institutions be subsumed into their own bureacratic structures, effectively strangling them at birth.”

Steve Schippert at Threatswatch -“Monolithic Foreign Policy Needs A Net-Centric Overhaul“

“ He continues to list the clear (and spot on) advantages that a flatter, net-centric approach affords over the ‘immovable objects’ of today’s bureaucracies. Those who have read Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy will have a jump-start and likely a fuller appreciation for his approach.

The crucial issue is the existing institutions’ inability to regularly interact and cooperate with any alacrity, consistency or theater-level effectiveness. As a prime example of the absence of synergy, consider the foreign policy turf war on display recently in Somalia

The apparent current search for a ‘Czar’ to address the same problems is not the solution. The current bureaucratic inefficiencies and ineffectiveness is akin to viewing State, Defense and other institutions as individual trains, bound to their own tracks and propelled by their own inherent inertia.

The solution, as Safranski ably elaborates, needs to be implemented at the 1,000 ft. to ground-level in respective regions and/or theaters. It cannot possibly be effectively employed in this manner from the 25,000 ft. level of a Washington, DC über-bureaucrat.”

Bill’s Bites’s

” Mark Safranski, below, writes a guest post for Democracy-Project readers which is MUST reading: …”

Cernig at NewsHog – “Good Theory, Shame About The Reality “:

“It sounds great – in theory – and in theory I’m right there with him on this.

But unfortunately, in practise the current administration would see such modular networks as an anathema to their rigid top-down heirarchy unless the whole process of creating these teams could be politically controlled and biased. Thus, team leaders would inevitably be cronies and yes men rather than actual experts. Or if experts at all would be hand-picked from the ranks of the neoconservative think-tankers favored by the likes of the Democracy Project who have made good use of the revolving door between those think tanks and the Bush administration to push their own failed ideology of American hegemony. “

John Burgess of Crossroads Arabia ( in Glittering Eye Comment section)

“A network of really smart people (I’m drawing a best-case here) can certainly come up with policies. But governance isn’t the same as finding the most efficient solution to a traveling salesman problem. It depends on politics and political will and that’s not just a matter of routing the salesman around a broken bridge. It’s also the matter of dealing with the salesman who won’t go over particular bridges because of factors non-essential to salesmanship, but vital for other reasons. It has to deal with the destination that simply won’t accept your salesmen or don’t want your product. When you try to figure out all the potential variables you simply run out of computing time.

I do think that networking as described can play a vital function within bureaucracies. Many–and I put State at the head of the list–are now dysfunctional due to their near-total top-down orientation”

More to come as the conversation develops.

ZENPUNDIT GUEST POST AT DEMOCRACY PROJECT

Through the kind invitation of my friend, columnist and former FPRI analyst, Bruce Kesler, the well-regarded blog, Democracy Project, is running a guest post “Modern Foreign Policy Execution” by your humble host, subtitled “Instead of Crowning a New Czar, Bush Should Ignite A Revolution“, where I offer some suggestions for changing the decidedly broken interagency process for foreign policy. A brief excerpt:

“Secretary Rice rattled cages at Foggy Bottom by prioritizing Iraq assignments over the “old boy” network and PC concerns that dominated past FSO assignments, making official the informal practice that prevailed under Secretary Powell. Resistance by diplomats and bureaucrats to working in dangerous locales that are critical national security priorities remains unacceptably high. This is partly due to reasonable safety concerns but also stems from political opposition to administration policy and simple resistance to a synergistic mindset that requires housing “other agencies” in “their” embassies. Even the DIA has been credibly accused of holding back Arabic linguists from Iraq duty and of having managers who retaliate against analysts with Arabic skills who volunteer for Baghdad duty and of enforcing a “groupthink” company line in analysis. Frankly, this is no way to run a foreign policy in a time of peace, much less one of war. “

Read the rest here.

A personal aside: Bruce is a veteran of the Vietnam War and he has both an interest and some healthy skepticism toward the many newer military theories. One of those is 4GW, which I believe has utility for analysts, historians and statesmen as well as for military professionals. While I write about 4GW with some frequency, it is properly associated with William Lind, Martin van Creveld, Chet Richards, Thomas X. Hammes, “Fabius Maximus” and other writers featured at the excellent and always thought-provoking Defense and the National Interest.

OK, SOMEONE GEEKY EXPLAIN THIS

What’s the benefit to this Jaiku social network over the other platforms ?