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It is not very often that I link to the Huffington Post but Steve Clemons, who is the director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, had a piece up that outlines a faction inside the White House that is very critical of National Security Adviser General James Jones and would like to see him replaced.

Initially, I was somewhat dismissive in my reaction, but after hearing directly from Steve, and then doing some reflection, I was overly hasty in my judgment. Mr. Clemons is on to something; there is an earnest effort at high levels within the Obama administration to get rid of General Jones. A profoundly bad idea, in my view. Here is Steve’s post in its’ entirety:

Can National Security Adviser James Jones Survive a Second Round of Attacks and “Longer Knives”?

I am here in London where I’m participating in an interesting forum sponsored by the Princeton Project on National Security and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Transatlantic Program, I’ve received not just one email — but three — from prominent insider journalists and policy hands that Jim Jones’ tenure as National Security Adviser is highly fragile.

One of these emails reports starkly:

“Knives getting longer”

That’s all my contact said. But other emails have intimated to me a serious tone-deafness by Jones about his role and responsibilities, his relationship with the president, and his relationship with younger, dedicated, hardworking and late-working staff. Jones recently said that National Security Council staff members that stayed longer than 7:30 pm must be disorganized in their work.

I speak to various NSC officials — often at 10:00 or 11:00 pm at night. They are hardworking, racing as fast as they can to manage the many, many, many major initiatives that Barack Obama has decided to simultaneously pursue.

James Jones is considered by his admirers to be a genius when thinking about management structures and decision-making processes. On the other hand, his critics see him as a plodding, slow-moving, out of touch retired general who was better prepared to think about the last era rather than the one we are moving into. His critics think that he’s just too unable to animate nimble, high flex policy decision making products for a White House on a manic dash to get a lot of top tier issues dealt with.

Friends at the National Security Council respect a great deal the way in which NSC Deputy Tom Donilon is managing his brief. Many see him picking up the load that Jones seems unable or unwilling to carry. Donilon is deeply engaged in the broad Middle East and Iran portfolio, the non-proliferation/WMD/arms control portfolio, the China economic and security portfolio, and he has — according to reports — supported and helped cultivate relationship building between State, DoD, the NSC, and other parts of the national security bureaucracy.

Some tell me that James Jones decided to try and remove himself from the “whack-a-mole” crisis reaction style of decision-making that could rob the Obama administration of the chance to define a new course in national security affairs. Tom Donilon, according to reports, wields far more the hand of power when it comes to day to day management and responding to crises that require presidential attention and response.

Jones, in contrast, has been obsessed with the structure of decisions — who is involved in those decisions, what the structure of decision-making should be, and what legal modifications to this process need to be made. He looks at that as the big nut that needs to be cracked — and that would improve, according to Jim Jones, the president’s effectiveness and chances of success at a macro level.

Jones’ self-determined task is not high profile, mostly structural, and has not won him many admirers for leadership — but what he is doing is necessary. If he departs his role, this challenge of dealing with the growing complexity of national security threats and the vital need to recalibrate the policy making and decision-making process will require the attention of someone serious.

So, whether Jones stays or goes — his portfolio will remain vital.

But what is clear is that Jones has enemies and that they are trying to undermine his place in the Obama orbit.

Their motives may not be earnest concern about the tempo or pace of Jones’ management style — but they very well could be his unwillingness to allow the liberal interventionists inside the Obama administration to have more than their fair share of power in the Obama decision-making process.

Jones has structured an all views on the table approach to decision making — quite evident when it comes to Middle East policy — and the hawkish/neocon-friendly/Likudist-hugging part of the Obama administration’s foreign policy operation may be engaged in a coup attempt against Jones.

I don’t know if he’ll survive this latest effort to oust him — but folks need to know that those “longer knives”, on the whole, do not have pure motives.

I am probably, from Steve’s vantage point, “hawkish/neocon-friendly” and a supporter of Israel, but I share his concern that those out to remove or undermine General Jones are not doing so out of good motives and that his replacement by a weaker figure,  one less experienced with the national security bureaucracies, is not to the advantage of the nation.

Ominously, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates felt is was nessecary to go on record to defend General Jones from his anonymous critics in a recent high profile interview with David Ignatius:

 WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates doesn’t give interviews all that often. So it was interesting that Gates reached out last week to talk about Gen. Jim Jones, the national security adviser, and how he is managing the foreign-policy process in the Obama administration

Gates is a fan of the retired Marine general. He said he has watched national security advisers up close since Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s and that Jones is “among the best” he has seen. “I think of Jim as the glue that holds this team together,” Gates said. Despite all the talk about big egos in the Obama group, he says that at the top level it is “not a team of rivals, but a team.”

This encomium wouldn’t be newsy, or even very interesting, if it weren’t for the whispering campaign about Jones that has been making the rounds in Washington for the past two months. The proverbial “anonymous sources” have been sniping at Jones, claiming that he’s out of the loop, unprepared, doesn’t stay late enough in the office and that he kicks his dog. (Actually I made the last part up.)

….What complicates the situation is that this administration, like some in the past, has an inner core that worked closely together during the campaign and formed a special bond with the president. Think of Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff; David Axelrod, the senior adviser; and Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert, senior members of the NSC staff. I facetiously call them the “Politburo.”

….”Age difference and closeness (to Obama) are a reality, but I don’t sense antagonism or jealousy,” Gates said. “Jim and Hillary and I have joked with each other that we’re of a different generation than those in the White House. While they’re texting, we’re on the cell phone or even a land line.”

….Gates argues that Jones’ biggest success has been as the proverbial “honest broker.” He explains: “I can trust Jim to represent my views on an issue to the president. … He is a facilitator, not an obstacle, and that hasn’t always been true in that job.”

The last sentence by Gates is an understatement of some magnitude.  It is also very unusual that a Secretary of Defense would feel the need to make such a public case in support of a key member of the President’s national security team. Gates is a very old Washington hand, and he recognizes the pattern of political death by anonymous leak and is trying to short-circuit it before the whispering campaign against Jones gets legs.

The NSC process exists to ensure that the president gets the best possible advice, a wider variety of options than bureaucratic preferences might choose that he be limited to hearing and that there is accountability and follow-up after policy has been decided. This requires a strong NSC adviser and an orderly, inclusive, process. That does not suit those inclined to free-lance or sabotage the interagency process and a weak NSC usually brings a fair amount of chaos and infighting into American foreign policy.

I will conclude by echoing Steve Clemons: those seeking General Jones’ removal do not have pure motives.

UPDATE:

Dr. James Joyner weighed in on this issue  when anti-Jones rumors first surfaced back in May

Downstream in the Pressfield post, Slapout from the SWC helpfully offered up this SSI PDF on tribalism, DIME and strategy by Richard J. Taylor:

 TRIBAL ALLIANCES: WAYS, MEANS, AND ENDS TO SUCCESSFUL STRATEGY

It’s good. The perspective is current but integrated with historical examples, seeking to examine where tribal structures, which Taylor sees as complex social institutions, fit in with the entire spectrum of American strategic and operational goals. An excerpt:

…Insights. Using tribal contributions as a “means” or a resource of achieving multinational operational
success has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage of employing the organizational strength
of tribes is that historically they have provided valued assistance to intelligence, security and law
10
enforcement, combat arms, and civil affairs capabilities. Recognition of this “means” as a functional
support tool is not explicitly stated in the NMS. Considering the broad range of nations across the
“arc of instability” that are comprised of ethnic-tribal units, one could implicitly deduce that tribes
are included as part of “multinational capability” in the NMS. A second advantage to using tribes as a
resource provider (“means”) is that tribes bring unique cultural and physical geographic knowledge
to the success of any military operation. Tribes know the terrain, the language, and the culture; tribes
contribute to the cultural learning of American military forces.
Conversely, incorporating tribes as part of a multinational capability may not encourage democratic
or modernizing practices among the society as a whole. More specifically, U.S. associations with tribes
may be interpreted as a silent agreement to practices such as discrimination against women or tribal
out-groups. Similarly, it is hoped that the sins (mandated settlement policies, land use restrictions, and
failure to honor tribal treaty commitments) of colonial tribal policies are not carried forward into the
21st century by U.S. military commands. A distinct disadvantage in working with tribes as a “means”
to strategy success is fragmentation. Depending on geographic location, tribal connections among
members may not be as coherent as in the past.

Nothing mind blowing here but the new Afghan commander offers this bit on the congruence between counterterrorism and COIN:

Counterterrorism, effective counterterrorism, is about networking. It’s about building a really effective network so you can gather information and then you can act on it rapidly and precisely. Counterinsurgency still requires the ability to build a network, gather information, understand what you’re trying to do…

Good Lord, I hardly know where to begin.

Late last night, I was pinged by Fabius Maximus who had just written a post about historical novelist Stephen Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire, The Virtues of War and The Afghan Campaign. I do not read enough fiction, so while I had heard of Pressfield because his books are very popular among milbloggers, I did not know anything about the man specifically. I was intrigued by FM’s post, here is an excerpt which will serve to introduce the subject at hand:

Advice about our long war – “It’s the tribes, stupid”

Today’s post examines advice to us from historian Steven Pressfield:

“The real enemy in Afghanistan isn’t Islamism or jihadism. It’s tribalism. … Can we Westerners impose ‘citizen values’ on a tribal society?”  (from his website)

Some people say our real enemy in Afghanistan is their religion.  Pressfield says our enemy is their form of society.  Both sides agree that they cannot be left alone, since they are “the enemy”.  This debate goes to the heart of our Long War, as both sides usually ignore the question of why we fight – and exactly how these people threaten us.

…. However, we can all look at his essay in the broader context of American grand strategy.  Please consider this astounding statement:

“What struck me most powerfully is that that war is a dead ringer for the ones we’re fighting today. … the clash of East and West is at bottom not about religion. It’s about two different ways of being in the world. Those ways haven’t changed in 2300 years. They are polar antagonists, incompatible and irreconcilable.

Economist and businesspeople discuss the Competitive Advantage of Nations (as in Michael Porter‘s 1990 book of that title).  Social scientists and geopolitical experts discuss Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations theory.  But Pressfield goes beyond these.  In effect he calls for a long war.  War between “polar antagonists, incompatible and irreconcilable” – perhaps running until one side is exterminated or conquered. 

Using Alexander’s invasion of Afghanistan as a paradigm raises as many questions than it answers.  What were Alexander’s reasons for invading Afghanistan?  Nothing rational, little more than love of war, power, and loot.  Do we have such aggressive motives?  Or do we fight legally under the international laws we both promulgated and signed, which means acting only in defense? 

Answering that requires a clear statement of the threat the tribes of Afghanistan pose to us.  Victory is impossible without a clear understanding of the threat and our goals. How can the tribes be enemies without a strong understanding of this?

Read the rest of Fabius Maximus’ post here. FM has a rich number of related links, most of which I will not duplicate here for sake of brevity.

Pressfield has been thinking about his concept for some time, having penned an op-ed piece for Dr. Chet Richards at DNI back in 2006 entitled “It’s the Tribes, Stupid” which I encourage you to read. Today, there is an impressively slick vblogging, presentation by Pressfield on a site of the same name “It’s the Tribes, Stupid”.  Pay close attention: this is what a bloggging series looks like with a budget and Hollywood production values. Agree or disagree with Mr. Pressfield’s argument ( and I shall do both) he is demonstrating “how” to use the online medium professionally in order to propagate a meme ( he just needs help maximizing the virality, but the components are “good to go” for anyone who cares to pick up the torch). It is first rate work, take a look for yourself at Pressfield’s intro piece:

Pressfield has three vposts up and two more for release in the pipeline on his site.

Joshua Foust of Registan.net has already taken issue on a host of Afghanistan context specific and non-specific ways while RAND emeritus David Ronfeldt has offered supportive comments at Pressfield’s blog. For my part, I think what Pressfield is doing here is well-intentioned, helpful to a degree, likely to be successful in spreading as a meme and ultimately off-target in a harmful way for the same reasons that his meme can effectively propagate in our information age. In short, what Pressfield is saying is useful tactically but could mislead us strategically, but boy, he sure says it well!

I say it is useful tactically in that most 18-21 year olds in military service are not cultural anthropologists and speaking from nearly 20 years experience in teaching, young Americans are breathtakingly egocentric in their worldview, even when they adopt a pose of critical antagonism toward their own country, it tends to be blindly self-referential. Walking a mile in another’s shoes is not something they do naturally and unprompted. That other people have radically different conceptions of “normal” is often a mind blowing epiphany for them when it sinks in, usually in their late 20’s, if at all.

In that Pressfield conveys the generalized and simplified basics of a generic “tribal mindset” in sound bites digestible to the average twenty year old from a dying Mill town or small Deep South rural county  is a feature, not a bug. We can’t send all the recruits straight from boot camp to do a few years at Oxford or Yale before they deploy to Khost or Anbar – we need “good enough” for a starting point, not perfection. Pressfield gets an “honor culture” and “primary loyalty identity” across effectively and that could, possibly, save some lives. Let’s keep that point in mind.

Secondly, Pressfield’s point that tribal mentality is significantly different from that of a Western citizen is fundamentally correct. Different political economies and social hierarchies rest on different value systems and alternate psychologies. Col. Pat Lang wrote that most tribesmen could “escape to be cab drivers” if they chose to do; tribesmen prefer tribal life and believe it to be superior to a “civilized” society that is bereft of honor, even if it is materially richer. We are unlikely to convince them otherwise and they will resent us for trying.

What Pressfield gets horribly wrong is the discounting of the religious radicalism aspect as being superceded by atavistic, superempowered, Ur-tribalism. Umm, no and not at all. The neo-fundamentalist Salafi and Deobandi Islamist radicals are, as Josh correctly argued, pan-Islamist militants who are deeply hostile to tribal customs and authorities they view as “jahiliyyah”, un-Islamic or even blasphemous apostasy. As far as our current operations go, this reaction was on display after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan where Afghan Mujahedeen commanders tried their best to keep the Arab volunteers, Wahabbi extremists for the most part, from angering tribesmen by desecrating village shrines and graves of Sufi “saints” or revered, local, holy men. In reality, the conflict between Tribe and Religion goes back for centuries and periodically erupts in violence in one era and cohabitates peacefully in others.

Tribesmen and Islamist radicals are not natural allies unless we put them in that position and most of their countrymen are comfortable having multiple identities without choosing between them or abstaining from the elements of Westernization that they admire or enjoy. Viewing tribalism as “the enemy” makes the same mistake as viewing all Islam as the enemy. Frankly, we have enough enemies right now without multiplying them excessively and we can find many allies among tribesmen, if we approach them in the right fashion – something I suspect that Mr. Pressfield hopes that his videos will encourage American troops to do. I get the impression, from watching the videos, that Pressfield is employing many of the writer’s imaginative’s gifts there – simplifying, romanticizing, artfully mythologizing not by droning on but with clear, powerful, phrases that capture attention and have an impact. I am now tempted, after listening to Pressfield speak, to buy some of his books. 

With such skills though, he needs to take greater care to get his narrative right.

Top Billing! PART I.  CNAS – Triage:The Next Twelve Months in Afghanistan and Pakistan (PDF)

Released in anticipation of a heavy-duty, A-List CNAS conference on Thursday that includes CENTCOM chief Gen. Petraeus, I consider this paper by Andrew Exum, Nathaniel Fick, Ahmed Humayun and David Kilcullen  to be a must-read for the reverberations it will have in the USG’s national security community ( I do not agree with Exum-Kilcullen’s earlier proposed end of all drone attacks  BTW – swinging the pendulum too far. Here they say “strictly curtail” instead, leaving the window open for targeting AQ leadership and key operatives). From the introduction:

….To implement this strategy effectively, the United States must rapidly triage in both countries. For the United States, NATO, and the governments involved, winning control over all of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the coming year is not a realistic objective; setting priorities is paramount. But because populations in civil wars tend to side with whichever group exercises control, protecting the population must take precedence over all other considerations. What counts, for now, is controlling what we can with the resources we have. Thus, this paper recommends that the United States and its allies pursue an “ink blot” strategy over the course of the next 12 months on both sides of the Durand Line, securing carefully chosen areas and then building from positions of strength.2

The tasks facing Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus—as well as their civilian counterparts, Ambassadors Karl Eikenberry and Richard Holbrooke—are complex and difficult. Yet, they must recognize one crucial thing: in insurgencies, momentum counts. The Taliban is pursuing a strategy of exhaustion designed to bleed away public support in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe for continued Western engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If the United States and its allies are unable to halt the downward trajectory of the war in Afghanistan over the next year, then public support for the war effort in the United States will surely ebb. That decline in popular support for the war is likely to be even sharper in allied nations. Regaining momentum will allow the United States and its allies to sustain public support both in Afghanistan and at home, prerequisites to defeating the Taliban.

Top Billing! PART II. Kings of War (Beitz) – 100 Years of COIN: What new have we Learned?

A phenomenal post on COIN by David Beitz. Then again if you write 50,000 word essay, cut that to a 10,000 word chapter and then distill the chapter into a blog post, then the blog post should be pretty impressive. Note Beitz’s mention of yet to be released The Insurgent Archipelago. Hat tip to Lexington Green.

On a lighter note, Drew Conway offers up The Five Demons of Twitter

Smart Mobs (Howard Rheingold) – Designing Choreographies for the “New Economy of Attention”

Of interest to anyone who teaches, preaches, presents or briefs 1.0 in a 2.0 world.

The National Security Archive – The first national intelligence estimate (1960), on Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program (PDF)

NIE # 1 is refreshing in it’s lack of weasel word phrasing and its realpolitik analysis of the implications of an Israeli  A-bomb that are free of the comical, politicized, contortions involved in reporting or analyzing Iran’s similar nuclear efforts today. The refusal to examine logical probabilities in the IC had not emerged yet.

Coming Anarchy –The House of Cards Trilogy

I share Curzon’s enthusiasm here.

9,000-year-old brew hitting the shelves this summer

Cool.

RECOMMENDED FUTURISM VIEWING:

Futurist Jamais Cascio’s presentation “Mobile Intelligence”

Mobile Intelligence

View more PDF documents from Jamais Cascio.

The Talk:

Pete Alcorn on the world in 2200:

That’s it!