zenpundit.com

Matt Armstrong has a must-read, incisive, take on the manipulatively edited propaganda popularly known as the “Wikileaks video”:

The true fiasco exposed by Wikileaks

….The Wikileaks release apparently caught the Defense Department flatfooted. Even today, three days after its release, there is largely silence from DOD, save a brief public comment and a link to documents and photos at http://www.centcom.mil/ (hidden in plain sight through the link labeled “Link to FOIA documents on July 2007 New Baghdad Combat Action“). Don’t bother going to http://www.defense.mil/ as that site, and hence the Pentagon, has nothing readily available either. The April 6 briefing pack did not include the explanatory imagery and there is no news release explanation the Department’s position. It’s as if nothing happened. When asked about the situation, senior official at DOD pointed me to the “great piece” in The New York Times explaining how trained soldiers view and operate in these events differently than civilians. This, however, misses the point.

Despite the vigorous discussion online and over the air whether there was a violation of the laws of war, the old belief that if you ignore a problem it will go away continues to dominate.

Read the rest here.

The Road to Tartary edition…. 

Top Billing! Michael J. Totten – Our Man Inside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards

I have a weakness, acquired from my days of studying the Soviets, for the intriguing and often tormented characters who become double-agents and defectors, as well as for the morally uncompromising, superhumanly heroic, dissidents who elect to confront tyrannical power head-on. We have had very few windows in the last thirty years into the opaque world of the of the Pasdaran-clique that now runs Iran. Michael Totten interviews one of them:

MJT: I’m a bit surprised that over the past year, since uprising after the fake election, that more people haven’t been killed during street demonstrations. I expected thousands to be killed like in China in 1989. If Khamenei were to order something like that, would the Revolutionary Guards carry it out?

Reza Kahlili: That is a very good question.

What happened in Iran totally destroyed the legitimacy they claimed to have, that they represent God and protect the oppressed. So if Khamenei wanted to do what he has seen other dictators do by killing thousands, I am sure it would affect the Revolutionary Guards’ mentality and spirit. They might not participate. That’s a very good question.

They don’t use the Revolutionary Guards to beat people or knife them or spy on them. They have the Basij and the special forces and the plainclothes police for the dirty jobs. The regular forces couldn’t sustain such an act. It would deeply affect them.

MJT: So what do you think they would do if they were given those orders? Would they just refuse to comply, or would they move against the government?

Reza Kahlili: They won’t move against the government. They just wouldn’t carry it out. They wouldn’t show up. Or if they did show up, they wouldn’t do what would be expected of them. It would create doubt in the hearts of the loyal forces who would fight a foreign force to the last drop of blood.

MJT: If you’re right about that, the government is eventually going to lose

Registan.net has excellent analysis of and speculation about events in Kyrgyzstan:

Protests, Clashes, and Arrests in Kyrgyzstan, Rushing for Inaccuracy in Bishkek, Let the Revolution Be Archived, Side elements of Upheaval, The More Things Change…,  What We Talk about When We Talk about Revolution, Why Kyrgyzstan’s Social Media Matters, A New Republic?

Transitions Online ( Bullough) – Why Are Chechens So Angry?

A very pro-Chechen look at the last few centuries of Russian-Chechen conflict and coexistence

New Eurasia.net has an interesting series on Turkmenistan. The blogger, “Annasoltan” has a good eye for the use of striking visuals too:

The signal of freedom, part 3: the 3Golden Age , OtherTube, PseudoBook, and the fate of the world in Turkmenistan,  Turkmen Gods, part 2: “This is for God and this is for our idols” , Turkmen Gods, part 1: divide and convert , “My people have been hypnotized” , Into the iris of insanity: dissent, psychiatry, and the true face of Turkmen totalitarianism,  Berdimuhammedov three years on: metaphysical dentistry or just cosmetic scrubbing?

The Atlantic Council – Kyrgyzstan’s New Chance for Democracy and Watching Karzai, Seeing Diem

Like Diem, Karzai brought some baggage with him. He was not a figure with whom the majority of Pashtuns identified, and his collaboration with the Northern Alliance made him suspicious as well. In the “grand” Afghan tradition, he has proven to be classically corrupt, instituting a kleptocracy in which members of his family have been notable beneficiaries. Corruption has, like land reform in Southeast Asia, been a major theme in Afghan opposition to Karzai, and the United States has publicly and privately implored him to clean up his regime’s act. Like Diem, he has issued pious rhetoric about attacking the problem but basically not done anything about it. As evidence, Americans seeking to liberate Helmand Province regularly report they fear corrupt Afghan officials as much or more than the Taliban.

Foreign Policy –  How Not to Run an Empire (Tom Malinowski)

U.S. policymakers increasingly view Central Asia as a transit point to somewhere else. It is a region through which oil and natural gas flow to Europe, reducing U.S. allies’ dependence on Russian energy supplies. It is a region through which fuel, food, and spare parts flow to surging U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, reducing their dependence on a precarious Pakistani supply route. Officials and policy experts even have a new name for this region that captures its status as a logistical intermediary, rather than a set of distinct countries that matter in their own right: They call it the “Northern Distribution Network.”

Foreign Affairs – A Substitute for Victory (Dr. Bernard Finel)

There is now a clear path to ending the war in Afghanistan; the question is whether political leaders can take advantage of McChrystal’s battlefield success. If Washington can turn the changing balance of power on the battlefield into a negotiating strategy that acknowledges the need to offer insurgent leaders more than just the opportunity to lay down their arms, the United States could succeed in Afghanistan in a way that neither proponents nor opponents of the Afghan surge imagined last fall. For the first time since the United States intervened in Afghanistan in 2001, it is possible to outline a coherent political-military plan that would yield, if not a clear-cut victory, at least an outcome that enhances U.S. security.

UNRELATED SUBJECTS:

There’s more than one way to skin a cat. With climate change as damaged goods for justifying social engineering and tax-farming on a global scale by an unaccountable IGO class, the scientist-political activist public intellectuals and their bureaucratic allies will be increasingly putting their efforts here.

Fabius Maximus – Starfor looks at Mexico: “The Struggle for Balance” and Freidman of Stratfor writes about “Mexico and the Failed State Revisited”

FM also includes a bibliography of Mexico related links. Comments are shut off, not sure why though if FM’s getting spammed like I have been lately I don’t blame him.

After a period of dormancy, the IO/Black Propaganda boys with an eye for talent at Swedish Meatballs Confidential are back in business!

That’s it!

Dr. James Joyner, Dave Schuler and Col. Pat Lang discuss the Apache video, COIN, ROE, war in an information age, Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Sys Admin-Leviathan split and Hamid Karzai at OTB Radio. A good discussion.

A couple of internet amigos who are hard-core Clausewitzians have put pen to paper of late ( or keys to board):

Wilf Owen at SWJ Blog:

The Toyota Horde

The subject of this article is a broad technical and operational examination of how almost any country on earth can currently gain a viable level of military power by building on the enduring elements of combined arms warfare. These elements are enduring and appeared in the first twenty years of the twentieth century. It is further suggested that skillfully applied this type of capability may enable its user to confront and possibly defeat NATO type expeditionary forces.

A number of popular opinions about the future nature of warfare have created a substantially misleading impression that the skills and equipment required for formation level combined arms capability, such as that possessed by NATO during the cold war is no longer needed, because few potential enemies possess similar peer capability. Thus the object of the article is to show just how simply a peer or near-peer capability can be acquired, and maintained.

Contrary to popular belief, there are many examples of where military action by irregular forces has inflicted battlefield defeats on regular forces. The most famous are the Boer defeats of the British Army during “Black Week” in December 1899 and the Hussite Wars of the 15th Century, where irregular forces, using improvised barricades made of ox wagons (wagenburgs) were able to stand against and defeat the armoured knights of the Holy Roman Empire. In both cases each irregular force was able to generate conventional military force from fairly meager resources. There is nothing novel, new or even complex, in this approach. It is common, enduring and proven.

Wilf, as usual, pulls few rhetorical punches. Read the rest here.

Now for the second piece, which rated a place of honor at Dr. Christopher Bassford’s Clausewitz Homepage (for those readers here whose interests are outside the realm of Clausewitzian strategy or military theory, this is sort of like a parish priest having their Sunday sermon published by the Vatican):

seydlitz89 at Clausewitz.com:

The Clausewitz Roundtable at Chicagoboyz.

My interest in Clausewitz goes back to my childhood when, being very interested in simulated wargames, I bought of copy of On War as a member of the military book club-that is at 12.  This was the the old, 19th-Century translation. I found it hard going and gave up about a third of the way through. 

It was only about 20 years later, after my service on active duty in the Marine Corps and serving as a US Army intelligence officer in Berlin, that I finally actually read On War,  that being the Howard/Paret translation, and realized that there was very much more to the work than I had ever suspected.  Being involved in strategic HUMINT collection was the spark that indicated for me the need of strategic theory, and specifically a theory that could be flexible enough to cover all sorts of conflicts, from industrial war to tense relations between otherwise friendly states or other political entities.

….I found out about the Chicagoboyz Clausewitz Roundtable quite by accident.  I was doing my usual Google search of “Clausewitz” under “news” when a post at Zen Pundit’s blog popped up.  As my comments and the responses show, I was more than eager to contribute.

What resulted was a very interesting mix of views on Clausewitz, some from people who had been familiar with Clausewitz through their military backgrounds or other reasons, as well as intelligent people who simply had picked up the book and started to read.  While this roundtable discussion would not be a good introduction to Clausewitz, since a beginning student might be led far astray by some of the comments, the roundtable did produce a wide variety of interesting perspectives and applications that the serious student of Clausewitz should find stimulating.  In short, the Chicagoboyz Clausewitz Roundtable reflects both the advantages and disadvantages of using the Internet as a forum for dialogue, as an attempt at establishing a dialectic.  The weaknesses would include the nature of blog posting in general, which requires a serious proofreading effort after the fact in spite of the best intentions of the poster.

Read the rest here ( seydlitz89 gives a nice nod in his essay to the moving spirit behind the roundtable, Lexington Green)

I’ve participated in and helped organize quite a few online roundtables and Think Tank 2.0 events, and while all of them were successful and had their own zeitgeist, I can safely say that The Clausewitz Roundtable was the best.

Andrew Exum said the Surge succeeded. Dr. Bernard Finel says “prove it“.

From Abu Muquwama:

Just Admit It: The Surge Worked

….We can argue about how many other factors aside from U.S. diplomatic and military operations led to the stunning drop in violence in 2007. There was a civil war in 2005 and 2006, tribes from al-Anbar “flipped” in 2006, and Muqtada al-Sadr decided to keep his troops out of the fight for reasons that are still not entirely clear. Those are just three factors which might not have had anything to do with U.S. operations. But there can be no denying that a space has indeed been created for a more or less peaceful political process to take place. Acts of heinous violence still take place in Baghdad, but so too does a relatively peaceful political process.

From BernardFinel.com:

Did the Surge Succeed?

….Violence was a problem for Iraqi civilians and for the U.S. military.  Reducing violence has unquestionably served humanitarian purposes in Iraq and has also saved American lives.  But that has nothing to do with “conceptual space” or the broader “success” of the surge.

I mean, come on, if you’re going to write a post that essential expects to settle a debate like this one, snark and assertions much be balanced with rigorous analysis.  But Exum doesn’t demonstrate any real understanding of the dynamics of violence in civil conflicts.

My suggestion is that you first read each gentleman’s posts in their entirety.

The first part of the dispute would be what is the standard of “success” that we are going to use to evaluate “the Surge”. I’m not certain that Exum and Finel, both of whom are experts in areas of national security and defense, would easily arrive at a consensus as to what that standard of measurement would be. Perhaps if they sat across from one another at a table and went back and forth for an hour or so. Or perhaps not. I have even less confidence that folks whose interests are primarily “gotcha” type partisan political point-scoring on the internet, rather than defense or foreign policy, could agree on a standard. Actually, I think people of that type would go to great lengths to avoid doing so but without agreement on a standard or standards the discussion degenerates into people shouting past one another.

In my view, “the Surge” was as much about domestic political requirements of the Bush administration after November 2006 as it was about the situation on the ground in Iraq. In my humble opinion, COIN was a better operational paradigm that what we had been doing previously in Iraq under Rumsfeld and Bremer, but the Bush administration accepted that change in military policy only out of desperation, as a life preserver. That isn’t either good or bad, it simply means that measuring the Surge is probably multidimensional and the importance of particular aspects depends on who you are. An Iraqi shopkeeper or insurgent has a different view from a USMC colonel or a blogger-political operative like Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga. Ultimately, the standard selected involves a level of arbitrary judgment. I can say the Surge was a success because the US was not forced to execute a fighting withdrawal from Iraq as some, like William Lind, was likely to happen but that’s probably not a narrow enough standard to measure the Surge fairly.

The second part of the dispute involves methodological validity, or “rigor” in making the evaluation, which was raised by Dr. Finel. I agree with Finel that in intellectual debate, rigor is a good thing. Generally in academia, where social scientists frequently suffer from a bad case of “physics envy”, this means unleashing the quants to build a mathematical model to isolate the hypothetical effects of a particular variable. I freely admit that I am not certain how this could be done in a situation as complex as the Iraqi insurgency-counterinsurgency in 2007 and still retain enough reliability to relate to reality. The act of isolating one variable is itself a gross distortion of the reality of war. There would have to be some kind of reasonable combination of quantitative and qualitative methods here to construct an argument that is comprehensive, rigorous and valid. I think Bernard should propose what that combination might be in approximate terms.

The third part of the dispute involves the medium for the rigorous argument over the Surge. I’d suggest that, generally, a blog post is not going to cut it for reasons intrinsic to the medium. First, blog posts have an unspoken requirement of brevity due the fact that audience reads them on a computer screen. While you can say something profound in just a few words, assembling satisfactory evidentiary proofs in a scholarly sense requires more space – such as that provided by a journal article or book. Blogging is good for a fast-paced exchange of ideas, brainstorming, speculation and, on occasion, investigative journalism. It’s a viral, dynamic medium. While there are examples of bloggers rising to levels of greater intellectual depth, these are exceptions rather than the rule in the blogosphere.

This is not a dispute that is going to be resolved because the parties are unlikely to find a common ground on which they can agree to stand.