Recommended Reading & Recommended Viewing
I feel this one will be a weird mix.
Top Billing! Col. Dr. Kilcullen vs. Col. Dr. Bacevich over Dave Kilcullen’s new book, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in 
the Midst of a Big One
Bacevich Review: Raising Jihad . Killcullen Rebuttal: Accidental Guerrilla: Read Before Burning
I have not read Accidental Guerilla yet but it seems obvious that Andrew Bacevich begins from a position longstanding and very strong, non-interventionist, anti-COIN, pro- “Big Army/Near Peer Competitior” policy views. I suspect that may have influenced his take on Dave’s argument just a bit, thus leading to Dave to speculate that Bacevich may have not read the final book or read it in full. A possibility; about 80% of the books I review here are advance copies sent by publishers, authors or their agents.
Outside the Beltway ( Dave Schuler) – Negotiating With Iran
Dave’s reasoned and reasonable take on the Obama administration’s opening moves with Iran.
Coming Anarchy – Financial Warfare and Idea: The Dictionary of Modern Ideas
Liked both of these posts – phrase of the day – “argotic arms race”.
Two for One: Whirledview (CKR) – Diplomacy Is Not What Bush Did and Duck of Minerva (Nexon) – Haven’t they Filled the Protocol Positions Yet?
This post by Cheryl is a lucid counterpoint to my knock on Obama administration stumbles in foreign policy while subsequent events have caused Dr. Dan to move in my direction on this score.
Threatswatch.org ( Elkus, Tanji) – Legacy Futures in Cyberspace and Brave Digital World
A cyberspecial.
Tom Barnett is on C-Span in a few hours.
John Robb indulges his dark side.
Open the Future – The End of Long-Term Thinking
A good example from Jamais on how words frame analytical thought.
NewsDaily – Who got AIG’s bailout billions?
Primarily the Brits, French and Germans it turns out – the same folks who were loudly blaming the crisis on American capitalism in public had the weaker and more poorly managed financial systems, despite heavy state regulation, and were taking enormous handouts from U.S. taxpayers in private.
Scientific American – Building a Portrait of a Lie in the Brain
SEED – Adapting to a New Economy , A Hormone to Remember and Is MIT Obsolete?
WSJ – Philanthropy and Its Enemies (Hat tip to Instapundit and Steve Schippert)
A united Hard Left and multiculturalist Race Hustling attempt at extortion and hijacking of private foundation endowments to advance political causes of the Left through a blandly named front group that is led by extremist antiglobalization activists like Christine Ahn and “social justice” organizers such as Judy Hatcher. Ironically, most of the major philanthropic foundations like Rockefeller, Ford and MacArthur are pretty liberal in their orientation and grant giving but in the perspective of these folks, “liberal” is another name for right-wing, capitalist, crypto-patriarchy. People like this are why David Horowitz never lacks for material.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING:
Evan Williams on Twitter’s user-driven evolution…..
Humor, a take on an old optical illusion ( hat tip Dave of Thoughts Illustrated)
March 8th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
As to the first item, Kilcullen versus Bacevich, Kilkullen failed to respond to Bacevich’s main points brought out in the review:
First, Bacevich said in his review there were in effect "three Kilcullens". The "Kilcullen" that Kilcullen emphasizes in his rebutal to Bavevich, is Bacevich’s third, that is Kilcullen as "apostate" so nothing really new there. He doesn’t of course bother to refute Bacevich’s point that "The Long War has been very good for Dr. Kilkullen" which of course is obvious.
Second, there is no mention in Kilkullen’s rebuttal of Bacevich’s main point, that being that the Long War has no clear or achievable political purpose which can be gained by US military means . . . Bacevich is a classical realist, a Clausewitzian, as any one who has read his The Limits of Power (especially pp 156-169) should know. He has absolutely no patience with strategic confusion especially at this point in time and especially coming from people who should know better . . .
Kilkullen’s weak response in his rebuttal is:
In other words, I’m not saying we should seek to continue the Long War – far from it, I’m saying this is likely to be a long-term conflict, whether we seek it or not. This may seem a very subtle distinction, but it’s one that other reviewers have grasped easily.
So what exactly is his argument, that they will follow us back to America and attack us here if we leave Iraq or Afghanistan? Wasn’t that the Cheney argument? Is that the hum of Saddam’s "drones of death" I hear overhead? Same old bag of worn out tricks.
Imo Bacevich understands Kilkullen far better than Kilkullen understands Bacevich.
Bacevich’s message is clear: Don’t attempt to confuse us with different masks, your obvious interests and (un)consciously imposed strategic confusion are there and we see it.
March 8th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Hi seydlitz89,
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Ah, your excellent productivity at the Clausewitz Roundtable shames those of us who have been more laggard, namely me. On to your comments:
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I have not read the book in question which would put me in a better place to "review the reviews". Kilkullen has a larger policy agenda here and Bacevich certainly does as well. Has the war on terrorism been "good for Kilcullen’s career" ? Would we argue if the Cold War was "good for George Kennan’s career" ? Would it have bearing on discussing the merits of Containment as a policy? This is a sloppy ad hominem attack by Bacevich to imply Kilcullen’s policy views on COIN emerged from motives of self-aggrandizement. Evidence please if that was the case.
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Regarding "Long War" issue Bacevich is correct that U.S. leaders have not articulated a coherent grand strategy to deal with the unfolding tumult in the Arab Muslim world but that tumult has been going on in earnest as long as Dave Kilkullen has been alive and setting our global national strategy per se is above his pay grade. COIN is not a grand strategy silver bullet, it’s one possible response to insurgencies, which will be far more common for economic reasons than large-scale state vs. state warfare in the near to medium term.
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Regarding the islamist terrorism aspect. No, Iraqi insurgents and Taliban are not going to "follow us home" but their insurgencies are not the same thing as al Qaida terrorism which is not limited to a geographic base or tribe and can gain adherents or imitators almost anywhere from China to Latin America. This convulsion of politico-religious extremism in the Islamic world is going to be long regardless of what we do, it’s been building up steam since Muhammed Abdub and al Afghani in the late 19th century and the critical mass of Salafi terrorists is here to stay for at least a generation until they burn themselves out as a movement, are killed off or are discredited among their own co-religionists.
March 8th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
"He doesn’t of course bother to refute Bacevich’s point that "The Long War has been very good for Dr. Kilkullen" which of course is obvious."
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Far from obvious, it was a vicious insult. The Long War has been even better to Bacevich, who has managed to have much larger book sales, without responsibility or personal risk, both of which Kilcullen is too much of a gentleman to refer to. That ad hominen line almost made me dismiss Bacevich out of hand, but I read the entire review anyway.
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The business about their being "three Kilcullens" is another gimmick that did not merit a response. Bacevich is basically saying, "you are either too ignorant or dishonest to admit
that you are saying three inconsistent things." The book is fully coherent and does not have triple-personality disorder.
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Having just finished Kilcullen’s book, I do think Bacevich read it. Bacevich chose to respond as he did, disregarding much of the book, because he wants to discredit Kilcullen, and prevent people from reading the book.
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It was an inaccurate, misleading review, using the book as a means to drive an agenda. Bacevich has many venues to push his agenda, but doing it this way was neither responsible nor respectable.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:34 am
"I have not read Accidental Guerilla yet but it seems obvious that Andrew Bacevich begins from a position longstanding and very strong, non-interventionist, anti-COIN, pro- “Big Army/Near Peer Competitior” policy views." (Zen)
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This appears to be correct, but I think it actually requires a more "big army" centric force to carry out a COIN grand strategy, compared to a great power strategy. Most of the proponents of great power grand strategy call for a smaller, more lethal, net-centric type force. A coin force is man-power intensive while the great power force is capital intensive.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Zen-
Thanks for the kind words. I’ve enjoyed participating on the CBoyz Clausewitz roundtable.
My reason for commenting is that after having read the comments at the Abu Muc site I thought that Bacevich’s classical realist position was being lost in the uproar. I haven’t read Kilcullen’s book, but have read Bacevich and was simply commenting on the exchange of review and rebuttal. As to who is being "inaccurate and misleading" I think it first depends on one’s politics which is not surprising since our current dilemma in the US stems very much from basic political questions imo. Beyond that we have of course strategic theory, or specifically the general theory, and here Kilcullen in Bacevich’s eyes seemingly falls apart.
As to the comparison with Kennan, the Cold War was hardly one we could have walked away from, whereas reordering Islamic societies by force in the hope of promoting "stability" (as we define it) is a recipe for disaster. What is the need for a caste of "Long War" intellectuals grinding out papers if the only result is the "Long War" itself?
Lexington commented;
The Long War has been even better to Bacevich, who has managed to have much larger book sales, without responsibility or personal risk, both of which Kilcullen is too much of a gentleman to refer to.
Andrew J. Bacevich has been consistent and clear-headed in his commentary concerning the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. He also lost his son, at the time a serving Army officer, in Iraq, so he and his family can be said to have paid the ultimate sacrifice . . . he deserves a fair hearing. With William Odom dead, who else is better equiped to argue from this theoretical perspective?
March 9th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I read "The Accidental Guerrilla" and can see where Bacevich identifies the three Kilcullens. The tone of the book changes from time to time, not in a dishonest manner (as perhaps Bacevich suggests in his review) but perhaps out of a confusion or set of contradictions to what Kilcullen describes, analyzes and proposes.
Most outside of the COIN community are not very aware of Kilcullen’s blunt assessments of blame and error dating from 2004 onward. Most only see him as the Aussie expert with General Petraeus and Condi.
Kilcullen’s book is not as good as I hoped it would be, and in many ways, I have seen better COIN writing about Afghanistan and Iraq elsewhere both in print and on the web. However, his "Accidental Guerrilla" theory is golden though, an important contribution to the debate and I really wish he had written more about other insurgencies he has seen as his brief takes on S. Thailand and E. Timor were tantalizing. That is worth the book purchase alone.
Yet Bacevich’s point is worth raising (Andrew Exum countered a version of it in a good debate last week with Justin Logan and Matt Ygelsias) about the ongoing narrative about COIN, how it is understood in America and how its being used by some with dubious or misinformed motives and judgment. This is an argument worth having, especially as the limits of COIN and broader American strategy (if there is one!) within the crux of brutally inept politicians in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the failure of economies and social systems there become clearer to us in the next year or two.
Does Bacevich cross the line in going after Kilcullen’s increased fame and fortune? Sure. Its the pot calling the kettle black as Lexington observes.
Yet I would not go as far as Lex in condemning Bacevich for it along the lines of doing so "without responsibility or personal risk". As Seydlitz89 points out, Bacevich lost his son in Iraq. How must that feel to lose a son to a war you oppose? I think that gives a father (especially a West Point grad who spent a year of combat duty in Vietnam and twenty years more service in the Army abroad after that) a tad bit of leeway here and I would hope LG would reconsider that sort of vicious personal attack. If we want to get infantile about it, has Kilcullen actually seen combat? His recounting of events in E. Timor suggests otherwise and I am not aware of him taking up arms in Iraq or Afghanistan. Its great he was on the ground risking his life in both places against insurgent attacks, but isn’t that a tad different than leading men into battle on the ground?
March 9th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
"…I would hope LG would reconsider that sort of vicious personal attack."
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I am just some blogger, a nobody. Who cares what I say?
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The vicious personal attack that provoked my comment was Bacevich’s snide remark that the Long War has been very good to Kilcullen, as if Kilcullen was some war profiteer cashing in on the deaths in this war, including — I did not know this — Bacevich’s son. (That may explain, and it does partly excuse, his tone.)
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Still, that crack, and the tone of the review, undermined whatever merit Bacevich’s substantive points may have had.
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It is also fair, if someone accuses a writer of being venal and cashing in on the deaths of other people, to ask what the reviewer himself has done. In Bacevich’s case, he has written and sold books and benefitted professionally and financially from his position regarding the war. He should not have suggested that other people are morally corrupt when the same facts could be turned against him. I think it is obvious that both Bacevich and Kilcullen are honest and mature people who are trying their best to get to the bottom of things, and that this was an unusual lapse on the part of Bacevich.
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Was Kilcullen shot at? He was in places where he could have been short or blown up, and did not make a big deal out of it. He was in positions where, if the surge had failed, he would have shared in the blame. So, risk and responsibility. I did not say or suggest he led men into battle in Iraq or Afghanistan.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
I believe that Kilcullen served in peacekeeping/making and COIN operations with the Australian Army. Given the small size of Australia’a Army, the frequency of international activity of said Army, Kilcullen’s length of service and rank, it would be virtually impossible for him to have avoided field duty.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
I care what you say (though who cares what I care about). You’re not just an anonymous blogger but an esteemed blogger (in writing and content) IMHO, damn traffic count or linkback semantics.
Bacevich has been criticized by bloggers along similar veins for years, with people knowing nothing about his prior service or even his political alignment prior to 2004-2008.
His review almost reminds me of the bizarre Fortune review Bing West wrote for "In A Time of War" where he got some basic elements of the book totally wrong even though some of the points he were making hit hard and true. I don’t know if that is the case with Bacevich, but there seems to be a sense of desperation growing among non-COIN oriented figures in their criticism of late. Is it because they think Afghanistan will be a COIN disaster or just because they feel they are losing the argument?
March 9th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Thanks, Eddie. You are very kind. I was not fishing for praise. What I am saying is that the views of the bit players in comments on blogs are not all that interesting, and will not be noticed, and so I don’t need to withdraw anything.
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What is interesting, in contract, is sorting out the views of the serious players like Bacevich and Kilcullen.
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Since Bacevich is a respected guy, who is a serious thinker, with serious credentials, who has added value to the conversation, I would prefer not to discount what he writes, so it is troubling when he acts as he did in this review.
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I think that there were a lot of people who saw a silver lining in the unmitigated disaster in Iraq, as it looked to be pre-Surge. That disaster would send the message to never do nation building, to get out of the business of counterinsurgency in foreign locations, get out of the low-end of warmaking, protect the global commons, intervene if and only if you can blast your way in and then leave, and generally restore the Powell Doctrine, or something even more restrictive, and bring the boys home. The idea here is that the lives and treasure lost in Iraq would at least have taught a tough and expensive lesson that would be clear to all observers.
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I think the fear on the part of many observers is that Surge, which was a successful Hail Mary pass, turned Iraq into a mitigated rather than unmitigated disaster. It has allowed the bad thinking that caused us to go into Iraq in the first place to be justified, by claiming that we somehow "won" because of the surge, rather than merely turning an incipient catastrophe into a miserable long-term problem. I see some of this on my own blog. I personally decided around the time of Bush’s second inaugural address that I had been very seriously wrong about Iraq, and that Mr. Bush had taken leave of his senses. Several of my colleagues at ChicagoBoyz tend to still think the Iraq adventure was "worth it", though I cannot fathom that view.
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So, there does appear to be a note of desperation in some quarters. They are thinking that Petraeus and Kilcullen and those guys, by preventing an unambigous helicopers-off-the-roof bugout have merely muddied the water, confused the message, and set us up for bigger and worse disasters in the future.
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Someone like Bacevich reads Kilcullen and he sees a dangerous messenger, who presents a view that leaves open, though it strongly disfavors, further interventions and a shift to a focus on COIN, which will invite its use. If you have a hammer, you will look for nails. To Bacevich, though the full-blown Unipolar Moment school of Neoconservatism has been repudiated, Kilcullen’s more fact-bound and contingent approach still looks like a door that needs to be slammed shut.
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That is how it looks to me.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Re: Adapting to a New Economy
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The problem with his thesis is that evolutionary biology is descriptive rather than predictive. When biologists start predicting how species will evolve next rather than describing how they’ve evolved in the past, a model for economics based on evolutionary biology will gain more steam.
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That’s the key problem with economics: economists are trying to predict rather than describe and they don’t have the tools for it.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
That is an astute conception of what is happening.
I worry about what kind of lessons have been learned about Iraq. Does much of what we have taken to learn about COIN and strategy in Iraq relate to the extreme difficulty of our task in fixing Afghanistan enough to leave or decrease our footprint with the maelstrom of Pakistan next door remaining unaddressed (since there is little the US has in its toolkit to fix that mess)?
It is a debate that needs to be ongoing rather than calcify in perceived wisdom. Though Bacevich did us no favors with that kind of attack that discredits his argument.
Its fun being a bit player! No responsibility or pressure…. just a lot of angst and detail mongering.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
"Its fun being a bit player! No responsibility or pressure…. just a lot of angst and detail mongering."
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Yeah.
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Also, best case, the prospect of introducing an idea of some value that may migrate into the mainstream discussion.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Zen,
"Primarily the Brits, French and Germans it turns out"
So ? Are Morgan Stanley, Goldmann, Merrill and Wachovia Manchurian Eurobanks then ? Deutsche`s share is about the size of Goldman`s according to the article you quote. Btw. the questions about the counterparties are not new – first surfaced last year but not on this blog.
Am I missing something here (facts please) ? Or am I just wasting wasting my time on reading cheap populist drivel even on this otherwise excellent blog ? Btw. as an inhabitant of the European financial services marketplace I wd never have trusted Deutsche Bank anyway – too arrogant and yet too inclined to ape whatever is in fashion on the other side of the Atlantic.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:03 am
Hi fmc,
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Fair enough, here goes.
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The primary issue -and it is a very serious one – is that the bailout has been entirely unaccountable and without transparency because Treasury and Fed officials fear a political firestorm over the details of their known favortism and insider dealing would jeopardize the government’s ability to further manage the crisis ( this may be correct) so they are stonewalling with the collusion of the relevant key members of Congress. The foreign aspect, while admittedly minor in the larger scheme of things, irritates me because not because money is going to foreign banks per se but because officials of the German government were so loud at the start of the crisis in their denunciations of American practices when a) their own house was far from being in order as they claimed and b) they are reliant upon bailout funds consisting of borrowed dollars guaranteed by U.S. taxpayers.
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Now in retrospect, the practices in question were worthy of denunciation but in light of the fact that German officials had tolerated a banking mess of their own to accumulate and had a large vested interest in AIG being bailed out in the manner which it was, speaking softly might have been the option of greater tact; EU counterparts with cleaner hands should have been the ones delivering lectures on "best practice".
March 10th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Seems to me that one element of Bacevich’s comment that Kilcullen has done very well with COIN may be something that keeps bothering me – the growth of special interests in parts of US foreign policy that then define the field and, indeed, do very well with it.
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Whether Bacevich was right about Kilcullen is another question that I won’t address, not knowing enough of the details.
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One criticism of how the US generates its foreign policy is that there is an establishment (VSPs, if you will) that profit from wars and recommendations of wars in ways that peace would not provide. So these people recommend what benefits them and that’s what the people of the US get, whether it’s to our benefit or not. I tend to believe this is a valid criticism, although perhaps I would not put it quite this strongly.
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So, Lexington Green, it’s up to us bloggers to try to break up this cycle!
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If all goes well, I hope to post more on this topic in the next few days.
March 10th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Hi Zen,
1st of all, thx for the prompt reply.
Fully agree with you on what you call the primary issue.
Still disagree with your contention that the bailout was primarily beneficial to Brits, French, Germans etc. You are unable to adduce any evidence, or even any data at all. So that is just a conspiracy theory, nothing more. Now there are quite enough people in the Bush and Obama administrations with links to the major banks, aren`t there ?
As for the politicians` twaddle, I do not care. You overestimate the German politicians anyway, most of them are far too ill informed and provincial in outlook to understand how the bailout works or what the financial mechanics behind all those acronyms (CDS, CDO etc.) are. What is more, most of them have a public sector background and wd not be able to distiguish a vested interest of their constituents` from a 6 foot baboon with a machete in his paw.
The German banking sector is in a mess, but for a number of other reasons IMO, the main being the strength of mutual savings banks and other semi-public institutions which hamper the growth of strong commercial banks (I am an insurer not a banker so I wd not wish to overstate my case here).
Incidentially, the problem is not what the politicians say, but the widespread distrust of the whole financial system. The dotcom bubble was bad enough by itself, but that is nothing compared to what we have today.
Finally, this is an excellent blog and, egotistical as it may seem, I wd like it to remain that way.
March 10th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
My post is up now. It’s the second part of my review of Thomas Barnett’s Great Powers.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:47 am
Hi Cheryl,
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I will check it out shortly!
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Hi fmc
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Thank you very much for the kind words, glad you enjoy the blog!. You are correct that this is presently a "data-free analysis" and it will remain so until Treasury and the Fed are compelled to release the details to the public. I will take your word as to the quality of German politicians’ intellectual capacities, given the infamously low level ( morally, intellectually, legally) of my home state’s notorious pols, anyone else’s will look palatable by comparison.
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The crisis is very worrisome. The complexity and scale of the financial market problems – notably the derivative instruments which I do not pretend to understand – seem to have created a whistling in the dark attitude among the elite which generated two bad policy responses. A) Incompetent Stimulus from Washington and B) No stimulus from EU states. The U.S. does not have the economic weight to pull the globe out of recession by borrowing on our own, this is not 1982. The EU states have to pony up here along with the US and China or the G-20 needs to come to a common, coordinated, policy on a global soft landing for gradual debt liquidation and not try to beggar thy neighbor . Even The whole G-20 acting in concert may not be able to do more than mitigate the depression if worst case estimates of the debt picture are accurate but right now everyone is wasting time, fiddling while Rome burns. Very frustrating to watch and I don’t have the specialization required for a detailed analysis so I have eschewed posting on it.
March 11th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Cheryl – I commented at Whirledview
http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2009/03/a-foreign-policy-insurgency.html
March 11th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Hi Zen,
I do not know whether you want to pursue this, but two observations from Old Europe may interest you:
First, the crisis will provide arguments to those who were always skeptical about or hostile to the free market approach anyway. After the collapse of the Soviet Union they had to "shut it" and they basically did. Now they are back.
Further to this point, both Germany and France have a tradition of state interference or what the French call dirigisme in the economy which is not confined to left at all (Bismarck, DeGaulle or further back).
Second, the crisis may well have security and political implications which go far beyond those of 9/11. I trust am not alarmist and I hope I am wrong. Time will tell – very soon IMO.
Whether the stimulus – or any stimulus – will work seems impossible to say at present, even for economists . In fact, those chaps seem to have been created by providence in order to make metereologists or astrologers to look good. Maybe you can have a look at the second point sometime, I wd be most interested.