CIAO DATE: 02/2012
Volume: 2, Issue: 1
December 2010
The Iraqi and AQI Roles in the Sunni Awakening (PDF)
Najim Abed Al-Jabouri, Sterling Jensen
After the coalition forces invaded Iraq in 2003, Sunnis revolted against the idea of de-Sunnifying Iraq. Partnering with the United States in 2006 was mainly an attempt to recoup Sunni losses once the United States had seemingly changed its position in their regard. This happened as the Sunni community increasingly saw al Qaeda and Iran as bigger threats than the U.S. occupation. The Sunni Awakening had two main parts: the Anbar Awakening and the Awakening councils, or the Sons of Iraq program. The Anbar Awakening was an Iraqi grassroots initiative supported by the United States and paid for by the Iraqi government. The Sons of Iraq program was a U.S.-led and -funded initiative to spread the success of the Anbar Awakening into other Sunni areas, particularly heterogeneous areas, and was not fully supported by the Iraqi government. If not for al Qaeda’s murder and intimidation campaign on Sunnis, and its tactic of creating a sectarian war, the Anbar Awakening—a fundamental factor in the success of the 2007 surge—most probably would not have occurred, and it would have been difficult for the United States in 2006 to convince Sunnis to partner with them in a fight against al Qaeda.
From Idea to Implementation: Standing up the Civilian Response Corps (PDF)
Samuel Farr
On October 14, 1960, President John F. Kennedy laid out his vision for the Peace Corps in a speech at the University of Michigan. Less than 5 months later, on March 1, 1961, the President signed an Executive order creating the Peace Corps. Using funds from mutual security appropriations, Peace Corps programs moved quickly through the design phase and into implementation. It was an example of how nimble government can be when political will is married with idealism and a willingness to improvise and take action.
Third-Generation Civil-Military Relations: Moving Beyond the Security-Development Nexus (PDF)
Frederik Rosen
The U.S. elevation of security assistance to a core military capability has divided the waters between those who believe the military should stick to preparing strike capability and fighting wars and those who believe the world needs much broader forms of military engagement. Recent developments in strategy indicate that the latter opinion will prevail. The commencement of U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM) in 2007 with its civilian command, interagency modalities, and soft power mandate reflects that an amalgamation of military and civilian capabilities is viewed at the highest levels as the way forward for realizing U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives.
Supporting Peace: The End (PDF)
William Durch
All good things must end. Bad things, on the other hand, seem to get a pass from nature. In the universe observed thus far, life on Earth is anomalous. Birth, growth, order, and building are difficult uphill struggles while death, decay, disorder, and destruction—the engines of entropy—roll on unless stopped. War is humanity’s entropy accelerator. The previous century witnessed war on an unprecedented scale, waged by industrialized states against one another, propelled by secular ideologies of the One Best Way or the one best variety of human. Today, most wars are fought on relatively smaller scales, within nominal state borders, by combinations of quasi-state forces, nonstate forces, and externally orchestrated, state-based interventions. Yet the implications of these smaller wars are global, as the pools of entropy they create are havens or way stations for disorder in the form of two-bit pirates and four-bit drug lords as well as this century’s dominant extremist ideologies, which claim not the mantle of history or superior genes but rather divine warrant to mete out infinite justice as they see fit.
Nonstate Security Threats in Africa: Challenges for U.S. Engagement (PDF)
Andre Le Sage
This article provides an overview of Africa's irregular, nonstate threats, followed by an analysis of their strategic implications for regional peace and stability, as well as the national security interests of the United States. After reviewing the elements of the emerging international consensus on how best to address these threats, the conclusion highlights a number of new and innovative tools that can be used to build political will on the continent to confront these security challenges. This article is intended as a background analysis for those who are new to the African continent, as well as a source of detailed information on emerging threats that receive too little public or policy-level attention.
Shock and Awe a Decade and a Half Later: Still Relevant, Still Misunderstood (PDF)
Harlan Ullman
Fifteen years ago, a small group of former senior military and civilian defense officials were troubled by the debate over American military strategy and its associated force posture.1 Given the implosion of the Soviet Union half a decade earlier and the stunning and overwhelming victory in the 100-hour Gulf War of 1991, the predominance of the U.S. military was assured. The weaponry was technologically the best in the world and the fighting force unmatched in ability. In essence, the first Gulf War finally cast off the dark shadow and unhappy legacy of Vietnam once and for all.
A Tale of Two Manuals (PDF)
Raphael Cohen
In January 13, 2009, in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Henrietta Fore unveiled the U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide. The guide was the first of its kind—an attempt at an interagency doctrine reaching across civilian and military agencies in the U.S. Government. It sought to create unifying principles for the counterinsurgency fight and to unite the involved agencies through a common game plan to "achieve synergy among political, security, economic and information activities."1 Coordinated by the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the Department of State, the guide was coauthored by all the major government stakeholders in the counterinsurgency fight: USAID; the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Treasury, Homeland Security, Transportation, and Agriculture; and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Moreover, the guide's creation brought together some of the leading counterinsurgency strategists from across the U.S. Government and drew upon current experience. Seemingly, the finished product was well poised to shape the way the U.S. Government thinks about and conducts counterinsurgencies.
Post 9/11 Stability Operations: How U.S. Army Doctrine is Shaping National Security Strategy (PDF)
Corri Zoli, Nicholas Armstrong
It was only a matter of time before the elevated language of post-9/11 security discourse, and the phrase the global war on terrorism itself, was bound to reap both practical applications and studied reversals.1 Without the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan and each country's challenging reconstruction projects, one might expect idealist solutions to this historical juncture.2 Only 8 short years ago, the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States (NSS 2002) offered just that, the virtues of pressing for freedom and democracy against a new breed of post-Cold War threats.3 In now memorable language, the policy document linked "the great struggles" of the 20th century "between liberty and totalitarianism" to a "single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."4 Displaying the "black and white" worldview of unchallenged power, NSS 2002 grouped 21st-century nations together that "share a commitment to protecting basic human rights and guaranteeing political and economic freedom," arguing that these values would "assure their future prosperity."5 Such values, it noted, are "right and true for every person" in "every society," and, in turn, "the duty of protecting" them "against their enemies" is the "common calling of freedom-loving people across the globe and across the ages"-a role spearheaded by the United States insofar as it enjoyed "unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence."6
Building Police Capacity in Afghanistan: The Challenges of a Multilateral Approach (PDF)
William Caldwell IV, Nathan Finney
In effective police force is critical to achieving Afghan aspirations for stability and U.S. strategic objectives in Afghanistan. As the most visible representation of the government in towns and villages across the country, police capacity must be the highest priority of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) and international community. When a sufficient and sustainable Afghan National Police (ANP) is built and employed, it will help assure the people that the GIRoA is committed to their security and prosperity, serving as a shield to protect them from malign actors and insurgent forces. The acquisition of this legitimacy is the primary objective that will help defeat the insurgency and bring enduring peace and stability to Afghanistan.
Pakistan Earthquake Relief Operations: Leveraging Humanitarian Missions for Strategic Success (PDF)
William Bowers
On Christmas morning 2005, at Saint Patrick's Catholic Church in Auckland, New Zealand, a priest stepped up to the pulpit to deliver his sermon. "Christmas is a time of giving. And this morning," he said, while holding aloft a thick, off-white wool blanket, "several hundred children suffering from the aftereffects of the earthquake in northern Pakistan will wake up and receive one of these." The priest then explained that several local farmers came to him wanting to do something special for Christmas. Through the church's coordination with relief agencies in Pakistan, the farmers learned that bedding was desperately needed and made hundreds of wool blankets from the fleece of their sheep. The church shipped these blankets to Pakistan, where they were distributed by helicopters to villages and into the hands of cold children.
The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era (PDF)
John Coffey
Winston Churchill once famously declared, "Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we have to think." Churchill's admonition underlies the theme of The Frugal Superpower, a slender but trenchant work presenting a chastening forecast for American foreign policy in the 21stcentury. Michael Mandelbaum, who is the Christian A. Herter Professor and Director of American Foreign Policy at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, explains how economic constraints will curtail America's post–World War II role as the "world's de facto government" and the consequences of that diminished role. The era of "American exceptionalism" has waned, he maintains; henceforth, the United States will behave more like an ordinary power. Written with verve and pith, this is a book for all
Why Vietnam Matters (PDF)
Scott Moore
The Vietnam War, long viewed as an example of a U.S. military and political failure best to be forgotten, has reemerged as a hot topic of historical revision. With counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, analysts and pundits are drawing parallels between American mistakes today and those of 40 years ago. Unfortunately, too many merely offer polemics over reasoned analyses, either restating long-held assumptions about Vietnam formulated in the immediate aftermath of the war and unquestioned since or providing shallow summaries of the war intended to prove preconceived points. The Vietnam War, according to much of the literature, remains a fiasco directed by arrogant politicians and inept commanders and fought by luckless troops who stumbled about the countryside blind to the realities they faced. Yet the Vietnam War—as with all wars, to include today's—proved to be a far more complex conflict than some would have us believe. If there were those whose hubris failed us, there were also dedicated military and civilians who fought mightily to achieve success. The inept served side by side with the skilled. While blame for ultimate failure can be fairly apportioned, in the end the United States eventually succumbed as much to the conditions and, with due credit not often granted by historians, the competent and well-led enemy it faced as to its own incompetence. Whether or not the Vietnam War could have been won (assuming winning is ever the objective of counterinsurgencies) remains a question that cannot be reduced to simple formulas or indictments of individuals or institutions. Instead, understanding the complexities of counterinsurgency, both then and now, demands a far more nuanced examination of the challenges inherent in these types of conflicts.
Samuel Worthington
In Exporting Security, Derek Reveron provides a thorough analysis of the changing security environment within which the U.S. military operates, and throughout the book he makes the case why military strategy and engagement must continue their evolution beyond combat. There is compelling rationale why the face of the U.S. military must change, why the phasing of military operations must include the creation of a stable environment for development efforts, and why different approaches to security cooperation and efforts to promote maritime security are needed to suit 21st-century missions.