CIAO DATE: 02/2012
Volume: 2, Issue: 3
June 2011
Forging a Comprehensive Approach to Counterinsurgency Operations (PDF)
Robert Caslen Jr., Bradley Loudon
The United States will face a myriad of new strategic challenges and opportunities in the 21st century that will further test its capability to succeed in an increasingly competitive, dynamic, and uncertain operating environment. The single most important prerequisite to success in future counterinsurgency operations is the establishment of conditions that facilitate and enable a whole-of-government approach that is forged from a unity of effort and purpose. To realize this, key governmental stakeholders must foster permissive rather than restrictive organizational environments where cooperation and coordination are the standard rather than the exception. While this transformation of agency culture represents an enduring effort on the part of key stakeholders, the authors of this article offer several short-term solutions based on first-hand experiences upholding American foreign policy “at the tip of the spear” as military commanders. These include the elimination of interdepartmental barriers and the establishment of innovative training and educational paradigms. The most pressing obstacle is arrogance that hinders our cultural understanding of the fabric of the host nation society and our ability to establish relationships and partnerships based on mutual trust and respect.
Terrorist-Criminal Pipelines and Criminalized States: Emerging Alliances (PDF)
Douglas Farah
Transnational criminal organizations, networks, and terrorist groups are increasingly helping each other move products, money, weapons, personnel, and goods. They accomplish this through an informal network or series of overlapping pipelines. These pipelines can be best understood as recombinant chains with links that can couple and decouple as necessary to meet the interests of the networks involved. Many operate in “alternatively governed” spaces outside of direct state control or within criminal state enterprises. A criminal state counts on the integration of the state's leadership into the criminal enterprise and the use of public services—such as licensing, issuance of official documents, regulatory regimes, border control—for illicit purposes. A further variation of the criminal state occurs when a state franchises part of its territory to nonstate groups, with the protection of the central government or a regional power sharing the profits. The author shows that understanding and addressing these threats requires capacity-building in human intelligence collection and prosecuting transnational criminal organizations.
Criminal Insurgency in the Americas and Beyond (PDF)
Robert Killebrew
Transnational crime and criminal networks have grown to such proportions that they have become a global problem. Large-scale crime, terrorism, insurgency, and piracy are blending into transnational criminal networks, capable of holding ground and challenging the power of the state, and threatening the basic fabric of society. Overcoming transnational crime requires the United States to merge domestic and international strategies. Domestically, the U.S. must do more to enable local police to integrate their effort and to develop, analyze, and share intelligence on narco-gangs and the cartels. Other domestic requirements for a successful anticartel strategy include better treatment for drug users, immigration reform, rehabilitation, and an all-out effort to move gangs out of schools. Internationally, the U.S. must adopt a long-range foreign policy strategy to help struggling states to restore the rule of law and civic security. The U.S. should partner with states already engaged in the “cartel wars.” Colombia and Mexico may be the two Latin states with the best chance of becoming anchors of success in the Western Hemisphere.
Law Enforcement Capacity-building in African Postconflict Communities (PDF)
Bruce Baker
In the post conflict environment, disbanded armed groups and militias maintain a “clan” affiliation with their ex-fighting colleagues. Generally marginalized from the rest of society and accustomed to violent conflict resolution, their crime rates frequently escalate after the official end of war. Where the police are not sufficiently effective and resources are limited, these ex-combatant nonstate actors may have a part to play as local law enforcement groups in unarmed crime prevention and investigation. This article analyzes arguments for and against donor support and development of such nonstate actors as providers of public goods and services. The challenge is to distinguish between “reformable” individuals and those “beyond reform.” Donors can utilize several criteria. First, are the nonstate entities popularly supported? Second, are they inclusive in providing services to all social groups? Third, do they conduct themselves with professionalism, operating without exploitation, extortion, or corruption? The article concludes with practical steps as to how such nonstate police actors might be strengthened including leadership development, intergroup nonviolent dispute resolution skills, enhancing existing links between state and nonstate actors, creating area policing networks, and establishing policing oversight frameworks.
International Support for State-building: Flawed Consensus (PDF)
Stephen Krasner
Conventional wisdom holds that the most important challenge for state development is the creation of effective institutions. The major objective for external actors engaged in state-building is to enhance capacity in target states. This perspective, which tacitly takes the ideal typical Weberian state as the ultimate objective, is deeply flawed. The Weberian ideal, in which a fully autonomous state effectively governs its own territory, is unattainable for many poorly governed or failed states. Governance may improve, but it will be problematic. The central state may not be able to provide security across its territory or even have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. External actors may share executive authority. Services might be provided by independent service providers rather than by the state. Policy could be more effectively framed if decisionmakers abandoned their commitment to conventional sovereignty and recognized the variety of authority structures, not only horizontally within states but also vertically between them, that exist in the contemporary international system.
Irregular Conflict and the Wicked Problem Dilemma: Strategies of Imperfection (PDF)
Franklin Kramer
Irregular conflict poses a wicked problem—with contradictory and changing requirements, multiple stakeholders, many interdependencies, and problems that keep evolving. Successful resolution demands strategies that can produce satisfactory results despite imperfections in motivations, capabilities, and techniques. Based on an analysis of successful irregular conflict resolutions, this article proposes a framework and broad set of techniques. In undertaking to generate “good enough” resolutions, a combination of competitive, collaborative, and authoritative approaches will allow for greater flexibility and effectiveness. The problem of changing behaviors is the critical element. Doing so will require understanding multiple critical actors and their often conflicting objectives, and applying, within the context of a multiphased adaptive approach, the techniques of persistent security, thoughtful interactions with key groups including the importance of a favorable base from which to build, establishment of appropriate and sometimes multiple and even competing structures, the control of spoilers, the management of hatred, close scrutiny of economic actions including the importance of absorptive capacity and the synergistic consequences of projects and the potential for corruption, the limitation of sanctuaries, and the use of negotiations.
Three Lessons from Contemporary Challenges to Security (PDF)
Max Manwaring
There is much to be learned about the national security threats generated by transnational criminal organizations, insurgents or politicized gang,s and other violent nonstate actors. Regardless of differing sizes, motives, and methods of operations, the primary objective of all gangs is to influence or compel radical policy and achieve political change. The gang phenomenon transcends law enforcement problems to extend to national security and sovereignty concerns. The author analyzes three demonstrative cases with varying forms of nonstate violence—the Jamaican Posses, the Brazilian Primero Comando da Capital (PCC), and the al Qaeda gang that was responsible for the 2004 bombing of the Madrid commuter train station. Three broadly applicable lessons may be drawn. First, locking up gang members in maximum security prisons is an inadequate solution. Second, small gangs can be as lethal and dangerous as large gangs. Third, even in a democracy, the public may favor the security and social services provided by criminal gangs rather than that provided by the government.
Five Missteps in Interagency Reform - And What to Do About Them (PDF)
James Carafano
The U.S. Government has a long history of dealing with interagency challenges—a legacy filled with epic successes, monumental failures, and everything in between. Washington has gotten more wrong than right when it comes to instituting a feasible, suitable, and acceptable whole-of-government approach. This article discusses five major missteps and recommendations for improvement. One misstep is that Washington has no professional historical foundation on which to build whole-of-government activities. Second, Washington needs a doctrine of practice—a body of common knowledge and understanding that informs how government should think about solving complex problems, rather than a rule book mandating what to do. Third, the skills, knowledge, and attributes of the leaders tackling complex problems are far more important than the formal organizations and processes. Fourth, the U.S. Government lacks good operational structures for managing interagency activities, particularly overseas operations. Finally, Congress needs to institute reforms in how it appropriates money for interagency activities through consolidation of oversight, setting broad rules for who is in charge, and establishing better rules on how to fund interagency operations.
Stability Operations: From Policy to Practice (PDF)
James Derleath, Jason Alexander
Examining the causes of the 9/11 attacks and the responses required to diminish the likelihood of future attacks, the Bush administration undertook a comprehensive national security review. Two significant findings emerged. First, contemporary threats facing the United States could not be mitigated by military force alone. Second, it is necessary to stabilize weak or failed states in order to diminish the grievances terrorists and other spoilers use to mobilize support. The 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS) acknowledged this new international environment and declared fragile and conflict states a threat to U.S. security. Consequently, “stabilizing” these countries became a foreign policy goal. The Obama administration’s May 2010 NSS continued this policy. Nevertheless, U.S. responses to unstable environments remain ad hoc and in most cases ineffective. While there are numerous challenges, a key constraint is the lack of practical tools for civilian and military field personnel conducting stability operations. This article examines the features of stability operations; reasons why bureaucratic, doctrinal, and policy changes have not had an effect at the operational and tactical levels; and how the use of USAID’s District Stabilization Framework (DSF) can help practitioners conduct more effective stability operations.
Stability Operations: From Policy to Practice (PDF)
James Derleth, Jason Alexander
Examining the causes of the 9/11 attacks and the responses required to diminish the likelihood of future attacks, the Bush administration undertook a comprehensive national security review. Two significant findings emerged. First, contemporary threats facing the United States could not be mitigated by military force alone. Second, it is necessary to stabilize weak or failed states in order to diminish the grievances terrorists and other spoilers use to mobilize support. The 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS) acknowledged this new international environment and declared fragile and conflict states a threat to U.S. security. Consequently, “stabilizing” these countries became a foreign policy goal. The Obama administration’s May 2010 NSS continued this policy. Nevertheless, U.S. responses to unstable environments remain ad hoc and in most cases ineffective. While there are numerous challenges, a key constraint is the lack of practical tools for civilian and military field personnel conducting stability operations. This article examines the features of stability operations; reasons why bureaucratic, doctrinal, and policy changes have not had an effect at the operational and tactical levels; and how the use of USAID’s District Stabilization Framework (DSF) can help practitioners conduct more effective stability operations.
Gangs, Netwar, and "Community Counterinsurgency" in Haiti (PDF)
David Becker
Haiti, the epitome of a fragile state, has been receiving international assistance via repeated UN missions and U.S. interventions for more than 20 years. Criminal gangs exploited the country’s sovereignty gap by wresting control over territory from the state and acquiring legitimacy among certain poor populations. The gangs can be understood as a network of “violence entrepreneurs” operating within a complex environment, a system of systems within the slums. While not as sophisticated as major international criminal organizations, between 2006 and 2007 the politically connected criminal gangs constituted a major challenge for the state and the UN peacekeeping mission, as well as a threat to national stability. The U.S. Government funded an innovative and integrated effort, the Haiti Stabilization Initiative (HSI), to counter the threat by investing in an analogous but countervailing approach reinforcing “social entrepreneurs” and their networks. This supplanted undesirable feedback loop effects with ones that enhance and consolidate stability. Risky participatory and community-led stabilization interventions marginalized and undermined gangs on their home turf. Using development tools for stabilization purposes, HSI stabilization goals were political rather than “needs-based” in nature. While the flexible and comprehensive approach generated important gains, there were also lessons learned and recognition of the initiative’s limitations.
The Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands
Andrew Leith
The Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) is an Australian led diplomatic intervention which deployed in July 2003 to establish peace and security. RAMSI has a “light” military presence and a strong emphasis on law and justice, democratic governance, and economic growth. The efforts of RAMSI and other donors have led to short-term successes. Challenges remain in the police and justice sectors, including entrenched corruption, poor resourcing, inability to recruit and retain qualified legal staff, lack of engagement with traditional justice systems, and outsourcing much of the daily work. The economic system is unsustainable, driven by large infusions of international aid and a rapid expansion of the forestry sector. The apparent stabilization success of RAMSI is undermined by fragile rule of law, short-term economic growth, and an electoral and political system which is both corrupt and nepotistic. For the same reasons that plague reconstruction and stabilization efforts in many other postconflict countries, the political instability in the Solomon Islands will continue to undermine the best efforts of RAMSI and the international community.
Learning While Fighting: Operational Knowledge Management That Makes a Difference (PDF)
Steven Mains, Gil Ad Ariely
The collection and use of lessons is neither a new phenomenon nor a new need. What is new is the quantity and velocity of current and historical lessons available to commanders and soldiers in almost real-time. Despite these recent advances, there is no indication that we have reached a plateau in our ability to collect and share lessons. The authors argue for the centrality of Lessons Learned structures and techniques for accelerating learning, knowledge and adaptation in complex operations both for civilian and military organizations. Focusing on the military environment and touching on recent civilian lessons learned efforts, the authors conduct an historical review of structures and techniques, highlighting the on-going “learning competition.” The second part of the article overlays a theoretical construct of knowledge complexity on these evolving adaptive structures. Finally, the article proposes a framework for organizations developing Lessons Learned. The proposed model, which is being implemented by the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, aims to network communities of practice in military structures supporting the fighting forces, network knowledge in units to allow emergence of operational patterns and share lessons and knowledge amongst units, and enhance professional military education.
How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle (PDF)
James Soligan
Ongoing engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq have resurrected one of the most important and challenging questions facing political and military leaders in the United States and other nations: how to set objectives, conduct operations, and terminate wars in a manner that achieves intended political outcomes. The collective track record leaves much to be desired, and results of even the most recent conflicts would argue that we have not yet learned the necessary lessons from wars in the 20th century to prevent making many of the same mistakes and suffering similar consequences in the 21st century.