CIAO DATE: 09/2012
Volume: 3, Issue: 3
June 2012
Military Support for Democracy (PDF)
Dennis C. Blair
The roles played by the Egyptian, Tunisian, Libyan, and Yemeni armed forces during the Arab Spring are the latest chapter in a long story of political transitions in which the armed forces have played a positive role, or at least a passive role, in bringing unpopular dictatorships to an end. Citing the recent peaceful collapses of dictatorships as well as numerous other historical examples, this article examines the causes of transitions from military-supported dictatorships to more democratic governments, and proposes ways in which developed democracies can use their military-military relations to encourage democratic development.
Concept Failure? COIN, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Theory (PDF)
Colin S. Gray
Much of the debate in recent years between rival groups of military intellectuals over counterinsurgency doctrine could be rendered more coherent and useful were it conducted in the intellectual context of general strategic theory. In a nine-part argument, Colin Gray addresses misconceptions and confusions inherent in the debate and discusses the need for a re-conceptualization of counterinsurgency through formal education in strategic theory for scholars. Gray concludes by stressing the fallacy of viewing counterinsurgency as either a principally military or principally political venture and the dangers of removing it from its conceptual setting.
Silver Bullet or Time Suck? Revisiting the Role of Interagency Coordination in Complex Operations (PDF)
Andrea Barbara Baumann
Integrated or whole-of-government approaches have come to be considered best practice in complex operations by a variety of multilateral organizations and governments. Recent efforts have largely focused on the seamless integration of civilian and military efforts in the theatre of operations. In the contemporary budgetary and political climate, however, the tools and processes that have been introduced over the past decade to facilitate the integration of defense, diplomacy and development have to be revisited. The challenge is to design a flexible institutional framework that allows agencies to cooperate effectively if and where needed, while at the same time allowing them to prioritize scarce resources in accordance with distinctly different core mandates and working methods. The article assesses the contribution made by two recent institutional mechanisms – Provincial Reconstruction Teams and the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization – to interagency coordination in stability operations and argues for a more selective approach. Institutionally, a new approach should invest in networks and people instead of advocating large-scale bureaucratic reorganization. Conceptually, it needs to account for the inevitability of friction among agencies within a comprehensive approach and more explicitly recognize tradeoffs arising from in joint structures. Organizations should strive to build on the experience of a generation of staff who experienced both the costs and benefits of coordination first-hand in order to devise a smart and selective model for future missions.
Finding Innovation in State-building: Moving Beyond the Orthodox Liberal Model (PDF)
Mark Sedra
Since the end of the Cold War there has been wide consensus in the international policy community that fragile, failed and conflict-affected states present one of the most pressing threats to global security. The world's ungoverned and poorly governed spaces, like Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, came to be seen as incubators and launching pads for a host of threats from terrorism and transnational crime to pandemic disease and environmental disasters. Although the scope and nature of those threats has increasingly become a topic for debate, what has become clear is that international responses have not been up to the task. The contemporary liberal state-building project has achieved few clear successes, opening the door for new models and schools of thought that challenge core Western and U.S. assumptions and approaches.
Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock, Matt Andrews
Many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they change what policies or organizations look like rather than what they actually do. If development resources and legitimacy continue to flow without demonstrated improvements in performance this undermines the impetus for effective action to build state capability or improve performance. This dynamic facilitates ‘capability traps' in which state capability stagnates, or even deteriorates, over long periods of time in spite of governments remaining engaged in development rhetoric and continuing to receive development resources. We propose a framework for explaining how capability traps endure over time, and preview an approach that offers some concrete strategies for helping countries ‘escape' from such traps.
Lessons from MoDA: Continuing the Conversation on How to Advise Institution-building (PDF)
Nadia Gerspacher, Adrian Shtuni
The Afghanistan Ministry of Defense Advisors Program (MoDA) was established in 2009 to recruit, train, and deploy senior civilian advisors from the Department of Defense to the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan / Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (NTMA/CSTC-A). Advisors are assigned to either the Ministry of Defense (MOD) or the Ministry of Interior (MOI). The goal is to help transform these security ministries into efficient, effective, and professional institutions, capable of inheriting and executing the overall national security mission by 2014. This article describes lessons learned from MoDA thus far, including how to structure the advising mission, how to integrate it into the larger international intervention, and how to select and prepare advisors to work with foreign counterparts in a reform environment.
Recognizing Systems in Afghanistan: Lessons Learned and New Approaches to Operational Assessments (PDF)
William P. Upshur, Jonathan W. Roginski, David J. Kilcullen
Over the last decade operations assessments have consistently failed to meaningfully describe complex conflict environments and progress of counterinsurgency campaigns in those environments. Operations assessments have perfunctorily served up junk arithmetic founded on hundreds of metrics and indicators, many of which are unobtainable and others of which are irrelevant. As such, the operations assessments process has generally been marginalized from planning and commanders’ decision cycles. This paper outlines a vastly simplified, yet highly descriptive method of assessing counterinsurgency campaigns, which can conceivably be refitted for use in other conflict or post-conflict theaters.
In Somalia, Kenya Risks Death by a Thousand Cuts (PDF)
Lesley Anne Warner
For the past two decades, Kenya has pursued a multilateral and primarily diplomatic approach to Somalia's instability. However, in October 2011, Kenya launched an invasion of southern Somalia to dismantle al-Qaeda-affiliated Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, and thereby ensure Kenya's national security and territorial sovereignty. Yet, there appears to be a notable disconnect between Kenya's stated objectives in Somalia and the level of effort required to achieve its desired end-state. Al-Shabaab is but one symptom of Somalia's enduring security, political, and humanitarian challenges; as such, the demise of al-Shabaab will not necessarily eliminate the many threats flowing over the Kenya-Somalia border. This article provides a context for Kenya's invasion of Somalia, and highlights key challenges that may preclude Kenya's military operations from stabilizing the country.
The Opportunity Cost of Security (PDF)
Dov S. Zakheim
The debate on the US role in nation building grapples with whether the US should be involved in national building at all, and if it were to undertake it, the degree to which the military should be involved. Contributing to this debate, this article offers five observations on the do's and don'ts of state building, including the (1) importance of multilateralism, (2) necessity of sufficient resources in the early stages of nation building without flooding the state's ability to absorb them, (3) importance of civilian capacity building, (4) need to limit the military's role, and (5) necessity of building sustainable programs in the state. Dov Zahkeim expands on these observations based on personal experiences as a senior-level DoD policymaker.
Village Stability Operations and Afghan Local Police (PDF)
Robert Hulslander, Jake Spivey
Village Stability Operations (VSO) integrate security, governance and development efforts in strategically important rural Afghan districts and villages which lack significant government presence; VSO facilitates the establishment and maturation of critical connections between the central Afghan government and the populace. This coalition-initiated program, executed by US special operations forces (SOF) and select conventional forces, trains a temporary local security force known as the Afghan Local Police (ALP) whose members are selected by village leaders/shuras and who are subject to the authority of the Afghan government through its Ministry of Interior. VSO/ALP enables rural Afghans to stand up for themselves and augments Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) operations while capacity is built. Equally important, the initiative shapes conditions for enhancing development and governance in key terrain areas critical to the COIN campaign and the Afghan government. In response to a suggestion from Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan (CFSOCC-A), JCOA analyzed VSO/ALP to create a study that discusses the initiative and highlights a number of the unique aspects, effects, and challenges of this innovative program.
Hybrid Warfare and Transnational Threats: Perspectives for an Era of Persistent Conflict (PDF)
John Arquilla
Hybrid Warfare and Transnational Threats: Perspectives for an Era of Persistent Conflict Coedited by Paul Brister, William H. Natter III, and Robert R. Tomes Council for Emerging National Security Affairs, 2011 318 pp., $15.00 ISBN: 978-098382-800-6
Victory for Hire: Private Security Companies' Impact on Military Effectiveness (PDF)
T.X. Hammes
Victory for Hire: Private Security Companies' Impact on Military Effectiveness By Molly Dunigan Stanford University Press, 2011 256 pp., $24.95 ISBN: 978-080477-459-8