CIAO DATE: 11/2012
Volume: 3, Issue: 4
September 2012
Post-Asad Syria (PDF)
Daniel Serwer
Most analysts are worrying about getting Bashar al Assad out of office and out of Syria. What happens after he goes? Post-war transition in Syria will require a massive and complex effort in order to achieve anything like a democratic state. This article analyzes issues likely to arise in achieving the vital components of transition. It starts not with the day after but rather with the desirable end states, which are mutually interdependent and have to be pursued simultaneously: a safe and secure environment, rule of law, stable governance, a sustainable economy, and social well-being. The challenges are daunting, the more so as the violence continues. Preparations should begin right away. Syrians should lead the effort, which is highly context- and path- dependent, but internationals should pitch in, drawing on experience gained in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, and elsewhere.
"Left of Bang": The Value of Sociocultural Analysis in Today's Environment (PDF)
Michael T. Flynn, James Sisco, David C. Ellis
The Intelligence Community has the opportunity to meet growing demands for socio-cultural analysis (SCA), but requires a paradigm describing how to resource this capability and explaining its value to foreign and military policy. This article asserts that today’s threat environment, in which subnational actors and complex social trends persistently undermine the state system, requires addressing budding conflicts before they turn violent. Doing so will allow the U.S. to better respond with a wider range of policy options at lower cost. The Conflict Continuum is offered to conceptualize the value of conducting SCA before crises are manifest. Additionally, the Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Intelligence framework is suggested to integrate whole-of-nation resources for understanding threats to populations, their states, and national interests. "RSI is a concept or paradigm co-developed by USSOCOM’s Matthew Puls and US Army TRADOC G2’s Dr. Kira Hutchinson for incorporating existing socio-cultural analysis resources into the intelligence process."
Evolved Irregular Threats (PDF)
Ben Fitzgerald, Pia Wanek
This article investigates the future of conflict in urban terrain, considering both trends in the operating environment and likely advancements in enemy capability as contributing to irregular threats. These trends are identified in theoretical terms and then examined in a hypothetical operation with explication of associated implications. Many contingencies must be considered in future analysis and capability development to create a balanced force. However, it is imperative that national security professionals consider the likelihood, and implications, of having to undertake future operations in littoral urban centers against evolved irregular threats.
Challenges Developing Host Nation Police Capacity (PDF)
James K. Wither
This article addresses the challenges of policing on UN and coalition stability operations and assesses efforts to achieve host nation police primacy, defined as a situation where indigenous police have the main responsibility for internal security and maintaining the rule of law. The article offers a broad perspective, identifying and discussing common, re-occurring problems that have beset policing operations and assessing national and international efforts to make better use of foreign and host nation police assets. Although national and international staffs have worked hard to improve policing capabilities over the last 20 years, the provision of effective policing for stability operations will continue to challenge the international community, not least because different perceptions of national interests, domestic political constraints, and bureaucratic inertia continue to impact police capabilities negatively.
Logistics Islands: The Global Supply Archipelago and the Topologics of Defense (PDF)
Pierre Bélanger, Alexander Scott Arroyo
A vast military-logistical landscape is forming as a result of force protection policies and long-term U.S. engagement in distant theaters of operation around the world. Facilitated by shifts in technology (aerospace, unmanning), policy (LOGCAP and BRAC) and strategy (preemptive action, force protection) since the Cold War, the spatial infrastructure of the U.S military has witnessed an unprecedented transformation both at home, and abroad. Responding to the geopolitical dynamics of national boundaries and assymetric nature of urban warfare, engagement by the U.S. military has responded in-kind with transmodal, transoceanic and transcontinental infrastructure of considerable physical scale and scope. This article chronicles the geospatial extents and effects of this expansion by looking at the formation of logistics islands and the adverse effects of the global defense supply chains which connect them.
The Stabilization Dilemma (PDF)
Greg Mills
There is an inevitable tension between the need to create conditions of stability through peace-building interventions and longer-term developmental needs. These tensions include focusing immediate attention and spending on local militaries, militias, and powerbrokers, for example, rather than on longer-term governance imperatives and the foundations for sustainable job creation, or put alternatively, on short-term humanitarian assistance (often involving the delivery of food) rather than development. Three central questions emerge: Should we balance the powerbroker versus good governance imperative and if so, how? How can we get the politics right—or better? How can foreign interventions best assist private sector growth? Dealing with this “stabilization dilemma” is problematic and involves political trade-offs, yet is not only possible but necessary. This is a special quandary for donors and other external agents as they seek to change the incentive structure that contributed to conflict in the first instance.
Political-Military Lessons from U.S. Operations in Vietnam and Afghanistan (PDF)
Michael J. Williams
Analogical comparisons between the American experience in Vietnam and in Afghanistan are rife in the media, but it remains unclear how effective analogical reasoning is in understanding the contemporary challenges in Afghanistan. The literature illustrates that while analogies can be helpful in understanding problems initially, adherence to stark analogical reasoning often blocks a fuller understanding of a complex problem that generally differs when one goes beyond superficial analysis. Thus analogical arguments that Afghanistan is nothing like Vietnam or that Afghanistan is just like Vietnam contribute little to our understanding of the challenges faced today by U.S. and NATO forces. This article looks at the contemporary application of the Vietnam analogy to Afghanistan and its utility in understanding contemporary security challenges.
What Is Wrong with the American Way of War? (PDF)
Antulio J. Echevarria II
This article argues that, for the last decade, most books and articles on the American way of war have assumed that there is something wrong with it. Various criticisms and cures have been offered, as if a way of war can, and ought to, be perfected. The real problem was less with the American way of war than with the lofty expectations that prevailed as far as what it could accomplish. American policy was eventually corrected by American politics, and American objectives, too, were realigned. Still, the way of war that fought two major campaigns over the last decade has been changed by that experience and by recent adjustments in force structure. What it is now is not what it was then.
Operation Enduring Freedom—Philippines: Civilian Harm and the Indirect Approach (PDF)
Geoffrey Lambert, Larry Lewis, Sarah Sewall
At the request of the SOCOM Commander, the study authors deployed to the Philippines to examine Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines (OEF-P). Since 2002, U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTF-P) has partnered with Philippine forces to conduct counterterrorism operations. This campaign successfully targeted high-value individuals and also diminished conditions that gave rise to terrorism and insurgency. Success in this partnered operation was predicated upon contributions and adaptations from both the U.S. and the host nation. Overall, the U.S. was able to contain a terrorist threat and cement a strategic partnership with a small investment in boots on the ground. OEF-P offers critical lessons for the U.S. Government in a time of decreasing resources.
The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan (PDF)
George Michael
As the U.S. military enters its 11th year of operations in Afghanistan, public support for the effort dwindles, according to recent polls, as a solid majority of Americans now believe the war is going badly and is not worth fighting. In The Operators, journalist Michael Hastings explores the recent history of America’s longest military campaign through the prism of General Stanley McChrystal and his staff. Not long after his story broke in June 2010 in Rolling Stone magazine, General McChrystal was forced to resign. The episode illustrated the deepening division between the White House and Pentagon over the appropriate prosecution of the war.
Galula In Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice versus Theory (PDF)
Riley M. Moore
With the outbreak of insurgency in Iraq (followed by Afghanistan), an urgent requirement emerged for concise and easily comprehensible answers to the complex question of how to counter an insurgency. In the midst of two wars, with no time or current doctrine and with a Presidential mandate for solutions, strategic thinkers and generals were desperately searching for a foothold to halt what seemed to be the inevitable descent into chaos in Iraq. The works of David Galula played a significant role in fulfilling that mandate. Touted by General David Petraeus and other military leaders—General Stanley McChrystal, for instance, claimed to keep Galula’s publications on his nightstand to read every night—Galula’s work has been influential in forming current U.S. counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine. Indeed, his influence on Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, which was authored under the leadership of General Petraeus, is undeniable.