We seek a future of war with Islam, while wearing a cloak of virtue

September 9th, 2014

Summary:  Yet again the merchants of fear have set America buzzing about small numbers of people far away, people angry that we not only support their corrupt autocratic rulers but attack them (with little concern for collateral casualties). There are no angels in these wars, and many demons.

The American response to ISIS will probably be the same as we gave Saddam and the Taliban: the trinity of US Tactics. Massive firepower on civilians. Search and destroy sweeps. Popular front armies.  But after 13 years and two failed wars some in the military, some voices suggest that we should have a strategy — not just tactics. Jeremy Kotkin (Major, US Army) proposed one, described in yesterday’s post — The solution to jihad: kill and contain our foes. Give war another chance!

We discussed this article in the comments with Major Kotkin, who generously shared his thoughts. They deserve attention, especially as America lurches into new wars in the Middle East, in Africa, and probably other places still secret.

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Major Kotkin opens the discussion

Well, you did a good job of parsing all the parts from it I specifically said were unacceptable by today’s standards. What I was doing with the ‘antithesis’ section was more or less building a strawman to get to the better strategy if we decide to take on ISIS (which I still think we *should not* because it doesn’t represent a threat to our interests). What truly focusing on the problem should look like however is a coordinated, cooperative, and focused approach by us and our allies using all the instruments of national power to contain and marginalize where the ideology comes from, where it’s funded from, and where it’s exported from. If you want to focus largely on one section of the essay then do so but don’t conflate it to be *the* conclusion or the policy recommendation.

This isn’t calling for anything retaliatory or indiscriminate on par with Dresden or our Search and Destroy missions in South Vietnam (‘we had to burn the village to save it’). That’s ridiculous. If the military option (hopefully only as a precursor to a larger containment strategy) is chosen, it should be targeted. On a larger scale than our current concepts of COIN kinetics, but not indiscriminate destruction bordering on any ‘genocide’ of people like you’re intoning. The intent (of the antithesis, I remind you) is looking to wipe a specific ideology out, not a people.

It will take more of a concerted effort than we’ve made so far to kill off Wahhabism coming from a few particular places in the Middle East. And again, if we can politically be honest enough to define that as the real problem at hand, not its symptoms. Until our foreign policy gets serious about it we can continue to deal with its symptoms and play our favorite counter-terrorism carnival game, whack-a-mole. Bombs on targets will be a good start at some certain level but concerted and cooperative foreign policy is the long term key. Muslims are obviously not the problem. Islam is not the problem. Monarchists in the Middle East who export and fund violence to satisfy their political/sectarian dominance fantasies are our problem. That we need to deal with better than we have been and that’s going to take a new foreign policy unencumbered by counterproductive alliances and relationships.

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My Reply

Thank you for your reply.  As for the representativeness of these excepts, that’s why I recommended at the start that people read your article in full. Each person will determine that for themselves. Also, for that reason I included longer excerpts than usual.

I believe your conclusion is quite clear. Especially this:

“First, “the gloves are off” military operations to utterly destroy the concept of jihad and Islamic conquest in the places we can reach …”

That conclusion seems logical (given your analysis) and consistent with the rest of your article. I don’t see how that message is negated by inserting a few notes that such actions are not likely to be taken. Advice is advice, no matter how unreceptive the audience.

I don’t know how much force your plan would require, or for how long, or in how many nations. But my guesses are “lots”, “very long”, and “many”. So I hope you are correct that the advice of hawks, like yourself, is unlikely to be taken. At least not on the scale you propose.

Rather than debate if these excerpts are representative, I’d rather discuss more substantive issues. Such as how you believe we should use force to achieve the broad objectives you recommend. Your article gives no clues. Also, why do you believe such interventions would have more success than the almost uniform failure of foreign interventions against local insurgencies?

I do agree that our current tactics are failing. Their failure was predicted before 9-11 by Martin van Creveld (e.g., in his 1991 book Transformation of War), and afterwards by those writing about 4GW (including, in a small way, me). Although our reasons differ.

Major Kotkin

And I agree: “Despite what the author claims, the record of foreign armies fighting local insurgents is one of almost uniform failure” (I didn’t claim differently). That’s why we shouldn’t get involved in the first place – not our insurgents, not our interests. We have a poor record as third-party counterinsurgents because we cannot control the political ineptitude of the host nation that gave rise to the insurgency in the first place. Unless insurgency hobbles one of our true allies (UK, Canada, etc) or vital interests, ‘not my circus, not my monkeys.’

My reply

(1)  Your article, and comments, raise many interesting points. Most of all, your call for force — what seems like large-scale long-term force — is quite vague. Can you give examples of what you recommend?

(2)   “I didn’t claim differently.”

I was referring to this:

“How have successful counterinsurgencies been accomplished in the past? Certainly not Afghanistan or Iraq. There are examples out there. We just choose not to look at them.”

(3)  “We have a poor record as third-party counterinsurgents because we cannot control the political ineptitude of the host nation that gave rise to the insurgency in the first place.”

The problem is deeper than that. Since Mao brought 4GW to maturity everybody has a poor record as foreigners fighting local insurgents. As Martin van Creveld describes in Chapter 6.2 of The Changing Face of War (2006):

What is known, though, is that attempts by post-1945 armed forces to suppress guerrillas and terrorists have constituted a long, almost unbroken record of failure … {W}hat changed was the fact that, whereas previously it had been the main Western powers that failed, now the list included other countries as well. Portugal’s expulsion from Africa in 1975 was followed by the failure of the South Africans in Namibia, the Ethiopians in Ertrea, the Indians in Sri Lanka, the Americans in Somalia, and the Israelis in Lebanon. … Even in Denmark {during WWII}, “the model protectorate”, resistance increased as time went on.

Many of these nations used force up to the level of genocide in their failed attempts to defeat local insurgencies. Despite that, foreign forces have an almost uniform record of defeat. Such as the French-Algerian War, which the French waged until their government collapsed.

Major Kotkin

FM, thanks for the feedback. That’s what this essay was intended to do – to get people to think about our current policy and what the larger issues are aside from temporary and non-existentially threatening terrorist groups. Force as a solution in and of itself is not recommended. I’ve always said (at least through my FB page so I realize not everyone will understand my larger context) that ISIS itself represents an issue of which we should take absolutely zero military action. They are not a threat to us or our interests. They might be a threat to the Saudi monarchy and other Gulf theocracies but that’s not our problem.

However, *if* a fundamental shift in the understanding of geopolitics should occur within the White House, Senate, and State Department (unlikely) and we can begin to reassess our foreign policy that coddles these states who are antithetical to our American/Western interests, then a full-court press is necessary; a coordinated policy not seen in American strategy since WWII or the Cold War. And yes, there were military aspects to the Cold War even though it was ‘cold’ designed to hem in the Soviet ideological threat to our system. The military aspect wasn’t the primary one but it was there. And it was coordinated with our ideological allies.

So is a “gloves are off” military solution what I’m calling for? No. That’s only a minor part of the whole. Terrorists will continue to ‘squirt out’ from the Wahhabi nest and therefore there will always be people who need killing and that should be more unconstrained that what we’ve been fighting the GWOT with. But again, that’s only the tactical sideshow to the larger strategy. To date we have no larger strategy.

Successful counterinsurgencies, although unpalatable today, exist in the historiography of COIN. The French razzias, the American Indian Wars, The Philippine Insurrection, the real lessons learned about Malaya, not the population-centric bunk that FM 3-24 would have us believe, etc. The list goes on. And before you hone in on extrapolating that I’m saying we should ethnically cleanse the Middle East like the way we committed genocide against the Native Americans (which I’m not saying), their simply are other lessons of COIN that should build our left and right limits than the narrowness we’ve artificially created with current doctrine.

Again, I’m not saying those examples are useful as a template but a source of lessons learned. And again, these military lessons should only be employed *if* they are part of a larger strategy of containment and, like MMK pointed out, “disentanglement.”

I agree that foreigners fighting insurgents has a bigger pool of failure than success but I’m only concerned about our history. We *we* fight insurgents, our insurgents, we win. When we fight someone else’s insurgents, and someone else who is more often than not corrupt, illegitimately ruling, malfeasant, and inept, we lose. It’s as simple as that and this should be the only metric that matters as we craft our strategy. Other nations’ insurgencies are not our concern….unless it happens to us (I’m still keeping my eye on the Tea Party ;) ) or one of our *very* close allies.

My reply

One quick point. War evolves — I repeat, there are no successful counter insurgencies by foreign armies (I.e., taking the lead, as we did in Vietnam, Iraq, & Afghanistan) against insurgents since Mao brought 4GW to maturity.

Not for lack of trying. That is the essential point which the US military establishment refuses to see. Repeated failure is the price we pay for their willful blindness.

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/we-seek-a-future-of-war-with-islam-while-wearing-a-cloak-of-virtue/#qJyE4gJfdExWu3Sr.99