I concur that a broad approach is needed; however approaching the problem from the default positions of COIN or CT is too limiting and may (if it has not already) stifle creative strategic thought.  I think we are making a mistake in trying to put everything into a COIN or CT "box."

That said ISIL clearly has evolved from an Islamist extremist based terrorist organization. I know we do not want to legitimize it by calling it the Islamic State but I think we have to look at it as more than a terrorist organization.  Although there are tremendous political problems in Iraq and those political problems have created security vacuums that ISIL has been able to exploit I do not think ISIL is conducting an insurgency against the Iraqi government.  What ISIL has done has become an occupying power in northern Iraq and is not seeking traditional forms of legitimacy from among the relevant population.  It is oppressing (and ethnic cleansing)  the people living in its occupied territory and it is obviously using the tactics of terrorism to oppress (and ethnic cleanse) the population.  It may have the objective to defeat all of Iraq and occupy it but I do not think that it will attempt to do so through insurgency and terrorism (though it will continue to conduct terrorism in support of its objective).  It will conduct large scale military type operations to achieve its objectives and to ISIL the population is secondary and is either used for exploitation or is simply in the way and an obstacle to be eliminated (again ethnic cleansing).  If we focus exclusively on CT and COIN we may very well miss the bigger picture and thus provide the wrong response to the wrong problem.

I think the broad approach needed is to not approach this from an insurgency or terrorism perspective but to approach it from an occupying power perspective.  This might lead to a two pronged approach - one is conventional forces (perhaps Iraqi and Kurdish) conducting conventional operations to retake lost terrain and population centers and defeat the ISIL forces hopefully with the support of a coalition with air power, ISR, and advisory support.  The second lesser and supporting approach might be an unconventional approach that leads to the overthrow of an occupying power if there is any remaining indigenous resistance potential in the occupied territory.  While coalition forces could provide external support to such resistance on the ground support might best be provided by non-western regional elements (from the Iraqi or Kurdish militaries), again with coalition external support.

But the bottom line for me is that using a COIN or CT approach is too strategically limiting and we need to address the ISIL threat as it really is (an occupying power) and not as we would wish it to be (an insurgent or terrorist organization).

A broad approach to countering the Islamic State

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/09/02/a-broad-approach

-to-countering-the-islamic-state/

By Christopher Paul and Colin P. Clarke September 2 at 10:09 AM

Iraqi soldiers celebrate on Monday after Iraqi forces broke through to the jihadist-besieged town of Amerili the previous day. (JM Lopez/AFP/Getty Images)

In 2013 we completed “Paths to Victory: Lessons from Modern Insurgencies,” a study of 71 counterinsurgencies since the end of World War II that quantitatively tested the performance of 24 concepts, or building blocks, for specific counterinsurgency (COIN) approaches, against the historical record. Some of the concepts were drawn from classical perspectives on COIN from the previous century, such as pacification and resettlement; others were contemporary concepts suggested for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as “boots on the ground” and the concept implicit in U.S. Army Field Manual (FM) 3-24, Counterinsurgency.

The selected cases are the 71 most recent resolved insurgencies, spanning the period from World War II through 2010. In addition to being perfectly representative of the modern history of insurgency, these cases represent geographic variation (mountains, jungles, deserts, cities), regional and cultural variation (Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, the Balkans, the Far East), and variation in the military capabilities and tactics of COIN forces and insurgent forces alike.

Map of the 71 Insurgencies – Green shading indicates that the COIN force prevailed (or had the better of a mixed outcome), while red shading indicates that the outcome favored the insurgents (thus, a COIN loss).

The study resulted in a definitive set of findings about historical cases of counterinsurgencies, several of which are detailed below.

First, we found that in every case where they succeeded, counterinsurgent forces managed to substantially overmatch the insurgents and force them to fight as guerrillas before getting down to the activities traditionally associated with counterinsurgency.

This means that step one in defeating militants from the Islamic State, formerly referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is to overmatch them and defeat their conventional aspirations. While this has not happened yet in Iraq, U.S. air power could make a significant contribution toward that end. Airstrikes will help curb Islamic State advances in strategically important parts of Iraq and thus, help bolster the Iraqi government and security forces, at least in the short term.

Second, we concluded from the research that “effective COIN practices tend to run in packs,” meaning that governments that managed to defeat insurgencies implemented numerous effective practices rather than just a few. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) techniques identified three COIN concepts critical to success. These three concepts were implemented in each and every COIN win, and no COIN loss implemented all three: Tangible support reduction; commitment and motivation; and flexibility and adaptability.

The recent Islamic State military offensive throughout northern Iraq has generated debate about what the U.S. role should be in countering the group. The broader strategy to defeat the growing insurgency in Iraq – and ISIS does represent an insurgency, as its stated goal is to topple the Iraqi and Syrian governments and replace them with a sharia state – will have to involve U.S. support on several levels, though the Iraqi security forces must be in the lead.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/09/02/a-broad-approach-to

-countering-the-islamic-state/

The fundamental problem is in the name.  "Counterterrorism partnership."  First we need a strategy and second such as strategy has to look beyond terrorism.  Counterterrorism partnership is no substitute for strategy nor the intellectual rigor required to develop strategy.

The irony is that counterterrorism has become like communism in the Cold War.  The perception is anything to do with counterterrorism is going to be funded as we have seen since 9-11. Not only our friends, partners, and allies (and lesser developed countries in particular) have learned that all they have to do is play the counterterrorism card and they will receive funds, resources, and training; but also US state and local law enforcement and other agencies can play the counterterrorism card and will likely receive funding (and often massive amounts that provide dubious capabilities to really defend the homeland).

I think we need to put CT back in the box and make it the discreet operation that it should be (the other issue that many of us lament is how often our national mission forces are exposed in the media).  We would better protect and allow for more effective operations of our national mission forces if we reduced the emphasis and visibility on counterterrorism.   Our national leaders call attention to their every operation as they try to scare congress into providing resources. It is interesting to see Congress standing up and saying perhaps "No Mas."

Please do not misunderstand me.  Counterterrorism is critically important and not going away.  However, I believe it is a mistake to make it the "focal point" of our strategy.  (pun perhaps intended here)   But what we really need to focus on are effective policies and strategies that are broader than counterterrorism and that take a holistic, comprehensive (and dare I say grand) approach to our national security.  Sometimes I think our national focus on resourcing counterterrorism is an example violating the principle of doing the hard right over the easy wrong.  The hard right is getting our national security strategy right.  But we put everything in the counterterrorism box from Afghanistan to Iraq to Africa to developing our SOF partners around the world to fight terrorism for us (another dubious concept perhaps).  There is more to national security than counterterrorism.  We need to think bigger than counterterrorism because our adversaries are exploiting terrorism and our focus on it while they pursue much larger strategies through variations on unconventional and political warfare.

Obama's New CT Program Meets Bipartisan Resistance on Capitol Hill

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140716/CONGRESSWATCH/307160028/Obama-s-New-CT-Program-Meets-Bipartisan-Resistance-Capitol-Hill

Jul. 16, 2014 - 01:39PM   |  

By JOHN T. BENNETT   |   Comments

Sgt. 1st Class Grady Hyatt, with US Army Africa, leads an after-action review with soldiers of the Ghana Army. (US Army)

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WASHINGTON — US House Armed Services Committee leaders struck a skeptical — and bipartisan — tone about a $5 billion counterterrorism program proposed by President Barack Obama.

Obama first proposed the CT program, designed to help train and equip US allies to fight violent extremist groups, during a major foreign policy speech at West Point in May. Since, Republicans have criticized him for providing scant details of what he envisions with the CT program and another proposal aimed at “reassuring” European allies.

The new program was codified in a $58.6 billion overseas contingency operations (OCO) request the White House recently sent to Capitol Hill. On Tuesday, the first panel dug into the request in a public setting.

“We understand that these initiatives were levied on the [Defense] Department by the White House without coordination, and you’re now working to develop spending plans,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., told a panel of senior Pentagon officials.

“But while counterterrorism partnerships and reassuring our European allies are important and necessary, the president’s approach lacks detail and is too broad in scope,” McKeon said.

The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, joined McKeon, as did numerous members of Obama’s own party.

“Most members of Congress are broadly supportive of building the capacity of our international partners and understand the necessity of providing a fair amount of flexibility to the department to carry out these activities,” Smith said.

“Nonetheless, the legislative proposal for the [CT program] the department submitted to the Congress can fairly be described as unconstrained — it is written so that it could be used for almost anything the department does,” Smith said, “up to and including refueling an aircraft carrier while circumventing all the normal reprogramming and transfer rules.”

HASC Vice Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, viewed as the frontrunner to replace McKeon, also criticized the proposed CT fund.

Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, considered another contender for HASC chairman, said, “The reason people are concerned this a slush fund” is, in part, because “the detail is lacking.”

Moments earlier, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., questioned the Pentagon witnesses on how they could prevent the account from becoming a slush fund.

Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work told the panel he sees a number of “checks and balances,” including a need to get White House Office of Management and Budget approval for any spending plans, which would prevent the Pentagon from “going willy-nilly” with the OCO monies.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, raised concerns that some of the requested OCO funds might go toward new initiatives that would be “duplicative” with existing programs.

Another Democrat, Rick Larsen of Washington, told Work “you’re not doing a very good job of explaining it.”

Work responded by saying the proposed CT fund would give the Pentagon greater flexibility to spend monies when crises happen around the world.

Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Adm. Sandy Winnefeld said the department “is running out of” funds allocated for CT operations under existing programs.

Larsen said lawmakers spent the last decade ensuring a number of post-9/11 CT programs function as the executive branch wanted and in a way that suited Congress.

The new proposed program, he said, “seems backward.”

Work described the aims of the proposed CT program this way: “The overall goal of the CTPF is to increase the ability of partner countries to conduct counterterrorism operations, prevent the proliferation of terrorist threats from neighboring states, and participate in multinational counterterrorism operations.” ■

Email: jbennett@defensenews.com.

Obama’s counterterrorism blueprint looks good, on paper

Conclusion:

Obama has the right concept in creating a global network of Special Operations forces and intelligence services that can combat the frightening evolution of al-Qaeda into new and potentially more toxic offshoots. But someone at the White House needs to drive this policy every day and make sure it’s happening on the ground, in Syria and Iraq and all the other potential ungoverned places on Obama’s new map.

We can take issue with the policy and strategy (and the proposed ways and means as some have done).  But I think Ignatius is exactly right.  Someone has to "do strategy" and do it every day, managing the process and making sure the efforts of the government are well orchestrated to to achieve the strategic end state and support the policies.

And I would also argue that there are other challenges to the US besides terrorism and that we have to have our strategy fully integrated and not stove piped dealing separate problem sets in isolation.

Obama’s counterterrorism 

blueprint looks good, on 

paper

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-obamas-counterterrorism-blueprint-l

ooks-good-on-paper/2014/07/10/fe65ed5e-084d-11e4-a0dd-f2b22a257353_story.html

By David Ignatius Opinion writer July 10 at 7:53 PM 

In President Obama’s sometimes maddeningly cautious foreign policy, you can see him struggling to answer what may be the hardest question of his presidency: How should the United States project power in a disorderly world without making the same mistakes it did in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Obama, whose deliberative approach often resembles that of a Supreme Court justice rather than a politician, has developed a conceptual framework for combating terrorism and instability. It looks good on paper. But the problem is that he hasn’t yet applied this framework successfully in dealing with the challenges that arose on his watch: civil wars in Libya, Yemen and Syria, and the emergence in Iraq of the Islamic State.

David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog. View Archive

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Obama is emphatic about what he doesn’t want to do. He wants to avoid “boots on the ground” with U.S. troops; he wants to avoid unilateral actions that isolate the United States; he prefers quiet partnerships that shield America and its allies from domestic political criticism. He is willing to use what amounts to targeted killing.

Instead of significant U.S. military intervention, Obama seeks a network of partnerships stretching from Morocco to South Asia. The United States would provide training and other support for the security services and militaries of nations across this belt. Where governance has vanished and terrorism reigns — as is the case now in parts of Syria and Iraq — the United States would fill the gaps, using surveillance drones, armed drones and Special Operations forces.

It’s a strategy in which Obama, despite his legalistic temperament, plays a role I’ve described as “covert commander in chief.” He relies on the two instruments of national power he most trusts: the CIA and its armed drones and “special activities,” overseen by Director John Brennan, one of his closest aides; and Special Operations Command’s “Global SOF Network,” developed by Adm. William McRaven, the architect of the Osama bin Laden raid and perhaps Obama’s favorite military adviser.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-obamas-counterterrorism-blueprint-looks-good-on-paper/2014/07/10/fe65ed5e-084d-11e4-a0dd-f2b22a257353_story.html

I really have to take exception to Linda's statement here.

“In Afghanistan, village stability operations and local police was the largest such initiative since [the war in Vietnam in the 1960’s]. They have over 25,000 now standing local defenders. To me, that experiment has really rescued a forgotten skill set of the Special Ops forces so they can go out into the villages and live with [civilians] and help those willing to stand up and defend themselves. That is a sustainable solution where you get countries [providing for their own internal security], denying safe haven to terrorists,” said Robinson. 

Perhaps the US government and the press and pundits thought it was a forgotten skill set but I can tell you that the Special forces I served in never forgot those skills and has been practicing them in various forms continuously since the Vietnam era.  And we should not forget that 5th and then 3d Special Forces Groups (as well as 7th) in Afghanistan never forgot these skills and tried to get buy in for executing this way in various initiatives since 2002.  From the Doctrine for Foreign Internal Defense that was continuously in US FID manuals until 2007 (why it was eliminated I do not know):

Remote Area Operations. These operations take place in insurgent-controlled or

contested areas to establish islands of popular support for the HN government and

deny support to the insurgents. They differ from consolidation operations in that

they are not designed to establish permanent HN government control over the area.

Remote areas may be populated by ethnic, religious, or other isolated minority

groups. They may be in the interior of the HN or near border areas where major infiltration

routes exist. Remote area operations normally involve specially trained

paramilitary or irregular forces. SF teams support remote area operations to interdict

insurgent activity, destroy insurgent base areas, and demonstrate that the HN

government has not conceded control to the insurgents. They also collect and report

information on insurgent intentions in more populated areas. PSYOP and CA

programs help in obtaining local support for remote area operations. Success is

more likely if—

A significant segment of the local population supports the program.

The HN recruits local personnel for its remote area paramilitary or irregular

force.

HN forces conduct remote area operations to interdict infiltration routes in areas

nearly devoid of people. In this case, SF teams advise and assist irregular HN

forces operating in a manner similar to that of insurgents but with access to superior

combat support (CS) and combat service support (CSS) resources.

V/R
Dave 

---

October 14, 2013

Analysts: An Evolution in US Counterterrorism

by William Eaglehttp://www.voanews.com/articleprintview/1769718.html

The United States recently launched two raids on suspected terrorist hideouts in Somalia and Libya. In Somalia, Navy SEALS attempted to seize a senior leader of the radical terrorist group al-Shabab. In Libya, U.S. forces captured a senior al-Qaida figure wanted in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania 15 years ago. Analysts from the RAND Corporation in Washington say the raids show an evolution in US policy - away from killing terrorists with a drone strike to taking them alive.

Alleged al-Qaida operative Abu Anas al-Libi is now in the US after spending several days on an American warship in the Mediterranean being interrogated.
Angel Rabasa, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation with a focus on radicalization in Africa, says incidents in other parts of the world show the importance of capturing terrorists. For example, in Indonesia, the government has successfully pursued the leaders of the armed Islamic group Al Jamaah Islamyia.

“The Indonesian police and intelligence agencies have been very successful in breaking up the group and capturing leadership. They say 90 percent of the information they obtained about the group came from people who were captured and corroborated [details] with the authorities, or by defectors. The practice of the U.S. of using drones to get terrorists has been counterproductive - once you kill these fellows, you don’t have the ability to derive any information from them,” said Rabasa.

Examples abound of captured terrorists providing critical information. One of the leaders purged by al-Shabab leader Mukhtar Abu Zubayr in Somalia was Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a senior leader and founder of now disbanded group preceding it, al-Itihaad al-Islamiya.  After the purge, he fled and surrendered to Mogadishu authorities. He is now a prisoner and could be a source of invaluable information in the counter-terrorism effort.

Some analysts think experiences from Afghanistan and Indonesia have shown that direct U.S. military involvement - including putting troops directly into a conflict zone -- can increase local support for radical extremists, especially in regions with large Muslim populations.   

“There is a danger to inserting the U.S. into direct conflict with some of these groups that not actively plotting against the U.S. [domestically].…One lesson from a different theater applies to Africa and to groups like al-Shabab: the U.S. in 2009 took out the leader of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan Baitullah Mehsud with a drone strike with Pakistan’s  support. [However, in response] the next year, [the group] put a SUV with explosives inside Times Square [driven by] Faisal Shahzad.  He had problems building that bomb, but we went from an organization that was very parochial [and pushed them] to respond by targeting the US homeland.  So we have to be careful with how we deal with some of these organizations that are not actively plotting [an attack within the US],” said Seth Jones, the associate director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center.

Linda Robinson, a senior international policy analyst with RAND with expertise on joint force development and special operations forces, points out that there are alternatives to high-profile interventions by the U.S. For example, Washington can work with other countries that share an interest in eliminating terrorism in their region.

“The broad tapestry of the menu I characterize as ‘soft partnering’ includes a wide variety of [options for US defense and intelligence officials]. They can provide direct support, like aerial feed reconnaissance. They can put together intelligence packets. They may accompany the host nation or partner forces up to a target, but let them prosecute the target… So there is a whole range.  They can stay behind the wire and just provide training; they can help write campaign plans. They can advise ministries. So there’s a whole gamut that falls short of doing a joint combat raid, which is yet another mode that they’ve been doing alongside the Afghan commandos in Afghanistan,” explained Robinson.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.voanews.com/articleprintview/1769718.html

U.S. Captures Qaeda Leader Linked to 1998 Bombings

Turning out to be a banner day in the Counterterrorism world.  I suppose the PSYOP message here is that despite the government shutdown our CT forces remain in action and can strike anywhere and any time and take down terrorists no matter how well secured.

October 5, 2013

U.S. Captures Qaeda Leader Linked to 1998 Bombings

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/world/africa/Al-Qaeda-Suspect-Wanted-in-US-Said-to-Be-Taken-in-Libya.html?smid=tw-bna&_r=0&pagewanted=print

CAIRO — United States forces captured a leader of Al Qaeda indicted in the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, ending a 15-year manhunt by seizing him in broad daylight near the Libyan capital, American officials said.

The suspect, born Nazih Abd al Hamid al-Ruqhay and known by his nom de guerre, Abu Anas el-Liby, has been high on the list of the United States government’s most-wanted fugitives since at least 2000, when a New York court indicted him for his part in planning the embassy attacks. The F.B.I. had offered a bounty of up to $5 million for information leading to his capture.

Abu Anas was captured alive near Tripoli in a joint operation by the United States military, the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., and was in American custody, a United States official said.

His capture was the latest grave blow to what remains of the original Qaeda organization after a 12-year-old American campaign to capture or kill its leadership, including the killing two years ago of its founder, Osama Bin Laden, in a compound in Pakistan.

Abu Anas is not believed to have played any role in the 2012 attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, senior officials briefed on that investigation say, but he may have sought to build networks connecting what remains of the Qaeda organization to like-minded militants in his native Libya.

Senior officials of the Libyan transitional government said they were unaware of the operation that captured him. Some vehemently insisted that their forces would play no role in any such American military operation on Libyan soil.

But a senior American official said the Libyan government was involved in the operation.

Disclosure of the raid is likely to inflame anxieties among many Libyans about their national sovereignty, putting a new strain on the transitional government’s fragile authority. Many Libyans already suspect that their interim prime minister, Ali Zeidan, who previously lived in Geneva as part of the exile opposition to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, of collaborating too closely with the West.

Abu Anas, 49, was born in Tripoli and is believed to have joined Bin Laden’s organization as early as the early 1990s, when it was based in Sudan. He later moved to Britain, where he had been granted political asylum. United States prosecutors in New York charged him in a 2000 indictment with helping to conduct “visual and photographic surveillance” of the United States Embassy in Nairobi in 1993 and again in 1995. In the indictment, prosecutors said Abu Anas had discussed with another senior Qaeda figure the idea of attacking an American target in retaliation for the United States peacekeeping operation in Somalia.

After the 1998 bombing, the British police raided his apartment and found an 18-chapter terrorist training manual in Arabic. Titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants,” it included advice on car bombing, torture, sabotage and disguise.

An American official said Abu Anas was to be brought to the United States for trial.

Since the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi in 2011, Tripoli has slid steadily into lawlessness, with no strong central government or police presence. It has become a haven for militants seeking to avoid detection elsewhere, and United States government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information, have acknowledged in recent months that Abu Anas and other internationally wanted terrorists had been seen moving freely around the capital.

His seizure was first reported Saturday in a Twitter post by a Libyan-born counterterrorism analyst based in London, Noman Benotman.

(Continued at the link below)

Gen. McMaster: Raiders, Advisors And The Wrong Lessons From Iraq

Excerpts:

The first mistake is what McMaster called "a raiding mentality": the idea that we'll get a "fast, cheap, and efficient" victory if we can only identify the crucial "nodes" -- enemy leaders, nuclear weapons sites, whatever -- and take them out, whether with a Special Ops team like the one that killed Bin Laden, a long-range smart weapon, or a drone, McMaster said in his remarks at theCenter for Strategic and International Studies.
…
The second fallacy, McMaster said, is that "we have exaggerated what we can accomplish through proxies or partners." There's a real value to T.E. Lawrence-like advisors who can guide a foreign force to victory, and the Army's spent a lot of time learning how to do that, with McMaster as one of the leading advocates ofcultural and language skills. 

But partners can only do so much on your behalf. Increasingly, McMaster said, you hear the argument that "'We're in fiscal constraints, so let's just outsource it to other armies. We'll just provide small advisory teams... and we can get them to fight wars in a way that is consistent with our vital interests.'"
…
"War is an extension of politics," McMaster said. "There's been a great deal of talk, as you know, about AirSea Battle" -- the influential Air Force-Navy concept for future war -- "[and] we talk about sea control, which is an important concept, but we never talk about land control, and land is where people live; land is where these problems emanate from."
…
The problem, of course, is a "range of capabilities" costs more than a single solution at a time of shrinking budgets. The manpower-intensive ground operations that McMaster and his fellow counterinsurgency theorists are associated with have gone out of fashion. Witness the fact that the room today at CSIS wasn't packed, even for one of the icons of "COIN," and even while 60,000 US troops continue to conduct counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. In such an environment, how do you sell the Army's continued relevance to policymakers? 

"It's not my job to sell it," McMaster told AOL Defense. "You just provide your best professional assessment... In a democracy, you get the army that the people are willing to pay for."

V/R
Dave

Gen. McMaster: Raiders, Advisors And The Wrong Lessons From Iraq

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

Published: March 20, 2013

http://defense.aol.com/2013/03/20/gen-mcmaster-raiders-advisors-and-the-wrong-lessons-from-iraq/

WASHINGTON: On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq one of the Army's leading thinkers, warned Washington not to learn the wrong lessons.

Army Maj. Gen. H.R. McMaster, now chief of the tank and infantry school atFort Benning singled out two pitfalls in particular, one about over-reliance on Special Operations raiders, the other about over-reliance on proxies and advisors. Call them (our words, not his) the Zero Dark Thirty fallacy and theLawrence of Arabia fallacy.

The first mistake is what McMaster called "a raiding mentality": the idea that we'll get a "fast, cheap, and efficient" victory if we can only identify the crucial "nodes" -- enemy leaders, nuclear weapons sites, whatever -- and take them out, whether with a Special Ops team like the one that killed Bin Laden, a long-range smart weapon, or a drone, McMaster said in his remarks at theCenter for Strategic and International Studies.

"That's a fundamentally unrealistic conception," said McMaster. "We know raiding and an attritional approach" -- i.e. just killing enemies until the survivors give up -- "did not solve the problem in Iraq" (or for that matter Vietnam). "Targeting does not equal strategy."

At its worst, a raiding approach is a militarized version of "George Costanza in Seinfeld, 'leave on an up note' -- just go in, do a lot of damage, and leave," McMaster said to laughter.

The second fallacy, McMaster said, is that "we have exaggerated what we can accomplish through proxies or partners." There's a real value to T.E. Lawrence-like advisors who can guide a foreign force to victory, and the Army's spent a lot of time learning how to do that, with McMaster as one of the leading advocates ofcultural and language skills.

But partners can only do so much on your behalf. Increasingly, McMaster said, you hear the argument that "'We're in fiscal constraints, so let's just outsource it to other armies. We'll just provide small advisory teams... and we can get them to fight wars in a way that is consistent with our vital interests.'"

(Continued at the link below)

http://defense.aol.com/2013/03/20/gen-mcmaster-raiders-advisors-and-the-wrong-lessons-from-iraq/

Obama administration learns that ‘leading from behind’ is the right place for the U.S.

I wish whomever coined the term of "leading from behind" had not done so.    It does much damage to the concept of helping friends, partners, and allies to conduct their fight against lawlessness, subversion, insurgency, and terrorism.  Why are there those that want to automatically default to the US having to take the lead?  But "leading from behind" may go down in history as one of the more damage foreign policy phrases.  I know some smart guy in the administration thought it up and it sounded good for a minute and even may have looked good on a power point chart but it has damaged the ability to be flexible in foreign policy and security strategy because of partisan attacks on the use of the phrase.  Does anyone argue that sometimes it is not better to help friends, partners and allies in their fights or do we think we must always be in the lead and (try to) solve every problem in the world with US military power?

V/R

Dave

Obama administration learns that ‘leading from behind’ is the right place for the U.S.

By Walter Pincus, Published: January 30

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/2013/01/30/424e7ab8-6a34-11e2-ada3-d86a4806d5ee_print.html

If Mali is any example, “leading from behind” is the right policy choice for the United States to follow in most of today’s international confrontations with what is now termed “terrorism.”

The Obama administration’s actions in the past months reflect it has learned some hard lessons from the United States’ 11 years fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. The wars have cost the nation 6,300 U.S. lives, 50,300 casualties among American service personnel and about $1.3 trillion.

What’s one lesson?

“The best-intentioned foreign intervention is bound to bog its armies down in endless wars fighting invisible enemies to help ungrateful locals,” as the Economist magazine frankly wrote in its Jan. 26 issue.

Sound familiar?

How about what then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told West Point cadets almost two years ago: “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General [Douglas] MacArthur so delicately put it.”

On Tuesday night, former secretary of state George P. Shultz, in an appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations here in Washington, put it this way: “Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be the template for how we go about” dealing with threats of terrorism.

The Obama refinement to such intervention may be to provide intelligence and logistic support to those deserving such help and capable of receiving it. But the lead for using combat troops, “boots on the ground,” should be taken by those whose vital interests are directly involved — starting with the host government. Next should be neighboring countries. In the best of circumstances, they would be banded together in regional organizations, and, if possible, with authorization from the United Nations.

If the situation requires U.S. diplomacy to facilitate such collaboration and authority, fine. That is where the world’s greatest power should take the lead. If more hawkish Americans want to call this “leading from behind,” then that’s all right, too. Finally, when outside ground forces from a major power are required, it should come from a nation with historic roots in the host country.

France is a good example. It stepped up and took the lead by going into Mali, a former colony, in response to the Bamako government’s call for help. Another example is the international cooperation on the oceans off Somalia that has successfully been dealing with the piracy problem.

(Continued at the lin below)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/2013/01/30/424e7ab8-6a34-11e2-ada3-d86a4806d5ee_print.html

U.S. National Security Strategy Must Go Beyond Counterterrorism

Key excerpt:

There is an assumption that expressions such as national security, foreign policy, national security doctrines, grand strategy, vital, and national interests are the same concept; they are not. The most talked about issue today in national security is counterterrorism. Thus, a common mistake made by many is to assume that the specific and tactical policies of counterterrorism are, in and of themselves, national security policy or even national security strategy. In this example, counterterrorism is merely a specific policy that is subordinate to the national security policy of the immediate time. If the American people are lucky, this immediate national security policy is somewhat clear and cohesive.

V/R
Dave 

U.S. National Security Strategy Must Go Beyond Counterterrorism

By LAMONT COLUCCI

January 17, 2013

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/01/17/us-national-security-strategy-must-go-beyond-counterterrorism_print.html

Dr. Lamont Colucci is an associate professor of politics at Ripon College, recent Fulbright Scholar to the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, and author of The National Security Doctrines of the American Presidency: How they Shape our Present and Future, among other books. You can find out more atlamontcolucci.com.

For the past two weeks this column focused on threats and solutions to immediate national security threats that the United States faces. In both cases grand strategy has been mentioned. The very concept of an American Grand Strategy has almost vanished from any discussion of national security and foreign policy. Neither the current occupant of the White House, nor the many (though not all of)  former Republican challengers were discussing, let alone promoting, a grand strategic vision for the United States. Some have come up with pieces of national security and foreign policy, but few have any sense of where the country should journey in order to protect American vital and national interests; few have presented a vision to guarantee American primacy, prosperity, and values.

There is an assumption that expressions such as national security, foreign policy, national security doctrines, grand strategy, vital, and national interests are the same concept; they are not. The most talked about issue today in national security is counterterrorism. Thus, a common mistake made by many is to assume that the specific and tactical policies of counterterrorism are, in and of themselves, national security policy or even national security strategy. In this example, counterterrorism is merely a specific policy that is subordinate to the national security policy of the immediate time. If the American people are lucky, this immediate national security policy is somewhat clear and cohesive.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/01/17/us-national-security-strategy-must-go-beyond-counterterrorism_print.html

The End of the Age of Petraeus: The Rise and Fall of Counterinsurgency

Kaplan's book should be an interesting read.  As an aside note the comments about the West Point Social Studies Department ("SOSH").  I think there is a study worth doing about how SOSH was the real center of ideas  and influence vice Leavenworth.  If one were to do a network analysis of the development of COIN thinking post-9-11 I think the largest node would be SOSH with the next being at Leavenworth and then the Army War college.  I think there will be more connections to SOSH by people of influence than any other node in the network.

But these two paragraphs illustrate our fundamental problem with strategic thinking.  The COIN versus CT argument distracted us from developing good policy and an executable strategy.  We should not have been developing policy and strategy from the debate between these two approaches and I think that this hindered us from sound strategic thinking and policy making.

After his election, Obama set about making good on his commitment, putting Riedel in charge of a quick review of policy toward what was now called AfPak. The results of the review were announced at the end of March 2009, enshrining goals for Afghanistan -- to "degrade, dismantle, and destroy al Qaeda"; accelerate training of the Afghan military; and build up the Kabul government -- and arguing that the best way to accomplish them, at least in the southern part of the country, was through "a fully resourced counterinsurgency strategy." As in Iraq, the new policy was accompanied by a dynamic new commander, General Stanley McChrystal, and some additional troops. 

By his own admission, Riedel knew nothing about COIN beforehand and was influenced on this point by one of the members of the interagency group that worked on the review: Petraeus, now commander of Central Command. Most of Obama's senior advisers backed the idea, again under Petraeus' influence, but there were two major dissenters. Vice President Joseph Biden favored a "counterterrorism-plus" strategy -- just going after the insurgents (using drones strikes and Special Forces raids) and training the Afghan army -- on the grounds that COIN would take too long and exhaust the public's patience. The other skeptic was Gates, who had stayed on as defense secretary. He had been deputy director of the CIA when the Soviets crashed and burned on Afghanistan's forbidding terrain, and he worried that if the U.S. footprint got too large and intrusive, history might repeat itself.

V/R
Dave 

The End of the Age of Petraeus

The Rise and Fall of Counterinsurgency

By Fred Kaplan

January/February 2013

Article Summary and Author Biography

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138459/fred-kaplan/the-end-of-the-age-of-petraeus?page=show

The downfall of David Petraeus sent such shock waves through the policy establishment when it hit the news in November because the cause was so banal: the most celebrated and controversial military officer of our time compelled to resign from his dream job as CIA director as the result of an extramarital affair. Yet long after the headshaking details are forgotten, Petraeus' larger significance will remain, as his career traced one of the era's crucial strategic narratives -- the rise and fall of counterinsurgency in U.S. military policy.

As recently as 2006, the country's top generals were openly scorning counterinsurgency as a concept; the secretary of defense all but banned the term's utterance. One year later, it was enshrined as army doctrine, promoted at the highest levels of the Pentagon, and declared official U.S. policy by the president. Then, five years after that, a new president and new defense secretary barred the military chiefs from even considering counterinsurgency among the war-fighting scenarios used to calculate the military's force requirements.

The swerves reflected the changing courses of the wars being fought on the ground. The George W. Bush administration had invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 with a "light footprint" strategy, designed to defeat the enemies and get out quickly to avoid getting bogged down. That approach, however, revealed its limits as Iraq began unraveling soon after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, and by mid-2006, the country had slipped into a vicious, chaotic civil war. A desperate Bush decided to gamble on counterinsurgency in a last-ditch effort to head off disaster, and he picked Petraeus, the author of a new army manual on the subject, to lead the effort. The apparent success of the new approach in stanching the bleeding inspired commanders, including Petraeus himself, to apply it to the worsening conflict in Afghanistan as well. But its apparent failure there led President Barack Obama -- never a huge fan -- to back away from the strategy not only there but in general.

Few U.S. military commanders detected the rise of an insurgency in Iraq; fewer still understood its implications.

U.S. troops are now out of Iraq and being drawn down in Afghanistan, but the basic questions about counterinsurgency -- or COIN, as it is widely abbreviated -- remain. Did it really succeed in Iraq, and if so, how? Why did it not work in Afghanistan? Is it a viable strategy for dealing with contemporary insurgencies, and even if it is, can it be employed by a democracy, such as the United States, with little patience for protracted war?

THE ROOTS OF THE COIN CABAL

The revival of COIN in the Age of Petraeus -- a brief era, but worthy of the title, so thorough was his influence and the improbable fame he attained -- was in part the product of generational politics. In 1974, when Petraeus graduated from West Point, the Vietnam War was approaching its inglorious denouement, and the U.S. Army's senior leaders were determined never to fight guerrillas again, in the jungle or anyplace else. They turned their gaze instead to the prospect of a major conventional war with the Soviet Union on the wide-open plains of Europe and threw out the books on what they termed "low-intensity conflict." By the early 1990s, army scribes had come up with a still more dismissive term: "military operations other than war," abbreviated as MOOTW (pronounced "moot-wah"). And the feeling was, as General John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, once muttered, "Real men don't do moot-wah."

Many of today's officers, however, rose through the ranks fighting precisely these "other-than-war wars" (as some called them), in El Salvador, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, and the Balkans, which didn't seem so low intensity and certainly felt like wars. Petraeus himself spent the early years of his career as an airborne infantry officer in France and Italy, where he happened upon a shelf-load of books touting what the French call "revolutionary warfare": Jean Lartéguy's novel The Centurions, Bernard Fall's Street Without Joy and Hell in a Very Small Place, and, most influential, David Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. Galula, who had observed and fought in several counterinsurgencies himself, was unlike any author Petraeus had read before. "Revolutionary war," his book stated, has "special rules, different from those of the conventional war." It's like a fight between a lion and a flea: the flea can't deliver the knockout punch, and the lion can't fly. The insurgent can sow disorder anywhere, whereas the counterinsurgent -- fighting on behalf of the government -- has to maintain order everywhere. Defeating fleas requires draining the swamp that sustains them; defeating insurgencies requires protecting, then wooing or co-opting, the population that sustains their cause. As Galula described, a soldier in a COIN campaign must "be prepared to become a propagandist, a social worker, a civil engineer, a schoolteacher, a nurse." Likewise, "a mimeograph machine may turn out to be more useful than a machine gun," and "clerks [are] more in demand than riflemen." These kinds of wars, Galula calculated, quoting Mao, are "20 percent military action and 80 percent political."

In the mid-1980s, Petraeus spent a summer as an aide to General John Galvin, head of the U.S. Southern Command. Central America was then blazing with the sorts of insurgencies that Petraeus had previously only read about; in El Salvador, U.S. military aides were devising something close to a counterinsurgency plan. Toward the end of his stay, Petraeus ghostwrote an article for Galvin titled "Uncomfortable Wars: Toward a New Paradigm," which called on the army to abandon its obsession with big wars and firepower and to recognize the prevalence of new kinds of warfare -- subversion, terrorism, guerrilla insurgencies. When he returned to the States, Petraeus elaborated on these points in a Princeton doctoral dissertation on the army's "myopic" post-Vietnam aversion to such conflict and its need to change its doctrine, tactics, and personnel policies accordingly.

(Continued at the link below - full access to the article requires a subscription but any National Security Thinker or Practitioner should have a subscription to Foreign Affairs)

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138459/fred-kaplan/the-end-of-the-age-of-petraeus?page=show

Spoiler Alert (Review of the TV Show Homeland - CT and CIA related)

Full disclosure: I have never watched Homeland and Professor Hoffman is my boss!

V/R

Dave

Spoiler Alert

I know counterterrorism and the CIA -- and almost everything in Homeland is ridiculous. But I'm still watching.

BY BRUCE HOFFMAN | DECEMBER 18, 2012

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/18/spoiler_alert?page=full

Every era needs its heroes and villains. Eighty years ago, gangsters and G-men were the Depression's meme and the funny pages of newspapers across the country had comic strips devoted to the dispensation of law, order, and justice. The standard story arc involved pillars of probity like the lantern-jawed lawman, Dick Tracy, whose one mission in life was to bring to justice a variety of nefarious malefactors. Invariably, these criminals had evocative names like B.B. Eyes, Prune Face, Lips Marlis, and Flatop Jones. And their pursuit claimed every waking moment of Dick Tracy's life -- at great personal cost and to the exclusion of any amorous relationships. Over the course of weeks, and sometimes months, a series of three or four black and white panels on weekdays (and double that on Sundays) conveyed the cleverly executed, but flawed crime; the investigation and epiphany; the criminal's desperate flight and lawman's relentless chase; before climaxing with the inevitable denouement of the arrest or death of that strip's reprobate lawbreaker.

In 21st-century America, however, no one reads the papers anymore and while crime dramas are still a staple of cable television, gangsters and crooks are no longer America's public enemy number one. Today, even in our post-Osama bin Laden world, it's terrorists who embody our worst fears -- and stereotypes. Although some come from this country, their ringleaders are invariably shadowy foreigners with dark skin, heavy beards, bushy eyebrows, and strange sounding names like "Abu Nazir." Nor are they any longer pursued exclusively by stalwart, upstanding, manifestly WASP males. Instead, emotional, mentally unstable women and brainy Jews -- commanded by an appropriately diverse melting pot of Americans representing a variety of races and creeds (some of whom are as morally compromised as the terrorists they are hunting) -- are our flawed heroes. This, at least, is what the hit Showtime television series, Homeland, would have us believe.

It is ironic that, at a time when most Americans are bummed out by the war on terror, have largely forgotten about Iraq, and desperate to turn their collective backs on the Middle East and focus on nation building at home, this series ceaselessly reminds us of what most of us would so dearly like to ignore. Like a child's need to believe in monsters or ghosts, perhaps, Americans are riveted byHomeland and captivated by the prospect of terrorist blowback -- mostly because of the series' two maddeningly compelling central characters, the über-CIA agent Carrie Mathison, magisterially played by Claire Danes, and the U.S. Marine sergeant turned terrorist, Nicholas Brody, brought believably to life by British actor Damian Lewis.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/18/spoiler_alert?page=full