Of course Security Force Assistance (SFA) in its present form was not invented until 2008 when the wheel of FID was reinvented.  

The one lesson that we should learn is that SFA or FID does not work unless there is a strategy that it supports (a strategy with balance and coherency among ends, ways, and means) and this must include the political objectives to be achieved.  We think that if we simply train security forces that they will somehow magically succeed for us.  We pay lip service to "through, with, and by" and treat it as a silver bullet because we have no idea how hard it really is to accomplish political objectives indirectly when by definition you are not in complete control and dependent on indigenous forces that are not the equivalent of US forces despite us trying to create them in our image through SFA.

Below this article I have pasted my Eight Points of Special Warfare, LTG Cleveland's comments about indigenous forces and my description of Frank Hoffman's principle of understanding.

Regarding the discussion of Korea in the article:  We should remember that our FID/SFA security assistance efforts prior to 1950 likely contributed to the failure of the ROK Army on June 25, 1950.  Based on poor assessment and erroneous assumptions we refused to allow the ROK military to develop a combat capable force capable of both combined arms defense and maneuver.  We allowed only a constabulary force to be established to defend against north Korea subversion.  We allowed this force to restrict the ROK from being able to attack the north to achieve unification.  And of course the Soviets and the Chinese placed no such restrictions on the north and when 100,000 combat hardened soldiers returned from the Chinese Civil War they were provided with Soviet T-34 tanks and the rest is history.  We of course learned our lesson and help the ROK to develop a military that is optimized for combined operations (ROK and US) with interoperability and not necessarily completely independent operations.

The Trump administration wants to send more military advisers to Afghanistan. Good luck with that.

• www.washingtonpost.com
• View Original
• May 15th, 2017

Marines salute during a handover ceremony at Camp Leatherneck in Lashkar Gah, in the Afghan province of Helmand. They returned there April 29, as embattled Afghan security forces struggled to beat back the resurgent Taliban.Photo by: WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty Images

Senior Trump administration officials have proposed sending 3,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Their mission? Advise and assist Afghan security forces.

The Obama administration’s plan was much the same. So is the U.S. strategy for Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Ukraine, Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Mauritania and many other locations around the world. In all these places, U.S. strategy relies on Security Force Assistance (SFA): using a small U.S. force to advise, train, equip and assist local allies to do the difficult ground fighting that Americans would rather avoid.

There’s a reason Security Force Assistance is so common. But it rarely works.

Why is SFA so widely used? The United States faces threats to interests that are real but often limited. U.S. officials feel the need to do something, but they are unwilling to send tens of thousands of American troops. SFA’s low cost and small footprint makes it look like a cheap solution that seems appropriate to the stakes.

But results are often disappointing. The massive train-and-equip program in Iraq after 2003 yielded an army that dissolved facing Islamic State forces in the June 2014 offensive in Mosul. SFA operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan fared little better.

That’s no accident. As we show in our recently published paper in the Journal of Strategic Studies, the low-cost SFA strategy rarely succeeds. Only when the host nation’s interests align very closely with Washington’s — and when the U.S. presence is both substantial and conditional — can SFA really substitute for a larger U.S. troop deployment.

Why Security Force Assistance often goes to waste

The United States rarely conducts SFA missions in Switzerland or Canada — because allies like these don’t need it. Rather, SFA usually goes to weak states with corrupt, unrepresentative regimes whose military shortcomings gave rise to the need for assistance in the first place.

[Did U.S. aid win hearts and minds in Afghanistan? Yes and no.]

This weakness also leads to a mismatch between U.S. interests and those of SFA recipients. Americans are looking for a local partner to fight an external threat, such as the Islamic State. But local leaders are typically more concerned with threats to their own rule from other elites within their state, especially the risk of a coup d’etat from dissatisfied officers or militia leaders.

SFA partners thus have a strong incentive to use U.S. aid to bolster their own internal security, rather than for whatever military operations that the United States wants.

Host regimes therefore often look the other way when their officers sell U.S. supplies on the black market, pocket the U.S.-provided salaries of “ghost soldiers,” use U.S.-provided equipment to settle scores with rival groups or extort protection payments from local civilians. This kind of corruption buys the loyalty of heavily armed elites who might otherwise be rivals, and it protects the regime’s internal political position. But it saps military readiness and undermines combat motivation: Why should Afghan or Iraqi soldiers risk their lives in combat for corrupt, cronyist officers who care only about lining their own pockets? The result is a military designed for internal politics, not for effectiveness against the external enemies that Americans care about.

Security Force Assistance can work, but only if the stars align and the conditions are right

In our paper, we looked at three historical examples where the United States sent significant security force assistance: Iraq from 2003-2014, El Salvador from 1979-1992, and South Korea from 1949-1953. These examples show just how hard it is to pull off SFA successfully.

[Three flawed ideas are hurting international peacekeeping]

In Iraq, the United States invested more than $25 billion on the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), deployed thousands of trainers and advisers, and by 2007 fielded more than 100,000 other U.S. troops to provide security until the ISF could take over. Yet the resulting Iraqi military collapsed in June 2014 when challenged by numerically inferior Islamic State fighters in Mosul. How could all this assistance produce so little real military power?

Here’s the problem: The U.S. and Iraqi governments had two very different visions for the ISF. The United States wanted trained military technocrats who could defeat the insurgency. The Iraqi regimes of  Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Nouri al-Maliki, however, saw that kind of ISF as a danger to their power, not an asset. The regime preferred a corrupt military it could control to a professionalized one it could not. All that U.S. effort thus created a military that was well-suited to Jaafari’s or Maliki’s internal political requirements, but a very poor tool for defeating ISIS.

The Salvadoran civil war, by contrast, is often seen as an SFA success story. Between 1979 and 1982, $5 billion in U.S. aid and fewer than 200 American advisers helped the Salvadoran government survive the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front insurgency. And U.S. SFA certainly was helpful. Without it, the government could well have fallen.

[The U.S. needs a new approach to counterinsurgency. Here’s an idea.]

Yet a closer look reveals that the results of the U.S. investment in SFA were only modest. The Salvadoran regime shared the U.S. goal of preventing its overthrow, but the regime also wanted to preserve its internal position. Hence the regime permitted just enough military improvement to keep the FMLN from toppling the government, but never enough for the army to get proficient enough to deliver a knockout blow. As a result, the war lapsed into a long, bloody deadlock that ended only when the Cold War came to a close. The net result was a real — but limited — payoff for SFA.

The one major SFA success we examine — Korea — is the exception that proves just how hard it is to do effectively. When North Korea invaded the South in June 1950, a weak, corrupt South Korean army collapsed. For South Korean President Syngman Rhee, the threat of outside conquest by North Korea now posed a more immediate threat than internal violence. His personal interests now aligned with that of the Americans in an urgent need to defeat a strong external enemy.

The United States rapidly expanded its aid, but it also monitored its use and threatened to withdraw assistance from Korean units that didn’t professionalize to U.S. standards. Since Rhee was more threatened by North Korean conquest than by a coup from within, he accepted these conditions and permitted politically risky military reforms that Iraqi and Salvadoran elites resisted. The result was major improvement in South Korean military proficiency by 1953. But the Korean case shows just how much the stars must align for SFA to work.

Sending more usually isn’t the answer

U.S. officials and politicians often see SFA as engineering rather than politics: Just send enough military aid and an ally’s forces will improve. When SFA falls short, as it often does, this implies the aid wasn’t enough — and so critics call for more.

But this view misses the key fact that SFA often directly affects local politics. SFA is unlikely to work unless the U.S. invests enough to gain leverage over its local host, and puts conditions on that aid to help ensure that the partner’s military really does improve.

On balance, then, SFA does not really offer a free lunch. Where limited U.S. interests mean that the U.S. will not deploy large numbers of its own troops, SFA will not yield major results from minor investments. For the foreseeable future, small footprints mean small payoffs for the United States.

Stephen Biddle is professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Julia Macdonald is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House and an assistant professor at the University of Denver.

Ryan Baker is a PhD candidate at George Washington University.

Eight Points of Special Warfare:

If there is an indigenous contribution to the solution of a complex political-military problem apply the Eight Points of Special Warfare (which apply to both UW and FID).

1.  Must determine the acceptable, durable, political arrangement that can achieved. Without this clearly articulated and understood there is no way to achieve unity of effort or to judge mission success. I think Congress must demand this from the Administration.

 2. Eliot Cohen & John Gooch: Military Misfortune:  All military failures are a result of a failure learn, failure to adapt, and failure to anticipate.
 Look at Mali and Yemen. Did we anticipate the Turegs and the Houthis?  I would submit that SOF on the ground reported on the growing threats to Mali and Yemen yet our myopic focus on CT blinded us at the strategic level.

3. Larry Cable (the discredited COIN theorist who wrote Conflict of Myths) The three P’s: Presence, Patience, Persistence.  You have to be present to make a difference.  You have to be patient because it takes a long time to influence indigenous forces and develop indigenous capabilities. It takes persistence because mistakes will be made, every operation will include discovery learning and we will have to learn and adapt.

 4. Assessment - must conduct continuous assessment to gain understanding - tactical, operational, and strategic.  Assessments are key to developing strategy and campaign plans and anticipating potential conflict.  Assessments allow you to challenge assumptions and determine is a rebalance of ends, ways, and means is required.
 Understand the indigenous way of war and adapt to it.   Do not force the US way of war upon indigenous forces if is counter to their history, customs, traditions, and abilities.

5.  Assure US and indigenous interests are sufficiently aligned.  If indigenous and US interests are not sufficiently aligned the mission will fail.  If the US has stronger interest than the indigenous forces we can create an “assistance paradox” - if the indigenous forces believe the US mission is "no fail” then the US forces will not allow them to fail and therefore they do not need to try too hard.  They may very well benefit from long term US aid and support.

 6. Employ the right forces for the right mission. US SOF, conventional, civilian agency, indigenous forces.  Always based on assessment and thorough understanding of the problem and available resources and capabilities.  Cannot over rely on one force to do everything.  

7.  Learn how to operate without being in charge.  If we usurp the mission indigenous forces will never be successful on their own.  You cannot pay lip service to advising and assisting.  This is why operations in Colombia and the Philippines achieve some level of success.
 This is not “leading from behind.”  This is the appropriate understanding of the relationship between USSF/SOF and indigenous forces in a sovereign nation or with indigenous forces seeking self determination of government.

 8. Campaigning  - we have to develop the campaign plan to determine the resources and authorities - and then execute the campaign - we have to get good at campaigning and it has to be more than a military campaign.  While disrupting terrorist attacks and attacking terrorist networks, finances and auxiliaries are important they are not a strategy. They can be part of a strategy and campaign but they are not sufficient.  We have to campaign beyond counter-terrorism with a campaign focused on attacking the enemy’s strategy.  This requires deep understanding to include especially understanding the enemy’s political objectives.  Once we understand the enemy ways and means can be employed to counter the enemy’s strategy and his political objectives.  Campaigning is important because it will orchestrate all the activities to achieve the strategic objectives or the acceptable, durable political arrangement we seek.   Campaigns identify the resources necessary (forces, bases, funding).  Campaigns identify the authorities necessary.  Although many in the military and government desire blanket authorities that is not the right way to operate.  However, establishing programs and funding lines such as 1206, 1207, 1208, and 1209 are not effective either.  Authorities need to be specifically applied to each campaign. And with an approved campaign plan Congress can more effectively provide oversight rather than managing funding programs.  Focusing on effective campaigning can discipline the application of the military instrument of power.  Of course it would useful for other elements of national power to be able to “campaign” as well.  (As an aside, we perhaps need to take another look at the 1997 PDD 56 which was for the management of complex contingency operations in the interagency – a disciplined process to orchestrate US government agencies and harmonize the instruments of power.)

·      A Principle of Special Warfare: "Go early, go small, go local, go long”  LTG(R) Charles T. Cleveland remarks at NDU November 30, 2015

·      Understanding indigenous forces:  ”Potential allies always start as at least unproven.  It is hard work that starts with assessments and making the best of who you have, seeking to improve your position (and your partners’) over time.”  LTG (R) Charles T. Cleveland, email January 18, 2016  (Note:  This can apply to resistance in nK)

·      Frank Hoffman's Principle of Understanding. I am a supporter of Dr. Frank Hoffman’s idea that we need a new principle of war called understanding.  Although that seems like a no-brainer – as far back as Sun Tzu we have be told that we must know our enemies and know ourselves to be victorious.   We all know we need to understand war and warfare, the conditions that give rise to conflict, and the politics that lead to and endconflict.  Yet even though the need for understanding is so obvious that we think we do not need to even mention it, it is surprising how so many of our failures can be traced to our lack of understanding.  SOF, through its various assessment capabilities and engagement with indigenous populations can make a key contribution to understanding.

If we cannot get the highlighted line imprinted in our brains or at least tattooed on the inside of our eyelids we will never be successful at working through and with indigenous or host nation forces.  This is probably our single most problematic weakness with all the concepts of building partner capacity, train advise and assist, organize, train, equip, rebuild and advise, and yes even foreign internal defense.  We have spent the last 14 years believing we could organize and train Afghans and Iraqis and others and yet we have not learned from history and we have tried so hard to create not only militaries in our image but also many other institutions.  We have spent so much time coming up with new concepts with new names and variations on foreign internal defense that have NOT been built on the important history we should have learned long ago and instead we continue to conduct social experiments to try to create armies and governments in our image.  Until we understand and accept the sentence below we will never be able to work effectively with host nation forces.

Can the Iraqis readjust their army to better reflect culture and clan in time for the next offensive? Can the United States commit to an air campaign to rival Desert Storm? Can we provide enough moral and technical support to make all this possible by the beginning of the next campaign season in April and May 2016? I don't know. But I do know that history has been harsh to those who try to build alien armies in their own image. All the American firepower and "boots on the ground" will be for naught unless we allow the Iraqis to fight their war their way.

The Iraqi Army Can't Be Westernized

Arabs fight best in formations organized around familiar groups sharing more than the same national flag.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB12104187675579354294504581041941772488936

By  

ROBERT H. SCALES

June 25, 2015 7:10 p.m. ET 

42 COMMENTS

Twenty-four years ago, in June 1991, as American troops began to gear up to invade Iraq, I started writing and researching my book "Certain Victory," the U.S. Army's official history of the Gulf War. I spent nine months reading documents and interviewing soldiers ranging from private to four-star general. I asked one question of everyone: How did the U.S. defeat the world's fourth-largest military in only 100 hours of combat?

The universal answers from the soldiers: We fought with superior equipment, bought by the taxpayers during the Reagan years; our leaders overcame the malaise of Vietnam to build a new volunteer military; the revolutions in training and doctrine of the 1980s proved their worth.

All true. But as I started to write, I knew something was missing. One afternoon at my office I convened a roundtable discussion with some of the most successful operational commanders against Saddam Hussein in Desert Storm. I asked the same question and got the same stock answers. But then one general and dear friend of mine paused for a moment, looked into the air pensively and said: "You know, Bob, Arab armies really can't do this very well. Remember we not only fought an Arab army, we fought with Arab armies, and the Saudis and Syrians weren't any better than Saddam's Republican Guard."

It was a politically incorrect moment to be sure. But after watching nearly a quarter-century of history pass, I must conclude he had a point. T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) certainly knew this to be true when he ignored orders from senior British Army officers to make his Saudi Bedouin brothers into a proper conventional force. The Israeli Defense Forces have racked up four wins and zero losses in wars against Arab armies that tried to fight them with Western methods and equipment. Our march to Baghdad in 2003 lasted only three weeks and crushed Iraq's conventional army.

The stark consistency of contemporary history tells us several things as we ponder why the Iraqi military is proving to be so inept in its war against Islamic State. First is the immutable tenet that wars are human endeavors and that culture counts. Arab culture is based on family, tribe and clan. Thus it should come as no surprise that Arabs fight best in formations that are organically grown and organized around familiar groups that share more than the same national flag.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB12104187675579354294504581041941772488936

US Army Special Operations Center of Excellence gives 3rd BCT paratroopers opportunity training on AK-47

As a reminder the Joint Staff Decade of War Report on Lessons Learned  (http://blogs.defensenews.com/saxotech-access/pdfs/decade-of-war-lessons-learned.pdf) recommended that the MATA Course be re-established:

Page 34: Re-establish training for effective partnering and advising: Re-establish a Military Assistance and Training Advisory (MATA) course to promote effective partnering and advising. This course should capitalize on recent lessons and Special Forces expertise with regard to FID and SFA operations.

This effort seems to be a step in that direction (though I would like to see it evolve to more:  Establish a 6 week advisor course for conventional and special operations NCOs and Officers.)

But this NCO has the right perspective because this is one of the contributions that SOF should be making (though it is not the sexy mission people aspire to do - As COL Ola Mize said, an SF soldier should only want to be in two places - overseas working with indigenous forces or back home at SWCS training others to do so.)

Excerpt:

An instructor with the USAJFKSWCS said he appreciated having the opportunity to teach the paratroopers as they prepare to deploy.

“When we are able to exchange knowledge we’re more than happy to do it,” he said. “As a Special Forces weapons sergeant, it’s my job to teach them.”

News: US Army Special Operations Center of Excellence gives 3rd BCT paratroopers opportunity training on AK-47

http://www.dvidshub.net/news/153167/us-army-special-operations-center-excellence-gives-3rd-bct-paratroopers-opportunity-training-ak-47#.VM0sJFXF_V2

3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division

Story by Staff Sgt. Mary Katzenberger

Staff Sgt. Mary Katzenberger

Paratroopers assigned to 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division disassemble foreign AK-47 rifles, Jan. 22, 2015, during a class at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School on Fort Bragg, N.C. Special Forces Soldiers with the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Center of Excellence taught the Paratroopers about AK-47 rifles in preparation of the Paratroopers deploying to Iraq to advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Mary S. Katzenberger/Released)

FORT BRAGG, N.C. – Paratroopers assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, took advantage of a unique opportunity to learn about the AK-47 rifle, Jan. 22, during a hands-on class at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School on Fort Bragg.

Special Forces Soldiers with the USAJFKSWCS, the Army's Special Operations Center of Excellence, taught the paratroopers about the AK-47 in preparation for their deployment to Iraq to advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces.

Approximately 1,000 paratroopers from 3rd BCT are slated to deploy in the coming weeks and will work with the ISF to instruct them in a range of military skills to enable them to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The paratroopers, a mix of noncommissioned officers and junior paratroopers, learned the characteristics of the AK-47, how to disassemble and reassemble the weapon and how to perform a functions check. The Special Forces Soldiers also taught the paratroopers how to sight the weapons, priming them for their upcoming mission with the ISF.

An instructor with the USAJFKSWCS said he appreciated having the opportunity to teach the paratroopers as they prepare to deploy.

“When we are able to exchange knowledge we’re more than happy to do it,” he said. “As a Special Forces weapons sergeant, it’s my job to teach them.”

Sgt. Thomas D. Pedigo, a paratrooper assigned to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 3rd BCT, said the class was very beneficial because he had no prior experience handling foreign AK-47 rifles.

“If we’re training host-nation forces, it’s good to know what type of weapons they use,” Pedigo said. “Just learning a different weapon system [was great].”

Spc. Anthony D. Jones, a paratrooper assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Bn., 505th PIR, is optimistic the knowledge will help him and his fellow paratroopers perform their advise and assist mission to the best of their ability.

“The most valuable part [of the class] is the level of knowledge the instructors have about this weapon system,” Jones said. “I’m glad these guys let us come down here and get the opportunity to get some hands-on training.”

Read more: http://www.dvidshub.net/news/153167/us-army-special-operations-center-excellence-gives-3rd-bct-paratroopers-opportunity-training-ak-47#.VM0sJFXF_V2#ixzz3QQfTafkV

After Iraq, Questions About Training Foreign Armies

We knew this was inevitable.  The pendulum could swing, although the author notes that it may not.

It is unlikely that the Iraq crisis will put a damper on partner-building initiatives, although critics will certainly try to make a case that the Iraq effort, like others, backfired on the United States, said John R. Deni, professor of national security studies at the U.S. Army War College. "Sometimes U.S. objectives for what we hope to see other countries achieve are not going to mesh up very well with what they want," Deni said. "But I still think security cooperation is going to be the primary means through which we exercise our military power over the next five to seven years."

...

Building partner capacity is the cornerstone of U.S. Special Operations Command's vision of its future. SOCOM Commander Adm. William McRaven has been a forceful advocate of partner-capacity building programs. 

Although the U.S. track record in this area is mixed — some countries take the tools and lessons the United States gives them and use them to subjugate their political competitors — the military is a strong believer in building up allies, Deni said. "Despite Iraq, I’m not ready to say this is a bad tool in the toolkit."

But I think people need to be realistic about training foreign forces.  It is not a silver bullet but many who have latched onto it since 9-11 really have no understanding of the complexities and risks.  

This is an interesting comment.  

In private discussions, SOCOM officials said the command's new "campaign plan" mirrors the Obama administration plan the president outlined May 30 in his West Point commencement speech. The problem with current efforts, a senior military official said during a recent industry gathering, is that they are short term. "We need persistent presence," the military official said. "We are hoping we will have the resources. We’ll see what happens with this budget."

The Iraq debacle could dampen the enthusiasm for training foreign armies, although the official pointed out that Iraq's special forces have been more effective because SOCOM made sure they had an equal balance of Sunnis, Shias and Kurds.

So the President has bought into the SOF Campaign Plan? (and campaign plan should not be in quotation marks above which implies to me the author thinks it is not real or a valid plan).  If there is an approved and resourced strategy and campaign plan then forces should be able to be deployed to have persistent presence.  However, persistent presence is not the end but only the start - it is all about what we can achieve with that persistent presence.

6/19/2014 After Iraq, Questions About Training Foreign Armies By Sandra I. Erwin  http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=7c996cd7-cbb4-4018-baf8-8825eada7aa2&ID=1538&RootFolder=%2Fblog%2FLists%2FPosts The collapse of the Iraqi army is likely to raise new questions about U.S. military plans to train foreign allies to help fight insurgencies and terrorist groups. Building "partner capacity" has been a hallmark of U.S. military strategy and is viewed as a key mission for American forces in the coming decades. President Obama last month asked Congress to approve a $5 billion "counterterrorism partnerships fund" that would be used to "train, build capacity and facilitate partner countries on the front lines." Members of Congress, many of whom have been longtime critics of security cooperation programs, see the situation in Iraq as another cautionary tale. During a June 18 hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey defended the president's initiative and argued that the United States has no other choice but to build allied capacity to counter violent extremist organizations. This threat is "going to be with us for another, in my judgment, 25 to 30 years," said Dempsey. The U.S. military could not possibly do this on its own, he added, especially as extremist groups continue to expand their reach from Pakistan, across the Arab world, Middle East, North Africa and Western Africa. "We've got to find a way to address them regionally," said Dempsey. The United States needs "partners and capable allies. ... That's what this fund is all about," he said. "I don't think we have any choice, frankly, but to find more capable partners and in other cases build more capable partners because the thought of doing this all ourselves is a difficult one to grasp." Dempsey led the effort to train Iraqi security forces from 2005 to 2007. Untold billions of dollars and human resources were spent to train those forces to defend the country. What is happening today is a "bitter disappointment," Dempsey told the committee. "They simply lost faith that the central government in Iraq was dealing with the entire population in a fair, equitable way." A similar outcome now is feared in Afghanistan, where the United States also spent a decade building and training security forces. "I can't completely convince myself that the risk is zero, that that couldn't happen in Afghanistan," said Dempsey. Military training alone can only go so far, he added. "At the end of the day, a security force is only as good as the instrument that wields it, and that's the central government." Although Dempsey insisted that training foreign forces is central to U.S. military strategy, he acknowledged that the Iraq crisis will prompt some rethinking. "Clearly, we will look back on this and do what we always do, an after-action review and use that results to change the way we build partners." Military experts have praised the "light footprint" approach to counterterrorism that keeps U.S. forces from having to engage directly. "Assisting our friends and allies in developing their own security forces directly supports our national interests and world security," said retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, senior advisor at the National Security Network. It is unlikely that the Iraq crisis will put a damper on partner-building initiatives, although critics will certainly try to make a case that the Iraq effort, like others, backfired on the United States, said John R. Deni, professor of national security studies at the U.S. Army War College. "Sometimes U.S. objectives for what we hope to see other countries achieve are not going to mesh up very well with what they want," Deni said. "But I still think security cooperation is going to be the primary means through which we exercise our military power over the next five to seven years." The military does not expect to be fighting major conflicts against nation-states in the foreseeable future, Deni noted. It does believe it will need to "shape the security environment through security cooperation." Building partner capacity is the cornerstone of U.S. Special Operations Command's vision of its future. SOCOM Commander Adm. William McRaven has been a forceful advocate of partner-capacity building programs. Although the U.S. track record in this area is mixed — some countries take the tools and lessons the United States gives them and use them to subjugate their political competitors — the military is a strong believer in building up allies, Deni said. "Despite Iraq, I’m not ready to say this is a bad tool in the toolkit." SOCOM has been in the vanguard of training African forces, for instance, said Deni. The command also has spent years strengthening its relationship with the State Department and other civilian agencies that oversee security cooperation. Although the Defense Department has a primary role in security cooperation efforts and owns most of the resources, the "train and equip" authority and funding is under Title 22 of the U.S. Code that governs foreign affairs. In private discussions, SOCOM officials said the command's new "campaign plan" mirrors the Obama administration plan the president outlined May 30 in his West Point commencement speech. The problem with current efforts, a senior military official said during a recent industry gathering, is that they are short term. "We need persistent presence," the military official said. "We are hoping we will have the resources. We’ll see what happens with this budget." The Iraq debacle could dampen the enthusiasm for training foreign armies, although the official pointed out that Iraq's special forces have been more effective because SOCOM made sure they had an equal balance of Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. Photo Credit: Defense Dept. Posted at 12:28 PM by Sandra Erwin | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

But What Can You Do for Us? The flaws of America’s “new” security assistance policy

The article below is an important critique of the the new policy on security sector assistance.  I did not notice this when the new White House policy came out but Dr. Simons brings this to light in number two below: "Promote partner support for US interests."  This was part of the early concept of Security Force Assistance (SFA) , e.g., the idea that we were going to build partner capacity so that partners could conduct operations in their country or as part of a coalition in other counties in support of US objectives.  We really should think that through.  Do countries really want us to train their military forces so that they can act to accomplish US objectives?  Yes of course we are going to training them because it supports our interests to do so and we should not conduct any operations that do not support US interests.  But do countries want it advertised publicly that the training they receive from US forces is so they can conduct operations to support our interests?  With all our talk about host nation legitimacy what kind of message do we think that sends to a country's political opposition when it is made public that their country's military is being trained to support US interests.   This was initially in the context of counterterrorism – we wanted to build partner capacity so that other forces could support our efforts in the War on Terrorism.  This idea (along with training host nation forces to defend against external threats) was the idea behind Security Force Assistance and the reason why many argued for the establishment of SFA in addition to Foreign Internal Defense (and only  few of us argued against it for these very reasons).  However, the Joint Doctrine writers have somewhat toned down the idea of training forces to support our interests and correctly changed it to supporting shared interests as in this excerpt from Joint Pub 3-22 Foreign Internal Defense (and keep in mind  there is no Joint Pub for SFA, it is part of the FID manual):

(b) Security Force Assistance (SFA). SFA is DOD’s contribution to aunified action effort to support and augment the development of the capacity andcapability of foreign security forces (FSF) and their supporting institutions to facilitate the achievement of specific objectives shared by the USG.

Despite toning it down I am sure that the idea still exists that we will be train them to do our bidding and it appears that whomever wrote the White House policy kept the original intent which could cause some countries to say we do not want US training to support US objectives but to support our own objectives.  To me there is a potential strategic communications problem with that aspect of the White House policy.  Dr. Simons goes on to detail the flaws in the policy.

Most importantly I think that Dr. Simon's concept of three types of "partnering" is very important and one that we should truly understand so that we do not "chase the shiny thing" of building partner capacity.

V/R

Dave

April 11, 2013

But What Can You Do for Us?

The flaws of America’s “new” security assistance policy

ANNA SIMONS

HTTP://WWW.THE-AMERICAN-INTEREST.COM/ARTICLE.CFM?PIECE=1416

L

ate last week the White House issued a new policy on security sector assistance. According to the White House press release, the aims of security sector assistance are to:

1) Help partner nations build the sustainable capacity to address common security challenges

2) Promote partner support for U.S. interests

3) Promote universal values, and

4) Strengthen collective security and multinational defense arrangements and organizations.

Let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that “universal values” don’t exist. The Administration’s approach is questionable for more prosaic reasons. Take goal number 2: What kind of partners are going to sign up to look out for our interests when we don’t even pay lip service to helping them with their security concerns?

I remember not long after 9/11, at the Naval Postgraduate School, where I teach, one of our African army officers decided to write his master’s thesis on the cattle raiders plaguing the northwest corner of his country. Why? Because cross-border raids posed a major problem to his military. A couple of years later, one of his colleagues focused on water rights in Lake Victoria. Neither officer was worried about what most concerned Washington at the time: anti-Western Islamists. Instead, both officers tackled topics of pressing local concern. Had those in senior positions beyond the Naval Postgraduate School known about these choices, they probably would have considered them wastes of time and money.

They weren’t, and they aren’t. It beggars the imagination that we don’t see more benefit in helping other militaries in areas where they know they need security assistance. Not only would this be our best shot for helping them improve their capabilities overall, but the better they can handle the threats that matter to them, the better they will be able to handle threats, period. So what that an automatic-weapon-wielding cattle raider somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa might never threaten us.

I see at least four flaws with Washington’s current approach for security assistance. First, it is all about “us” and our needs, thereby ignoring or takings for granted others’ needs. Second, it shows no understanding of what “partnering” really means. Third, it suggests we will be pursuing the same old strategies that have served us so poorly in the past (think of Mali). Finally, it diverts us from what should be our main goal: the development of incorruptible, apolitical security services—a goal that is an either/or proposition, and not something, as many Washington insiders contend, that takes decades to achieve.

Let me elaborate these points, taking the last one first.

When security services are incorruptible, states hang together. Look at India. No country these days has more sectarian divisions, not to mention multiple insurgencies. Yet India’s armed forces remain apolitical and professional. Nor is this just a legacy of British imperialism; it is a lived reality, requiring real work and commitment to meritocratic principles. (To be fair the threats beyond India’s borders, as well as within them, no doubt force this issue too.)

Now, imagine other countries in which most politicians aren’t just corrupt but also manage to stay in power through intimidation. How are they able to do so? The answer: Members of the security services are at their service, not the service of their country. Men in uniform, whether hailing from  the army, the police, the gendarmerie, or a praetorian guard, act as the muscle. It’s not hard to see that if members of the security services refused to behave like thugs, venal politicians would have a hard time mustering protection for their abuses of power. The significance of apolitical, incorruptible security services thus cannot be overstated. And although developing a professional force is a harder task than most in Washington seem to realize, it is also more straightforward.

It is harder in the sense that building such a force requires a leader who is nationalist enough to want to make this happen. Such individuals tend to be rare. Ramon Magsaysay, Minister of Defense and then President of the Philippines in the 1950s, was one such individual. Magsaysay helped turn the Filipino army around with assistance from a small team of Americans under Colonel Edward Lansdale. This effort required neither decades nor thousands of U.S. advisers.

Lansdale took pride in introducing the term “civic action” to the U.S. military. What he meant by this is that the Philippine military needed to prove to Filipinos that it existed to protect rather than to prey on them. As a concept, “civic action” has morphed over time, but it still provides the easiest proof there is of who has what it takes to be a worthwhile partner. Anytime we find ourselves having to cajole a leader into wanting to fulfill any semblance of a social contract, we should recognize the effort as a lost cause. (Today’s most vivid exemplar: Hamid Karzai.)

Determining whether a leader has the potential to become more “legitimate” doesn’t have to be complicated. In the wake of Afghanistan and Iraq, most U.S. policymakers (finally) agree that getting in bed with a government that shows no interest in its population makes no sense. Thus we should ask two litmus test questions before proffering assistance: Does the country we’re considering as a partner already possess a civic action capability? If not, is it willing to develop one? Governments that don’t want their militaries to develop a civic action capability are governments we can’t help—nor should we want to.

In this sense, civic action represents the ideal canary in the coalmine. Even better, by returning to the idea that they do the heavy lifting (while we do the assisting), we would extricate our military from the business of digging wells, building schools, setting up clinics and performing all sorts of other aid-like functions. By making all such tasks the responsibilities of partner militaries (and their governments), we wouldn’t just arrest the corruption we inevitably fuel whenever we send taxpayer-funded projects, money and stuff abroad; we would also force governments to have to remain responsive to their citizenries, thus yielding “partners” worthy of the name.

The U.S. military should consider only three types of partnerships viable:

In Partnership no. 1, you are my equal. We are interchangeable, and our forces can be fully integrated.

In Partnership no. 2, I trust you implicitly. We can agree on a division of labor. I’ll be responsible for Sectors A, B, and C; you’ll be responsible for Sectors D, E, and F.

In Partnership no. 3, we are complementary. You have skills and capabilities I lack, and vice versa. I’ll defer to you for intelligence and local knowledge; you can rely on me for logistics and medevac.)

(Continued at the link below)

HTTP://WWW.THE-AMERICAN-INTEREST.COM/ARTICLE.CFM?PIECE=1416