I love this town

Someone broke the driver’s side window on my car.  Sweet.

 

 

A reply to COIN and Nation Building skeptics: Part I, defending Nagl with ethical Nation Building

Zenpundit provides excerpts of a book review by Nagl, which explicitly states the objectives, goals, and requirements of counterinsurgency and nation building, which is shown to be quite compatible with Barnett’s work. On the other hand, Fabius Maximus has issues with this.

To recap, I say that Nagl’s strategy (based on this one paragraph) is

(1) neocolonial in view, putting us in opposition to a major trend in post-WWII history,
(2) puts us in opposition to local nationalists (ditto),
(3) weakens the legitimacy of the government we are attempting to help, in violation of a major theme of FM 3-24, and
(4) takes on the burden of structuring foreign polities, at which we will likely fail.

Each of these arguments can be refuted, and discussions such as those at Dreaming 5GW provide the intellectual soil from which one can do so, as CGW recently reminded us in Zen’s original post (link up top). Below I attempt to refute the first two points, regarding neocolonialism and the uncontrollable resistance of nationalism.

(1) Neocolonialism: there is, in fact, an ethical way to undertake nation building despite the West’s history of colonial oppression, occupation, and exploitation.  Feldman describes it trusteeship, and invokes Burke to demonstrate that “there is nothing inherently oppressive about the idea of trusteeship applied to the authority to govern: it is endemic to representative democracy itself.” [1] If so, then ” the occupying force owes the same ethical duties to the people being governed that an ordinary, elected democratic government would own them. It must govern in their interests; and it must not put its own narrow interests ahead of the interests of the people being governed.”[2]

Counterinsurgency principles and practice necessitate consistency with the principle of democratic trusteeship.   It is fought primarily to protect the people, guarantee their security, practice good governance, and defend their interests.  To fulfill this objective, modern counterinsurgents cannot assume they know everything about how the people define their security or how they want to be governed.  Certainly we can make basic assumptions about the people’s interests [3], but to understand how they are defined, counterinsurgents must actively seek out this definition through social communication and interaction.  In this way, the people produce an ‘input’ that allows the counterinsurgency provide them an ‘output’ that meets their demands.  It is establishing this relationship between the people and the counterinsurgent that leads to victory.  FM 3-24 is obviously aware of this, as

Intelligence in COIN is about people. U.S. forces must understand the people of the host nation, the insurgents, and the host-nation (HN) government. Commanders and planners require insight into cultures, perceptions, values, beliefs, interests and decision-making processes of individuals and groups. These requirements are the basis for collection and analytical efforts. [4]

Despite this, FM criticizes the use of Nagl’s language, emphasizing how the counterinsurgent assumes a dominant role over the population.

We protect. We allow them to control. We decide who is the insurgent and who the legitimate government. Nationalism has been one of the world’s most powerful social forces for several centuries, and this formula puts us in opposition to it. It will sound terrible to them, because it is inimical to their control over their land and society.

Who decides what are the “norms of the civilized world? The local people? The UN? Or us?

This is not inconsistent with Feldman’s notion of trusteeship: “we need to abandon the paternalistic idea that we know how to produce a functioning, succesful democracy better than do others.” [5] We don’t know what norms lead to that, only the locals do.  It is they who decide what their norms are and then communicate them to us. We only exist to help them institutionalize their norms as the basis of their social stability.  We enable and empower their conception of norms, not transfer and impose our own.  If we are perceived as doing so, we become a threat or an enemy, creating a new anticolonial Self consistuted by a imperial Other.  But, this is by no means a guarantee.  It depends upon the words and deeds of the counterinsurgent.

Nationalism: The cultural identity to which one ascribes to is not fixed, essential, or primordial. Instead, we must recognize that one’s identity is socially constructed by interaction with Others. In my previous post, I discussed how counterinsurgents can manipulate the identity of a civilian population and build a shared identity with it. Doing so requires the population to not see the counterinsurgent as a threat, or “Your enemy must not feel that he is not on your side.”  One can falsify being perceived as a ‘threat’ or an ‘enemy’ by taking actions that confound the expectations of what an enemy should do, namely threaten the existence and security of the population. If we act like neutrals, or even friends, the people will learn to perceive us that way. 

Traditional colonialism easily leads to being perceived as an enemy by the people, as the colonial power is exploiting, subjugating, and espousing a general attitude of cultural dominance. The information flow is one-way, from colonizer to colonized, who must be tutored in the ways of civilization. On the other hand, counterinsurgecy/democratic trusteeship is a two-way information flow in which counterinsurgents and people learn from each other. In this way, they establish and routinize norms of behavior that recognize the autonomy and independence of each Other, and further the construction of a shared identity. Successful counterinsurgency makes appeals to anticolonial nationalism ultimately futile.

This is about the use of a poststructural form of power.  Wendt identifies this as “the cultural constituion of identity” [6], citing Foucault.  This refers to the fact that one’s identity, or understand of Self, requires validation by the social behavior and communication of social Others.  Self knows who it is as confirmed by Others.  When the identity ascribed to Self by Others changes, Self’s conception of identity also changes. Feldman scolds the American state building effort in Iraq for ignoring this crucial fact: “Power is not unidirectional but negotiated between different parties.  Much to the consternation of American government officials who had not read their Foucault, negotiation is the reality of political power when nation building is taking place.”[7]

Through actively communicating and interacting with the people, counterinsurgents can learn, accept, and act in the best interests of the people.  They can learn what actions will be perceived as consistent with enmity and friendship.  In turn, they act on this knowledge to falsify hostility and build a social experience of friendship through communication and social interaction.  This same interaction creates the basis for the emergence of norms that guide the behavior of both sides, and falsifies identities that perceive each Other as an enemy.  In this way, counterinsurgents use their presence in the social system of the people to reconstruct their social environment.  This is consistent with the victory standards set by Nagl in his RUSI book review, as wars of the 21st Century are “only won when the conditions that spawned armed conflict have been changed.” [8]

[1] Noah Feldman. 2004. What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building. Princeton University Press, Princeton. p. 63.
[2] Ibid., p. 64.
[3] FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency Field Manual. see Chapter 3: Intelliegence in Counterinsurgency, FM 3-24, in particular sections 3-65 through 3-73.
[4] Ibid., section 3-2.
[5] Feldman, p. 70.
[6] Alexander Wendt. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. p. 177.
[7] Feldman, p. 80.
[8] Nagl, RUSI book review.

 Update: The links finally work, apologies for my shoddy blogging.  Also, Stathis Kalyvas (among others, including Stephen Biddle) reviews FM 3-24 in the latest issue of Perspectives on Politics, (via AM) and notes the implicit constructivism of the field manual. Part II of this reply will focus on the issues of the legitimacy of the host nation government, and the possibility of social engineering, AKA nation building.

Deconstructing the Taliban

Abu Muqawama’s newest blogger is Troy, who christens that blog by reviewing two articles about Afghanistan in the most recent issue of International Security. The first piece, by Seth Jones, argues that the neo-Taliban insurgency emerged due to the lack of state authority, a structural factor.  Thus, Jones’s solution is fairly conventional as Troy admits, namely extend governance into Pashtun areas and restore law and order. One the other hand, Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason make a cultural argument: the values and norms of Pashtun society, in particular pasthunwali, or the Way of the Pashtun, makes this group resistant to the central authority emanating from Kabul and sympathetic to Fundamentalist Islamic movement when threatened.  His recommendations are to give the Pashtuns greater autonomy and rebuild traditional tribal structures that have a better record of keeping peace and order.  As Troy points out, this is completely opposite our current strategy in Afghanistan.  He concludes by admitting a bias towards governance based strategies for COIN and suggests that culture should not be seen as ’the’ preeminent variable.

Both arguments are good, and soundly based in traditional social science approaches to violence and insurgency.  However, they can be merged.  Alex Wendt does just this in Social Theory of International Politics. That is, structure and culture may not necessarily be two separate variables in causing political behavior.  Culture itself is a structure that constrains and alters the behavior of actors (pp. 249-250).  For example, if two states believe that each is likely to seek the destruction of the Other, then they will act with hostility towards each other and confirm those hostile beliefs.  In this way, culture can be a self-fulfilling prophecy (pp. 184-189). 

I should add that by culture, Wendt is referring to ‘common knowledge’ held intersubjectively by each state about its own identity and the identity of other states (pp. 157-164)  This knowledge of Self and Other implies that each state should behave a certain way toward other states.  Thus, culture provides states with their identity and norms of behavior depending on the perceived identity of the other state.  Again, culture itself is a structural variable: it imposes itself on the behavior of states and drives them to act in a certain way. 

This isn’t to say that culture-structure is unchanging – it does.  Based on the perceived identity of Other states, the Self has certain expectations about the behavior of Others, that leads to certain behaviors based on those expectations.   However, if the actions of Other states run contrary to the expectations of Self, then Self has to revise his understanding of their identity.  In Social Theory, Wendt argues that this process of cultural-structural change has led to great cooperation among states.  In fact, as states falsify each other’s belligerent expectations, they could to see they are more alike than different, and a shared identity emerges between them.  Thus, through social interaction, staes become socialized to coopereate with each other and eventually see themselves in each other. 

What does this have to do with the Taliban?  Again, its not culture or structure, but how culture-structure imposes itself upon actors, or how identity constitutes an actor with self-interest and gives meaning to observations of power.  Thus, to win over the Pashtuns, the solution would be to alter their perception of Self (their identity) and Other (the identity ascribed to the state, and Western powers).  At the moment, we can assume that the Pashtuns perceive us as hostile threats to their identity: we are Western crusaders who want to subjugate them and destroy Islam (Taliban propaganda).  To alter this identity which is ascribed to us, we must falsify it by taking actions which run contrary to Pashtun expectations.  From these interactive experiences, Pashtuns will learn to ascribe a new identity to us, one that is not hostile and perhaps neutral, or even friendly. 

But, how can we be sure that our new actions will falsify their expectations of us?  Who is to say that the Pashtun won’t simply mentally discard these new observations and retain their hostile perceptions?

This is where indigenous cultural norms such as pashtunwali come in.  If we want to make friends with Pashtuns, we must take actions that Pashtuns know correspond with friendship.  We must learn the Way of the Pashtun as if we were Pashtuns ourselves. This would give us knowledge about how to act like a Pashtun in different contexts: what would constitute a demonstration of honor or respect which would necessitate civility, or what would constitute dishonor and disrespect, necessitating revenge and hostility. Once we learn how to operate within the cultural code of the Pashtun, we can then use it to turn the Pashtuns against the Taliban. Once we develop an intersubjective understanding of honor, respect, and civility, we can point to Taliban actions which violate that understanding, suggesting an appropriate response to deal with them.

Here’s the point: culture and structure are not separate causes of action, they impose themselves on actors as identities, which make certain actions rational. If we want to make violent resistance irrational and quiesence rational, we must construct a shared identity with the Pashtun. At the same time, this would deconstruct the shared identity between the Pashtuns and the Taliban. The cognitive frames by which the Taliban mobilize against us (Crusader/Imperialist) would no longer be effective, instead they would crash against the shoals of social experience developing between us and the Pashtuns. In this way, our very social presence can alter the structure-culture of the Pashtuns. More broadly, it should alter the entire structure-culture of Afghan society. Zenpundit quotes Nagl saying something quite similar in describing the necessary operational capabilities of a SysAdmin force: “The soldiers who will win these wars require an ability not just to dominate land operations, but to change entire societies.” This is the key to victory in contemporary warfare, War Amongst the People, or 5GW, however it might be labeled. We win by manipulating identities, worldviews, perceptions of reality itself, within the simulcra that makes reality (if I’m using the concept of simulcra incorrectly, please let me know, I’m new to the Baudrillard stuff).

Lastly, I haven’t talked about governance so much here, which, as Troy points out, is the traditional solution of COIN. Michael Fitzsimmons also notes this, but argues that new COIN theory should inquire into the impact of identity, as the cultural content of some identities makes building legitimacy impossible through simply applying ‘good governance’. I hope the above analysis demonstrates a theoretical path to square this circle: yes, some identities will make attempts to build legitimacy through applying good governance unsuccessful. But, we can also work within those identities and the cultural norms they encompass to figure out exactly what ‘governance’ means to an indigenous population. The next step is to think about how to initiate the process of state and institution building, so one day we can pack up and go home.

Gangs of Albany, NY

Violence in Albany was always something I thought peripherally about, I was more worried about the wannabe gangsta frat boys from Long Island.  But, if there was any doubt that this city had homegrown issues with violence, the death of Kathina Thomas surely dispelled them.  Renewed attention is being paid to the gang violence that the city for the most part ignores.

Like most cities, Albany has its share of national gangs like the Bloods and the Crips, but the local gangs seem to perpetuate most of the violence. There’s been the traditional uptown-downtown rivalry between West Hills and Arbor Hill, and the Times Union has done a great job of listening to people who know all about the gang problem, like the kids who walk the streets:

ALBANY — From boarded-up row houses in the South End to crumbling sidewalks across Arbor Hill, gangbangers strut the streets in packs, flying gang colors on blue baseball caps, red do-rags, yellow bandannas and beige jerseys.
They fight, steal and deal drugs from within shadow organizations. While authorities try to downplay gangs, they are a daily presence in the city’s most blighted and impoverished neighborhoods.

On a recent afternoon at the corner of Clinton Avenue and Lark Street, Akeem Weeks, 11, a sixth-grader at Livingston Magnet Academy, rattles off the names and colors of gangs around his Arbor Hill neighborhood.

“We’ve got the Jungle Junkies, and Tally, which are baby Jungles. They wear beige,” he says. “Then there’s 4 Block, East Side, West Side, First Street Goonies, Second Avenue Goonies, Purple City, Crips, Bloods, SBO.”

These aren’t hardened criminal either, at least not since October 2006 when the feds busted 30 Jungle Junkies. What’s left are high school kids who troll around on bikes and shoot people in the legs. The Jungles are back, its just a new, younger, and more reckless generation. Nonetheless, they don’t have a monopoly on shooting people, as the 15-year-old kid who killed 10-year-old Thomas was one of the ““>Yard Boys, as in Ida Yarborough Homes, where the gang would hide weapons for later use.

Who’s to say that this last murder will trigger some change? Jerry Jennings and James Tuffey, our wonderful Mayor and Chief of Police, respectively, can’t be expected to do much, as lettting kids shoot each other seems to be the norm of Albany enforcement and city policy (not mention allowing neighborhoods to become slums). District Attorney David Soares is taking some initiative and asking landlords of vacant properties to permit searches to find hidden ‘community guns’ that kids stash away for future use. Another idea might be to think about how violence is perpetuated relationally, through revenge, almost like a social virus (I believe this idea is mentioned in the Metroland article as well). Certainly counterinsurgents and students of contemporary warfare might also have something to say about this, as law enforcement has become a primary objective of military forces across Iraq and Afghanistan. Lawlessness pervades both the Gap and the forgotten neighborhoods of the Core, yet the same strategies can be used to improve human security in both areas.

 

Our priorities are whacked

We have two wars on our hands, and only so many resources to go around.  Iraq has always gotten more attention than Afghanistan, especially since the former has always been seen in worse shape than the latter.

Funny how their roles are now reversed.  We may cautiously speak of successes in Iraq, while Afghanistan is sliding into absolute anarchy.  Consider the events of the past couple months in both countries.

In Iraq, the Iraqi Army is securing the country.  Basra was followed by Sadr City, Mosul, and soon Amara in Maysan Province will be next. At the same time, GWB has tried and failed to force long-term occupation on the Iraqis, leaving the Status of Forces Agreement to the next administration. The Iraqis want us gone, real bad, and if anything their recent successes have made them so confident as to float the idea of telling us to leave. We’ll be on the way out sooner rather than later, and should plan accordingly as opposed to continue pissing in the wind with ignorant rhetoric that ignores the evolving situation on the ground.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the Tailban are strong and influential enough to sneak into Kabul and take potshots at the President, who is becoming a nonentity as corruption has become the norm for his administration. And yesterday, the Taliban completely emptied a prison in Kandahar, freeing all sorts of undesirables that will certainly take up arms against the government, ISAF, and the people. This will only contribute to the steady growth of the insurgency.

In other words, while complete defeat has been averted in Iraq, we are on the brink of disaster in Afghanistan. While Senator McCain seems to think that as long as casualties are down in Iraq we can stay there forever, he completely ignores the fact that casualties are on the rise in Afghanistan, so much so that more Coalition casualties are taken in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

The long and short is this: Iraq is getting better and Afghanistan is getting worse. This doesn’t bode well considering that the political class in this country is obsessed with Iraq and practically ignores Afghanistan. Not only should we be exploiting our success in Iraq by preparing to leave in consultation with the Iraqis, but the time is rapidly approaching where we make Afghanistan the primary theatre of counterinsurgency and nation building efforts. Iraq is starting to come together. Afghanistan is falling apart. We have to shift gears and get our priorities straight, otherwise the gains of the past year and a half will be squandered by even more monumental failure.

Yes, we are winning (sort of)

Dan Tdaxp. The Unexpected Success of the Surge.

Washington Post. The Iraqi Upturn.

The Maliki government now controls Iraq’s three biggest cities, Mosul in the north, Sadr City in Baghdad, and Basra in the south. This is what winning looks like. This is progress (on one front), pure and simple.

How did we get here?

We built an army of Iraqis with its own Order of Battle, full of divisions, brigades, etc. We use the minimum amount of force possible, and limit our presence to where it can be helpful to providing security, and not provoking insecurity, since many nationalist Iraqis don’t like foreigners occupying their country. With a fully developed Iraqi Army, we don’t have to be the tip of the spear, but we do make sure that it’s damn sharp, and that opponents (like the Sadrists) know that if they pick a fight, they get blamed for the collateral damage.  War amongst the people necessitates that any use of force has the backing of the people.  Petreaus has used U.S. and Iraqi force with this condition in mind, and in the end, the Maliki government has actually gained popular support and legitimacy.

 I’ve thought this for awhile now, but I feel like just saying ‘we are winning’ invites pitfalls in of itself.  Taking control of the cities is only one aspect of the war.  Politically, there are still problems.  Sadr can still put thousands of followers in the streets to protest the Status of Forces Agreement.  Maliki’s government is still dragging its feet on incorporating the Sunni volunteers into the Army, and could not sustain negotiations with Sunni parties over cabinet members.  There is still no agreement on the date of provincial elections, and the Sadrists still maintain that Maliki’s offensive is about setting the stage for ISCI-Dawa to win over the Sadrists. 

These are the new problems.  We are winning now, but any of the above problems can still erase our gains in an instant.  This is why so few people (including myself) want to speak progress.  Recognizing success in Iraq will never happen as events unfold in real time, but only retrospectively, perhaps in reverse Friedman units. This is still an uphill fight, as it always was.

Update: Doc iRack speaks the truth, in the third person as always.  Check the WaPo article and associated pictures.  Long live Basra University.