Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 134

Simpson’s 'WFTGU' (IV and last): What a strategic narrative is -- and how to use it

The last two chapters
of Emile Simpson's War
From the Ground Up
offer some of the best things I have read on strategic narrative. They also may be the most
significant part of the book, because I think he breaks some new trail here.

His point of
departure, as you might have noticed in his piece for Best Defense on Friday, is
that narrative is a key element of strategy. "Strategy does not merely need to
orchestrate tactical actions (the use of force), but also construct the
interpretive structure which gives them meaning and links them to the end of
policy." (P. 28) That is, it offers a framework into which participants and
observers can fit the facts before them. "Strategic narrative expresses
strategy as a story, to explain one's actions." (P. 233)

This aspect of
strategy is both more important and more difficult now than in the past, he
argues, because of the global information revolution, which means more
audiences must be involved in one's strategic deliberations. When military
action not only serves political ends (as in classic war) but must be judged in
political terms to determine who is prevailing (as in our current wars), he
argues, constructing a persuasive narrative becomes key to success.

You run into trouble
when your "strategic narrative does not correspond to the reality on the
ground," he warns. (P. 125) That phrase evoked for me the Bush administration's
rhetoric about Iraq in 2003-05 -- first insisting that there was no insurgency,
then claiming it was "a few dead enders" and that steady progress was being
made.

It also made me think
about the fundamental contradiction of the Bush administration embracing
torture as part of an effort to defend rights and freedoms it held to be
universal. As Simpson warns, "The moral high ground, once evacuated, is very
hard to regain." (P. 209) That admonition should be remembered by anyone
devising a strategy in the 21st century.

So, he advises, "The
key in counterinsurgency is to match actions and words so as to influence
target audiences to subscribe to a given narrative." (P. 154)

Strategic narrative
must not only be rational but also have an emotional component, he says. "War
is as much a test of emotional resistance as a rational execution of policy."
(P. 193) Nor does the need for it go away. "The requirement is to maintain the
narrative -- perpetually to win the argument -- is enduring, not finite." (P.
210)

Helpfully, he cites the Gettysburg Address as an example of the
presentation of a strategic narrative. I think he is correct in that
insight. He also invokes Kennedy's inaugural address. I think he is correct
that it indeed was a presentation of a narrative -- but I think that JFK's "bear any burden" narrative was
incorrect, and would be proven so a few years later in the jungles and villages
of Vietnam.

Army psychologist kills himself

Friends say Peter Linnerooth came home from Iraq with heavy
PTSD. He had written about the burnout of military
therapists.

Counterfeit COIN ops?

Lt. Matthew Cancian,
the Dave Goldich of active-duty Marines, has a good piece in the January issue of Marine Corps Gazette criticizing commanders who pretend to be
carrying out a counterinsurgency campaign without really doing it:

We go through the
motions of counterinsurgency without focusing on what really matters. This
leads to a focus on process metrics instead of outcome....We patrol in order to
be able to report hours spent patrolling.

Tom again: Anytime
you see someone focusing on their inputs (time and other resources expended)
rather than their results, you should be suspicious. This is true in civilian
life as well as in the military, I think.

Emile Simpson: This is the strategic narrative we need in Afghanistan now

By Emile Simpson

Best Defense guest
columnist

Afghanistan
2013: time to evolve the strategic narrative

(By ‘strategic narrative' I mean the
explanation of actions: the lens that we propose to people through which to
view the conflict.)

a. We need to adjust the strategic narrative
in relation to the 2014 transition deadline.

i. Since 2009, the coalition strategic
narrative has successfully toned down expectations of the more idealistic
aspects of the campaign, which means that audiences now gauge coalition
‘success' primarily in terms of the stability of the Afghan state, the
credibility of Afghan security forces, and coalition casualty figures. The last
one will fade as we pull back, placing increasing emphasis on the first two.

ii. Our current strategic narrative still
presents the conflict effectively as a zero sum game: the Taliban will either
come back or they won't. This is closely associated with the proposition, that
we mistakenly encourage, that what we are engaged in is a ‘war,' in which one's
aim is defined against an enemy. By conditioning audiences to expect success or
failure to present itself in a binary manner, we hamper ourselves: first, the
conflict is not likely to produce a binary outcome, which will make our job in
terms of explaining the conflict over the next few years very hard, and we will
lose credibility by our failure to match what is actually happening to what we
said would happen.

iii. Why is the conflict not likely to produce
a binary outcome? The ‘Taliban' is a franchise movement; most of its field
commanders fight for their own self-interest, hence why many simultaneously
have connections into the Afghan Government. The dynamics of the conflict are
thus kaleidoscopic, with actors competing vis-à-vis one another, not polarised.
The bulk of the coalition leaving will accelerate the kaleidoscopic dynamic, as
we are the main object against which the Taliban ‘franchise' can define itself
to maintain its cohesion (i.e. less cohesion means more self-interested
dynamics). The Soviet experience of transition in 1988-90 supports this
analysis.

The likelihood is the Afghan Government will
maintain the cities and the roads only (they don't have the logistical capability
or political will to hold more), but neither do the insurgents have the combat
power, logistics, or command structure to mass, take over a whole city, and
hold it. This will create (and is already creating) a ‘core' area held by the
Afghan Government and a ‘peripheral' zone beyond. What will result is a
patchwork of allegiances, with some villages, and even broad remote areas,
controlled by power brokers linked to the insurgency, others to the Afghan
Government, or more likely, linked to both. By maintaining a narrative that
emphasises a binary outcome, we will be perceived as having failed, when in
reality the Afghan Government controls the key areas, and over time, will make
pragmatic arrangements with those who control the periphery to maintain relative
stability in Afghanistan.

b. We should not invest any coalition
credibility in holding the peripheral areas: Over the next three years, the
Taliban flag may go up in some towns and villages. In our current narrative,
that will be seen as a major victory for them. In reality, to control dusty
villages on the periphery, and even remote district centres, means little. We
need to adjust our narrative so people expect that, and when it happens, people
believe us when, legitimately, we point out that this is insignificant. By so
adjusting the narrative, we take pressure off the Afghans to hold the
peripheral areas, which they do not want to, only being there because they
perceive it as a condition for us giving them support. We also take the
initiative away from insurgents by recognising that this is a war for political
more than physical space: insurgents are attention seekers -- they want us to
react to a provocative flag raising because by reacting we show the world that
they matter -- should they raise a flag in a forlorn district centre and we
appear neither to look nor care, they have a serious problem.

c. The narrative needs to allow for
maintaining some (but significantly less than today) coalition combat power in
Afghanistan beyond 2014: This is the insurance policy that ensures the
Afghan Government does not lose the cities and roads. The model should be in
extremis back up to the Afghan security forces (airpower based, with boots on
the ground as a last resort). This is critical, as the perception (amongst the
insurgency, the Afghan people, the Afghan Government itself, and international
audiences) that the Afghan security forces will hold the core areas will create
space for de facto political settlements on the ground.

d.
‘Moshtarak' is over -- the narrative
now needs to emphasise Afghan sovereignty: Ultimately there will remain a
real possibility of the Afghan state, which is incompetent and corrupt,
collapsing in on itself with little action from the insurgency until it
genuinely sees itself, and is seen by insurgents and Afghans, as sovereign. In
2009 ‘moshtarak' -- side by side --
was the visual metaphor chosen to characterise the strategic narrative; that
made sense at the time. However, side by side means shared responsibility, and
that is incompatible with genuine sovereignty. Time now for coalition press
conferences to get very dull, as most answers should amount to: "ask the Afghan
Government, they are in charge." The litmus test of Afghan sovereignty will be
when people stop asking the coalition their questions.

Emile Simpson served
in the British Army as an infantry officer in the Gurkhas from 2006 to 2012. He
deployed to southern Afghanistan three times and is the author of War
From the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics
(Columbia, 2012).

On the road again: My speaking engagements in the coming months

I may be in your
neighborhood soon. Here is list of my speaking engagements for the coming
months:

Wed. Jan. 23 -- Two events at Army War College,
Carlisle, Pa. -- lunchtime talk and an evening seminar

Tues. Jan. 29 -- RAND, Pentagon City, Va.  (noonish) -- talk

Tues. Feb. 5 -- Army-Navy Club, Washington DC
(6:30) -- talk

Tues. Feb. 12 -- Lewis Sorley's group, The
Tertulias (noonish) -- talk

Wed. Feb. 13 -- members of Congress, Capitol
Hill (6:30) -- discussion

Thurs. Feb. 14 -- GAO national security staff,
DC (2 pm) -- talk

Sunday, Feb. 24 -- George Marshall house,
Leesburg, Va. 

Tues. March 12 -- The Basic School, Quantico,
Va. (4 pm) -- talk

Wed. March 13 -- Army Military History
Institute, Carlisle, Pa. (7:15) -- talk

Tues. April 2 -- Marine Corps University. (2 pm)
-- talk

Rebecca’s War Dog of the Week: Retirees Brit and Bubba begin brand new lives

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Two career MWDs, both at the ripe
old age of eight, recently traded in their military leashes for the comforts of
civilian life. Brit, a German shepherd, was formerly
a "patrol narcotics detection dog for a military police unit at Joint Base
Lewis-McChord in Washington." Bubba (pictured), a chocolate lab with one tour
in Iraq and one in Afghanistan behind him, was a bomb-sniffing dog for the Army.

Bubba's last tour in Afghanistan was apparently cut short when
the 80-pound dog took a bad tumble, falling through a canvas roof. But his new
owners, the Van Fleets, report that Bubba's wounded leg doesn't keep him from
enjoying his new home or from taking measures to keep his new family safe. The
couple, who lives in Trumansburg, NY, say that Bubba "will case
the perimeter" of their home whenever he's outside and "insists on inspecting
whatever object in one's hands."

Brit on the other hand, is continuing to offer his services
to those in the military but in a rather different capacity. Along with his new
owners, the Russells of Fayetteville, NC, Brit is making the rounds at the Womack Army Medical
Center at Fort Bragg as a therapy dog, having taken therapy-training
classes in order to assist wounded veterans. He's only made a handful of visits
so far, but his presence already seems to be making an impact.

"The boy is a traffic stop," [his owner, Russell, who
accompanies Brit on these visits] says. "Everyone stops to say hello or
give him a hug."... On several occasions, those soldiers have broken down
in tears while hugging Brit and have thanked him for the service of military
working dogs overseas...."They tell me 'When the dogs come, it makes our day.'"

Canine news of
interest: The practical use of the canine nose seems without limits. This
week I came across three very interesting articles about sniffer dogs being
used to detect some pretty unexpected...things. In Britain
dogs are helping authorities uncover
counterfeit condoms, and in California dogs are being employed to track
down fox droppings in an effort to preserve the endangered San
Joaquin kit fox. They're also using dogs to sniff out fox dens in
Queensland, Australia, though in this case it's to cull
the population, not save it. Who knew?

Rebecca Frankel, on leave from
her FP
desk, is
currently writing a book about military working dogs, to be published by Atria
Books in August 2013.

Simpson’s ‘War from the Ground Up’ (III): What he says about the Afghan war

Emile Simpson's core observation on the Afghan
war is that when war is simply violent politics, one shouldn't expect it to
end, because politics doesn't end. As he writes in his book, "The outcomes of contemporary
conflicts are often better understood as constant evolutions of how power is
configured." (P. 2)

Once you see the
conflict in Afghanistan as political at its core, then just talking about the
enemy as a unitary force makes no sense. For example, when in 2005 Helmand's
provincial governor was ousted from office and so could not pay his followers,
he sent them to work for the Taliban, which was hiring. "Akhundzada and his men
did not ‘change sides'; they remained on their own side." (P. 44)

Seeing military
action through a political lens, as he advocates throughout the book, also puts
coalition operations in a different light. Wresting control of Kandahar city
from the Taliban might seem to make military sense if it is the enemy's center
of gravity, he notes. But think of it instead as a political problem. "In
political terms, to have identified Kandahar city as the decisive point was a bold
move; however, for a political consultant in a US presidential election, it
would be like the Democratic Party investing massive resources in trying to win
Texas." (P. 100)

He also warns that it
is easy for the Taliban's leaders to negotiate, because it gives them
legitimacy, but hard for them to reach any agreements, because then they would
have to enforce them, and they can't. "If the leadership were to negotiate a
political settlement only to have it ignored by the groups it claims to
control, it would lost all credibility." (P. 78)

He thinks that
official corruption is "a significantly more relevant issue than the
insurgency" in terms of the future stability of the Afghan state. (P. 152)

Nobody has yet
written an overall history of the Afghan War. I nominate Emile Simpson. (Who,
by the way, was a captain, not a lieutenant, as I mistakenly said my first post about the book, on Tuesday.)

Commanders now authorized to ask suicidal soldiers if they have guns

The NRA was in no
position to oppose this change in the law. And some soldiers may live
because of it. Good.

One day in the VA Clinic waiting room

By Ron Rogers

Best Defense office
of veterans' affairs

There were four of us left in the VA Clinic waiting
room in Morehead City, North Carolina. There was a rather bulky fellow with a
huge shock of white hair and half-asleep, a woman waiting to drive a neighbor
home, a young veteran of Fallujah and Helmand, and myself, a Vietnam veteran.

The woman, a bright senior, and I started out
talking about the man she was driving and that conversation morphed into
Afghanistan and getting the heck out. I mentioned that the hardships of Korea,
the "forgotten war," made Afghanistan pale by comparison. The older gentleman
seemed to wake up and mumbled an apology for jumping into the conversation and
he was welcomed -- of course. He was a retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant who had
fought in Korea and Vietnam. He acknowledged that Korea was the forgotten war
and told a brief story about his unit "resting" behind the lines, but still
having to man defensive positions. One night he was handed a .38 revolver (!)
and sent to man the front gate of the compound. It began to snow and soon it had
piled up to shoulder height. Two days later they were able to reach him and
relieve him on post. Note that he did not talk about the cold, the lack of food
and water, or the hardships of the fights that preceded resting. We talked some
more about how, in Vietnam, he had gotten tired of the infantry and changed his
MOS to aviation ordnance, and he spoke of his gauging the intensity of the
battles by the amount and type of ordnance he was supplying for the planes. He
observed that it was not going well. And then he was called back to see the
doctor.

It was running very late and was now 1730 (for a
1530 appointment). Next the woman's friend came out and they left. I was now
alone in the room with a rigid, taciturn, powerfully built young man who was
standing at parade rest facing the door and wearing a backpack. His face was a
slightly hostile mask. I asked him if he was a veteran and he said yes, he was
a Marine. I observed that he must have been in Afghanistan and he replied that
he had fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I asked him what he did and he said
that he had been a "door kicker." He said it with both pride and resignation --
he was not happy. Part of it was due to the fact that his wife hadn't shown up
yet to take him home. He phoned her and it was clear that they were not
communicating well. I took a chance and said that I had observed that many
younger veterans were seemingly angry and asked if he was doing OK. He revealed
the very sliver of a smile and said with some hesitation that "he was doing OK."
He said that he had spent 10 years in the Corps and that at the very end, he
too had changed his MOS to aviation and proudly said that he had worked on
Harriers. Then it turned out that both he and his brother had fought in the
same places and made the same shift to aviation. He politely listened to my
mentioning that I had read books by Bing West, who West is, and also Little America. When I said that West
had explained the folly that led to the vicious second Battle of Fallujah, he
acknowledged that with an angry nod and a "yes." Then I mentioned that in Little America General Nicholson had
been described as a nice man with the wrong instincts about where and how to
fight. It was clear that this former NCO was not happy with General Nicholson
at all.

Just then his wife drove up and he said, "Time to go
home to my three kids." I exclaimed "three?" and he smiled. I asked if he was
now working as a civilian at Cherry Point and he showed surprise and said yes
that he was working on Harriers. I said that that was a good job and that "I
had found that the best thing to say was ‘welcome home,' so welcome home." He
smiled for the first time and said, "that was right -- welcome home," and we
shook hands and he went out through the door to join his wife.

Now alone in an ever colder waiting room, I marveled
at the parallel careers of these two Marines, separated by fifty years, but
sharing the same thought processes -- that kicking doors had gotten old and it
was time for a change. And, just as comfortable as "the Gunny" was with his
life, this new veteran Marine was going to go through a difficult transition to
reach that place as I had noted his demeanor and his difficulty in
communicating with his wife on the phone. They were going to have to learn to
communicate and perhaps deal with his demons or their marriage would come to an
end. He is a fine young man.

He and his brother are home now, but are we helping them to get all the way
home?

The author served on active duty
and in the Reserve for 23 years and was lucky to spend most of that time in
Army Special Forces, with a diversion to Intelligence. While in Vietnam, he served both on an
"A" Team and with DARPA. As a reservist, he served in OSD. In civilian life he
has been an editor for McGraw Hill, a civil servant with USIA, and an IT
manager in Washington. He is now retired on a boat in North Carolina.

Simpson’s ‘War from the Ground Up’ (II): You may not be interested in COIN, but COIN remains interested in you

Emile Simpson doesn't
think we can just walk away from COIN. As he writes in his book, "Counter-insurgency is likely
to remain the more effective operational approach to deal with an enemy who
wants to fight in an irregular manner," (p. 11).

"The control of
political space is as important, if not more important, than controlling
physical space," (p. 6). There is a good master's thesis to be written on just
exploring that thought.

And don't think you
can just ignore the politics. "One cannot refuse to engage in political
activity: the empowerment or marginalising of individuals and groups will occur
through coalition actions, whether deliberate or not," (p. 107).

He seems to reject
the "hearts and minds" shorthand often used for COIN: "‘Classic' counterinsurgency...was
far more about population control than about popular support," (p. 150).

Finally, he observes
that classic Western military thought calls for concentration of force against
the enemy's center of gravity, but warns that insurgencies generally avoid
concentration.

His bottom line: "If in a given conflict the
policy choice has been to commit military forces to achieve an outcome in a
country in which the enemy refuses conventional battle and lives among the
people, counterinsurgency, properly resourced, and in a realistic political context,
can be highly effective," (p. 235).