Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 148

The submarine: Not just a game changer, but nearly a crippler of the British Empire

British
military might rested on its navy for centuries, Paul Kennedy reminds us in The Rise and Fall of British Naval
Mastery, which I am just finishing. That changed
almost exactly 100 years ago with the advent of the submarine. "There is no
doubt that this new weapon almost brought the British Empire to its knees," he
writes.

By
1937, British spending on the RAF passed spending on its army, and a year
later, also passed the navy's budget.

Rebecca's War Dog of the Week: British bomb dog Theo receives Dickin Medal

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Theo,
the springer spaniel who died of an undiagnosed seizure in Afghanistan last
year was recently (and posthumously) bestowed the prestigious Dickin
Award. Theo's handler Lance Corporal Liam Tasker was shot and killed by
enemy fire hours earlier. In lieu of a confirmed cause of death Theo is rather
famously believed to have died of a broken heart. The bomb-detection team held
the record for most finds-a record that holds strong to this day.

Tasker's mother who attended last month's ceremonies told reporters that she was
very proud of her son and commented on her son's relationship with the young
dog, "One couldn't have worked without the other out there, doing
the job they were doing."

The first Dickin Medal was awarded in 1943 and has been
given to 64 animals in the years since including: 32 pigeons, 28 dogs, three
horses, and one cat. These animals were each presented with a "large,
bronze medallion bearing the words "For Gallantry" and "We Also Serve" all
within a laurel wreath. The ribbon is striped green, dark brown and pale blue
representing water, earth and air to symbolise the naval, land and air
forces." The award is named in honor of the woman who founded Britain's PSDA in 1917, Maria Elizabeth Dickin.

For many years the organization discontinued its practice of
handing out the Dickin Award but in the aftermath of 9/11 it was reinstated. It
was presented to a search-and-rescue dog named Appollo, a canine with the NYC
police department. He was the first dog on the scene after the towers were hit.

Theo is now the 64th in a long line of deserving four-legged
and winged recipients.

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

Annals of toxic leaders: BG Sinclair's generalship as a negative example

Brig.
Gen. Jeffrey
Sinclair, the U.S. Army's most famous one-star, allegedly made
his lover urinate in a waste basket (I think so people couldn't see her coming
and going from his place), talked trash about female officers, and once
threatened to kill his lover and her family if she talked. When she tried to
break off the relationship, he would
seek oral
sex.

Pop
quiz for new brigadiers: Which of these behaviors was wrong?

 

Come on down: Book event in D.C. tonight

[image error]

I'll
be giving a talk on my book tonite at the Willard Hotel in DC at 6:30 tonight,
along with Susan Glasser, the smart and dynamic editor of Foreign
Policy magazine.

It
is free, but you must needs register. Click here to do so.  

If
you wear a Best Defense t-shirt tonight, you get a free drink after the show.
But then again you get the drink even if you don't. However, with the t-shirt you might get it faster.

In
other CNAS news, the estimable Nate Fick is leaving the place to become CEO of
some cyber company. He will be missed. We need a replacement. So, if you know
someone who is energetic, unassuming, likable, married above himself, has a
Harvard MBA, and is a fine leader, and who maybe also has written a good memoir
of military service, just sent them to apply here.   

Tom's Wednesday: Fox on the run?

By
coincidence, I was over at Fox News headquarters in midtown Manhattan yesterday
morning, just as the election results were setting in incontrovertible
concrete. The scene reminded me of something that David Eisenhower once said to
me about living in the Nixon White House during Watergate: "It was painful for
others, but you know, it sure was interesting for me." At Fox, the faces in the
hallways were sober but chin-up. There clearly was some head-scratching going
on. Like, "Hey, perhaps the Republican Party shouldn't have dissed women,
Hispanics, the poor and the rest of the electorate so much?"

I
wonder if the jig is up for Fox: On election night they looked like they
couldn't decide whether they were a
political party or a news network. That peculiar combination is
no longer working. It was kind of like being in the line yesterday at Romney's
D.C. transition office to hand in your cell phones. Or, if you're into 1962,  like being at U.
Miss. 

On
the other hand, Obama's re-election may have helped the Fox MO. After all, it
is much easier to work in opposition. You don't have to deal with messy
realities, or defend the awkward compromises that come with it, and can criticize
at will. That likely will be the case come Monday, when Fox will have their
memory banks adequately scrubbed. So maybe their business model is safe -- despite
it being built on the rubble of the national comity.    

The British lesson of the Industrial Revolution: The drawbacks to being 1st

One
of the drawbacks to being the pioneer in the Industrial Revolution, Paul
Kennedy writes in The Rise and Fall of
British Naval Mastery, was that the British,
being first, simply were not accustomed to competition. Hence both their industrial
and social practices were encumbered, he writes, by "complacency and inefficiency."

As
a result, he continued, the British educational system failed to keep pace with
the Americans and Germans in churning out engineers and technologists. And even
when innovators surfaced, they did not necessarily succeed. Britain was a major
innovator in the steel industry, he writes, but was surpassed because its
wealthy did not back innovation with investments. 

Army wife: How CGSC managed to screw up my wounded warrior husband

A
wife writes:

My husband was part of the wounded
warrior education initiative and was placed in the military history dept at
CGSC. He had only one class group and wasn't even able to finish it due to
getting notice. The army paid a lot of money to get him ready for this job and
I believe he had no chance to keep his job. My husband gave a lot to his
country including limb. He had great reviews from his students and fellow
instructors. He had asked if he should get his PhD a couple months into being
at CGSC and was told to wait. Which of course his lack of PhD was part of the
reason he lost the job he loved and was very good at. When CGSC placed these
wounded warriors they knew that they wouldn't have a PhD right off the bat. The
wounded warrior project went all the way to Texas to recruit my husband, moved
him to Kansas, paid for his masters, paid for his salary while going to school,
gave him one class group and then let him go. I'm sure there would be a lot of
taxpayers out there that wouldn't be too happy to have no return on their
investment. I have been around the military my whole life and for the first
time I am very disappointed in how they have handled a situation. My husband
feels as though he was set up for failure and that yet again the army has
failed him.

Drones: Here to stay

By Adam Ahmad

Best Defense department of dronery

The debate concerning the use of armed Predator drones to
neutralize al Qaeda and a cauldron of other militant groups in Pakistan's
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) has accelerated in recent months.
Supporters of the drone program cite its ability to rapidly trounce terrorist
operatives with little difficulty, while those in the opposition highlight the
controversial nodes of the program such as its legality and the public
animosity it breeds from civilian casualties. 

But a constant focus on the positives and negatives of
the drone program in Pakistan does little to address the real issues
surrounding its use. The more compelling issue is: what's the alternative? Yes,
the drone program has sapped much of al Qaeda's energy in the tribal areas, but
it has also sparked torrents of anti-Americanism. Is there any other way for
the U.S. and Pakistan to dismantle terrorist organizations without provoking
wider violence for Pakistan?

One approach is for Pakistani military forces to suit up
and prepare for another invasion of the tribal areas. But past incursions have
ended dreadfully. During Operation Zalzala in South Waziristan in 2008, homes
were razed, villages were leveled and thousands of FATA residents were
displaced. The operation was so devastating that it created new grievances for
FATA's local population and led Baitullah Meshud's al Qaeda inspired
Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) to double-down in violence and suicide bombings,
wreaking havoc across the Pakistani landscape.

This is not to say that the Pakistani military should shy
away from conducting operations in Pakistan proper to claw back militant gains.
The military offensive in 2009 to vanquish Mullah Fazlula's Taliban
faction-responsible for the assassination attempt on Malala Yousafzai-from the
Swat Valley was much needed. But the Pakistani military should steer clear of
orchestrating incursions into the tribal areas where the writ of Islamabad runs
thin in order to avoid wider devastation.

A more hazardous alternative to drones is to have U.S.
forces conduct cross-border raids into FATA. With the U.S. drawing down in
Afghanistan, this option is not on the table in Washington and for good reason.
If the Pakistani public is outraged at remote controlled bombers hovering over
their country, hostility towards the U.S. would certainly hit a fever pitch at
western boots on the ground. A U.S. military presence in FATA would also serve
a propaganda bonanza for violent extremist groups. Indeed, there remains little
appetite in Washington to turn that into a reality. Pakistan's leadership will
also never give the green light for such a move.

In another approach, Pakistani authorities could also
turn to forging political settlements with militant groups in hopes that they
cease their assistance in planning and executing terror attacks with foreign
and homegrown terrorist organizations. But if history is any lesson, peace
deals with extremist groups have a very short lifespan. The 24-year-old Waziri
militant leader Nek Mohammed back in June 2004 failed to up hold his end of the
Shakai Peace Agreement with Islamabad, jolting the Pakistani military into
South Waziristan again to clear out Pakistani and foreign militant groups from
the area.

What's more, recent utterances from TTP vanguard
Hakimullah Meshud suggests that the group is not interested at all in signing
peace deals with the government. Meshud even sacked one of his deputies -- Maulvi
Faqir Muhammad -- for entertaining the idea.

Pakistan has historically negotiated these peace deals when
the Pakistani government was in a relatively weak position, forcing the state
to make significant concessions to the militants. The deals failed to serve
their purpose and only strengthened the resolve of the extremists.

None of these alternatives can wipe out terror groups in
Pakistan without causing wider destruction in the tribal areas or in Pakistan
proper. Drones not only allow for the swift incineration of terrorist
operatives, but they also make it more difficult for terror groups to meet and plan
attacks. The program may have its faults, but it has also kept Pakistan safer
by neutralizing the groups that seek nothing more than to break the government
in Islamabad and harm activists for speaking out for a woman's right to
education. For better or for worse, blemishes and all, drones are here to stay.

Adam Ahmad is a researcher at the Center for a New American
Security and a reporting assistant at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars. His work focuses on South Asia and U.S.
covert action.

One key to strategy: Hone your planning by considering what might lead to failure

One
line that I've always hated is "Failure is not
an option."

Rather,
failure should always be considered carefully in strategic discussions. One
question that needs to be asked is, "How could we lose this thing?" That helps
sharpen the discussion and helps lead to distinctions between what is essential
and what is merely important, as Eisenhower put it early in World War II.

I
mention all this because Paul Kennedy mentions in The Rise and Fall of
British Naval Mastery
that early in the 7 Years' War (a.k.a. the French and Indian
War), the British recognized early on that the only way they could totally lose
was through a French invasion of England. So job one was to prevent that.  

Signed copies of 'The Generals' available

Inspired
by a request I got, I've decided to partner with Politics & Prose, a great
local bookstore here in DC, to offer signed copies of The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today.
The catch is that they are only available by the dozen. No onesies, twosies or
such, and no special inscriptions, which just gets too damned complex. (But
what better way to cover your Christmas list than with 12 signed copies of a
fun narrative history?)

For $375, you can get
a dozen signed copies, which includes shipping it to you. Just send the check
and a good mailing address to me at:

 

Tom Ricks

CNAS

1301 Pennsylvania Ave NW

Suite 403

Washington DC 20004