Category Archives: Military

Deterrence Facile and Sophisticated

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A piece by Clifford D. May from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies that appeared in the Washington Times contained the following statement:

The paradox of deterrence is that the stronger we are, the less likely that our adversaries will provoke a conflict with us. By contrast, if we appear weak or wobbly, those who despise us will be emboldened to take their best shots.

This is a rather facile understanding of deterrence. Strength does not necessarily increase deterrence. Deterrence is a very difficult thing to achieve in international affairs because it is intimately tied to the level of analysis, information, perceptions, and the security dilemma.

The level of analysis matters greatly. For example, most of the work on nuclear deterrence, treats states as unitary rational actors. That is a state makes decisions doing costs-benefit analysis and chooses the option with the most gain (or least loss). That simplifying assumption appears to have worked well for theories of nuclear deterrence. Nuclear deterrence rests on the idea that having a viable second strike capability on both sides. It ensures that weapons will not be used, because the first use is guaranteed to result in a counter-strike. Given the destructive power of strategic nuclear weapons, the result is the destruction of both sides. For this reason, the so-called nuclear triad is very important. Possessing intercontinental ballistic missiles, bombers, and sea launched ballistic missiles ensures that a first strike could not knock out a state’s entire arsenal, and enough will survive for the counter strike. For nuclear deterrence to work, all that is required is rationality and information, the more perfect the better. Better information reduces the likelihood of miscalculation. Even so, during the Cuban Missile Crisis there was almost a nuclear weapon used by a Russian submarine under attack by US destroyers enforcing the quarantine of Cuba. Use of a nuclear weapon might in turn have set off an escalatory spiral. (Russia’s deployment of IRBMs in Cuba was to address an imbalance of forces because at the time Russia was struggling with its ICBM program and thought that the US advantage in interceptor fighters, made thee Russian bomber fleet insufficient to deter a US first strike. The Russians wanted to bring more of the continental United States under nuclear threat.

Deterrence has been less effective in conventional arms because it is tied to perceptions. The state as a unitary rational actor seems not to hold well. For example, whether offense or defense in war has the advantage has a bearing on the calculus of decision makers. Decision makers may “fight the last war” and misunderstand how technology has changed the nature of war. At a more tactical level, information problems abound. How good is the intelligence? After all, military decision makers disguise movements and behave in rationally irrational ways–for example, marching the army over the mountain and not down the road which would be faster, because it enhances surprise. Incentives to dissemble abound.

States themselves may not be unitary actors. Without strong civilian control of the military, actions may be undertaken that are detrimental to the state for parochial military reasons. When states leverage irregular war strategies such as proxies and militias, or in the case of Iran, parallel security institutions, the idea that a state will behave as a unitary actor are imperiled.

Deterrence rests upon credible threat. This is what May is getting to, but strength doesn’t necessarily make a threat credible. There are many ways of making threats more credible. I’ll refer you to Schelling’s classic analysis of threat for a more detailed discussion, including how weakness can actually enhance the credibility of threat. One of the key ways of making a threat more credible is to remove options for concessions thereby shrinking the policy space. Another key way is to use unpredictability for advantage. When a state behaves unpredictably, the state may be able to drive a harder bargain than were its true preferences known. Think of Nixon’s approach during the Vietnam War, when trying to extract concessions from North Vietnam, he cultivated the idea that he was irrational.

Strength can actually be a detriment to successful deterrence, because it can result in the security dilemma. A state feels threatened, so it increases its military capability, thereby increasing the costs associated with an attack, however, the military buildup makes the other state more insecure, resulting in an arms race, or a temptation to attack in order to preempt the state from getting stronger.

Finally there is the issue of crazy states. Yehezkel Dror in his Crazy States: A Counterconventional Strategic Problem, laid out a typology of ways states have preferences that are in his terminology “counter reasonable”. An extreme example: millenarianism produces preferences that are “counter reasonable” because willingness to destroy one’s self to destroy an enemy is counter reasonable, violating the basic principle of self preservation.

Thus, strength does not automatically increase the level of deterrence. Credible threats can be made even from positions of weakness. Perceptions of threat may activate a security dilemma–for example, it is possible that Iran embarked on a covert nuclear weapons program as a way of deterring the United States from pursuing regime change, ditto North Korea–and finally, the states themselves may not behave rationally. They may not do cost-benefit analyses and act as a utility maximizer, a prerequisite for analytical tools for understanding state behavior like game theory that has worked so well in developing doctrines of nuclear deterrence.

A European Aircraft Carrier

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Recently AKK advocated the EU build its own aircraft carrier. This is not as harebrained as it appears on its face. Per a report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), post-Brexit, the European Union would struggle to execute a humanitarian disaster response in its near abroad due to a lack of naval assets.

An aircraft carrier, I am not talking a behemoth like the American nuclear-powered floating cities with 80 aircraft and a crew of 5,000, but the typical modern carrier closer in size and capability to a flattop for VSTOL aircraft like an American Wasp-class amphibious assault ship (LHD), is an important asset to have in order to execute that kind of mission. This is not, as AKK said, “[A] symbolic project.” Rather, it addresses a real capability shortfall.

However, must it be European? For the following reasons it makes sense for a German to go the multilateral route:

  1. France is the only member of a post-Brexit EU with experience in naval aviation. Naval aviation is a hard capability to develop and Germany’s startup costs would be high and learning curve steep. Germany gets capability sooner, while paying the price of policy constraints imposed by the multilateral approach.
  2. The German public would likely never support a German independent naval aviation capability. Germany struggles with maintaining land and air capability to deter invasion today, let alone developing capability with offensive power projection potential.
  3. Any European aircraft carrier would still benefit Germany’s industry.

However, a European aircraft carrier would fail as a project for the same reason that an independent Chapter VII military failed to materialize at the UN. The EU is an intergovernmental organization (IGO) and as such most be looked at through the lens of principal-agent analysis. Member states delegate issue areas to the IGO and maintain constraints on the independence of the IGO (ask the southern members of the EU about the control Germany exercises on the European Central Bank viz. monetary policy). It is one thing for states to cooperate on security in the European Union, offering their own troops and materiel for collective defense and sharing intelligence, always retaining an implicit veto via withdrawal. It is another, to build the first ship of an independent European navy, which makes the EU more of an independent third-party actor than any member state would wish. Even if theoretically a veto still existed at the level of the Council of Ministers.

Realist Reductionism and MAGA

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The Washington Times featured a typical piece of MAGA cheerleading.  The United States is poised to withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.  The article is cheering the decision and dismissing the threat from Russia to start a new arms race: “bring it on.”  This is absurd to wish for.

First, let’s review the reasons behind the INF and how it fits into nuclear strategy.  The USSR developed an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM), the SS-20, capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads with a range of approximately 4,000-5,000 km, depending on warhead, using solid rocket fuel, from a road mobile launcher.  This meant that all of Western Europe was under threat from a strategic nuclear weapon (1+ megaton warheads), whose preparation and deployment could not be detected early.  The United States in response deployed its own mobile IRBMs to Western Europe, the Pershing II and the Ground Launched Cruise Missile (a variant of the Naval Tomahawk cruise missile), with 5-150 kiloton warheads.  Both systems were theater level tactical nuclear weapons and not directly analogous to the SS-20, but were what the US had.  IRBMs were not covered under the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (SALT I and SALT II) which had a range of 5,500 km as the definition of an ICBM.  The INF eliminated the IRBM as a class of weapons.

There are several reasons why the INF Treaty is obsolete.  First, from Russia’s perspective, the United States’ withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in order to develop ballistic missile defense (BMD) technologies to handle the threat of rogue regimes has increased Russian anxieties over the viability of its own nuclear deterrent.  The argument is bogus, because the size of Russia’s ICBM arsenal could easily overwhelm any deployed BDM system, and Russia wants tools with which to coerce Western Europe and to counter China’s IRBM arsenal.  Second, China was not a party to the INF, and has a large arsenal of IRBMs that threaten both US and Russian interests in Asia.  IRBMs are a core piece of China’s security architecture given its geography.  China is a continental power bordered by two peer rivals, Russia and India, and is economically dependent on Pacific trade that must transit choke points defined by two rings of archipelagoes.  Therefore, deterring rivals by land and extending hegemony to the archipelagoes are crucial to Chinese security.  Furthermore, it reinforces the imperial ambitions of China as it emerges from its “century of humiliation” and remakes the world order.  It permits them to extend nuclear terror (or more kindly, a nuclear umbrella for allies) over the near abroad and is an important tool for denying US access to the Western Pacific.

Russia has already violated the INF with the testing of a new class of ground launched cruise missile.  The INF did not ban research and development, but did ban testing and deployment.  Thus, the United States is now threatening to formally withdraw from the agreement and a prelude to developing new capability, the most likely candidate is the reintroduction of an updated GLCM.

This is how we got here.  This is a development that should not be cheered.  As numerous analysts have pointed out (e.g., here, here, and here), it raises the risk of miscalculation and nuclear war in Europe, encourages proliferation, and wastes resources better spent elsewhere.  As long as nuclear weapons remain in the hands of normal states and not crazy states (Dror, Crazy States: A Counterconventional Strategic Problem), they are weapons designed never to be used.  Thus, an arsenal larger than a certain size is absurd.  The essence of nuclear strategy is having a reliable second strike capability.  The idea is that an adversary is deterred from attempting to eliminate your nuclear weapons with a first strike, because enough will survive to guarantee destruction of the adversary in a counter-strike, hence the so-called nuclear triad: (1) ICBMs, (2) aircraft delivered bombs, and (3) submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).

Arms control agreements, contrary to popular belief, are not tools towards the abolition of nuclear weapons, because they don’t eliminate the scientists and engineers necessary to have a nuclear weapons program.  They are tools nuclear powers use to prevent wasteful arms races.  IRBMs were never necessary to maintain a strategic deterrent, but they were destabilizing to European politics–for example, the fear of a limited first strike and abandonment by allies.  The elimination of IRBMs stabilized European politics.

Realist international relations theory says that due to the lack of a supranational authority to enforce agreements, states will abide by agreements as long as the benefits to remaining in the agreement outweigh the costs of abiding by the agreement.  It also predicts that cheating on the agreement is the best of all, which is why agreements need vigorous enforcement mechanisms and also why states tolerate spying rather than defining it as an act of war.  Spying reduces the amount of private information and therefore increases the knowledge of adversary intentions and capabilities.  It lowers the likelihood of miscalculation and war.

Some scholars in the realist tradition think that nuclear proliferation is a good thing, because it will reduce the likelihood of war.  For example, the father of structural realism–the idea that it is the structure of the interstate system itself that causes war–Kenneth Waltz speculated that more nuclear weapons may be better for stability.  And John Mearsheimer, who is the father of offensive realism theory, and whose The Tragedy of Great Power Politics is a masterful analysis of the cause of World War I–essentially, German unification in 1862 destabilized the balance of power in Europe established after the Napoleonic wars, has advocated nuclear weapons as a means of securing the independence of small states.

On balance, however, the stability offered by proliferation is only evident when (a) all parties have a viable second-strike capability and (b) are normal states.  Viable second strike capabilities do not spring forth fully formed from the head of Zeus.  During the early phase, the system is not stable.  The Cuban Missile Crisis was in part caused by the lack of a viable Soviet second-strike capability.  At the time, the USSR was struggling with its SLBM and ICBM programs and they thought that the size of the US Air Force meant that its bombers may not reach their targets in the continental US.  Therefore, they undertook a plan to covertly deploy IRBMs in Cuba that could threaten the US eastern seaboard.  The US responded with a blockade of Cuba (called a quarantine for reasons of international law), that almost resulted in the use of a nuclear weapon by a Soviet submarine (surprisingly like the scenario of Crimson Tide).  Under conditions of bounded rationality is not at all clear that small states won’t always behave according to rational choice theory, hence normally.  It is always possible that a state would behave according to normal political considerations.  For example, the apocalyptic scenarios as a consequence of Iranian nuclear breakout are predicated on Shia millenarianism driving the decision to use nuclear weapons against rational calculations.

But L. Todd Wood doesn’t get this sophisticated.  He merely thinks that paleo-realist sources of power (cf., Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations) are determinative of the victor in an arms race.  US economic might well mean that Russia loses the arms race, which is a perversion of the theory that the Cold War was won because of Reagan’s military build up.  That victory in the Cold War was mainly a historical accident.  It hinged on Gorbachev.  Furthermore, L. Todd Wood, ignores how states other than the US and Russia will respond to a nuclear IRBM deployment in Europe.  Trump has already denigrated NATO Article 5 and it is entirely possible that you may see a European arms race to deal with the threat.  The likely scenario is a rejuvenation of the French nuclear arsenal to extend a European nuclear umbrella over Germany, but there is no guaranteeing that Germany might not decide to develop its own nuclear capability.  Either response, actually reduces US relative power over the postmodern multi ethnic empire in the making that is the European Union.  The tricky thing about European rearmament is that for the most part, weapons systems are not purely defensive and security dilemmas develop with potential for conflict.

The MAGA crowd may be tired of the United States underwriting European security, when the real conflict right now is with China, but the shift must be carefully managed and may not, in the long term, be in US interests.  Dependency gives the US influence in European affairs it wouldn’t otherwise have.

I happen to think that on balance withdrawal is justified viz. the contest with China, because deployment of a new conventional IRBM capability is needed to deter a forceful reunification of Taiwan with the PRC, which would be a geostrategic disaster for US hegemony in the Pacific, and to deter a preemptive attack by China on US bases in the region.  The development is to be lamented not cheered.  Lamented because it is precisely a tragedy of great power politics.

Britain, the US and France

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Two opinion pieces today highlight Britain’s post-EU situation well. Tunku Vadarajan highlights the change in relative diplomatic status between Britain and France. He contends that France is the United States’ new principle ally among European great powers as evinced by the state visit of Marcon last week. This is at the expense of Britain, because a Britain outside the EU is no longer consequential.

The second piece by Ted Brumond puts a spotlight on the decline of the RAF and British military generally. The Royal Navy is now so small that it can field only 5 frigates at a time. The Army has only 227 main battle tanks. Budget cuts have cut deeply in the UK’s ability to project power in any meaningful way.

These are two sides of the same coin. A Britain outside the EU has a smaller “continental commitment.” Whether Britain should be engaged on the European continent and prepared to wage a land war or not, has always been at the heart of defense politics. Armies are expensive and furthermore, the Army is organized on the regimental system. The basic organizational unit in the British Army is a regiment of about 3 battalions of combined arms and self-supporting. It is an ideal way of organizing for low-intensity conflict (LIC) and military operations other than war (MOOTW). The British Army is a professional volunteer force recruited geographically into regiments. A regiment’s smaller size, close to an American Brigade or a USMC Marine Expeditionary Unit (however the MEU is purposely built and trained for expeditionary warfare). Its organization, size, and capability, the perfect solution for colonial policing. In the post-colonial era, the regiment has transitioned well to counterinsurgency, peacekeeping, and armed humanitarian operations. You could say that the British Army’s character was determined by empire (the American Revolution, being the first of many LICs the British Army fought).

The British Army is not built to wage total war with massed forces. Only were it organized on the basis of the division could it be considered a force for waging continental war against the Russians. British Army doctrine is focused on maneuver (much like the USMC), because they expect to be outgunned and outmanned.

More disturbing in the Weekly Spectator piece is the decline of the Royal Navy. With empire now a generation in the past and the Cold War over, a substantial peace dividend was harvested (navies are exceedingly expensive to build and maintain).  The US Navy took over responsibility for providing the global public good of policing the global maritime commons (a mission the US has been trying to shirk since the end of the Cold War, because it is expensive).  The Royal Navy did not need to be as large.  However, it would appear that perhaps too much peace dividend has been harvested. I say this, because 5 frigates and a couple of submarines is not enough ASW capability to police the coasts, let alone enough firepower and presence to impose a blockade of Europe. Russian submarines will prowl the North Atlantic.

This decline in RN capability could be an additional reason for US diplomatic disengagement unmentioned by Vadarajan. The RN won’t matter in a European conflict.

In the modern era Britain has always avoided a continental commitment where possible. From one perspective, Brexit is about precisely that issue. After the Second World War, Britain appeared to double down on a continental commitment in order forstall another European total war. Part of that commitment was not merely NATO, but participating in the EEC/EU in order to have influence on the continent, however the cost of participation in the EU project rose higher than the immediate benefit of participation. Brexit is a retreat from the continental commitment, which has always happened with extended peace time.

Which brings me to France. Vadarajan, ably points out the reasons for increasing US engagement with France. Post Brexit, the US wants to have influence, and France is a powerful partner in the EU. Furthermore, France also is not the complete military basket case that Germany is.

This is not to say that France will ever be as close to operating with US Forces the way the British Army has. Language and cultural barriers will make that difficult. This is not to say that there aren’t substantial differences between British and American strategic culture. For example, British military doctrine is based on maneuver and harrassment, whereas, American military doctrine has been shaped by the Civil War, World War II, and Vietnam towards waging total war and not LIC. It is still division centric and geared towards fighting total war, even after more than a decade of LIC in Southwest Asia. The US may come to work more closely with French forces over time. This is particularly true of deterrence missions in Europe (e.g., tripwire deployment in Eastern Europe) and LIC/MOOTW in Africa (e.g., Mali where French and US forces are deployed to increase state security and combat Islamist forces).

Where does that leave Britain viz. the US relationship? It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Britain could forge a truly consequential trade relationship with North America via NAFTA or some other new Multilateral arrangement, however, the “special relationship” is probably over in the new world disorder.  Britain has returned to a geopolitical situation similar to before the Elizabethan age–a territorial defense Army and a Navy too small to protect Albion’s interests beyond the Channel and sometimes not even that.

Wooden Ships, Iron Men

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The New York Times had an article about the fallout of the multiple collisions in the US Seventh Fleet. The investigations are not complete. Yet actions are already being taken:

  • Operational tempo of forward deployed forces will be slowed to allow for more training and maintenance
  • Ships will be required to turn on AIS when in crowded shipping lanes
  • Paper charts and CPAs are back in fashion
  • Standing rules for watch officers will be standardized
  • Watch durations are being adjusted
  • Ships without training currency will now be allowed out

Additionally several senior heads have already rolled. Vice Admiral Aucoin is already out. Admiral Swift is going to be out, as will Admiral Rowden.

AIS is a system that uses digital selective calling on VHF FM marine radio to broadcast information about a ship and its location, which is then received by other vessels and Vessel Traffic Service and displayed on a chart plotter or Radar plan position indicator. There is extended coverage with satellite based receivers as well.  Warships normally don’t operate with AIS turned on, because it makes enemy target acquisition, surveillance, and reconnaissance easier. Now they will operate with AIS on in congested waterways.

One of the challenges a Navy vessel faces in a congested waterway is the ship has been designed for stealth. The ship is painted a gray color designed to be difficult to distinguish from atmospheric haze. The ship also is designed to have a small Radar cross section and appear smaller on a PPI than it is—essentially look like a fishing boat, not a warship.

In the old days, a quartermaster, a petty officer responsible for navigating the vessel, was responsible for calculating the closes point of approach (CPA) for all targets reported from the Radar and lookouts and keeping the Captain up to date on other vessels maneuvering near the ship. A special piece of polar coordinate graph paper called a maneuvering board was used to graphically solve the vector arithmetic problems of all the target vessels.

Maneuvering Board Image

Example of a maneuvering board

If you tour the USS Midway in San Diego, you will find a glass divider between the workstation and the Captain’s chair. The quartermaster would receive reports of targets on the sound powered telephone, do the calculations, and write the CPA on the glass partition backwards(!), so the Captain is always aware of risks of collision.

In the USCG cutters are required to maintain a paper plot of position at all times, regardless of the electronic gizmos on board. The position reported by electronic navigation is checked by celestial navigation at solar noon each day. The USCG still has a wooden ships and iron men mentality. The Navy is re-learning. Recently, the US Naval Academy has added celestial navigation back into the curriculum, given the fragility of the GPS system to spoofing and jamming. Furthermore, anticipating conflict with a peer adversary, the government has put out a tender for a new radio navigation system, since Loran-C was decommissioned in 2010. With GPS out of commission an accurate way of finding position will be needed.

Fundamentally, the source of the problem is that the demands being placed on forward deployed forces are not compatible with sequestration. You can’t shrink the Navy and expect the same operational tempo to be sustained for very long. Ships systems begin to fail. The ship’s company gets out of currency on training. One effect is that in challenging navigation situations, like operating in a congested waterway or at night, the Captain relies on only the most senior watch standers, whose fatigue mounts with the extra hours. With fatigue, lapses of attention and judgment happen.

Hobbes and the Risks in Proxy Wars

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Thomas Hobbes described the state of nature as a “warre of all against all.” That describes the war in Syria. Every player has different goals in the conflict. The Syrian government is fighting to survive and reclaim territory. Russia has allied with the Syrian government to maintain basing in the Mediterranean and disrupt the European Union. The United States wants to remove a terrorist stronghold and strangle in the cradle a nascent Islamist revolutionary state, ISIS. Iran wants to create a crescent of influence that includes Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The Gulf monarchies want to counter Iran’s plans. Turkey wants to avoid the creation of a Kurdish state in Syria and counter Iran.

The United States has used proxies to fight a war on ISIS. The most effective fighting forces have been Kurdish militias. I had not expected Kurdish forces to move outside their ethnic strongholds and take the fight to ISIS, but they have. The ISIS stronghold of Raqqa has been encircled by Kurdish militias, Syrian Democratic Forces (Turkey’s proxy), and Free Syrian Army (another Turkish proxy).

The United States allied with Kurdish forces, because they were the most capable fighting force. The Kurds allied with the United States with the hopes of support for a Kurdish state in the region. Turkey does not want a Kurdish state, fearing the dismantling of eastern Turkey. Turkey invaded Northern Iraq to limit Kurdish control over territory adjacent to Turkey. More recently, Turkey has shelled Kurdish positions in Syria. The United States has repositioned its special operations forces embedded with the Kurds in order to fend off Turkish advances against Kurdish forces.

The US forces are a tripwire force. Attacking Kurds with US embedded forces risks a wider conflict with the US, something Turkey wants to avoid. This is a dangerous brinksmanship, but necessary to keep the pressure on ISIS. Were the Kurds to withdraw forces to fight Turkey, it would delay the defeat of ISIS.

Let’s war game out a scenario. Raqqa falls to a Kurdish and SDF/SFA turkish proxies. Raqqa becomes like a divided Berlin, carved up into zones of control. The US maintains its presence to police ISIS sympathizers and deter the Russian backed Syrian government and Iranian backed militias from attempting to retake eastern Syria. The Kurds take the opportunity to establish a de facto state in eastern Syria and northern Iraq. The tripwire force is now hostage to the Kurds. Does the United States withdraw and start a new war, this time between Kurds, the Syrian government, and Turkey, or does it back a Kurdish state?

Either way, the fall of Raqqa is really just the end of the beginning of the realignment of the Middle East. Humpty Dumpty cannot be put back together again.

SOCOM wants Captain America

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For those not in the know, the Marvel Comics character Captain America was a super soldier.  A weakling, Steve Rogers, was used as a guinea pig in experiments during World War II to create a super soldier.  He was given a serum that turned him into a superhero.

The Special Operations Command, according to this article, wants to do the same thing with special operations soldiers.  The idea is to experiment with regimens of supplements and performance enhancing drugs to expand the limits of human endurance and strength.

I have concerns over this approach.  The selection process for Navy SEALs, et al. is already designed to have the cream rise to the top.  Only the most mentally and physically tough make it.  Given that every drug has side effects, I would not want operators being forced to adulterate their bodies with cocktails of drugs to create super soldiers.  They already are super soldiers–elite warriors.

This seems to be an expedient to be able to get more of them.  There seems to be an insatiable demand for operators in the Global War on Terror (GWT).  Elite athletes are few and far between.  Perhaps the objective is to either extend the careers of warriors (much the way Major League Baseball players in the steroid era were using PEDs to deal with injuries and age) or to allow those not physically endowed to get through training able to make it.

The True purpose of Decapitation

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One of the junior analysts over at the Foreign Policy Research Institute has a blog posting about the ineffectiveness of drone strikes on Al Qaeda leadership.  After discussing the killing of a senior Al Qaeda operative in Afghanistan, he goes  on to lament the failure of drone strikes to win the War on Terrorism:

Despite these pronouncements of impending victory, U.S. counterterrorism strategy is inherently flawed.  The U.S. relies on a tactic known as decapitation, which states that eliminating the leaders of an organization will lead to its destruction.

I would submit that the Pentagon or White House can claim victory in any winning engagement with the enemy, no matter how small.  Winning a battle and winning a war are two different things.  Furthermore, decapitation is not the strategy, it is a tactic, one of many being used in the Global War on Terror (GWT).  The U.S. has been in Afghanistan for 15 years to eliminate a hostile regime and build the successor state’s capabilities to the point that the state is able to exert sovereignty over its territory. (Sovereignty defined in the Weberian sense of a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.)

Decapitation is used to disrupt the opposing organization.  It will never lead to the destruction of a decentralized and franchised organization like Al Qaeda.  The temporary disruption caused by drone strikes should not be disparaged, because it fails to win a war singlehandedly.

The GWT is a civilizational conflict that will be generations long.  The defeat of violent salafi groups is not achievable with military methods alone.  Drone strikes are one of many ways to temporarily keep the wolves at bay.  Building the capabilities of states to police their own jihadis is an important tool in the longer term strategy.

 

Special Operators in Mosul

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There is a report that the U.S. has stepped up the use of special operators in Mosul.  This is pretty standard in advance of a push to take the city.  Throw a loose cordon around the city.  Use nighttime raids against high value targets to disrupt command and control and demoralize the insurgents by getting them thinking that there is no place to hide.  Then faint on one side of the city and advance in force elsewhere.  It is what we did to take Ramadi from Al Qaeda.  We sent Task Force 145, composed of Delta and SEALs to get the leaders before the Marines went in.

Human Rights versus Maintenance of Order

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Ellen Bork of the Foreign Policy Initiative has an essay over at The American Interest in which she rebukes the Obama administration’s lifting of the arms embargo on Vietnam, because there has been insufficient progress on human rights by the Communist government there.

She complains that human rights progress has been a requirement for lifting the arms embargo, citing testimony by the U.S. Ambassador to Congress during his confirmation hearing: “We can’t lift the ban absent significant progress on human rights.”

It is fitting that the essay appeared at The American Interest, since Walter Russell Mead, founding editor, had previously written extensively about the incompatibility between Continental European Realpolitik and American traditions of foreign policy:

The Nixon and Ford administrations represented the zenith of Continental realism’s influence in American foreign policy. International life was seen as a morals-free zone… The United States would support any distasteful regime, bar none, in the interests of strengthening our global posture against the Soviet Union…The Nixon-Kissinger approach also took the moral element out of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. It was as if the United States and the Soviet Union were two rival great powers like Prussia and Austria, and could rech a detente based on common interests while setting aside their philosophical differences, just as Catholic Austria and Protestant Prussia had done. (Mead 2001, 76)

But this was its zenith. The Carter administration was ideologically unable to continue the Nixon-Kissinger pivot and it settled back into a comfortable moralizing anticommunism centered around the Soviet Union’s “abysmal human rights record and principled opposition to what was interpreted as Soviet aggression in Afghanistan.” (Mead 2001, 76)

What Bork fails to realize and which I have explained in a previous post on Obama’s “realism” is that he is a neoliberal institutionalist (NLI). What distinguishes NLI from previous forms of liberalism, like commercial pacifism (Adam Smith, Kant and its apotheosis in Norman Angell), is that the fundamental principles of realism are accepted: in the absence of a Hobbesian Leviathan, the in international states system is anarchic and a self-help system. What distinguishes NLI from realism, is the role that international institutions can play in removing the issue hierarchy that places the state’s security above all other diplomatic initiatives. Remove existential threats and cooperation among states becomes possible.

Obama is following a policy viz. China’s rise that goes back to the Bush administration (Silove 2016). China’s rise to great power status is inevitable and the United States’ diplomatic task is to manage that rise peacefully and integrate China into the current post-Second World War set of international institutions and liberal order. This, by the way, is extremely ambitious, since historically no reordering of relative power of this magnitude has been without war.

Checking Chinese imperial ambitions and preserving United States maritime hegemony in the Pacific dictates that the United States strengthen the relative power of China’s neighbors in order to raise the cost of Chinese assertion of sovereignty over its neighbors. China must be channelled into acceptance of the status quo instead of behaving as a revisionist power. This is very different from a strategy of containment, it but may be interpreted as such by the Chinese and may provoke armed conflict. This is why the strategy is so risky.

Lifting the embargo makes it possible to do selective arms deals with Vietnam along with Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines to increase their defensive and maritime policing capabilities that raise the cost to China of a significant conflict.

Fighting the cause of human rights is noble, but deterring a major war is more noble.

References

Mead, W. R. (2001) Special Providence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Silove, N. (2016) The Pivot before the Pivot: U.S. Strategy to Preserve the Power Balance in Asia. International Security 40 (4): 45-88.