Culture-the missing piece of effective Counterinsurgency Policy

Counterinsurgency’s Comeback, a piece by Nasser Hussain published in the January 2010 edition of the Boston Review, discusses the effects of various counterinsurgency tactics used in Iraq and other wars in the past going back to Vietnam. Hussain also outlines the long history of counterinsurgency methods from various field manuals and publications that illustrate step by step methods for how to “win over” the “host population” in the country at hand. Such a task has proved to be nearly impossible in recent history, often due to issues of legitimacy, according to Hussain. Legitimacy is arguably the most significant reason that the majority of counterinsurgency tactics mentioned in this article have failed; they cannot win over the “host population”. Hussein mentions that almost every counterinsurgency tactic has a goal of winning the “hearts and minds” of the population, yet it is often very difficult for those in the country to see the US presence as legitimate. Why does the US fail to convince the host population that their presence is legitimate? Read the rest of this entry »

“An Ugly (and Untenable) Peace”

As violence diminishes in post-civil war Iraq, sectarianism is becoming entrenched in the political institutions of the country according to the first of a two-part series by Nir Rosen in our November/December 2009 issue.  What does this say about Iraq’s future?  A government rife with corruption and authoritarian tendencies begins to appear increasingly threatening when sectarianism is thrown into the mix.  Although the decrease in violence over the past two years is certainly something to be happy about, it shouldn’t cloud the necessity to foster minority protection rights.  Sunnis and Shias have tired of violence and recognized the legitimacy of the central government for now, but ten years down the road, when Shias are receiving all the civil service jobs and Iraqi schools are imposing a Shia-based education on its Sunni students, can we be sure that another civil war won’t break out?  And this isn’t even considering the volatile north, where the central government stands by watching the Kurdish authority committing human rights abuses against Shabaks, Yazidis and other minority ethnic groups.

The Obama administration’s attention is currently solely fixed on Afghanistan, and understandably so.  The President has rejected all of the proposals set before him by his war council and continues to ponder over whether or not to employ an Iraq-styled “surge” in Afghanistan.  While considering the question of whether to increase troops or not, he should also ask if the “success” he would be looking to replicate with the surge is the type of success he wants.  The decision facing Obama has been compared to the dilemmas faced by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 with respect to Vietnam.  “Eikenberry’s stand” gives the President some time to continue to weigh the pros and cons of a troop increase.  During this time, he should not only refer back to the consequences of Johnson’s decisions in Vietnam, but also to what is shaping up to become an untenable peace in Iraq.

American Amnesia and the Unaddressed Legacy of the Iraq War

“Having spent the better part of the Bush era arguing foreign policy with a fury not seen since Vietnam, Americans have settled on a remarkably durable consensus: It was a mistake. We’re winning. Let’s leave.” ~Ross Douthat

We can never be sure of the alchemy by which historical conflicts and experiences influence the decision making of national leaders in comparable situations. Were it not for the rapid escalation of World War I, would European leaders have proved as cautious in appeasing Hitler? But alternatively, Soviet defeat in Afghanistan and the American humiliation in Vietnam did not deter the Bush Administration from trying to tame Afghanistan and Iraq.

As for the legacy of the current war in Iraq, one aspect of its legacy in foreign policy decision-making seems clear – that no one is considering it.

Since 2003, the Fertile Crescent has been the setting of a great test of Neoconservative American foreign policy. This grand Neoconservative vision, resurgent and emboldened in the 90’s by America’s triumph over the Soviets, calls for “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.” That is, a foreign policy of an American hegemon exerting global leadership and moral superiority, protecting fellow democracies while utilizing strong military intervention against hostile regimes to recast them in America’s own democratic image.

As President Clinton prepared for his 1998 State of the Union, he received a letter signed by a score of prominent Neoconservatives. Citing the inevitability of Saddam Hussein producing weapons of mass destruction, destabilizing the Middle East, threatening the safety of our troops and allies in the region, and cutting off the oil supply, they urged Clinton “to turn [his] Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power,” a strategy that “will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts.”

Three years later, the signers of this letter populated Washington with only a Texas cowboy between them and control of the American war machine: Dick Cheney was Vice-President, Donald Rumsfeld the Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz his Deputy, and Elliott Abrams Special Assistant to the President and a National Security Council member. When September 11 introduced the Middle East to the national consciousness as a land of sinister threats, it offered the opportunity to push their Neoconservative vision into action.

Not long ago, this vision appeared to have been torn asunder by IED’s and lying dead in the ethnically charged landscape of Iraq – de-legitimized by its failed implementation as Iraq descended into chaos and civil war. The Neoconservatives planning and running Operation Iraqi Freedom were criminally negligent, arrogant, unprepared and perhaps even corrupt in a plethora of ways so well discussed in the last several years they need not be repeated, although it can largely be summed up by an Army lieutenant colonel’s presentation to war planners days before the invasion, which described post-invasion re-construction plans as “To be provided.” They never were.

But the surge no longer reflects President Bush going down with the Neoconservative ship. Competent US military personnel, reconstruction experts and Iraqi citizens have wrought an amazing transformation, achieving modest successes in Iraq. I began this post with a quote by journalist Ross Douthat describing the collective American reaction to success in Iraq: relief and an attempt at amnesia. But lurking behind this collective silence on the meaning of Iraq remains the question of whether continued improvements will redeem Neoconservatism’s ideals and principles, and whether it will allow this strongly interventionist foreign policy, which simultaneously promotes American democracy, values and interests, to re-enter the decision making calculus of American leaders.

While our collective silence on Iraq leaves the fate of Neoconservativism unclear, the events unfolding there hold implications for other foreign policies. The Neocons have no monopoly on interventionism as a policy tool. American intervention has long been advocated, simply without the Neoconservative military focus and assumed moral clarity/superiority. The chaos of 2003-2006 Iraq has hurt prospects for more modest interventionists – realists advocating intervention to maintain international stability and idealists advocating intervention for democracy or human rights promotion. In addition, the forum in this past Boston Review contains a number of prominent political scientists who believe that interventions in one form or another could be the best hope for ending civil conflict and bringing development to the world’s “Bottom Billion.” Without dialogue, the differences between these approaches and the Neoconservativism that resulted in Iraq’s failures will be neither addressed nor discerned.

We are silent today, but the question remains: as history plays out in the keystone country of the Middle East, what will it mean for the foreign policy of the world’s superpower?

Bibliographical note: I drew extensively on Gilles Kepel’s excellent book The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West in writing this post. For further reading on Neoconservative intentions in the Middle East, see Wolfowitz’s leaked “US Defense Planning Guidance” and this Neoconservative memo for Israeli leaders, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.”