Quickly as I’m out of time to post and or to add my own comments, but here are two recommendations: the first is something to read (or a series of reading if you’re industrious) and the second is something to listen to. Both of these are on counterinsurgency today.

First is Dave Kilcullen’s response on the Small Wars Journal Blog to Edward Luttwak’s Dead End: Counter-Insurgency as Military Malpractice. (For more discussion, see the thread on the Small Wars Council discussion board.)

The second item of note is to be listened to. It’s an audio program (transcript to appear soon) by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Background Briefing with Stan Correy. By the way, on the topic of the Small Wars Journal and Council, the founders can be heard around 27 1/2 minutes in.

See Draconian Observations for his brief post on Anthony Cordesman and Antulio J. Echevarria on the Long War.

The below slide DO posted from Cordesman’s presentation is a statement of the obvious that’s absolutely revolutionary (plug: it’s nice to have real analysts agree with me, see the last paragraph here.)

DO’s summary is, of course, dead-on:

The Long War concept ties together the coming Shaping JOC, the SSTR JOC, AFRICOM and also – because of the holistic, true clausewitzian approach – points to the troubled division of labor between State and Pentagon. But that is another story.

Yet another addition: PCR Project, a CSIS blog on prevention, conflict analysis, and reconstruction. Post-conflict reconstruction (PCR) is a popular topic these days covering a wide range of topics.

On the same topic, but not a blogroll addition, is the new Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding (H/T C-M blog, initial issue avail free):

…a new cross-disciplinary journal devoted to academic and practitioner analysis of international intervention with the purpose of strengthening state capacities.

Statebuilding – constructing or reconstructing institutions of governance capable of providing citizens with physical and economic security – is widely held to be one of the most pressing policy questions facing the international community today. Those concerned with such issues cross the political spectrum. They include political realists who argue that there is more to fear from failing states than from conquering ones. They also embrace activists who see the dysfunction of state institutions as lying at the heart of the global poverty trap. Indeed, it is the intersection of these concerns on the part of the security and development communities that has made state-building a core policy focus across the policy agendas of major Western states, international institutions and international NGOs.

Robert Young Pelton writes on, and gives important background on, insurgent tactics and organization in Iraq.

I enjoy discussing 4GW because there are just so many problems with the “theory”. This is probably why I read Arms and Influence’s Mao or Less with a grin on my face:

OK, I’ve officially had it with the “netwar” crowd. An interesting observation–successful guerrillas and terrorists operate in loosely-networked organizations, instead of hierarchical chains of command–has turned into a distorted view of revolutionary warfare. “Netwar” is an overstatement, a description of a trend that is not entirely new, nor is it exactly the strategy of many revolutionary groups described as “net warriors.” If the United States is going to get smarter about counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, it shouldn’t posit a brand new kind of warfare that may not exist.

Continue reading “I enjoy discussing 4GW…
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The Afghan Road Rage memo of July 18, 2006, should probably be sent to Iraq. In the context of counterinsurgency, there are repercussions to driving like this.

Hat tip IraqSlogger & The Daily Background

Appropriately, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) released their 2007 Military Balance:

The IISS in the 2007 Military Balance again analyses the challenges of complex irregular warfare, this time assessing the psychological component. Our judgement is that military planning procedures need to incorporate so called ‘influence activities’ as an integral part of pre-deployment preparation for complex warfare missions. Without this deeper perception of the mission environment, operations will lack the necessary ingredient for long-term success.

Continue reading “IISS on complex irregular warfare: the West is Failing
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This isn’t what you think it is. It’s about institutional culture clashes manifested as conflicts between anthropologists and a “scholarly” rejection of “military dominance in the field”. In April 2005, Montgomery McFate wrote an article for Military Review titled Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: the Strange Story of their Curious Relationship in which she wrote about past use of anthropologists in COIN. Some selected excerpts from this article:

Continue reading “Institutional Culture Clash preventing culture understanding
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The Civilian Reserve Corps has gotten pitched in public again with Max Boot writing about it in today’s Los Angeles Times:

As for the Civilian Reserve Corps, the administration has no detailed plans to recruit, train or deploy abroad the kind of experts we need in such fields as law, finance, sanitation and balloting. Nor does it have the money. Odds are that this bright idea will suffer the same fate as another plan devised by the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, which asked for $100 million from Congress for contingency planning last year and got zip.

Ideally (a key word here), CCR will be more than the ill-fated S/CRS ever was. Picking up on Barnett, Boot suggests a Department of Peace built from a new USAID and a new US Information Agency. I love that last bit, not because I disagree, but I find it increasingly humorous that talk about recreating and reempowering USIA come not from State (although old USIA hands say the same, they seem to have largely been sidelined) but from DoD & the defense establishment. In other words, it’s the hard power guys calling for USIA and improving communications while the “soft power” folks under SecState Rice are… well, what are they doing (and here)?

See Opposed Systems Design comments on Max Boot here and my previous observations on the CCR proposal here.