All Tomorrow's Posts: Archive

“If ISAF abandoned Helmand and a few thousand Marines moved to Kandahar to clear, hold and build (with Karzai’s kleptocracy?) the Hell out of that province in 2009, are we to believe that the Taliban would’ve just surrendered? They wouldn’t have hit softer targets of the Karzai government, like the Afghan Security Forces? They wouldn’t have moved in the supposedly “cleared” areas around Kabul and set up shop to continuously destabilize the capital in front of TV cameras? That they wouldn’t have relied on safe Pakistani enclaves to rest, recuperate and rotate back for the next three years?”

Prine’s post is worth a read, and it hits specifically at the same frustration Foust expressed in Exum vs Exum: the plan from on high was a bad one, and fault lies not in the execution but the overall structure.

Ultimately, Afghanistan may be a lesson in gradual failure leading to fewer changes than catastrophe. There will be other lessons, but as the Afghan postmortems/terminal diagnoses trickle in, a consistent preference for course adjustment over change in strategy seems has led us to no Tet but instead death from a thousand lost turning points.

Jun 29, 2012

#africa #kenya #state department

“Belmokhtar is believed to have died during a battle that killed at least 20 people on Wednesday night in the north Mali town of Gao, where the Islamists seized the MNLA headquarters, the source said. The Islamists have since declared they are in control of northern Mali.”

It looks like the founder of AQIM was killed. Initial source is Malian TV, so waiting for confirmation, but this is the kind of big slip I was expecting to break under distraction of SCOTUS. (H/t RockyShoals)

Jun 28, 2012

“That may be true to various degrees, but the war never had to be screwed up in the first place: Afghanistan responds well to humility, to limited ambitions, and to long time frames. The COINdinistas now furiously trying to revise their policies never accepted that.” - Joshua Foust

I’m going to sidestep the general thrust of Foust’s piece (for personal non participation in the 2009 COIN/CT debate) and instead focus on the two key problems that keep resurfacing as America fails to effectively prosecute her wars abroad: path dependency and a lack of long term planning. Much of COIN’s momentum as a strategy derives from it’s perceived success in the Iraq surge. As detractors (and honest surge supporters) will be note, the surge worked because it at best catalyzed/at worst coincided with a situation on the ground that had been evolving towards rough settlement for years.

The US war in Afghanistan lacked those preconditions (as Foust is quick to point out), and so a surge thrown into that conflict was going to work differently, and executed without thought to local conditions, was going to go poorly. This is where CT advocates get to say their “I told you so’s”, and where better long term planning was needed. Asking “are the conditions anywhere like ready for this to catalyze success, and if not, how do we get them there first?” would have done a lot.

Once we had our hybrid surge/CT strategy in place, the role of policy planners was to figure out how to make it work. Part of that responsibility, of course, is being able to say “this isn’t working,” admit error, and change course. But that runs against path dependency, where we find it easier to adjust a wrong course of action than completely switch strategy. It’s a vexing problem, and one compounded by poor long term planning. A catalyst without an endpoint in sight isn’t.

Jun 28, 2012

Play

Jun 28, 2012

#spyfare #DIA

“In concert with these overseas operations, the U.S. passed the PATRIOT ACT, stepped up domestic law enforcement operations and increased electronic surveillance. Wow, Americans really hated this! Renditions, illegal detentions, surveillance and GITMO were declared over – probably a good thing. Side effect of this: 1) the U.S. has no method for detaining terrorists captured on global battlefields. Lacking a detention policy, terrorists lacking sufficient evidence for prosecution are turned back to their home countries… 2) Without the ability to pursue a law enforcement approach (Corrupt/incapable CT partners) or detain those captured, the U.S. reverts to drone warfare to interdict terrorists in safe havens.” —http://selectedwisdom.com/?p=685

Jun 28, 2012

#drones #counter terrorism

“We, like all potential players, know that the expected utility of not playing is greater than the expected utility of playing, yet many people play. Due to the presence of perfect information and the lack of a commitment problem, we can say that the fact that some people play roulette is proof that people often violate the assumptions of rationality. If it’s true for roulette, why can’t it be true for war?”

Great short post examining a situation in which people take risks with full knowledge of potential payouts and a guarantee of outcome agreements being honored. Roulette is a game stacked against players that remains popular, and provides an ideal abstraction for study.

Jun 27, 2012

This is a follow up to an earlier map based on ethnic identity, which didn’t fully capture identify of the region. Neat!

Jun 27, 2012

Iran has announced development of a video game in which the player pursues a Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Three quick takes: 1. Iran is trolling, and maybe looking to generate headlines unrelated to how badly sanctions are hurting them or how their proxy is doing in Syria. 2: if Iran wants to be seen as a rational actor, and most nuke-aspirational states do, this (and yesterday’s rant about Zionists and the drug trade at the UN) is a terrible way to do that. 3: This sounds like a really bad game, as a middle aged author isn’t exactly the most threatening of people. Of course, that all could change if they pull a Castle Wolfenstein and put Rushdie in a mech suit with gatling arms.

Jun 27, 20121 note

#video games #Iran

Via Daniel Solomon

Jun 27, 2012

Perhaps skimping on troop evac is the best way to erode an army’s faith in it’s leadership

Jun 27, 2012

Jun 26, 20121 note

#army #camouflage #uniform

Jun 26, 201235 notes

#drug war #mexico #syria

Jun 26, 20121 note

#wargaming #games #Modeling

“Quantitative risk assessments should be more useful to the analysts, desk officers, and deputies who may be able to raise warning flags earlier and who will be called upon when their country of interest pops into the news. Statistical forecasts of relevant events can shape those specialists’ thinking about what the major risks are in their areas of concern, hopefully spurring them to revisit their assumptions in cases where the forecast diverges significantly from their own expectations. Statistical forecasts can also give those specialists some indication on how various risks might increase or decrease as other conditions change. In this model, the point isn’t to replace or overrule the analyst’s judgment, but rather to shape and inform it.” —Jay Ulfelder ponders the cognitive biases against predictive modeling and how to make it more used by policy makers.

Jun 26, 2012

#Modeling #cognitive bias #future prediction

“

Assad could voluntarily cede power, spending the rest of his days in comfortable exile. But this is the second reason he continues to fight. Assad knows that a safe, comfortable exile is not an option for him. In the past, hated dictators have sometimes chosen exile when defeat seemed likely. The Shah of Iran did it in the 1970s, Ferdinand Marcos did it in the 1980s, and Ben Ali did it last year. This option isn’t open to Assad and this is what makes fighting to the finish attractive to him.

Assad cannot go into exile because exile leaves him vulnerable to prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Assad’s problem is that he signed the Rome Statute of the ICC, giving the Court the right to prosecute him if he engages in crimes against humanity – something he has clearly done over the past year. In fact, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly confirmed that Assad could be prosecuted for war crimes. This places Assad directly in the sightline of the ICC.

” —Turns out the ICC can inadvertently prolong civil wars, by denying the golden parachute out for otherwise exile-ready war criminals. It’s a strange justice that prioritizes retribution against a national leader over attempts to end their crimes.

Jun 26, 2012

#syria #ICC #golden parachute #exile #amnesty

“The research showed that in Africa the volume of water naturally stored underground within the cracks and pores of rocks is much larger (possibly 20 times more) than the 8,000 cubic miles of water visible in lakes and rivers. This water holds enormous potential to help people and nations move out of poverty, produce more food and better adapt to climate change. But it also could lead to tensions between neighboring countries.” —

Jun 25, 2012

#drones #air force #cost comparison

“

Kilcullen puts it best when he says that Ranger School “…lures the kind of young, smart soldiers needed to get the toughest jobs done.” Folks, that’s got nothing to do with your reproductive capabilities. You’ll notice the absence of the word “men” anywhere in that sentence; it’s about “soldiers.”

Neither Lilyea nor Kilcullen articulated any reason why women were incapable of attending or completing Ranger School. Instead Kilcullen argues simply that they don’t belong there and Lilyea claims that the Army is incapable of integrating women into Ranger School while simultaneously maintaining existing standards. They both believe—although for very different reasons—that women shouldn’t be allowed to go. The Army’s inability to figure this out is a different issue altogether from the question of whether or not women should be allowed to attend Ranger School.

” —

Last week, both Tyrell Mayfield (above) and Andrew Exum (below) weighed in on women going to ranger school, and in parallel argued the same point:

The temptation will be to relax the standard, because only a very select group of women would be able to do six strict chin-ups.
But that, of course, is exactly the point. When I was selected for service in the Ranger Regiment, the Regimental psychologist told me, “Well, the bad news is, you are not normal. The good news is, we’re not interested in normal people.”

and came to the same conclusion: if the standards for Ranger School don’t change, this is a non-debate.

Jun 25, 2012

#US Army #gender #rangers

“I can never forget the people who work in the diplomatic corps and the workers in the General Intelligence Service and those who maintain the security of the homeland against its enemies wherever they are. I cannot forget all of them.” —From the English translation of Egyptian President-elect Morsi’s speech. I’m pulling this quote among many other more important ones because it satisfies my ricebowl to see shout-outs to the diplomatic corps.

Jun 25, 2012

All Tomorrow's Posts

June 2012

65 posts