Conflict

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Our geopolitical experts will destroy America, if we let them

A new post by our most perceptive geopolitical expert, Fabius Maximus.

He reviews the 14 “Plan Bs” suggested by pundits assembled by Foreign Policy magazine.  Essentially, their recommendations amount to doing more of the same, but expecting different results.  Here’s his paraphrase of #13:

(#13)  Invade another god-forsaken land where we have no national interest while there’s still a few $ on the national VISA card

So what would be wrong with arresting Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, which has conducted a campaign of brutal terror in northern Uganda and adjacent areas of Africa for years?

Nothing — if it were done by the governments of Uganda or the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Sudan.  The problem is that those entities are states only in the sense that they have seats at the UN, and they are among the most corrupt in the world.  Sending in special operators to take out Kony will change that about as much as killing another narcotrafficking boss will return the rule of law to northern Mexico.

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Problems at Facebook?

I tried a post and got the following message:

“This message contains blocked content that has previously been flagged as abusive or spammy. Let us know if you think this is an error.”

Here’s the abusive content I was trying to post:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

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Count me in Tim Heffernan’s camp

With many thanks for the kind mention in his Politics Blog at Esquire.com, dated September 2, 2010:

Drones Do Not Win Wars

… Drones are just one of our tools. You can argue their practical merits and the morality of their use. But it is naked idiocy to trust them alone to “turn the tide” or “put the enemy on the run” or “bring our boys home” or justify any other jolly stock phrase. Count me in Chet Richards’s camp, instead: the power of drones is as likely to induce hubris in ourselves as acquiescence in terrorists. Regarding which, I’m reminded of an unjolly stock phrase that actually rings true: pride goeth before a fall.

Unfortunately, the link to my piece got gomered up in Tim’s original blog; the link above should work.

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Destruction and Creation

The previous post featured Boyd’s last work on strategy; this one provides his first.  The entire Boyd opus can be found at http://dnipogo.org/john-r-boyd/

I had met Boyd while he was still in the Air Force and I was a civilian in the Program Analysis and Evaluation division of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.  We’re talking 1972 or so.  But I didn’t start working with him until he retired and started this paper.  He needed someone to review the mathematics and who would work for free.  I fit the bill.

Destruction and Creation lays out the primary arguments that will guide Boyd’s strategic thought at least through Strategic Game in 1986.  It makes the statement that one cannot tell the character or nature of a system from within that system.  Fair enough — nothing radical there.  But then he makes a claim that as far as I know establishes his unique place in strategic thought:  Attempts to do so will “expose uncertainty and generate disorder.”

In other words, a good strategic principle is to force  opponents to turn inward and keep them focused internally until they destroy themselves or so weaken their abilities to resist that you can do it for them.

All the rest of Boyd’s primary strategic work illustrates this concept and suggests many mechanisms at the physical, mental, and moral levels for applying it.

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The Essence of Winning and Losing

Boyd’s last briefing, also called “the big crunch,” available through our “Articles” page link above.

In the 10 years after the last dated version of his major briefings, including Patterns of Conflict (available at http://dnipogo.org/john-r-boyd/), Boyd thought long and hard about the essential elements of his work.  About a year before he died, this is what he came up with.

It ties together all the major elements of his work, including orientation, implicit guidance and control, Fingerspitzengefühl, the OODA loop, and the notion of “operating inside the OODA loop.”  All in 3 pages.

It’s not an easy read, but it will repay many hours of deep pondering.

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People thoughts, etc., etc.

I don’t want to bore you all, but it’s hard to think of a more important topic in this day and time.  So far, I’ve mentioned the Naxelites in India and Jamaican drug gangs.  But the gold standard for swimming in the sea of the people nowadays is probably Hezbollah:

Ten years on since the withdrawal, the UN together with the Lebanese army patrol the border area. But flapping in the breeze along the fence are yellow and green flags of Hezbollah. Waving next to them is the flag of the group’s biggest foreign backer – Iran.

It is Hezbollah that has real control over what happens in southern Lebanon and many villagers say they like the arrangement.

“It’s the resistance, its weapons and [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah who make us feel safe here,” says Fawwaz Mohammed. “Without the resistance we could never be free.”

Update on Jamaica — reports that “thousands” of troops have assaulted Dudus’s stronghold.  The fact that, two days later, they’re still assaulting it tells you something.  Whether they eventually capture Christoper “Dudus” Cook, this cannot turn out well for Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding.  For one thing, Dudus’s gang, the “Shower Posse,” is (was?) closely affiliated with Golding’s ruling Labor Party.  And by launching the assault after initially resisting the US demand for Dudus’s extradition, Golding paints himself as more attuned to American interests than those of his constituents and countrymen.

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People thoughts must become guerrilla thoughts

Latest in a series.

For an example of how it’s done, read the Guardian’s series on Christopher “Dudus” Coke, a gang lord from Jamaica:

Coke is described as one of the world’s most dangerous druglords by the US justice department.

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To the residents of Tivoli Gardens, the poor west side of Kingston where his gang has immense support, he is the benefactor who provides them with food, acts as mediator in disputes and even sends their children to school. They call him Presi, Bossy, Shortman or, most commonly, Dudus.

Residents, not affiliated with the gang, have erected their own barricades:

In the centre of Kingston today, residents could be seen standing behind roadblocks on street corners. Several barricades appeared to have been erected not by gunmen or gang members, but by ordinary residents seeking to protect themselves, or to obstruct the police, who often have a poor reputation for corruption and brutality.

A similar situation erupted in Brazil in 2006, when a gang called the First Command of the Capital shut down Sao Paulo for several days.

What could happen in Jamaica is that the government takes such losses in combating the gangs that its police and security forces refuse to engage.  At this point, the state has failed, and it will probably require massive and expensive intervention by the US to prop up some semblance of a government.  The alternative, that Jamaica, like India, works out a modus vivendi with the mini-state in its midst, was foreclosed when the US decided to force Jamaica to honor the American request to extradite Dudus to New York.  We should be careful what we wish for.

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COIN

“Insurgents” are people out to overthrow the government in some part, perhaps all, of a country and replace it with themselves.

“Guerrilla warfare” is a style of fighting.  It can be used for any purpose, including prosecuting an insurgency or resisting an occupying force of foreign troops.  It can also be an adjunct to conventional operations in a more traditional war between states.

Continue reading →

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Consequences and costs

From an article on CNN.com today:

The Mexican cartels, the report says, are “the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States.” The Mexican organizations have operations in every region of the United States and are expanding into more rural and suburban areas. … They’ve also stepped up cooperation with U.S. street and prison gangs for distribution.

According to Michael T. Walther, director of the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center, which produced the report. “The economic cost alone is estimated at nearly $215 billion annually.”

Note that this compares with the annual direct costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So while we’re off in those places, guess what’s happening in our own back yard.

More than 2,500 people were killed in drug-related violence in Ciudad Juarez (across the Rio Grande River from El Paso) last year. That’s in one city, right across our border, and only the murders we know about.

With this amount of money at stake, and with the level of violence that the Mexican drug cartels routinely employ, we might rephrase the National Drug Threat Assessment 2010 report’s conclusion as:

The Mexican cartels, the report says, are “the single greatest threat to the United States.”

We have to choose where to use our limited resources, and our survival as a free and democratic country rests upon our choosing wisely.