There has recently been significant combat by the Taliban to interdict lines of supply through the Khyber pass.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani militants attacked a parked convoy of trucks carrying military vehicles for Western forces in Afghanistan near Peshawar early on Sunday, destroying 96 trucks, police said.

Security guards said they were overpowered by more than 200 militants who attacked two terminals on the ring road round the northwestern city of Peshawar, where the trucks carrying Humvees and other military vehicles were parked.

“It happened at around 2.30 a.m. They fired rockets, hurled hand grenades and then set ablaze 96 trucks,” senior police officer Azeem Khan told Reuters.

Most of the fuel and other supplies for U.S. and NATO forces in landlocked Afghanistan are trucked through Pakistan, much of it through the mountainous Khyber Pass between Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province and the border town of Torkham.

Khan said one private security guard was killed in an exchange of fire between police and the militants.

“They were shouting Allah-o-Akbar (God is Great) and Down With America. They broke into the terminals after snatching our guns,” said Mohammad Rafiullah, security guard at one terminal.

Militants destroyed 22 trucks carrying food supplies in the same area a week ago.

Last month the government closed the main supply route to Western forces in Afghanistan for a week after militants hijacked more than a dozen trucks on the road through the Khyber Pass.

The Captain’s Journal has weighed in on this issue beginning almost one year ago, and there isn’t much more than can be said about the difficulties except that only when the pressure of kinetic operations is put on the Taliban will the trouble on the lines of logistical supply ease.

But there is one troubling aspect to this recent attack.  Note the number of Taliban engaged in the operations, i.e., 200.  This is similar to the number engaged in the Battle of Wanat, and it shows a confidence in large scale operations that doesn’t bode well for the campaign.

The Asia Times has an important article on the security situation near Kabul, Afghanistan.

If there is an exact location marking the West’s failures in Afghanistan, it is the modest police checkpoint that sits on the main highway 20 minutes south of Kabul. The post signals the edge of the capital, a city of spectacular tension, blast walls, and standstill traffic. Beyond this point, Kabul’s gritty, low-slung buildings and narrow streets give way to a vast plain of serene farmland hemmed in by sandy mountains. In this valley in Logar province, the American-backed government of Afghanistan no longer exists.

Instead of government officials, men in muddied black turbans with assault rifles slung over their shoulders patrol the highway, checking for thieves and “spies”. The charred carcass of a tanker, meant to deliver fuel to international forces further south, sits belly up on the roadside.

The police say they don’t dare enter these districts, especially at night when the guerrillas rule the roads. In some parts of the country’s south and east, these insurgents have even set up their own government, which they call the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the name of the former Taliban government). They mete out justice in makeshift sharia courts. They settle land disputes between villagers. They dictate the curricula in schools.

Just three years ago, the central government still controlled the provinces near Kabul. But years of mismanagement, rampant criminality, and mounting civilian casualties have led to a spectacular resurgence of the Taliban and other related groups. Today, the Islamic Emirate enjoys de facto control in large parts of the country’s south and east. According to ACBAR, an umbrella organization representing more than 100 aid agencies, insurgent attacks have increased by 50% over the past year. Foreign soldiers are now dying at a higher rate here than in Iraq.

The burgeoning disaster is prompting the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai and international players to speak openly of negotiations with sections of the insurgency.

Who exactly are the Afghan insurgents? Every suicide attack and kidnapping is usually attributed to “the Taliban”. In reality, however, the insurgency is far from monolithic. There are the shadowy, kohl-eyed mullahs and head-bobbing religious students, of course, but there are also erudite university students, poor, illiterate farmers, and veteran anti-Soviet commanders. The movement is a melange of nationalists, Islamists, and bandits that fall uneasily into three or four main factions. The factions themselves are made up of competing commanders with differing ideologies and strategies, who nonetheless agree on one essential goal: kicking out the foreigners.

Analysis

It isn’t surprising that this hodgepodge of rogues would only have one thing that holds them together. After all, NATO forces – and in particular – U.S. troops, are the main barrier between them and their other goals, whether it be wealth, control, power or Islamic rule.  The indigenous Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda initially had the goal of ousting U.S. forces too, and the Sunni tribes eventually turned on al Qaeda.

The assessment that the “Taliban” is not a monolithic group is also tired and rather passe. It is neither new information nor valuable analysis. Coverage and commentary at The Captain’s Journal has focused over the past months on the cloistering of NATO forces onto FOBs and in urban centers (except for some U.S. and British forces), as well as the focus on the high value target initiative rather than the application of counterinsurgency tactics.

The countryside has been left to the Taliban because, quite simply, there aren’t enough troops to conduct counterinsurgency. This had thus far led to the logistical problems we have faced with supplies to NATO forces, but more important than this is the situational milieu for which the lack of security had been a catalyst. The mistakes are not new, and we have had the benefit of learned wisdom if not the wisdom to hear the learned words.

Mr. Kabulov, 54, is no ordinary ambassador, having served as a K.G.B. agent in Kabul — and eventually as the K.G.B. resident, Moscow’s top spy — in the 1980s and 1990s, during and after the nine-year Soviet military occupation. He also worked as an adviser to the United Nations’ peacekeeping envoy during the turbulent period in the mid-1990s that led to the Taliban’s seizing power.

Now he is back as Moscow’s top man, suave and engaging, happy to talk of a time when the old Soviet Embassy compound was the command center for an invasion that ended in disaster and speeded the collapse of the great power that undertook it …

“They’ve already repeated all of our mistakes,” he said, speaking of what the United States has done — and failed to do — since the Taliban were toppled from power in November 2001 and American troops began moving into old Soviet bases like the one at Bagram, north of Kabul.

“Now, they’re making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright.”

The list of American failures comes quickly. Like the Soviets, Mr. Kabulov said, the Americans “underestimated the resistance,” thinking that because they swept into Kabul easily, the occupation would be untroubled. “Because we deployed very easily into the major cities, we didn’t give much thought to what was happening in the countryside,” where the stirrings of opposition that grew into a full-fledged insurgency began, he said.

Mr. Kabulov goes on to say that the real problem is the irritant that is a foreign occupation, and that the solution is to leave as quickly as possible. Not all of his counsel is sensible, and the absence of U.S. troops would mean the fall of Kabul to the Taliban within a week.

However much Western sensibilities might feel revulsion at the treatment of women under radical Islam, or disgust at the corruption of the government, the goal of the campaign cannot and should not be the implementation of democracy or perfect governance. Further, the population is only a key to the extent that the are the interstitial tissue upon which the cancer of the insurgency feeds.

The goal should not be ending Islamic rule, for this would surely fail. The goal is to isolate and kill the globalist elements among them, those elements which gave safe haven to al Qaeda and which would no doubt be allied with the Tehrik-i-Taliban in the future. Every tactic should be oriented towards this end as one of many lines of effort.

There is robust debate in professional military community as to how we must implement a surge, with the admonition common to these debates that Afghanistan is not Iraq and the precise strategy used in the Middle East will not necessarily work in the far East. Those who give this admonition are wasting words by repeating the obvious.

But it is a non sequitur to claim that the necessary difference in strategy means that more troops are neither needed nor appropriate. No strategy can be implemented without troops, and the notion that the countryside can be left to the Taliban but Afghanistan converted into a location that doesn’t give safe haven to globalists is preposterous, no matter how many experienced and wise souls declare it to be true.

There is no magic, no special incantation to utter, and no learned discourse to speak. Troops are needed no matter what strategy is implemented, for in order to effect an end, there has to be an effect.  Proper Counterinsurgency is “Plan A.”  There is no “Plan B.”

Prior:

Logistical Difficulties in Afghanistan

Taliban Control of Supply Routes to Kabul

Degrading Security in Afghanistan Causes Supply and Contractor Problems

In addition to being a scourge on intercontinental commerce and transit, piracy on the Somalian coast has now take the next step.  A passenger liner – note, cruise ship – was recently the target of pirates.

An example of legal hand-wringing over law of the sea issues, rules of engagement and general reluctance of address the issue can be found at Opinio Juris.  Mr. Anderson at one point states that “No use of force question is ever truly easy.”  Of course, this is wrong, and the question is very easy to answer.  The Captain’s Journal has already done so (while also noting concurring opinions).

The Captain’s Journal has weighed in saying:

This is easy. We tell the LOAC and ROE lawyers that they’re special and that they should go to their rooms and write high-sounding platitudes about compassion in war so that they’re out of the way, we land the Marines on the ship, and we kill every last pirate. Then we hunt down his domiciles in Somali and destroy them, and then we find his financiers and buyers and kill them. Regardless of the unfortunate potential loss of Ukrainian or Russian civilian life upon assaulting the ship, this weaponry and ordnance should never have been shipped in this part of the world without escort (and perhaps it shouldn’t have been shipped even with escort). Negotiations will only serve to confirm the pirates in their methods. It’s killing time. It’s time to turn the United States Marines loose.

Ralph Peters has weighed in saying:

Piracy must be exterminated. Pirates aren’t folk heroes or champions of the oppressed. They’re terrorists and violent criminals whose ransom demands start at a million bucks. And they’re not impressed by the prospect of trials in a velvet-gloved Western court. The response to piracy must be the same as it was when the British brought an end to the profession’s “golden age:” Sink them or board them, kill them or hang them.

Lt. Col. P at OpFor has weighed in saying:

Kill all of the pirates.

Seriously. Why do we allow a handful of khat-addled assholes to dominate one of the world’s most important sea lanes? We, the western powers, have sufficient naval units in the area to take care of the problem in very quick order. What we lack is the will. We apply an idiotically high standard of judicial due process to a situation that doesn’t lend itself well to a judicial solution. Anyone who has dealt with Somalis can tell you that they laugh at western legalisms, and what they perceive as western weaknesses. And then they redouble their violent efforts to take what they want from you. They do react very well to a boot on their necks, and a gun to their heads. Then they tend to wise up quickly.

Here’s how it needs to be done. Oil tanker sends distress call, takes evasive actions insofar as it is capable. (Or better yet, armed men aboard oil tanker defend by fire.) Coalition forces despatch (sic) vessels and boarding parties. Pirates who survive ensuing gun battle are lined up by the rail and shot in the head, then dumped overboard. Pirate boats are burned. If their bases or villages on the coast can be identified, said bases are raided and destroyed. No fuss no muss, no ransom, no hostages, no skyrocketing costs.

The inability to deal with pirates properly is a 21st century phenomenon, entirely a function of legal problems, rules of engagement, rules for the use of force, and the impossible desire to be infallible and utterly perfect and pristine in the application of force.

At any rate, this is what we have previously stated to be the manifest solution to the problem.  But now, readers get a chance to weigh in by answering the easy poll below.  Remember – your heart may be telling you to vote the last bullet, while your head is telling you to vote something else.  But we expect the proper donation and we’ll know if you haven’t dropped coins into the coffers.

Thanks for taking the time to vote.

Nice school spirit here, but it’s now time for all cadets at West Point to go back and repeat statics and dynamics (Physics and Engineering Professors, nothing like seeing your young students perform, is there?).  Just too far off the mark.  Sigh … too far.

In the January / February 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has a paper entitled A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age. It is a lengthy paper, and some selected quotes are extracted below, followed by a brief analysis.

The defining principle of the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy is balance. The United States cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything. The Department of Defense must set priorities and consider inescapable tradeoffs and opportunity costs.

The strategy strives for balance in three areas: between trying to prevail in current conflicts and preparing for other contingencies, between institutionalizing capabilities such as counterinsurgency and foreign military assistance and maintaining the United States’ existing conventional and strategic technological edge against other military forces, and between retaining those cultural traits that have made the U.S. armed forces successful and shedding those that hamper their ability to do what needs to be done.

The United States’ ability to deal with future threats will depend on its performance in current conflicts. To be blunt, to fail — or to be seen to fail — in either Iraq or Afghanistan would be a disastrous blow to U.S. credibility, both among friends and allies and among potential adversaries.

In Iraq, the number of U.S. combat units there will decline over time — as it was going to do no matter who was elected president in November. Still, there will continue to be some kind of U.S. advisory and counterterrorism effort in Iraq for years to come …

It would be irresponsible not to think about and prepare for the future, and the overwhelming majority of people in the Pentagon, the services, and the defense industry do just that. But we must not be so preoccupied with preparing for future conventional and strategic conflicts that we neglect to provide all the capabilities necessary to fight and win conflicts such as those the United States is in today.

Support for conventional modernization programs is deeply embedded in the Defense Department’s budget, in its bureaucracy, in the defense industry, and in Congress. My fundamental concern is that there is not commensurate institutional support — including in the Pentagon — for the capabilities needed to win today’s wars and some of their likely successors.

What is dubbed the war on terror is, in grim reality, a prolonged, worldwide irregular campaign — a struggle between the forces of violent extremism and those of moderation. Direct military force will continue to play a role in the long-term effort against terrorists and other extremists. But over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory. Where possible, what the military calls kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit. It will take the patient accumulation of quiet successes over a long time to discredit and defeat extremist movements and their ideologies …

The recent past vividly demonstrated the consequences of failing to address adequately the dangers posed by insurgencies and failing states. Terrorist networks can find sanctuary within the borders of a weak nation and strength within the chaos of social breakdown. A nuclear-armed state could collapse into chaos and criminality. The most likely catastrophic threats to the U.S. homeland — for example, that of a U.S. city being poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack — are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states.

The kinds of capabilities needed to deal with these scenarios cannot be considered exotic distractions or temporary diversions. The United States does not have the luxury of opting out because these scenarios do not conform to preferred notions of the American way of war.

The military and civilian elements of the United States’ national security apparatus have responded unevenly and have grown increasingly out of balance. The problem is not will; it is capacity. In many ways, the country’s national security capabilities are still coping with the consequences of the 1990s, when, with the complicity of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, key instruments of U.S. power abroad were reduced or allowed to wither on the bureaucratic vine. The State Department froze the hiring of new Foreign Service officers …

Yet even with a better-funded State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, future military commanders will not be able to rid themselves of the tasks of maintaining security and stability. To truly achieve victory as Clausewitz defined it — to attain a political objective — the United States needs a military whose ability to kick down the door is matched by its ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward.

Given these realities, the military has made some impressive strides in recent years. Special operations have received steep increases in funding and personnel. The air force has created a new air advisory program and a new career track for unmanned aerial operations. The navy has set up a new expeditionary combat command and brought back its riverine units. New counterinsurgency and army operations manuals, plus a new maritime strategy, have incorporated the lessons of recent years in service doctrine. “Train and equip” programs allow for quicker improvements in the security capacity of partner nations. And various initiatives are under way that will better integrate and coordinate U.S. military efforts with civilian agencies as well as engage the expertise of the private sector, including nongovernmental organizations and academia …

The United States cannot take its current dominance for granted and needs to invest in the programs, platforms, and personnel that will ensure that dominance’s persistence.

But it is also important to keep some perspective. As much as the U.S. Navy has shrunk since the end of the Cold War, for example, in terms of tonnage, its battle fleet is still larger than the next 13 navies combined — and 11 of those 13 navies are U.S. allies or partners. Russian tanks and artillery may have crushed Georgia’s tiny military. But before the United States begins rearming for another Cold War, it must remember that what is driving Russia is a desire to exorcise past humiliation and dominate its “near abroad” — not an ideologically driven campaign to dominate the globe. As someone who used to prepare estimates of Soviet military strength for several presidents, I can say that Russia’s conventional military, although vastly improved since its nadir in the late 1990s, remains a shadow of its Soviet predecessor. And adverse demographic trends in Russia will likely keep those conventional forces in check.

All told, the 2008 National Defense Strategy concludes that although U.S. predominance in conventional warfare is not unchallenged, it is sustainable for the medium term given current trends. It is true that the United States would be hard-pressed to fight a major conventional ground war elsewhere on short notice, but as I have asked before, where on earth would we do that? U.S. air and sea forces have ample untapped striking power should the need arise to deter or punish aggression — whether on the Korean Peninsula, in the Persian Gulf, or across the Taiwan Strait. So although current strategy knowingly assumes some additional risk in this area, that risk is a prudent and manageable one.

Analysis

The entire paper is worth studying, but Secretary Gates continues to build upon the theme of maintaining a balance between arming and training for near peer conflicts and irregular warfare. The theme is in keeping with his history, as he has convinced the current administration that the 183 F-22s already purchased are enough to fill the gap between now and the advent of the F-35 (which by all accounts is far outperformed by the F-22). The Air Force wants more, but will likely have to settle for 183. Gates’ pragmatic view is also in keeping with our own advocacy of the A-10 (which we believe to have been prematurely retired and entirely capable of performing another decade or two), but our advocacy is not entirely based on its performance in COIN. It is also a very capable tank killer, and can still function as originally designed. Not every aerial weapon has to be new, and outfitting the A-10 to bring it up to the digital age is quite enough for now.

Gates even goes to lengths that The Captain’s Journal isn’t prepared to go, in allowing money for the ill-conceived and (soon-to-be) ill-fated Army future combat system with its exoskeleton. We’ve made our desires know, i.e., lighter ESAPI plates with the same ballistic stopping power are a worthy investment, the exoskeleton is not (and is suited merely for erasing gender, strength and fitness differences in combat, not a laudable goal anyway). Kill the program, Secretary Gates.

Gates also pushes the notion that investment in almost-failed states is a worthy goal compared to the risk, i.e., the next attack that levels a city or kills civilians is more likely than not going to come from almost-failed states rather than stable ones. So far, so good. The Captain’s Journal has always been an advocate for Secretary Gates and will be so into the future.

But one cannot escape the sinking feeling that Gates is on another level in his understanding of things compared to the team that will surround him (excluding General Jim Jones). Gates clearly delineates between the army of State Department employees, foreign operatives and NGOs that are necessary for the proper engagement of almost-failed states and such notions for large state actors. The delineation is that while Gates works hard on the former, he doesn’t mention the later. The incoming administration appears by all accounts to believe that negotiations will suffice to dissuade bad state actors from their intentions. We have gone on record disagreeing with this.

One cannot escape the reality that Russia just might push for some version of its former global empire, that China might just decide that it has lost patience with Taiwan, and that Iran, no matter the size of the army of negotiators, will continue its push for nuclear weapons grade material. At some point we must consider that in addition to the ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s prudent to have fleets in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Aden along with Marines for CENTCOM ready reserve.

It’s going to be a difficult four years, we believe, but we feel certain about one thing. President-elect Obama couldn’t do any better than Secretary Gates, and his team is stronger for having him there, and would be profoundly weak without him. For those who have opined that the U.S. military is losing focus on conventional warfare with the institutional focus on counterinsurgency and stability operations, the argument is settled for the moment. We’ll do both, but we’ll focus for now on the campaigns we have at hand. And that’s that.

We are told that “experts” have now warned President-elect Barack Obama of a nuclear Iran.

Iran poses the greatest foreign policy challenge to Barack Obama, the President-elect, with Tehran on course to produce a nuclear bomb in the first year of an Obama administration, a coalition of top think-tanks gave warning yesterday.

Mr Obama must keep his promises of direct talks with Tehran and engage the Middle East region as a whole if he is to halt a looming crisis that could be revisited on the US, the experts said.

“Diplomacy is not guaranteed to work,” Richard Haass, one of the authors said. “But the other options – military action or living with an Iranian weapon are sufficiently unattractive for it to warrant serious commitment.”

The warnings came in a report entitled Restoring the Balance. The Middle East strategy for the President-elect was drafted by the Council for Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution.

Gary Samore, one of the authors, said that the level of alarm over the “hornet’s nest” facing the President-elect in the Middle East, and the need for the swift adoption of previously untested approach, had inspired the decision to write policy for him. “New administrations can choose new policies but they can’t choose next contexts,” Mr Samore said.

The report paints a grim picture of the problems in the region but asserts that Mr Obama is still in a strong position. For the first time since the Iranian revolution the leadership in Tehran has endorsed the idea of talking directly with Washington, as Mr Obama has suggested. Falling oil prices also provide an opportunity, restricting Iran’s means to sponsor terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah that act as its proxy in the region.

The new administration, however, must not fall into the trap of treating Iran in isolation to the rest of the Middle East, as the previous administration did.

Syria, which has shown tentative signs of a desire for better relations with the West and has held negotiations with Israel, could be the ideal test case for a new diplomatic approach.

The full report, Restoring the Balance, is a product of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution. The Captain’s Journal is actually a bit surprised to see Michael O’Hanlon associated with the report – he seems a bit too smart to have endorsed it. But it is also worth pointing out that our record of forecasts is thus far impeccable. Three important examples evince the point. First, when Army intelligence forecast that there wouldn’t be a Taliban spring offensive in 2008 because of the alleged split between Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Omar, we predicted that there would in fact be a two-front offensive, one in Pakistan by the Tehrik-i-Taliban and the other in Afghanistan. Second, we accurately predicted the Taliban strategy of interdiction of NATO supplies in Pakistan in March of 2008. Third, we predicted that Joseph Lieberman would be victorious in the Connecticut Senate Race. We seldom make forecasts, but when we do, we’re usually right.

There were no instances of refusal to guarantee our forecasts when we went on record. The Captain’s Journal – although it is tempting to wait until the new year to weigh in on these important issues – will weigh in concerning some of the recommendations of the subject report, and make some forecasts of our own.

First, Richard Haass doesn’t guarantee that diplomacy will work with Iran. Without equivocation or qualification, we guarantee that diplomacy will not work to dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons. Iran might make a show of allowing IAEA inspectors into certain parts of their facilities, or responding to IAEA inquiries as to the status of special nuclear material (” … this is not the same highly enriched Uranium we tested on such-and-such date, so where did it come from”), or employ any number of other decoys as a subterfuge. But in a truly verifiable and serious way, Iran will not cease and desist the pursuit of weapons grade nuclear material no matter the size of the army of negotiators or lawyers the U.S. deploys or the number of IAEA inquiries with which Iran gets pelted. Again, this is an absolute guarantee, something that The Council on Foreign Relations couldn’t provide.

Second, the desire to “spin off” Syria from Iran into an ally or even partial or halting ally in Middle East stability is a day dream. Syria is an apparatchik of Iran, and Damascus gets its orders directly from Tehran. Syria will court such negotiations and talks as long as it convinces the battalion of U.S. diplomats that there is something to be gained from it. When it is no longer prudent and efficacious to perform the show, Syria will drop the pretense. The battalion of U.S. diplomats will look like stooges on the world stage.

Third – concerning the recommendation in Chapter 5 of the report that the U.S. encourage Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab actors to pressure Hamas to police the cease-fire agreement with Israel and to convince the Hamas leadership to accept the April 2002 Arab League Peace Initiative – this avenue will fail because Hamas will cease to exist as an effective and viable organization unless it acquiesces to pressure from the surging Salafist movement inside Palestine itself (with religious schools numbering as many as 50,000). Palestine will become more radical, not less. A corollary forecast is that holding Israel to its commitment to freeze settlement and construction in Jerusalem (Chapter 5) will be meaningless to the Palestinian cause. When Hamas refers to the “occupation,” they don’t mean occupation of Gaza or Palestine proper. They mean that they consider the existence of the Jews at all to be an occupation of their land. In other words, Palestine will continue to reject the two-state solution, and no army of negotiators will change that.

Finally, as to some particulars:

1. Hamas will begin launching rockets at Israel again from Gaza during the upcoming administration.
2. Hezbollah will attack Israel again during the upcoming administration. The orders will come directly from Tehrah to Damascus and then be relayed to Hasan Nasrallah.
3. Russia will continue the pressure on the Georgian administration and expand its military presence inside the borders of Georgia.
4. Russia will (covertly) support the installation of a pro-Russian administration in the Ukraine (which is not the same as forecasting that a pro-Russian administration will actually end up being installed).
5. Russia will assist Iran in its desire to achieve weapons grade nuclear material.
6. Without direct action to undermine the Iranian regime (such as democracy programs or even the fomenting of an insurgency to topple the regime), Iranian elements (Quds, IRG) will expand the scope of their operations inside Iraq and Afghanistan and even support Hezbollah as it battles Israel. No amount of diplomacy will change this.
7. Finally, the State Department will begin the administration will high hopes, excitement and grand ambitions for the role of diplomacy, negotiations and multi-lateral talks. By the end of the administration, a general malaise and confusion will have descended upon the entire State Department, and yet there will still be sparse and shallow understanding of why negotiations have so miserably failed to prevent or ameliorate the various calamities for which they were targeted.

Planning for these exigencies should “restore the balance.” The Captain’s Journal will send a bill to the incoming administration for our consultative services. They will prove to be better than those of the Council on Foreign Relations and well worth the cost.

The Captain’s Journal has a history on the one hand of defending the bravery of the enlisted British soldier, and on the other of criticizing the strategy that the British brass brought to the campaign in Southern Iraq. Without a doubt the British enlisted man wanted to participate in counterinsurgency in Basra, and also quite without a doubt, his chain of command effectively prevented him from doing so.

Now comes Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup who vigorously defends the British campaign, and more particularly, we note, the decisions by the military brass.

Although operation charge of the knights got off to an inauspicious start, its eventual success and subsequent developments have transformed the situation in Basra. But the operation has also attracted a degree of controversy, particularly with regard to the British role.

So I want to take this opportunity to lay to rest some of the myths that have emerged. Myths such as: the British had given up in Basra; that they’d done a deal to hand the city over to the militias; and that they failed to support the Iraqis during charge of the knights. But to do so, I need to take you back a bit. Back to the latter part of 2006, in fact. Now at that particular time, we and the United States were in a process of transition, working to transfer responsibility for security away from the coalition to the Iraqi government. But there were obstacles to this transition. And the obstacles were different in different parts of the country. The problem for the Americans in Baghdad and the surrounding areas was that the Iraqis were too busy trying to kill one another to face up to the question of how Shia and Sunni could co-exist politically. The problem for the British in the south east was that the Iraqis were too busy trying to kill us to focus on the intra-Shia political issues in Basra. These different problems required different solutions.

Thus has the Air Chief Marshal created a false picture of the British task versus the American task. First of all, the U.S. Army in Baghdad and surrounding areas was indeed targeted by both al Qaeda and radical Shi’a elements, including the Jaish al Mahdi. But more to the point, the Air Chief Marshal has conveniently ignored the fact that the U.S. Marines in Anbar were under attack twenty four hours a day, 365 days a year for a very long time. They know what it’s like to have fighters trying to kill them, but even before the U.S. Army in Baghdad, they implemented combat outposts, traditional counterinsurgency tactics, and even more advanced tactics such as sand berms, gated communities and biometrics, and the concerned citizens program along with payments for labor. More than 1000 Marines perished in Anbar as a result of the campaign, so it is disingenuous and insulting for the Air Chief Marshal to attempt to portray the British dilemma as somehow unique in history, or even the history of Iraq. Continuing:

The US decided to increase its force levels – the surge – in order to suppress Sunni-Shia violence and create space within which the political process had some chance of success. This was a key step. But the process got a helping hand from a most unexpected quarter: al Qaida in Iraq. Their appalling treatment of the Sunni tribes in the areas they dominated – such as Anbar province – led to their rejection by the local population, which then looked to the coalition for support.

It is an adulteration of the narrative to insert the feature of the tribal awakening and population’s rejection of al Qaeda without also including the months and even years of buildup to this via combat operations to prove to the population who was the stronger tribe and who could be trusted with security and protection. Again, the narrative must be complete in order to be accurate. Again continuing:

The UK made repeated attempts to deal with extremist militia violence in the south east. We planned and sought to execute numerous Special Forces operations. We also developed Operation Salamanca – an ambitious, comprehensive and hard-edged plan to confront and subdue the militias. All of these combined powerful offensive action with stabilisation and development activity. But each was, in the event, emasculated. Because we simply couldn’t get the agreement of the Iraqi government; their own internal politics made it impossible. The Iraqi government was at that stage still dependent on the political support of Muqtada al Sadr, which made decisive action against the Jaish al-Mahdi somewhat problematic for them. And there was a growing desire to assert Iraqi sovereignty, manifested by increasing restrictions on our offensive activity.

Here again the Air Chief Marshal is only telling his listeners part of the narrative. The Jaish al Mahdi and power of Moqtada al Sadr is largely a creation of the UK, which after he was in the actual custody of the 3/2 Marines in 2004, went to great lengths to ensure his release and safety by performing an emergency transport of Ali al Sistani (who was in the UK at the time undergoing medical treatment) back to Iraq to negotiate his release with the support of the UK. At that time, the JAM numbered a few hundred followers, and by the time the British were no longer effective in Basra they numbered in the thousands. Again continuing:

Interestingly, one of its best and most enduring legacies – the destruction of the hated and feared Jamiat police station, source of so much corruption and intimidation – brought down on us the wrath of the government in Baghdad. So the question was how else we could free Basra from its cycle of violence. Early in 2007 we came to the conclusion that we were going to have to do something significant to break the impasse. Something that would force the Iraqis to face up to their problems and to their responsibilities. We judged that the only way to do this was to withdraw our permanently based forces from Basra city, and to put the Iraqis in the lead there.

The “wrath of the government in Baghdad.” Maybe the U.S. Marines weren’t too concerned about the wrath of the government in Baghdad when the Iraqi officials turned on the Marines for engaging the Sunnis in the Concerned Citizens program (later called the Sons of Iraq) because the Shi’a officials in power believed the program to be an embarrassment to Iraq at the hands of the Americans who were making deals with “gangs of killers.” There were even reports of U.S. troops standing down far superior numbers of Iraqi troops along with armor, bent on doing harm to Sunni members of the Sons of Iraq, coming close to exchanging fire with the ISF. Take particular note of this incident – it means that the U.S. forces came close to a military confrontation with the ISF in the protection of the Sunni population. So much for the notion of the British enduring the “wrath of the government.”

The fact of the matter is that the soft cover, the almost invisible force projection and the low visibility, and the extremely restrictive rules of engagement aided the continual diminution of the security situation in Basra rather than stopped it. Further, the Iraqi government only dealt with the JAM when it became obvious that the UK insisted on there being one to begin with. A counterinsurgency strategy suited for Northern Ireland just doesn’t apply to Iraq, but the British found this out too late to do much in the way of counterinsurgency. Unfortunately, the Air Chief Marshal still hasn’t learned anything about the campaign.

Prior:

What Basra can teach us about Counterinsurgency

The Good and Bad in Basra

More British Trouble in Basra

Continued Chaos in Basra

Calamity in Basra and British Rules of Engagement

The Rise of the JAM

The Captain’s Journal respects only one individual on the national security team and featured in the photograph above – Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. He has earned every bit of respect he has throughout the defense community. The balance of the team must earn their respect but is off to a very bad start. Eric Holder with his pitiful judgment inspires absolutely no confidence, and Janet Napolitano may as well have turned Arizona over to MS 13. The President-elect stands opposed even to refurbishing the existing nuclear weapons stockpile (the greatest deterrence we have), much less do we believe that we’ll get support for new developments in nuclear weapons.

As for the incoming Secretary of State, that horrible, juvenile interrogation before the Senate where General David Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were mocked by both Biden and Clinton will go down as one of the worst and most dishonorable displays of any politicians in our history. As it turns out, Crocker and Petraeus were right, so our incoming Secretary of State and Vice President-elect are batting 0.000.

President-elect Obama has talked a good game at times, vowing to fund the U.S. military needs of the 21st century.

“We will also ensure that we have the strategy — and resources — to succeed against al Qaeda and the Taliban,” Obama told a news conference. “And going forward, we will continue to make the investments necessary to strengthen our military and increase our ground forces to defeat the threats of the 21st century.”

But these words ring hollow when he has all but given up on high powered deterrence such as nuclear weapons and put into place a national security team that has such a poor incoming record. Secretary of Defense Gates, who opposes Obama on nuclear weapons, is the one bright spot on the team. Thank God for Gates.

The Obama team will back the use of soft power in the coming months and years.

President-elect Barack Obama’s national security team, introduced Monday in Chicago, includes two veteran Cold Warriors and a political rival whose records are all more hawkish than the new president who will face them in the White House Situation Room.

Yet all three of his choices – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as old rival turned secretary of state; General James Jones, the former NATO commander to be the national security adviser; and Robert Gates, the current and future defense secretary – were selected in large part because they have embraced a sweeping shift of resources in the national security arena.

The shift in resources, which would come partly out of the military’s huge budget, would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states. Obama also said he was nominating Susan Rice, a former National Security Council official, as ambassador to the United Nations.

“Whether they can make the change one that Obama started talking about in the summer of 2007, when his candidacy was a long shot at best, will be the great foreign policy experiment of the Obama presidency,” one of his senior advisers said recently. But the adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the three officials had all embraced “a rebalancing of America’s national security portfolio” after a huge investment in new combat capabilities during the presidency of George W. Bush.

But is Gates really completely in line with this thinking? To be sure, he has advocated the use of soft power in counterinsurgency.

… my message today is not about the defense budget or military power. My message is that if we are to meet the myriad challenges around the world in the coming decades, this country must strengthen other important elements of national power both institutionally and financially, and create the capability to integrate and apply all of the elements of national power to problems and challenges abroad. In short, based on my experience serving seven presidents, as a former Director of CIA and now as Secretary of Defense, I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use “soft” power and for better integrating it with “hard” power

Gates nowhere discusses the diminution of combat capabilities or the jettisoning of military power as a foundation for being able to afford this soft power. In fact, just before making the statement above, Gates said this.

One of my favorite lines is that experience is the ability to recognize a mistake when you make it again. Four times in the last century the United States has come to the end of a war, concluded that the nature of man and the world had changed for the better, and turned inward, unilaterally disarming and dismantling institutions important to our national security – in the process, giving ourselves a so-called “peace” dividend. Four times we chose to forget history.

The left has their pet views about what Obama has promised and what he should accomplish.

President-elect Barack Obama has affirmed his commitment to bring the war in Iraq to a close and to refocus our attention on Afghanistan. To do both, Obama must do more than fix ambitious timelines or offer hazy plans with muddy particulars. He must stick to his campaign pledge that would fundamentally shift the ideological orientation of America’s foreign policy establishment: ending the Iraq mission will require engaging Iran, solving Afghanistan will mean dialogue with terrorists.

Tacit in this demand is that Iran is participating in the violence and engaging them in dialogue will convince them to renounce that violence despite the fact that twenty five years of engagement has failed to do this. Tacit in the expectation that we dialogue with the Taliban is that they are interested in this dialogue. Hamid Karzai has literally begged Mullah Omar to negotiate and promised him complete safety, but both The Captain’s Journal and Ayman al-Zawahiri have pointed out that we would be currently negotiating from a position of weakness rather than strength.

The full engagement of the State Department should involve things like democracy programs for Iran (which the State Department effectively killed), while the perspective is being nurtured by the incoming administration that full involvement of soft power involves thousands of negotiators, as if, hearkening back to their experience in American jurisprudence, we can lawyer our way to victory if we only deploy better talkers than they do.

So there seems to be a fundamental difference between Gates and the balance of the team. Gates apparently doesn’t believe in fairy tales and myths, while the demands on the left are for Obama not only to defund the military and engage enemies with dialogue, but to succeed, and that, remarkably so. This administration and the American public are being set up for huge disappointment, but all is not lost.  At least we have one adult on the national security team who can speak sense to the others.

See also W. Thomas Smith, America’s Naval Supremacy Slipping, and The Captain’s Journal, Is Obama Proposing Leviathan and Sysadmin?, and Civilian National Security Force.