'Each man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world'
-- Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

'Artists are tricky fellows sir, forever shaping the world according to some design of their own'
-- Jonathan Strange, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Wednesday 29 June 2011

Machiavelli would be wary of Greeks bearing Euros and Libyans with Gifts

Timeo danaos et dona ferrentes -- I fear Greeks, even when they bring gifts.
Virgil, Aeneid, Book 2
Machiavelli: Warned against being caught unarmed, suggesting only armed "prophets" have ever been victorious


Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been reading his Machiavelli recently, obviously. Or perhaps he's just feeling the pressure from across the Atlantic and in particular, Robert Gates' stinging rebuke in Brussels recently. Here is Rasmussen writing in Foreign Affairs:

'Military might still matters in twenty-first-century geopolitics. The security challenges facing Europe include conflicts in its neighbourhood, such as in Libya; terrorism from failed states further away; and emerging threats such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and cyberwarfare. What defines these threats is both their diversity and their unpredictability. Investing in homeland security and retrenching will not be enough to counter them. Nor will it be enough to rely on soft power... Events in Libya have underlined that although a military approach cannot solve a conflict on its own, it is a necessary tool in a wider political effort.'

I remember my Machiavelli. In particular, his message that, 'he who overcomes the enemy by fraud is as much to be praised as he who does so by force.' Machiavelli suggested that armament was the first and foremost necessity for a state but projection of military power is a strange tool - three of the five first wave of nuclear proliferators have waged an offensive campaign against Libya and the regime, more than 100 days after the first strikes, is still functioning. 

It seems likely however, that the economic and material embargoes on Qaddafi will eventually succeed where the military strikes have failed. This is a siege - we have to wait it out and wait for the white flag or representatives to emerge from the keep. But looking at Rasmussen's more general assertions, one wonders how the EU members of NATO can deal with them after Greece inevitably defaults and the mostly European and American banks shoulder the burden of loss.

We should not forget that NATO has a historical trajectory that has struggled to reinvent itself itself after the end of the Cold War. NATO was formed to offset the strategic vulnerability of Europe to military positions of the Soviet Union at the end of World War II and arose specifically from the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 . Member states were all unified in their opposition to Soviet encroachment and it was easy to align military doctrine and material to prevent theorietical offensives through such geographies as the Fulda Gap. At the end of the Cold War, NATO had a number of successes in serving to police and ameliorate the break-up of teh former Yugoslavia, specifically Bosnia (1991-5) and later Serbia in 1999. 

But the considerations of member states have changed - there is no longer an existential threat to world order posed by the bipolar world of communism and capitalism - instead this is the era of small wars, insurgencies and civil strife. Libya is a case in point - it's humanitarian intervention and now to ensure continued safety of civilians, this seems to incorporate regime change. Canada as a NATO member, for example, can have little interest in removing Qaddafi. Germany, abstaining from the UN vote and absent from the Libya coalition only agreed to send surveillance AWACS to Afghanistan to free up surveillance capabilities for the Libya campaign. Recently, under pressure from EU partners, it has now responded to pleas to restock depleted allied armouries. How was this achieved? Through the NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency. Over 2000 "smart bombs" have been dropped on Libya thus far. By my rough calculations that's 20 a day. And of course, the UK has deployed the Typhoon for some sorties even though its ground attack capability is much less than the Tornado but you have to show the need for this new material, no?

So it isn't going well. Lord Levene, who chaired the recent Defence Reform Unit (the 87 page report can be found here) charged with streamlining the corpulent Ministry of Defence, wrote in the Times, regarding his recently completed grand audit of MoD bureaucracy that, 'the financial gene needs to be a core part of the defence DNA.' The MoD, the report observed, is 'bloated and disfunctional' and there was a need, Liam Fox argued, to prevent 'Waste'. Which is interesting given Robert Gates' comment in a Question and Answer session the day before his Brussels diatribe:

Q:  Last remark, if you allow -- that there was a waste of money in Afghanistan; how do you evaluate this?

SEC. GATES:  That's a no-brainer.  Of course there's been a waste of money in Afghanistan.  You tell -- you show me a war where there hasn't been a waste of money.

Waste in the fog of war, quite. Two big attempts to streamline two services have occurred in the UK recently, in health and in the military - and the two services face exactly the same problem that occurs in no other service. Technological development makes these services more expensive. In other industries, technology makes things cheaper - cars, televisions, other transport. But in medicine, treatments are more complex - consider platinum-based cancer therapies, and in the military, the revolution in military affairs with its inherent technology for technology's sake, makes this a service which year on year becomes more expensive to provide the same spectrum of services as the year before. Wedding IT to the military is a case in point - integrating new technologies, "upgrading" can only lead to greater expenditure. When your opponent is fighting with plastic-encased IEDs and suicide bombers (see the Kabul hotel attack yesterday) the revolution in military affairs seems less attractive than it did at the end of the "major combat operations" during the initial offensive of Gulf War 2. 
The MoD, like the NHS, will continue to waste money. The SDSR is a more important document than the DRU review because it's what you waste your money on, rather than how much you waste, that will determine how effective the UK is in within the NATO umbrella and more generally against the challenges of the 21st century. We need to waste money on serious challenges in which we can lead a response to. We are behind the ball on cybersecurity, but cybercrime threatens to predominate in the West's concerns this century - we should start to coagulate a centre of excellence within the military that gathers its own momentum in the coming years. We have lauded our special forces, particularly after the embassy siege, and we should enhance their capabilities and number. We need to waste money in a smart manner - this is the message, and cling to the periphery of NATO as best we can, without engaging in ridiculous offensives in countries without any idea of what will emerge from it when we win.




Friday 24 June 2011

Europe Impecuniosis


Writing of Richard I and his campaign that would come to be known as the Third Crusade, ending as it did in a stalemate with limited concessions, one historian observed that, 'to be rex bellicosus one also had to be rex pecuniosus' - to be king of war, one also had to be king of money. 

Three centuries later, a cash-strapped Henry VIII would perform a diplomatic coup in 1520 during the three-week long lavish spectacle that woudl earn the sobriquet the Field of the Cloth of Gold (to the French under Francis I, this was Le Camp du Drap d'or). The French were trying to gain alliances against the Holy Roman Empire and hosted the English King at a site in Norther France outside of Calais. The two castles originally earmarked for the living quarters were in such disrepair that the Kings camped in the field, erecting grandiose tents of such colours that the countryside erupted in golden hues as the tents sprung up. 

Politically, the outcome of the meeting was neglible but such was the show of wealth and pomp by Henry that it reasserted England's place in the power politics of Europe and led to renewed interest in his favor from both France and the Empire. It had been a loss leader and triumph of diplomacy, a type of soft-power if you will, where England exercised her might on the field, rather than the battlefield. One can almost here the voice of Sun Tzu echo through the ages - if you are weak, appear strong.

The contrast between the two positions of the English kings and the outcomes is marked. In actually prosecuting an expensive foreign war, Richard I bankrupted the treasury and ended up imprisoned in Austria paying a ransom equivalent to twice the annual revenues of England, almost bankrupting the country as he had done in raising the revenues for conquest in the first place (In raising money for the campaign, Richard I persecuted rich Jews, sold royal lands and levied novel taxes. He declared that he 'would sell the city of London, if I could find a purchaser'). Kinetic operations don't lie - they require money and when the coffers are empty, the military operations must end. 

Henry VIII and the astute Cardinal Wolsey realised the coffers were empty but they expended a limited amount of money in a soft power offensive appearing strong and in the ensuing power struggle between France and the Empire, they positioned themselves in the middle and coveted as a strategic actor/ally by both parties. It was to gain England a valuable period of ascendency in European politics.

So the news that current UK operations in Operation Unified Protector have cost the British 'taxpayer' (I always really feel sorry for that person) £260 million in an ongoing campaign (over half of this earmarked for munitions replacements) at a time when the MOD is running at its most profligate, the SDSR has slashed military spending and the strategic objectives of the operation have apparently creeped silently into regime change (and what regimes will fill the voids is of course, unknown) has been greeted with obvious disgruntlement. Pro-government voices have cited this operation as an essential mission to head off catastrophe in the Maghreb before it gets out of control - spend half a billion now and you save billions in massive humanitarian disaster management, special forces and immigrant rehousing across Europe. Plus, implicitly, you get the good ratings of military leadership in a crisis. 

But in fact, whilst British and French leadership in the crisis was meant to demonstrate European ability to conduct a foreign campaign and show their relevance, the opposite has occurred. Von Moltke will be nodding in his grave, for the Prussian military theorist who wrote that 'no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy' would feel validated at the mixed messages and slow escalation of involvement in the Libyan affair. The presence of special forces on the ground would constitute an especially serious breech of initial pledges. Outgoing US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, sceptical from the start about a no-fly zone, has now turned his ire to the sick man of NATO - Europe, in particular, implicitly, Britain and France. NATO had become, he said in a valedictory speech at Brussels, a 'two-tiered alliance' with members in Europe interested only in talking and peacekeeping.
This from the Guardian:

"The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country. Yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference."
In March, all 28 Nato members had voted for the Libya mission, he said. "Less than half have participated, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission … Many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can't. The military capabilities simply aren't there."
The air campaign had been designed to mount 300 sorties daily but was struggling to deliver 150, Gates added.
Europe plays the effeminate partner to a strong North American presence in NATO but the relationship, once amorous is now fraught with perils
The leader article in the current Foreign Affairs is thus instructive - Anders Fogh Rasmussen, sec-gen of NATO, writes about the problems facing the organization: 

'Since the end of the Cold War, defense spending by the European NATO countries has fallen by almost 20 percent. Over the same period, their combained GDP grew by around 55 percent. The picture is somewhat different in Asia. According to SIPRI, between 2000 and 2009, India's defense spending grew by 59 percent, and China's tripled. This lead to a double leap forward: a transformation of these countries' armed forces and their acquisition of new weapons systems.'
'If one compares Europe's defense spending with that of the United States, the contrast is also large. By the end of the Cold War, in 1991, defense expenditures in European countries represented almost 34 percent of NATO's total, with the United States and Canada covering the remaining 66 percent. Since then, the share of NATO's security burden shouldered by European countries has fallen to 21 percent.'
'Many observers, including some in government circles on both sides of the atlantic, argue that the biggest security challenge facing the West is rising debt levels in Europe and the United States. They have a fair point; after all, there can be no military might without money.'

But Rasmussen uses statistics here as a drunk uses a lampost - for support rather than illumination. Europe was busy reaping the post-cold war peace dividend and reorienting itself to an enlightened, humanitarian interventionist view of foreign policy. In the good years, America was happy to provide the umbrella. The collapse of bipolarity meant that Asian actors were forced to reasses their strategic interests and diplomatic ties, this led to increased defence budgets in the region. Nevertheless, the view of Europe from America as a dog with all bark and no bite seems credible as the Libya fiasco draws on.

So to sum up, to be nation-state bellicosus you also have to be nation-state pecuniosus. Well it's no wonder that Gates is bristling, after all, American finances are precarious and its main challenger to hegemonic status in the coming decades, China, holds approximately 120 trillion dollars worth of stake in the American economy including around $750 billion of its treasury bonds. When China sold up $34.2 billion of these in February, it prompted global concerns about the state of the American economy. With all that, United States and Canada shoulder some 75% of NATO defense expenditures in the current fiscal year. 

It seems ludicrous that Britain and France should be such poor cousins yet draw in their rich relatives to an offensive campaign that they cloaked in a humanitarian discourse. At the same time as drawing up the controversial SDSR they then start kinetic operations against a terrorist freedom fighter who has remained as leader of a large country on the doorstep of Southern Europe for 42 years. He hasn't given up without a fight? Incroyable! I smile, ironically, when Rasmussen asserts in a media interview that economic and military pressures will soon cause the downfall of the Qaddafi (in arabic, "he who throws") regime. He's probably right - I can't see how Qaddafi can withstand this siege indefinitely. But then I can't see how NATO can prosecute this campaign indefinitely. Clinton and his, "it's the economy, stupid" arrived at an overarching rule. Meanwhile, every aerial sortie plunges Europe further into the red.

We can't have our cake and eat it. If we want to prosecute wars in Afghanistan and Libya (Alfred von Schlieffen would turn in his grave at enmeshed prosecution of campaigns on two fronts) we need to cough up and stay the distance, beefing up our military, not downsizing it. If we want to shore up finances by reducing the military (we could streamline and augment our special forces capability but a vast reduction in armament and personnel would similarly affect the economy adversely by reducing defence industry procurement and putting men and women of the armed forces into redunduncy with skills ill-equipped for the civilian sector) then we need to work on our diplomacy, not "bombing to win".

Tuesday 21 June 2011

culture wars

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamposts - for support rather than illumination"
--Andrew Lang

I was fascinated by the google books ngram viewer that Thomas Rid used on his last KingsofWar blog post and which, at base, scans electronically stored books from a developed database which has volumes from 1800-2008. Naturally, I had a little go on the site myself and generated this set of statistics.



Blue= culture + war; green = islam; red = orientalism; yellow = jihadism


The role that culture plays in military planning, in particular counterinsurgency, is the crux of my PhD thesis, the title being, "to what extent does Orientalism inform the War on Terror?" and it draws largely on the points made in Patrick Porter's insightful "Miltary Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes" (2009, Hurst). The most interesting point to be made from the graph is that "Islam" reached a similar high after the 1979 Iranian revolution as it has done since 9.11. Jihadism has often been equated to nihilism and recent scholarship at CTC West Point by Lia, Lahoud et alia and also in Europe by scholars such as Alia Brahimi ("Crushed in the Shadows") suggest that while jihadism may be difficult to align with nihilism, in the words of Lahoud, jihad is performed for "jihad's sake", in other words, jihad is the end and also the means. Jihad has no voice in the Arab Spring, which seeks to negate Western influence over proxies and corruption.

On the BBC World Service today, a commentator observed that the "1.2 trillion dollars" America has spent prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an amount equal to the amount it owes China in Federal bonds. If ever there was a "statistic" that favoured soft over hard power, that is perhaps it. In tracing the ascent of culture in the role of military planning, there is a seminal work by Ralph Peters in Spring 2000, written in Parameters. This influential 8 page mission statement is required reading for any student of military doctrine. Being written before 9.11 its theory is based around the Mogadishu and Balkans affairs, and Peters concerns himself primarily with cities (see also Porter's notes on megacities of the third world in his Military Orientalism) and I quote Peters in full here, as I think it foreshadows Iraq and Afghanistan and hence underlines his importance:

"From the military standpoint, multicultural cities can be easy to conquer--with the aid of oppressed minorities as a fifth column--but difficult to administer after peace has been established. If you have made allies of one group, they will expect to dominate after the victory or intervention. Western notions of equitable treatment and the rule of law strike the population as risible, if not as an outright betrayal. Peace can be imposed, but not even a generation of occupation will convince the opposing groups to behave "like us." In cultures where compromise is, literally, unthinkable, the peacekeeping adventure will see a constant jockeying for favor and usually a hardening of physical divisions between groups. The citizens of all factions will be looking beyond the presence of the peacekeepers to the renewed struggle, violent or otherwise, for hegemony. Often, the nominal government imposed by the occupier or peacekeeper will have less real power than ethnic leaders, militia commanders in mufti, religious leaders, or mafiosi. The primary interests of each faction will be to exploit the power of the constabulary force for partisan purposes, to exploit gaps in the force's knowledge of the local situation for advantage, to shield illicit activities from the force's awareness, to consolidate power within the group, and, finally, to corrupt key elements of the force to facilitate prohibited behaviors and to undermine competitors. The primary challenge for a Western military operating in a multicultural city is to get at the facts--and the facts never hold still."

Anthropological notions have become ascendent in recent years as has been well documented, but mapping the "human terrain", whilst a project eagerly undertaken by the Pentagon, has proved illusive. MAP-HT and HST have come in for considerable criticism and from the post war planning of the Bonn conference, 2001 in Afghanistan, we now have the talks with the same Taliban that were defeated a decade ago. "War is hell," and hubris and anger necessitated our instigation of "culture wars" on "the edge of empire". We strove to become children of Huntington and Lewis, viewing the world as a clash of civilizations when in reality, prudent observations show that material interests predominate over cultural or even religious consderations. We wanted 9.11 to show us that the world was about a backward Islam trying to thwart an enlightened, modern West. In reality, it was the tiny minority instigatiing mass murder, unpresentative of any body of any population