This post is not about whether current ops are "working" — for us, here on the ground, time will tell, though some observers elsewhere seem to have already made up their minds (on the basis of what evidence, I'm not really sure). But for professional counterinsurgency operators such as our SWJ community, the thing to understand at this point is the intention and concept behind current ops in Iraq: if you grasp this, you can tell for yourself how the operations are going, without relying on armchair pundits. So in the interests of self-education (and cutting out the commentariat middlemen—sorry, guys) here is a field perspective on current operations.

Ten days ago, speaking with Austin Bay, I made the following comment:

"I know some people in the media are already starting to sort of write off the "surge" and say 'Hey, hang on: we've been going since January, we haven't seen a massive turnaround; it mustn't be working'. What we've been doing to date is putting forces into position. We haven't actually started what I would call the "surge" yet. All we've been doing is building up forces and trying to secure the population. And what I would say to people who say that it's already failed is "watch this space". Because you're going to see, in fairly short order, some changes in the way we're operating that will make what's been happening over the past few months look like what it is—just a preliminary build up."

The meaning of that comment should be clear by now to anyone tracking what is happening in Iraq. On June 15th we kicked off a major series of division-sized operations in Baghdad and the surrounding provinces. As General Odierno said, we have finished the build-up phase and are now beginning the actual "surge of operations". I have often said that we need to give this time. That is still true. But this is the end of the beginning: we are now starting to put things onto a viable long-term footing.

These operations are qualitatively different from what we have done before. Our concept is to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously, in order to prevent terrorists relocating their infrastructure from one to another, and to create an operational synergy between what we're doing in Baghdad and what's happening outside. Unlike on previous occasions, we don't plan to leave these areas once they're secured. These ops will run over months, and the key activity is to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them. The really decisive activity will be police work, registration of the population and counterintelligence in these areas, to comb out the insurgent sleeper cells and political cells that have "gone quiet" as we moved in, but which will try to survive through the op and emerge later. This will take operational patience, and it will be intelligence-led, and Iraqi government-led. It will probably not make the news (the really important stuff rarely does) but it will be the truly decisive action.

When we speak of "clearing" an enemy safe haven, we are not talking about destroying the enemy in it; we are talking about rescuing the population in it from enemy intimidation. If we don't get every enemy cell in the initial operation, that's OK. The point of the operations is to lift the pall of fear from population groups that have been intimidated and exploited by terrorists to date, then win them over and work with them in partnership to clean out the cells that remain -- as has happened in Al Anbar Province and can happen elsewhere in Iraq as well.

The "terrain" we are clearing is human terrain, not physical terrain. It is about marginalizing al Qa'ida, Shi'a extremist militias, and the other terrorist groups from the population they prey on. This is why claims that "80% of AQ leadership have fled" don't overly disturb us: the aim is not to kill every last AQ leader, but rather to drive them off the population and keep them off, so that we can work with the community to prevent their return.

This is not some sort of kind-hearted, soft approach, as some fire-breathing polemicists have claimed (funnily enough, those who urge us to "just kill more bad guys" usually do so from a safe distance). It is not about being "nice" to the population and hoping they will somehow see us as the "good guys" and stop supporting insurgents. On the contrary, it is based on a hard-headed recognition of certain basic facts, to wit:

(a.) The enemy needs the people to act in certain ways (sympathy, acquiescence, silence, reaction to provocation) in order to survive and further his strategy. Unless the population acts in these ways, both insurgents and terrorists will wither, and the cycle of provocation and backlash that drives the sectarian conflict in Iraq will fail.

(b.) The enemy is fluid, but the population is fixed. (The enemy is fluid because he has no permanent installations he needs to defend, and can always run away to fight another day. But the population is fixed, because people are tied to their homes, businesses, farms, tribal areas, relatives etc). Therefore—and this is the major change in our strategy this year—protecting and controlling the population is do-able, but destroying the enemy is not. We can drive him off from the population, then introduce local security forces, population control, and economic and political development, and thereby "hard-wire" the enemy out of the environment, preventing his return. But chasing enemy cells around the countryside is not only a waste of time, it is precisely the sort of action he wants to provoke us into. That's why AQ cells leaving an area are not the main game—they are a distraction. We played the enemy's game for too long: not any more. Now it is time for him to play our game.

(c.) Being fluid, the enemy can control his loss rate and therefore can never be eradicated by purely enemy-centric means: he can just go to ground if the pressure becomes too much. BUT, because he needs the population to act in certain ways in order to survive, we can asphyxiate him by cutting him off from the people. And he can't just "go quiet" to avoid that threat. He has either to come out of the woodwork, fight us and be destroyed, or stay quiet and accept permanent marginalization from his former population base. That puts him on the horns of a lethal dilemma (which warms my heart, quite frankly, after the cynical obscenities these irhabi gang members have inflicted on the innocent Iraqi non-combatant population). That's the intent here.

(d.) The enemy may not be identifiable, but the population is. In any given area in Iraq, there are multiple threat groups but only one, or sometimes two main local population groups. We could do (and have done, in the past) enormous damage to potential supporters, "destroying the haystack to find the needle", but we don't need to: we know who the population is that we need to protect, we know where they live, and we can protect them without unbearable disruption to their lives. And more to the point, we can help them protect themselves, with our forces and ISF in overwatch.

Of course, we still go after all the terrorist and extremist leaders we can target and find, and life has become increasingly "nasty, brutish, and short" for this crowd. But we realize that this is just a shaping activity in support of the main effort, which is securing the Iraqi people from the terrorists, extremist militias, and insurgents who need them to survive.

Is there a strategic risk involved in this series of operations? Absolutely. Nothing in war is risk-free. We have chosen to accept and manage this risk, primarily because a low-risk option simply will not get us the operational effects that the strategic situation demands. We have to play the hand we have been dealt as intelligently as possible, so we're doing what has to be done. It still might not work, but "it is what it is" at this point.

So much for theory. The practice, as always, has been mixed. Personally, I think we are doing reasonably well and casualties have been lower so far than I feared. Every single loss is a tragedy. But so far, thank God, the loss rate has not been too terrible: casualties are up in absolute terms, but down as a proportion of troops deployed (in the fourth quarter of 2006 we had about 100,000 troops in country and casualties averaged 90 deaths a month; now we have almost 160,000 troops in country but deaths are under 120 per month, much less than a proportionate increase, which would have been around 150 a month). And last year we patrolled rarely, mainly in vehicles, and got hit almost every time we went out. Now we patrol all the time, on foot, by day and night with Iraqi units normally present as partners, and the chances of getting hit are much lower on each patrol. We are finally coming out of the "defensive crouch" with which we used to approach the environment, and it is starting to pay off.

It will be a long, hard summer, with much pain and loss to come, and things could still go either way. But the population-centric approach is the beginning of a process that aims to put the overall campaign onto a sustainable long-term footing. The politics of the matter then can be decisive, provided the Iraqis use the time we have bought for them to reach the essential accommodation. The Embassy and MNF-I continue to work on these issues at the highest levels but fundamentally, this is something that only Iraqis can resolve: our role is to provide an environment in which it becomes possible.

All this may change. These are long-term operations: the enemy will adapt and we'll have to adjust what we're doing over time. Baq'ubah, Arab Jabour and the western operations are progressing well, and additional security measures in place in Baghdad have successfully tamped down some of the spill-over of violence from other places. The relatively muted response (so far) to the second Samarra bombing is evidence of this. Time will tell, though....

Once again, none of this is intended to tell you "what to think" or "whether it's working". We're all professional adults, and you can work that out for yourself. But this does, I hope, explain some of the thinking behind what we are doing, and it may therefore make it easier for people to come to their own judgment.

David Kilcullen is Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser, Multi-National Force—Iraq. These are his personal views only.

Joining the Caravan? The Middle East, Islamism and Indonesia

By Anthony Bubalo and Dr Greg Fealy

Lowy Institute Paper #5:

Since 9/11 a number of claims have been made about the global nature of the threat posed by militant Islam, many of these have been debated extensively at the Small Wars Journal. This significant monograph from a part of the world directly engaged in these issues provides a fresh, research driven and policy focused perspective on this topical issue. From the paper's executive summary:

"Against the background of the 'war on terror', many people have come to view Islamism as a monolithic ideological movement spreading from the centre of the Muslim world, the Middle East, to Muslim countries around the globe. To borrow a phrase from Abdullah Azzam, the legendary jihadist who fought to expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980s, many today see all Islamists as fellow travellers in a global fundamentalist caravan. This paper explores the truth of that perception. It does it in part by looking at the way Islamism has evolved in the Middle East. It then assesses the impact that Islamist ideas from the Middle East have had in Indonesia, a country often cited as an example of a formerly peaceful Muslim community radicalised by external influences".

The paper offers several important policy recommendations arising from its conclusions; (these are expanded at the link):

1. In focusing on the global, do not lose sight of the local;

2. Adopt a more nuanced categorization of Islamists and neo-fundamentalists;

3. Take a less timorous approach to engagement with Islamists;

4. Think about education and the 'war of ideas' in broad terms;

5. Encourage transparency; and

6. Be conscious of double standards and the democracy dilemma.

About the Authors:

Anthony Bubalo is the Director of the West Asia Program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. Anthony is a fluent Arabic speaker and has worked as an Australian Diplomat in Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Prior to joining the Lowy Institute he was a Middle East Analyst at Australia's peak intelligence body, the Office of National Assessments (ONA).

Dr Greg Fealy is a research fellow and lecturer at the Australian National University specialising in Indonesian Islam and politics.

The Lowy Institute for International Policy is Australia's premier independent foreign policy think tank. Its objective is to generate new ideas and dialogue on international developments and Australia's role in the world. Its mandate is broad. It ranges across all the dimensions of international policy debate in Australia - economic, political and strategic -- and it is not limited to a particular geographic region.

Men of Harlech stop your dreaming

Can't you see their spear points gleaming

See their warrior pennants streaming

To this battlefield

Men of Harlech stand ye steady

It cannot be ever said ye

For the battle were not ready

Welshmen never yield

From the hills rebounding

Let this song be sounding

Summon all at Cambria's call

The mighty force surrounding

Men of Harlech on to glory

This will ever be your story

Keep these burning words before ye

Welshmen will not yield

Hat Tip to Council Member 120mm

I have accused the Classicists of focusing "perhaps myopically" on the glorious heyday of Mao and revolutionary warfare. Furthermore, I also accuse the Classicists of ignoring the uniqueness of Maoist or colonial wars of national liberation, and over-generalizing the principles that have been drawn from them. Today's insurgent is not the Maoist of yesterday, as many have noted. Our understanding of COIN is really a synthesis of the best of the classical practitioners, including General Kitson (see chart below). While I accept the general teachings of Robert Thompson and David Galula, I suspect that they might be bewildered by the distinctly different nature and scale of today's global insurgency.

Galula:

Primacy of political over military actions

Single direction

Isolate insurgents, use minimal force

Population is critical

Adaptation (tactics and structure)

Kitson:

Coordinating machinery

Rule of law

Fused intelligence

Unconditional support of the people

Qualities required for COIN different

Thompson:

Clear political aim

Overall plan, coordinating structure

Priority against political subversion not insurgents

Secure Base

Dr. David Betz, from King's College London made a similar assessment, concluding

While the new counterinsurgency field manual is thorough, serious and stands in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric concerning the "War on Terror" of the last few years, it is not without failings, chief among them that it is pervaded by concepts drawn from Maoist-style People's Revolutionary Warfare, which is not the sort of insurgency now being faced.

Environmental Conditions

My essay examined the influence of four environmental factors and their incorporation during the development of the COIN manual. I suggest that the impact of trans-dimensional actors, urbanization, information technologies, and the rise of religious extremism augur for new or neo-classical approaches to COIN in this century. These emergent factors should, as Dave Kilcullen has suggested, require us to "Rebuild our mental model of this conflict, redesign our classical counterinsurgency and counterterrorism methods and continually develop innovative and culturally effective approaches."

Potential Implications

The convergence of networked cells, operating in dense urban environs, passionately inspired by their faith, exploiting the connectivity and real time intelligence of modern IT, generates a very different context for COIN. Galula and the classicists are certainly not irrelevant because of this change in context, but there is enough change to suggest that a fundamental reappraisal of conventional wisdom is required. The collective impact of these environmental factors complicates the three major and interrelated competitions that are inherent to insurgency. This section will address how these major competitions are altered.

The Competition for Political Legitimacy.

The rise of religious identity may substantially influence our COIN approach. In many cases, ethnic identity or religious affiliation are the basis for belonging and for legitimacy, and our historical approaches are hard pressed to win the political competition unless we operate in the most indirect manner. How do we compete with a Hamas or Hezbollah-like entity? In Iraq, the American military is being exposed to identity or religious-based militias, another form of alternative community formed to meet community needs. Some of these entities, like Hezbollah, are being very trans-dimensional, meeting their respective community's security and social needs. Rather than employ our traditional "market-based" approach, we have to work more indirectly via a moderate representative of the same collective identity group. Naturally, the adversary works to discredit and de-legitimize any candidate as a puppet of the external intervening force. Hence, this competition will continue to prove harder as long as identity politics or ethnic-based conflict remains central to complex insurgency.

The Competition for Perceptions.

Perceptions may trump or displace reality within the information dimension of counter-insurgency. In the Information Age, perceptual isolation will be even harder if not impossible. There are too many sources and means of transmitting ideas and images in real time today. The battle of ideas has always been a central competition within an insurgency, but in the past governments had some advantages. Now, the IT revolution magnifies the ability of the modern insurgent to exploit his limited success. A sophisticated insurgent can exploit the communications revolution to extend his influence and maximize his credibility by continuously flaunting his tactical successes all out of proportion to their accumulative operational effect. This is where a true competition exists, best captured by General Rupert Smith's analogy of rival commanders as film producers, competing with each other for the best narrative and the imagery to support it in order to influence people. Instead of Clausewitz's duel, it's a contest between producers with stories. Combat and casualties are no longer the key cash transaction of war; it's an exchange of carefully choreographed images and stories to produce an effect. Rather than physical effects, the psychological impact of all actions has to be considered. As Kilcullen has noted "In the battlefield, popular perceptions and rumor are more important than a hundred tanks."

We need to fully exploit the cognitive terrain of conflict and "maneuver" in the minds of our allies, friends, neutrals and the enemy. But how does one "clear, hold and build" in the virtual dimension?

The Security versus "System Disruption" Competition.

Urbanization increases the difficulty of winning the security competition. It will be extremely difficult for the counter-insurgent force to establish a credible perception of a monopoly over lethal violence in dense urban complexes. The urban guerrilla has too many tactical advantages, and our efforts to impose control on large populations are replete with opportunities to create resentment or provoke a disproportionate response. Technological profusion and urban complexity produce too many opportunities for the urban guerilla today to strike repeatedly and effectively at the sinews of municipal order. The degree of systemic perturbation that this can cause may not be significant in real terms, but it will undermine the local government and breed instability. The urban guerilla may not be able to mass enough force to take over territory, or to regularly overcome state forces. But he can disrupt communications, services, transportation and energy distribution networks at will. Readers are strongly encouraged to look at John Robb's new book, Brave New War, about the nature of this competition.

The Security-Disruption competition mismatch can impose heavy costs on the government, resources better spent on other counter-insurgency programs. But until security can be provided, and met unequivocally, then the other initiatives will stagnate. It is axiomatic to classical COIN that we should seek to isolate the insurgent from the population. Physical isolation may be possible but has always proven hard to do, without draconian population control measures and significant investments in barriers lines and posts. The imposition of such control measures today, thanks to the media, could weaken our position and extend any conflicts. Dr. Kilcullen's comments about the "urban tourniquet" are spot on.

Conclusions

The new FM is a long step forward, reflecting our current understanding of this increasingly complex mode of conflict. Yet it is true that "the 1960s theorists cast a long shadow" in FM 3-24. This era is necessary but not sufficient. We must do more than simply relearn classical COIN, we need to adapt old doctrine to new and increasingly more complex circumstances. We also need to pay more than lip service to the notion that every insurgency is unique and that war evolves. Victory against the fervent and fanatical who find "the notion of transcendence through death enticing rather than forbidding," will not be gained by "outgoverning" those that do not seek to govern. In short, the solution to today's so-called "irregular" challenges will not be found by laminating yesterday's frameworks on to our current context.

In short, I think we need to draw upon the classical COIN principles and update them to reflect changed conditions, to produce what could be called "neo-classical insurgency" for the lack of a better term. The COIN manual, despite its critics, actually made some headway in this regard. But not enough. Additionally, we should urgently place a greater emphasis on human capital and greater institutional adaptability, as T.X. Hammes has argued. The proposed ground force expansion provides resources for this proposal. Finally, inasmuch as there is universal agreement on the critical contributions from nonmilitary agencies, interagency shortfalls which have hamstrung our performance in OEF and OIF must be resolved. As Steve Metz from the Army's Strategic Studies Institute has stressed:

...if Iraq is a portent of the future—if protracted, ambiguous, irregular, cross-cultural, and psychologically complex conflicts are to be the primary mission of the future American military (and the other, equally important parts of the U.S. security organization)—then serious change must begin.

NOTES

David Betz, "Land Forces and Future Warfare: Learning to Fight Wars Amongst the People," Contemporary Security Policy, 2007, p. 9.

David J. Kilcullen, "Countering Global Insurgency," Journal of Strategic Studies, August 2005, p. 615.

Kilcullen, "Counter-insurgency Redux," Survival, Spring 2007, p. 112.

Dr. Andrew Krepinevich and his work at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments are thanked for employing this analytical construct about the nature of competitions within conflict or within domains of military combat.

Steve Metz, Learning from Iraq, Carlisle, PA: Army War College, 2007 pp. 83-84. Metz puts it simply: "Applying existing counterinsurgency strategy and doctrine, derived from 20th century ideological conflict, to Iraq thus was pounding a round peg in a square hole. This hamstrung the effort from the beginning."

General Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, New York: Knopf, 2006, pp. 286-287.

David Kilcullen, "Twenty Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency," Military Review, May-June 2006, p. 106.

Kilcullen, "Counter-insurgency Redux," pp. 112-113.

Ralph Peters, "When Devils Walk the Earth: The Mentality and Roots of Terrorism," Quantico, VA: Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities, Dec. 2001, p. 24.

Metz, p. 91.

SWJ Book Review by Terry Daly

Bing West's superb book on the loss and retaking of Fallujah in al-Anbar Province, western Iraq, in 2004 excels on several levels. For the general reader it tells a heroic story in the tradition of American combat writing of Richard Tregaskis on Guadalcanal, Robert Sherrod on Tarawa, and Samuel Lyman Atwood ("SLAM") Marshal on World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Second, its dependence on first hand knowledge from participants at every level among U.S. military and civilian participants, while the action was taking place, guarantees it will be one of the basic historical reference works for future writers on the Iraq war.

For the specialist, though, its greatest value will be in its detailed description, perhaps unintentional, of how and why conventional military tactics concentrating on the enemy -- simply killing insurgents -- fail, even when those tactics are used skillfully and bravely by well trained, well led, elite forces. Time and again West describes Marine and Army units sweeping through areas, using the conventional firepower and maneuver at which they excel, only to have the insurgents move right back in behind them again to retain control of the population living in those areas.

People-centered classic counterinsurgency doctrine requires that military forces stay to protect the population until effective policing can defend the people from the insurgents; it is on another planet from the Marines and their commanders on the ground in al-Anbar, in the Green Zone in Baghdad, and in Washington. Rather than complementing the military efforts, economic development funds are treated as bribes for local sheiks whom, despite all evidence to the contrary, senior commanders persist in hoping might spare the US military the job of cleaning out the insurgents. The Marine generals treat governance of Fallujah as an afterthought, to be left to whatever Iraqis show up rather than part of a structured plan with US staff, money and a charter to monitor and guide its development.

The only Americans who come out well in NO TRUE GLORY are the Marines and soldiers who do the sweating and the dying, and their immediate tactical commanders; despite West's attempt to show they are acting for intelligently and good reasons, no one who wore stars or suits will be comfortable reading the description of his efforts. French counterinsurgency expert David Galula's stricture against negotiating with insurgents is proven again here -- not for the reason that Galula intended, that it gives encouragement, hope and relief to the insurgents, but rather because the incompetence of EVERYONE involved on the American side is beyond belief. The Marx Brothers on a bad day couldn't emulate the vacillation, chaos and confusion caused by the disconnection from reality, and lack of skill, purpose and communication among US senior Marine and Army generals, civilian officials and policy makers.

Finally, for students of national security West's book provides inescapable evidence that our system for command in wartime is broken. Communications flow in one direction -- downwards in the form of orders, directives, regulations, etc. Information never goes upward or laterally in a way that causes or even influences review and rethinking of a course of action to be taken. By the first battle of Fallujah it was obvious to the fighters on the ground and their tactical commanders up to the regimental and brigade level that the strategy of the "light footprint" handed down from CENTCOM, by which contact with the Iraqis by US military forces was to be minimized, was not working. Yet it was as if there was some impenetrable membrane sealing the generals and their staffs from the fighters at regiment or brigade and their staffs and below. The horse Light Footprint was dead but the generals kept demanding, ordering, cajoling and pleading to make Light Footprint horse run. But Light Footprint was lying dead out there on the track in front of the world and the only people who didn't realize it were the four-stars, getting their reality from classified daily Power Point briefings.

So once again, as it usually does, in Fallujah it came down to the Lance Corporals, Sergeants, and Company and Field Grade officers to compensate with their skill, courage and blood for the failures of the Generals, Ambassadors and policy makers. Here West is outstanding in letting them tell their own stories. At least here someone got something right.

Lieutenant Colonel Terry Daly is a retired U.S. government national security and foreign policy official. After training in counterinsurgency he served in Vietnam as a civilian advisor.

New Paradigms for 21st Century Conflict

By David J. Kilcullen

Despite our rather rosy hindsight view of World War II, there was considerable dissent at the time about the war's aims, conduct, and strategy. But virtually no one disagreed that it was indeed a war or that the Axis powers were the enemy/aggressors.

Contrast this with the war on terrorism. Some dispute the notion that the conflict can be defined as a war; others question the reality of the threat. Far-left critics blame American industrial interests, while a lunatic fringe sees September 11, 2001, as a massive self-inflicted conspiracy. More seriously, people disagree about the enemy. Is al-Qaida a real threat or a creature of Western paranoia and overreaction? Is it even a real organization? Is al-Qaida a mass movement or simply a philosophy, a state of mind? Is the enemy all terrorism? Is it extremism? Or is Islam itself in some way a threat? Is this primarily a military, political, or civilizational problem? What would "victory" look like? These fundamentals are disputed, as those of previous conflicts (except possibly the Cold War) were not.

In truth, the al-Qaida threat is all too real. But ambiguity arises because this conflict breaks existing paradigms—including notions of "warfare," "diplomacy," "intelligence," and even "terrorism." How, for example, do we wage war on nonstate actors who hide in states with which we are at peace? How do we work with allies whose territory provides safe haven for nonstate opponents? How do we defeat enemies who exploit the tools of globalization and open societies, without destroying the very things we seek to protect?

A New Paradigm

British General Rupert Smith argues that war—defined as industrial, interstate warfare between armies, where the clash of arms decides the outcome—no longer exists, that we are instead in an era of "war amongst the people," where the utility of military forces depends on their ability to adapt to complex political contexts and engage nonstate opponents under the critical gaze of global public opinion.(1) Certainly, in complex, multisided, irregular conflicts such as Iraq, conventional warfare has failed to produce decisive outcomes. We have instead adopted policing, nation-building, and counterinsurgency approaches—and developed new interagency tools "on the fly."

Similarly, we traditionally conduct state-based diplomacy through engagement with elites of other societies: governments, intelligentsia, and business leaders, among others. The theory is that problems can be resolved when elites agree, cooler heads prevail, and governments negotiate and then enforce agreements. Notions of sovereignty, the nation-state, treaty regimes, and international institutions all build on this paradigm. Yet the enemy organizes at the nonelite level, exploiting discontent and alienation across numerous countries, to aggregate the effects of multiple grassroots actors into a mass movement with global reach. How do elite models of diplomacy address that challenge? This is not a new problem—various programs were established in U.S. embassies in the Cold War to engage with nongovernmental elements of civil societies at risk from Communist subversion. But many such programs lapsed after 1992, and problems of religious extremism or political violence require subtly different approaches.

Likewise, traditional intelligence services are not primarily designed to find out what is happening but to acquire secrets from other nation-states. They are well-adapted to state-based targets but less suited to nonstate actors—where the problem is to acquire information that is unclassified but located in denied, hostile, or inaccessible physical or human terrain. Even against state actors, traditional intelligence cannot tell us what is happening, only what other governments believe is happening. Why, for example, did Western intelligence miss the imminent fall of the Soviet Union in 1992? In part, because we were reading the Soviet leaders' mail—and they themselves failed to understand the depth of grassroots disillusionment with Communism.(2) Why did most countries (including those that opposed the Iraq war) believe in 2002 that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction? Because they were intercepting the regime's communications, and many senior Iraqi regime members believed Iraq had them.(3)

Long-standing trends underpin this environment. Drivers include globalization and the backlash against it, the rise of nonstate actors with capabilities comparable to some nation-states, U.S. conventional military superiority that forces all opponents to avoid its strengths and migrate toward unconventional approaches, and a global information environment based on the Internet and satellite communications. All these trends would endure even if al-Qaida disappeared tomorrow, and until we demonstrate an ability to defeat this type of threat, any smart adversary will adopt a similar approach. Far from being a one-off challenge, we may look back on al-Qaida as the harbinger of a new era of conflict.

Adapting to the New Environment

Thus, as former U.S. Counterterrorism Ambassador Hank Crumpton observed, we seem to be on the threshold of a new era of warfare, one that demands an adaptive response. Like dinosaurs outcompeted by smaller, weaker, but more adaptive mammals, in this new era, nation-states are more powerful but less agile and flexible than nonstate opponents. As in all conflict, success will depend on our ability to adapt, evolve new responses, and get ahead of a rapidly changing threat environment.

The enemy adapts with great speed. Consider al-Qaida's evolution since the mid-1990s. Early attacks (the East African embassy bombings, the USS Cole, and 9/11 itself) were "expeditionary": Al-Qaida formed a team in Country A, prepared it in Country B, and clandestinely infiltrated it into Country C to attack a target. In response, we improved transportation security, infrastructure protection, and immigration controls. In turn, terrorists developed a "guerrilla" approach where, instead of building a team remotely and inserting it secretly to attack, they grew the team close to the target using nationals of the host country. The Madrid and London bombings, and attacks in Casablanca, Istanbul, and Jeddah, followed this pattern, as did the foiled London airline plot of summer 2006.

These attacks are often described as "home grown," yet they were inspired, exploited, and to some extent directed by al-Qaida. For example, Mohammed Siddeque Khan, leader of the July 7, 2005, London attack, flew to Pakistan and probably met al-Qaida representatives for guidance and training well before the bombing.(4) But the new approach temporarily invalidated our countermeasures—instead of smuggling 19 people in, the terrorists brought one man out—side-stepping our new security procedures. The terrorists had adapted to our new approach by evolving new techniques of their own.

We are now, of course, alert to this "guerrilla" method, as the failure of the August 2006 plots in the United Kingdom and other recent potential attacks showed. But terrorists are undoubtedly already developing new adaptive measures. In counterterrorism, methods that work are almost by definition already obsolete: Our opponents evolve as soon as we master their current approach. There is no "silver bullet." Similar to malaria, terrorism constantly morphs into new mutations that require a continuously updated battery of responses.

Five Practical Steps

In responding to this counterintuitive form of warfare, the United States has done two basic things so far. First, we improved existing institutions (through processes like intelligence reform, creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and additional capacity for "irregular"—that is, nontraditional—warfare within the Department of Defense). Second, we have begun developing new paradigms to fit the new reality. These are yet to fully emerge, though some—such as the idea of treating the conflict as a very large-scale counterinsurgency problem, requiring primarily nonmilitary responses coupled with measures to protect at-risk populations from enemy influence—have gained traction.(5)

But in a sense, policy makers today are a little like the "Chateau Generals" of the First World War—confronting a form of conflict that invalidates received wisdom, just as the generals faced the "riddle of the trenches" in 1914-1918. Like them, we face a conflict environment transformed by new technological and social conditions, for which existing organizations and concepts are ill-suited. Like them, we have "work-arounds," but have yet to develop the breakthrough concepts, technologies, and organizations—equivalent to blitzkrieg in the 1930s—that would solve the riddle of this new threat environment.

There is no easy answer (if there were, we would have found it by now), but it is possible to suggest a way forward. This involves three conceptual steps to develop new models and, simultaneously, two organizational steps to create a capability for this form of conflict. This is not meant to be prescriptive, but is simply one possible approach. And the ideas put forward are not particularly original—rather, this proposal musters existing ideas and integrates them into a policy approach.

1. Develop a new lexicon: Professor Michael Vlahos has pointed out that the language we use to describe the new threats actively hinders innovative thought.(6) Our terms draw on negative formulations; they say what the environment is not, rather than what it is. These terms include descriptors like unconventional, nonstate, nontraditional, unorthodox, and irregular. Terminology undoubtedly influences our ability to think clearly. One reason why planners in Iraq may have treated "major combat operations" (Phase III) as decisive, not realizing that in this case the post-conflict phase would actually be critical, is that Phase III is decisive by definition. Its full doctrinal name is "Phase III—Decisive Operations." To think clearly about new threats, we need a new lexicon based on the actual, observed characteristics of real enemies who:

a. Integrate terrorism, subversion, humanitarian work, and insurgency to support propaganda designed to manipulate the perceptions of local and global audiences.

b. Aggregate the effects of a very large number of grassroots actors, scattered across many countries, into a mass movement greater than the sum of its parts, with dispersed leadership and planning functions that deny us detectable targets.

c. Exploit the speed and ubiquity of modern communications media to mobilize supporters and sympathizers, at speeds far greater than governments can muster.

d. Exploit deep-seated belief systems founded in religious, ethnic, tribal, or cultural identity, to create extremely lethal, nonrational reactions among social groups.

e. Exploit safe havens such as ungoverned or undergoverned areas (in physical or cyber space); ideological, religious, or cultural blind spots; or legal loopholes.

f. Use high-profile symbolic attacks that provoke nation-states into overreactions that damage their long-term interests.

g. Mount numerous, cheap, small-scale challenges to exhaust us by provoking expensive containment, prevention, and response efforts in dozens of remote areas.

These features of the new environment could generate a lexicon to better describe the threat. Since the new threats are not state-based, the basis for our approach should not be international relations (the study of how nation-states interact in elite state-based frameworks) but anthropology (the study of social roles, groups, status, institutions, and relations within human population groups, in nonelite, nonstate-based frameworks).

2. Get the grand strategy right: If this confrontation is based on long-standing trends, it follows that it may be a protracted, generational, or multigenerational struggle. This means we need both a "long view" and a "broad view".(7) that consider how best to interweave all strands of national power, including the private sector and the wider community. Thus we need a grand strategy that can be sustained by the American people, successive U.S. administrations, key allies, and partners worldwide. Formulating such a long-term grand strategy would involve four crucial judgments:

a. Deciding whether our interests are best served by intervening in and trying to mitigate the process of political and religious ferment in the Muslim world, or by seeking instead to contain any spillover of violence or unrest into Western communities. This choice is akin to that between "rollback" and "containment" in the Cold War and is a key element in framing a long-term response.

b. Deciding how to allocate resources among military and nonmilitary elements of national power. Our present spending and effort are predominantly military; by contrast, a "global counterinsurgency" approach would suggest that about 80 percent of effort should go toward political, diplomatic, development, intelligence, and informational activity, and about 20 percent to military activity. Whether this is appropriate depends on our judgment about intervention versus containment.

c. Deciding how much to spend (in resources and lives) on this problem. This will require a risk judgment taking into account the likelihood and consequences of future terrorist attacks. Such a judgment must also consider how much can be spent on security without imposing an unsustainable cost burden on our societies.

d. Deciding how to prioritize effort geographically. At present most effort goes to Iraq, a much smaller portion to Afghanistan, and less again to all other areas. Partly this is because our spending is predominantly military and because we have chosen to intervene in the heart of the Muslim world. Different choices on the military/nonmilitary and intervention/containment judgments might produce significantly different regional priorities over time.

Clearly, the specifics of any administration's strategy would vary in response to a developing situation. Indeed, such agility is critical. But achieving a sustainable consensus, nationally and internationally, on the four grand judgments listed above, would provide a long-term basis for policy across successive administrations.

3. Remedy the imbalance in government capability: At present, the U.S. defense budget accounts for approximately half of total global defense spending, while the U.S. armed forces employ about 1.68 million uniformed members.(8) By comparison, the State Department employs about 6,000 foreign service officers, while the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has about 2,000.(9) In other words, the Department of Defense is about 210 times larger than USAID and State combined—there are substantially more people employed as musicians in Defense bands than in the entire foreign service.(10)

This is not to criticize Defense—armed services are labor- and capital-intensive and are always larger than diplomatic or aid agencies. But considering the importance, in this form of conflict, of development, diplomacy, and information (the U.S. Information Agency was abolished in 1999 and the State Department figures given include its successor bureau), a clear imbalance exists between military and nonmilitary elements of capacity. This distorts policy and is unusual by global standards. For example, Australia's military is approximately nine times larger than its diplomatic and aid agencies combined: The military arm is larger, but not 210 times larger, than the other elements of national power.

To its credit, the Department of Defense recognizes the problems inherent in such an imbalance, and said so in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review.(11) And the Bush administration has programs in train to increase nonmilitary capacity. But to succeed over the long haul, we need a sustained commitment to build nonmilitary elements of national power. So-called soft powers, such as private-sector economic strength, national reputation, and cultural confidence, are crucial, because military power alone cannot compensate for their loss.

These three conceptual steps will take time (which is, incidentally, a good reason to start on them). But in the interim, two organizational steps could prepare the way:

4. Identify the new "strategic services": A leading role in the war on terrorism has fallen to Special Operations Forces (SOF) because of their direct action capabilities against targets in remote or denied areas. Meanwhile, Max Boot(12) has argued that we again need something like the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which included analysis, intelligence, anthropology, special operations, information, psychological operations, and technology capabilities.

Adjectives matter: Special Forces versus Strategic Services. SOF are special. They are defined by internal comparison to the rest of the military—SOF undertake tasks "beyond the capabilities" of general-purpose forces. By contrast, OSS was strategic. It was defined against an external environment and undertook tasks of strategic importance, rapidly acquiring and divesting capabilities as needed. SOF are almost entirely military; OSS was an interagency body with a sizeable civilian component, and almost all its military personnel were emergency war enlistees (talented civilians with strategically relevant skills, enlisted for the duration of the war).(13) SOF trace their origin to OSS; yet whereas today's SOF are elite military forces with highly specialized capabilities optimized for seven standard missions,(14) OSS was a mixed civil-military organization that took whatever mission the environment demanded, building capabilities as needed.

Identifying which capabilities are strategic services today would be a key step in prioritizing interagency efforts. Capabilities for dealing with nonelite, grassroots threats include cultural and ethnographic intelligence, social systems analysis, information operations (see below), early-entry or high-threat humanitarian and governance teams, field negotiation and mediation teams, biometric reconnaissance, and a variety of other strategically relevant capabilities. The relevance of these capabilities changes over time—some that are strategically relevant now would cease to be, while others would emerge. The key is the creation of an interagency capability to rapidly acquire and apply techniques and technologies in a fast-changing situation.

5. Develop a capacity for strategic information warfare: Al-Qaida is highly skilled at exploiting multiple, diverse actions by individuals and groups, by framing them in a propaganda narrative to manipulate local and global audiences. Al-Qaida maintains a network that collects information about the debate in the West and feeds this, along with an assessment of the effectiveness of al-Qaida's propaganda, to its leaders. They use physical operations (bombings, insurgent activity, beheadings) as supporting material for an integrated "armed propaganda" campaign. The "information" side of al-Qaida's operation is primary; the physical is merely the tool to achieve a propaganda result. The Taliban, GSPC (previously, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, now known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb), and some other al-Qaida-aligned groups, as well as Hezbollah, adopt similar approaches.

Contrast this with our approach: We typically design physical operations first, then craft supporting information operations to explain our actions. This is the reverse of al-Qaida's approach. For all our professionalism, compared to the enemy's, our public information is an afterthought. In military terms, for al-Qaida the "main effort" is information; for us, information is a "supporting effort." As noted, there are 1.68 million people in the U.S. military, and what they do speaks louder than what our public information professionals (who number in the hundreds) say. Thus, to combat extremist propaganda, we need a capacity for strategic information warfare—an integrating function that draws together all components of what we say and what we do to send strategic messages that support our overall policy.

At present, the military has a well-developed information operations doctrine, but other agencies do not, and they are often rightly wary of military methods. Militarizing information operations would be a severe mistake that would confuse a part (military operations) with the whole (U.S. national strategy) and so undermine our overall policy. Lacking a whole-of-government doctrine and the capability to fight strategic information warfare limits our effectiveness and creates message dissonance, in which different elements of the U.S. government send out different messages or work to differing information agendas.

We need an interagency effort, with leadership from the very top in the executive and legislative branches of government, to create capabilities, organizations, and doctrine for a national-level strategic information campaign. Building such a capability is perhaps the most important of our many capability challenges in this new era of information-driven conflict.

Tentative Conclusions

These notions—a new lexicon, grand strategy, balanced capability, strategic services, and strategic information warfare—are merely speculative ideas that suggest what might emerge from a comprehensive effort to find new paradigms for this new era of conflict. Different ideas may well emerge from such an effort, and, in any case, rapid changes in the environment due to enemy adaptation will demand constant innovation. But it is crystal clear that our traditional paradigms of industrial interstate war, elite-based diplomacy, and state-focused intelligence can no longer explain the environment or provide conceptual keys to overcome today's threats.

The Cold War is a limited analogy for today's conflict: There are many differences between today's threats and those of the Cold War era. Yet in at least one dimension, that of time, the enduring trends that drive the current confrontation may mean that the conflict will indeed resemble the Cold War, which lasted in one form or another for the 75 years between the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Many of its consequences—especially the "legacy conflicts" arising from the Soviet-Afghan War—are with us still. Even if this confrontation lasts only half as long as the Cold War, we are at the beginning of a very long road indeed, whether we choose to recognize it or not.

The new threats, which invalidate received wisdom on so many issues, may indicate that we are on the brink of a new era of conflict. Finding new, breakthrough ideas to understand and defeat these threats may prove to be the most important challenge we face.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.

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Endnotes

(1) See Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), especially pp. 3-28 and 269-335.

(2) See Gerald K. Haines and Robert E. Leggett, Watching the Bear: Essays on CIA's Analysis of the Soviet Union (Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2003), especially chapters VI and VII.

(3) See Kevin M. Woods et. al, Iraqi Perspectives Project: A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam's Senior Leadership (Joint Forces Command, Joint Center for Operational Analysis), p. 92.

(4) Intelligence and Security Committee, Report Into the London Terrorist Attacks on 7 July 2005 (London: The Stationery Office, May 2006), p. 12.

(5) See David Kilcullen, "Countering Global Insurgency," Small Wars Journal (November 2004) and available at http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/kilcullen.pdf ; Williamson Murray (ed.), Strategic Challenges for Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terrorism (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2006); and Bruce Hoffman, "From War on Terror to Global Counterinsurgency," Current History (December 2006): pp. 423-429.

(6) Professor Michael Vlahos, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, personal communication, December 2006.

(7) I am indebted to Mr. Steve Eames for this conceptual formulation.

(8) Compiled from figures in International Institute for Strategic Studies, Military Balance 2007, pp. 15-50.

(9) Compiled from U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, Congressional Budget Justification 2007, table 9.

(10) The U.S. Army alone employs well over 5,000 band musicians, according to a March 2007 job advertisement; see http://bands.army.mil/jobs/default.asp.

(11) Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (2 February 2006): pp. 83-91.

(12) See Max Boot, Congressional Testimony Before the House Armed Services Committee, 29 June 2006, at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2006_hr/060629-boot.pdf.

(13) See Central Intelligence Agency, The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency at https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/oss/index.htm.

(14) The seven standard SOF missions are Direct Action (DA), Special Reconnaissance (SR), Unconventional Warfare (UW), Foreign Internal Defence (FID), Counter-Terrorism (CT), Psychological Operations (PSYOP), and Civil Affairs (CA).

On Dec. 19, 2006, President George W. Bush said for the first time that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq. It was a dramatic admission from a president who had insisted since the start of the war that things were under control.

Now, as the U.S. begins what the administration hopes is the final effort to secure victory through a "surge" of troops, Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.), Col. William Hix, Col. H.R. McMaster, Maj. Thomas Mowle, State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow and other military and government officials talk to FRONTLINE about both the military and political events that have led up to the current "surge" strategy. Endgame is the fifth film in a series of Iraq war stories from FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk, including Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question, The Dark Side and The Lost Year in Iraq...

Watch the full program online.

Endgame Interviews: Michael Gordon, Col. William Hix, Frederick Kagan, Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.), Lt. Col. Andrew Krepinevich (Ret.), Col. H.R. McMaster, Thomas Ricks, Col. Kalev Sepp (Ret.) and Philip Zelikow.

McMaster:

It's important to understand that forces can't be withdrawn prematurely from an area. I think sometimes you're trapped by the initial success of an operation: Insurgents are defeated in a certain area; a life returns to that area; the markets are back open; people are happy again. And you think, wow, things are better now; I can leave, and I can leave behind police forces and maybe some Army and support.

But what's important to understand is that the forces left behind [have] to be just not capable of sustaining the current situation, but they have to be capable of dealing with an intensified effort on the part of the enemy, which is certain to follow a successful operation.

It's also important to understand that the standard for success for these Iraqi security forces is very high. They have to secure a population against an enemy who is —to conduct mass murder against innocent people. The standard for success for the terrorist is very low, because they're —to murder women and children in a marketplace.

And it's very difficult to defend everywhere in a very dense, urban area, so it's important not only that these security forces have the physical capability, but also that they develop very strong informant and source networks so they can have access to good intelligence. It's also important that they develop good relationships in the community so that people are —to come to them for assistance when suspicious people move into the neighborhood.

There are a lot of dimensions to the capability of Iraqi security forces that don't really appear on paper that we have to focus on developing over time.

Timeline: Struggling to find a strategy for success in Iraq.

Endgame "Themes": Bottom Line, What Went Wrong?, Rumsfeld and the Generals, Gen. George Casey, Gen. Petraeus and the New Team, Can the Surge Work?, Misreading History? and The Colonels' War.

Discuss at Small Wars Council.

Discuss at PBS.

The Political Officer as Counter-Insurgent

By Dan Green

Politics and Insurgencies

Counter-insurgency efforts have taken on an increasingly important and vital role in the U.S. strategy to defeat global terrorism since the attacks of September 11th. A key aspect of today's conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and, historically speaking, a fundamental difference between fighting conventional wars and insurgencies is the role of politics and diplomacy. Unlike conventional warfare where "military action . . . is generally the principal way to achieve the goal" and "politics as an instrument of war tends to take a back seat", in unconventional warfare, "politics becomes an active instrument of operation" and "every military move has to be weighed with regard to its political effects, and vice versa." At their core, insurgencies are about political power struggles, usually between a central government and those who reject its authority, where the objective of the conflict is the population itself and the political right to lead it. Thus, the center of gravity in this type of warfare is not the enemy's forces per se, but the population where "the exercise of political power depends on the tacit or explicit agreement of the population or, at worst, on its submissiveness."

Due to the centrality of politics to this type of warfare, counter-insurgent forces must craft a political strategy that is sensitive to the needs of the population, seeks to secure their loyalty to the government, will mobilize the community to identify, expel, or fight the insurgent, and extends the authority and reach of the central government. To achieve these goals, a government must have "a political program designed to take as much wind as possible out of the insurgent's sails." If done effectively, the political strategy will have succeeded in "separating the insurgents from popular support" so they can be killed or imprisoned by the government's security forces. If a political plan is implemented poorly, or not at all, insurgent forces will capitalize on the grievances and frustrated hopes of a community to entice them away from the government and to the political program of the insurgent. The community may then actively assist the insurgent, providing him with a safe haven to rest, re-arm, re-equip, recuperate, and re-deploy to fight another day. In the long run, because this conflict is not about how many causalities counter-insurgent forces can impose upon the insurgents, but upon the will to stay in the fight, foreign counter-insurgents tend to grow weary of the amount of blood and treasure they must expend to defeat the insurgent. Though the insurgent could conceivably lose every military engagement he has with counter-insurgent security forces, he can still win the war if the political program of the government does not win the population over to its policies, plans, and initiatives.

Politics and the Global War on Terror

Any political strategy to defeat al Qaeda, its affiliates, and the insurgencies we face in Afghanistan and Iraq has at least three levels to it: strategic, operational, and tactical. While large parts of any national strategy are well beyond the scope of this essay and are often, unfortunately, quite contentious, my primary focus in this paper is on how we conduct tactical diplomacy and politics and on those aspects of operational plans that are integral to a province or city-level counter-insurgency strategy. My goal is to empower political officers, whether they are members of the U.S. Department of State (DOS) working at a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) or a member of the U.S. military designated to handle political matters, with the conceptual tools, practical knowledge, and "tricks of the trade" they will need to perform the incredibly important role they will play in a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy. The responsibilities of a Political Officer in an insurgency environment are enormous, challenging, and absolutely vital to our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the U.S. military has quite ably adapted itself to the insurgency challenge, those of us at the U.S. Department of State need to follow their example and adapt to the challenge of unconventional warfare. We need to make politics and diplomacy central to a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy at the tactical level.

Learning and Adapting

When an operation is executed, commanders may develop the situation to gain a more thorough situational understanding. This increased environmental understanding represents a form of operational learning and applies across all Logical Lines of Operations. Commanders and staffs adjust the operation's design and plan based on what they learn. The result is an ongoing design-learn-redesign cycle.

COIN operations involve complex, changing relations among all the direct and peripheral participants. These participants adapt and respond to each other throughout an operation. A cycle of adaptation usually develops between insurgents and counterinsurgents; both sides continually adapt to neutralize existing adversary advantages and develop new (usually short-lived) advantages of their own. Victory is gained through a tempo or rhythm of adaptation that is beyond the other side's ability to achieve or sustain. Therefore, counterinsurgents should seek to gain and sustain advantages over insurgents by emphasizing the learning and adaptation that this manual stresses throughout.

Learning and adapting in COIN is very difficult due to the complexity of the problems commanders must solve. Generally, there is not a single adversary that can be singularly classified as the enemy. Many insurgencies include multiple competing groups. Success requires the HN government and counterinsurgents to adapt based on understanding this very intricate environment. But the key to effective COIN design and execution remains the ability to adjust better and faster than the insurgents.

Both of the following linked articles by Major Don Vandergriff (USA, Ret.) address US Army training, education and culture and its relative importance in producing the adaptive leaders we require. Vandergriff retired August 30, 2005 following 24 years of active duty as a Marine enlisted and Army officer. He has served in numerous troop, staff and education assignments in the United States and overseas. Vandergriff is a recognized authority on the U.S. Army personnel system, Army culture, leadership development, soldier training and the emergence in the early 21st century of asymmetric warfare.

Adaptive Leaders Course (ALC): Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks (May 2006)

Abstract

The Secretary of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff explicitly state that the U.S. Army is going to adapt its culture to encourage develop and teach Adaptive Leadership.

The Army is learning and leaders admit it must reshape its leader educational and training programs as part of a new leader paradigm into what a recent Army magazine article identified as "Learning Organizations."

U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) has identified a need to move from the current Industrial-Age leader development paradigm, and as a result has published a number of papers from TRADOC Areas of Interest (TAIs) to support its Campaign Plan objective "Reshape the fundamental Army Learning Process for a dynamic Operating Environment." "TAI 2 Learning for Adaptation" provided the ingredients for the paper "Learning for Adaptation: U.S. Army Training and Leader Development in the Early 21st Century." This paper lays the foundation to "discovering possible solutions as the Army continues to adapt to new settings and environments."

One of the twelve study objectives of this paper is "Integration of recent leader development initiatives and a comprehensive leader education model with emphasis on human, cultural and cognitive understanding." "Adaptive Leader's Course (ALC) Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks" is an approach to evolving U.S. Army leader-centric institutions to ones that not only can teach and evaluate adaptability in leaders, but also become adaptive leader-centric institutions.

Cultural evolution within leader development is the optimal start point as Army leaders tackle the complex issues of addressing laws, regulations and beliefs that deal with today's leader paradigm. The Adaptive Leader's Course (ALC) offers examples of viable education and training solutions as sought and asked for in "Learning for adaptation: U.S. Army Training and Leader Development in the Early 21st Century." Specifically the first recommendation in "Learning for Adaptation" is "Change the Professional Military Education (PME) model to adapt to the contemporary operational environment (COE) and the Army Forces Generation (ARFORGEN) model, and leverage Army Distributed Learning (ADL)." This paper supports the specific action of recommendation number 1's "Direct the development of an overarching conceptual framework for adaptability that captures emerging research and will guide the implementation of related adaptability education and training concepts throughout TRADOC."

Future Leader: The Journey of Developing (and Nurturing) Adaptability -- The Future is Now (December 2005)

Abstract

"Adaptability" has become a buzzword throughout the Army. The system in place today evolved from one that worked to support the nation's mobilization doctrine. Several factors have combined to force the Army to think about the way it develops and nurtures its leaders. Continual modifications to today's paradigm may not be enough.

The U.S. Army still "thinks" and "acts" from an industrial-age, mobilization doctrine-based leader development paradigm more than 16 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The industrial age approach continues to shape the way the Army approaches its training and education, often confusing the two terms. The Army has to do more than post rhetoric about "adaptability" on briefing slides and in literature. The Army's personnel system designed for an earlier era are so intimately tied to the maintenance of Army culture that they form a self-perpetuating cycle that will diminish and even prevent the Army from becoming an adaptive organization unless it accepts rapid evolutionary change as the norm of the new era.

One cannot divorce how the Army accesses, promotes and selects its leaders from its leader development paradigm. The Army cannot expect to create leaders that grasp and practice adaptability and then after graduation enter an Army that is not adaptive or nurtures innovation.

The Army culture must become adaptive and the personnel system evolves into one that nurtures adaptability in its policies, practices and beliefs.

Viable education and training solutions exist alongside an evolution into a new personnel management system centered on flexibility. This is what the paper and follow-on papers will recommend.

Ten Key Points:

Secure the people where they sleep.

Population security is our primary mission, one that will take time, and one we must carry out deliberately. Most extra-judicial killings occur at night and in people's homes...

Give the people justice and honor.

Iraqis value justice and honor. In the counterinsurgency fight, we want the hands that bring security to be the hands that help bring justice and honor as well...

Integrate civilian and military efforts -- this is an interagency, combined arms fight.

Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams now operate directly alongside many military units, bringing cultural, political, and economic expertise to the tactical commander's overall counterinsurgency effort...

Get out and walk -- move mounted, work dismounted.

Vehicles like the up-armored HMMWV limit our situational awareness and insulate us from the Iraqi people we intend to secure. They also make us predicatble, often obliging us to move slowly on established routes. These vehicles offer protection, but they do so at the cost of a great deal of effectiveness...

We are in a fight for intelligence -- all the time.

Intelligence is not a "product" provided by higher headquarters, but something we gather ourselves through our own operations. Tactical reporting, from civilian and military agencies, is essential...

Every unit must advise their Iraqi partners.

Developing a capable, credible ISF remains central to establishing sustainable security, and partnership is the key to this effort...

Include Iraqi Security Forces in your operations at the lowest possible level.

When it comes to language capacity, cultural awareness, and having a "feel" for what is normal in the local environment, Coalition forces are at a natural disadvantage. In contrast, ISF units possess all these capabilities but lack our combat power. Working together with the ISF and the local populace, we are a quite powerful combination; working unilaterally, we can be defeated piecemeal...

Look beyond the IED -- get the network that placed it.

Every IED provides a window into the network that placed it. If properly exploited, this window can be used to damage and "roll up" that network...

Be first with the truth.

Since Soldier actions speak louder than what PAOs say, we must be mindful of the impact our daily interactions with the Iraqis have on global audiences via the news media. Commanders should communicate key messages down to the individual level, but, in general, leaders and Soldiers should be able to tell their stories unconstrained by overly prescriptive themes...

Make the people choose.

Some in the Iraqi civilian population want to "sit on the fence" and avoid having to choose between the insurgents and the government. We must get the Iraqi populace off the fence -- and on the side of the GOI...