[R-G] Obama and the counter-insurgency era
Anthony Fenton
fentona at shaw.ca
Tue Feb 17 17:33:26 MST 2009
Feb 18, 2009
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KB18Ak02.html
Obama and the counter-insurgency era
By Anthony Fenton
Early signals indicate that United States President Barack Obama will
continue driving the "counter-insurgency era" that began under his
predecessor George W Bush.
Less than one month into his administration, the most significant
indicators that Obama will continue implementing a foreign policy
transformation that began under the Bush administration may be found
in and around his National Security appointments. Strikingly, the very
rhetoric that is being used to signify change is representative of
this continuity.
The first key signal came on December 1, when Obama confirmed that he
would continue with Robert M Gates as secretary of defense. That day,
Obama also announced that (retired) marine general James L Jones would
become his national security advisor, and that Hillary Clinton would
be secretary of state.
Subsequent appointments, including (retired) navy admiral Dennis Blair
to director of national intelligence, and Michele Flournoy as under
secretary of defense for policy, along with keeping Michael Vickers on
at under secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity
conflict, are all linked to Obama's assurances that "irregular
warfare" will remain at the forefront of US policy, strategy and
operations for the foreseeable future.
To help solidify matters, on December 1, Gates quietly signed
Department of Defense Directive (DoDD) 3000.07, establishing the
policy that "irregular warfare is as strategically important as
traditional warfare". [1]
According to the directive, irregular warfare (IW) encompasses
"Counter-terrorism operations, foreign internal defense,
unconventional warfare, counter-insurgency, and stability operations".
Under 3000.07, Vickers, a former special forces and Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative who is considered one of the key
architects behind the CIA's covert war with the Afghan mujahideen
against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, becomes Gates' "principal
advisor" on irregular warfare and the person who will provide "overall
policy oversight" to ensure the US military establishment is
transformed to be "as effective in IW as it is in traditional warfare".
Directive 3000.07 builds on a post-9/11 foreign policy establishment
transformation that began with the Bush Administration's National
Security Strategy of 2002. According to counter-insurgency theorist
(retired) colonel Thomas Baltazar and United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) Elisabeth Kvitashvili, the NSS of
2002 "emphasized a 'whole-of-government' approach to the war on
terrorism". [2]
"Whole of government" is a key term that has stuck, and is
increasingly being used by the Pentagon and the counter-insurgency
community.
The Quadrennial Roles and Missions Review Report, released by the
Department of Defense in January 2009, calls for "a better balance
between our Nation's hard and soft power", a shift which "requires
exploring whole-of-government approaches for meeting complex security
challenges". [3]
Directive 3000.07 also built on former president George W Bush's
National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 44 and secretary of
defense Donald Rumsfeld's DoDD 3000.05, both issued in late 2005.
These directives had already placed Stability Operations on par with
traditional operations. Likewise, the Quadrennial Defense Review of
2006, and the publication and mass promotion of the US Army
Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24) also demonstrated an
increasing emphasis on IW. [4] [5]
Counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen (at the time, a key State
Department advisor) said in a speech at the US Government Counter-
insurgency Conference in September 2006, "True enough, the words
'insurgency', 'insurgent' or 'counterinsurgency' do not appear in NSPD
44, but it clearly envisages the need to deploy integrated whole-of-
government capabilities in hostile environments."
Other key, IW-related developments during the Bush administration
included former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's
"transformational diplomacy" initiative. Announced in January 2006, it
called for "a more cooperative working relationship between American
diplomats and the US military". [6]
An equally seminal moment took place in November of 2007, when Gates
delivered the Landon Lecture, during which he made the "case for
strengthening our capacity to use 'soft' power and for better
integrating it with 'hard' power." [7]
The integration of "soft" and "hard" power is known as "smart power",
a concept that is generally credited to Joseph Nye, a member of the US
foreign policy elite, and former official under presidents Jimmy
Carter and Bill Clinton. But it is the 2006 CSIS Commission on Smart
Power report, which Nye co-chaired, that is more likely the source for
the shift in rhetoric that would be introduced by Gates and then used
by the Obama administration. [8]
The fundamental argument of the report was that "the most important
mandate" for the next administration would be to re-brand the US image
in order that the dwindling Empire might "move from eliciting fear and
anger to inspiring optimism and hope".
Optimism and hope, under the overarching if nebulous theme of "change"
were key messages of Obama's presidential campaign. Among the major
goals laid out by the report is "to prolong and preserve American pre-
eminence as an agent for good".
The report asserts that the US "cannot abandon" its military, but that
it needs to strengthen the tools of soft power, which include
diplomacy and development aid. The report acknowledges that the shift
to "smart power" had already begun under Bush, writing: "Some elements
of this approach are already occurring in the conduct of ongoing
counter-insurgency, nation building, and counter-terrorism operations
- tasks that depend critically but only partially on hard power."
As with many soul-searching debates into the strategic countenance of
the US over the years, this one hinges on questions of legitimacy and
"credibility". For the authors, it is not the formulation of the war
on terror itself that is problematic in so much as "strik[ing] a
balance between the use of force against irreconcilable extremists ...
and other means of countering terrorism."
While the "war on terror" is seen as "likely to be with us for
decades", the next administration needed to find "a new central
premise for US foreign policy to replace the war on terror".
The new "central premise" appears to have already emerged. On February
6, the Pakistani press reported that Senator John Kerry, the new chair
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, bristled at the "the use of
the term 'war on terror'". Rather, according to Kerry, "What we are
doing is conducting global counter-insurgency." [9]
One of the key "guiding principles" that the CSIS commission suggested
to the incoming administration was to "elevate and integrate ...
development, diplomacy and public diplomacy into unified whole".
The shift to an emphasis on "whole of government" capabilities
(sometimes referred to as "inter-agency", or "three-D" capabilities)
is highlighted in other emerging policies and key reports.
In July 2008, the USAID released its "Civilian-Military Cooperation
Policy". Therein, USAID describes itself as being "designed to
facilitate a whole-of-government approach in which US government
agencies work ... to provide a coordinated, consistent response in
pursuit of shared policy goals." USAID also notes in the policy how
its efforts are "a key element of any successful ... counter-
insurgency effort". [10]
Likewise, the touchstone US Government Counter-insurgency Guide had
its signing ceremony on January 13. The three signatories were USAID
administrator Henrietta Fore, Secretary of Defense Gates, and outgoing
secretary of state Rice. In the Guide's preface, State Department
Counselor, and Project for a New American Century signatory Eliot A
Cohen asserts that "insurgency will be a large and growing element of
the security challenges faced by the Unites States in the 21st
century". The COIN Guide is to prepare key government agencies for the
"near certainty" that the US will be engaged in COIN [counter-
insurgency] operations "during the decades to come". [11]
Other key responsibilities under DoDD 3000.07 were given to the
undersecretary for defense policy (USD-P), a position that is now held
by Michele A Flournoy, the former president of the Center for a New
American Security (CNAS) think-tank. When it was announced that
Flournoy would become USD-P, the Washington Independent's Spencer
Ackerman referred to her appointment as "a victory for the coterie of
counter-insurgency thinkers that the think-tank employs and
champions". [12]
In addition to heading CNAS, Flournoy was, together with Jones, Blair,
and Nye, a member of the "Guiding Coalition" of another key think-tank
close to the Obama administration, the Project for National Security
Reform (PNSR).
At the December 1 event announcing his appointment, Jones stressed how
"National Security in the 21st century comprises a portfolio which
includes all elements of national power and influence working in
coordination and harmony towards the desired goal of keeping our
nation safe."
This statement echoed recommendations that would be made only two days
later by the PNSR in its bi-partisan report, "Forging a New Shield".
The report's main recommendation is that "a new national security
system in which agencies work together on joint assignments and policy
implementation in responding to crises and managing day-to-day
national security affairs".
Modeled on and led by one of key architects of the 1986 Goldwater-
Nichols Act, which restructured the US military bringing all of the
forces under one umbrella for the first time, the PNSR seeks to
similarly alter the national security apparatus of the US in order
that the "whole of government" can more cohesively wage global counter-
insurgency.
The PNSR grew out of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, the
same agency that coordinated the Iraq Study Group and the lower-
profile Afghanistan Study Group. The latter was headed by Jones. One
of its key recommendations, that the US increase the number of troops
in Afghanistan, began to be adopted by the Bush administration and was
a key foreign policy plank of Obama's electoral campaign. Upon taking
office, Obama quickly implemented another ASG recommendation by naming
Richard Holbrooke as his special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
[13]
On January 13, 2009, PNSR announced that they had received $4 million
from Congress via the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
(ODNI) and the Department of Defense. Both ODNI, led by former PNSR co-
chair Dennis Blair, and the DoD "will oversee execution of the
agreement". [14]
The close proximity of the PNSR to the new administration is
instructive for another important reason.
In 2006, army General David Petraeus and Marine Lieutenant General
James Mattis established the Counter-insurgency (COIN) Center at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, "to facilitate the development of a culture that
enables us to more effectively adapt as a whole government when called
upon to deal with future COIN or COIN-like threats". [15]
According to the COIN Center's official pamphlet, its purpose is "to
better educate and train all US ground forces on the principles and
practices of counter-insurgency, and to better integrate COIN efforts
among the services".
Among members of the COIN Center's "community of interest" listed on
its website, is the PNSR. Additionally, in its pamphlet, the COIN
Center lists both a current program and a "near term initiative" that
it is collaborating on with the PNSR. It remains to be seen what role
exactly the PNSR will play with the COIN Center. One clue is found in
the COIN Center pamphlet which states:
The analytical construct the COIN Center uses for continued analysis
of distributed responsibility for issues in a COIN environment is the
acronym "DDD" or the "3Ds": Diplomacy (State); Development (USAID);
and Defense (DoD)." [16]
That PNSR has a shared emphasis on the interagency, or 3D, process,
which may be an indication of collaborative efforts to watch for.
One reason to be wary of the commitment to "irregular warfare" is that
it reflects a warning issued recently by the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, that US foreign policy is "too
militarized". Although the lip service paid to "smart power" might be
seen to indicate a balancing effect toward civilian influence over
foreign policy, the appointment of retired military and intelligence
figures to key civilian posts calls this into question. [17]
Since the Obama administration campaigned on the continuity of counter-
insurgency and irregular war as key elements of US power projection
under his administration, it is likely that these policies will attain
a level of popular support not experienced by the Bush administration,
and will see little critical scrutiny by the media. The challenge will
be to shed light on and critically examine these policies as they
manifest in any number of settings around the world in the days to come.
Notes
1. Department of Defense directive number 3000.07, December 1, 2008. http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300007p.pdf
2 . Baltazar, Colonel Thomas and Elisabeth Kvitashvili, "The Role of
USAID and Development Assistance in Combatting Terrorism," Military
Review, March-April 2007, pp. 38-40.
3. Pentagon Recommends 'Whole-of-Government' National Security Plans
by Walter Pincus, The Washington Post, Monday, February 2, 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/01/AR2009020101964_pf.html
4. National Security Presidential directive NSPD-44 December 7, 2005. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-44.html
5. DoD directive 3000.05 November 28, 2005. http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/300005.htm
6. Better Jointness Needed Between Military and Diplomats, Rice Says
By Steven Donald Smith. American Forces Press Service, January 18,
2006. http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=14581
7. Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M Gates,
Manhattan
, Kansas, Monday, November 26, 2007. http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1199
8. CSIS Commission on Smart Power. http://www.csis.org/smartpower/
9. Kerry says Pakistan aid bill to be passed shortly, APP Feb 6. http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=67233&Itemid=2
10. Civilian-military cooperation policy July 2008. http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/civilianmilitarycooperation.pdf
11. US government counterinsurgency guide. http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/usgcoinguide.pdf
12. Obama’s Pentagon Subcabinet Officials: Lynn, Flournoy by Spencer
Ackerman, The Washington Independent, 1/8/09.
http://washingtonindependent.com/24512/obamas-pentagon-subcabinet-officials-lynn-flournoy
13. Afghanistan Study Group report. http://www.thepresidency.org/pubs/Afghan_Study_Group_final.pdf
14. PNSR Hails Appointment of Guiding Coalition Members to Obama
Administration.
http://www.pnsr.org/data/files/newsletter%203.0.pdf
15. COIN Center Community Of Interest. https://coin.harmonieweb.org/Pages/COI.aspx
16. US Army/US Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center. https://coin.harmonieweb.org/Knowledge%20Center/COIN_Center_Pamphlet.pdf
17. Foreign Policy Beyond the Pentagon by Walter Pincus The Washington
Post, February 9, 2009.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/08/AR2009020801852.html
Anthony Fenton is an independent researcher and journalist based near
Vancouver, Canada. He is currently co-writing a book on Canadian-US
post-9/11 foreign policy integration and transformation, and can be
reached at fenton at shaw.ca.
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