An "easy and reliable way of defeating all insurgencies everywhere"

But before you get too excited, beware that as the author of this approach, Edward Luttwak writes: "It is enough to consider these methods to see why the armed forces of the United States or of any other democratic country cannot possibly use them."

Nevertheless why not at least see what an "easy and reliable" method of counterinsurgency would involve.

From his article "Dead End" in the April issue of Harper's, I extract Luttwak's key points:

The simple starting point is that insurgents are not the only ones who can intimidate or terrorize civilians. For instance, whenever insurgents are believed to be present in a village, small town, or distinct city district—a very common occurrence in Iraq at present, as in other insurgency situations—the local notables can be compelled to surrender them to the authorities, under the threat of escalating punishments, all the way to mass executions.

History is full of the successful application of this approach says Luttwak:

That is how the Ottoman Empire could control entire provinces with a few feared janissaries and a squadron or two of cavalry. The Turks were simply too few to hunt down hidden rebels, but they did not have to: they went to the village chiefs and town notables instead, to demand their surrender, or else. A massacre once in a while remained an effective warning for decades...

Long before the Ottoman Empire, the Romans knew how to combine sticks and carrots to obtain obedience and suppress insurgencies. Conquered peoples too proud to accept the benefits of their rule, from public baths and free circus shows to reliable law courts, were “de-bellicized” (a very Roman idea). It was done by killing all who dared to resist in arms—it made good combat practice for the legions—by selling into slavery any who were captured in battle, by leveling towns that held out under siege instead of promptly surrendering, and by readily accepting as peaceful subjects and future citizens all who submitted to Roman rule...“They make a wasteland and call it peace” was the bitter complaint of a Scottish chieftain (as reported by Tacitus).

He goes on to cite how well this technique worked for the Germans in World War Two: "As for the daring resistance attacks that feature in films," he writes, "they did happen occasionally, but not often, and not because of any lack of bravery in fighting the routinely formidable Germans but because of the terrible punishments they inflicted on the population."

And how well it worked in Vietnam:

[T]he Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were skilled in using terror to secure their pervasive territorial control and very ready to use any amount of violence against civilians, from countless individual assassinations to mass executions, as in Hue in 1968. The Communist cause had its enthusiasts, “fellow travelers,” and opportunistic followers, but Vietnamese who were none of the above, and not outright enemies, were compelled to collaborate actively or passively by the threat of the violence so liberally used.

"That is exactly what the insurgents in Iraq are now doing," he writes, "and this is no coincidence." As he goes on to recap his argument:

All insurgencies follow the same pattern. Locals who are not sympathetic to begin with, who cannot be recruited to the cause, are compelled to collaborate by the fear of violence, readily reinforced by the demonstrative killing of those who insist on refusing to help the resistance. Neutrality is not an option.

Contrast the terror approach, says Luttwak, with the American method of "de-bellicizing" the Iraqi insurgency:

[T]he capacity of American armed forces to inflict collective punishments does not extend much beyond curfews and other such restrictions, inconvenient to be sure and perhaps sufficient to impose real hardship, but obviously insufficient to out-terrorize insurgents.

Since American forces can never hope to out-terrorize the insurgents, what, if any, is the alternative?

"The ordinary administrative functions of government can also be employed against the insurgents," writes Luttwak:

Insurgents everywhere seek to prohibit any form of collaboration or contact with the authorities, but they cannot normally prevent civilians from entering government offices to apply for obligatory licenses, permits, travel documents, and such. That provides venues for intelligence officers on site to ask applicants to provide information on the insurgents, in exchange for the approval of their requests and perhaps other rewards. This effective and straightforward method has been widely used, and there is no ethical or legal reason why it should not be used by the armed forces of the United States as well. But it does require the apparatus of military government, complete with administrative services for civilians.

I get it: this must be the difficult and unreliable way of defeating an insurgency.

Now to understand why Luttwak thinks a military government as opposed to, say, the civilian Iraqi government needs to do this, you should read his article. Then again, maybe he thinks the Iraqi goverrment is the American military government.

Anyway, to see what another expert, David Kilcullen, civilian advisor to the Central Command in Iraq, said about Luttvak's approach, start here.

Imagine you're a counterinsurgent in Iraq....

Here's a fun exercise for a Saturday:

[Pretend] your company has just been warned for deployment on counterinsurgency operations in Iraq or Afghanistan.

That's the opening line of David Kilcullen's "Twenty Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency." Since he's the Senior Counter-Insurgency Advisor to the Commanding General, Multi-National Force in Iraq, he's worth reading (and fun too), because, and I quote him below, this is what he writes about:

What does all the theory mean, at the company level? How do principles translate into action - at night, with the GPS down, the media criticizing you, the locals complaining in a language you don't understand, and an unseen enemy killing your people by ones and twos? How does counterinsurgency actually happen?

If you want to know the answer, read his whole article.

Counter-Insurgency from the field versus the armchair

Dr. David Kilcullen, Senior Counter-Insurgency Advisor to the Commanding General, Multi-National Force Iraq, responds to Edward N. Luttwak’s article in Harper’s Magazine, “Dead End: Counter-Insurgency as Military Malpractice” over at Small Wars Journal. In general this is a must-read blog if you want to follow how General Petraeus is now running the counter-insurgency in Iraq.

You should definitely read Kilcullen's entire post but here are some excerpts. First, on governance:

Dr Luttwak observes that “better government…is certainly wanted in France, Norway and the United States but obviously not in Afghanistan or Iraq, where many people prefer indigenous and religious oppression”. This differs markedly from my field experience in both countries. One night last summer, a member of a tribe that sits astride the Afghan-Pakistan border told me: “you want to bring us ‘democracy’ at the national level, but we already have democracy within the khel. What we want from the government is security, honor, justice and prosperity. If anyone offers us those things, we will fight for him to the death. If democracy only brings elections, what use is it?” In my experience, this is a fairly widespread view in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

On religiousity:

Dr Luttwak argues that “the vast majority of Afghans and Iraqis, assiduous mosque-goers, illiterates or at best semi-illiterate, naturally believe their religious leaders” (who, Dr Luttwak suggests, incite violence with claims that America seeks to destroy Islam and control oil resources). Again, this is at variance with field observation. In fact, neither Iraqis nor Afghans are particularly assiduous mosque-goers. And religious figures are prominent on all sides of both conflicts, in moderate and extreme political groups; there is an extremely wide range of clerical opinion, ranging from quietism through support for democratic government, to extremism. More fundamentally, in these societies, religious faith is not a function of ignorance and credulity, as Dr Luttwak implies, but a widespread cultural norm that infuses all social classes, political orientations and education levels.

On whether Iraqis and Afghans are helping the coalition forces:

Dr Luttwak argues that “many of the local inhabitants certainly know who the insurgents are…but they are not telling”. Actually, they now are. Every U.S. unit that has applied the new manual’s approach, living among the people and focusing on their security, has reported a flood of unsolicited tips from the population and volunteering of information about insurgents.

On Dr. Luttwak's how-to defeat insurgencies everywhere:

...Dr Luttwak suggests an “easy and reliable way of defeating all insurgencies everywhere”: essentially, to “out-terrorize” insurgents through reprisals, mass executions, and collective punishments. He cites German forces in the Second World War, claiming this approach was standard, “and very effective it was too in containing resistance movements with very few troops”.

Again, I beg to differ. One German officer on the Eastern Front remarked: “the
German Army in Russia was like an elephant attacking a nest of ants. The elephant will kill millions. But in the end the ants will eat him to the bone”.

German methods in Yugoslavia, Greece and Russia proved extremely counterproductive. And as Barbara Tuchman argued in The Guns of August, earlier
German brutality against civilians in Belgium and France in 1914 helped provoke worldwide revulsion, contributing to eventual American intervention and German defeat in the First World War.

On America the occupier:

Dr. Luttwak’s final point is one of his strongest. He argues that there is ambivalence in the United States approach, that America is “willing to start wars because of future projected threats…willing to conquer territory or even entire countries, and yet is unwilling to govern what it conquers, even for a few years”. What he calls “the critical ambivalence of occupiers who refuse to govern” is indeed worth discussing, though it is properly an issue of political will, strategic culture and national character, rather than counterinsurgency technique. As a colleague said to me in Iraq last year, “we need to either make a serious effort to govern these people, or get the hell out”.

But Iraq and Afghanistan now have sovereign governments; and we (with many other countries) are helping these governments to do exactly that—make a serious effort to govern their people effectively. And we have no plans for permanent presence: as the President said, we will stay as long as we are needed, and not a day longer.

George Packer, Know The Enemy

George Packer, in his December 18 article in The New Yorker, wonders whether social scientists can redefine the "war on terror."

He asks this question because a social scientist, an Australian by the name of David Kilcullen is being asked to do just that by the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, Henry Crumpton.

According to Kilcullen, the war on terror would be better defined as a global counterinsurgency. As Packer writes, to Kilcullen, "a war on terror suggests an undifferentiated enemy." He argues that the U.S. needs to avoid mapping the various conflicts around the world onto a global jihad because it will be far easier in the long run to address local grievances. As Packer reports Kilcullen saying: "Let's not talk about bin Laden's objectives - let's talk about your objectives. How do we solve that problem? You don't play to the enemy's global information strategy of making it all one fight."

As Packer writes, in Kilcullen's view, this fight is less about religion or ideology and more about social networks. It is one's friends, family and associates who will ultimately determine which side somebody ends up on. To combat this war then, Kilcullen believes that the U.S. has to establish competing networks - of friendly mosques, community leaders, professional associations - in order to provide a social context that enables people to choose a way other than jihad.

In his view, social scientists are the ideal persons to identify these individuals and alternative networks but there's one problem. Most social scientists are unwilling to assist the U.S. government, a legacy of the Vietnam War era.

Packard interviews one of the few who is willing to do so, an anthropologist who works for the Pentagon, Montgomery McFate. She describes herself as a rebellious daughter of "hippie parents" who says she grew up believing that the Cold War was just a "bunch of lies the government fed us to keep us paranoid." Her rebellion began, she says, when she finally realized that "there was a thing called the Cold War, and we nearly lost. And there was no guarantee that we were going to win."

Since 9/11, as she told Packer, she has been on an "evangelical mission" to get the Department of Defense to understand the importance of "cultural knowledge" because in her view, the government has no choice but to understand its adversaries.

The Pentagon seems to be convinced enough of the need for this type of knowledge that it has formed a Cultural Operations Research Terrain that is planning to send out teams of social scientists to act as cultural advisors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Steve Fondacara, the head of this effort, says it's difficult to recruit people for this mission. Aside from the not insignificant risks involved, many scientists still shun the idea of working for the U.S. government.

For McFate, the good she can do outweighs the risk, both personal and academic, "I see there could be misuse," she told Packer, "But I just can't stand to sit back and watch these mistakes happen over and over as people get killed, and do nothing."

While it does seem that social scientists could indeed help redefine the "war on terror" and in a positive way, perhaps the real question Packard was asking was will they?