5 Questions with Admiral Stavridis on Scotch and Strategy

By Ryan Evans

January 27, 2014 

This is the latest edition of our Five Questions series. Each week, we feature an expert, practitioner, or leader answering five questions on a topic of current relevance in the world of defense, security, and foreign policy. Well, four of the questions are topical. The fifth is about booze. We are War on the Rocks, after all.

This week, I spoke with Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret). He is the former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and currently Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Admiral Stavridis holds a PhD from Fletcher, and has written five books, including Destroyer Command, and over a hundred articles. You can follow him on Twitter @stavridisj.

1. Admiral Stavridis, thanks for doing this. You’ve been a great supporter of War on the Rocks since we launched with your review of The Guns at Last Light. Warrior-scholars like you, General Petraeus, and General McMaster have played very important roles in our military during a trying time of two wars and new security challenges. Does this signal a new era defined by the warrior-scholar seeking to bridge theory and practice? Or was this a blip?

I think the nation has always had warrior-scholars (and warrior-diplomats for that matter) and we will continue to have them. Many of the WWII senior officers had published in the US Naval Institute Proceedings and similar journals. Flag Officers like Rear Admiral JC Wylie, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce, and Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske come quickly to mind. As I look at young officers today, we are still producing fine thinkers and writers in the field of strategy, many with PhDs or other advanced degrees. We will not deliver security solely from the barrel of a gun in this turbulent century, and we will need to out-think our opponents as well as out-fight them.

2. In the latest issue of Proceedings, you and David Weinstein call for the consolidation of all the service’s cyber components into a U.S. Cyber Force—not just a joint command, but a full-fledged, new service within DoD? What problems would this solve?

The problems are inefficiency, cross-service competition, lack of standardized training and education, and creating an effective military capability in the cyber world. The pick-up team approach (allowing each service to have its own cyber branch, with different career paths and training regimes) is not efficient. Cyber is too big, too important, and too central to future warfighting not to have a dedicated cadre of individuals who focus on training, equipping, and organizing—and then are made available to the joint commanders for combat operations.

Learning Large Lessons from Small Wars

By Frank Hoffman

February 5, 2014 

Not long after America’s withdrawal from South Vietnam, Harvard Professor Stanley Hoffmann observed that, “Of all the disasters of the last decade, the worst could be our unwillingness to learn enough from them.” The same appears true today. For all the ink spilt and bytes used, it is hard not to want to paraphrase Dr. Hoffmann and apply his witticism to America’s policy elite. So here goes: the greatest disaster about Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom is our abject inability to draw critical lessons from them.

I find myself in mild disagreement with Mark Stout’s comments on the counterinsurgency debate. The debate is certainly useful. However, it masks a larger and more important debate on the effectiveness of American policy and the strategy community, and another about the utility of force in the 21st century. We should not be distracted from these larger debates, which depend on our ability to be reflective and properly draw upon history to establish lessons.

Drawing clear lessons from post-mortems and “after action reviews” is a delicate matter because they can be politicized too readily. But it can and must be done. For an example, see the admirable Joint Staff assessment titled The Decade of War. But the military drew only operational lessons in that report. Its strongest lesson was about the “Big War” mentality that blinded the U.S. military from studying and preparing for insurgencies or small wars.

Several contributors here at WOTR have touched on the need to draw lessons carefully. Dr. David Johnson of RAND has reflected on his own experience in the post-Vietnam Army. Others, like Army Strategist Nate Finney, have also commented on the challenge, saying:

If we cannot look critically at our conflicts, how they were prosecuted, what worked and didn’t work, and what this could imply for the future, all of the concept development (think AirSea Battle and Strategic Landpower) and budget battles we are currently debating will be largely premature, if not largely uninformed.

Hagel Says Ethical Scandals Are a ‘Growing Problem’ in the Military

Stephanie Gaskell

February 5, 2014

NUCLEARPENTAGON

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is worried that after more than a decade of fighting two wars, the nation’s military is under a different kind of stress that’s leading to a loss of “moral character.”

One scandal after another has popped up in the news. An Air Force general was fired for drinking and misconduct during a trip to Russia. An officer in charge of the Air Force’s sexual assault prevention program was arrested for attacking a woman outside an Arlington, Va., strip club. A group of nuclear missile operators were suspended for cheating on proficiency exams. Now the Navy is investigating several trainers at its nuclear propulsion program for cheating.

AUTHOR

Stephanie Gaskell is deputy editor and senior reporter for Defense One. She previously covered the Pentagon for Politico. Gaskell has covered war, politics and breaking news for nearly 20 years, including at the Associated Press, the New York Post and the New York Daily News. She has reported from ... Full Bio

Ethical misconduct is nothing new in the military, but Hagel worried that these cases are just part of a growing trend. “I think he definitely sees this as a growing problem, and he’s concerned about the depth of it,” Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby said Wednesday during a briefing at the Pentagon.

What if two Chinese colonels think that warfare is changing, even if you don't?

BY Thomas E. Ricks

FEBRUARY 7, 2014 

By Col. C. Anthony Pfaff, U.S. Army 

Best Defense guest columnist 

There has been a great deal of discussion lately regarding how political and technological developments have impacted our understanding of war. 

More than a decade of frustration combating weaker insurgent forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the likelihood of future frustration to ensure political stability in developing nations and U.S. access to critical markets and infrastructure has led many to question whether we still adequately understand what war is. Central to this discussion has been a debate over whether the nature of war has changed or simply its character. At stake in this debate is not only how we develop, organize, and employ military forces, but also our doctrinal view of war, which has important implications for how we justify the use of those forces. How we justify the use of those forces has equally important implications for how often we find ourselves using it. 

In a recent article on "War on the Rocks," Christopher Mewett described war's nature as "violent, political and interactive." His concern, rightfully so, is that if we do not get the nature of war right, we will not properly prepare for it. However, this view of war is not necessarily shared by at least some possible U.S. adversaries. In their oft-cited 1999 book, Unrestricted Warfare, two Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiansui, argued that the United States narrowly defined war and this narrow understanding exposed it to a vulnerability that weaker states, like China, could exploit. In fact, they stated the U.S. military does a poor job of deliberating upon future fights, adding "lucid and incisive thinking ... is not a strong point of the Americans." If only they knew. 

Future of War: Rosa Brooks smacks down 19th c. industrial era theories about warfare

BY Thomas E. Ricks

FEBRUARY 6, 2014 

The promised smackdown arrives. 

Everyone knows that the character of war changes constantly but that the nature of war is immutable. Why do they know this? Because they were told so at war college. 

Everyone, that is, except my FP & Future of War teammate Rosa von Brooks. She's read all the books and she comes away unpersuaded. For example, she writes, "Take cyberwar: Much of what is often spoken of under the 'cyberwar' rubric is not violent in the Clausewitzian sense of the word. Cyberattacks might shut down the New York Stock Exchange and cause untold financial damage, for instance, but would we say that this makes them violent?" 

She notes that Clausewitzian strict constructionists will then respond, "You can blather on all you want about cyberwar or financial war, but if what you're talking about is not both violent and political, it's just not 'war,' but something else." 

Not so fast, she counters. "But there are many other ways to understand and define violence. Consider various forms of psychological torture or abuse. Or consider cyberattacks that lead to loss of life as an indirect result of extended power outages: Why not view such attacks as a form of violence if they lead predictably to loss of life?" 

Then Brooks gets all neo-Westphalian on their asses. "It is the state that creates and defines the role of the military.... It is also the state that defines the legal contours of war." So, for a truly subordinate military, war might be war, but war is what your civilian superiors say it is. 

The Future of War (no. 4): We need to protect our personnel from the moral fallout of drone and robotic warfare

BY Thomas E. Ricks

FEBRUARY 6, 2014 

By Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer, U.S. Army 

Best Defense guest columnist 

Until last year, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders required "actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others" for a diagnosis of PTSD. How is it that drone operators can suffer PTSD without experiencing physically traumatic events? The answer lies in the concept of "moral injury." 

Dr. Jonathan Shay popularized the term "moral injury" in his book Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. To Shay, it is the moral component -- the perceived violation of "what's right" -- that causes the most harmful and enduring psychological effects from PTSD-inducing events. Dr. Tick, another psychologist who has counseled hundreds of combat veterans, holds a similar view. Tick contends that PTSD is best characterized not as an anxiety disorder, but as an identity disorder stemming from violations of what you believe that you yourself (or other people that you identify with) could or should have done. 

Other mental health practitioners describe moral injury as something distinct from PTSD, which they see as caused by physical reactions to physical stressors. But moral injury, as Dr. Brett Litz and other leading experts in the field recently defined it, is "perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations." Moral injury may follow a physical event, but it can also follow events that are not physically traumatic at all. 

Litz and his colleagues agree that, while PTSD and moral injury share symptoms like "intrusions, avoidance, numbing," other symptoms are unique to moral injury. These other symptoms include "shame, guilt, demoralization, self-handicapping behaviors (e.g., self-sabotaging relationships), and self-harm (e.g., parasuicidal behaviors)." They also advocate different treatments for moral injury. While PTSD sufferers may be helped via such physical remedies as drugs and the "Random Eye Movement" treatment, those who suffer from moral injury require counseling-based therapies. 

Will Google Become America’s Number One Defense Company?

By Daniel Goure, Ph.D.

February 05, 2014

Source Link

Futurists and defense analysts alike increasingly are focusing on IT and computing as the central pillars of looming industrial-societal and military transformations. Advances in networking, big data, sensors and computing power are changing most aspects of everyday life, many industrial processes, and even the value of human capital. Our lives are an open book to Internet service companies, online providers of content and products, the NSA and any reasonably competent hacker. How we relate to one another is being changed by the way the Internet allows/requires us to communicate. Politics has been forever changed by the ability of parties and groups to hyper-target potential voters. Print media has been decimated by the rise of cable and Internet news outlets and the promise that whatever opinions one has will be supported by the information provided by the news service of your choice. Psychologists and biologists are increasingly of the mind that intensive use of IT and computers is changing the way our children think and learn and even how their brains are wired. 

When the power of IT and computing are merged with advances in manufacturing the outcome could shake the world. 3D printing, which marries up advances in sensors, computer modeling and controls, networked communications and industrial robotics, could well rewrite the book on industrial processes, the character of the corporation, patent law, labor relations and global trading patterns among other areas. 

At the heart of this transformation is the rise of the machines (my apologies to the Terminator franchise). Machines -- to include all forms of computers and communications devices -- are increasingly replacing people. This phenomenon started with the use of calculating machines to speed the pace of laborious mathematical and accounting activities. It then moved onto the assembly line where robotic welders and assemblers could reduce the wear and tear on human line workers but also respond much more agilely than their biological counterparts to changes in the design or material basis of many products. Now machines are replacing people everywhere from the operating room to the garage at your office building. Some opponents of raising the minimum wage warn that it will simply speed up the rate at which low-skilled workers are replaced by machines. 

Will this same set of technological revolutions transform the way military forces are organized and operated? Certainly, the explosion of capabilities in IT and computing have radically improved the ability of military forces to communicate, coordinate activities on the battlefield and locate and strike targets. But all of these advances are matters of degree, not kind. Improved target location and weapons accuracy allow force to be applied in lower amounts and more discretely for greater effect. Strike operations by a few dozen aircraft in 2003 could achieve more than what the entire 8th Air Force could do in a single raid in 1944. But the mission remains essentially unchanged. The fruits of the IT and computing revolution allow the military to do with finesse what used to require brute force to accomplish. 

The real change in the ways of warfare will come when -- or more accurately if -- the military follows the private sector’s lead in replacing people with machines. One way this might come about is if cyber warfare becomes the normal form of combat, at least when technologically-capable foes are involved. The warning by some intelligence officials of a potential cyber “Pearl Harbor” that wipes out U.S. military and civilian communications, power grids and data bases needs to be taken seriously. The other avenue is more commonly that of science fiction: when largely autonomous, armed robots actually take to the battlefield. The military has autonomous robots in the form of various unmanned air, land and sea systems. The military also has armed robots such as the Reaper UAV and the Talon ground-based system. There are even autonomous, armed robots; they are called fire and forget missiles. So far, military robots have supported or complemented human-centered operations. But this could change. 

Vanderbilt Works to Secure Military Smartphones

by Kris Osborn

February 6, 2014

Source Link

Soldiers in Afghanistan are experimenting with smartphones engineered to better protect operational datas designed by scientists at Vanderbilt University’s Institute for Software Integrated Systems, or ISIS.

Vanderbilt experts and researchers are working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, on a program called Transformative Apps, an effort designed to develop a family of military-relevant software applications, or apps.

The program is aimed at improving the security or information assurance technology of smartphones in order to allow for their use in rugged, tactical combat environments where there are often no fixed-infrastructures such as cell towers.

“One of the things you find when you move into a tactical environment is that you cannot rely on any kind of fixed infrastructure,” said Douglas Schmidt, professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University, ISIS.

The Army has worked on a program called Nett Warrior to get smartphones in the hands of soldiers in combat. Currently, soldiers with the 10th Mountain Division are using them on a deployment to Afghanistan.

Putting “Anti-Intellectualism” in Context

Intellectualism, Misology, and the Army 

This post was provided by Dave McHenry, a US Army strategist. The views expressed belong to the author alone and do not represent the US Army or the Department of Defense.

Trying to define “intellectual” is like walking in the world of Zoolander, a movie about a male model (Ben Stiller) who describes himself as “really, really, ridiculously good looking.” Academic definitions of “intellectual” (often themselves it would seem) paint a similar gushing picture about a “life of the mind” that values education, and appreciates critical thinking, history, philosophy, and science. After Matt Cavanaugh and Andy Rohrer’s recent blog exchange, I was left wondering how could anyone be against all these wonderful things? One shot of “blue steel” and I was ready to side with Rohrer — the Army, as an institution (or bureaucracy) simply, demonstrably, empirically, is not anti-intellectual.

But, I am in the Army and know the culture. I have heard my peers lament the “loss of a fine officer” when they enroll in a PhD program. I have seen generals roll their eyes and sigh, “darn intellectuals,” when they receive the 400 page read ahead for the 30 minute brief. I have even been guilty of only reading my inbox (and may even wear my reflective belt while doing it). So, maybe we are anti-intellectual — of at least some type of intellectual. But, what type?

What I needed was to stop asking intellectuals to define themselves and seek wisdom elsewhere. I needed a colloquial definition. Enter the more pedestrian and boorish Urban Dictionary — an intellectual is “someone who has found something more interesting than sex and alcohol.” Hmm… then the example sentence, “Parties bore Dan because he is an intellectual.” Therefore, an anti-intellectual would be someone that is not bored at parties and, most likely, would find Dan to be a bore. This explains the Army’s anti-intellectual culture that I know. We have all met Dan, and been bored by him. While this new definition, and its analogy, has added some insight, something was still missing between the Zoolander and Urban Dictionary definitions.

Why RMAs Still Matter

By Rich Ganske

Some thoughts on what Knox & Murray’s “Dynamics of Military Revolution” teaches us… 

Often confused for one another, Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) are much less influential than the societal-military earthquake-inducing Military Revolutions (MR). The confusion is not simply semantic, but rather crucial as RMAs have little to no influence beyond the tactical and operational levels of war. RMAs, as Knox and Murray tell us in “Dynamics of Military Revolution,” are no “substitute for strategy.” Understanding the nature of RMAs provides vital perspective on the extent of their influence upon the political and strategic context. Finally, having this proper perspective within the strategic hierarchy, one is better armed to sort valuable insight on changes in the strategic landscape from insight that is fundamentally flawed.

What is a Revolution in Military Affairs?

Military organizations embark upon an RMA by devising new ways of destroying their opponents. To do so, they must come to grips with fundamental changes in the social, political, and military landscapes; in some cases they must anticipate those changes. Revolutions in military affairs require the assembly of a complex mix of tactical, organizational, doctrinal, and technological innovations in order to implement a new conceptual approach to warfare or to a specialized sub-branch of warfare.

Why do Revolutions in Military Affairs matter?

Polen, Stukas 1939

(German Federal Archives)

There are several important considerations of RMAs here for the military professional. First, RMAs are rarely predicted. In the 1990s, most immediately following Operation Desert Storm, RMAs became the topic of much discussion that was, on the whole, largely ahistorical and ineffectual. The most stillborn of RMA ideas was that new tactical and technological dyads would usher in certain success at the operational and/or strategic levels of war in a new era. In contrast, Knox & Murray’s edition effectively and repeatedly emphasizes that the lessons of history are inconsistent with the idea of technological supremacy as a key to victory. Equally, we should also observe here that the edition is not opposed to technological advancements—although it notes that in some cases technology becomes irrelevant sooner than other cases. Blind obsession with technological acquisition is just as imprudent as those stubborn advocates who suggest that archaic weapons are sufficient for future tactical and operational success.

On “No More Easy Wars”

Source Link

An axe, by any other name, is just an axe… but what would be refreshing is a narrative that offers a positive view of a future land force against anti-access and area denial concerns rather than another cynical view of joint force contributions. 

In Foreign Policy’s National Security Blog, Colonel Scott Gerber (USA) recently attempted to make out the Air Sea Battle (ASB) Concept as foolishness. Personally, I am extremely concerned about building an operational concept around a policy shift known as the “Asia Pivot.” My greatest concern is that the United States has not sufficiently fleshed out the strategic underpinnings of translating the Asia Pivot policy into action, however setting that aside for now, I will revisit that in a follow-on post. What I find striking about Gerber’s offering here is how he insists on building a straw man of mythological proportions in order to knock over the ASB Concept.

Before we begin, there is one aspect that Gerber gets right: he offers wise counsel against what a friend of this blog refers to as “self-defeating technological fetishes.” Clausewitz reminds us that “policy is not a tyrant,” and the present fiscal constraints should endear strategists towards constrained ends to match our more humble means. But while others have reminded us that “clear thinking about war costs nothing,” it is equally prudent to recall that U.S. policy makers, not spendthrift sister-service fat cats, directed the pivot.

Specifically, in what follows, we will look beyond the interservice cynicism of officers like Gerber and discover some interwoven faults of his logic. This includes the oft-used false attribution of the Iraq misadventure to “Shock and Awe,” the lack of discernment of what targeting provides the Joint Force Commander, and real grip as to what the Air Sea Battle Concept provides the Joint Force Commander. Only then can we also understand better that the U.S. Army has an important role to play in Air Sea Battle, if only it would choose to do so. Finally, we will conclude with why the U.S. Army must consider the present operational concepts within a longer view that takes us back to the days of the Air Land Battle Concept. 

Anti-intellectualism in the Army

The bureaucracy or the people? 

This post was provided by Andy Rohrer, a US Army Strategist currently serving in the Pentagon. The views expressed belong to the author alone and do not represent the US Army or the Department of Defense.

Recently, Matt Cavanaugh published a short essay positing that the Profession of Arms was in decay. He stated that “[t]he Profession of Arms is decaying (weakening or fraying­—as opposed to a relative decline), and the primary causes are neglect, anti-intellectual bias, and a creeping, cancerous bureaucracy.” From that point he asserts that the blame for this condition lies at the feet of the Army, an institution charged with the defense of the nation now barely able to perform its duty because it is overtaken by bureaucracy. I concede there is a bias towards anti-intellectualism in the Army; however, members of the institution, not just the inanimate institution itself, bear part of the blame. Thus, it is better argued that the bureaucracy creates incentives that perpetuate an existing preference toward anti-intellectualism among the members of the institution. This is not to say that the people who form the institution are unthinking, incurious individuals, just that the institution is not solely to blame if a person displays the traits of anti-intellectualism.

General Creighton Williams Abrams, Jr.

General Creighton Abrams, while Chief of Staff of the Army stated that, “Soldiers are not in the Army. Soldiers are the Army.” Recognizing the Army was not well-regarded by the population, suffered widespread low morale, and desperately needed modernization, this statement succinctly acknowledged that the status quo was no longer acceptable in the context of a force no longer able to draw on conscripted service from the nation. The statement also put in plain words that the Army is its people; its character and culture reflect those who serve. In that vein, blaming only the bureaucracy for the malaise of the institution while avoiding any share of blame for the service-members, which are the institution.

First, a short discussion on the nature of the bureaucracy’s impact on people is in order to properly frame how the individuals bear equal responsibility. The examples given by Cavanaugh in his piece to illustrate bureaucracy’s effect—a nonsensical uniform regulation and a requirement to complete multitudes of paperwork to travel to Mexico—are not examples of bureaucracy stifling intellectualism; they are reflections of a bureaucratic aversion to risk. The former is an example of what American soldiers during World War 2 called ‘chickenshit’—“petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant ‘paying off of old scores’; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.” The latter is an example of how a complex bureaucracy keeps track of an individual it employs, and how it protects itself should something unforeseen occurs.

Anti-Intellectualism and the Army

The Sky isn’t Falling…yet 

This post was provided by Joe Byerly, a US Army armor officer. The views expressed belong to the author alone and do not represent the US Army or the Department of Defense.

“The evidence would indicate that a serious intellectual effort during peacetime in thinking through what the past suggest about the future plays an important role in how well military organizations are able to adapt in conflict.” -Williamson Murray

Over the last couple of weeks, Matthew Cavanaugh, Andrew Rohrer, and Mikhail Grinberg have written essays addressing the Army’s slant towards anti-intellectualism. While all of them are very good essays about problems affecting the Army, I think they are focusing on the wrong issue. Anti-intellectualism exists, as it always has in militaries since the rise of standing armies; so instead of focusing on the bureaucratic nature of military culture, we should be determining how to refocus seasoned troops on education so that we may hone our judgment in garrison as we prepare to meet the challenges of future battlefields. The issue is not one of merely having an intellect, but how an intellect is both grown and employed.

In August of 1802, Gerhard Scharnorst, a Prussian officer, posed the following question to a young lieutenant, “What will happen when the men Frederick II trained during the Seven Years War are no longer with us?” A similar question should be asked today as the Army downsizes and veterans baptized in the complexities, ambiguities, and nature of combat, leave the service. While these characteristics of conflict may be fresh to many of us, institutional memory has the tendency to dissipate quickly. Very soon, the realities of war will become a foreign concept to not only our company grade officers and NCOs, but also our cadre of instructors in our professional military education courses. If we are not careful, the bureaucratic nature of military service may overtake those very things that allow us to call ourselves a profession. Therefore, Scharnhorst’s answer to his question is still relevant today: “The crisis can only be met by educating our [soldiers].”

In Response to “Anti-intellectualism in the Army”

Knowledge, Judgement and Strategic Thinking 

This post was provided by Matthew Cavanaugh, a US Army Strategist and editor of the WarCouncil.org blog. The views expressed belong to the author alone and do not represent the US Army or the Department of Defense.

Andy Rohrer’s blog and my own previous run in parallel and there’s so much agreement between the two that it’s almost hard to write a response. Rohrer’s essay is critical of “The Decay of the Profession of Arms” in that “the examples given by Cavanaugh…to illustrate bureaucracy’s effect — a nonsensical uniform regulation and a requirement to complete multitudes of paperwork to travel to Mexico — are not examples of bureaucracy stifling intellectualism; they are reflections of aversion to risk.” There is a genuine disagreement in this minor point of the essay — where Rohrer is gentle with these matters and considers them more or less trivial, my position is openly hostile. Here’s why:

Don Snider has often said that military judgment is the core of the expertise of the Profession of Arms. Bureaucratic policies which remove acts of judgment, particularly those related to safety and security, from commissioned or soon-to-be commissioned officers — naturally and subtly produce unthinking, uncritical leaders that constantly look upward for guidance.

Sure, it’s just a reflective belt. But each time that cadet puts the belt on in the middle of the day (for a 20 or 30 minute run) he has lost an opportunity to exercise independent judgment. Or, oppositely, when she goes out for a run in the very early morning, pitch black and foggy — that belt is likely insufficient for the environment she encounters — yet regulations counsel a single solution to all problems (and we wonder why we’ve been criticized for an overreliance on firepower in multiple strategic scenarios).

Saving the Army from Unfair Bias

Anti-intellectualism, bureaucracy, marketing, and society 

The Barefoot Strategist in The Bridge

This post was provided by Mikhail Grinberg, a strategy consultant, student of the defense industry and member of the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum. The views expressed belong to the author alone.

The Army may have an “anti-intellectual” bias, but the arguments set forth to support this claim are incomplete. Last week, Matthew Cavanaugh laid out a passionate account for why the “profession of arms is decaying.” Bureaucracy — that gentle giant that is always available to take a beating — was Cavanaugh’s primary culprit. But his article may have had an ulterior motive. Andy Rohrer set out to correct him. He agreed that there is a “strain of anti-intellectualism in the Army.” But for Rohrer, society commits the anti-intellectual crime, bureaucracy is only a culprit.

These issues cannot be taken lightly. Anti-intellectualism — which neither author defines well — is a serious issue and a heavy accusation. More importantly the causes they cite for it are perhaps more frightening than the problem itself. Their assertion may be true, but it requires much more analysis to confirm.

Cavanaugh and Rohrer define anti-intellectualism in the margins, leaving the reader wanting of what — exactly — is there a bias against. Thus, this rebuttal tries to understand step-by-step the arguments the two authors make, while offering commentary on why their conclusions may need further research. 

Sacrificing an intellectual lamb

Cavanaugh believes that military judgement — the ability to exercise “high moral content” repeatedly — is decaying due to a disregard for intellect. This disregard is evident at West Point, he says, where cadets are lectured on professionalism but “practice bureaucracy.” Cavanaugh quotes a colleague that argues that at West Point a culture of discussion, debate, and continued innovation has been replaced by a codified, restrictive bureaucracy.

Has the nature of "war" changed since the days of Clausewitz?

BY Rosa Brooks

FEBRUARY 4, 2014

Rosa Brooks is a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. From April 2009 to July 2011, she served as Counselor to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy at the U.S. Department of Defense.

In a 1942 case called Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court held that there is no First Amendment right to utter "insulting or 'fighting' words -- those which, by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

Needless to say, this is a doctrine of surpassing vagueness (and it has been substantially narrowed since 1942), since if you don't know the norms of a particular community, you have no way of knowing what might constitute "fighting words." Language capable of causing riots in Des Moines might be merely yawn-inducing in Manhattan, and vice versa.

So it is here in the (virtual) pages of Foreign Policy, where last week, Tom Ricks fecklessly posted excerpts from a preliminary concept paper developed by the New America Foundation's "Future of War" project team (of which I am fortunate to be a member, together with Tom, Peter Bergen, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Sascha Meinrath, and a bunch of other smart and interesting people). In the concept paper, we outlined the importance of looking at "the changing nature of war."

Innocuous, you say? Not so!

To the Clausewitzian strategy community, dem's fightin' words. We might as well have insulted David Ortiz's mother in Fenway Park, or informed a die-hard Marxist that there's no such thing as the proletariat.

Within days, I received several kind notes from friends and acquaintances, informing me that to the classically-trained Clausewitzian there can be no such thing as the "changing nature of war," and urging the Future of War team to delete this phrase before anyone else noticed our terminological muddleheaded-ness.

But it was too late. The initial Future of War posts had already generated a blogospheric Clausewitzian rebuttal, posted by Christopher Mewett in War on the Rocks and soon reposted on the Small Wars Journal's blog. Mewett takes the Future of War team to task for our lack of "careful attention to semantics":


According to the Prussian, war's nature does not change -- only its character.... The nature of war describes its unchanging essence: that is, those things that differentiate war (as a type of phenomenon) from other things. War's nature is violent, interactive, and fundamentally political. Absent any of these elements, what you're talking about is not war but something else. The character of war describes the changing way that war as a phenomenon manifests in the real world. Further confusion in this case stems from the Future of War team's formulation: "changes in the nature of warfare."

The Aadhaar joke is on us

Feb 05, 2014

Vivek Kaul

The irony is that the Aadhaar form clearly states that ‘Aadhaar enrolment is free and voluntary’. If enrolment into Aadhaar is free and voluntary, how could the OMCs have insisted on Aadhaar linked bank accounts for payment of cooking gas subsidies?

In his speech on January 17, 2014, Rahul Gandhi, the vice-president of the Congress Party, requested Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to provide 12 cooking gas cylinders a year at the subsided rate, instead of nine.

Since the request came from the Gandhi family scion, the normally slow Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government acted quickly for a change, and before the end of January 2014, the cap had been raised. From April 1, 2014, consumers will get one subsidised gas cylinder a month. This increase in cap is expected to increase the subsidy burden of the government by `5,000 crore. Along with increasing the cap, the government has also suspended the Aadhaar card-linked Direct Benefit Transfer for LPG (DBTL) scheme. This scheme had been implemented in 289 districts in 18 states. In January 2014, it had been extended to a further 105 districts, including Delhi and Mumbai.

Under this scheme, the consumers bought the cooking gas cylinder at its actual market price. The subsidy amount was then transferred directly into their Aadhaar card linked bank accounts. So, a resident of Delhi, where the scheme was launched recently, while buying a gas cylinder would have had to pay `1,258 for a 14.2 kg cylinder. The cost of the subsidised cylinder is `414 in Delhi. Hence, the difference of `844 would be paid directly into the Aadhaar linked bank account of the consumer. The trouble is that many people still do not have Aadhaar accounts. And those who have it have not been able to link it to their bank accounts. Hence, the government has set up a committee to review the DBTL scheme. In an election year, the worst thing that can happen to a government is that its subsidies do not reach the citizens. By forming a committee to review the DBTL, that discrepancy, hopefully. will be set right.

Anyone who has implemented even a very basic project will tell you that it is very important to do a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of the project. A basic SWOT analysis would have shown that the first problem in the DBTL scheme would be people not having Aadhaar cards and that those who have it, would not have had it linked to their bank accounts. But the government and Nandan Nilekani, the chief of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), have been in a hurry to showcase Aadhaar. UIDAI is in charge of implementing Aadhaar. In fact, a recent report on the website of the Moneylife magazine pointed out that Mr Nilekani is a member of almost every committee that has been making Aadhaar mandatory “for citizens to access several services and benefits” from the government. Guess, he is not bothered about the conflict of interest his being on these committees creates, even after having held one of the top jobs at Infosys, one of India’s most ethical companies.

THE SICK STATE OF INDIA - The damages wrought by poor political culture

Politics and Play - Ramachandra Guha

In the late 1980s, the demographer, Ashish Bose, coined the term ‘BIMARU’, an acronym bringing together those states of the Indian Union which had low per capita incomes and literacy rates on the one side, and high levels of infant mortality and malnutrition on the other. BI stood for Bihar; MA for Madhya Pradesh; R for Rajasthan; U for Uttar Pradesh. Bose’s acronym punned on the word ‘bimar’, Hindi for sick or ill, which is what, in an economic and social sense, these states were. Of these four states of India, the one I know best is Uttar Pradesh. I was born and raised in Dehradun, at the time not the capital of a separate hill state but merely a district town in UP. Although ethnically Tamil, by culture and upbringing I am in some part a UP bhayya. My maternal grandfather moved to the state in 1930; my father in 1948. My mother and her brothers were educated in Hindi-medium schools. Our closest friends were Kayasths from Allahabad.  As a boy, and as a young man, I certainly did not think my state was backward or disadvantaged. Allahabad University was not quite the Oxford of the East; but it still had a decent reputation. My scientist-father guided PhD students from the then moderately respectable Agra University. Kanpur was a thriving industrial town, and incidentally (or thus) home to the best among the Indian Institutes of Technology. Premchand was dead, but his stories were still read; and Firaq was still around to recite his poems. Lucknow and Banaras were active centres of classical music. The Uttar Pradesh I grew up in was culturally rich, as well as politically dominant. I had reached the age of 19, and my country the age of 30, before there was a prime minister from outside Uttar Pradesh. This man (Morarji Desai) lasted all of two years. In the next 14 years, India witnessed as many as five prime ministers; all were from UP. When the most powerful man (or woman) in one’s nation is from one’s state, how can one possibly think of it as ‘sick’?

Two agencies on a collision course

February 8, 2014

From the Intelligence Bureau’s point of view, the Ishrat Jahan investigation is definitely a blow to its morale. Its long-term impact is incalculable … No amount of incentives will restore the zest for counterintelligence work

The Central Bureau of Investigation’s decision to chargesheet a former Special Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) (whose rank is that of a DGP in the State Police cadre) and three serving officers of the same bureau in the sensational Ishrat Jahan case in Gujarat should shock us. It is a sad day for both the organisations whose support to the cause of national security and the upholding of the rule of law hardly needs overemphasising. Although their respective territories are demarcated, the two are now on a collision course. This is despite the fact that they need each other, and that whenever they have worked in harmony, they have achieved the near impossible. Since they have undoubtedly lent great stability to our polity, to do anything that would dent their image is a sacrilege.Need for balance

I would like to make it clear that berating the CBI and IB as being handmaidens of the government is being unfair to the many dedicated officers who serve them. Even their most ardent supporters will admit that the two bureaus are not without their faults. Perhaps, they have much to hide — especially the CBI, which is always in the public eye and is under immense judicial scrutiny. On the contrary, the IB is a low profile outfit which, unlike the CBI, has no legal status or authority. I know that both have their detractors who are ready to throw the first stone at them at every conceivable opportunity. Some are only too delighted to be able to drive a wedge between them. We should not allow them to succeed. The Ishrat Jahan case provides these forces an opportunity to do this. This is why what has happened in the Ishrat Jahan case demands both responsible comments and a balanced perspective.

There are some basic facts on which there can be no disagreement. No democracy can condone the killing of any of its innocent citizens by a state agency. And when the victim happens to be a woman, the crime gets compounded a million times. This is what is being alleged by the CBI. The four IB officers did not by themselves kill Ishrat Jahan. But they did a lot to facilitate the crime committed by some Gujarat policemen. What drove them to carry out this barbaric act is anybody’s guess. According to press reports, the CBI charge sheet is silent on this. Now that the court concerned is to take cognisance of the CBI charge sheet, it would be extremely inappropriate for any of us to comment on the CBI’s controversial decision or any evidence adduced by it.

‘CIA believed Netaji could return in 1964’

Press Trust of India | Kolkata | February 8, 2014

Summary
Declassified documents : CIA expressed possibility of Netaji leading a rebel group undermining Nehru govt


American intelligence agency CIA had cast doubt on the reported death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in a plane crash in 1945 and was tipped off that he would return from exile in 1964, according to declassified documents.

“A search of our files indicates that there is no information available regarding subject’s death that would shed any light on the reliability of the reports,” documents released by CIA said.

A document, dated February 1964, released by CIA said, “There now exists a strong possibility that Bose is leading the rebellious group undermining the current Nehru government.”

Four declassified CIA documents were given to researchers Abhishek Bose and Anuj Dhar, besides Netaji’s grand-nephew Chandra Bose, who had sought details under the Freedom of Information Act.

In a report dated January 1949, the agency had noted the rumour that Bose was ‘still alive’. In a detailed analysis of the Indian political scenario in November 1950, a highly-placed source had informed the CIA that it was being !said in New Delhi that Bose “is in Siberia, where he is waiting for a chance to make a big come back.

Among the released documents, the oldest one goes back to May 1946, in which a confirmation of Netaji’s death was sought from the Secretary of State in Washington DC. “The hold, which Bose had over the Indian imagination was tremendous and that if he should return to this country trouble would result,” wrote the then American Consulate General in Mumbai.

When under house arrest by the Britishers, Netaji had escaped from India in 1941 to seek international support for the freedom struggle. After organising the Indian National Army with Japanese help he went missing in 1945.

He was last seen at the Bangkok Airport on August 17 1945. The Mukherjee Commission, probing Bose’s disappearance, had rejected that he died in a plane crash in Taiwan on August 18, 1945.

The Prime Minister’s Office had earlier refused to furnish data on documents and records it held on Netaji’s disappearance, saying the disclosure would harm India’s relation with foreign countries.

Family members and researchers on Netaji’s life have said that it was time for the Indian government to release the files.

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/kolkata/cia-believed-netaji-could-return-in-1964/

India after Nido

Pratap Bhanu Mehta

February 6, 2014

Son of an Arunachal Pradesh Congress MLA and Parliamentary Secretary in Health and Family Welfare Department, Nido died on January 30. 

Summary

His death reminds us of the transitions the Indian project still needs to make.

Nido Taniam’s death was deep tragedy. But there is some consolation that political attention to this incident is ensuring that it does not become a mere statistic. Yet in India, a single violent incident bears the weight of complex histories and tangled sociologies. It has highlighted the casual but consequential racism prevalent in our cities.

It has reopened the delicate question of the place of the Northeast in India’s imagination. It has also reminded us of the subtle transitions the idea of India still needs to make for the Indian project to be complete.

The first transition it needs to make is the move from territoriality to people. The idea of India is tied to an emphasis on territoriality. While this is inevitable in any modern nation state, the monumental privileging of territoriality has often led to making concrete peoples invisible.

The Northeast has often been imagined in Delhi in largely territorial terms; even the name suggests that. Defending territory trumps almost everything else: human rights, economic freedom. But in a strange way, discourse in the Northeast also has been besotted with territoriality. The claim that ethnicity and territoriality be aligned has also wreaked havoc in the region. It is a formula that has also produced more violence, displacement and antagonism in the region.

The principle fight of the Indian state with the Northeast, on one hand, and among the peoples of the Northeast, on the other, has been about who controls what territory, not about how to define proper ethical relationships with others. In a way, the Indian state and the Northeast have shared each other’s pathologies. It is time to move from the question of territory to what it will take for us to treat each other as free and equal human beings.

The second transition is the move from diversity to respecting freedom. Indian toleration was often based on segmentation and hierarchy. Each community could have its place, so long as it remained in its place. But the mobility produced by economic changes, the desire to expand the boundaries of freedom, the jostling in same spaces, sometimes even competition for the same jobs, needs a different kind of toleration.

This toleration is not about respecting each other’s identities at some distance. In a way, it is not even about knowing the histories and identities of others, though that might help. It is about quite the opposite. It is about making identity more of an irrelevant fact in the background, not an axis on which we organise what rights people have and what places they can inhabit. It is about recognising the limits to which we can, as individuals, exercise sovereignty over others; how one wears one’s hair is nobody’s business. This is a challenge for migrants in India everywhere.

The third transition is from self-proclaimed innocence to an overt confronting of racism. The self-proclaimed image of a tolerant society has often sidelined deep questions about racism in India. Racism is a complex subject. But it haunts our conception of nationalism, where we often cannot decide whether the Northeast is radically different or the same, based on race. It haunts our relations with the outside world, as we see with Africans. The moral education required is not more facts about this or that culture. It is about the idea that racism of any kind is not acceptable.

Expansionists at heart like to bury the truth

Friday, 07 February 2014

SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY

It was bad enough that the Government of India annexed Sikkim in 1975. Worse was the meek response of large sections of the media to the event. The Press swallowed New Delhi’s lies without batting an eyelid

Government-Press relations have always been the subject of speculation. Many politicians denounce the media as the enemy within while some media braggarts boast of being permanent adversaries. Mr LK Advani alone seemed discerning and honest enough to describe India’s media as the Government’s ally, though the Union Steel Minister, Mr Beni Prasad Verma, might add that the alliance has to be paid for. Indeed, Jawaharlal Nehru’s benevolence invented the phenomenon of the “embedded journalist” which shamed the profession during the American invasion of Iraq.

The concept reached its apogee in India as newspapers lustily applauded the mix of military force and political legerdemain that swallowed up the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim in 1975. The only parallel I can think of was in the conduct of the nearly 200 Murdoch publications during the Iraq war. Ms Alison Broinowski, the former Australian diplomat at whose seminar on Australia, Asia and the Media nearly 35 years ago I presented two papers, says the Murdoch Press was “hysterical” in backing Mr George W Bush’s immoral adventurism. India’s Press similarly supported every fraudulent manoeuvre described in detail in my book, Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim. Listening to the recent panel discussion that launched a revised edition of the book, I recalled that “disgraceful sycophancy”, to quote Mr BG Verghese, the first panellist.

As editor of the Hindustan Times, Mr Verghese had bravely opposed the operation with a memorable editorial titled, Kanchenjunga, Here We Come. He spoke of a “dastardly blow in the back for democracy,” maintaining that the “rigged plebiscite” that gave a semblance of legality to the acquisition could not possibly have been held in “far-flung areas” in the time claimed. For Sir Mark Tully of the BBC the “shameful” annexation highlighted the “great problem” of India’s “failure to deal with smaller neighbours”. Having personally known the last King of Sikkim, Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal, Sir Mark rejected as “an obvious lie” the image of a “tyrannical ruler” whom democrats overthrew. The Chogyal was “passionately committed to development”. Not only was the plebiscite “bogus” but the saddest memory was that no one in India uttered a critical word.

He was not quite right there. Mr Verghese did object with considerable vehemence, while two Bengali journalists — Dipankar Chakrabarti and Sukanta Raha —were jailed when a magistrate ruled that their writing in a relatively obscure monthly magazine called Aneek “seems to be calculated to prejudice the minds of the people against the territorial integrity of the Union of India”. My book naturally went much further than any article could. When Smash andGrab first appeared in 1984, Sachin Chaudhuri, the distinguished lawyer who became Union Finance Minister, warned me, “You’ve been a good friend to the Chogyal. But in the process you may not have been a good friend to yourself!” I was relieved, therefore, when a review by Nari Rustomji of the ICS said the book showed the author was “as true a friend of Sikkim as he is a good patriot of his own country.”