Military Matters' Dane Vallejo in the Mail On Sunday

Following the blog I wrote on private security firms in Afghanistan ("Thieves by day, terrorists by night...necessary in between"), I have been quoted in The Mail On Sunday in an article by Nadene Ghouri.

Ghouri makes an interesting case for why private security firms are strategically counterproductive and traces the murky and controversial dynamics of the private security network.  Well worth a read!

A review of "The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and al-Qaeda", by Peter Bergen

Peter Bergen, CNN’s national security analyst, first became interested in al-Qaeda in the mid 1990s, and since that point he has established himself as one of America’s foremost experts on the subject. In addition to an impressive back catalogue of books, articles and lectures, Bergen has conducted interviews with a wide variety of important figures and is one of the few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden. In his new book, Bergen attempts to tell the history of the war on terror, from the origins of al-Qaeda’s outlandish aspirations to the present day.

In the opening passages, Bergen presents an enthralling account of the origins of the 9/11 attacks, tracing the development of al-Qaeda’s strategy following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and demonstrating America’s inability to respond to this challenge. He paints a damming picture of the Clinton and Bush administrations’ actions in the years and months before 9/11, claiming that the problem did not lie in a lack of information about al-Qaeda’s intentions and capabilities, but in America’s unwillingness to see an attack from such an organisation as a realistic threat. He goes on to show how this incompetence continued into the early stages of the war in Afghanistan through the Bush administration’s failure to capture or kill bin Laden in Tora Bora in late 2001, and their reluctance to commit adequate troops or aid to the beleaguered nation for fear of entangling themselves in ‘nation building’. He also demonstrates how the attacks of 9/11 constituted a tactical mistake on the part of al-Qaeda since they brought about the exact opposite of bin Laden’s stated aim of removing US troops from Muslim lands and embroiled the organisation in a war it cannot possibly win.

However, when it comes to the origins of the Iraq War, Bergen is much less convincing. To read Bergen on Iraq is to get the impression that nobody considered Saddam’s regime a problem until the neo-cons came along with an unshakable determination to overthrow him, even if that meant fabricating evidence of Saddam’s WMD programme and making non-existent links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Yet to make this position seem coherent he has to leave out a lot of important information. Not once does he mention Saddam’s numerous violations of UN resolutions or the fact that his military had fired at coalition forces protecting the no-fly zones over Iraq every day for ten years. Nor does he care to remind us that it was under the Clinton administration in 1998 that the Iraq Liberation Act was passed in the Senate declaring that it should be the policy of the United States to move Iraq into a post Saddam era. Of course, the Bush (and Blair) administrations attempted to frighten rather than persuade their populations into supporting the war in Iraq by using flawed, and ultimately dishonest, methods and Bergen is right to point this out. Yet, by completely ignoring Saddam’s undeniable record of crime; his constant flouting of UN resolutions; his campaigns of genocide; his invasions of neighbouring countries; and the state of perpetual fear and misery that he created in Iraqi society, Bergen is himself presenting a rather dishonest account of the origins of the Iraq war.

The author also contradicts himself in a number of places. For example, near the beginning of the book he expresses his surprise that so many have overlooked the important role of religion when discussing the ‘root causes’ of Islamic terrorism and bin Laden’s motivation. Yet a few pages later he declares that there can be no justification for al-Qaeda’s attacks in the Koran or other key texts and, for the rest of the book, continuously stresses that bin Laden is motivated primarily by US foreign policy. Of course, it is possible (and undoubtedly true) that bin Laden is motivated by both religion and foreign policy, but to deliberately emphasise the importance of religion on one page and then play it down just a few pages later seems a little odd.     

And there are also one or two nonsensical statements in the book. Take for instance:

Bush would style himself as a “wartime president,” but by way of sacrifice he stopped playing golf, cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, and did not institute a draft. At the height of the Battle of Britain in 1940, Churchill could say with some truth, “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.” After 9/11, never was so little asked from so many.

Apart from drawing a rather crude contrast to Churchill, what point is Bergen trying to make here? Is he seriously suggesting that President Bush should have implemented a draft; something commonly agreed by both right and left during the 1970s to constitute a form of slavery? And what does whether or not the president plays golf have to do with anything?

The book’s closing chapters are a great deal more persuasive, with Bergen laying out how the Bush administration – in the face of considerable opposition from the Democratic Party, foreign policy experts and the general public – decided to send more troops to Iraq and implement a counter insurgency strategy, thus helping to radically alter America’s fortunes in the war. This is followed by a superb chapter on the dilemma’s that confronted the incoming Obama administration in the deteriorating war in Afghanistan, in which Bergen manages in 25 pages to present a more interesting account of the challenges the administration faced and the options it considered, than Bob Woodward was able to do in his incredibly repetitive 400 page book on the subject, Obama’s Wars, released last year.

Ultimately, the book’s success lies in its ability to tell the story from both sides; to bring to light the misconceptions and miscalculations that both al-Qaeda and America made both before and after the events of 9/11. Though Bergen is convinced that al-Qaeda’s philosophy and tactics mean it is destined to eventually be defeated, he shows us that the longest war is not set to end any time soon.

by Matt Jones

Lincoln's contradictions - 150 years on

Next month will see the 150^th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s ascension to power, which means that, as America prepares itself for numerous parades and events, we will once again be treated to the myth of ‘honest Abe’ as the flawless emancipator of the slaves and saviour of the nation . It is therefore an appropriate time to reflect upon Lincoln’s numerous contradictions and flaws – so often papered over by American hagiographers and the education system – that bring Lincoln to life as a great historical figure rather than a fictitious behemoth.    

The first criticisms often directed at Lincoln relate to his responsibility for the Civil War. The argument goes something like this: At the time of the Mexican War in 1848 Lincoln stated that “any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.” Yet, when the Confederate states decided to do just this in February 1861 under the leadership of Jefferson Davis, Lincoln was staunchly opposed to their behaviour and launched a brutal civil war that cost the lives of some 650,000 Americans. Moreover, in conducting the war Lincoln suspended habeas corpus for the first time in American history, arrested and imprisoned people merely for sympathising with the Southern cause and greatly expanded the size of the federal government.

These criticisms are dealt with fairly effectively however by Lincoln’s defenders. Since the Confederates were not willing to negotiate on any position, and particularly not over the extension of slavery to the new territories, then unless you believe – as some critics of American empire do – that the U.S. would have been better off had it split into two separate states in 1861, it is difficult to argue against Lincoln’s stance. Though Lincoln’s statement in 1848 contradicts his later position, his argument of 1861 that since he was legitimately elected and had broken no constitutional provision, supporting the Southerner’s decision to secede was effectively supporting the principle of allowing any group to leave the nation if it merely didn’t like the result of an election, is rather persuasive. Furthermore, though his suspension of civil rights during the war was undoubtedly too drastic, it must be remembered that the nation was in a desperate state of war in which its very survival was at stake.

The second and most often repeated criticism of Lincoln relate to his position towards slavery. Though he was staunchly opposed to the expansion of slavery to the new territories, Lincoln was certainly not an abolitionist and infamously declared to newspaper editor Horace Greely in August 1862 that if he could preserve the Union without freeing a single slave he would. Moreover, in his famous debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln declared himself to be against intermarriage and opposed to political and social equality between the races, while on more than one occasion he expressed his desire to colonise blacks away from the U.S. This has led some critics to declare that had Lincoln had his way, there would have been no Martin Luther King or Barack Obama since America would be a purely white society.

These criticisms are harder to shake off. Since there were numerous people in the 1850s and 1860s who explicitly attacked slavery and called for its immediate and complete abolition, it will not do to simply assert that Lincoln was a product of his time. Instead, Lincoln’s defenders argue that his statements need to be understood from the point of view of a pragmatic politician and, in fact, demonstrate Lincoln’s great skill. Certainly, the vast majority of the white population were racist in their views towards blacks and if Lincoln wanted to be elected he had to attain popular support, even if this meant appealing to people’s prejudices. Moreover, his insistence on preserving the Union rather than freeing the slaves reflected the fact that he could persuade men in the north to fight for the former cause, but not the latter. Though his statements on the colonisation of slaves make for uncomfortable reading, it must be remembered that Lincoln was also the author of the Emancipation Proclamation and, ultimately, it is impossible to refute the assertion that it was because of Lincoln that slavery finally came to an end.

Like the other great emancipator of the 19^th century, Charles Darwin (who was coincidentally born on the exact same day of 12 February, 1809), Lincoln’s reputation is secure. Yet, it would be nice to see Lincoln celebrated at the upcoming anniversary as the great, yet flawed, figure that he was, rather than mythologized as the faultless hero of American history. Here’s hoping.   

by Matt Jones

Revaluing Our COIN - Moving British counterinsurgency forward in the 21st century

In a brand new strategic briefing published by The Henry Jackson Society, I discuss the condition of Britain's counterinsurgency (COIN) capabilities, tracing the history of British COIN and assessing why things went so badly in Iraq and Afghanistan, and outlining policy decisions that could improve our approach.

This briefing argues against the notion that insurgency has undergone strategic shifts and, by extension, argues that the core of the 'British way' in COIN remains relevant in the face of contemporary contingencies.  This briefing then puts forward the case for COIN as a concept; arguing that a less expensive counterterrorism strategy fails to change facts on the ground in the manner of population-centric COIN.

Finally, in order to move what is a solid historical foundation forward into a COIN approach that is successful once more, this briefing outlines 4 viable policy areas which require focused improvements: military efficiency; civilian-agency efficiency; multilateral operations; and strategy. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL BRIEFING 

by Dane Vallejo

Viva Jhonattan Vegas

It may be 'just' a golf victory (an admirable one at that), but Jhonattan Vegas' victory in La Quinta is also a good opportunity to wave two fingers at Hugo Chavez...

Jhonattan Vegas became the first Venezuelan to win a major golf tournament last night with victory in the Bob Hope Classic in La Qunita, California.  Why does this matter?  He would probably say because it’s a great start to his fledgling career.  But from an admittedly slightly bizarre angle, I would say it is because this victory is a big ‘two fingers up’ at Hugo Chavez.

He may have offered his congratulations to Vegas, stating he at least "beat the gringos", but the Venezuelan President (ever nearing dictator) has gone on record in the past to call golf a “bourgeois” pastime, adding that golf courses should be paved over and used for housing for the poor.  Far be it from me to argue against better standards of living for the poor.  In fact, far be it from me to get involved in any bourgeoisie vs. proletariat debate whatsoever.  But Vegas’ victory has the potential to resonate throughout Venezuela; inspiring the poor to achieve through excellence, despite the constraints they are under in Chavez’s ever asphyxiating regime.  After all, Vegas is a man who began his golf career with a broomstick and a rock.

Hugo Chavez is, quite simply, a danger to his country, his immediate neighbours and potentially to the international system as a whole.  His calls to expropriate golf courses for the ‘public good’ (a dubious claim, to say the least) are but the latest in a long line of expropriations that completely contradict Article 115 of Venezuela’s constitution which protects its citizens’ right to private property and enterprise.  But this is just the tip of the iceberg.  This is the same man who has flagrantly abused his power, most recently by exploiting his country’s extensive flooding by engineering the right to rule by Presidential decree.  The same man who has censored the press extensively in Venezuela, stifling the right to freedom of information and association.  The same man who has crippled Venezuela’s economy, yet now has the temerity to verbally attack a sport for being contrary to the needs of Venezuela’s poor.

Add to the mix his ties with Russia, China and Iran, his pursuit of nuclear power, and his consistent undermining of international cooperation and trade and it's clear that Hugo Chavez is bad news.  And so I say ‘Viva Jhonattan Vegas’ for not only his fine sporting victory, but for the example he is setting for his fellow citizens against a backdrop of ascending autocracy.

by Dane Vallejo

Harvard’s Finest? The Ferguson-Kissinger Connection

If Niall Ferguson is to produce a first rate biography of Henry Kissinger, he will need to present more convincing arguments than the ones on display at the LSE...

Last week Harvard historian Professor Niall Ferguson was back at the London School of Economics, in his year-long capacity as Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs, to deliver the third part in his lecture series on the Cold War. The topic of the most recent instalment was ‘the grand strategy of detente’, which as Ferguson made clear straight away, meant focusing on the architect of said strategy, Henry Kissinger. In addition to their mutual link to Harvard University, Ferguson is also Kissinger’s official biographer, having been given access to the former secretary of state’s papers, as well as to the man himself, to write a ‘warts and all’ (Ferguson’s phrase) account of Kissinger’s career.

 After an initial throat clearing in which he declared that since he had scarcely written a word of the book yet, his conclusions would be only tentative ones, he set straight out to attack those who have criticised Kissinger, and in particular, Christopher Hitchens. Making light of the fact that Hitchens’ book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, started life as an article ‘in that renowned scholarly publication, Vanity Fair’ (actually it was Harpers), he went on to criticise the author for using an insufficient number of primary source documents in his footnotes. Considering the fact that Ferguson himself has been highly criticised by historians for failing to use any footnotes at all in his most popular books, accusations of being unscholarly seem a little hypocritical.

Following this, he again peddled the argument (first put forward in an article in the Sunday Times in May 2008) that criticism of Kissinger may have something to do with the fact that he is Jewish. Aside from the fact that his two most famous critics, Hitchens and Seymour Hersh, are themselves of Jewish ancestry, this disgusting accusation seems to suggest that there can be no political or moral reasons to dislike the man.

The point Ferguson is trying to make with this slur is that Kissinger has been unjustly singled out for special criticism, since similar policies to his own were adopted by all foreign policy makers during the Cold War. He sarcastically posed the question, why has no one written ‘The Trial of John Foster Dulles’, who as Secretary of State during the 1950s oversaw the calamitous American policy towards Guatemala? The answer to this question, to put it in a similar format, is the same reason why no one would think to deliver a lecture on ‘The Grand Strategy of Madeline Albright’. The fact is that Henry Kissinger had a hold upon American foreign policy that no other secretary of state could be argued to have possessed. When biographers write of Kissinger as virtually a second president when it came to foreign affairs, this is not hubris, and for much of the 1970s it was almost impossible to think of a foreign policy decision that had not been instigated by Kissinger. In fact, one of the most lamentable things about Kissinger is his willingness to boast about the amount of power he has when it suits him, yet insist that events were outside of his control when it does not, as in the cases of Cyprus and East Timor, to take just two examples.

Of the charges made against Kissinger by his critics, Ferguson dealt directly with only one in his hour long lecture, namely Kissinger’s involvement in the Vietnam debacle. With the help of a chart, Ferguson pointed to the ‘extraordinarily rapid decrease of American casualties in the Vietnam war after Richard Nixon became president, to the point that by the time he was re-elected, American casualties in Vietnam had essentially ended’. What the professor omitted is that the terms that the war ended on in 1973 were essentially the same as those being negotiated back in  1968 at the Paris peace talks, which the Nixon campaign (with Kissinger’s help) managed to undercut by insisting to the South Vietnamese that they could offer them a better deal should they abandon the negotiations. Moreover, Ferguson failed to make any reference to the number of Vietnamese who were killed after 1969, thus ignoring the important question, ‘is it morally acceptable to use whatever tactics one likes to achieve fewer American casualties?’ What if those tactics included (as they did) the illegal bombing of the independent state of Cambodia, which in addition to killing an unknowable number of Cambodians,  created the conditions necessary for the murderous Khmer Rouge to attain power?  

In attempting to demonstrate the incredibly difficult world situation that Kissinger faced, and thus the need for his grand strategy of detente, Ferguson asserted that the 1970s were the most violent of all the Cold War decades. Here he is in danger of confusing cause and effect. Is it not more accurate to point out that much of the violence in that decade was the product of actions that Kissinger supported – Bangladesh being only the most salient example – precisely because he was following a strategy that required him to worry only about the actions of the superpowers? This is something Ferguson tentatively admitted during the question period when he stated that ‘the superpowers probably made it [violence] slightly worse, maybe a lot worse in some cases’.

Finally, Ferguson turned to the most recent Kissinger controversy, namely the tape of him declaring to Nixon in March 1973, following a plea from Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to push Moscow to allow the emigration of Soviet Jewry, that:

The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.

Having made reference to the event at the start of the lecture and merely stated that if we heard all the telephone conversations of other statesmen we would get a pretty nasty image of them too (not exactly a good defence), Ferguson returned to the subject towards the end of his lecture to assure us that contrary to how Kissinger’s statement may appear, it in fact shows how moral the man is. ‘Imagine’, Ferguson declares ‘what it means to say something like that when you personally, as a Jew, have seen a Nazi concentration camp liberated’. The professor went on to proclaim Kissinger to be ‘somebody who grapples endlessly with the fundamental moral problem of choice, of priorities, which is at the heart of any meaningful foreign policy’. Now come on. It is one thing to defend Kissinger on the basis that the anarchical nature of the international realm requires morals to be superseded by state interests, but to suggest that the man ‘grapples endlessly’ with moral issues is not borne out by the facts. Like any egomaniac, Kissinger has refused to accept that he made any mistakes in his time in office or to show any sympathy for the fate of small countries, which, when one considers the calamitous effects of many of his policies, is a rather disturbing sign.

Ferguson in undoubtedly a talented historian with a rare ability to make you challenge commonly held views. But if he is to produce a first rate biography of Kissinger, he will need to present more convincing arguments than the ones on display at the LSE.   

By Matt Jones