• The importance of policy and doctrine to be meme-ified.  This means that all levels of international relations, ranging from high-level grand strategy to the infantry tactics that make COIN operations successful, must be transmittable and digestable by the various power-brokering actors of the global stage.  I refer to this as the Meme-ification of Policy.
• The tactical and operational art of COIN are without strategic foundation.

The first issue–the Meme-ification of Policy–has been an issue only since the breakup of the Soviet Union.  Prior to the early 1990s and going back to the beginning of the Cold War, the general meme of national security policy, and of grand strategy, was packaged in a single, transmittable word:  Containment. The concept of Containment allowed for the transmittal of that grand strategy quickly among elites, who were then able to translate the general concept of Containment into the equivalent of Operational and Tactical decisions in a vast array of disciplines.  An American Army general in his headquarters south of the Korean DMZ would be able to translate Containment into military decisions.  A diplomat in Moscow, or Beijing, or Ankara, with an understanding Containment, would be able to translate that grand-strategic policy into diplomatic decisions at whatever level the diplomat is working, according to the locality he is operating in.  Simply put, these grand-strategic memes allow the “Think Global, Act Local” to operate in the national security realm, from the level of policy and grand strategy, through the levels of strategy, operational art, and tactics.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, American grand strategy has defied meme.  Various concepts–globalization, black swans, Y2K, COIN, etc., have managed to spread among elites, but there has been very little coherence among these concepts.

The second issue–that tactical and operational levels of COIN lack a strategic foundation–is even more important.  In his post, Zenpundit encapsulated a “Kilcullen Doctrine” with bullets, which may serve as current boilerplate counterinsurgency dogma:

• First, planners should select the lightest, most indirect and least intrusive form of intervention that will achieve the necessary effect.
• Second, policy-makers should work by, with, and through partnerships with local government administrators, civil society leaders, and local security forces whenever possible.
• Third, whenever possible, civilian agencies are preferable to military intervention forces, local nationals to international forces, and long-term, low-profile engagement to short-term, high-profile intervention.

The ideas behind this “Kilcullen Doctrine” are, on the face, unremarkable.  One might quibble with ideas here and there–for example, that perhaps large numbers of infantry working intrusively in a foreign society might be preferable to “lighter, less intrusive” methods.  Or perhaps that this doctrine gives short shrift to the utility of Direct Action missions against terrorist kingpins.  Reasonable and well-respected experts may disagree on these points.  But the most damning critique of this Kilcullen Doctrine is levied by Zenpundit himself:

“…Kilcullen’s three principles are an operational and not a genuinely strategic doctrine. In fairness, no major COIN advocate has ever said otherwise and have often emphasized the point. The problem is that a lot of their intended audience – key civilian decision makers and opinion shapers in their 30’s-50’s often do not understand the difference, except for a minority who have learned from bitter experience. Most of those who have, the Kissingers, Brzezinskis, Shultzes etc. are elder statesmen on the far periphery of policy.”

In fairness to others, Zenpundit hasn’t been the only one making this point.  Andrew Exum, of abu muqawama, has been making this point for some time now.  In any case, Zen and Ex are right.  COIN doctrine is applicable only to the tactical and  operational levels of war.  As of yet, nobody has created a strategy, let alone a grand strategy, that is capable of being executed and understood up and down the levels of international relations.  COIN tactics remain without strategic foundation.

This critique doesn’t only apply to the Kilcullen Doctrine.  Such critiques have been very forcefully levied by David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum themselves against the tactic of using unmanned robotic drone aircraft to attack key leaders in the Pakistani Taliban.  They argue, essentially, that such attacks are the substitution of technology for strategy, and that such a substitution will ultimately do more harm than good to American interests.  Read:  Blowback.  (It’s good to know that Kilcullen seems to be aware of the problem of a lack of strategy and grand strategy.)

The Kilcullen Doctrine and the Drone Attacks both are cases of Tactics Without Strategy.  Some are now looking to Thomas P.M. Barnett to supply the necessary grand strategy to compliment the Tactics.  Indeed, that is the implicit argument of Tom’s first book on Grand Strategy, The Pentagon’s New Map. The second book, Blueprint For Action, is essentially an amplification of various points and implication of PNM.  Barnett’s third book, Great Powers attempts to provide a basis for Barnett’s grand strategy by using certain narratives of American history.  (Here I must confess to have only read the first two books of Barnett’s trilogy.  GP remains in my anti-library.)

In PNM, Barnett very slickly attempted to build a possible grand strategy for post-Cold War America.  The starting point was a political map of the world, with points plotted for the several military operations undertaken since the Cold War had ended (PDF).  The points were then connected, thereby outlining two regions of the world:  The Functioning Core and the Non-Integrating Gap.  Barnett believes the Gap to be the source of instability of the world, and consequently American grand strategy ought to be focused on integrating the Gap into the Functioning Core–the areas of the world that Barnett believes to be globalizing, trading, integrating, growing economically, and stabilizing populations.

Barnett's Core-Gap Globe

Let us go back to Barnett’s starting point:  the plotting of American military operations from 1990-2003.  Does anybody not see a problem with this starting point?  I certainly do, on several bases:

• The plotted military operations were drawn from the time period from the fall of the Soviet Empire through the date of publication of PNM (1990-2003, specifically).  This was the precise period when America was lacking a grand strategy to govern whether a given military operation should occur.  Instead, operations seemed to be undertaken on an ad hoc basis.  Such a basis cannot reasonably be used to discern a grand strategy.  There was certainly more to determining whether a given operation would occur than the occurance of something undesirable in the Gap.  How else to explain Core action in the 1991 Gulf War, and Core inaction during the Rwandan genocide?
• In taking tactical and operational military cases, and then using those cases to discern a grand strategy, Barnett  put the tactical cart before the strategic horse.  Policy should drive Grand Strategy, which should drive Strategy, which should drive Operational Art and Tactics.  Barnett instead uses Tactics to drive Grand Strategy.  This is the most grievous and most fundamental error he makes.

The effects of that fundamental error are many:  they force the grand strategist to steer by the wake of the ship, rather than by steer from cues in the grand strategic environment, knowledge of himself as a global power, and knowledge of actual interests.  They also cause the grand strategist to assume that the types of operations that America ought to prepare for in the future are more of what happened in the 1990s.  Even more important, those tactical and operational COIN aficionados who look to Barnett to supply the strategic and grand-strategic foundations for their operations should realize that whatever basis Barnett supplies is only a tautology:  COIN tacticians look to Barnett to supply a strategic foundation.  The foundation of Barnett’s grand strategy are tactical operations.  Tactical COIN and Barnett’s Grand Strategy combine to make a self-licking ice cream cone!

Barnett would probably reply to my critique using a well-worn, and well-understood line of argument he often uses with military professionals:  Military thinkers need to learn to see war in terms of everything else, as opposed to seeing everything else in terms of war.  As a Clausewitzian who believes that war ought never be an end by itself, I heartily agree.  Grand Strategy exists to serve policy. That is precisely why I see the Pentagon’s New Map as a poor basis for a grand strategy.

Furthermore, Barnett has remarked numerous times on his blog how various non-military world maps resemble the Pentagon’s New Map.  Though such maps cannot be discounted on the basis of putting the tactical cart before the strategic horse, but they can be easily discounted on the basis that they force the grand strategist to steer by the wake of the ship.  Such maps are more in the realm of gimmickry, not grand strategy.

Now, before I go further, let me state that I like Barnett, personally.  He is highly engaging and very persuasive.  He adores the Green Bay Packers, as I do!  And strategically speaking, there is still a lot to Barnett.  He is one of the few grand strategists to have a good understanding of the intersection between economics and other forms of power.  And if you embrace his (flawed) assumptions, his grand strategy seems to make a good deal of sense.

But where Barnett deserves the most credit in the area of meme-ification of his grand strategy.  Zenpundit alludes to this:

“Dr. Barnett’s public example of intellectual proselytizing and briefing to normal people outside of the beltway is even more important.”

And Zenpundit is absolutely correct.  Barnett has managed to create an (albeit flawed) grand strategy that is easily digestable.  It has it’s own easily-understood logic, it’s own glossary of terms, and as Boyd would put it, it’s own (flawed) Orientation (PPT).  That Orientation is capable of being transmitted from person to person, is highly persuasive, and provides the capability for “Think Global, Act Local” action by myriad sorts of actors:  diplomats, military officers, financial wizards, corporate tycoons, media personalities, private citizens, etc.  Barnett deserves the highest praise for this!  Indeed, it is very difficult to critique Barnett without resorting to using the very lexicon he created!

So, where does this leave us?

We are left where we began:

• We need a new grand strategy–one that doesn’t rely on past tactical actions for its basis.
• We need to adopt Barnett’s method of proselytizing.  His translation of (flawed) grand strategy into a meme that is capable of viral transmittal to elites of all power-brokering disciplines must be emulated.

I will address a possible new basis for grand strategy in future posts.

Semper Fidelis.

At any rate, I’ll return in due time.

In the mean time, I’m crystallizing some thoughts about how the Marine Corps ought to refit and position itself with so much change happening in the armed forces today. Among the great issues that I’m thinking about are:

1) What is the role of Special Operations Forces in the Marine Corps, and what is the role of the Marine Corps in the SOF community?

2) To what extent should we take recent lessons in Iraq and attempt to apply them to other conflicts?

3) The Marine Corps has been functioning as essentially a second land army over the last seven years. Should it return to the sea?

4) Should the Marine Corps be a COIN force? Shock troops? Leviathan? SysAdmin?

5) How should the Marine Corps cope with the upcoming QDR?

…And many other questions.

So sit tight…I’ll return.

Semper Fidelis,
SE

I have, until now, failed to produce the copy for electronic dissemination. That was partly because of the nature of my list–specifically, it’s a constant work-in-progress. My reading list is actually a compilation of several reading programs, starting with the various US armed forces reading programs. It also includes the reading lists of various military experts and officers, the reading lists of various institutions of learning, and even a few noteworthy reading lists from the blogosphere. This list is lengthy…over 4900 books, articles, films, monographs, and other media, and it’s compilation has taken place over the last six years.

This list was, and continues to be a massive effort on my part, but this effort is worth the trouble. In constructing this list I am able to see with great breadth the nature of writing within my profession. With understanding of the breadth of the scholarship of my profession, I am able to more easily study in depth a given subject area, as well as study tangential subject areas.

I have not really left any subject area out of this list. This program is obviously dominated by works directly related to armed conflict, since that is my profession. But works of broader history, as well as sociology, political science, economics, psychology, business management, philosophy, biography, literature, the hard sciences, and foreign area studies all have their places within this list.

Here are a few meta-notes on the list. It is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The first two columns are the title and author (if any) of the work. The next column (green) specifies the media used. The next three (yellow) columns contain any pertinant notes relating to the work. The next column (cyan) contains any related internet URLs. The next two columns (blue) allow the user to annotate whether the work has been purchased or downloaded, and whether the work has been read. The next column (gray) specifies the number of occurances that particular work has in the reading lists.

The remaining columns contain the individual lists that are compiled into my reading list.

Since the list is stored in an Excel file, the list may be easily sorted by author, title, etc.

SE’s Reading List can be downloaded from this page.

Cross-posted at Antilibrary, Chicago Boyz, and Smitten Eagle.

1) Northeastern. These are the Rockefeller Republicans. They tend to be internationalists and fiscally conservative. This movement is all but dead. They were compelled to leave the party by the much more socially conservative Southern Republicans. George H.W. Bush was a NE Republican.

2) Southern. These are the social conservatives. They tend to support a strong national defense. Fiscal discipline is only a talking point.  This movement is still alive, but was repudiated both in the congressional elections in 2006, as well as the general elections of 2008. George W. Bush was a Southern Republican.

3) Western. The Western Republican is the Republican of libertarian leanings, generally favoring non-intrusive government in terms of social issues, and also favoring fiscal discipline. They tend to oppose nationalization of anything. They often, but not always, favor a strong national defense. Reagan was a western republican. This is the future of the Republican party, because the Western Republican can capitalize on the whims of the Independent Voter, who is usually fiscally conservative, libertarian socially, and for a strong national defense.

The Northeastern Republican was the type of Republican your grandfather was.  The Southern Republican was just beat up in a brawl yesterday and is on life support.

The Western Republican is the Republican of the future.  When the Obama-Reid-Pelosi troika overplay their hand in the next 2-4 years, conservatives and conservate-leaning libertarians will strike, and will reestablish a mandate to govern.

Crossposted at Chicago Boyz.

In the coming decades a history will be written explaining:

1) How the Greatest Generation endured the Greatest Generation, fought and won World War II, and then rebuilt society in the US and in Western Europe. The United States was the greatest creditor nation in history at that point, and the sacrifices of that generation were bestowed on the Baby Boomers in the form of material riches available to the middle class on the scale what what was available to kings and emperors centuries before.

2) The Baby Boomers took that rebuilt world, full of riches, and squandered them. The United States became the greatest debtor nation in history. A strange brew of individualistic license combined with identity politics worked to destroy the bonds that were painstakingly welded in the previous generation. The welfare state grew. Materialism replaced religion and erudition. Most of all, a sense of entitlement overcame the Baby Boomers, like a rich kid too eager to get their father’s hard-earned inheritance. This entitlement was paid for by going into debt.

3) The history will be written that the debts of our fathers were bequeathed to Generations X & Y. The Bailout of the Baby Boomers was not paid by the Baby Boomers, but by their children. In this sense, the Baby Boomers sold their children into a form of slavery.

I cannot say how that debt will be paid. I know it will be paid, and it will be paid by my cohort.

I can now only hope that my generation’s standards of living will decline. I wish this so that we may pay off the debts of our fathers and mothers, so we may bequeath this country, the greatest in history, to our children with less debt, and thus more freedom.

Sacrifice is what brings real riches. May my generation sacrifice all we can.

This leads me to refocus on the purpose of the checkride. The purpose of a checkride is to establish whether I am capable of meeting a given aviation standard. That standard does not exist in a vacuum. The standard exists so I may properly employ the taxpayer’s aircraft in a tactically responsible and effective way, in direct support of other American and allied forces. It is not about me and my piloting skills. It’s about the people who need my support, and my obligations as a professional military officer, the Constitution, and the taxpayer’s money.

Should I fail a checkride, I ought to demand appropriate action be taken against me, as that would be the only responsible, professional thing to expect. It would be a failure of the professional ethic for me to retain flight status with a checkride failure.

My flying career is of little consequence in the scheme of things. I am of equally little consequence. However, my obligations to my fellow Marines, and to my country, are burdensome. It is with these obligations in mind, not my personal fortunes, that I prepare for the checkrides.

Needless to say, I probably won’t be posting much next week.

He then confessed to me why he joined the Marines: To become a pilot. I told him not to say that ever again. I cannot answer to the purity of his motivations, save for the fact that in the Marines, and especially in the officer corps, it is “not about you.” The second you start thinking that it is about you is the second you start to fail in your obligations to the Constitution, to the mission, and to your Marines.

His self-motivation is somewhat dangerous: There are countless avenues by which on can become a pilot, and becoming a Marine to become a pilot is perhaps one of the toughest routes to wings that one can undertake. Yet he’s willing to go that distance for himself, and himself alone. This speaks to incredible selfishness. He needs to be watched.

Hopefully, when the pressure is on, at night, with dogshit visibility, and assholes shooting, and he’s flying a casualty evacuation mission, he will have the fortitude to deny his selfishness and continue the mission, even though it might cost him his life. The Marine Corps, after all, is not always great for self preservation, but we will look after each other.

Over the weekend, Galrahn at Information Dissemination broke the news that the new DDG-1000 Zumwalt class of destroyers were designed without capability for area air defense, a fatal flaw in the design of the ship. I have been silent on this topic for a couple of days, hoping my anger to settle somewhat, but it hasn’t.

This is a massive failure of the American officer corps.

I’m not going to recount here (read Galrahn’s post for that) what exactly happened, save for the following:

• The Navy has decided to release publicly that the new DDG-1000 class of destroyers is not Standard Missile capable. This is a drastic change to what has been stated for years about the design of the ship. This is a big deal, because the new ship would not be capable of self-defense against air threats. This means that there has been a campaign of deception by the Admirals to congress and the American people.
• $13,000,000,000 was wasted. (I know that it’s possible to be cynical about this, because money is wasted everywhere in the DOD. But that’s still 13 billion dollars!)
• The Navy actually wanted to build this class of ships, until two weeks ago. Such a ship would have placed the lives of it’s Sailors and the lives of Marines, who the ship was designed to support, at risk. That the Navy would consider such a ship worthy of construction under any circumstances is an utter failure of the ethic of the officer corps. This is onconscienable, unethical, and absolutely wrong.
• At least one admiral, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vern Clark lied to congress. It is unknown how many other officers lied in service to this deception.

The Navy needs a John Boyd figure: Someone who is willing to sacrifice their career to hold the admirals accountable, who is willing to work tirelessly on building survivable, useful, effective, and economic ships, and someone who can generally re-energize the ethics, morals, and morale of naval service. I’m not sure who this person is, but the Navy is in desperate need of a dynamo of an officer to restore honor to the Navy.

We, as officers of the sea services need to debate exactly WTF happened with this, and scrupulously work to ensure that disgusting series of events like this never happens again. Some blogs, notably Information Dissemination and Danger Room are already helping with this, but the blogs cannot restore the honor of the officer corps and the military profession. Hopefully the US Naval Institute, as the independent forum of the sea services, will help to facilitate a debate on this. (All naval–’naval’ meaning Navy and Marine–officers ought to be members of this organization, just as all Marine Officers should be a member of the Marine Corps Association).

Senior officers need to council their junior officers that this boondoggles like this are wrong and that they are a blot on the record of the entire corps of officers.

We, as officers of the Sea Services need to heed the obligations of our profession. We need to hold our flag officers accountable, protect our charges, and honor our oaths to protect and defend the Constitution. When shit like this happens, the Constitution is weakened, and the honor, good name, and reputation of the officer corps is imperiled.

Oh, and I forgot. There are some folks who need to be fired.

I am pissed, as all American officers ought to be.

From Maximus I learned self-government, and not to be led aside by anything; and cheerfulness in all circumstances, as well as in illness; and a just mixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity to do what was set before me. I observed that everybody believed that he thought as he spoke, and that in all that he did he never had any bad intention; and he never showed amazement and surprise, and was never in a hurry, and never put off doing a thing, nor was perplexed nor dejected, nor did he ever laugh to disguise his aggravation, nor, on the other hand, was he ever passionate or suspicious. He was accustomed to do acts of beneficence and was ready to forgive, and was free from all falsehood; and he presented the appearance of a man who could not be diverted from right rather than of a man who had been improved. I observed, too, that no man could ever think that he was despised by Maximus, or ever venture to think that himself a better man. He had also the art of being humorous in an agreeable way.

Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations, I:15

There are few figures like Maximus alive today. Where do we find them?

I think many of them are found in our resolute, obedient, and loyal enlisted force.  They do their required tasks without fanfare and drama.  Their stiff upper lips are tribute to their virtue.

There are surely other figures in the mold of Maximus in the world.  Where are they?

Check it out here and join the discussion.