The Strategist

Caught my eye - special forces, global "gangs", and cyberspace as battlespace

First up - John Arquilla argues that jihadists are being given a free ride in cyberspace; they should be driven out instead. Tim Stevens responds to John's argument - he warns against using the internet as a battlespace.

Crystal ball time: the future is not looking good for the UK with water, oil and food shortages, plus crop and animal diseases and, of course, climate change.

But that's ok because things are going well in Afghanistan, right? According to the Telegraph, British and US special forces are poised to "break the back" of the Taliban insurgency in Helmand. H/T Glamdring. Some comment on this tomorrow.

And from one kind of insurgency to another: Adam Elkus and John P Sullivan on global gangs. A question - is it accurate to label these organizations as "criminal gangs"? The "gangs" Adam and John describe seem to be evolving into complicated entities. Again, more on this later.

Why "tomorrow" and "later"? I'm engrossed in Niall Ferguson's Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003). I held off reading this history of the British empire, thinking that it looked dry, but I'm glad I plucked it from the shelf. One thing I like is that Ferguson seamlessly integrates the economic and financial aspects of empire with the political, social and military. 

Steampunk vision - the Victorian fortification at Fort Ballance

 

Ruins are time portals, gateways to other eras and lost worlds. I guess this explains why I'm obsessed with exploring Wellington's coastal fortifications, like Fort Ballance, a Victorian-era fortification on the Miramar peninsula.

Fort Ballance was built in 1885 by the New Zealand colonial government when war between the British and Russian empires seemed likely. The fort was heavily armed with eight guns - five at the fort itself, three below the fort, with another battery at nearby Kau Point. It was designed to prevent enemy warships entering the port of Wellington, the capital of Britain's most distant colony.

Fort Ballance remained operational during the First and Second World Wars, although technological advances, such as more powerful guns, indirect fire, and the use of telephone, radio and radar for fire control, meant that the focus of coastal artillery defence shifted to Wellington's south coast and the newer fortifications at Fort Dorset, Palmer Head, Wrights Hill and Makara.

Although overgrown with grass, broom, wild flowers, fennel and flax, Fort Ballance is relatively well preserved. Wandering around, I felt that I had entered another time, or perhaps a strange steampunk alternative reality. The lonely desolation of the site, the bright sunlight, the roar of the northwest wind in the trees, the cryptic graffiti and inscriptions - all this gives Fort Ballance a fey air, as though Victorian artillerymen still walk the fort's dark passageways and underground rooms. 

The photo above shows the northern end of the barracks and one of its three brick and concrete chimneys. On the left, a stairway leads to the barracks roof and a battery observation post.

The photo below shows the concrete emplacement for a QF 6 pounder Nordenfeldt gun, a light 57mm coastal defence gun of the late 19th century. The emplacement looks northwards, over Wellington harbour with Matiu Somes Island and the Hutt Valley in the distance. 

 

Russia, and why it's hard to win counterinsurgencies

This article, about the renewed insurgency by Islamic radicals in Russia's North Caucasus region, highlights how hard it is for states to "win" counterinsurgencies. And how, by assessing the situation over a short time frame, we fool ourselves into thinking that things are over.

Through brute force, a state might end one phase of conflict. But old grievances remain, new ones are added, and both are sharpened by brutal repression and humiliation. Lack of jobs means that young people have plenty of time and energy to forment revolt. If the ideas that animated earlier phases of insurgency have played out, new ideas, like radical creeds linked to operational tactics that worked elsewhere (e.g., suicide bombing, roadside IEDs), fill the void and spark further insurrection.

In these situations, struggle may also morph into new forms. As a nascent form of conflict, cyber-warfare seems ripe for exploitation by insurgents. There may be others. 

First we take Peshawar...

David Kilcullen on the next big fight (via The Daily Dish):

"For Britons and Americans watching the hard-fought progress of our Coalition troops in Helmand, the harsh reality is that Nato could do everything right in Afghanistan and still lose the broader regional campaign against terrorism if Pakistan fails to contain its internal militants.

This makes the fight in Pakistan, and finding means to help Pakistanis help themselves, the most important battle in the world."

Hmmmm. The US and Britain have no clear idea about objectives, strategy and resources for the Afghan War. Is Kilcullen suggesting that as well the West gets embroiled in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and the tribal agencies? What comes after that? Balochistan, Kashmir?

The title of Kilcullen's piece suggests that he seeks inspiration from George Curzon's experience as Viceroy of India (1899-1905). If there are lessons to be drawn from British imperial experience on the Raj's frontier in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it's these: know your limits, don't overextend, leave tribal peoples to govern themselves, and if you must enter their territory, don't stick around long.

Sunday morning reflection

In 1890 Anton Chekhov journeyed to the Russian Far East and the penal colony on Sakhalin Island. On the way he travelled down the Amur River on a steamer. Chekhov wrote:

"The air on board gets red hot from all the talking. Out here nobody worries about saying what he thinks. There's no one to arrest you and nowhere to exile people to, so you can be as liberal as you please. The people grow ever more independent, self-sufficient and understanding."*

Freedom from control. This is one reason why people migrate to distant colonies and frontiers. Why they leave corporate bureaucracies to set up their own businesses. Why they eschew personal ambition so as not to be enslaved to the petty tyrants of the workplace.

* Letter, "To Chekhov family, 23-26 June 1890".

>> "I must die. But must I die bawling?"

Paramilitary forces - a powder keg waiting to blow?

The most infamous mutiny of recent times was the 1857 Rebellion of Indian sepoys against East India Company rule. It took the British almost two years to put down the rebellion, and resulted in the dissolution of the Company's administration of India and the imposition of the Raj (direct British rule).

Last week's mutiny of the Bangladesh Rifles, a paramilitary force formed by the British in the late 18th century, seemed like a faint echo of that bloody and defining conflict. The death toll so far is 76, with the mutineers murdering senior officers and their wives, including the Rifles' commanding officer, Major General Shakil Ahmed.

Paramilitary forces are common in South Asia, a legacy of the Raj when the British used such units to control restive populations and patrol dangerous frontiers. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh maintain large paramilitary forces, like Pakistan's Frontier Corps (80,000 strong), India's Border Security Force (220,000), and the Bangladesh Rifles (67,000).

Well-trained and disciplined paramilitary units have their uses. But overall the model seems like a powder key waiting to blow - large numbers of heavily-armed men, concentrated in cantonments, often poorly paid, badly equipped and ill-disciplined. Mutiny is one concern; also worrying is the potential for paramilitaries to ally with organized crime, as seems to be happening in Mexico.

China sends forces to fight Somali pirates

The Times reports that China is sending three warships to Somali waters, to join the international anti-pirate naval force.

"The three vessels - the missile-armed destroyers DDG-171 Haikou and DDG-169 Wuhan and the Weishanhu supply ship - are among the most sophisticated in the Chinese navy, all entering service this decade..."

Hardly surprising. Beijing needs secure sea lanes for exporting goods and importing commodities - like oil, minerals and timber - from the Middle East and Africa. It is developing significant interests in minerals and timber in Africa. British historian Niall Ferguson sees this as China creating an "informal nascent empire in commodity-rich Africa".

Weekend Reading: The Orwell Diaries

The Orwell Prize  is publishing George Orwell’s diaries here as a blog. Starting on 9 August 2008, Orwell’s domestic and political diary entries will be posted in real time.

"Orwell’s ‘domestic’ diaries begin on 9th August 1938/2008; his ‘political’ diaries (which are further categorised as ‘Morocco’, ‘Pre-war’ and ‘Wartime’) begin on 7th September 1938/2008."

I can't remember which of Orwell's books I read first: probably Animal Farm, but it might have been Burmese Days. This was Orwell's first novel, published in 1934, and based on his five years service in the 1920s as a colonial policeman in the Burma Division of the Indian Imperial Police.

In Burmese Days, Orwell skewered the conceit of the imperialist - that he/she is racially and culturally superior to the colonized. He revealed how the main motive of imperialism - the desire to seize and control other people's land, resources and labour - is cloaked by cant that invokes the need for 'civilizing missions' to benighted heathens.

American Empire

If you fervently believe that Washington DC is the new Rome, then you'll love this Pentagon study.

In 2002 the Pentagon published a paper entitled "Military Advantage in History". The paper looked at four empires - the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great, Imperial Rome, the Mongol empire, and Napoleonic France - to see how the United States could maintain its military advantage in the 21st century. It sought to understand how these empires sustained their might across great expanses and centuries.

The study is bollocks, according to Mother Jones:

"After reviewing a section that identifies five discrete 'transformations' of the Roman military over a period of 1,000 years, Lee Brice of Western Illinois University, president of the Society of Ancient Military Historians, described it as 'so completely incorrect as to be useless.' In general, Brice noted, 'it is inappropriate to apply modern concepts of systems theory, doctrine, and strategy to ancient armies. That required a level of planning and centralization that simply did not exist.'"

Well, bollocks it may be, but I wish I had a well-paid job researching and writing guff stuff like this.

But seriously, the study overlooks one obvious point. The great empires of Alexander, Genghis Khan and Napoleon fell apart pretty quickly, while the Roman empire fell into a long decline, wracked by dynastic struggles, internal wars and rebellions, and barbarian invasions. Hardly great models for American imperium.

For budding US imperialists, the British empire would offer a better model. People tend to associate the British empire with its apogee, in the late 19th century, or its eclipse, just after the Second World War. But the empire's roots reach down to the 16th century, with the establishment of colonies and trading ventures in Ireland, the Americas and the Far East. It was globally pre-eminent, on sea and land, for a long period of time. And its impact on the shape of the modern world - everything from new nations, state boundaries and political systems to language, industry and commerce, cannot be overstated.

I guess, though, that for the Pentagon, some empires are more PC than others.

A Drastic and Unambiguous Escalation?

Today's attack on a Chinese paramilitary police station in Kashgar, which killed 16 policemen, is undoubtedly a serious incident for the Chinese authorities.

But is Richard Lloyd Parry, writing in The Times, going too far when he claims that the attack, which appears to have been carried out by Uighur Muslim separatists, "represents a drastic and unambiguous escalation of a formerly murky conflict"?

The separatist struggle in Xinjiang has been simmering for decades. Since the early 1990s there has been occasional low-level violence: as Parry says, "the last unambiguous attacks by Uighur separatists were in 1997 and 1998". In response, Beijing strengthened its hold on the region through a security crack down and large-scale Han Chinese migration.

To say then that this attack is "a drastic and unambiguous escalation" of the separatist struggle is over the top. It tells us a lot about a newspaper's need to boost readership with dramatic stories, especially any story with a Beijing Olympics angle. It tells us little about the real state of affairs in Xinjiang.

As with any conflict, to understand the situation one must look at the pattern of events over a reasonable period, not dramatize a single incident.

What I'm Reading: "Tip and Run"

Who?

Edward Paice

What?

Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa (2007).

Why?

I haven't read much in the way of military history recently. So I bought Tip and Run, an account of the fighting in East Africa between British imperial and German forces during World War One. 

Weekend Reading: Mary Beard on the Emperor Hadrian

If you enjoy reading about Roman emperors, legions, fortifications and wars, then check out classicist Mary Beard's article on Hadrian.

Hadrian ruled the Roman empire in the early 1st century AD. He was a skilled and intelligent statesman, strategist and administrator, noted for his interests in philosophy and poetry and his patronage of the arts. Beard asks to what extent Hadrian - who appears to us as an emperor with modern tastes and modern concerns, such as the problems of ruling a large empire - is an image we have created to mirror our own preoccupations. "Hadrian seems familiar to us," she concludes, "for we have made him so".

In an article full of trenchant observations, I found this one, about the purpose of Hadrian's Wall, built across northern Britain, to be illuminating:

"Most likely it was for the control rather than the exclusion of people. The aim was to channel regular movement into certain standard crossing points...to police the migration of people both ways, and possibly also to tax the goods that came and went. On the spectrum of modern walls, that would make it closer to the Mexican border fence than to the Berlin wall."

There's an interesting parallel with early Chinese walls that were built along the northern steppe frontiers. In The Great Wall (2006), Julia Lovell argues that the walls were designed "to occupy foreign territory, to drive the nomadic inhabitants out of their land and to facilitate the setting up of military posts that would police the movement of people across these areas".

Walls, in other words, are not necessarily defensive measures. As in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, they can serve as tools of expansion and domination.

Flow and Ebb

Like empires, civilizations flow and ebb, and the turning points generally are seen only in hindsight. We associate decline with great events - the departure of the Roman legions from Britain in 410 AD, the Ottoman defeat at the gates of Vienna in 1683, for instance - but to people living at the time such events may not have carried the significance we now attach to them. It's more likely that decline is marked by many small events, minor in themselves but which taken together form an inexorable pattern.

Is the situation on Colonsay a sign of global civilization's high tide mark? Since the end of the Second World War, our civilization and way of life have been based on cheap and plentiful supplies of oil. But global oil production is peaking and the era of cheap oil is closing. On the Scottish island of Colonsay, the soaring cost of fuel is threatening the survival of the island community. As Paul Kelbie reports, in the last 12 months "nine people have either left or announced their intention to leave the island, which once boasted more than 1,000 inhabitants, but now has just 108".

There's a couple of interesting features about Colonsay. It was first settled more than 6000 years ago. What does this say about the resilience of our way of life when Colonsay's forebears inhabited the island for this span of time without the use of our modern technology?

Another is that Colonsay, while remote, is not that distant from the mainland - it is not exactly the Shetland Islands. If Colonsay is struggling to survive in the face of rising fuel costs, what does this say about the prospects for other island communities, for rural communities, and even for people living in the outer suburbs of major cities who drive long distances in their cars to work and have no other forms of transport?

As I read about Colonsay, I recalled a recent radio interview with a woman who lives in a suburb in a mid-western city in the United States. She was saying - and the tone of her voice was almost incredulous - how her father and his friends can no longer afford to drive to work by themselves, and have taken to car-pooling to get by.

Kings of Kafiristan

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the mountains of Nuristan saw heavy fighting between Afghan guerrillas and Soviet soldiers. In the 19th century, the region was known as Kafiristan, a wild land beyond the frontiers of the Raj (the British empire in India), whose inhabitants were thought to descend from Macedonian soldiers left behind by Alexander the Great.

Rudyard Kipling used Kafiristan as the setting for one of his short stories: 'The Man Who Would Be King'. In the story, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, two old India hands, strike out for the Hindu Kush and set themselves up as gods and kings of Kafiristan:

'One morning I heard the devil's own noise of drums and horns, and Dan Dravot marches down the valley with his Army and a tail of hundreds of men, and, which was the most amazing, a great gold crown on his head. "My Gord, Carnehan," says Daniel, "this is a tremenjus business, and we've got the whole country as far as it's worth having. I am the son of Alexander by Queen Semiramis, and you're my younger brother and a god too!"

Kosovo on His Mind?

China's President Hu Jintao.

The Interpreter explains in a short and sophisticated post why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is brutally suppressing dissent in Tibet, and thereby risking giving its opponents a PR victory before the Beijing Olympics.

Part of the explanation may be that Kosovo is weighing heavily on the mind of President Hu Jintao:

"to the CCP, the symbolic significance of Kosovo's independence would have been striking: a unilateral declaration of independence by a small, ethnically distinct enclave, with international sympathy and support, and in the face of great power opposition."

>> "On the Horns of a Dilemma"

"Blaze and Blood in Lhasa"

In the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has gone to great pains to convince the world that it is a benign government ruling a harmonious and prosperous society.

But Beijing's crackdown on Tibetan protesters is a reminder that the CCP knows only one way of dealing with dissent - with brute force, news blackouts and Orwellian spin:

Xinhua: "Now the blaze and blood in Lhasa has unclad the nature of the Dalai Lama, and it's time for the international community to re check their stance.

The Dalai Lama and his clique have never for a day refrained from violence and terror. Continuous tolerance to violence undoubtedly means appeasement to terror."

On the Horns of a Dilemma

Rioting in Lhasa, Tibet, yesterday.

It's hard to believe that China's leaders did not anticipate that the Beijing Olympics would be a rallying point for opposition, or that the regime's freedom to crack down on dissent would be curtailed.

The rioting in Lhasa puts Beijing on the horns of a dilemma. If the regime cracks down, it risks international condemnation and boycotts of its flagship games, which start in August. But if Beijing adopts a softly softly approach, it risks continued and escalating outbreaks of violence in Tibet. The contagion of disorder could also spread to other parts of China, such as Xinjiang, which also has a strong separatist movement.

Then there is Taiwan. It's a long shot, but if there was ever an opportune time for "the rebel province" to declare independence from Beijing, and gain a breathing space from reprisals, this would be it.

A Way of Insecurity

"Invading Iraq wasn't about the oil". Yeah, right.

The abiding memory I have of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was how US forces swiftly secured the Iraq's Oil Ministry in Baghdad but stood by as looters pillaged other government offices and museums.

It's unfair, of course, to seize upon one incident among many and draw a general conclusion from it. In this article, journalist Dilip Hiro lays out the evidence for the argument that Iraq's oil was a big factor, even the primary factor, in the invasion calculations of the Bush administration. His article follows a recent comment by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who said that "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Hiro's analysis is consistent with that of David Strahan, a British journalist and author of The Last Oil Shock (2007), a book about peak oil. Of the US game plan, Strahan notes that

"The idea seems to have been to prise open Iraq and the wider Middle East for Western investment - not only for the sake of profit, but in order to raise oil production. The invasion was not just 'all about oil'; it was about peak oil."

Then there was the embarrassing gaffe by Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, who in July admitted that oil is a key reason for Australia's military presence in Iraq. Prime Minister John Howard moved swiftly, and unconvincingly, to contain the damage:

"We are not there because of oil and we didn't go there because of oil....the reason we remain there is that we want to give the people of Iraq a possibility of embracing democracy."

What puzzles me is why the Bush administration continues to maintain the charade that oil had nothing to do with the invasion. Empires run on energy, as Thomas Homer-Dixon noted in The Upside of Down:

"Acquiring and protecting the sources of this energy, the routes along which it's carried, and the people and organizations responsible for generating and transporting it becomes a key job of an empire's security and military forces."

A Bush functionary once said that the US is "an empire now, we make our own reality". For an empire which makes its own reality, there should be nothing embarrassing about coming clean on the real reasons for invading another country. Can you imagine a Roman emperor, such as Trajan, claiming that he invaded Dacia to free its people from their tyrannical chieftains?

The Bush administration defines 'energy security' as securing foreign oil reserves, sea lanes, and the interests of US oil companies. In truth, this is a way of insecurity. It ignores what energy security is really about - having courage, integrity and foresight to break the foreign oil addiction (and, as Adrian points out, reliance on rickety Middle East regimes like Saudi Arabia) by investing in public transport and long distance rail, implementing tough fuel, energy and building efficiency standards, and switching to clean and renewable energy sources. 

Empire and Energy

Thomas Homer-Dixon (in The Upside of Down) on why energy supply is central to empire-building:

"Empires run on energy. A central task of any empire is to produce, transport, and focus enough energy to maintain and extend its political and economic power. Acquiring and protecting the sources of this energy, the routes along which it's carried, and the people and organizations responsible for generating and transporting it becomes a key job of an empire's security and military forces.

Without constant inputs of high-quality energy, complex societies aren't resilient to external shock. In fact, they almost certainly can't endure. These ever-present dangers drive societies to relentlessly search for energy sources with the highest possible return on investment. They also drive societies to aggressively control and organize the territories that supply their energy and to extend their interests, engagements, and often their political and economic domination far beyond their current borders."

He was talking about ancient Rome and the United States, but his remarks apply equally to China, and quite possibly India.