By Michael Belil Introduction Following the quagmire in Iraq, an uphill battle in Afghanistan, and with a rising China a mor...
By Michael Belil
Introduction
Following the quagmire in Iraq, an uphill battle in Afghanistan,
and with a rising China a more assertive Russia, and a destabilized and highly
sectarian Middle East; the United States is at a critical juncture in which it determines
what ideas its grand strategy should be based on. Grand Strategy is comprised
of the ideas for employing a state’s resources to achieve long term policy
objectives. While ideas help form the direction or course of a grand strategy a
state chooses to employ, it is a state’s relative capabilities and resources
that determines the means to achieving strategic objectives. In this article I
seek not to lay out the entire grand strategy debate, but to look at one part
of it. I will examine US grand strategy as it pertains to the Middle East along with a developing a strategy to counter the Islamic State, and
mitigate extremism, diffuse anti-Americanism, lower the threat of a terrorist
attack at home and secure the commons. The two primary grand strategies are
restraint based predominantly on defensive realism, and liberal hegemony which
is primarily based upon liberalism. The alternative strategy will be based upon
neo-classical realist theory, in some places drawing upon constructivist theory
and learning theory.
Restraint an Answer to American Activism
Prof. Barry Posen, MIT |
In his book Restraint, Barry Posen argues that military
adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan was counter-productive if not detrimental
to America. Deep engagement in the Middle East since 9/11 has fostered more
extremism and anti-American sentiment in the form of US military invasion,
support of dictators and reckless drivers such as Israel and the former Nouri
al Maliki regime in Iraq. Furthermore,
perfect safety is a chimera and attempting to pursue it is a fool’s errand.
Posen suggests that US commit as little troops as possible while keeping Al
Qaeda on the defensive. Here I must point out that Posen’s book was published
before the rise of the Islamic State and therefore does not take into account
the current situation in the Middle East. The Islamic State is arguably more
dogmatic in their beliefs, while at same time possessing proficient hybrid
warfare capabilities and control of an area the size of a small country.
Furthermore, many formerly Al Qaeda aligned groups such as Boko Haram, Al Qaeda
in the Islamic Maghreb, as well as Tehreek-e-Taliban in Pakistan have all
declared loyalty to Daesh. The Islamic State took Al Qaeda’s model of jihad and
flipped it on its head. Unlike Al Qaeda, IS focuses inward, building its
resources, strength and support base, training its fighters not just in
unconventional warfare, terrorist tactics or guerrilla warfare, but
conventional, mechanized warfare, and infantry tactics, fighting local
competitors including other Islamist and non-Islamist jihadi groups and
apostate regimes.
Posen suggests in the past, the United States has fought
terror in an overly expensive, counter-productive fashion that has generated
more bad than good. Moreover, he posits that for US Middle East diplomacy to be
successful, “…the United States must show by its actions that it is not the
enemy of the Islamic World.” Personally, I agree with a great deal of these assertions
about past US mistakes, however my disagreement is based upon how Posen implements these
lessons in his preferred Middle East security strategy. Furthermore, he
contradicts himself when he calls for US diplomacy to show the Muslim World
that America is not its enemy when he argues for special operations raids and
drone strikes as “the preferred option.” Aside from cumbersome “big army”
forces that fostered anti-America sentiment in Operation Iraqi Freedom, drone
strikes that started under President Bush and hit new highs under President
Obama have exacerbated the problem. Furthermore, special operations raids and
drone strikes aren't strategy, but tactics. While direct action raids are an
important component, solely removing insurgents from the battlefield, or
engaging in leadership decapitation has a relatively limited effect on
strategic objectives and political objectives as opposed to tactical and
operational objectives.
A Hybrid Strategy
As Posen aptly points out,
“Identity politics based on religion, ethnicity, or nation must be taken
seriously.” We should seek to develop an overarching strategy for containing the
Islamic State that reflects identity politics as well as the overall sectarian
geopolitical dynamics of the region. The Middle East strategy will be mostly
political and diplomatic in nature that tries to alleviate sectarian and ethnic
division in Iraq and then to re-build American legitimacy in the region. This
policy will address the reckless drivers that Posen talks about, for example,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the former Maliki regime. As it pertains to
sectarianism in Iraq, ethno-federalism offers an alternative past attempts at
governing. Ethno-federalism advocate Liam Anderson argues, “Iraq’s long-term
survival hinges on designing a federal system that protects Sunni Arab regions
against a Shia-dominated central government and maintains current levels of
Kurdish autonomy…Better to unite a single Kurdish region (which is written in
stone) with one or two Sunni regions, and multiple Shia regions in the south.”
Anderson concedes that ethno-federalism is no panacea, but is rather a
“…workable compromise solution to the problem of ethnic conflict in the absence
of viable alternatives.”
In addition, if implemented in Iraq as Anderson
suggests, ethno-federalism can begin to restore a balance of power in the
Middle East that is both beneficial for the diverse peoples of the Middle East
as it is for US interests. Barry Posen has since argued for a “light
containment” of the Islamic State, letting local actors like the Kurdish
Pershmerga, Iraqi Army and moderate Sunni and Shia militias do their own
fighting. Concerning US military involvement, we should argue for a harder containment
strategy, which still does not call for massive commitments in US blood and
treasure, but time and patience working with partners in Iraq. As it pertains
to a viable military strategy, recently US Special Operations Command released
a white paper detailing a strategy called “political warfare” For a “political
warfare” strategy to work, “U.S. policy makers require a suite of complementary
options enabling them to counter and deter hybrid and asymmetric warfare
practiced by state and non-state adversaries.
As hybrid and asymmetric warfare
rely on surrogates, proxy forces, insurgents and supporting influence
operations, effective U.S. policy responses require capabilities to
a) Comprehensively mitigate the effect of subversion, Urban Warfare (UW), and de-legitimizing
narratives in partner countries targeted by adversaries; and
b) Dissuade
adversaries from conducting hybrid warfare by increasing the cost of such
activities to the point that they become unsustainable.
The former effort
involves strengthening the capabilities, capacity, and legitimacy of partners,
while the latter involves aggressively countering subversion and UW waged
against friendly states, proactively employing coercive diplomacy,
legal-economic measures, and UW against adversaries, and aggressively
prosecuting a battle of narratives to undermine adversary legitimacy among
critical populations.” Furthermore, “given its diplomatic and economic content and its focus on
achieving political ends, Political Warfare is likely best led by agencies
beyond Department of Defense - DOD. Indeed, Political Warfare can only succeed if it is conducted in a
way to “elevate civilian power alongside military power as equal pillars of
U.S. foreign policy.”
In the third part of alternative Middle East security strategy,
we should emphasize internal balancing, in the form of innovation comprising
improvement of civil-military relations, and a restructuring of the defense
budget. James Fallows, of the Atlantic unpacks these issues and argues,
“America’s distance from the military makes the country too willing to go to
war, and too callous about the damage warfare inflicts. This distance also
means that we spend too much money on the military and we spend it stupidly,
thereby shortchanging many of the functions that make the most difference to
the welfare of the troops and their success in combat. We buy weapons that have
less to do with battlefield realities than with our unending faith that
advanced technology will ensure victory, and with the economic interests and
political influence of contractors. This leaves us with expensive and delicate
high-tech white elephants, while un-glamorous but essential tools, from infantry
rifles to armored personnel carriers, too often fail our troops.”
An example of
one of these “white elephants” is the F35 Joint Strike Fighter, which was
supposed to be a better, more versatile and cost-effective alternative to the
F-22 Raptor, but according to defense journalist Tyler Rogoway has been plagued
by design flaws including, “…its air frame being handicapped by the STOVL
requirement and the absurd costs involved with the jet that obliterates a true
high-low capability mix.” Moreover, “…the all-in costs of this airplane are now
estimated to be as much as $1.5 trillion, or a low-end estimate of the entire
Iraq War.” Posen is averse to costly high risk defense expenditures, and thus the
F-35 is one such program that he would surely agree should be handled
differently. While the sunk costs of the program as well as diplomatic
commitments to sell the plane once in production have already happened, by
eliminating the program now – and
perhaps shifting production efforts to the similar stealth air superiority F-22
which had ceased production in 2011 prospective future costs in the $1.5
trillion range can be averted.
In terms of military politics, William Lind, a
military historian who developed the concept of 4th generation
warfare argues, “The most curious thing about our four defeats in Fourth
Generation War—Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan—is the utter silence in
the American officer corps. Defeat in Vietnam bred a generation of military
reformers … Today, the landscape is barren. Not a military voice is heard
calling for thoughtful, substantive change. Just more money, please.” In The
Atlantic in 2012, Thomas Ricks wrote, “Hundreds of Army generals were deployed
to the field, and the available evidence indicates that not one was relieved by
the military brass for combat ineffectiveness.” This didn't just diverge from
the norm set by and for America’s generals, but also “an important factor in
the failure” of our most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fallows
persuasively argues this change comes from a major disconnect between the
military and the American public, “…because…at its safe remove, (it) doesn't insist on accountability. Partly it is because legislators and even presidents
recognize the sizable risks and limited payoffs of taking on the career
military.” He concludes, “And yet however much Americans “support” and
“respect” their troops, they are not involved with them, and that disengagement
inevitably leads to dangerous decisions the public barely notices.” The lack of
politically engaged citizens, civil-military understanding and cooperation has
led to a detrimental “lionization
of military officials,” which according to retired Lieutenant Colonel Jack Ruby
is a major reason for lack of oversight and reform. Dwight Eisenhower’s speech
on the military-industrial complex in 1961 had particular foresight, “This
conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry…The
total influence -- economic, political…is felt in every city, every State
house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need
for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave
implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the
very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard
against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist…Only an alert and knowledgeable
citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military
machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals…”
Prof. Michael Glennon, Tufts University |
Along similar lines, Michael Glennon at Tuft's applies
the “double government” theory to America and suggests the, “…U.S. national
security policy is defined by the network of executive officials who manage the
departments and agencies responsible for protecting U.S. national security and
who, responding to structural incentives embedded in the U.S. political system,
operate largely removed from public view and from constitutional constraints…judicial
review is negligible; congressional oversight is dysfunctional; and
presidential control is nominal. Absent a more informed and engaged electorate,
little possibility exists for restoring accountability in the formulation and
execution of national security policy.” Neo-classical realist insight from
Norrin Ripsman on the other hand tells us that the military-industrial complex
does not have significant influence over foreign security policy. This is
because actors within the Military Intelligence Community (MIC) may offer a substantial payoff for pursuing their
preferred policy, but this payoff is often offset and by a counter-vailing
coalition who prefer a different policy, thus allowing the foreign policy
executive to “…select its preferred policy without forgoing the bulk of the
payoff.” Furthermore, despite the MIC and its interest groups unity on issues
such as defense spending and use of force, interest groups in another sector
can in affect, balance against the defense sector and offer the foreign policy
executive another reward. That being said, Ripsman also says domestic actors
can influence policy choices not by offering rewards, but by shaping the
perception of external realities abroad and defining the national interest. “In
this sense, they can act as epistemic communities, shaping the mind-set of the
national security executive.” Ripsman primarily talks about the role think
tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the Council of Foreign Relations as
epistemic communities. I build off his argument that epistemic communities can
shape perception of external realities, but argue that the military-industrial
complex acts as an epistemic community that coupled with “lionization” of
military officials can be source of powerful influence when it comes to shaping
the ideas behind national security policy and the means with which to pursue
them. Returning to Glennon’s double government argument, where he argues that
presidential power is nominal, I argue that it can be constrained. Stephen M
Walt supports Glennon’s “double government” theory because it “…explains why
U.S. foreign policy is prone to recurring failure and resistant to genuine
reform…”
In his book talk at the School of International
and Public Affairs at Columbia, Barry Posen was asked about the difficulties of
bringing in his ideas of restraint into mainstream political discourse in which
American exceptional-ism is a powerful idea that can guide or rather misguide
foreign policy. He responded that there are two versions of “our mission,” the
first being the “city on the hill” (isolationist) version and the other a
Wilsonian (activist) version. Second, there is growing support both on the
right and left in America, for a less activist foreign policy. Third, according
to Posen, there is some “fertile ground” on which the seeds of restraint can be
planted, but there is still a major uphill battle to push back against liberal
hegemony. Alternative grand strategy is a selective engagement/ selective
retrenchment strategy (SESR) as opposed to Posen’s restraint. While we argue
that America should remain selectively engaged, especially in the Middle East, We should also contend that it is counter-productive to conflate military activism in
the Iraq War with selective engagement as an idea by itself. Furthermore, argument based along similar lines as Barry Posen, that there is a major uphill battle
that policy entrepreneurs face as a result of how deeply embedded liberal
hegemony has been since 1945. Poor civil-military relations, fruitless and
costly defense expenditures and unchecked influence of the MIC as an epistemic
community on defining foreign security policy interests and means all add to
the durability of embedded ideational frameworks. Therefore, defense reform
designed to combat these aforementioned obstacles is imperative to mitigate
relative economic decline, and even more so to create a domestic environment
that can better facilitate an improved ideational framework that defines US
interests in a way that aligns ends and means. In the spring of 2011, Barack
Obama asked Gary Hart, the Democratic Party’s most experienced and
best-connected figure on defense reform, to form a small bipartisan task force
that would draft recommendations on how Obama might try to recast the Pentagon
and its practices if he won a second term. Gary Hart, James Fallows, Andrew J.
Bacevich, John Arquilla and Norman R. Augustine sent a report to Obama that
fall, but never heard back. Defense reform is as central to a restraint
strategy as it is to mine. Hart wrote to the President:
“Twenty years after the end of the Cold War…our
military remains fundamentally unchanged from its Cold War organizational
schemes. We…continue to maintain a military structure, spending patterns, and
habits of thought that owe too much to threats and technologies of a bygone age
and reflect too little the strategic challenges and technological opportunities
of the decades ahead… (And) we cannot continue to outspend the rest of the
world, combined, on military forces when our economy represents one quarter of
the world’s output and requires sustained domestic investment to preserve and
increase economic leadership and opportunity for the
American people. A restructured 21st century military should cost no less nor
no more than is required to defend our country…Evolving threats are
specifically designed to avoid our fortified points…”
These seemingly fortified points that evolving
threats are able to exploit are ones that my strategy SESR will address,
especially in the Middle East. Moreover, Hart’s study group’s defense reform
recommendations will form the foundation for part four of my SESR strategy.
These reforms will help facilitate the other parts of my strategy. Hard ball
diplomacy and restraint to rein in reckless drivers will yield benefits for the
United States, as well as help diffuse sectarianism in the region. It was quite
alarming that after 14 years of a “global war on terror” CIA Chief John Brennan
is just now saying, “We have to…come to terms with how we’re going to deal with
these ideologies and movements…We have to find a way to address some of these
factors and conditions that are abetting and allowing these movements to grow.”
General Nagata, the chief of US special operations in the Middle East similarly
concedes, “We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.” The
Islamic State’s takfirist ideology is an important source of motivation for IS
fighters.
In addition, Sunni people who have been treated as “second-class
citizens” have become disillusioned with the Iraqi government and are therefore
are pushed towards allying themselves with extremist Sunni groups like IS.
Issam Eido discusses how IS a sort of microcosm of the political, religious and
social state of the Middle East and Ummah as a whole. Eido states, “Despite its
recent birth, ISIS can function as a microcosm of the complexities of our
region, as well as the intellectual contradictions. Despite its nihilism, IS
full of meaning. Despite its absurdity, it is laden with symbolism and
potential interpretations. Since ISIS was born with a fringe nature, shaped in
crisis and apocalypse, and has subsequently developed in a similar context…” According to Eido and other scholars, there
are reasons that refute the commonly held perception of ISIS as Salafist. These
reasons consist of the fact that ISIS operates outside most structures
established by Salafist Ulema. Second, IS has not presented a coherent
theological and political posture, and apparently the most influential
jihadists are not members of ISIS. Another argument made in Eido’s dialectic,
is that IS is analogous to the “Brotherhood of the Obedient” that began to
rebel against Saudi King Abd al Aziz after he allied with the British. Eido builds
upon this and asks if IS is analogous to the “Brotherhood of the Obedient” why
would Saudi Arabia support and fund them?
Our argument based on a remarkably similar situation to the conflict between
the Ikhwan and the Aziz Regime and Daesh and the current Saudi Government. Both
the old and new regimes implement a “pragmatic Wahhabism” and allow foreign
influence either British or American in the Kingdom. Like the Ikhwan of old, the Daesh implement
extreme Takfirist ideals in that if people did not follow the ways of their
version of strict Wahhabi Islam, the penalty was death. In terms of
recruitment, those who have joined the ranks of ISIS from all parts of the
Muslim World, according to Eido, “…believe they either have come to the “land
of the caliphate” or are determined to do so, in hopes of eternal salvation and
as retaliation against the nationalist sentiments at the hands of which they
have been suffering in their own respective states.
Understanding the Islamic
State is imperative in order to establish a new narrative, and following
through with a new narrative is even more crucial in order to re-build
credibility in the region. Ethno-federalism should be implemented in Iraq as
the best option in a sea of bad options for restoring the country and greater
balance of power in the Middle East. “Political warfare” is a viable, cost-effective
and whole of government strategy that can help restore US civil-military
coherence, counter the Islamic State, and help in containing it and slowly
pushing it back into Syria. Neo-classical realism along with some
constructivist theory will underpin the strategic and policy recommendations of
this article's introspective aspect.