Posts Tagged: John Robb

politics / war — No Comments
27
Nov 09

The Puppies of War

Lind writes in the Fourth Generation War Manual of the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Marine Corps:

Much of what Marines now face in Fourth Generation wars is simply war as it was fought before the rise of the state and the Peace of Westphalia. Once again, clans, tribes, ethnic groups, cultures, religions and gangs are fighting wars, in more and more parts of the world.

I’m no military historian, but this viewpoint always seemed to me to be a) obvious and b) wrong. Perhaps I came of age in that post-Cold War period when Fourth Generation warfare (4GW) was simply the face of war – and certainly the big ticket wars of that time, the Great Lakes and Yugoslav wars, fit the description – but it seemed clear that the sort of war that is now described as Second and Third Generation warfare was long gone. By 1991, in fact, that sort of warfare already seemed archaic, something that you would read about in history books rather than actually attempt to wage.

So yeah, Lind seems kind of obvious here, in the same way as Hobsbawm seems when he talks about the 20th Century lasting from 1914-1991 – not obvious in a “well, duh” way, but obvious in a “thank god somebody else noticed, and isn’t that a useful way of looking at things” way.

I missed out on military history, but I did study contemporary history, and in particular a whole heap of African history. So while Lind’s statement seems obvious, it also seems wrong, because a brief glimpse through the annals of post-WWII African history reveals a glaring absence of Second and Third Generation warfare. It’s all 4GW all the time, baby. Other parts of the world tell a similar story, since most of the proxy wars between the USA and USSR were easiest to sustain at the 4GW level, with some heavy artillery thrown in and the occasional weak-ass air force. Maneuver warfare in eastern Congo? Unlikely.

If this is true, it raises a difficult question for the “standard” history of warfare from First to Second to Third to Fourth Generation. You don’t have to be John Gray to be suspicious of such a smooth narrative, particularly when it emnates largely from the Kings of Narrative, our American friends. American political history perhaps more than any other country is one in which the narrative is paramount for the sense of national identity – where most national histories are primarily the result of historical contingency, of pragmatic adaptation to external and internal shocks, American history was spun equally out of whole philosophical cloth.

Suspicions multiply when Lind talks (with caution, admittedly) about importing 4GW techniques – via the physical presence of the military – to fight gang crime on the streets of American, on the basis that gang tactics are essentially identical to insurgency tactics.

Objectively, what the Washington Post has reported is a milestone, to be neither praised nor regretted but merely noted. It denotes another step toward 4GW here at home. It is a step we cannot avoid. As both imported and domestically-generated Fourth Generation entities ramp up their warfare on American soil, the U.S. military will be drawn in. As is the case in 4GW overseas, it will probably fail. Old Uncle Karl was right: the state will wither away. But what follows will not be communism. It will be chaos.

The last four sentences are all narrative reinforcement, by the way,  but I thought they were worth keeping in. Lind is wrong about the essential point here (and I would argue wrong in his conclusions as well). While their tactics may look similar (in the sense that there’s a limited range of possible criminal activity in any society, so it inevitably looks familiar), gang culture in the United States is primarily the result of the failure to sustain the narrative of the US – another, different symptom of this failure can also be seen in the political schisms in the US that have grown up since the turn of the millenium – and we can argue about why that narrative is failing another time.

By contrast insurgency culture in other countries is not just a response to the failure of the state’s narrative – for example, in Afghanistan. That reduces the narrative to a response to a dominant state narrative, which might seem natural to those of us who come from countries where a dominant state narrative, but is not true in many places; and to reduce it so also reduces the agency of insurgents to mere reaction. That is sometimes the case, but we need to recognise that insurgency culture presents a successful narrative in its own right in a way that street gang culture does not. So the two are not identical, they are flip sides of the same narrative coin, which means they need to be addressed differently – although in both cases the importance of establishing alternative narratives is paramount.

Back to my original point – the difficult question for the “standard” history of warfare is whether that narrative fits the facts. My answer is no. The standard history presented by Lind and others is a) Eurocentric and b) militarocentric,1 primarily an attempt to define a coherent narrative which justifies both the military and the ends to which the military is directed. Any group that didn’t buy into the post-Westphalian consensus on how war would be conducted – and that includes pretty much everybody who wasn’t a European state and who didn’t take their cues from the European states, which is to say pretty much everybody in the world – was rolling like they used to roll, all 4GW all the time, baby.

Does this make much difference to the work of Lind and others to help the military to adjust to 4GW? Not especially – although their historical interpretation might be a bedtime story to reassure the military that they weren’t wasting their time, the direction in which they’re going is absolutely the right one.2 The real question is whether a state-based military can really be “successful” in 4GW terms in a situation where the very idea of the state has lost its currency – and that seems to me very doubtful.

p.s. H/T to John Robb for hosting William Lind‘s work on his website. I count that as a public service.

  1. That’s a terrible word – anybody got anything better? [↩]
  2. Until things shift again and renders the entire concept of a state-based military entirely not merely redundant, but comical. [↩]
politics — 3 Comments
14
Apr 09

Tough on pirates, tough on the causes of pirates

If I was a terrorist, I’d be angry that pirates are grabbing the headlines. Perhaps people would have taken piracy more seriously sooner if we’d been referring to them as “terrorists of the seas”? Everybody loves pirates except for the French and the Americans, who have decided to start shooting pirates in the head,1 unleashing a wave of speculation about how to deal with the tricky devils.

Over at the Danger Room, Nathan Hodge lays out the options, which include killing more pirates, arming crews, forming convoys and so forth, before concluding that there are few good options. John Robb, a more lateral thinker, believes that the eventual policy that will be adopted is a “Somali Coast Guard“, i.e. a Sons of Iraq style militia whose bills will presumably be paid by governments on behalf of their shipping companies. On a million different blogs you can also find people whose main recommendation is to bomb Somalia back to the Stone Age – ironic, given their opinions of the current state of Somalia.

Military solutions have a monetary cost and a strategic cost. In this case the monetary cost will be high but bearable, but the strategic cost – well, we’ve already paid that. Some people believe that killing more pirates will have a deterrent effect against future hostage situations occurring. This is wrong. Killing pirates will ensure that, in future, hostage situations will be more likely to end in the deaths of the hostages, particularly if those hostages are American (or French). So killing pirates – especially taking the killing to the pirate lairs, i.e. impoverished Somali fishing villages – scores 11 on the stupidometer.

Abdullahi Lami, one of the pirates holding a Greek ship anchored in the Somali town of Gaan, said: “Every country will be treated the way it treats us. In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying. We will retaliate… the killings of our men.”

“Oy Paul,” I hear you cry, “always with the negative! What do you suggest we do about this terrible situation?” Well, first, everybody should calm down. The cost of these kidnappings should be borne by shipping companies, but there’s a danger that, with national governments involved, there may be even less incentive for shipping companies to invest in anti-piracy measures.2 The obvious suggestion is that companies keep paying the ransoms and accept it as an operating cost, particularly if they’re cutting corners in order to cut costs:

The merchant ship-owners are also recommended to keep their vessels 600 miles away from Somalia’s eastern seaboard from where most of the pirates emerge. Not all the merchant ships, however, conform to the rules. Some fail to use the transit routes, and others give scant attention to installing anti-piracy defences.

Second, perhaps we could look at the reasons that Somalis become pirates? It’s easy to dismiss Somalia as a basket case filled with well-armed maniacs, but this would be a mistake. Johann Hari notes that there are legitimate grievances amongst coastal Somalis, particularly since, in the absence of a state, foreign vessels have been dumping toxic waste, fishing out local stocks and generally taking advantage.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply… At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers.

Some pirates have claimed that they’re already acting in the public interest, although it’s a thin line between that, banditry and good business sense:

We don’t consider ourselves [pirates]. We consider [pirates] those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard…. We don’t want these weapons to go to anyone in Somalia. Somalia has suffered from many years of destruction because of all these weapons… We are not going to offload the weapons. We just want the money.

So third, we should recognise that being a pirate is a lifestyle choice that makes sense when you are dirt poor:

Generations of children followed their fathers to sea and a lucrative career in fishing. They still want to go to sea. Only now they dream of being pirates. “I want be a pirate, they have cool cars and lots of money,” said a boy, 13, staring out to sea.

Who are we to deny that little boy his dream? Who are we to stifle his ambition? Piracy is big business:

Last year Somali pirates mounted 111 attacks and captured 42 ships, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Ransom demands have ranged from $1 million to $8 million, earning the modern-day brigands an estimated $30 million in ransom payments in 2008.

The way to deal with piracy is very simple but completely unacceptable. It’s to invest in coastal Somali communities, with the international community providing:

  1. Tighter regulation of commercial shipping, including making anti-piracy measures compulsory for all shipping along hazardous routes;
  2. Increased security to guarantee Somali fishing waters and prevent abuse of the coastline, including (for agreed periods) naval patrols;
  3. Improved capacity for Somali fishermen, including training in fishing techniques and re-training for those unable to make a living from fishing;
  4. Guaranteed market value for the fish caught by Somali fishermen – basically, buy their fish at a fair price on a consistent basis.

This of course should be on top of general development investments in Somalia – but that’s a whole other tricky kettle of sly fish, unlikely to yield much in the way of results. John Robb’s idea of a Somali Coast Guard might also work for a limited period, but a more sustainable solution is (in addition to the above) community education programmes to increase social pressure on people not to become pirates. All of these measures could contribute towards a solution, but we have to recognise two limitations here: first, some people just love being a pirate, so you’ll never eliminate it completely; and second, killing people is easier than helping them, so it’s probably the stupid people who will carry the argument in this case.