War From the Ground Up (41 page)

The point here is again not an absolute one. To deny the value of long-term planning, which is of obvious utility, would not make sense. The argument here is about balance: the correct identification of the UK's strategy-making problems should not by default be solved by craning one's neck to look even further ahead, which might exaggerate the problem identified. In other words, to gaze far into the future is usually an unreliable strategic guide, but staring even harder into the crystal ball is often the well-intentioned, but misguided, default reaction to a loss of strategic self-confidence. National strategy does require long-term planning, but primarily on the basis of analysis not of an abstract construction set far in the future, but of one's present situation, and assessment of one's vulnerabilities that others, it can safely be assumed, will exploit.

A pragmatic mentality can facilitate the association of abstract ideas and practical reality. However, pragmatism means little in itself, as it is a human quality that has to be expressed by a real person. A pragmatic mentality can, however, encourage the requirement for balance in strategy.
It can also be an aid to resolve an apparent contradiction in strategy between the requirements for vision and agility. Vision is necessary to energise strategic narrative with a genuine sense of purpose. Yet agile adjustment of strategic narrative is necessary to maintain a balance between what is desired by policy and what is realistically possible on the ground.

The strategic dialogue which evaluates and adjusts the relationship between desire and possibility may well generate conclusions which significantly challenge the strategic vision. The question then arises as to which to privilege, and which audiences to satisfy. While such questions may be taken by military and civilian strategists alike, elected or unelected, at various levels of authority, the question is essentially of a political nature. The commander him-, or herself, and the human personalities of the audience, become critical at this point. Clausewitz emphasised the commander's intuition as a key factor in war. The same is true today: the personality of the human decision-maker, and the ability to understand an audience in human terms, remain of fundamental importance. Clausewitz's emphasis on balance in strategic dialogue, between people, policy and the play of probability and chance that war itself generates, still makes sense today.

The speed and extent of inter-connectivity brought about by the information revolution is fundamentally changing the world, and war too. People, individuals and communities, fragment in each other's image: the intertwining of all kinds of cultures has huge power to unite people through common understanding; conversely, the endless disagreement over the meaning of an event becomes more common, as world audiences are so diverse.

War From The Ground Up
has suggested a way to forge effective strategy in order to approach conflict in this contemporary environment. However, as liberal democracies seem to sleepwalk into the fusion of war and routine international politics, they do not seem not to grasp that, if encouraged, this profoundly unstable evolution of ‘war' will challenge core aspects of the liberal tradition in its broad sense as the tradition which underpins liberal democracies. War is just as much the IED-mangled body, the icon of early twenty-first-century combat, as it is a tool of policy; its proliferation is undesirable. War as war serves a legitimate function and this is not an anti-war book. However, war is currently not compartmentalised as it should be. By increasingly merging
it with regular political activity, and investing in operational ideas a policy-like quality, we are confronted with policy as an extension of war; that used to be the wrong way round.

1
. David Kilcullen, ‘Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, Theory and Practice' (2007), PowerPoint presentation, available at
http://smallwarsjournal.com/
, slide 45.

2
. Technically the strategic distinction is between ends (aims), means (resources) and ways (the application of resources in a plan). A full discussion of the function of all three aspects of strategy is at
Chapter 5
.

3
. Robert Haddick, ‘Nagl and Gentile Are Both Right, So What Do We Do Now?'
Small Wars Journal
op-ed (November 2008).

4
. Paul Brister, William H. Natter III and Robert R. Tomes,
Hybrid Warfare and Transnational Threats: Perspectives for an Era of Persistent Conflict
(New York: Council for Emerging National Security Affairs), February 2011.

5
. This debate has primarily been driven in journal articles by the question of how the US should configure its military post-Afghanistan. The two positions have been characterised in debates between Lieutenant Colonel (retired) John Nagl and Colonel Gian P. Gentile. See Shawn Brimley, ‘Mediating Between Crusaders and Conservatives',
Small Wars Journal
op-ed (October 2008).

6
. For a summary of the concept, see Frank G. Hoffman,
Conflict in the 21
^st
Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars
(Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, December 2007).

1
. Antulio J. Echevarria II,
Preparing for One War and Getting Another?
(US Army Strategic Studies Institute, Advancing Strategic Thought Series, September 2010), p. 26.

2
. The operation involved several other units on the British side, especially a company from the Royal Welsh Regiment, and other nationalities, particularly Dutch, Australian and United States, as well as Afghan army and police units.

3
. This phrase was coined by Paul Watzlawick; see Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland, Richard Fisch,
Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1974). This Book drew on work by Gregory Bateson,
Steps to an Ecology of Mind
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972).

4
. Dr Conrad Crane, US Army War College, Counterinsurgency Workshop held at Merton College, Oxford, 26 May 2011. The Counterinsurgency Field Manual referred to is the
Unites States US Marine Corps and US Army Field Manual 3–24
.

5
. Carl von Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 1, ch. 1, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 87.

6
. Ibid., Book 2, ch. 1, p. 126.

7
. George MacDonald Fraser,
Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War in Burma
, (London: Harper Collins, 1995; first published by Harvill, 1992), p. 49.

8
. See Hew Strachan, ‘The British Way in Warfare', ch. 19 in
The
Oxford
History of the British Army
, ed. David Chandler and Ian Beckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 402.

9
. The US strategic concept of ‘limited war', which developed in response to concern over escalation to nuclear war, exemplifies the very real influence that ‘war' can exert on policy as a future possibility rather than an actual event. Such a concept was expressed most prominently by the post-war theories of ‘Limited War' (coined by Robert Osgood in his Book
Limited War
), in which war is used as a regulated political instrument without escalation to absolute (nuclear) war. See Robert E. Osgood,
Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).

10
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 2, ch. 1, p. 127; also Book 6, ch. 1, p. 357.

11
. Ibid., Book 4, ch. 11, p. 260.

12
. Ibid., Book 8, ch. 6B, p. 605. Andreas Herberg-Rothe notes that the explicit connection that Clausewitz makes in this passage between war and language is located in the way in which grammar was conceptually understood at the time. Herberg-Rothe argues that much of the content of Clausewitz's conceptualisation of war can be found in an article on grammar in the
Enzyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste
(Encyclopaedia of the Sciences and the Arts, ed. Ersch and Gruber, First Section A-G ed. H. Brockhaus (Leipzig, 1865), pp. 1–80), if one substitutes ‘language' for ‘war'. Thus just as the speech or writing of thought (the equivalent of political intention)
are regulated by grammar, so too is war. Herberg-Rothe argues that for Clausewitz the concept of grammar ‘illustrates both war's unity with a greater whole and its relative autonomy' (Andreas Herberg-Rothe,
Clausewitz's Puzzle
, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2007, p. 151). He notes the fact that the treatment of grammar in this encyclopaedia required an entry of almost 80 pages. Hardly any other concepts are examined so comprehensively. This indicates the significance of the concept at the time.

13
. See, for example, John Cantile, ‘Upper Gereshk: The Helmand plan meets tough reality',
BBC News Online
, 2 October 2011,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14897977
.

14
. Declan Walsh, ‘Video of girl's flogging as Taliban hand out justice',
Guardian Online
, 2 April 2009,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/02/taliban-pakistan-justice-women-flogging
.

15
. This analogy specifically relates to the study of hermeneutics in a theological sense. I have used the term ‘interpretive' rather than ‘hermeneutic' throughout the Book for simplicity and accessibility.

16
. See James Simpson,
Burning to Read, English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

17
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 3, ch. 1, p. 182.

18
. Chancellor Angela Merkel first referred to German troops being involved in ‘combat operations' in September 2009. This represented a gradual progression of the German conception of the mission. Before German involvement in Kunduz Province (North Afghanistan) in 2007, the German Ministry of Defence referred to soldiers who ‘died' in Afghanistan; post 2007 they ‘fell'. This acknowledged that the mission was more than just reconstruction, but it was not ‘combat' until 2009. Dr Timo Noetzel, University of Konstanz, lecture at the Oxford University Changing Character of War Programme, 22 February 2011. See also Timo Noetzel, ‘The German Politics of War: Kunduz and the War in Afghanistan',
International Affairs
, vol. 87, issue 2 (March 2011), pp. 397–417,

19
. Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy and the Limitation of War',
Survival
, vol. 50, no. 1 (Feb.-March 2008), pp. 31–54.

20
. Ibid., p. 35.

21
. Ibid., p. 35.

22
. Rupert Smith,
The Utility of Force
(London: Penguin, 2006; first published by Allen Lane, 2005), p. 302.

23
. Although even in wars of this type the boundaries are only ever essentially the same. The controversy over the sinking of the
General Belgrano
(whether it was within the ‘war zone') illustrates this point in the case of the Falklands. Moreover, the Falklands War of 1982 was not the start or the end of the conflict in the wider sense: for example, there had been a possibility of
an Argentinian operation during the Callaghan government; Argentinian reconnaissance patrols on the Islands have occasionally been reported post the 1982 war; the Argentinian government still uses the issue to gain political leverage in domestic politics. The basic political problems remain unresolved today.

24
.
‘Quintili Vare, legiones redde!'
Suetonius,
Vita Divi Augusti
, 23.49.

25
. Harry Kreisler and Thomas G. Barnes, ‘Military Strategy: Conversation with Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr', interview held on 6 March 1996. Full citation can be found at
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/Summers/summers2.html
.

1
. Museum of Military History, Vienna. Copyright 2012.

2
. The Gurkha platoon commander was Lieutenant Paul Hollingshead, who was awarded a Mention in Dispatches for leading a counter-attack in this ambush.

3
. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Eighth Report on Global Security, ‘Afghanistan and Pakistan' (21 July 2009), ch. 6, paragraph 245.

4
. Damien McElroy, ‘Afghan governor turned 3,000 men over to Taliban',
Daily Telegraph
, 20 November 2009.

5
. Antonio Giustozzi and Noor Ullah, ‘Tribes and Warlords in Southern Afghanistan 1980–2005' (London School of Economics Crisis States Research Centre Working Paper, 2006), pp. 12–13.

6
. Sher Mohammed Akhundzada comes from the Hassanzai sub-tribe of the Alizai tribe. While Provincial Governor of Helmand he also oppressed Alizais from other sub-tribes (Pirzai and Khalozai). His affiliation with the Alizai tribe is used here in the broad sense for simplicity.

7
. The National Directorate of Security (NDS) is the Afghan equivalent of MI5.

8
. Mike Martin,
A Brief History of Helmand
(British Army Publication by the Afghan COIN Centre, August 2011), p. 49. Martin cites Sarah Chayes,
The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan after the Taliban
(London: Portobello Books, 2007, first published by Penguin, 2006), pp. 274–9.

9
. Pajhwok Afghan News, ‘Dozens of insurgents killed, 60 rounded up in Helmand' (11 September 2005),
http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2005/09/11/dozens-insurgents-killed-60-rounded-helmand
. See Martin,
A Brief History of Helmand
, pp. 47–51 for a much broader discussion of this theme.

10
. Mike Martin,
A Brief History of Helmand
. Martin cites International Crisis Group, ‘Afghanistan: The problem of Pushtun Alienation' (
Asia Report
no. 62, 2003), p. 18; Joel Hafvenstein,
Opium Season
,
A Year on the Afghan
Frontier
(Lyons Press, 2007), p. 132; Economist Intelligence Unit, ‘Country Reports—Afghanistan' (Q2/3003), p. 9; Ali A. Jalali, ‘Afghanistan in 2002: The Struggle to Win the Peace',
Asian Survey
(2003), p. 183; Sarah Chayes,
The Punishment of Virtue
(London: Portobello Books, 2007), pp. 273–4.