Summary: We’ve slowed the intensity of our efforts in the Long War, following failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. So the momentum shifts to our foes, as the fires we’ve sparked across the Middle East spread. Success in the next phase depends on what our military leaders have learned from their failures. Today a senior general gives a demonstration.
I’ve killed them by the tens of thousands, scoured their countryside at will, pried their allies away, and humiliated them day after day. I have burned their crops and looted their wealth. I’ve sent a whole generation of their generals into the afterworld … Have I changed nothing? They are stronger now than before. They are more than before. They fight more sensibly than before. They win when they used to lose.
— Hannibal, in David Anthony Durham’s novel Pride of Carthage(2005).
{From the start the insurgents} made a decision to attack our tactical mobility … and they’ve chosen the IED as the way to do that. This is the first war where we’ve faced an enemy that’s adapted better than we have at a tactical and operational level. We had IEDs from Day 1. … What have we done to adapt? Nothing.
— Anthony Zinni (General, USMC, retired; former chief of the U.S. Central Command), quoted in USA Today, 15 July 2007.
Contents
- What have our generals learned after 14 years of 4th Generation War?
- We crank the Darwinian Ratchet & empower our foes
- Why our strategy fails
- For More Information
(1) What have our generals learned after 14 years of 4GW?
See this Interview by Breaking Defense with Michael Flynn (Lt. General, US Army), retiring chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency. See his Wikipedia entry. He shows what might be the defining characteristics of senior US military thinking in our Long War: blindness about the effects of our actions and obliviousness about the intents of jihadist groups.
I know that’s a scary thought, but in 2004, there were 21 total Islamic terrorist groups spread out in 18 countries. Today, there are 41 Islamic terrorist groups spread out in 24 countries. A lot of these groups have the intention to attack Western interests, to include Western embassies and in some cases Western countries. Some have both the intention and some capability to attack the United States homeland.
The general’s analysis has the sophistication of a boy explaining how the cookie jar “just broke”.
In 2000 the Middle East was relatively calm. There was, as there has been since WW2, turmoil about Israel. The Iraq-Iran War was over. The Taliban had brought peace to Afghanistan. There was persistent low-lever conflict in Lebanon, and small attacks on US personnel based in Saudi Arabia (1995 & 1996). The general does not mention what happened in the years before 2004 to set the region afire. We invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, toppling a row of dominoes that’s still falling.
What makes this quite sad is the US military’s blindness to their role as useful idiots in bin Laden’s plan to incite a war between Islam and the infidel invader (that’s us) that would unify his people — as Bismarck used wars to unify small States to create Germany. We took the bait: invading Iraq and Afghanistan, attacking Pakistan, Yemen and now others in Africa.
(2) We still crank the Darwinian Ratchet, empowering our foes
“The genetics of disease resistance are worth discussing here. We can think of resistance to disease as an arms race. As a population gets exposed to more and more diseases, a darwinian ratchet effect occurs, and only those with stronger immune systems survive.”
— “What are the risks of a global pandemic?“, Nathan Taylor, Praxtime, 23 March 2013.
“We know that the Darwinian Ratchet can create advanced capabilities in stages — it’s a process that gradually creates quality — and gets around the usual presumption that fancy things require an even fancier designer.”
— The Cerebral Code: Thinking a Thought in the Mosaics of the Mind(1996), William H. Calvin.
General Flynn explains that they have slowly learned, and now see the Darwinian Ratchet (aka Tactical Darwinism) at work. But again he talks as if this is “just happening”, ignoring our role as the fuel powering this process.
These various groups have learned from fighting the U.S. military for a decade, and they have created adaptive organizations as a means to survive. They write about and share ‘Lessons Learned’ all the time. That was something Bin Laden taught them before he died. These proliferating Islamic terrorist groups have also for years been developing connective tissue to each other and back to al-Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan’s tribal regions. Some of those connections are pretty strong. We’re not talking bits and pieces or nascent connections.
… when Bin Laden was killed there was a general sense that maybe this threat would go away. We all had those hopes, including me. But I also remembered my many years in Afghanistan and Iraq [fighting insurgents] … We kept decapitating the leadership of these groups, and more leaders would just appear from the ranks to take their place. That’s when I realized that decapitation alone was a failed strategy.
My first posts about the Iraq War (Sept 2003 and Oct 2003) explained that our tactics empowered the insurgency. Not just spurring recruitment (as many saw), but forcing improvement in their leadership and methods. As described here (from Oct 2007):
An insurgency brings into play a “Darwinian ratchet,” in which the government in effect drives the insurgency. The security services cull the pack of insurgents. They eliminate the slow and stupid, clearing space for the “best” to rise in authority. That is, those most able to survive, recruit, and train new ranks of more effective insurgents. An insurgency with shallow roots can be destroyed. If not destroyed, then evolution takes place: the more severe the efforts at exterminating the insurrection, the more capable the survivors.
It works with bacteria. Administer antibiotics in non-lethal doses and soon you have a colony of drug-resistant bacteria. It works with people, too.
Hence the familiar activity pattern of a rising sine wave, seen in Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, and a dozen other places: successes by the security forces, a pause in activity, followed by another wave of activity – but bigger and more effective.
{For more about this see Our tactics are an obstacle to victory in the Long War, as the Darwinian Ratchet works against us, 19 April 2011}
This locks us into the Red Queen’s race, so we must run ever faster just to stay abreast of our enemies in the Long War. Insurgents prove more resilient than we expect, so we use more force. We kill more locals, destroy more of their infrastructure. We recruit more jihadists, further alienate the local population. US intelligence has long warned of this, as in this from the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States“.
We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives … The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.
Our leaders ignored these warnings, as they have so often ignored intelligence advice that didn’t suit their needs.
(3) Why our strategy fails
We involve ourselves in foreign civil wars, often allying ourselves with corrupt tyrannical governments. That does not imply that the insurgents are better, merely that we have no nature role in these conflicts. Our involvement globalizes these conflicts, expanding the insurgents’ visions. Being bombed by robots operated by foreign infidels does that.
There is an alternative. Involve ourselves only when defending core national interests. Minimize our involvement, and our footprint especially.
The late American strategist Col. John Boyd (USAF) said that a grand strategy focused our nation’s actions — political, economic, and military — so as to:
- Increase our solidarity, our internal cohesion.
- Weaken our opponents’ resolve and internal cohesion.
- Strengthen our allies’ relationships to us.
- Attract uncommitted states to our cause.
- End conflicts on favorable terms, without sowing the seeds for future conflicts.
(4) For More Information
(a) For more about the Darwinian Ratchet:
- “The Growing Sophistication of Iraqi Militants“, Stratfor, 27 December 2004 — About “Tactical Darwinism”
- “Dinosaurs versus Mammals: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Adaptation in Iraq“, David Kilcullen, RAND Insurgency Board, 8 May 2008
- Strong recommendation to read: “Darwinian selection in asymmetric warfare: the natural advantage of insurgents and terrorists“, Dominic Johnson (Reader, Dept of Politics & International Relations, U of Edinburgh), Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Fall 2009
- “Pakistan: The South Waziristan Migration“, Stratfor, 14 October 2009
- “Insurgent career planning or insurgency darwinism“, JJ Malevich (Lt Colonel, Canadian Exchange Officer, COIN Branch Chief), USA and USMC Counterinsurgency Center Blog, 4 March 2010
- “Bombs away“, The Economist, 4 March 2010
(b) Posts about the Long War:
- The Fight for Islamic Hearts and Minds, 20 February 2012
- A look at al Qaeda, the long war — and us, 7 August 2013
- How I learned to stop worrying and love Fourth Generation War. We can win at this game., 18 September 2013
- Handicapping the clash of civilizations: bet on America to win, 24 September 2013
(c) Posts about Islam
- Are islamic extremists like the anarchists?, 14 December 2009
- Hatred and fear of Islam – of Moslems – is understandable. But are there hidden forces at work?, 3 August 2010
- Should we fear that religion whose believers have killed so many people?, 4 August 2010
- Hard (and disturbing) information about schools in Pakistan – the madāris, 1 May 2011
- The Fight for Islamic Hearts and Minds, 20 February 2012
