The Belgravia Dispatch: Talk of the Town: Disaggregation in Vogue

January 04, 2007

Talk of the Town: Disaggregation in Vogue

Dear Eric,

Are we all Kilcullenian disaggregators now?

Best, Greg

Excerpt from George Packer's excellent piece on Kilcullen:

One night earlier this year, Kilcullen sat down with a bottle of single-malt Scotch and wrote out a series of tips for company commanders about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an energetic writer who avoids military and social-science jargon, and he addressed himself intimately to young captains who have had to become familiar with exotica such as “The Battle of Algiers,” the 1966 film documenting the insurgency against French colonists. “What does all the theory mean, at the company level?” he asked. “How do the principles translate into action—at night, with the G.P.S. down, the media criticizing you, the locals complaining in a language you don’t understand, and an unseen enemy killing your people by ones and twos? How does counterinsurgency actually happen? There are no universal answers, and insurgents are among the most adaptive opponents you will ever face. Countering them will demand every ounce of your intellect.” The first tip is “Know Your Turf”: “Know the people, the topography, economy, history, religion and culture. Know every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader, and ancient grievance. Your task is to become the world expert on your district.” “Twenty-eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency”—the title riffs on a T. E. Lawrence insurgency manual from the First World War—was disseminated via e-mail to junior officers in the field, and was avidly read.
Last year, in an influential article in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Kilcullen redefined the war on terror as a “global counterinsurgency.” The change in terminology has large implications. A terrorist is “a kook in a room,” Kilcullen told me, and beyond persuasion; an insurgent has a mass base whose support can be won or lost through politics. The notion of a “war on terror” has led the U.S. government to focus overwhelmingly on military responses. In a counterinsurgency, according to the classical doctrine, which was first laid out by the British general Sir Gerald Templar during the Malayan Emergency, armed force is only a quarter of the effort; political, economic, and informational operations are also required. A war on terror suggests an undifferentiated enemy. Kilcullen speaks of the need to “disaggregate” insurgencies: finding ways to address local grievances in Pakistan’s tribal areas or along the Thai-Malay border so that they aren’t mapped onto the ambitions of the global jihad. Kilcullen writes, “Just as the Containment strategy was central to the Cold War, likewise a Disaggregation strategy would provide a unifying strategic conception for the war—something that has been lacking to date.” As an example of disaggregation, Kilcullen cited the Indonesian province of Aceh, where, after the 2004 tsunami, a radical Islamist organization tried to set up an office and convert a local separatist movement to its ideological agenda. Resentment toward the outsiders, combined with the swift humanitarian action of American and Australian warships, helped to prevent the Acehnese rebellion from becoming part of the global jihad. As for America, this success had more to do with luck than with strategy. Crumpton, Kilcullen’s boss, told me that American foreign policy traditionally operates on two levels, the global and the national; today, however, the battlefields are also regional and local, where the U.S. government has less knowledge and where it is not institutionally organized to act. In half a dozen critical regions, Crumpton has organized meetings among American diplomats, intelligence officials, and combat commanders, so that information about cross-border terrorist threats is shared. “It’s really important that we define the enemy in narrow terms,” Crumpton said. “The thing we should not do is let our fears grow and then inflate the threat. The threat is big enough without us having to exaggerate it.”

By speaking of Saddam Hussein, the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Taliban, the Iranian government, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda in terms of one big war, Administration officials and ideologues have made Osama bin Laden’s job much easier. “You don’t play to the enemy’s global information strategy of making it all one fight,” Kilcullen said. He pointedly avoided describing this as the Administration’s approach. “You say, ‘Actually, there are sixty different groups in sixty different countries who all have different objectives. Let’s not talk about bin Laden’s objectives—let’s talk about your objectives. How do we solve that problem?’ ” In other words, the global ambitions of the enemy don’t automatically demand a monolithic response.[my emphasis]

More on this soon.

Posted by Gregory at January 4, 2007 04:12 AM

Comments

why do i get the feeling that "disaggregation" and other such theories are the "workaround" being employed by liberal hawks and sane conservatives to admit what we Moonbats who have opposed Bush's "war on terror" policies have said (and been criticized for saying) all along --- that the primary approach to terrorism requires a "criminal justice" framework rather than a "military" one.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 4, 2007 12:16 PM | Permalink to this comment

I think that this is a repudiation in a way of Paul Berman's theory which has been avidly taken up by so many many hawks. Berman came out of the New Left and the big revelation for him and his comrades was, as Susan Sontag said refering to the crackdown on Solidarity, Communism is fascism. Berman took this basic formulation and linked all totalitarian political systems and ideologies. Therefore, to him, there was no real difference between Baathism and Qtub's ideology, and that Iran's theocracy was the same as Bin Laden's fantasies of a new Caliphate.

This may be a morally reasonable way to think about it, but it is a strategic disaster.

Posted by: RWB at January 4, 2007 02:13 PM | Permalink to this comment

Greg,

It's all the rage.

PL,

I'm neither liberal hawk, nor sane conservative nor Moonbat. But I do like me some disaggregatin'.

What RWB said.

Posted by: Eric Martin at January 4, 2007 05:29 PM | Permalink to this comment

We let ourselves in for a lot of intellectual wheel-spinning if we continue to discuss administration policy in Iraq and elsewhere without reference to the political context.

That context -- the one that matters -- is defined by American domestic politics as they have evolved in recent years, not by politics in the Middle East or elsewhere. Specifically, the political requirement for a President deeply committed to a part of the world neither he nor the American public understand well is a clear message, true enough to be plausible and simple enough to be repeated often enough that everyone likely to vote hears it.

It is true that a President deeply knowledgable about foreign affairs can build enough credit with the American public to be given the benefit of the doubt on policy; such a President can embrace not only nuance but contradiction. Nixon's China policy is the most often cited example, but there are many others. Bush is not this kind of President. This is not just or even primarily because he is exceptional among today's American politicians -- he is actually more like most of them than he is different -- but rather because victory in low-turnout elections requires high levels of political mobilization among a candidates likely supporters, and because this in turn requires a simple message.

Bush's policy toward terrorism has excelled in this respect. His message to his actual and potential supporters has always been clear; he has effectively communicated a posture of resolve, of opposition to things Americans find distasteful, and of support for things (like freedom and democracy) Americans value. If most of your audience does not spend a great deal of their time studying Arab ideologies or the geopolitics of the Middle East -- and most Americans don't -- this level of clarity is going to appeal to that audience absent clear and overwhelming evidence that the resulting policy is going over a cliff.

There is never any guarantee that foreign policies and cliffs will stay safely separated, but it should be clear enough that the danger of things going badly wrong overseas is greatest when the occupant of the Oval Office is largely ignorant of, and indifferent to, foreign affairs before he is elected. Presidents like that are a function of the electoral process, specifically a product of what the public is most looking for in a President every fourth year. In 2000 the public was not looking for sophistication or experience in foreign affairs, as it was not in other years (e.g. the Watergate election of 1976, 1992, 1996). Sometimes a President chosen in such a year will be lucky, and face only quiet times. Sometimes he will face a challenge for which nothing in his life has prepared him, and do very badly.

What this has to do with Kilcullen should, I think, be apparent by now: Kilcullen is arguing as if what the administration is getting wrong is its analysis of various Muslim countries and groups. The problem is instead that the political imperative for a President under stress and out of his depth in foreign affairs is to send a message to the American public that is simple, clear and consistent over time. This imperative is what is driving the analysis, and Kilcullen is mistaking the symptom for the disease.

Posted by: Zathras at January 4, 2007 08:12 PM | Permalink to this comment

No, you have this wrong. Kilcullen has it wrong. As Suskind pointed out in the 1% Doctrine, with tongue only slightly in cheek, Bush and Cheney came to see facts, and knowledge, as getting in the way of action. Or words to that effect. It was an amazing insight on his part. Facts and knowledge lead to contemplation. Contemplation leads to inaction. You see all the possibilities of danger. You go into a cautious holding mode. To hell with that, right W?

Its as if they took Reagan's infamous slip up in one of his speechs, 'facts are stupid things" as a brillant new idea: 'facts are stupid things" indeed

Kilcullen should get with the zeitgeist of the times.

Ok, of course he's got it right. He's just about 3 years too late.

Posted by: jonst at January 4, 2007 08:58 PM | Permalink to this comment

Nothing in Kilcullen is new. A quick red of a little Tom Barry, Mao and any description of the Green Berets would led one to exactly the same conclusions.
The only interesting bit is that someone in D.C. now understands why East Timor was important:it's so much harder to hide one's bloody hands these days.

Posted by: Paul Curtin at January 5, 2007 08:56 PM | Permalink to this comment

Ach!
that's read, not red, he wrote before the irony choked him....

(Paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud!)

Posted by: Paul Curtin at January 5, 2007 08:59 PM | Permalink to this comment

	« Department of 'I Need Help, And Badly!' \| Main \| U.S. Troops In Kurdistan? » January 04, 2007 Talk of the Town: Disaggregation in Vogue Dear Eric, Are we all Kilcullenian disaggregators now? Best, Greg Excerpt from George Packer's excellent piece on Kilcullen: One night earlier this year, Kilcullen sat down with a bottle of single-malt Scotch and wrote out a series of tips for company commanders about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an energetic writer who avoids military and social-science jargon, and he addressed himself intimately to young captains who have had to become familiar with exotica such as “The Battle of Algiers,” the 1966 film documenting the insurgency against French colonists. “What does all the theory mean, at the company level?” he asked. “How do the principles translate into action—at night, with the G.P.S. down, the media criticizing you, the locals complaining in a language you don’t understand, and an unseen enemy killing your people by ones and twos? How does counterinsurgency actually happen? There are no universal answers, and insurgents are among the most adaptive opponents you will ever face. Countering them will demand every ounce of your intellect.” The first tip is “Know Your Turf”: “Know the people, the topography, economy, history, religion and culture. Know every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader, and ancient grievance. Your task is to become the world expert on your district.” “Twenty-eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency”—the title riffs on a T. E. Lawrence insurgency manual from the First World War—was disseminated via e-mail to junior officers in the field, and was avidly read. Last year, in an influential article in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Kilcullen redefined the war on terror as a “global counterinsurgency.” The change in terminology has large implications. A terrorist is “a kook in a room,” Kilcullen told me, and beyond persuasion; an insurgent has a mass base whose support can be won or lost through politics. The notion of a “war on terror” has led the U.S. government to focus overwhelmingly on military responses. In a counterinsurgency, according to the classical doctrine, which was first laid out by the British general Sir Gerald Templar during the Malayan Emergency, armed force is only a quarter of the effort; political, economic, and informational operations are also required. A war on terror suggests an undifferentiated enemy. Kilcullen speaks of the need to “disaggregate” insurgencies: finding ways to address local grievances in Pakistan’s tribal areas or along the Thai-Malay border so that they aren’t mapped onto the ambitions of the global jihad. Kilcullen writes, “Just as the Containment strategy was central to the Cold War, likewise a Disaggregation strategy would provide a unifying strategic conception for the war—something that has been lacking to date.” As an example of disaggregation, Kilcullen cited the Indonesian province of Aceh, where, after the 2004 tsunami, a radical Islamist organization tried to set up an office and convert a local separatist movement to its ideological agenda. Resentment toward the outsiders, combined with the swift humanitarian action of American and Australian warships, helped to prevent the Acehnese rebellion from becoming part of the global jihad. As for America, this success had more to do with luck than with strategy. Crumpton, Kilcullen’s boss, told me that American foreign policy traditionally operates on two levels, the global and the national; today, however, the battlefields are also regional and local, where the U.S. government has less knowledge and where it is not institutionally organized to act. In half a dozen critical regions, Crumpton has organized meetings among American diplomats, intelligence officials, and combat commanders, so that information about cross-border terrorist threats is shared. “It’s really important that we define the enemy in narrow terms,” Crumpton said. “The thing we should not do is let our fears grow and then inflate the threat. The threat is big enough without us having to exaggerate it.” By speaking of Saddam Hussein, the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Taliban, the Iranian government, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda in terms of one big war, Administration officials and ideologues have made Osama bin Laden’s job much easier. “You don’t play to the enemy’s global information strategy of making it all one fight,” Kilcullen said. He pointedly avoided describing this as the Administration’s approach. “You say, ‘Actually, there are sixty different groups in sixty different countries who all have different objectives. Let’s not talk about bin Laden’s objectives—let’s talk about your objectives. How do we solve that problem?’ ” In other words, the global ambitions of the enemy don’t automatically demand a monolithic response.[my emphasis] More on this soon. Posted by Gregory at January 4, 2007 04:12 AM Comments why do i get the feeling that "disaggregation" and other such theories are the "workaround" being employed by liberal hawks and sane conservatives to admit what we Moonbats who have opposed Bush's "war on terror" policies have said (and been criticized for saying) all along --- that the primary approach to terrorism requires a "criminal justice" framework rather than a "military" one. Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 4, 2007 12:16 PM \| Permalink to this comment I think that this is a repudiation in a way of Paul Berman's theory which has been avidly taken up by so many many hawks. Berman came out of the New Left and the big revelation for him and his comrades was, as Susan Sontag said refering to the crackdown on Solidarity, Communism is fascism. Berman took this basic formulation and linked all totalitarian political systems and ideologies. Therefore, to him, there was no real difference between Baathism and Qtub's ideology, and that Iran's theocracy was the same as Bin Laden's fantasies of a new Caliphate. This may be a morally reasonable way to think about it, but it is a strategic disaster. Posted by: RWB at January 4, 2007 02:13 PM \| Permalink to this comment Greg, It's all the rage. PL, I'm neither liberal hawk, nor sane conservative nor Moonbat. But I do like me some disaggregatin'. What RWB said. Posted by: Eric Martin at January 4, 2007 05:29 PM \| Permalink to this comment We let ourselves in for a lot of intellectual wheel-spinning if we continue to discuss administration policy in Iraq and elsewhere without reference to the political context. That context -- the one that matters -- is defined by American domestic politics as they have evolved in recent years, not by politics in the Middle East or elsewhere. Specifically, the political requirement for a President deeply committed to a part of the world neither he nor the American public understand well is a clear message, true enough to be plausible and simple enough to be repeated often enough that everyone likely to vote hears it. It is true that a President deeply knowledgable about foreign affairs can build enough credit with the American public to be given the benefit of the doubt on policy; such a President can embrace not only nuance but contradiction. Nixon's China policy is the most often cited example, but there are many others. Bush is not this kind of President. This is not just or even primarily because he is exceptional among today's American politicians -- he is actually more like most of them than he is different -- but rather because victory in low-turnout elections requires high levels of political mobilization among a candidates likely supporters, and because this in turn requires a simple message. Bush's policy toward terrorism has excelled in this respect. His message to his actual and potential supporters has always been clear; he has effectively communicated a posture of resolve, of opposition to things Americans find distasteful, and of support for things (like freedom and democracy) Americans value. If most of your audience does not spend a great deal of their time studying Arab ideologies or the geopolitics of the Middle East -- and most Americans don't -- this level of clarity is going to appeal to that audience absent clear and overwhelming evidence that the resulting policy is going over a cliff. There is never any guarantee that foreign policies and cliffs will stay safely separated, but it should be clear enough that the danger of things going badly wrong overseas is greatest when the occupant of the Oval Office is largely ignorant of, and indifferent to, foreign affairs before he is elected. Presidents like that are a function of the electoral process, specifically a product of what the public is most looking for in a President every fourth year. In 2000 the public was not looking for sophistication or experience in foreign affairs, as it was not in other years (e.g. the Watergate election of 1976, 1992, 1996). Sometimes a President chosen in such a year will be lucky, and face only quiet times. Sometimes he will face a challenge for which nothing in his life has prepared him, and do very badly. What this has to do with Kilcullen should, I think, be apparent by now: Kilcullen is arguing as if what the administration is getting wrong is its analysis of various Muslim countries and groups. The problem is instead that the political imperative for a President under stress and out of his depth in foreign affairs is to send a message to the American public that is simple, clear and consistent over time. This imperative is what is driving the analysis, and Kilcullen is mistaking the symptom for the disease. Posted by: Zathras at January 4, 2007 08:12 PM \| Permalink to this comment No, you have this wrong. Kilcullen has it wrong. As Suskind pointed out in the 1% Doctrine, with tongue only slightly in cheek, Bush and Cheney came to see facts, and knowledge, as getting in the way of action. Or words to that effect. It was an amazing insight on his part. Facts and knowledge lead to contemplation. Contemplation leads to inaction. You see all the possibilities of danger. You go into a cautious holding mode. To hell with that, right W? Its as if they took Reagan's infamous slip up in one of his speechs, 'facts are stupid things" as a brillant new idea: 'facts are stupid things" indeed Kilcullen should get with the zeitgeist of the times. Ok, of course he's got it right. He's just about 3 years too late. Posted by: jonst at January 4, 2007 08:58 PM \| Permalink to this comment Nothing in Kilcullen is new. A quick red of a little Tom Barry, Mao and any description of the Green Berets would led one to exactly the same conclusions. The only interesting bit is that someone in D.C. now understands why East Timor was important:it's so much harder to hide one's bloody hands these days. Posted by: Paul Curtin at January 5, 2007 08:56 PM \| Permalink to this comment Ach! that's read, not red, he wrote before the irony choked him.... (Paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud!) Posted by: Paul Curtin at January 5, 2007 08:59 PM \| Permalink to this comment		Reviews of Belgravia Dispatch "Awake" --New York Times "Always-Worth Reading" --Andrew Sullivan Recent Entries A Brief (and Belated) Word on Chas Freeman What Would Real--Rather Than Rhetorical--Change in U.S. Foreign Policy Look Like? Of War, and Tent Hospitals The Obama Imperative Some Addt'l Thoughts Re: Georgia McCain: Let's Compound the Blunder! 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