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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

PD AND COUNTERINSURGENCY IN THE GLOBALIZATION AGE: TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN?
JUN 23, 2008 - 12:42PM PST
Posted by Daryl Copeland
All posts by this author

Globalization is contributing to a growing international divide -- political, economic, cultural, and digital. This gap, characterized by the polarization of wealth and resources and the breakdown of shared goals and identity, has contributed to heightened instability and the generation of conflict. Terrorism and holy war have been among the reactions.

Unfortunately, the West's organizational tools, policy instruments and military doctrine, mired still in Cold War era thinking, appear incapable of responding adequately. Foreign ministries and departments of defense tend to be rigid, compartmentalized and hierarchic; they aren't designed or equipped to connect with populations, forge partnerships with civil society, use the new and conventional media strategically, generate granular intelligence, or communicate cross-culturally. Few diplomats or military officers have the requisite background, training, skills or experience.

Moreover, the prevalence of an adversarial world view predicated on an "us versus them" mentality and a tendency to militarize international policy responses has imposed a continuing focus on out-moded objectives such as technological/weapons superiority; controlling territory and retooling command bureaucracies. In the face of an agile, smart, networked and distributed threat -- global insurgency which uses religion to motivate violent extremism -- new approaches are imperative.

Those who theorize war and political-military relations these days have little choice but ponder counterinsurgency (or COIN, in the language of the trade). It just happens to be what many NATO governments are attempting to do in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq -- and, it must be added, without great success. Conventionally trained armies are struggling with asymmetrical confrontations because they are organized, doctrinally, culturally and materially, for contesting the larger-scale and more structured types of conflict which they would like to fight, rather than the jagged, complex, shadowy conflicts in which they find themselves enmeshed.

Traditionally formed diplomats, for their part, are running into difficulty because they are equipped primarily to deal with the representatives of other states, and are most comfortable operating in metropolitan centers where much time is spent interacting with others of their ilk.

How can insurgency be successfully countered? Not easily. From Roman times to the Third Reich, and including the so-called Indian wars in the western USA and the Boer War in southern Africa, some combination of harsh measures, retaliation wreaked upon civilians in a manner way out of proportion to your own losses, and extreme brutality could usually be counted on to dampen the enthusiasm of the population for rebellion. Another tried and true technique is massive occupation -- say, one soldier for something between every twenty and every one hundred persons occupied, depending upon the ferocity of the resistance. That means heavy casualties for the occupier, and consequent political challenges on the home front.

With widespread sensitivity and concern over human rights, mass media coverage, and limited public tolerance for casualties, neither of these standard approaches is realistically possible. So what remains? You can try to hand over control to a friendly local regime and allow them to deal with the backwash, but, as has been shown with the Karzai (Afghanistan) and al-Maliki (Iraq) governments, that is a tall order. It is very difficult to find credible, legitimate, and effective partners.

In a striking example of the post-Cold War de-territorialization of political space, it is the population, not the place that has become the strategic center of gravity. That puts a premium on political persuasion, convincing people that your intentions are noble and constructive and that your efforts deserve support. Yet this is rarely attempted. Instead of reaching out to populations through dialogue and partnership, a variety of alternative objectives have been substituted: break, take, hold, repair the damage.

Variations on the theme of "shock and awe," which combines speed, advanced technology and overwhelming force to establish "full spectrum dominance" might work for regime change, but are highly counter-productive in the aftermath.

In the counterinsurgency type of conflict, as was so clearly the case in Vietnam, tactical victory is next to irrelevant. If you are winning every battle but still losing the war, then something is clearly out of kilter. Modern insurgency is in large part a function of underdevelopment, and will best respond if treated accordingly. If all efforts are not directed ultimately toward locally sourced good governance, the rule of law, the provision of services and political participation, and the construction of representative institutions, then neither development nor security can be anticipated.

Distracted by terrorism and confounded by the jihadist political ideologies associated with Islamism, it seems fair to say that the main currents of strategic thinking in Western countries have not fully adapted to the sweeping implications of the globalization age. Specifically, the costs of the failure to come to terms with the political and developmental pre-requisites of security are adding up, and now demand a fundamental change in direction.

How to begin to bridge this gap, especially, in the case of armed conflict, at the sharp, pointy end of the diplomatic spectrum?

Here something quite unprecedented seems to be happening. Two strains of thought, emanating in some cases from opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum, are apparently converging. When it comes to dealing with irregular conflict, military and civilian analysts are arriving at more or less the same place: the theme of engaging populations. The clearest signs of this convergence are cropping up -- if not always explicitly -- in the literature on counter-insurgency, a good deal of it written by active or retired service personnel. This is especially evident in some of the new thinking around "Three Block" and "Fourth Generation" war, which implies a broader understanding of the implications of globalization.

With the release of a welter of new articles, books and manuals, contemporary COIN doctrine, at least at the tactical end, is beginning to come into line with current conditions in theater. As happened in earlier conflicts in places such as Vietnam and Malaya, it is gradually dawning on the theorists of counter-insurgency that asymmetrical conflicts are prime candidates for the application of political approaches to problem solving and dispute resolution, applied through the medium of public diplomacy.

Shared PD/COIN themes include favoring flexibility over force; emphasizing brain power over firepower, and; winning hearts and minds rather than taking and holding physical territory. Critical competencies? Abstract thinking, problem-solving skills and rapid-adaptive cognition. Awaiting instructions, following orders and referring to operating manuals won't cut it in this fast-paced, high-risk environment. And talking with the enemy? It just might produce better results than shooting up wedding parties, crashing through compounds, bashing down doors and entering living rooms in tanks. These methods provide the grist of jihadist recruitment videos, not the building blocks of confidence, trust and respect.

Bottom line? In the globalized international security environment, political counterinsurgency and military public diplomacy appear to be converging to become two sides of the same coin.

What are the full implications for soldiers and diplomats, armies and foreign ministries?

This remains to be seen, but of this, at least, we can be sure. Soldiers may have the watches, but the guerrillas have the time. So let's start by putting a hold on dispatching the armored divisions, and instead send in a busload of political officers who can operate effectively in conflict zones, who specialize in dialogue rather than combat, and for whom insurgent thinking will be second nature.

For multilingual, culturally savvy, creative and, not least, courageous public diplomats, the challenge of COIN beckons inevitably.
 
Read Comments (2) | Add Your Own

Read Comments:

Noah Chestnut on June 24, 2008 @ 12:32 pm:
Counterinsurgency, Diversion & Engagement

In today’s Wall Street Journal (June 24), newly appointed Under-Secretary for Public Diplomacy James Glassman describes a new priority for American public diplomacy: diversion. Glassman writes:

“Our vision is a pluralistic world with many peaceful and productive choices on how to order one's life. The task is not to persuade potential recruits to become like Americans or Europeans, but to divert them from becoming terrorists. We do that by helping to build networks (virtual and physical) and countermovements – not just political but cultural, social, athletic and more: mothers against violence, video gamers, soccer enthusiasts, young entrepreneurs, Islamic democrats. For example, there is an emerging global network of families of Islamic victims of terrorist attacks. While winning hearts and minds would be an admirable feat, the war of ideas needs to adopt the more immediate and realistic goal of diverting impressionable segments of the population from being recruited into violent extremism.” (1)

After re-reading your post about counterinsurgency and public diplomacy, Glassman’s new strategy appears to have heeded your advice. He argues that public diplomats should target receptive segments of foreign populations in order to establish support networks to that can prove the noble intentions of your country. Diversion can be described as a way to aid counter-insurgency campaigns. The goal is not to win over populations, but to alter their behavior away from violence.

While I laud this mission in theory, I am hesitant to embrace public diplomacy as a medium of counter-insurgency for two reasons. First, this strategy places too much faith in public diplomacy for solving the problems of fledgling counter-insurgency campaigns, risking a backlash to public diplomacy as a whole. Public diplomacy can (and has) become a scapegoat for broader structural problems, like underdevelopment and the absence of the rule of law. Even if there were busloads of “diplomatic special forces” (2) ready to be deployed in conflict zones, there are a host of other factors that can play spoiler to even the best designed counter-insurgency plans. A recent issue of the Cato Institute’s Policy Analysis expands on this point:

The problem with counterinsurgency warfare is not that its theory of victory is
illogical. If you understand the culture, if you avoid counterproductive violence, if you integrate civilians and make reconstruction operations a reward for cooperation, if you train the local forces well, if you pick your allies wisely, if you protect enough civilians and win their loyalty and more, you might succeed. But even avoiding a few of these ifs is too much competence to expect of foreign powers. That is why insurgencies in the last century generally lasted for decades and why the track record of democratic powers pacifying uprisings in foreign lands is abysmal. (3)

Too often policy-makers cast public diplomacy as a cure-all for America’s ills in curbing terrorism. Despite limited funding and resources, public diplomacy remains attractive in the halls of Congress because it can be synonymous with both common sense and innovation. Unfortunately, saying that we should talk to the enemy in an increasingly shrinking world is not enough. Prescriptions such as this keep public diplomacy in a precarious position because its goals remain subservient to something else. Public diplomacy lacks a truly lasting mission. Before it was fighting communism, now it is diverting terrorists/insurgents. Without something to hang its hat on, public diplomacy is vulnerable to unfair criticism. Thus, my second point.

Defining public diplomacy in terms of counterinsurgency further dilutes the structural independence of public diplomacy. Structural independence, refers to the capacity of public diplomats to define their own agenda external from policy-makers in the Executive and Congress. Without an independent agenda of its own, public diplomacy is held hostage to the most recent and/or pressing crises. Public diplomacy should really be named crisis public diplomacy. Look to when the most recent push for public diplomacy originated. It arose from the barrage of scholarly articles, studies, op-eds and government hearings following the attacks on September eleventh. A central problem of ‘crisis pd’ is that it is inherently reactionary. Playing catch-up poses a series of problems, such as hindering public diplomats from defining problems, placing inordinate demands for immediate results and creating unmanageable goals.

Even with these expressed hesitations, I do believe that public diplomacy plays a critical role in stemming insurgent violence. Public diplomacy can divert people away from taking up arms. In order for this to work, clarity and specificity are crucial. The responsibilities of public diplomats must be made clear to both domestic and foreign publics. Additionally, public diplomacy must be given a voice during planning and strategy sessions. It is clichéd to quote Murrow, but public diplomacy needs to be present during takeoffs. It would be a mistake to treat public diplomacy as merely a tactic to aid in responding to a problem. Finally, public diplomats must be willing (and allowed) to say no. Recent failures, such as Alhurra, are partly due to a lack of credibility stemming from the inability to be independent from those that make policy. For public diplomacy to be able to aid in a counter-insurgency, it must be allowed to criticize other elements of America’s counter-insurgency campaign.

Noah Chestnut
Masters of Public Diplomacy Candidate, 2009
University of Southern California

(1) James K. Glassman, “How to Win the War of Ideas,” Wall Street Journal, A19, 24 June, 2008.

(2) Kurt M. Campbell and Michael E. O’Hanlon, Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security, New York: Basic Books, 2006: 115-116.

(3) Benjamin H. Friedman, Harvey M. Sapolsky and Christopher Preble, “Learning the Right Lessons from Iraq,” Policy Analysis 610, 13 February 2008, http://www.cato.org/pub_cat_display.php?pub_cat=2. See also Gil Merom’s How Democracies Lose Small Wars and Jeffrey Record’s Beating Goliath.

joel rochow on June 29, 2008 @ 6:28 am:
Hi Darryl. As USIA officer, I remember Bobby Kennedy's interest in counterinsurgency.

Nothing ever got implemented, except that USIA director Leonard Marks, Johnson family TV lawyer, promised LBJ to send USIA officers to Vietnam. Four of us even got trained in the essential fluency in Vietnamese.

Darryl, there was one 27 year old bird colonel I met in Vietnam who "got it." As far as the other USIA, Army and Marine people, they had little knowledge (initially) of the language, culture, politics of Vietnam.

Not their fault they got no training, but their ability to contribute to counterinsurgency was limited, except for a USIA officer named Frank Scotton. He also "got it."

Bureaucracies are tough to bring on line regarding any project. In the world of computers, Microsoft's "Windows" is still letting in lots of viruses, 20 years after its inception.

So how are projects successfully launched? First by having a cooperative bureacy, and then by bringing on board people who know the subject, and again, we are back to an essential knowledge of language, culture, politics.

If you want an army, or even a successful insurgency, you needto have people who know how to fire a rifle and keep it clean and serviceable. Well, in the fascinating, complex field of dealing with attitudes - theirs and ours - we seem to have field "soldiers" who know how to fire a rifle.

Find the Frank Scottons, actual and potential, train them in (here we go again) language, culture, politics and history, and make sure they get a chance to pass on their developed attitudes and skills to others. Otherwise, it all remains in the field of theory and possibility, but not yet reality.

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