Mali's Model Democracy Myth

The international community seems intent on "restoring democracy" to Mali. But it was the pre-coup status quo that led to collapse in the first place.

Article | 8 February 2013 by Joe Penney 

Bamako, Mali:

Both the Malian people and the international press have been almost unanimous in lauding the French military campaign in Mali, which started in earnest on January 11. The ultimate French goal appears to be returning Mali to its status quo circa 2011 – i.e. before the start of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) campaign in the north. In accordance with this plan, Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traoré, recently announced imminent elections for July 2013.
Thus France will claim to have completed its dual objectives of regaining Mali’s ‘territorial integrity’ and accomplishing a ‘democratic transition’. The French then plan to withdraw smoothly, replacing its fighters with a UN peacekeeping force and conceding the presence of some jihadist fighters in the Adrar des Ifoghas Mountains.

Making sense of Mali's armed groups

After spending weeks reporting from the country's restive north, Al Jazeera's May Ying Welsh reviews some of the different groups and what they want.

May Ying Welsh   Last Modified: 17 Jan 2013 10:19 French planes have bombed targets in Mali in what they consider a fight against al-Qaeda-linked fighters. But the region is a cauldron of instability with a diverse blend of religious fighters, ethnic militas and secularists. MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) The secular separatist Tuareg rebel group wants an independent state in northern Mali called Azawad. MNLA say they want this state for all the peoples of northern Mali (Tuaregs, Songhai, Arabs, and Fulani are the main ethnic groups). They have some token members from the Songhai ethnic group, but the fact is that 99 percent of MNLA fighters are Tuaregs whose motivation is to have a Tuareg state.

Afghanistan: Green on Blue Attacks Are Only a Small Part of the Problem

During the last few weeks, coverage of the Afghan War has focused on ‘green on blue attacks’ - the killings of U.S. and other International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers by members of the Afghan security services. This is part of a natural tendency to ride the headlines, but the coverage has often been misleading, and it reflects a persistent failure to address the far broader range of problems emerging in the war and the needs for major changes in virtually every aspect of the way it is fought.

Read more: http://csis.org/publication/afghanistan-green-on-blue-attacks-are-only-small-part%20of-proble

John Boyd and strategic theory in the postmodern era

John Boyd and strategic theory in the postmodern era
By Frans Osinga

We live in the postmodern era, the French sociologist Francois Lyotard told us in the early eighties. Postmodernism has come to signify a break with traditional modes of behavior. This includes warfare. Two dominant strands of strategic thought have both earned the label of postmodern warfare: Network Centric warfare (NCW) and Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW). One takes its inspiration from the postmodern information society, the other from the eroding authority and power of the modern-era political institutions. Both are also unified in a common conceptual father: the late USAF Colonel John Boyd, the first postmodern strategist. Few people in the past three decades have surpassed his influence on western military thought, but, like Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, he has also often been superficially read and understood.

Read more: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/boyd/osinga_boyd_postmod_copyright2007.pdf

Great debate on military reform!

Great debate on military reform!

Here is a two and 2/3 hours of greatest debate I have ever heard on military affairs. It is on what is actually important in building a force to be able to win wars. I strongly recommend watching it to all military and military related people – makes you think and understand the priorities in creating the really successful defense of any State.

You will see Colonel John Boyd, Senator Gary Hart etc in front of the House Committee Armed Services in 1991. I can promise that the time will be well spent.

Some keywords: personnel policy, military education, doctrines, bureaucracy, high tech, maneuver warfare, Gulf War.

Credit goes to Major Donald Vandergriff (U.S.) for appointing it out. Thanks Don!

See the video: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/AfterO

Mission Command: Questions for the Army Personnel System

Mission Command:  Questions for the Army Personnel System

Don Vandergriff

So, how do we create strategic corporals, strategic lieutenants, strategic majors, and strategic colonels?  The trick is to instill a culture like the one embodied in the Army’s new TRADOC Pam 525-3-0, The Army Capstone Concept Operational Adaptability—Operating Under Conditions of Uncertainty and Complexity in an Era of Persistent Conflict.[1]  The emphasis is on evolving toward the practice and culture of Mission Command.  The essence of this approach is to ensure that we lead through Auftragstaktik, a German word that implies that once everyone understands the commanders’ intent (two levels up), then people are free to and indeed duty-bound to use their creativity and initiative to accomplish their missions within the intent. Within such an environment, teams will largely self-organize within the doctrinal framework to accomplish the mission. Such a military culture that supports Mission Command takes time to develop, must be embraced across the entire spectrum of the Army, practiced in every institution—operational and generating forces—while decrees from above cannot magically decentralize operations conducted by Adaptive leaders.[2]

Irregular Warfare and Adaptive Leadership

Irregular Warfare and Adaptive Leadership

Paul Yingling

When I was a battalion XO in Iraq in 2003, I served with a company commander whose vehicle was struck by an early version of an IED. The fragmentation shattered his windshield and severed his antennas, the smoke and dust obscured his vision and the blast temporarily deafened him. In the first critical seconds after the blast, the commander saw the ubiquitous white pickup leaving the blast area, but didn’t pursue it. His battalion commander was furious, and later harangued the captain for his failure to act. The company commander was crushed; he felt the battalion commander was questioning his courage, and in fact he was.

A Review of The Pentagon Labyrinth

A Review of The Pentagon Labyrinth

By Werther via Don Vandergriff

In a recent radio interview, the British historian Timothy Garton Ash stated that his overall impression of the United States was one of dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit, such as in the Silicon Valley. But Washington, D.C., he said, reminded him of Moscow in the former Soviet Union.

In the context of the interview, he probably intended that as a criticism of the U.S. capital as being stagnant, status quo, and wedded to obsolete theories. But in a more pointed way he may not have consciously meant, it is equally true that Washington is remarkably like late-Brezhnev era Moscow in the sense of being very visibly the capital of a garrison state. With its billboard adverts for fighter aircraft in local Metro stations, radio spots recruiting for “the National Clandestine Service,” its ubiquitous Jersey Wall checkpoints, and its electronic freeway signs admonishing motorists to report suspicious activity (whatever that may be), the District of Columbia quite accurately simulates the paranoid atmosphere of a cold war era capital of Eastern Europe, say, East Berlin or Bucharest, albeit at two orders of magnitude greater cost.

Petraeus’s Last Stand?

Petraeus’s Last Stand?

February 24, 2011 by Don Vandergriff

The author of this important report in Politics Daily (also attached below), Dave Wood, is a very experienced combat reporter and one of the very best US reporters covering Afghanistan. (Truth in advertising: I have known and admired Dave for 25 years.) Wood has produced an an excellent, if grim, Afghan SITREP that is well worth studying carefully, including its hotlinks.

I think it would be a mistake to conclude that the situation being in a kind a balance, because we are in a strategic stalemate, however. While it is probably true we are in a strategic stalemate in the strictest sense of term ‘strategic,’ every year the Taliban is able to maintain its menacing posture gives the insurgents additional leverage at the far more decisive grand-strategic level of conflict: To wit, ask yourself if any of the following five trends (which are inversions of the five criteria defining a successful grand strategy) is way out of line:

(1) Polls tell us that the political will at home to continue this war is slowing deteriorating;

(2) our allies are also going wobbly and some have already pulled the plug;

(3) uncommitted countries are not being attracted to our cause and our warlike activities are alienating many in the Muslim world;

(4) the insurgents’ will to resist shows no sign of weakening; and

(5) no one the US government has a clue how to end this conflict on favorable terms for the United States that do not sow the seeds of future conflict in the region, or with Islam.

The Afghan insurgents may not understand grand strategy in these terms, but they understand instinctively that they can outlast invaders, because they believe they have done it before to Alexander the Great, the British at the height of their imperial power, and the Soviets. Is there anyone who not think the insurgents’ moral is being boosted by the prospect of outlasting the Americans?

A simple grand-strategic analysis reveals that time is clearly on the Taliban’s side and to assume that battle hardened leaders of the Taliban do not understand this is just a tad optimistic, to put it charitably. In fact, the breakdown of President Obama’s strategic review last December, which devolved into a dispute over when to leave, simply reinforced the obvious.

Chuck Spinney

Read more: http://donvandergriff.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/petraeuss-last-stand/

It Takes a Network

BY STANLEY A. MCCHRYSTAL

From the outset of my command in Afghanistan, two or three times each week, accompanied by a few aides and often my Afghan counterparts, I would leave the International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul and travel across Afghanistan -- from critical cities like Kandahar to the most remote outposts in violent border regions. Ideally, we left early, traveling light and small, normally using a combination of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, to meet with Afghans and their leaders and to connect with our troops on the ground: Brits and Marines rolling back the enemy in Helmand, Afghan National Army troops training in Mazar-e-Sharif, French Foreign Legionnaires patrolling in Kapisa.

But I was not alone: There were other combatants circling the battlefield. Mirroring our movements, competing with us, were insurgent leaders. Connected to, and often directly dispatched by, the Taliban's leadership in Pakistan, they moved through the same areas of Afghanistan. They made shows of public support for Taliban shadow governors, motivated tattered ranks, recruited new troops, distributed funds, reviewed tactics, and updated strategy. And when the sky above became too thick with our drones, their leaders used cell phones and the Internet to issue orders and rally their fighters. They aimed to keep dispersed insurgent cells motivated, strategically wired, and continually informed, all without a rigid -- or targetable -- chain of command.

Read more: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/it_takes_a_network