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5801. Military Support for Democracy

Author:
Dennis C. Blair
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
In the past year three dictatorships with strong military support ended peacefully—in Tunisia, Egypt, and Burma. The armed forces of all three countries played a decisive role. Having for years supported autocratic regimes in which they enjoyed privileged positions, the army leaders in Tunisia and Egypt turned away from the very dictators who made them generals years before. In Burma a younger generation of officers took off their uniforms and set up the rudiments of a more democratic form of government. The outcome of the events in all three countries is not yet clear; what is clear is that military leaders in autocratic countries are not blind followers of the dictators who appointed them. They can turn against the regime or reform themselves in surprising ways.
Political Geography:
Burma, Egypt, and Tunisia

5802. Concept Failure? COIN, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Theory

Author:
Colin S. Gray
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
The general theory of strategy, which explains the structure, content, and working of the strategy function, has a domain of intellectual authority that is universal and eternal. This logical precedence over the wide variety of historically unique strategic phenomena means that the theory can provide order and discipline to help those who argue about particular ideas and their practical expression in action. This article is a modest attempt to bring general strategic theory to the intellectual feast of rival ideas and doctrines about COIN, or should it be counterinsurgency, that continues to excite combative theorists.

5803. Silver Bullet or Time Suck? Revisiting the Role of Interagency Coordination in Complex Operations

Author:
Andrea Barbara Baumann
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
American-led interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan are drawing to an end and the political climate inside the Beltway has turned decidedly hostile toward large deployments of U.S. troops and civilians overseas. Consequently, stability operations have dropped off the radar for many analysts and commentators. The policy community that once feverishly tackled questions over how to stabilize foreign countries through the extended deployment of military and civilian capabilities under various labels (most prominently state- or nation-building and/or population- centric counterinsurgency) is shifting its gaze elsewhere. With growing hindsight, the entire endeavor is often declared as flawed from the start. In addition to this sense of strategic failure, a drop in political attention now heightens the risk of losing hard-earned insights from these operations. This is therefore a crucial time to evaluate the institutional developments that operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have spurred.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and America

5804. Finding Innovation in State-building: Moving Beyond the Orthodox Liberal Model

Author:
Mark Sedra
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
The collapse of a series of postcolonial states in the developing world following the end of the Cold War stimulated a shift in Western security thinking. Influenced by the emerging discourse on globalization, Western policymakers and analysts began to see these newly bankrupt states in the global periphery as posing a distinct threat to the wealthy Western core of the international system. Indeed, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which were partially planned from one of the world's chronic fragile states, Afghanistan, seemed to justify the notion that ungoverned spaces around the world posed a direct threat to global security.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan

5805. Capability Traps in Development: How Initiatives to Improve Administrative Systems Succeed at Failing

Author:
Michael Woolcock, Matt Andrews, and Lant Pritchett
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
In many nations today, the state has little capability to implement even basic functions such as security, policing, regulation, or core service delivery. Enhancing this capability, especially in fragile states, is a long-term task. As we document in this article, countries such as Haiti and Liberia will take many decades to reach even a moderate capability country such as India, and millennia to reach the capability of Singapore. Short-term programmatic efforts to build administrative capability in these countries are thus unlikely to demonstrate actual success, yet billions of dollars continue to be spent on such activities. What techniques enable states to “buy time” to enable reforms to work, mask nonaccomplishment, or actively resist or deflect the internal and external pressures for improvement? How do donors and recipient countries manage to engage in the logics of “development” for so long and yet consistently acquire so little administrative capability? In short, how do initiatives to modernize administrative systems so often succeed at failing?
Political Geography:
India, Haiti, Liberia, and Singapore

5806. Lessons from MoDA: Continuing the Conversation on How to Advise Institution-building

Author:
Nadia Gerspacher and Adrian Shtuni
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
Established in 2009, the Afghanistan Ministry of Defense Advisors (MoDA) program was based on a thorough needs assessment and extensive consultations with U.S., coalition, and Afghan stakeholders as well as possible support and service providers. The program initially recruited, trained, and deployed 17 senior advisors to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Training Mission–Afghanistan/Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan (NTM-A/CSTC-A) mission. Most advisors were assigned to the Ministry of Defense (MoD), with a few assigned to the Ministry of Interior (MoI). The goal of the program is to help transform the key security ministries into more efficient, effective, and professional institutions, capable of inheriting and executing the overall national security mission by 2014. By all accounts, the advisors, guided by many other similar capacity-building joint projects, have thus far effectively engaged their counterparts at MoD and MoI, developing rapport and productive professional relationships at a relatively early stage in their tours.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and North Atlantic

5807. Recognizing Systems in Afghanistan: Lessons Learned and New Approaches to Operational Assessments

Author:
William P. Upshur, Jonathan W. Roginski, and David J. Kilcullen
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
Until it was overhauled in 2011, the assessments process in Afghanistan's Regional Command South was mired in 240 metrics and indicators—some of which were uncollectable while others were entirely irrelevant. It lacked focus, failed to define the problem, and was divorced from decisionmaking cycles. That is to say, it was representative of how operational assessments are usually conducted. There was a general understanding that measuring the conflict environment was vital to the mission and to operational success. But what that was supposed to look like and how it was supposed to be accomplished were never articulated. What resulted was a frenetic approach that tried to measure the universe—attempting to analyze everything and accomplishing little.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan

5808. In Somalia, Kenya Risks Death by a Thousand Cuts

Author:
Lesley Anne Warner
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
For two decades, Somalia has been a failed state, devoid of an effective central government, and the source of multiple threats to the international community. Over the years, Kenya has borne the brunt of Somalia's instability but has historically pursued a multilateral and primarily diplomatic approach to the Somalia problem. Yet in October 2011, with no clear end in sight to the threats spilling over its northern border, Kenya launched Operation Linda Nchi, Swahili for “protect the nation.” At the outset of the operation, Kenya's objective, according to a government spokesman, was to dismantle the al Qaeda–affiliated Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, but not to maintain a prolonged presence in Somalia. There has since been speculation that Kenya also seeks to disrupt al-Shabaab's finances by expelling it from the city of Kismayo, whose port is currently the group's largest source of revenue.
Political Geography:
Kenya and Somalia

5809. The Opportunity Cost of Security

Author:
Dov S. Zakheim
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
The United States has been fighting wars, to a greater or lesser extent, for the better part of the past 20 years. Indeed, hardly a year has passed during that period in which American forces were not involved in combat somewhere in the world. At the same time, the extent to which the United States and its military should be involved in nation-building, which increasingly was tied to the outcome of American military operations, became a major issue during the 1990s. In fact, there were two aspects to this issue, both of which were, and still are, hotly debated.
Political Geography:
United States and America

5810. Village Stability Operations and Afghan Local Police

Author:
Robert Hulslander and Jake Spivey
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
This article examines the security and stability programs known as Village Stability Operations (VSO) and Afghan Local Police (ALP). Created through the combined efforts of the U.S. military, other U.S. Government departments and agencies, and the Afghan government, VSO/ALP enhanced security, governance, and development in strategically important rural areas critical to the Afghanistan campaign but beyond the effective reach of the Afghan government and U.S. conventional forces. VSO/ALP attempts to link and effectively balance centralized and decentralized authority by bolstering traditional governance mechanisms. The program was designed to mitigate shortcomings in Afghan governance and security capacity and capability, while “buying time” for those capabilities to mature. Although the program's official inception was in August 2010, its roots go back to earlier efforts that served as the basis of the current initiative. Ultimately, VSO/ALP aims to provide a framework through which the Afghan government can strengthen its relationship with its citizens and wrest control and influence away from the Taliban, other insurgents, and criminal networks.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Taliban