Regaining Strategy: Small Powers,Strategic Culture,and Escalation in Afghanistan

Abstract

In Western operations in Afghanistan, small European powers escalate in different ways. While Denmark and the Netherlands have contributed to Western escalation through integration with British and US forces, Norway and Sweden have done so by creating a division of labour allowing US and British combat forces to concentrate their efforts in the south. These variations in strategic behaviour suggest that the strategic choice of small powers is more diversified than usually assumed. We argue that strategic culture can explain the variation in strategic behaviour of the small allies in Afghanistan. In particular, Dutch and Danish internationalism have reconciled the use of force in the national and international domains, while in Sweden and Norway there is still a sharp distinction between national interest and humanitarianism.     

Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992–1993

ABSTRACT

The conventional wisdom about the 1992 US intervention in Somalia is that it was a quintessentially humanitarian mission pushed by President George H. W. Bush. This article challenges that interpretation, drawing on newly declassified documents. The Somalia intervention, I argue, was largely a pragmatic response to concerns held by the US military. In late 1992, as the small UN mission in Somalia was collapsing, senior American generals worried about being drawn into the resulting vacuum. Hence they reluctantly recommended a robust US intervention, in the expectation that this would allow the UN to assemble a larger peacekeeping force that would take over within months. The intervention ultimately failed, but the military learned useful lessons from this experience on how to achieve smoother UN handoffs in the future and thus effectively shift longer-term stabilisation burdens to the international community.     

Sir Robert Thompson,Strategic Patience and Nixon’s War in Vietnam

Counter-insurgency scholars have long been familiar with Sir Robert Thompson’s classic work Defeating Communist Insurgency, which combined analysis of the insurgencies in Malaya and Vietnam with advice for counter-insurgents that emphasised the drawn-out nature of insurgency and the importance of focusing on population security. While historians have called attention to his role with the British Advisory Mission in South Vietnam and his later criticism of the US counter-insurgency campaign in Vietnam in his various books, less has been written about his subsequent role as a pacification advisor to the Nixon administration. This article explores Thompson’s relationship with Kissinger and Nixon and his views on the war in Vietnam from 1969 to 1974. An examination of Thompson’s thinking on Vietnam in the Nixon years reveals a theorist whose optimism on US prospects there was based on assumptions about elite and public patience for lengthy wars that were ultimately misplaced.     

Fencing the bear? Explaining US foreign policy towards Russian interventions

Despite the burgeoning literature on Russia’s renewed power politics, little attention has been paid to the fact that US reactions towards Russia’s military interventions were all but coherent. The USA has chosen weak measures in Georgia in 2008 (shaming) compared to its assertive response in Ukraine in 2014 (sanctions, hard deterrence). This article assesses the explanatory power of neorealist, liberal and constructivist theories for the variation in US reactions towards Russian interventions in Georgia and Ukraine. Our argument is that the constructivist perspective explains the cases best as it highlights the power and communality of normative assessments. The Ukraine crisis was perceived by the USA as a violation of core international norms, especially the non-use of force and the principle of territorial integrity. Relevant international norm carriers shared this assessment of the conflict. In contrast, the perception of the Georgian war centred on the issue of democracy promotion. While democracy is an important aim of US foreign policy, it does not summon the same normative importance as general principles of international law. Furthermore, the perception of the Georgian war remained contested among Western allies, which decreased the communality of the normative assessment.     

US warfare in Somalia and the trade-off between casualty-aversion and civilian protection

This article examines the ways in which the two normative concerns of casualty-aversion and civilian protection influenced US military strategy in the particular context of the asymmetric conflict in Somalia in the early 1990s. The article critically evaluates US military operations through the prism of international humanitarian law and examines whether American forces started prioritizing casualty-aversion over the safeguarding of Somali civilians. Finally, by drawing on emerging moral guidelines (such as Michael Walzer's idea of ‘due care’), the article examines whether lower numbers of Somali civilian deaths could have been achieved if marginal increases to the risks faced by US soldiers had been accepted.     

POWER,INFLUENCE, AND HIERARCHY: DEFENSE INDUSTRIES IN A UNIPOLAR WORLD

The global defense‐industrial sector reflects the hierarchy of power in the post‐Cold War world. As in the larger international system, the United States plays the dominant role in the defense sector as well. It is a comparative advantage often used by US policymakers to influence the foreign policy behavior of other states. Curiously, the radical concentration of the world’s defense industrial sector, as described here, has received relatively little scrutiny from either academia or the media, even though it not only reflects the international order but provides the United States with considerable leverage in it.     

The 1950 ‘Ambassador's agreement’ on USAF bases in the UK and British fears of US atomic unilateralism

The article explores the 1950 ‘Ambassador's Agreement’ (named after US Ambassador Lewis Douglas) about establishing long-term US air bases in the UK. During the discussions British representatives expressed resentment of American pressure and were concerned about the expense that developing the bases for American purposes might entail. There were even fears that Washington might use the airfields to launch an atomic bomb attack on the USSR without regard to the views of the UK government. The British consented to providing the bases because they wanted to enmesh the US further in UK and Western European defence. For their part American negotiators had wanted to further US atomic strategy without delay. Although the agreement imposed no restriction on the use of the airfields, some US officials believed that in a crisis the UK government might try to prevent them being used for atomic bombing missions.     

France,the United States and the invisible Algerian outcome

The American administration was much influenced through the late 1950s by the consequences of decolonisation. Though a nation historically committed to anti-imperialism, members of the American administration became anxious at the extent to which recently independent states were coalescing into a large ‘neutralist’ bloc likely to threaten US interests, particularly in the UN. Washington feared in particular that this Afro-Asian grouping might fall under the sway of the Soviet Union. How best to solve this problem created divisions within the US government about dealing with the Algerian problem: some favoured closer contacts with the FLN; others wished to help the French. In the end by hedging their bets and wishing to broker a solution American governments displeased both sides.     

Joint Publication 3-07.15 Tactics,Techniques and Procedures for Advising Foreign Forces and the American Mission

US Army Major Paul Marks discusses the history of American advisory efforts during the Cold War and recommends that the concept and the use of advisors be revived as a tool of contemporary American foreign policy. The failure of American advisors to turn the South Vietnamese armed force into a viable entity and the lack of public knowledge about the success of advisors in El Salvador in the 1980s contribute to a bias against advisors in the public, the government, and the military. The article argues that in today's evolving security environment where the large scale commitment of US troops is neither feasible nor necessary, US national interests can still be advanced through the judicious use of advisors. The article proposes a Joint publication as the doctrinal basis for the employment of advisors.     

Staying Power and the American Future: Problems of Primacy,Policy, and Grand Strategy

Many scholars, strategists and pundits contend that the US is in decline. They argue that America's national capabilities are significantly eroding, and that with the rise of important regional powers, its primacy in world affairs is rapidly diminishing as well. Yet America continues to possess significant advantages in critical sectors such as economic size, technology, competitiveness, demography, force size, power projection, military technology, and in the societal capacity to innovate and adapt. This article argues that the nature of material problems has been overstated, and that the US should be able to withstand modest erosion in its relative strength for some time to come without losing its predominant status. Instead, where limits to American primacy do exist, they are as or more likely to be ideational as they are material. The problem inheres as much or more in elite and societal beliefs, policy choices, and political will, as in economic, technological or manpower limitations at home, or the rise of peer competitors abroad.     

Reinventing the Revolution: Technological Visions,Counterinsurgent Criticism,and the Rise of Special Operations

Two big ideas have shaped recent debate about military doctrine: the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and Counterinsurgency (COIN). These ‘network centric’ and ‘population centric’ worldviews appear contradictory, but this is a false dichotomy. American forces have actively developed RMA concepts in COIN environments during recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the exemplar par excellence is innovation by US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in doctrine, technology, and organization for counterterrorism. Ironically, SOCOM's reimagining of the RMA managed to both improve the strengths and underscore the weaknesses of the American military's technological prowess.     

North Korea,deterrence, and engagement

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) justifies its nuclear weapon arsenal with the concept of deterrence. It means that it will try to miniaturize and modernize its warheads and missiles. This leads to a first-use doctrine of nuclear weapons. Obama's policy of engagement does not offer a solution to the North Korean nuclear issue as yet. In the context of its policy of critical engagement with the DPRK, the European Union has three key interests: regional peace and stability, denuclearization, and human rights. The Conference on Security and Cooperation (CSCE) could be a precedent. The CSCE process was based on three “baskets”: security, economics, and humanitarian. The multilateral Trans-Pacific Partnership is a step in this regard. This article looks at three theoretical approaches: realism, liberal institutionalism, and liberal internationalism. It concludes that a political strategy to create a stable North Korean peninsula has to go beyond nuclear deterrence that is based on the realist notion of balance of power.     

Reward,punishment or inducement? US economic and military aid, 1946–1996

If the US has wielded power as global hegemon, then there should be evidence of a linkage between American resources and the ability to influence behavior. However, there is widespread disagreement on how this power is manifested (see Krause, ). Methodological and epistemological issues have hampered empirical studies of US hegemonic behavior. For example, does the US reward past behavior or does it offer inducements for future behavior? We document and discuss these issues in terms of the aid–foreign policy compliance nexus. The empirical portion of our paper tests whether US military and non‐military aid are correlated with foreign policy similarity. The main merits of our study are that: (1) we test a new measure of foreign policy similarity developed by Signorino and Ritter () and compiled by Gartzke et al. (); (2) we relax the causality issue and test using vector autoregression (VAR) for 76 developing countries; and (3) our time horizon is a minimum of 30 years for each country. Our central finding is that aid is most often used as a reward. More specifically, foreign policy similarity leads to greater economic aid for most African countries, foreign policy similarity leads to greater military aid for a majority of Latin American states, and there are no overarching patterns for Asia and the Middle East. We discuss the implications of our findings in the context of the bargaining and structural approaches to statecraft.     

The American way of war in Africa: the case of Niger

ABSTRACT

Increasing attention paid to US casualties in far-flung places such as Tongo Tongo, Niger, and headlines claiming ‘secret wars’ have fueled discussion about American military’s involvement in Africa. Though the continent has been a part of the American way of war since the beginnings of the US – consider the early combat actions of US Marines in Tripoli –, current African conflicts are challenging our understanding of war and approaches to winning it. This article examines the ways America seeks to achieve its ends in Africa with a particular focus upon the last 10 years of US counter-terrorism and stability operations in Niger and the Sahel Region. The author proposes unifying American, Allied, and partner efforts through a strategy of Active Containment.     

Beyond 'the Mogadishu Line': Some Australian Lessons for Managing Intra-State Conflicts

The controversial humanitarian intervention in Somalia was a foretaste of a continuing international failure to come to terms with the post-Cold War security environment. For much of the 1990s, the wrong lessons, drawn almost entirely from the unsuccessful US experience in Mogadishu, shackled international thinking about international conflicts like Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Bosnia. Yet if the international communities going to develop a more effective response to the new pattern of intra-state violence, it should learn from the successes as well as the failures of humanitarian intervention in Somalia. In Baidoa, the Australians demonstrated it is possible to develop what might be termed a peace-enhancement strategy in a collapsed state situation. By striking a balance between political reconstruction and a measure willingness to use force to obtain compliance with UN demands the Australians indicated that the dire prophesies of Robert Kaplan's 'The Coming Anarchy' can be averted.     

An Evolving View of Warfare: War and Peace and the American Military Profession

The Western way of warfare has not prepared the US Army or American society for appreciating an approach to national security that does not yield decisive and measurable outcomes. This proclivity may have significant consequences given the changing nature of the international security environment in the twenty-first century. In order to preserve national security and global stability, American strategic thinkers must understand the evolution of the national strategic culture. Then adjustments must be made to deal effectively with the challenges of a changed world order. Rather than limiting the use of force to decisive means and outcomes, the American military profession must be seriously prepared for success in less dramatic stability and support missions.     

The symbolic politics of ballistic missile defense: seeking the perfect defense in an imperfect world

Ballistic missile defense (BMD) politics present an interesting evolution in how the USA, especially Congress, has come to think about BMD both as operational reality and as a symbolic policy. The argument here is that BMD's operational reality is increasingly overshadowed by its symbolic aspects. Such a status arose from rapidly changing international and domestic politics. The end result is a situation in which BMD policy in a sense floats above the question of its actual combat effectiveness. Its primary mission in part is sustaining US capacity to remain a global power and support its allies.     

US–Latin America’s security: moving through an inflection point?

Recent elections in Latin America, such as those of Mauricio Macri in Argentina, Horacio Cartes in Paraguay, and the impeachment process of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, point to a new direction in Latin American politics and away from the “hard left;” they also point to a new momentum in the security relationship between the US and Latin American countries. Former US President Obama’s 2016 trip to Cuba and Argentina was a clear demonstration of this new security paradigm and also a clear indication that there is a new momentum brewing in the US towards a rethinking and reshaping of security strategies and mindsets. This article will explore the multidimensional security relationship between the US and Latin American countries in light of recent changes in the US’ posture toward the region.     

A Good Ally - Norway and International Statebuilding in Afghanistan, 2001-2014

The article examines the findings of the Commission of Inquiry established by the Norwegian government in 2014 to evaluate all aspects of Norway’s civilian and military contribution to the international operation in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. Concerned with the wider implications of the Commission’s findings, it focuses on two issues in particular: (1) Norway’s relations with the US, a close and long-standing strategic ally whose resources, capabilities and dominance of decision-making dwarfed that of all other coalition partners in Afghanistan; and (2) Norway’s record in the province of Faryab, where, from 2005 to 2012, a Norwegian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team was charged with bringing security, good governance and development to the province. How Norway prioritised and managed relations with the US highlights and helps to problematise the challenges – political, practical and moral – facing small and medium-sized powers operating in a coalition alongside the US. Norwegian efforts in Faryab are revealing of the dilemmas and contradictions that plagued and, ultimately, fatally undermined the international intervention as a whole. As such, Norway’s experience provides a microcosm through which the inherent limitations of the attempt to transfer the structures of modern statehood and Western democracy to Afghanistan can be better understood.     

Hard Balancing in the Age of American Unipolarity: The Russian Response to US Ballistic Missile Defense during the Bush Administration (2001–2008)

One of the central debates in contemporary international relations scholarship concerns the issue of whether balancing has occurred in response to US-based unipolarity, and if it has, how this should be characterised. Existing research has seen analysts argue that major power responses to unipolarity can be placed in one of either three categories: an absence of balancing, soft balancing, and hard balancing. This article contributes to the scholarly literature by providing a case study of hard internal Russian balancing against the US’s development and deployment of Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems during the Bush Administration (2001–08). Russian hard balancing against the US has involved: (1) fielding new strategic nuclear and conventional weapons equipped with BMD countermeasures, and, relatedly, (2) making changes in military doctrine. As a result, security dilemma dynamics are increasingly in evidence in US relations with Russia.