INTRODUCTION
1.David Kilcullen, ‘Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, Theory and Practice’ (2007), PowerPoint presentation, available at http://smallwarsjournal.com/, slide 45.
2.Technically the strategic distinction is between ends (aims), means (resources) and ways (the application of resources in a plan). A full discussion of the function of all three aspects of strategy is at Chapter 5.
3.Robert Haddick, ‘Nagl and Gentile Are Both Right, So What Do We Do Now?’ Small Wars Journal op-ed (November 2008).
4.Paul Brister, William H. Natter III and Robert R. Tomes, Hybrid Warfare and Transnational Threats: Perspectives for an Era of Persistent Conflict (New York: Council for Emerging National Security Affairs), February 2011.
5.This debate has primarily been driven in journal articles by the question of how the US should configure its military post-Afghanistan. The two positions have been characterised in debates between Lieutenant Colonel (retired) John Nagl and Colonel Gian P. Gentile. See Shawn Brimley, ‘Mediating Between Crusaders and Conservatives’, Small Wars Journal op-ed (October 2008).
6.For a summary of the concept, see Frank G. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars (Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, December 2007).
1.THE LANGUAGE OF WAR
1.Antulio J. Echevarria II, Preparing for One War and Getting Another? (US Army Strategic Studies Institute, Advancing Strategic Thought Series, September 2010), p. 26.
2.The operation involved several other units on the British side, especially a company from the Royal Welsh Regiment, and other nationalities, particularly Dutch, Australian and United States, as well as Afghan army and police units.
3.This phrase was coined by Paul Watzlawick; see Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland, Richard Fisch, Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974). This Book drew on work by Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972).
4.Dr Conrad Crane, US Army War College, Counterinsurgency Workshop held at Merton College, Oxford, 26 May 2011. The Counterinsurgency Field Manual referred to is the Unites States US Marine Corps and US Army Field Manual 3–24.
5.Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, ch. 1, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 87.
6.Ibid., Book 2, ch. 1, p. 126.
7.George MacDonald Fraser, Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War in Burma, (London: Harper Collins, 1995; first published by Harvill, 1992), p. 49.
8.See Hew Strachan, ‘The British Way in Warfare’, ch. 19 in The Oxford History of the British Army, ed. David Chandler and Ian Beckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 402.
9.The US strategic concept of ‘limited war’, which developed in response to concern over escalation to nuclear war, exemplifies the very real influence that ‘war’ can exert on policy as a future possibility rather than an actual event. Such a concept was expressed most prominently by the post-war theories of ‘Limited War’ (coined by Robert Osgood in his Book Limited War), in which war is used as a regulated political instrument without escalation to absolute (nuclear) war. See Robert E. Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).
10.Clausewitz, On War, Book 2, ch. 1, p. 127; also Book 6, ch. 1, p. 357.
11.Ibid., Book 4, ch. 11, p. 260.
12.Ibid., Book 8, ch. 6B, p. 605. Andreas Herberg-Rothe notes that the explicit connection that Clausewitz makes in this passage between war and language is located in the way in which grammar was conceptually understood at the time. Herberg-Rothe argues that much of the content of Clausewitz’s conceptualisation of war can be found in an article on grammar in the Enzyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste (Encyclopaedia of the Sciences and the Arts, ed. Ersch and Gruber, First Section A-G ed. H. Brockhaus (Leipzig, 1865), pp. 1–80), if one substitutes ‘language’ for ‘war’. Thus just as the speech or writing of thought (the equivalent of political intention) are regulated by grammar, so too is war. Herberg-Rothe argues that for Clausewitz the concept of grammar ‘illustrates both war’s unity with a greater whole and its relative autonomy’ (Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2007, p. 151). He notes the fact that the treatment of grammar in this encyclopaedia required an entry of almost 80 pages. Hardly any other concepts are examined so comprehensively. This indicates the significance of the concept at the time.
13.See, for example, John Cantile, ‘Upper Gereshk: The Helmand plan meets tough reality’, BBC News Online, 2 October 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14897977.
14.Declan Walsh, ‘Video of girl’s flogging as Taliban hand out justice’, Guardian Online, 2 April 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/02/taliban-pakistan-justice-women-flogging.
15.This analogy specifically relates to the study of hermeneutics in a theological sense. I have used the term ‘interpretive’ rather than ‘hermeneutic’ throughout the Book for simplicity and accessibility.
16.See James Simpson, Burning to Read, English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
17.Clausewitz, On War, Book 3, ch. 1, p. 182.
18.Chancellor Angela Merkel first referred to German troops being involved in ‘combat operations’ in September 2009. This represented a gradual progression of the German conception of the mission. Before German involvement in Kunduz Province (North Afghanistan) in 2007, the German Ministry of Defence referred to soldiers who ‘died’ in Afghanistan; post 2007 they ‘fell’. This acknowledged that the mission was more than just reconstruction, but it was not ‘combat’ until 2009. Dr Timo Noetzel, University of Konstanz, lecture at the Oxford University Changing Character of War Programme, 22 February 2011. See also Timo Noetzel, ‘The German Politics of War: Kunduz and the War in Afghanistan’, International Affairs, vol. 87, issue 2 (March 2011), pp. 397–417,
19.Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy and the Limitation of War’, Survival, vol. 50, no. 1 (Feb.-March 2008), pp. 31–54.
20.Ibid., p. 35.
21.Ibid., p. 35.
22.Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force (London: Penguin, 2006; first published by Allen Lane, 2005), p. 302.
23.Although even in wars of this type the boundaries are only ever essentially the same. The controversy over the sinking of the General Belgrano (whether it was within the ‘war zone’) illustrates this point in the case of the Falklands. Moreover, the Falklands War of 1982 was not the start or the end of the conflict in the wider sense: for example, there had been a possibility of an Argentinian operation during the Callaghan government; Argentinian reconnaissance patrols on the Islands have occasionally been reported post the 1982 war; the Argentinian government still uses the issue to gain political leverage in domestic politics. The basic political problems remain unresolved today.
24.‘Quintili Vare, legiones redde!’ Suetonius, Vita Divi Augusti, 23.49.
25.Harry Kreisler and Thomas G. Barnes, ‘Military Strategy: Conversation with Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr’, interview held on 6 March 1996. Full citation can be found at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/Summers/summers2.html.
2.CLAUSEWITZIAN WAR AND CONTEMPORARY CONFLICT
1.Museum of Military History, Vienna. Copyright 2012.
2.The Gurkha platoon commander was Lieutenant Paul Hollingshead, who was awarded a Mention in Dispatches for leading a counter-attack in this ambush.
3.House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Eighth Report on Global Security, ‘Afghanistan and Pakistan’ (21 July 2009), ch. 6, paragraph 245.
4.Damien McElroy, ‘Afghan governor turned 3,000 men over to Taliban’, Daily Telegraph, 20 November 2009.
5.Antonio Giustozzi and Noor Ullah, ‘Tribes and Warlords in Southern Afghanistan 1980–2005’ (London School of Economics Crisis States Research Centre Working Paper, 2006), pp. 12–13.
6.Sher Mohammed Akhundzada comes from the Hassanzai sub-tribe of the Alizai tribe. While Provincial Governor of Helmand he also oppressed Alizais from other sub-tribes (Pirzai and Khalozai). His affiliation with the Alizai tribe is used here in the broad sense for simplicity.
7.The National Directorate of Security (NDS) is the Afghan equivalent of MI5.
8.Mike Martin, A Brief History of Helmand (British Army Publication by the Afghan COIN Centre, August 2011), p. 49. Martin cites Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan after the Taliban (London: Portobello Books, 2007, first published by Penguin, 2006), pp. 274–9.
9.Pajhwok Afghan News, ‘Dozens of insurgents killed, 60 rounded up in Helmand’ (11 September 2005), http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2005/09/11/dozens-insurgents-killed-60-rounded-helmand. See Martin, A Brief History of Helmand, pp. 47–51 for a much broader discussion of this theme.
10.Mike Martin, A Brief History of Helmand. Martin cites International Crisis Group, ‘Afghanistan: The problem of Pushtun Alienation’ (Asia Report no. 62, 2003), p. 18; Joel Hafvenstein, Opium Season, A Year on the Afghan NOTES Frontier (Lyons Press, 2007), p. 132; Economist Intelligence Unit, ‘Country Reports—Afghanistan’ (Q2/3003), p. 9; Ali A. Jalali, ‘Afghanistan in 2002: The Struggle to Win the Peace’, Asian Survey (2003), p. 183; Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue (London: Portobello Books, 2007), pp. 273–4.
11.Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue.
12.Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan 2002–2007 (Columbia University Press, 2008), p. 60.
13.Stephen Carter and Kate Clark, ‘No Shortcut to Stability: Justice, Politics and Insurgency in Afghanistan’ (Chatham House Paper, December 2010), p. 18.
14.General Sir Peter Wall, evidence to House of Commons Defence Committee, Fourth Report, Operations in Afghanistan (17 July 2011), pp. Ev 145, Q 676.
15.David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (London: Hurst, 2009).
16.The district governor of Nad Ali in this case was Habibullah. I am grateful to Mike Martin for this observation.
17.House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Eighth Report on Global Security, ‘Afghanistan and Pakistan’ (21 July 2009), ch. 6, paragraph 230.
18.House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Fourth Report, The UK’s foreign policy approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan (February 2011), paragraph 103.
19.Anthony King, ‘A private war Britain must settle if it is to win in Helmand’, Parliamentary Brief Magazine (28 April 2011).
20.House of Commons Defence Committee, Fourth Report, Operations in Afghanistan (17 July 2011).
21.Ibid., pp. Ev 144–5, Q 674.
22.For narrative simplicity I have not mentioned the other international coalition partners who operated in Helmand in 2006, most notably US, Canadian, Danish, and Estonian troops.
23.Clausewitz, On War, Book 3, ch. 12, Howard and Paret, p. 205.
24.Ibid., Book1, ch. 1, p. 75. Andreas Herberg-Rothe has argued that: ‘This assumption of symmetry in the concept of the duel has far reaching consequences. Clausewitz’s argument here reflects the political theory of the eighteenth century, according to which every state had the right to wage war. This concept differed from the medieval idea of ‘just war’ by assuming that the right to wage war was an aspect of every state’s sovereignty. This symmetry brings with it a tendency to justify wars, but it has other consequences as well. It includes a recognition in principle that one’s opponent is iustus hostis—an equal—so the enemy is no longer considered a criminal. This assumption that enemies in war are equal is the basic precondition of respect for the laws of war’. Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle, p. 106. Herberg-Rothe cites Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 6th edn (Berlin, 1996), p. 29.
25.Clausewitz had intended to write a separate chapter on the principle of polarity. In an article written shortly before he died, he stated that: ‘the whole of physical and intellectual nature’ is kept in balance by means of antitheses. Clausewitz, On War, p. 83. On the article written before his death, see Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle, p. 119. Herberg-Rothe cites Clausewitz, Die Verhältnisse Europas seit der Teilung Polens, in Karl Schwartz, Leben des Generals Carl von Clausewitz und der Frau Marie von Clausewitz geb. Gräfin Brühl, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1878), pp. 401–17.
26.There is debate about the translation of ganze Krieg. Alternative translations have used total war, ideal war, or pure war. There are two tensions at play. First, does one mean absolute political goals or absolute use of violence? Second, is absolute war a theoretical pole which war in the abstract can be analysed by, or is it a real event? While both ideas are problematic, the definition I would use stresses the absoluteness of political goals over violence, although the latter is no doubt central to defining the quality of the conflict; it is hard to argue that combat in any context is not absolute for the individual. The key seems to be the correlation between political goals in terms of their proximity to absolute political objectives and the extent to which they remove qualitative restraints upon the means by which violence is applied. I also take absolute war to be a theoretical pole which has been closely approached, but not actually reached, because all wars have ultimately ended. (A full-scale nuclear exchange might well be absolute war in reality.)
27.Clausewitz, On War, Book 6, ch. 28, pp. 488–9.
28.Ibid., Book 6, ch. 7, p. 377.
29.Ibid., Book 7, ch. 1, p. 523.
30.Ibid., Book 7, ch. 7, pp. 530–31.
31.Ibid., Book 1, ch. 1, p. 84.
32.Ibid., Book 1, ch. 1, p. 83.
33.What is meant by attack and defence here is ‘the attacker’ and ‘the defender’. Ibid., Book 7, ch. 22, p. 566.
34.J. C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (New York: Rutgers, 1967), p. 85.
35.Tacitus, Agricola, ch. 30.
36.Ibid., Book 1, ch. 2, p. 90.
37.Gladiator (2000).
38.Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, ch. 1, p. 77.
39.Field Marshal Viscount William Slim, Defeat into Victory (London: Pan Books, 2009; first published by Cassell, 1956), pp. 609–10.
40.Clausewitz, On War, Book 7, ch. 5, p. 528.
41.Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, trans. Jefferson Chase (London: Granta, 2003).
42.Both Rifleman Padam and Corporal Basanta were awarded the UK Chief of Joint Operation’s Commander’s Commendation for their part in this action.
43.Major Shaun Chandler was awarded a Mention in Dispatches as a Company Commander on this tour.
44.Ibid., Book1, ch. 1, p. 88.
45.General Raymond Odierno, quoted in Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker, ‘General Works to Salvage Iraq Legacy’, New York Times (24 March 2010). Cited by Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy or Alibi? Obama, McChrystal and the Operational Level of War’, Survival, 52:5, p. 176.
46.Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, ch. 2, p. 95.
47.Ibid., Book 1, ch. 2, p. 98.
48.Daniel Moran has argued that this was very much Clausewitz’s view. There is a strong argument that eighteenth-century wars were just as vicious, and were by no means a game, but that commanders were logistically constrained from the exploitation of a victory to crush the enemy completely. In the Seven Years War (1756–63), for example, all of the great battles took place in the first four years, but the war dragged on and ultimately ended not on the battlefield but through mutual exhaustion. By comparison, Moran points out that the Austerlitz campaign of 1806, which was a decisive and massive victory for Napoleon, was over in three weeks. See Daniel Moran, Strategic Theory and the History of War (US Naval Postgraduate School, 2001), p. 6.
49.Clausewitz, On War, Book 8, ch. 8, trans. O. J. Matthijs Jolles (New York: Random House, 1943), p. 570.
50.Hew Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War: A Biography (London: Atlantic Books, 2007), p. 61.
51.Clausewitz, On War, Book 8, ch. 8A, Howard and Paret, p. 593.
52.Ibid., Book 8, ch. 8A, pp. 583–4; Book 8, ch. 2, p. 581.
53.Ibid., Book 8, ch.3A, pp. 583–4.
3.GLOBALISATION AND CONTEMPORARY CONFLICT
1.Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2005), p. 1.
2.Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War Through Western Eyes (Columbia University Press/Hurst, 2009), pp. 173–4.
3.Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism, p. 174.
4.Ibid., p. 174.
5.Dan Halutz, ‘Airpower as a Variable of Hachraah’, in ‘Ben Hachra’ah L’nitzachon (Between Decision and Victory)’: A Joint Seminar between the Center for Study of National Defense, Haifa University and the National Defense College, IDF, 28 January 2001 (Haifa: University of Haifa, 2001), p. 96.
6.Dan Halutz, ‘Airpower as a Variable of Hachraah’, p. 98.
7.Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism, p. 184.
8.US Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3–24, Counter-Insurgency.
9.Lieutenant General (retired) Sir Graeme Lamb, direction issued as Commander Field Army, Counter-Insurgency Commander’s Guidance, May 2009.
10.Such as Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-i Tayyiba (LT), Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM), Harakat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), the Qari Zia Group (QZG), Lashkar-i-Islami (LI), Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU). See Gretchen Peters, ‘Crime and Insurgency in the Tribal Areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan’, The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, October 2010; Peters’ list at p. 5 is particularly helpful.
11.This is well encapsulated by the term ‘accidental guerrilla’, coined by David Kilcullen and referred to in The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (London: Hurst, 2009).
12.Martine van Bijlert, ‘Unruly Commanders and Violent Power Struggles: Taliban Networks in Uruzgan’, ch. 7 in Antonio Giustozzi (ed.), Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field, (London: Hurst, 2009), pp. 160–61.
13.Ibid., p. 160. Bernt Glatzer as cited in Robert D. Crews, ‘Moderate Taliban?’, in Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi (eds), The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 242.
14.Adam Holloway, In Blood Stepp’d In Too Far: Towards A Realistic Policy for Afghanistan (Centre for Policy Studies, October 2009), p. 14.
15.Daniel Marston, ‘Realizing the Extent of Our Errors and Forging the Road Ahead: Afghanistan 2001–10’, in Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian (eds), Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2010).
16.Ahmed Rashid, ‘The Way Out of Afghanistan’, New York Review of Books (13 January 2011), quoted in House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Fourth Report, The UK’s foreign policy approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan (February 2011), paragraph 85.
17.The Revolutionary United Front, for instance, were heavily involved in the destabilisation of Sierra Leone that led to the successful British intervention 2000. They were a ‘franchise’ of different militia groups held together by their commander. He kept control over them through a number of methods that resembled a franchise, such as retaining control over the distribution of logistics, especially ammunition. He would personally hold the key to the ammunition store and distribute it. Brigadier Richard Iron, Expert Military Witness Report into the Revolutionary United Front, written for the Special Court of Sierra Leone. Note on relationship between logistics and command at p.C-51; report dated 15 April 2005.
18.Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism, p. 156.
19.Antonio Giustozzi, ‘Armed Politics and Political Competition in Afghanistan’, Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) Working Paper, 2011.
20.Antonio Giustozzi, ‘Armed Politics and Political Competition in Afghanistan’, p. 19. Giustozzi cites as his sources: local notables, administration staff, Afghan intellectuals, UN officials. Map by Sebastian Ballard.
21.Antonio Giustozzi, ‘Armed Politics and Political Competition in Afghanistan’, p. 22. Giustozzi notes that MPs with a past in Hizb-i Islami, but currently affiliated with other groups, have been excluded. He cites as his sources interviews with former and current members of Hizb-i Islami, Kabul, London, Jalalabad 2006–7; his personal communications with UN and diplomatic staff. Map by Sebastian Ballard.
22.Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, ch. 1, Howard and Paret, p. 89. It has been argued that association of policy with ‘government’ in the state at war can be understood more broadly than ‘government’. Clausewitz uses the word der Regierung which can imply regimen, or governing authority, as well as government. In this reading reason, or policy, can be associated with the ‘cohesive’ element which provides the unifying rationale within any ‘political community’ (the state in the broad sense). This reading would imply that Clausewitz’s intention was to resist tying his theory exclusively to the nation-state, or at least that Clausewitz’s theory of war has legitimacy beyond the nation-state. See Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle: The Political Theory of War, (London: OUP, 2007). pp. 99, 141–2 and 164. Moreover, the term ‘state’ has been understood more metaphorically in terms of the representative parts of an individual, or a ‘body’ of men more generally: the rational mind (reason/policy); one’s emotions (passion); the ability to fight (to deal with violence). Whether Clausewitz himself allowed for the possibility of his paradigm being literally, rather than metaphorically, applied to political communities that were not nation-states is debatable. Clausewitz, On War, Book1, ch. 1, p. 88; Book 8, ch. 6, pp. 606–7.
23.Clausewitz, On War, Book 2, ch. 2, Howard and Paret, p. 138.
24.Tacitus, Histories, Book 1–39. This phrase is used by Tacitus in the context of plotting during the Roman Civil War of 68 to 69 ACE.
25.Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). See in particular ch. 11, ‘Cleavage and Agency’, pp. 364–87.
26.Ibid., p. 364.
27.Ibid., p. 389.
28.Ibid., p. 387.
29.David Loyn, Butcher and Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan (London: Hutchinson, 2008), p. 89.
30.Ibid. pp. 143–162.
31.Ibid. pp. 88–94.
32.Ibid. p. 121.
33.Ibid. p. 146.
34.Ibid. p. 161.
35.John Masters, Bugles and a Tiger, (New York: The Viking Press, 1956), p. 191.
4.STRATEGIC DIALOGUE AND POLITICAL CHOICE
1.Dr Conrad Crane was the editor of the Unites States US Marine Corps and US Army Field Manual 3–24.
2.I am grateful to Dr Conrad Crane of the US Army War College for these illustrations, from a presentation given by Lieutenant General David Petraeus at Fort Leavenworth in February 2006.
3.Colonel Joseph Felter, US Army, Royal United Services Institute Conference on Counterinsurgency Tactics, London, 8–9 December 2010.
4.Admiral J. C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1967).
5.Frederick Spencer Chapman, The Jungle is Neutral (London: Chatto and Windus,1949).
6.Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars, ch. 30, p. 350.
7.House of Commons Defence Committee, Fourth Report, Operations in Afghanistan (17 July 2011), pp. Ev 67, Q 295.
8.David Kilcullen, Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, Theory and Practice 2007, PowerPoint presentation, available on the Small Wars Journal website, slide 26.
9.Antonio Giustozzi, ‘Armed Politics and Political Competition in Afghanistan’, in Astri Suhrke and Mats Berdal (eds), The Peace In Between: Post-War Violence and Peacebuilding (London: Routledge, 2011).
10.Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb, Counter-Insurgency Commander’s Guidance, British Army internal unclassified publication (May 2009).
11.William S. Lind, Colonel Keith Nightengale, Captain John F. Schmitt, Colonel Joseph W. Sutton, and Lieutenant Colonel Gary I. Wilson, The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation, Marine Corps Gazette (October 1989), pp. 22–6; ‘Bin Laden Lieutenant Admits to Sept. 11 and Explains Al-Qa’ida’s Combat Doctrine’, Middle East Media and Research Institute, Special Dispatch 344 (10 February 2002); cited by Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism, p. 63.
12.Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie (London: Pimlico, 1998; first published by Jonathan Cape 1989), p. 67.
13.‘Remembering the Vietnam War, Conversations with Neil Sheehan’ (14 November 1988), part of ‘Conversations with History’, University of California, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/Sheehan/sheehan-con6.html
14.Neil Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, p. 317.
15.Ibid., p. 697.
16.General Sir Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, Peace-keeping (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), p. 72. Kitson set out very clearly thirty years ago many of the lessons that have taken the British Army eight years to re-learn in Afghanistan. Kitson advertises as a model the US military, which by 1970 had become in his eyes a highly effective counterinsurgency force in Vietnam; the irony being that this experience was subsequently largely jettisoned by the US military, forcing them to (successfully) re-learn their older lessons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kitson also criticises the widely held view among army officers on both sides of the Atlantic (of his time, but which is also to be found today) that the army should get back to ‘proper soldiering’ (conventional conflict), and that ‘a fit solider with a rifle’ can accomplish any task. He points out that this is simply not true. Subversion and counter-insurgency are professional specialisations which any force will struggle to improvise. History repeats itself. (pp. 199–200).
5.LIBERAL POWERS AND STRATEGIC DIALOGUE
1.There is an issue of translation here. See Clausewitz, On War, Howard and Paret, p. 608 footnote 1.
2.Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Belknap Press, 1957).
3.The historical roots of this idea lie more with Jomini (1779–1869), the Swiss-born theorist of warfare, than with Clausewitz. John Shy in his essay on Jomini argues that it was he who popularised the idea that ‘interference’ by strategically naïve political leaders led to military failure. Jomini used the example of Austria, which lost many major campaigns between 1756 and 1815, by comparison with the success of Frederick the Great or Napoleon, who united the political and military in one man. Shy notes that: ‘these difficulties were a central theme of On War, but soldiers managed to read even Clausewitz in ways that twisted his meanings back into comfortable formulae’. John Shy, ‘Jomini’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 161.
4.Clausewitz, On War, Book 8, ch. 6, Howard and Paret, p. 608.
5.Huntington, The Soldier and the State, p. 100.
6.Ibid., p. 73.
7.Ibid., p. 74.
8.Ibid., p. 308. Huntington cites Command and General Staff School, Principles of Strategy, pp. 19–20; USNIP, XLVI (1920), pp. 1615–16.
9.Ibid., pp. 322–5.
10.Ibid., p. 329.
11.Ibid., p. 336; Huntington cites Hearings before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs on S.84, 79th Cong., 1st Sess. (1945), p. 521.
12.Ibid., p. 344.
13.Ibid., p. 456.
14.Ibid., pp. 465–6.
15.This conception of strategy can be found in Clausewitz, although in its modern form it is associated with the work of Arthur F. Lykke. See ‘Towards an Understanding of Military Strategy’ in the US Army War College Guide to Strategy (2001), ch. 13, p. 179.
16.Harry R. Yarger, Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The Little Book on Big Strategy, US Army War College (February 2006), p. 1.
17.J. C. Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 78.
18.Clausewitz, On War, Book 8, ch. 6B, pp. 606–7.
19.Ibid., Book 2, ch. 4, p. 152.
20.Ibid., Book 2, ch.1, p. 128.
21.Hew Strachan, ‘The Lost Meaning of Strategy’, Survival, vol. 47, no. 3 (Autumn 2005), p. 35.
22.Loc. cit.
23.Harry R. Yarger, Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The Little Book on Big Strategy, p. 12, reproduced with permission of the author.
24.‘Military experts, not political amateurs, should decide whether we go to war’, Oxford University debate, 2010. http://www.ox.ac.uk/oxford_debates/past_debates/hilary_2010_war/index.html
25.International Security and Assistance Force website (ISAF): http://www.isaf.nato.int/mission.html
26.See COMISAF’s Initial Assessment to the Secretary of Defense (30 August 2009), obtained by the Washington Post. http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf
27.Prime Minister Gordon Brown, speech on 13 December 2008.
28.See for example Adam Holloway MP, ‘In Blood Stepp’d In Too Far: Towards a Realistic Policy for Afghanistan’, paper for the Centre for Policy Studies (October 2009), p. 5: He challenges a statement from the British Ministry of Defence in 2009 that ‘our commitment is first and foremost about Britain’s national security interest. Put starkly, the choice is between fighting the AQ insurgents in Afghanistan, and fighting them on the streets of UK towns’. Holloway’s response is: ‘this statement from the MoD is nonsense. Put starkly, our current situation is working against the West’s security interest and is making attacks on the streets of Britain more, not less, likely’.
29.Woodward, Obama’s Wars, pp. 271, 239.
30.NATO OPLAN 10302 (Revise 1), Unclassified version released December 2005, p. 1, paragraph d. See also Lt.Col. Steve Beckman ‘From Assumption to Expansion: Planning and Executing NATO’s First Year in Afghanistan at the Strategic Level ’ (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 2005).
31.Ibid., p. 2, paragraph 2.
32.Ibid., p. A-2, paragraph b.
33.Adam Holloway MP, Hansard vol. 477, Part 112. UK Parliament Westminster Hall Debate, 17 June 2009.
34.Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, ch. 1, p. 77.
35.Ibid., Book 1, ch. 1, p. 87. Note that Clausewitz used the word Politik, which does not differentiate between policy and politics.
36.Ibid., Book 8, ch. 6B, p. 605.
37.J. C. Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 80.
38.‘The aims a belligerent adopts, and the resources he employs, must be governed by the particular characteristics of his own position; but they will also conform to the general spirit of the age and to its general character. Finally, they must always be governed by the general conclusions to be drawn from the nature of war itself’. Clausewitz, On War, Book 8, ch. 3, p. 594.
6.PRAGMATISM AND OPERATIONAL THOUGHT
1.Clausewitz, On War, Book 2, ch. 1, Howard and Paret, p. 128.
2.A doctrinal distinction between centre of gravity and decisive point can also be made.
3.Ibid., Book 8, ch. 4, p. 596.
4.‘War can be a matter of degree. Theory must concede all this; but it has the duty to give priority to the absolute form of war and to make that form a general point of reference, so that he who wants to learn from theory becomes accustomed to keeping that point in view constantly, to measuring all his hopes and fears by it, and to approximating it when he can, or when he must [italics original]… Without the cautionary examples of the destructive power of war unleashed, theory would preach to deaf ears. No one would have believed possible what has now been experienced by all’. Clausewitz here is referring to the huge expansion in scale and lethality in war that European states experienced during the Napoleonic Wars. Clausewitz, On War, Book 8, ch. 2, Howard and Paret, p. 581.
5.Ibid., Book 4, ch. 9, p. 248. Clausewitz has been criticised, perhaps legitimately, for advocating methods that stressed, sometimes obsessively, the imperative to seek physical destruction of the enemy. To ignore aspects of Clausewitz that are largely unpalatable today is to be partial. We should not brush over the brutality of aspects of his argument. There is undoubtedly an element of obsession with the destruction of the enemy that one can read in many parts of the work. He states that ‘the price of battle is blood’, and that if a general ‘blunts his sword in the name of humanity’, eventually somebody would ‘come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms’ (Ibid., Book 4, ch. 11, pp. 259–60). While apparently brutal, Clausewitz does not seem to make a fetish of war’s brutality; that was war as he had experienced it. Indeed in some ways he is more honest about war than accounts that keep their distance from actual description of the battlefield. One of the most striking and original parts of On War is the short series of chapters at the end of Book 1 which vividly describe actual battlefield experience (Ibid., Book 1, ch. 4,5,6,7, pp. 113–21). While this argument had purchase at the time in which Clausewitz wrote, it would not today, especially in the context of nuclear warfare and a very different ethical and legal environment. Furthermore, one of Clausewitz’s intentions was for On War to be of practical value to soldiers in war. In that context, he was trying to come to terms with the problem of how to deal with a potential enemy who would use Napoleonic methods. To that end, the last chapter of On War is a long description of how to fight a hypothetical war against France. In the context of Europe immediately after the Napoleonic Wars, it would have made sense for Clausewitz in On War to have suggested operational methods which had been proven as effective by Napoleon: ‘our conviction that only a great battle can produce a major decision is founded not on an abstract concept of war alone, but also on experience’ (Ibid., Book 4, ch. 11, p. 260). Indeed, it was by imitating his methods that his opponents had ultimately defeated Napoleon.
6.Ibid., Book 4, ch. 11, p. 260.
7.Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle, p. 32. Herberg-Rothe cites Carl von Clausewitz, The Campaign of 1815. Strategic Overview, p. 89, translated and edited by Daniel Moran, unpublished manuscript (Monterey: 2005).
8.Clausewitz, On War, Book 6, ch. 30, p. 501.
9.Ibid., On War, Book 8, ch. 3, p. 582.
10.Ibid., On War, Book 3, ch.16, p. 218.
11.Ibid., On War, Book 6, ch. 30, p. 516.
12.Ibid., On War, Book 8, ch.4, p. 597.
13.Clausewitz, Two Letters on Strategy (1827), edited and translated by Peter Paret and Daniel Moran (1984). http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/TwoLetters/TwoLetters.htm
14.Clausewitz’s views evolved as he was writing On War, which was an unfinished Book at the time of his death. In many places he can legitimately be seen to be obsessed with the destruction of the enemy, and advocates this as the default operational method. Yet in the books he revised towards the end of his life, namely Book 1 and Book 8, the mature Clausewitz offers a far more nuanced analysis which recognises the primacy of policy and the need of an operational approach to satisfy political objectives.
15.Clausewitz, On War, Book 6, ch. 30, p. 516.
16.Clausewitz’s work only came to real prominence in Europe following Prussia’s successes in the wars of German unification (1866–71).
17.Both Jomini and Clausewitz drew upon, and challenged, the work of a retired Prussian Officer, Heinrich von Bülow (1757–1807). Bülow’s conception of strategy conformed to its ‘traditional’ location, between tactics and policy; strategy was defined as: ‘all military movements within the enemy’s cannon range or range of vision’, tactics was ‘all movements within this range’. What distinguished Clausewitz and Jomini’s works in relation to Bülow’s was their reaction to his advocacy of universal military principles. Peter Paret, the American military historian and Clausewitz specialist, has argued that Jomini agreed with Bülow’s approach, but disagreed with his conclusions, replacing Bülow’s universal principles with his own. Peter Paret, The Cognitive Challenge of War, Prussia 1806 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 111–12.
18.This was the concluding 35th chapter of the 3rd volume of his Traité de grande tactique.
19.Peter Paret, The Cognitive Challenge of War, Prussia 1806 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 111–12; see footnote 6 on p. 111 for discussion of publication dates of the Résumé.
20.Clausewitz criticised General von Bülow and Antoine-Henri Jomini for looking for set rules that applied universally in war. This is perhaps an unfair criticism given that their views were in fact very similar to his; the key difference is the distinction as to the context in which they are applied. See for example the extensive footnote in On War, Book 6, ch. 3, p. 363; also Book 6, ch. 30, p. 516.
21.Peter Paret, The Cognitive Challenge of War, pp. 112 and 129.
22.John Shy stresses how Jomini’s view was that irregular warfare was not the business of regular armies; he rejected civil wars and religious wars as ‘wars of opinion’ that were ill suited to rigorous analysis; Antoine-Henry Jomini, Précis de l’art de la guerre, new edn, 2 vols. (Paris, 1855; reprinted Osnabrück, 1973), 1:83. Jomini found guerrilla warfare morally repugnant; he did not think it was the business of regular armies. He wrote that soldiers prefer war ‘loyale et chevaleresque’. Jomini had for example written about the horrors of the French experience of guerrilla warfare in Spain. Jomini advanced that if armies were forced to engage in such conflict the principles of conventional war did not apply. Rather than striking a decisive point, a mobile force should be created, while other territorial ‘divisions’ garrisoned each conquered district; commanders of such forces should be ‘instruit’ (politically attuned). Antoine-Henry Jomini, Traité des grandes opérations militaires, contenant l’histoire des campagnes de Frédéric II, comparés à celles de l’empereur Napoléon; avec un recueil des principes généraux de l’art de la guerre, 2nd edn, 4 vols. (Paris, 1811), 4: 284–85n; John Shy, ‘Jomini’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 170–71.
23.Shy, ‘Jomini’, pp. 179–84. The ‘six principles’ of the American Thayer Mahan’s very influential The Influence of Sea Power upon History 1660–1783 (1890), for example, popularised Jominian method in naval context. Giulio Douhet’s The Command of the Air (1921) anticipated the notion of ‘air power’ and its associated principles.
24.Daniel Moran, Strategic Theory and the History of War (US Naval Postgraduate School, 2001), p. 7.
25.Karl-Heinz Frieser, The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West, translated by John T. Greenwood (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005); first published as Karl-Heinz Frieser, Blitzkrieg-Legende. Der Westfeldzug 1940 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1995).
26.Ibid., cited in Hew Strachan, The Lost Meaning of Strategy, p. 46.
27.Hew Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, A Biography, p. 17.
28.Eric Ludendorff, Kriegführung und Politik (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1922), pp. 320–42. Cited in Hew Strachan, The Lost Meaning of Strategy, p. 45.
29.Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie, p. 637; this is the father of the General Krulak associated with the ‘three block war’ concept. See also Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, ‘Counter-insurgency in Vietnam’, in Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian (eds), Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (London: Osprey, 2008), p. 139.
30.Brian M. Jenkins, The Unchangeable War, RM-6278–2-ARPA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1970), p. 3. The speaker is not identified by name.
31.Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy or Alibi? Obama, McChrystal, and the Operational Level of War’, Survival, 52:5 (2010),pp. 157–82.
32.Ibid., p. 160.
33.Strachan cites Tommy Franks, American Soldier (New York: Regan Books, 2004), p. 440.
34.Ibid., p. 166.
35.Edward Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard, revised enlarged edn 2002), p. 111. The same argument relates to the distinction between ‘strategic’ and ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons.
36.Shy, ‘Jomini’, p. 154.
37.Shy notes that this term had already been used by Henry Lloyd and the Prussian Colonel Fredrick von Tempelhoff.
38.‘Security and Stabilisation: The Military Contribution’, Joint Doctrine Publication 3–40 (London: Ministry of Defence, 2009), pp. 4–24.
39.Susan L. Woodward, ‘The Paradox of “State Failure”, States Matter; Take Them Seriously’, Enjeux Internationaux (Brussels), special issue on state failure edited by Jean-Paul Marthoz, no. 11, 2006, http://www.statesandsecu-rity.org/_pdfs/enjeuxintle.pdf
40.Gian P. Gentile, ‘A Strategy of Tactics, Population Centric COIN and the Army’, US Army War College Parameters magazine (Autumn 2009).
41.Edward Luttwak, ‘Dead End: Counter-insurgency Warfare as Military Malpractice’, Harper’s Magazine (February 2007), pp. 33–42.
42.Daniel Dombey and Matthew Green, ‘US shifts Afghan tactics to target Taliban’, Financial Times (17 March 2011).
43.See particularly US DOD Joint Force Quarterly 52 (1st quarter 2009); 58 (3rd quarter 2009); two op-eds of Small Wars Journal in particular comment on the issue: Shawn Brimley, ‘Mediating Between Crusaders and Conservatives’ (October 2008), and Robert Haddick, ‘Nagl and Gentile Are Both Right, So What Do We Do Now?’ (November 2008).
44.Nagl has also argued for the creation of a corps of advisers to conduct low-level counter-insurgency-type missions worldwide in partnership with local forces to deal with potential conflicts before they become bigger problems.
45.John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: counterinsurgency lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, reprint of an earlier thesis).
46.Brigadier General H. R. McMaster, ‘On War: Lessons to be Learned’, Survival (February-March 2008); cited by John Nagl, ‘Let’s Win the Wars We’re In’, US DOD Joint Force Quarterly 52 (1st quarter 2009), p. 23.
47.Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars, ch. 8, p. 83.
48.Ibid., Glossary, p. 381.
49.Colonel Gian P. Gentile, ‘Freeing the Army from the Counter-insurgency Straitjacket’, US DoD Joint Force Quarterly 58 (3rd quarter 2010), p. 121.
50.Colonel Gian P. Gentile, ‘A Strategy of Tactics: Population Centric COIN and the Army’, p. 6.
51.Plutarch, Life of Pompey,10, 7.
52.John Paul Vann quoted in Neil Sheenan, A Bright Shining Lie (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988), p. 67.
53.General Sir Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, Peace-keeping (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), p. 199.
54.See for example A New Way Forward, re-thinking US Strategy in Afghanistan, A Report of the Afghanistan Study Group (August 2010).
55.Although most obviously associated with Malaya, the term ‘hearts and minds’ was possibly coined by Sir Robert Sandeman, a British official associated with the campaigns in South Baluchistan in the 1870s. See David Loyn, Butcher and Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan (London: Hutchinson, 2008), p. 162.
56.Alex Marshall, ‘Imperial nostalgia, the liberal lie, and the perils of post-modern counter-insurgency’, Small Wars and Insurgencies Journal 21:2 (2010), pp. 233–58. His argument concludes by criticising policy-makers in the context of Afghanistan for not having provided a political context in which counter-insurgency as an operational concept can have political utility, if the counter-insurgent is not the sovereign power. I would not go this far, as counter-insurgency was highly effective in Iraq, and has so far achieved localised effects in Afghanistan. However, I agree with Marshall’s broader point about the critical association of political context and operational method.
57.Neil Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, pp. 365, 373.
58.Ibid., p. 374.
59.British Army Training Team (BATT) notes on the raising and training of irregular forces in Dhofar, p. 65, paragraphs 4 and 12, document from the Middle East Centre, St Anthony’s College, Oxford. I am grateful to the Counterinsurgency Scholars Programme at the US Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, run by Professor Daniel Marston, for this document.
60.Many of the observations for the Dhofar section were presented by veterans of the Oman Sultan’s Armed Forces (SAF) at a conference in Oxford run by members of the US Army Counterinsurgency Scholars Programme, US Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth. The SAF veterans present were: Ian Gordon, Mike Lobb MBE, Knobby Reid OBE, John McKeown. I am grateful to Lt. Col. (retired) McKeown for his unpublished Masters dissertation, Britain and Oman: The Dhofar War and its Significance (submitted to the University of Cambridge, 1981). See also Ian Gardiner, In the Service of the Sultan, A First Hand Account of the Dhofar Insurgency (London: Pen and Sword, 2007). Also General Sir John Akehurst, We Won a War (Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1982); Peter Thwaites, Muscat Command: The Muscat Regiment in Oman in 1967 (Combined Books, 1995).
61.Major Shaun Chandler and Captain Emile Simpson, ‘The Shade-Shift Approach to Operations’, British Army Review, no. 150 (Winter 2010/2011).
62.Emile Simpson, ‘Gaining the Influence Initiative: Why Kinetic Operations are Central to Influence in Southern Afghanistan’, British Army Review, no. 147 (Summer 2009).
63.I am not sure who coined this. I have tried and failed to find the source.
7.BRITISH STRATEGY IN THE BORNEO CONFRONTATION 1962–6
1.A good account of the diplomatic aspects of the Commonwealth position is presented in John Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno (London: Macmillan, 2000); the military contribution of Australian and New Zealand forces in particular is well covered in Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey, Emergency and Confrontation: Australian Military Operations in Malaya and Borneo 1950–1966 (St Leonard’s, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1996); and Christopher Pugsley, From Emergency to Confrontation: The New Zealand Armed Forces in Malaya and Borneo 1949–1966 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
2.Denis Healey to the House of Commons, 27 November 1967, in General Sir Walter Walker, ‘How Borneo Was Won’, The Round Table (January 1969), p. 395.
3.J. A. C. Mackie, Konfrontasi: The Indonesi-Malaysia Dispute 1963–1966 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 125.
4.Leifer notes how Dr Subandrio, in the same speech of 20 January 1963, ‘reasserted the primacy in political life of Nasakom (the acronym which endorsed a harmonious integration of nationalist, religious and communist forces), without which Indonesia’s unity was said to be impossible’. Michael Leifer, Indonesia’s Foreign Policy (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), pp. 62, 79–82.
5.This period is well covered in Matthew Jones, Conflict and Confrontation in South East Asia, 1961–65 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the formation of Malaysia prior to Malaysia Day on 16 September 1963.
6.Matthew Jones offers an amusing vignette here. Major Roderick Walker, the assistant British military attaché in Jakarta and SAS officer, marched around the embassy in uniform playing the bagpipes while the crowd threw a barrage of stones in ‘a bizarre example of late imperial gusto’. Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, p. 196.
7.Ibid., pp. 34–7.
8.Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, p. 60.
9.‘Policy towards Indonesia’, 6 January 1964, PRO: CP(64)5 CAB/129/116.
10.The Anglo-Malaysian Defence Agreement of 1957 allowed Britain to station troops on Malaysian soil.
11.‘Policy towards Indonesia’, 6 January 1964, PRO: CP(64)5 CAB/129/116, p. 3727.
12.Although Labour won the October 1964 General Election, they continued with the same policy with regard to the Indonesian Confrontation, at least until the withdrawal east of Suez.
13.John Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno (London: Macmillan, 2000), ch.5, pp. 95–114.
14.Cabinet meeting, 18 February 1964, PRO: CM(64)12, CAB128/38.
15.Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, p. 104.
16.Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, p. 293.
17.Walker, ‘How Borneo Was Won’, p. 1.
18.Note from Edward Peck, Assistant Under-secretary of State at Foreign Office 1961–6, note to Secretary of State, 19 October 1964, PRO: FO371/176484, IM 1192/15. See also ‘British Policy towards Indonesia’, April 1965, PRO: FO371/176484, IM 1051/7.
19.Paper from British High Commissioner in Malaysia to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations entitled ‘Malaysia: Confrontation’, 11 December 1963, PRO: FO371/175065, p. 99.
20.Walter Walker, Fighting On (London: New Millennium,1997), p. 112.
21.Telephone interview with Lord Denis Healey (2005); he was the Minister of Defence during the Wilson government. Note that Walker was appointed during the previous administration, but continued to serve under the Labour government.
22.Walker, ‘How Borneo Was Won’, p. 3.
23.Tom Pockock, Fighting General (London: Collins, 1973), p. 173.
24.Walker, Fighting On, p. 150.
25.Walker, Fighting On, p. 164.
26.Interview with Brigadier (retired) Christopher Bullock, then curator of the Gurkha Museum, 1 July 2004.
27.Walker, ‘How Borneo Was Won’, p. 387.
28.Interview with General (retired) Gareth Johnson, Gurkha company commander during Confrontation, 2 July 2004.
29.Interview with the late Lt. Col. (retired) John Woodhouse, commander of 22 SAS during the Indonesian Confrontation, 7 January 2005.
30.Walker, Fighting On, p. 148.
31.Pockock, Fighting General, p. 196–7.
32.Note from Secretary of Defence to the Prime Minister, 2 November 1964, PRO: FO371/176484, IM1192/25–7.
33.Major General George Lea quoted in Peter Dickens, SAS: The Jungle Frontier: 22 Special Air Service in the Borneo Campaign 1963–66 (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1983), p. 194.
34.Interview with Brigadier (retired) Christopher Bullock.
35.Records of the 10th Gurkha Rifles, Gurkha Museum, Winchester.
36.Records of the 2nd Gurkha Rifles, Gurkha Museum, Winchester.
37.Christopher Bullock, Journeys Hazardous: Gurkha Clandestine Operations in Borneo 1965 (Eastbourne: Antony Rowe, 1994).
38.2/2 Gurkha Rifles Battalion Records 1964–6, Gurkha Museum, Winchester. Sketch by Sebastian Ballard.
39.Note from Colonel N. H. N. Wild to the Foreign Office on requirements for the Indonesian Confrontation identified by the Chiefs of Staff Committee on 29 September 1964, PRO: FO371/176484, IM1192/7.
40.Note from the Chiefs of Staff Committee to the Secretary of Defence, ‘Dispatch of V-Bombers to Far East’, 27 November 1963, PRO: DEFE7/2374.
41.Circular paper from Peck, 23 October 1964, PRO FO 371/176484 IM 1192/20.
42.Plan ‘Mason’ was formerly known as plan ‘Shalstone’.
43.Defence and Oversees Policy Committee minutes, 16 November 1964, PRO: FO371/176484, IM1192/37. See also letter from A. A. Golds on plans Addington and Mason dated 3 December 1964, where he details how to synchronise the political action associated with Mason: PRO: FO371/176485, IM1192/62.
44.Paper by Peck, October 1964, PRO: FO371/176484, IM1192/15, p. 8.
45.Daily Mirror, 9 November 1964; The Times, 8 November 1964.
46.Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, p. 246.
47.Walter Walker, ‘How Borneo Was Won’.
48.Robert Osgood, Limited War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).
49.Christopher Tuck, ‘Borneo, Counter-Insurgency and War Termination’, Defence Studies, vol. 10, Issue 1–2 (March-June 2010), pp. 106–25.
8.STRATEGIC NARRATIVE
1.Captain Wayne Porter, USN, and Colonel Mark Mykleby, USMC, with a Preface by Anne-Marie Slaughter, A National Strategic Narrative (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars paper, 2011), p. 10.
2.David Kilcullen, ‘Twenty-Eight Articles, Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency’, Small Wars Journal (Edn 1, 2006), p. 7, paragraph 21.
3.Charles Farr, ‘Counter Terrorism Strategy in the UK: Are We Winning?’, Lecture given at the Global Strategy Forum, London, 6 July 2011.
4.I am grateful to Lt. Col. Gerald Strickland for this illustration, a version of which he presented at the Royal United Services Institute conference on Counter-Insurgency Tactics, London, 8–9 December 2010.
5.Thirteen Days (2000), based on the Book by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow (eds), The Kennedy Tapes—Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
6.Clausewitz argued that the eighteenth-century emphasis on ‘strategic manoeuvre’ was overly dependent on the psychological component at the expense of its underlying physical reality: ‘A general such as Bonaparte could ruthlessly cut through all his enemies’ strategic plans in search of battle’. Clausewitz, On War, Book 6, ch. 8, Howard and Paret, p. 386.
7.Ibid., Book 6, ch. 3, p. 363.
8.Ibid., Book 2, ch. 2, p. 143.
9.Ibid., Book 6, ch. 29, p. 499.
10.Ibid., Book 6, ch. 30, pp. 509–10. This idea is similar that of the highly influential naval theorist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, who wrote at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He argued in his work on sea power that in naval warfare when opposing forces are in contact, that is ‘tactical’; everything else is ‘strategic’.
11.Ibid., Book 4, ch. 4, p. 232.
12.Namely Heinz Guderian and Erwin Rommel, who were following an idea that Frieser suggests was originally Erich von Manstein’s.
13.Karl-Heinz Frieser, The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West, translated by John T. Greenwood (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005), p. 344.
14.Karl-Heinz Frieser, The Blitzkrieg Legend, p. 326.
15.David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (London: Hurst, 2009), pp. 299–300.
16.John Keegan, The Face of Battle (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976).
17.Ahmed Rashid, ‘The Way Out of Afghanistan’, New York Times Review of Books, vol. LVIII, no. 1 (January-February 2011), p. 19.
18.Clausewitz, On War, Book 3, ch. 17, p. 220.
19.Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, ch. 3, p. 104.
20.Ibid., Book 1, ch. 3, p. 119.
21.Ibid., Book 2, ch. 2, p. 137; Book 8, ch. 1, p. 578.
22.Ibid., Book 4, ch. 10, p. 254.
23.Napoleon’s Maxims of War, With Notes by General Burnod, first published 1827, translated by Lieutenant General Sir G. C. D’Aguilar (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1902), Maxim 73.
24.Ibid., Maxim 62.
25.Ibid., Maxim 61.
26.Ibid., Maxim 60.
27.Ibid., Maxim 58.
28.Ibid., Maxim 56.
29.Clausewitz, On War, Book 6, ch. 30, Howard and Paret, p. 514.
30.On geist in Clausewitz, see Hew Strachan, On War, A Biography, p. 127. Peter Paret writes that in one of the manuscripts Clausewitz wrote in 1812, next to a comment on the need to understand the character of supreme command, Clausewitz had himself noted: ‘Wallenstein. Schiller’. (Peter Paret, The Cognitive Challenge of War, p. 54. Paret cites Clausewitz, Schriften-Aufsätze-Studien-Briefe, ed. Werner Hahlweg (Göttingen, 1966), 1:1700.) This makes an overt connection to what Paret sees as linkages inherent in Clausewitz’s works between factors that are present in war, but have justification beyond it. This is one of the themes of Friedrich von Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy of plays (which Schiller had started writing in 1794); one of the protagonist’s quotations from this play is, for example: ‘even in war, what ultimately matters is not war’; another line from the same character is: ‘for if war does not already cease in war, from where should peace return?’ (Peter Paret, The Cognitive Challenge of War, p. 53. Paret cites Schiller, Die Piccolomini, act 1, scene 4.) Paret emphasises the connections between Clausewitz’s writings and more broadly the ‘new emphasis in the arts on character, temperament and feeling’, reflected in Clausewitz’s works in the need ‘to bring emotional factors far beyond such matters as the soldiers’ discipline and morale into the structural analysis of war’. (Ibid., pp. 56–63. Paret cites, for example, linkages with Franz von Kleist’s play Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, written between 1809 and 1811.) Clausewitz experienced war first hand and was attuned to its reception in not just political but also in cultural terms. Hence his use of contemporary cultural reference points to inform his analysis of war is paralleled by the stress in his work in locating war not just in its political context, but in its cultural context.
31.Clausewitz, On War, Book 8, ch. 2, p. 580.
32.Ardant Du Picq, Etudes sur le combat: Combat antique et moderne. Translated into English as Battle Studies from the 8th edn in French by John Greely and Robert C. Cotton (New York: Macmillan, 1920). Cited by Hew Strachan, keynote paper at the Oxford University Changing Character of War Programme conference on Post-Heroic Warfare, March 2011.
33.Anthony King, paper on ‘Cohesion in the Armed Forces’ at the Oxford University Changing Character of War Programme conference on Post-Heroic Warfare, March 2011.
34.Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, ch. 3, p. 112.
35.Ibid., Book 1, ch. 3, p. 105. See also Book 3, ch. 16, p. 217.
36.Ibid., Book 1, ch. 1, p. 81.
37.Bernard Bailyn, quoted in Gordon S. Wood, ‘No Thanks for the Memories’, a review of The Whites of Their Eyes by Jill Lepore, New York Times Review of Books, vol. LVIII, no. 1 (January-February 2011), p. 42.
38.General Anthis served in Vietnam 1961–4. It is somewhat ironic in retrospect that he was the first recipient of the US Air Force Association’s Citation of Honor Award for outstanding work in counter-insurgency in South East Asia.
39.Neil Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, p. 541.
40.The exact number is not clear; this is Time Magazine’s figure.
41.Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr. Hamburger Hill proved to be the telling battle of the Vietnam War, as Pork Chop Hill was for the Korean War. Vietnam Magazine, June 1999. See also Neil Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, p. 742; and ‘The Battle for Hamburger Hill’, Time Magazine, 30 May 1969.
42.Neil Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, p. 742.
43.Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, ch. 5, p. 116.
44.See Brendan Simms and D. J. B. Trim (ed.), Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
45.Clausewitz’s style in 1812 was not that of the more mature author of On War, started in 1816, and still unfinished by 1830. Hew Strachan argues that Clausewitz most clearly subscribed to an ‘existential’ view of war in the years 1809–12. His later views, which we find in On War, are far more balanced and incorporate the idea of ‘instrumental’ war. The two forms are reconciled by a broad definition of policy. Clausewitz, Historical and Political Writings, edited and translated by Peter Paret and Daniel Moran (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 290. In Hew Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, A Biography, pp. 53–4.
46.Clausewitz, On War, Book 5, ch. 16, p. 345; Book 6, ch. 3, p. 365; Book 6, ch. 6, p. 373.
47.Hew Strachan in his biography of On War argues that even Clausewitz’s treatment of insurrections is framed in terms of an extension of state on state warfare, where the people continue the state struggle through unconventional means. As a Prussian officer, Clausewitz drew up contingency plans in 1811 for a possible insurrection in Silesia against France. He argued that not just Prussia but the German nation should rise up. Hew Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, A Biography, p. 182.
48.Clausewitz, On War, Book 2, ch. 2, p. 138.
49.The term ‘ally’ also has an emotional implication. It comes from the Latin alligare (to bind to); in medieval English ‘ally’ was used as a verb to mean ‘to join in marriage’ (late thirteenth century), and subsequently as a noun to mean ‘relative’ or ‘kinsman’ (late fourteenth century).
50.Peter Paret notes that even in 1806, at the time of Clausewitz’s experiences of warfare, despite the emergence of ideas of the ‘German Nation’, there were widely different political reactions to the Prussian defeat at Jena by the other German states and principalities. Some felt admiration for French reforms, which Paret argues was not inconsistent with broader German patriotism. Peter Paret, The Cognitive Challenge of War, p. 38.
51.Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, originally published in Vossische Zeitung (1929), translated by A. H. Wheen (London: Putnam, 1930).
52.Ibid., p. 287.
53.Ibid., pp. 222–3.
54.‘Afghanistan bombing kills 13 in busy Helmand market’, BBC News Online, 31 March 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8596312.stm
9.ETHOS, VISION AND CONFIDENCE IN STRATEGIC NARRATIVE
1.Quoted in Hew Strachan, ‘The Lost Meaning of Strategy’, Survival 47:3, 33–54 (2005), pp. 33–4.
2.I am grateful to Ian Gordon for this expression. He is a former Gurkha officer who himself uses this expression in relation to his experience of the Dhofar War of the 1970s.
3.Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, ch. 1, Howard and Paret, p. 80.
4.Brendan Simms, Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia (London: Penguin, 2002).
5.General Graeme Lamb, ‘Counter-insurgency Commander’s Guidance’ (British Army internal unclassified publication, May 2009).
6.Andrew Ross Sorkin, Too Big to Fail (Allen Lane, 2009) p. 432.
7.Ibid., p. 223.
8.Northern Helmand used to be called Zamindabar. The province of Helmand was only created in 1960 and was called Gereshk Province from 1960–64 when the provincial capital moved to Lashkar Gah. See Mike Martin, A Brief History of Helmand (British Army publication, 2011).
9.Mike Martin, A Brief History of Helmand, p. 72. Martin cites Professor Habibullah Rafi, Kabul University, quoted in Tom Coghlan, ‘The Taliban in Helmand: An Oral History’, in Antonio Giustozzi (ed.), Decoding the Taliban, p. 125, 129; S. Gordon, Aid and Stabilisation: Helmand Case Study, Royal Institute of International Affairs, p. 52.
10.This was an idea formally put forward by R. G. Collingwood in The Idea of History (1946), although the actual phrase was coined by E. H. Carr, What is History? (1960).
11.See for example Jill Lepore, The Whites of Their Eyes, The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
12.Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1869), trans. Louise Maude, Aylmer Maude (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Book 3, ch.1, p. 650. Tolstoy’s theory of history is fully expounded in the second epilogue of War and Peace.
13.Harry S. Truman, ‘Inaugural Address’, 20 January 1949, Public Papers of the Presidents (1949), pp. 114–15.
14.‘Point IV’, Fortune, February 1950, p. 88.
15.Cullather cites Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (New York: Doubleday, 1960), p. 393.
16.Nick Cullather, From New Deal to New Frontier in Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State, Working Paper #6 (August 2002), ‘The Cold War as Global Conflict’, International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University, p. 3.
17.See for example Antonio Giustozzi, War, Politics and Society in Afghanistan 1978–1992 (London: Hurst, 2000), especially ch. 13 on ‘National Reconciliation’, pp. 154–85.
18.These observations came from discussions with my father, James Simpson, the author of Burning to Read, English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Belknap Press, 2007), p. 247.
19.Ibid., p. 247.
20.On the role of rumors in Afghan politics see for example Antonio Giustozzi, ‘The “Great Fears” of Afghanistan: How Wild Ideas Shape Politics’, Ideas Today, issue 04.10, London School of Economics and Political Science (June 2010), pp. 9–13.
21.BBC Radio 4, Political Hour, 28 June 2009.
22.James Simpson, Burning to Read, p. 178.
23.This interpretation follows Saint Paul (2 Corinthians 3:3) which might be taken to suppose that the true text of the literal sense is written ‘in the fleshly tables of the heart’. There is a much wider theological debate over this which this Book is not concerned with.
24.Lord Denning in Magor and St Mellon RDC v. Newport Corpn [1950] 2 All ER 1226 at 1236, CA. Cited in Ian Loveland, Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, and Human Rights: A Critical Introduction, 5th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 69.
25.General Sir Graeme Lamb in House of Commons Defence Committee, Fourth Report, Operations in Afghanistan, 17 July 2011, p. Ev 66, Q 288.
CONCLUSION: CONTEMPORARY STRATEGIC THOUGHT
1.Clausewitz, On War, Book 6, ch. 30, Howard and Paret, p. 515.
2.President G. W. Bush, address to a joint session of Congress, 20 September 2001.
3.Ian Traynor, ‘Russia accused of unleashing cyberwar to disable Estonia’, Guardian, 17 May 2007.
4.Although even the practice of capturing people in the Afghan conflict illustrates the differences with conventional war, since detainees are not prisoners of war, and so have to be prosecuted by the Afghan justice system. The notion of routinely gathering ‘evidence’ against enemy soldiers is alien to conventional war.
5.This doctrine was consciously Clausewitzian. See Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy and the Limitation of War’, Survival, vol. 50, no. 1, Feb.-March 2008, p. 50.
6.Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions 1949, Article 52.2, states that: ‘Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives. In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage’.
7.Jack L. Snyder, The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operations, Report for the United States Air Force R-2154-AF (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1977).
8.The Network of Concerned Anthropologists, The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
9.Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, ch. 1, Howard and Paret, p. 77.
10.Ibid., Book 3, ch. 16, p. 217.
11.Ibid., Book 8, ch. 2, p. 579.
12.Ibid., Book 1, ch. 1, p. 76.
13.Ibid., Book 1, ch. 1, p. 89.
14.Ibid., Book 1, ch. 1, p. 86.
15.See Daniel Moran, Strategic Theory and the History of War, p. 4. He cites, for example, Jeremy Bentham, A Plan for Universal and Perpetual Peace (London, 1789).
16.Daniel Moran, Strategic Theory and the History of War, p. 4.
17.Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, ch. 1, p. 80.
18.HM Government, ‘A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The National Security Strategy’ (London: Stationery Office, October 2010), p. 15.
19.Nicholas Watt, ‘Senior military figures tell Liam Fox: “rescrub” your defence review’, Guardian Online, 13 June 2011.
20.The report is clear that the UK had at that point strategically lost its way: ‘this leads us to the profoundly disturbing conclusion that an understanding of National Strategy and an appreciation of why it is important has indeed largely been lost’. Public Administration Committee, ‘First Report: Who does UK National Strategy?’ Published 12 October 2010, ch. 4, paragraphs 32, 39, 40.