Things Noted Here and There

by Cliopatria

Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino,"Getty Had Signs It Was Acquiring Possibly Looted Art, Documents Show," LA Times, says that half of the J. Paul Getty Museum's fine antiquities were acquired from dealers who are now under investigation and that Italian authorities are seeking their return.

Scott Jaschik,"Inbred Historians," Inside Higher Ed, 26 September, reports on Robert Townsend's"Privileging History: Trends in the Undergraduate Origins of History PhDs," Perspectives, September. Townsend found that doctoral programs admitted candidates from a broader range of undergraduate institutions in the 1980s, but that more recently the range has narrowed again. For one thoughtful undergraduate's reaction, see:"Favorite Sons," The Elfin Ethicist, 22 September.

A number of the weekend's most noted things reminded me of the prophet Jeremiah's tragic sense of history:"The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge":

Richard Morin,"The Legacy of Lynching, Part I," Washington Post, 25 September, summarizes the findings of sociologists Steven F. Messner, Robert D. Baller, and Matthew P. Zevenbergen,"The Legacy of Lynching and Southern Homicide," American Sociological Review 70 (August 2005): 633-56. In brief, the authors find direct continuity among patterns of lynching in the 19th century South, homicide rates in the 20th century, and capital punishment in the 21st century. Thanks to Sepoy at Chapati Mystery and Hiram Hover, who has some questions about the study, for the tip.

Jason Vest,"Willful Ignorance: How the Pentagon Sent the Army to Iraq Without a Counterinsurgency Doctrine," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August, suggests that, for all its technological brilliance, Donald Rumsfeld's"shock and awe" confidence still had not learned the lessons of and had no plan to fight post-conventional, guerilla warfare. Thanks to Mark Grimsley at Blog Them Out of the Stone Age for the tip.

Niall Ferguson,"What Happens If We Pull Out Of Iraq – Think Beirut To The Power of 10," The Telegraph, 25 September, argues that you haven't seen violence like what is likely to occur if the British and American troops are withdrawn soon. [ ... ]

Historians like Louisiana State University's T. Harry Williams and the University of North Carolina's George B. Tindall used to joke occasionally that Louisiana was"the northernmost of the banana republics," but the Bush administration's tragically inept response to Hurricane Katrina two weeks ago had Yale sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein suggesting that the United States looked like a"banana republic".

When El Salvador has to offer troops to help restore order in New Orleans because U.S. troops were so scarce and so slow in arriving, Iran cannot be quaking in its boots about a possible U.S. invasion. When Sweden has its relief planes sitting on the tarmac in Sweden for a week because it cannot get an answer from the U.S. government as to whether to send them, they are not going to be reassured about the ability of the U.S. to handle more serious geopolitical matters. And when conservative U.S. television commentators talk of the U.S. looking like a Third World country, Third World countries may begin to think that maybe there is a grain of truth in the description.

Thanks to Chairman Ku's Little Blue Book for the tip.

Our HNN colleagues at Liberty & Power are sponsoring a contest to name the 1) Best Libertarian/Classical Liberal Group Academic Blog; 2) Best Libertarian/Classical Liberal Individual Academic Blog; 3) Best New Libertarian/Classical Liberal Academic Group Blog; and 4) Best New Libertarian/Classical Liberal Academic Individual Blog. Nominations will be open through 25 October; and voting will occur shortly thereafter. You don't have to be a libertarian to participate in the process. Go over and nominate your favorite libertarian or classical liberal blogs!

Finally, Kenneth Chang and Warren Leary's New York Times obituary of Yale mathematician Serge Lang includes this statement about his classroom methods:"Decades of students discovered that if they did not pay attention in class, Dr. Lang would throw chalk. ‘He would rant and rave in front of his students,' Dr. [Kenneth] Ribet said. ‘He would say,"Our two aims are truth and clarity, and to achieve these I will shout in class."'" Thanks to Jon Dresner for the tip.

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David Silbey - 10/1/2005

Mr. Lederer--

We are having a terminology problem here. "Doctrine" is not just a field manual or classes taught. In an organization as large and varied as the military, doctrine, to be effective, has to be reflected in equipment and training exercises. Carrying out the principles in the FMs requires specific equipment and rigorous and continuing training exercises.

Thus, the AirLand Battle concepts led to the purchases of the Big 5 weapons systems:
1) the M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank
2) the M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle
3) the UH-60 Blackhawk utility helicopter
4) the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter
5) the Patriot air defense missile system

All of these weapons were specifically designed for the tenets of airland battle, and all were purchased by the thousands. The Army learned how to use them and how to carry out the tenets of conventional doctrine in a continuing series of exercises during the 1980s and 90s. There were exercises with NATO allies, exercises in the continental U.S., and exercises with Middle Eastern and Asian allies. The result was that the Army knew how and with what to exercise the principles laid out in the field manuals. That's doctrine.

By contrast, the counterinsurgency ideas laid out in the mid-1980s never led to specific technology to use them, were rarely tried out in joint exercises, and had no real organizational implication for the Army. There's little time to read a field manual or your class notes in a firefight. You have to be trained and rehearsed to do so effectively.

(To take a specific example of this: the officer in charge of the M1 Abrams has a command station at the top of the turret of the tank. It's very hard to see if the hatch is closed and he's using the (inadequate) remote vision equipment. So most commanders pop the hatch and stand half-exposed. That works reasonably well in a conventional campaign, where the targets are going to be at some distance and in a predictable direction. In counterinsurgency, where the first indication of an enemy is the sniper bullet that just hit the commander in the head, it works not well at all.)

John H. Lederer - 9/28/2005

I don't disagree that in the 70's the emphasis of the Army was on a conventional war in Europe.

Nor do I disagree that there were problems with the Army's counterinsurgency doctrine (though I do not see exactly the same problems as your cited critics).

But was there thought and effort put into what the Army should do in a counter insurgency situation? Was there a formally promulgated doctrine? Were officers trained in this doctrine?

Yes.

With the possible exception of the first Iraqi war, I don't think there has been any war the U.S. has fought where its doctrine was both pretty much correct and applicable to the situation. I doubt that there will be another in the next 200 years.

But that is something else entirely than to accuse the army of not having even seriously looked at how it would prosecute such a war.

David Silbey - 9/27/2005

David Silbey - 9/27/2005

Mr. Lederer--

The Army official history does not particularly agree with you:

"The emphasis within the Army throughout the decade of the 1970s remained on conventional war in Europe, where Chief of Staff General Creighton W Abrams, General DePuy, and like-minded officers believed the greatest hazard, if not the greatest probability of war, existed. They conceived of an intense armored battle, reminiscent of World War II, to be fought in the European theater. If the Army could fight the most intense battle possible, some argued, it also had the ability to fight wars of lesser magnitude."

From the Army official history of the First Persian Gulf War (www/Www2.htm)">http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/www/Www2.htm)

Quite a few officers and civilians, writing in the journal of the Army War College, Parameters, also do not agree with your evaluation. You might look at:

www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/04summer/cassidy.htm">http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/04summer/cassidy.htm

www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/03autumn/cassidy.htm">http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/03autumn/cassidy.htm

www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/04spring/tomes.htm">http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/04spring/tomes.htm

www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/1995/metz.htm">http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/1995/metz.htm

www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/97spring/kagan.htm">http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/97spring/kagan.htm

----
In essence, the dominant FM to look at for the late 70s and 80s was 100-5, "Operations," first written in 1976 and then updated a number of times in the 80s. 90-8 was an afterthought, and an attempt to integrate counterinsurgency operations into AirLand Battle rather than the other way around. The doctrine drove the war, rather than the war driving the doctrine. As one Army Officer later wrote:

"The writers of FM 90-8 were conventional soldiers who knew how to be conventional warfighters. Their instruction manual on how to fight an insurgency was based on what they knew--how to use units trained in conventional infantry tactics to fight a guerrilla that presumably would present a readily identifiable target.

The writers knew how to "find and fix" an enemy that had a presence on the rural battlefield. Unfortunately, the battlefield tactics the writers wrote about in FM 90-8 were designed almost exclusively for use against an easily identifiable and rural insurgent (the Viet Cong). FM 90-8 fails to address in depth the tactics and techniques that should be employed to identify insurgents that camouflage themselves in the local populace as they have, and do, in such places as Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I believe that FM 90-8's lack of depth is a major reason for the U.S. Army's continuing difficulty in conducting successful operations against a latent and incipient insurgency. I also believe there is an effective model that the U.S. Army could emulate when it is faced with conducting counterguerrilla operations against guerrillas that refuse to present an easily identifiable target." (_Infantry_ magazine, Mar-Apr 2004, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IAV/is_2_93/ai_n6124001).

The Army began to recognize that in the early 1990s and out of that came FM 100-20, "Operations other than war", which, the authors wrote "fills a void which has existed in the Army and the Air Force for some time." But FM 100-20 did not particularly gain traction at the time in an Army interested largely in the Powell doctrine of using overwhelming force for fixed ends with a clearly defined exit strategy. As the Air Force Association Magazine wrote in 2001, AirLand Battle got the Army out of the "swamp of counterinsurgency" and back to its _real_ job: conventional operations. [http://www.afa.org/magazine/June2001/0601airland.asp]

Unfortunately, sometimes the swamp sucks you back in.

John H. Lederer - 9/27/2005

Re: Jonathan Dresner's comment:

What I think I sensed in the first year after the invasion was a disconnect between the military and the civil side. The military doctrine emphasizes the role of the military as one part of a several part effort, with the other parts being done by the "government" --which after the invasion really meant the State department and civilian DOD, e.g. Bremer.

I don't think the civilian part was up to the task, and the military didn't fill the hole.

That is not harsh criticism of the civilian part -- I rather suspect that no occupation administration would ever be up to the task of convincing people that they are a better government than a reasonable indigenous one for any appreciable length of time. Combine that with high hopes on the part of the population and a wrecked country as Saddam's legacy, and disappointment seems likely.

As the civil administration becomes an Iraqi one and more and more "established" and "legitimate", I think the military is in an increasingly comfortable role -- one that coincides with their doctrinal role of providing military support to the government. My own impression is that they are starting to do very well at that.

John H. Lederer - 9/27/2005

Mr. Sibley,

I don't think the implication of a long hiatus is correct. Note for instance the doctrinal FM 90-8, Counter Guerrila Operations (1986), which despite its title is about equally devoted to counterinsurgency and counter guerrilla operations (which it defines as a subset of counterinsurgency operations). The manual specifically relates counter-insurgency operations to the tenets of the Air-Land battle concept

David Silbey - 9/27/2005

Mr. Lederer is right to point out that both the Army and the Marines _have_ published counterinsurgency doctrines. He leaves out perhaps the most famous one--the Marine "Small Wars" manual of 1940, which was adopted by the Army.

But note the latest date he mentions: 1963. That's because Mr. Vest's larger point is correct. After Vietnam, in which there was a clear need for the development of a up-to-date COIN doctrine, the military instead refocused on the Soviet threat, largely to the exclusion of COIN ideas. The result was the AirLand Battle doctrine, which has done enormously well for our conventional wars (note how quickly both Persian Gulf Wars went in their conventional phase), but is not particularly suited for guerilla warfare.

The doctrinal gap exists. And I should point out that this is not simply a theoretical discussion. Doctrine shapes equipment. The reason that more Humvees were not armored was because AirLand Battle organizes the battlefield into front/near front/rear area. Equipment in the combat zones needed arms and armor. Equipment in the rear areas (hummers, fuel tankers) did not.

Jonathan Dresner - 9/27/2005

This is one case where the title of the piece doesn't adequately reflect the content: whether or not there was official doctrine, there was no official recognition that counterinsurgency doctrine was applicable until far too late, and even then the importance of relevant and well-informed tactics was ignored.

Which is to say, as so often has been said about this administration, that partisan "visionaries" were allowed to run riot over established, competent people.

Ralph E. Luker - 9/27/2005

Mr. Lederer, You might want to go over to Mark Grimsley's blog, listed on your left, as War Historian, and discuss that with him. I'd defer to his judgment.

John H. Lederer - 9/27/2005

Mr. Vest appears to have failed to do the research to support his claim that the "pentagon" sent troops to Iraq without a counterinsurgnecy doctrine. Five with minutes with Google, or simply a survey of several military book publisher's catalogues would have indicated his error.

The first formal field manual on countersinurgency operations was published in 1963,FM 31-22 U.S.Army Counterinsurgency Forces (November 1963). The Marines published doctrinal papers and works in the 1920's.

Formal courses in counterinsurgnecy operations were taught and are taught at Ft. Benning. The author of the 2004 Field Manual has acknowledged that his team started with the published material widely available in the military.

It might be bad doctrine or wrong doctrine, but to say there was no doctrine simply is not true.

Louis N Proyect - 9/26/2005

He might be the most unreliable historian in the past 50 years, especially when it comes to writing about "violence".

---

"In Niall Ferguson’s panegyric to British colonialism, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003), Kenya gets just one significant mention. It comes in the introduction, and is a description of his time there as a boy. It was three years after independence, but, happily, ‘scarcely anything had changed’ since colonial days. ‘We had our bungalow, our maid, our smattering of Swahili – and our sense of unshakeable security. It was a magical time, which indelibly impressed on my consciousness the sight of the hunting cheetah, the sound of Kikuyu women singing, the smell of the first rains and the taste of ripe mango. I suspect my mother was never happier.’ Glasgow, where the family returned after just two years, was a comedown. ‘To the Scots, the empire stood for bright sunshine.’ You can see that in the book. Yet less than a decade before Ferguson’s idyllic stay there, Kenya had been wracked by war, with much bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities on all sides. It was wrong to say that ‘scarcely anything had changed.’ Not that the young Ferguson would have been aware of that in the 1960s; but by the time he came to write his book, some knowledge of it should have percolated through. The Kenya ‘Emergency’ is a major incident in the history of the end of the empire: it makes a difference to the whole story. But he doesn’t mention it."

full: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n05/port01_.html