How to win the GWOT

By: humanfont
Published On: 3/26/2008 11:38:30 PM

We won the cold war with Dynasty and Levis, not SDI, B1's and other defense contractor boondoggles as the Reaganites would have you believe.  Now I see a chance for america to defeat our new enemy.  I offer a counterpoint to the W/McCain forever war; I call my strategy can you hear me now :-). We see an opening, a turning on the taliban in southern Afghanstian this week.  Was it some new NATO program, or offensive?  No it was the cell phones.  The taliban decided that we could track them through cell phones, which we can.  So they started blowing up the cell phone towers.  Now the cell phone companies are pulling out of southern afghanistan and the local population is pissed.  The taliban is begging for the companies to come back.  But after seeing 2 million dollars of equipment destroyed, the companies arn't so eager.  
The fact is we will beat this enemy through opening and sharing.  Look at the power of a cell phone, now imagine what happens if we got these folks TV and internet, and electrification.

Comments



Winning hearts and minds only through humanity (Hugo Estrada - 3/27/2008 9:11:54 AM)
That is the only way to win people over. Many people believe that if one behaves brutally enough, then people will fear you and obey you. This may work within countries, but at a global level it fails. Brutally engenders desire for revenge and resolution against the aggressors. The British never crumbled under the Nazi bombings; they become stronger on their will to fight them.

The role of international police, intelligence, and the military is to take care of current active terrorists groups. But the overall strategy should be to prevent having more people recruited to terrorist groups.  



Right on (Evan M - 3/27/2008 10:50:05 AM)
The diary is right on. At the end of the day, it's about the quality of life of the average person. Our story to the world needs to be prosperity for the many.


How to win the GWOT (South County - 3/27/2008 9:51:18 PM)
To begin with we should eliminate the GWOT title and call this struggle the partnership for progress and stability.  GWOT implies a long "war" (read: military action) on terrorism.  We want to portray exactly the opposite impression: we're in this together, we want to help people have a better future, and we can't solve all problems with force alone.  As we've seen in Iraq and Afghan, military force alone can't succeed in quelling an insurgency.  The Counterinsurgency (COIN) field manual reminds us of that.  Author Tom Barnett notes that broadening economic globalization (such as FDI) to create a stronger economies around the world may well be the best real force for change.

Some insurgents and terrorists will always have to be killed.  Plus, although state-on-state warfare is not a big factor these days, we still need a stong conventional military just in case.  However, beyond that, seven years after 9-11, we do not have a long-term national strategy for how to win the GWOT.  I've heard several people say recently that it would be more beneficial for the 3 remaining candidates to discuss their long term strategy for providing stability, rather than arcane debate about how fast to pull out of Iraq.  What we need to do is: (a) broaden the use of all elements of national power, and (b) use DoD to increase its ongoing non-kinetic (non-shooting) partnership building efforts around the world.  

The acronym DIMEFIL (Diplomatic, Info, Military, Economic, Finance, Finance, Intelligence, and Legal) is useful in considering the other levers of national power available for use other than just the military.  However, for many reasons we haven't seen much, if any, participation of any non-DoD agencies in stabilization operations overseas.  Where is our diplomatic (State) push in trying to push Iraq to make political compromises, or Pakistan to fight terrorism?  Only recently have we seen discussion of a Civilian Response Corps to deploy civilian government agency experts to a hot spot quickly.  These experts can restore essential government services (power, water, etc.), and shore up the courts, economic systems, and government agencies.  In the last week, British PM Gordon Brown announced the UK was creating such a civilian response cell to perform similar functions.

In DoD, the non-kinetic approach has quietly taken hold in all of the Combatant Commands not involved in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Since commands with responsibility over the Pacific, Europe, Africa, North America, and South America, have few, if any, shooting conflicts going on in their area of operations (AO), they are focusing instead on maintaining stability by building parterships.  Officially known as "building partnership capacity" or "phase zero", the effort aims to prevent conflicts from ever beginning in the first place.  The goal is to win hearts and minds of local citizens by reinforcing the legitimacy of their government (information operations), improving quality of life through tangible projects (humanitarian and civic assistance), and improving the capabilities of the host nation military and security forces (foreign military training).  Secretary Gates recently said the most important mission for the Army going forward will not be the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we train other countries for provide stability for themselves.

To carry out these partership building efforts, a number of innovative efforts have been initiatied, including the 3-D aproach in the Horn of Africa, humanitarian assistance that provides free medical care, the creation of a new command for Africa, and the development of unique foreign miitary training methods.  CJTF-HOA based in Djibouti, focuses on the so-called 3-D approach: Diplomacy, Defense, and Development.  In 2007, the USNS Comfort deployed to South and Central America for several months providing free medical care to thousands of patients.  U.S. Africa Command is being established in 2008 to focus the capacity building and conflict prevention efforts in Africa.

However, moving forward, we have a military designed for conventional tank-on-tank warfare on the plains of Europe.  We're not organized, trained, or equipped to fight protracted insurgencies, let-alone do civil-military operations/peace-corps on steroids missions.  Our Information Operations efforts, means to deliver humanitarian assistance, and foreign military training capabilities, need to be modernized and strengthened.