Piracy as Insurgency

Robert Kaplan has an interesting piece on Piracy in today's NYT. For him, this anarchy at sea is a direct result of anarchy on land. And Somalia, along whose coast this is occuring, is the ultimate failed anarchic state.

Piracy, of course, has the potential to disrupt major trade routes and hence trade at the same time that global trade is under assault from protectionist reactions to the economic crisis. Kaplan suggests, however, that the assymetric nature of piracy represents a greater threat -- its potential use as a terrorist weapon:

The big danger in our day is that piracy can potentially serve as a platform for terrorists. Using pirate techniques, vessels can be hijacked and blown up in the middle of a crowded strait, or a cruise ship seized and the passengers of certain nationalities thrown overboard. You can see how Al Qaeda would be studying this latest episode at sea, in which Somali pirates attacked a Maersk Line container ship and were fought off by the American crew, even as they have managed to take the captain hostage in one of the lifeboats.

The obvious response to this is military (in this case, naval) interdiction. Yet as Kaplan notes, this presents the usual problems of a massively powerful response to asymmetric attacks:

So we end up with the spectacle of an American destroyer, the Bainbridge, with enough Tomahawk missiles and other weaponry to destroy a small city, facing off against a handful of Somali pirates in a tiny lifeboat. This is not an efficient use of American resources. It indicates how pirates, like terrorists, can attack us asymmetrically. The challenge ahead for the United States is not only dealing with the rise of Chinese naval power, but also in handling more unconventional risks that will require a more scrappy, street-fighting Navy.

Sadly, however, this overlooks a half century of lessons on asymmetric warfare. As both the recent groundbreaking work of the U.S. Army in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual (pdf file) and in the widely influential work by John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, counterinsurgency is a multifaceted task of which military response is only one (usually relatively small) part. This is the lesson ignored in Viet Nam, learned in Iraq and currently being relearned (and learned for the first time by Canada) in Afghanistan.

Let's hope we don't forget it in the Indian Ocean

Harper and the Taliban Insurgency

In an interview with CNN's Farreed Zakaria on Sunday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke with surprising candor about the future of Canada's mission in Afghanistan. Although many sources, including the Globe and Mail, reported that he had claimed that the NATO effort could never defeat the Taliban insurgency, what he in fact said was quite a bit more nuanced.

Harper did in fact argue that Canada and its allies cannot simply "win by staying" and cannot on their own defeat the insurgency. He insisted, however, that we can bring about improvements, and he suggested that the most important improvement that might be made is the emergence of an honest and competent government that can "manage the insurgency" and govern capably. Success against the insurgency, he argued, must be indigenous, and the proper role for Canada and others must be to help bring about sufficient Afghan governance and military capacity to achieve such success. It is this, he insisted, that is the essential element of our engagement and ultimately our exit strategy.

The issue for Harper, therefore, is not "whether to stay or go" but "whether we are being successful" in building this local capacity. To my mind this is scarcely defeatist. It is simple common sense coupled with an accurate reading of history. Western democracies have seldom prevailed alone in foreign counterinsurgency efforts. And indeed such efforts have often destabilized the very societies mounting them. France in Algeria and the United States in Viet Nam are obvious examples.

John Nagl, a co-author with David Patraeus and others of the U.S. Army's widely regarded counterinsurgency field manual suggests that

[i]t is perhaps only a slight exageration to suggest that, on their own, foreign forces cannot defeat an insurgency; the best they can hope for is to create the conditions that will enable local forces to win it for them.

If this is the approach that an expanded U.S. role force in Afghanistan is going to take, and this would appear almost certain, then there is real hope that the type of success that Harper envisions will be realized. And if this is the case, then an argument can be made for our continued presence. However, I think Harper is right that if we are not making progress in this direction, then it might be better to recognize this and curtail our efforts.