The media has been saturated over the past week with reports on the departure from Iraq of the last US combat troops. On the margins of that coverage, and to a greater extent in the think tank press, questions have been posed about the conduct of the war, its costs, what may have been achieved, whether or not it is really over, and what lies ahead.

More remarkable, however, is the speed and extent to which the Iraq war, like a bad dream the morning after, has faded from public consciousness.

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While doing the research for Guerrilla Diplomacy,  I came across an especially poignant quotation attributed to the Roman senator and historian Tacitus. He wrote:

They created devastation, and called it peace.

It seems to me that much the same could be said about Iraq in September 2010. By the time the shock and awe campaign began in the spring of 2003, it had become clear that in the USA, foreign policy had in large part become an instrument of war, rather than vice versa. The State Department’s comprehensively detailed, 1200 page, 13 volume dossier on post conflict planning was reputedly tossed into the trash can by then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Apparently he preferred to take his interpretation of the revolution in military affairs for a test drive on the road to Baghdad. When they arrived, coalition soldiers succeeded – barely – in stage managing the toppling of monuments, but stood by as government offices and museums were savagely looted. As the liberators came to be seen as occupiers, rapid dominance soon gave way to a vicious insurgency.

Among the outcomes, democracy, security and stability were conspicuously absent.

Not all wars end with results inimical to their stated objectives. Nor are political solutions always possible. Yet there was, and remains something very wrong here. Mesopotamia represents one of the cradles of civilization, and those items stolen or smashed were part of the world’s shared cultural heritage. Much of what was lost may never be recovered. And that is barely the start. The human and financial costs of the war have been staggering. Iran has emerged as a primary beneficiary of the intervention. The region is less secure. Jihadi recruiters have had a field day. Perhaps most significant in geo-strategic terms, and notwithstanding the improvement in the image and reputation of the USA in some parts of the world, the unipolar moment of global American economic and political leadership has been brought to a pre-mature end, and the ascent of the BRICs hastened.

The calamity in Iraq stands as another fine example of blowback, rather like the twisted tale of the Mujaheddin morphing into the Taliban, but on a greater scale and with quite possibly even graver consequences.

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This is not the first time, of course, that war has trumped diplomacy, leaving catastrophe in its wake. In the past century there have been many instances, Iraq included, where a reliance upon non-violent alternatives to the use of armed force would likely have produced vastly superior conclusions.

With that thought in mind, some years ago I was walking down an idyllic country road in West Sussex, UK.  The lane runs from the edge of  Steyning village up through the grounds of Wiston House, home of the Wilton Park conferences, to the Chanctonbury Ring, an Iron Age fort which sits atop the gentle, densely forested South Downs.  Amidst the brambles and primrose, I quite unexpectedly came across a verse, engraved in a stone tablet mounted unobtrusively in an embankment on the side of a tiny intersection. I jotted it down:

Chance Memories

I can’t forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the Ring

In summer time, and on the Downs how larks and linnets sing

High in the sun.  the wind comes off the sea and, oh, the air!

I never knew till now that life in old days was so fair.

But now I know it in this filthy rat-infested ditch,

When every shell may spare or kill, and God alone knows which,

And I am made a beast of prey, and this trench is my lair.

My God! I never knew till now that those days were so fair,

And we assault in half an hour and, – it’s a silly thing-

I can’t forget the narrow lane to Chanctonbury Ring.

This powerful little poem was written by Lt. John Stanley Purvis on December 5^th, 1915, only minutes before going over the top and into the battle of the Somme, the most protracted and senseless slaughter of World War I.

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For reasons very different from the case of Iraq, the so-called Great War is also fading from popular memory.  Still, the War To End All Wars has always fascinated me – the scope of the violence, the vast human toll, and the bloody-mindedness – if not sheer stupidity – of the political and military leadership at the time.

We will return to that historical setting, and to those themes, presently.

By my reckoning, history suggests that at the end of the day there are only three ways to successfully counter an insurgency.

The most obvious technique is that referred to rather disparagingly by T. E. Lawrence and set out in the previous post: suffocate the spark of resistance under the sheer weight of massive military occupation. Estimates vary, but the experience suggests that effective suffocation requires a ratio of counter insurgent soldiers to units of local population somewhere in the range of 1:10 to 1:100 or more, depending on the severity of the resistance encountered.  For example, troop requirements in 2004 during the second battle for  Fallujah, Iraq would have been on the high side of this scale, while in rural Malaysia, even at the height of the emergency in the mid-to-late 1950s, they would have been much lower.

In any case, and with the with relevant scope dependent upon particular local circumstances,  resistance to occupation can be countered by the presence of sufficient numbers of boots on the ground.

A second counterinsurgency tactic was in widespread use from Roman times to the Third Reich, including during so-called Indian wars in the western U.S. and the Boer War in southern Africa. It involves some combination of harsh measures and extreme brutality wreaked upon civilians in a retaliatory manner far out of proportion to the counter insurgent force’s own losses – if the resistance kills a soldier, for instance, a village could be torched and its male population slaughtered. Although this variant could almost certainly be counted on to dampen the enthusiasm of the population for rebellion, in the age of citizen journalists, digital media and instantaneous messaging, recourse to gross human rights violations has become ethically unacceptable and strategically counter-productive. When word got out of the 1995 massacre of 8000 Bosnians in Srebrenica, for instance, the international consequences for the Serbs were disastrous.

This option might be thought of as the flip side, or obverse of Lawrence’s reference to the need to maintain a degree of popular support and moral authority.

What, then, remains? There is a third option, one touched upon by Lawrence in his references to the importance of communications and legitimacy, and which in my view represents by far the most effective and appealing of the lot.

Warring parties can get at the roots of their differences by negotiating a political settlement.

All of which brings us back to Afghanistan today.  Massive occupation – which even with the current American surge NATO does not come close to achieving – is clearly a non-starter. In the wake of the recent WikiLeaks revelations, and at a time of flagging public support for the intervention, NATO countries will never be politically able to field the 600,000 or more troops required to secure the population, impose its will by force of arms, or defeat the insurgency militarily.

Similarly, and although one might question the wisdom of employing tactics such as selective assassination and Predator drone strikes within the context of an overall counterinsurgency strategy,  it is unimaginable that NATO forces would ever seek victory through an explicit policy of repression, intimidation or violence directed against the populace. Publics on the home front have a very low tolerance for barbarism, and there has already been considerable backlash against rising civilian casualties and collateral damage. Patient police and intelligence work might work as a substitute in addressing criminality and terrorism, but in Afghanistan there is neither the time nor the capacity at present. The underlying security issues, morover, are deeply embedded in politics.

By this logic, when it comes to assessing the way ahead for ISAF’s counterinsurgency operation, diplomacy inevitably becomes the international policy instrument of choice.

Without question, establishing the basis for a durable settlement acceptable to all internal and external parties, including the regional powers, will be extremely difficult. But with the other two counterinsurgency options off the table, and relative to the alternative  of continuing an unwinnable war of attrition or withdrawing in haste and  allowing Afghanistan to slide back completely into violent civil disorder, it is an objective well worth pursuing.

Eight years on, public confidence in ISAF’s management of the Afghanistan war is understandably slipping.  It is time to partner with other organizations – not just the the UN, but perhaps the Shanghai Coopertion Organization or Oganization  for Security Cooperation in Europe – in advancing the negotiating process.

Eighty years ago, Lawrence was very clear on the immense difficulties associated with counterinsurgency warfare, and he understood the paramount importance of the political. Decision-makers within interested governments, and the policy planners in their foreign ministries would be well advised to think through the implications of his counsel, and to provide their diplomats with the mandate to act accordingly.

Last Sunday, August 1^st, the Dutch began a low key, unceremonious withdrawal from participation in the NATO/ISAF mission to Afghanistan. With 24 dead, 140 wounded, and over a billion euros expended, Holland is the first major member of the ISAF coalition to head for the exit. This event, however, was almost lost in the Canadian mix of news coverage over the holiday long weekend, despite the fact that Afghanistan remains among Canada’s top international priorities.

As the number of outside  military forces active in Afghanistan shrinks – Canada, and likely Germany are set to follow the Dutch example next year – the US is more than compensating with a troop surge which is now in full swing. These developments, in combination with the record number of casualties, may serve to encourage more public and media attention and give rise to a broad consideration of the way ahead.

Early in the Afghanistan piece, and especially before the centre of gravity in the Global War on Terror was shifted to Iraq, there was ambitious talk of attaining lofty objectives related to development, security, democracy, and the promotion of human rights and good governance. In the face of widespread corruption, wavering leadership and scant evidence of demonstrable progress in the intervening eight years, most of that kind of language has fallen away. Within NATO and the Pentagon the discussion is now almost exclusively about counterinsurgency (COIN).

The current strategy in Afghanistan  is centred on protecting the population and attempting to win them over while preparing the Afghan army and police to take the lead in maintaining security by 2014. This strikes me as somewhat akin to the ill-fated efforts undertaken by the U.S government 1973-75 to secure the “Vietnamization” of that now distant Southeast Asian war. As then, the goal may represent mission impossible.

But let’s focus on the interim prospects for conducting a successful counterinsurgency campaign in the “graveyard of empires”.

Interest in COIN doctrine – how to prevail in a war among the people – is again running high. For theorists, there is apparently something appealing about the idea of using an armed occupation to effect cultural transformation and win local hearts and minds. The record, however, indicates that serious difficulties can be anticipated. The burden of history is real.

In that regard, I am struck by the entry for “Guerrilla” penned by  T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) for the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica back in 1929. Speaking of the irregular Arab resistance to Turkish occupation of the Middle East, Lawrence  asks: “ …suppose they were an influence, a thing invulnerable, intangible, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head.”  In such circumstances, to control the land they occupied, the Turks “would have need of a fortified post every four square miles, and a post could not be less than 20 men. The Turks would need 600,000 men to meet the combined ill wills of all the local Arab people. They had 100,000 men available.”

According to Lawrence, then, simply having the numbers of boots on the ground is a critical counterinsurgency pre-requisite. Another involves the capacity to communicate with the population, a challenge which has proven significant for NATO.  “The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern (guerrilla) commander,” he continues, predicting accurately the modern-day use of the Internet by the likes of the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, and various Jihadist groups for recruitment and propaganda purposes.

Popular support is also crucial. From the perspective of the insurgents, Lawrence observes, “Rebellion must have an unassailable base ….It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by 2 percent active in a striking force, and 98 per cent passively sympathetic … Granted mobility, security … time, and doctrine … victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain.”

As veteran author and journalist Robert Fisk has noted, Lawrence’s words remain chilling, if not prophetic… NATO lacks the critical mass, the communications ability, and the grass-roots moral authority necessary to achieve their present objectives.

We will consider the counterinsurgency alternatives in the next post.

It has now been a year since the release of Guerrilla Diplomacy. I have spent much of this time trying to promote the book’s main arguments in support of restoring the diplomatic ecosystem and de-militarizing international policy. Following are a few reflections on those efforts.

In countless presentations in Canada, the USA, UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand,  perhaps the main thing I learned is that diplomacy remains a very hard sell. It is still regarded as somewhat of an exotic, rarely discussed and widely misunderstood, even by those whose job is supposed to be doing it. In the public mind, as in the mainstream media, diplomacy has never recovered from the legacy of Chamberlain in Munich, when it came to be associated with weakness and appeasement. This can be seen in the still popular currency of expressions such as “talk is cheap” and “weasel words”.

Diplomacy suffers from a debilitating image problem, featuring diplomats as spoiled ditherers achieving little while drinking and dining off the public purse. It also faces a very real substance problem, related mainly to the inability of diplomatic practices and institutions to change with the times.

Diplomacy has not adapted well to the challenges of globalization, the defining historical process of our times which integrates economically even as it fragments politically, polarizes socially, and homogenizes culturally. This combination generates chronic instability, and what Chalmers Johnson has so aptly termed blowback. Even as it affords comfort and choice to a relative few, globalization has become a driver of the insecurity and underdevelopment which make for state frailty and, on occasion, state failure.

In the face of a rising tide of suffering, inequality, conflict and unaddressed perils – many rooted in science and driven by technology – the world is suffering from a double diplomatic deficit. This may be attributed to an increasing demand for, but diminished supply of diplomacy world-wide, and the serious performance gap which afflicts foreign ministries and foreign services most everywhere.

That said, diplomacy, by which I refer to international political communications characterized by a reliance upon negotiation and compromise, is still the most effective – and economical – alternative to the use of organized violence. The continuing dependence upon the force of arms, whether under the auspices of the Global War on Terror, or now, counterinsurgency, stabilization and overseas contingency operations, has proven costly and counter-productive.

Defence departments and military organizations exist, in the first instance, for the purpose of exerting power and compelling compliance. Foreign ministries and the diplomatic service, on the other hand, are designed to exercise influence through persuasion by identifying partners with whom to make common cause in the pursuit of shared values and mutual interests. To be sure, radical reform is overdue. Yet skilfully conducted, and notwithstanding the prevalence of misleading cartoon caricatures of men in top hats and women in pearls, diplomacy represents the best possible way forward when it comes to resolving entrenched differences and broaching even the most vexing of transnational threats.

The mitigation of globalization’s tendency to socialize costs while privatizing benefits, and the harnessing of its positive potential, should become the pre-occupation of both diplomacy and grand strategy. I remain convinced that the guerrilla diplomacy (GD) formula, through which messages are not only transmitted but received, and fed back into the policy development process, can deliver on that imperative. GD offers the prospect not only of improving the quality of international political communications, but also of altering behaviour at both ends of the conversation. Therein lies is the essence of the GD’s commitment to meaningful exchange.

In this climate change challenged, pandemic disease ridden, chronically resource short world we live in, diplomacy matters now more than ever, but it remains in crisis. Diplomats still languish in the bleachers as the legions march by.  That is why I have tried in the book to get beyond both traditional and public diplomacy, and why I will continue to advocate in favour of equipping our envoys for the 21^st century and moving them into centre field. Absent that, this small planet is likely to look more and more like a smattering of razor-wire enclosed green zones, with security by Blackwater/Xe and sanitation by Halliburton, precariously vulnerable and exposed while attracting the anger and resentment of the excluded majority.

The continuing carnage in Iraq, multiple setbacks in Afghanistan, and the need to accommodate rising powers without repeating the mistakes of the last century suggest that governments today desperately need to find a better way to deliver international policy.

Guns will never get them there.

A capacity to engage in genuine dialogue, knowledge-based problem-solving, supple analysis and complex balancing just might.

Last month the Canadian International Council released its report, Open Canada, on possible new directions for Canadian foreign policy. There is much to commend about this easily-digested document, not least the fact that at a critical moment a group of thoughtful Canadians took the time and effort required to bring the ambitious project to completion within a very short time frame.

My observations are directed at the content in Chapter 2, entitled Multilateralism: The Revolution. That section contains most of the authors’ commentary related to diplomacy in an interdependent, connected and network-centric world.

Not all of the material presented in the chapter is revolutionary, and indeed much of what does appear has been seen in one form or another elsewhere. Consider, for example, suggestions that:

• The G20  is eclipsing the G8
• Scope exists for  the establishment of  joint-venture partnerships between government and universities, think tanks, and civil society
• After a prolonged absence, Canada should revisit the merits of engagement in 21^st century peacekeeping operations
• A specialized civil-military, rapid deployment force could be created and headquartered at DFAIT for use in fragile state stabilization missions
• Underinvestment in international education has created opportunities for increased activity in scholarships, global and language studies and the establishment of overseas campuses by Canadian universities

While there is no harm in re-floating sensible ideas, the section’s more powerful appeal is found at a higher level of analysis.

For example, most of the other chapter titles in Open Canada reflect the set of existing priorities which are being used to define this country’s global interests – the USA, Western Hemisphere, Asia, the Arctic, prosperity, defence and security. Multilateralism, however, does not figure centrally or explicitly on the government’s list, the ongoing Canadian campaign for a UN Security Council seat notwithstanding. As an international policy instrument,  multilateralism  has lately taken a back seat to defence and trade.  Reference to diplomacy, which the authors of Open Canada tend to use almost synonymously with multilateralism, is similarly absent in most official strategy. That’s why the elevation multilateralism – a.k.a. diplomacy – to a core list of recommended activities is encouraging.

Equally interesting is decision of the authors to frame and conceptualize their discussion of a failing states strategy under the rubric of multilateralism rather than defence and security. Inherent in that choice is a conviction that failing states are best treated with non-military tools, diplomacy and development foremost amongst them.

That, too, is laudable, and dovetails well with a conclusion that I have advanced elsewhere, namely that public diplomacy rather than aggressive war-fighting should have a central place in counterinsurgency.

The authors also raise the idea of knowledge diplomacy. Were failing states to become a focus for Canadian international policy post-Afghanistan, then the capacity to deliver that form of representation would have to be honed and reinforced considerably. The report highlights the importance of knowledge diplomacy in areas such as energy; multicultural diversity; water; democratic development, and; international education,  but it is hard to imagine real progress on these files under prevailing circumstances. To improve performance and produce results, significant change and reform would be required.

Here I am thinking about the need to afford Canadian foreign service officers substantially greater room to manoeuvre in order to permit complex and difficult problems to be resolved adroitly. Simply identifying the objectives is not enough. Canadian representatives must be vested with the confidence, trust and respect necessary not only to tap quickly and effectively into the global political economy of knowledge, but then to bring the results to bear in a timely fashion and with maximum effect in the field.

Multiple layers of oversight and endless consultation with superiors and headquarters would not be the business model of choice for knowledge diplomats.

The implicit need to transform diplomatic structures, culture and technique without lapsing into maudlin recollections about some “Golden Age” is arguably a major element of Chapter 2. If that observation is pushed just a bit, one could interpret a related requirement to create an institution capable of supporting innovative policy-making and enlightened diplomatic practice.  Preferably, this project would be undertaken outside of the foreign ministry, where the generation of new thinking sometimes takes a back seat to career and political considerations.

A stand alone entity dedicated to the exploration and articulation of diplomatic alternatives – and alternative diplomacy - would not suffer from the diffuse objectives, diverse taskings and vexing administrative overheads of a government department. Such an enterprise would be staffed by experts recruited inter-sectorally, and could perhaps function along the lines of a skunk works, not unlike the sort usually associated with the high technology industry. This would mean the adopting, and living by values such as flexibility, adaptability, teamwork, continuous learning, and risk tolerance.  The use of new media and virtual networks would figure centrally.

The establishment of a cross-cutting, public-private and independent network node for the promotion of diplomacy would both burnish the Canadian brand and serve as a concrete expression of this country’s comparative advantage internationally. By way of charter and mandate, a whole-of-government, whole-of-Canada Institute for Diplomatic Alternatives (or Alternative Diplomacy…?) could:

• develop innovative diplomatic strategy and tactics
• identify and advocate approaches and solutions to global issues and problems
• generate creative ideas on crisis remediation and conflict resolution
• conduct research and analysis, develop policy, provide advice
• undertake continuous outreach to journalists, attentive publics and opinion leaders
• engage strategic partners on all sides of key issues
• produce events (conferences, symposia, round tables)
• edit and publish an e-journal of alternative diplomacy
• prepare reports, op-eds and commentary
• design and deliver training and professional development programs

The management of international relations non-violently, through dialogue, negotiation and compromise, is a worthy end deserving of additional means. To get to the “multilateral revolution” which the authors of Open Canada plainly seek, those considering the recommendations in Chapter 2 might usefully think about, but also well beyond, the existing range of options.

Contemplating the merits of a distinctively Canadian Institute for Diplomatic Alternatives seems a good place to start.