What We Can Learn From the French (other than retreating, that is)....

Then & Now: French Colonial Warfare; Contemporary US Military Strategy

Much has been made of the post-major-hostilities phase of the war in Iraq. Indeed, still referring to it as a war is contentious, for, depending on whether one supported the invasion or was a naysayer, there is much evidence to support either side. Here, the point of referring to the current situation in Iraq as a war is not so much a thesis statement as it is to provide the analytical framework common to (what is sometimes called) "small wars". It is an apt term, as the Iraqi insurgency is not singularly layered; it has historical striations of interests—sectarian, religious, and political. The width between each is not static, but dynamic. It is also apt because the reality is the coalition continues to strategically use the heavy artillery—tanks, helicopters, howitzers, flying drones, etc. Hence, when looking back through the annals of strategy, colonial warfare, particularly French colonial warfare of the mid-19th century, is also apt to decipher the US's military philosophy in Iraq.

One reason: the term "hearts and minds"—that ubiquitous term used by the administration and military leaders—can be traced back to the French. Also, the term "going native" was systematically used at times by several French military leaders. Though the latter term has seen more use in Afghanistan, where Special Forces (SF) men grew beards to look more Afghani, one cannot say that Iraq has been void of the mentality.

There is another side to these terms, however: one which shines a light on the political difference between the French then, and the US now. Before discussing this aspect, we will turn to the similarity in tactics between, making them seemingly separated by a day instead of 150 years. While this paper will occasionally be expanded to also cover Afghanistan, it is more to show as-example the fundamental strategic policy of the contemporary US military than anything else.

Tactics

Beginning with Marshal Thomas-Robert Bugeaud, the French colonial army underwent a military transformation in colonial warfare. When he had arrived in Algeria in 1840, the French army's approach was "European" in that, as with the wars against Great Britain (much like Great Britain's two wars in America), it made marches and lined-up to face the enemy. They were also "…tied down defending fixed points and tormented by Arabs who raided their supply wagons and destroyed crops and supplies…." (378). Reprisal raids failed partly because objectives were unclear, and partly due to vast columns of men were "…weighted down by artillery an heavy convoys of supplies," (378).

In scrapping this approach he noted that this war was not one where "civilized" strategy would win the day; rather, "…that unconventional tactics are the soul of this war," (378). His reforms were based on 4 principles: "…mobility, morale, leadership, and firepower," (378).

To draw a modern day example for how today's US military is not so dissimilar, one only need to read Donald Rumsfeld's article, "Transforming the Military", which appears in the May/June 2002 issue of Foreign Affairs. After stating his efforts to reform the military even before 9/11, Rumsfeld notes the German blitzkrieg as-example of what the modern US military mentality should be:

In World War II, the German blitzkrieg

revolutionized warfare, but it was

accomplished by a German military that

was only 10 to 15 percent transformed.

The Germans saw the future of war lay

not with with massive armies and

protracted trench warfare, but in small,

high-quality, mobile shock forces,

supported by airpower, and capable of

pulling off "lightning strikes" against

the enemy. They developed the lethal

combination of fast-moving tanks,

motorized infantry and artillery, and

dive-bombers, all concentrated on one

part of the enemy line. The effect

was devastating. 21

His point is not so much that "…such tactics and capabilities should be a model for future battles," (21) as it is "…that preparing for the future will require new ways of thinking," (21).

Thus, in addition to the hardware, prep, and strategy the new component is psychology: that is, one must have the mindset which allows for innovation. Douglas Porch, in his essay, "Bugeaud, Gallieni, Lyautey: The Development of French Colonial Warfare", notes the importance of psychology in Bugeaud's strategy: "Such a strategy would have been impossible, however, without appropriate psychological preparation," (379). True, it was in reference to morale; yet, it was one of the first times a commander in the field openly took issue with the psychological effect of morale in relation to being offensive—instead of defensive—minded.

With the arrival of Gallieni and Lyautey, the French colonial army was nearing its fourth decade in Africa. Many soldiers had served only in the African colonies, knowing nothing of conventional European column-warfare. As with Bugeaud, the French army under Gallieni was mobile and, with the addition of such weapons as the foldable Maxim gun (which could fire at a rate of 11 shots a second), was now not incumbent on number of troops. Likewise, with technological capabilities—such a laser guidance—that can be stored in a knapsack, a modern American GI can call in a barrage equivalent to a thousand grenade launchers.

Paraphrasing Porch, many colonial soldiers became so suited to their surroundings that they became an implicit club where only fighting in Africa got you a seat at the table, so to speak. As much of a negative as this may have seemed to French officials in parliament and other areas of government, there is a modern equivalent.

During and after the coalition invasion of Afghanistan, it was noted how prominent a role the Special Forces (SF) played in operations. Never before had SF been used in such numbers and in so many regions. Symbolic, it was of the new direction the US military had taken in just a few years time (which is not to say, as Rumsfeld stated, that each and every future action will play out the same way).

Months after the Taliban had been ousted and a reasonable semblance of an Afghan government began to take shape there was an almost under the radar communiqué concerning the SF's wearing of beards. To the average person it may seem a trite matter, but, for anyone who knows how important the growth of beards is in many Muslim societies, it was a minor act on behalf of SF to blend in with the populace. In another time, it may have been called "going native", but it was so as to not be conspicuous (and, in a way, being courteous to your hosts—considering you are not an occupying army).

In a January 1900 article appearing Revue des deux mondes, entitled "Du role colonial de l'Armee," Lyautey laid down Gallieni's methods for all France to see. Indeed, as with his previous article, Lyautey was implicitly making a political move in hopes of garnering support for the colonial effort. His sole purpose it was not, however. Perhaps just as important, if not more so, his article helped redefine the "social role" of an officer (admittedly, he was limiting it to the social role of a colonial officer, but, as we shall see, this role has been broadened by the US military today). Quoting Porch's assessment of the article, "A colonial soldier was more than a warrior. He was an administrator, farmer, architect, and engineer—in short, he took up any skill required to develop the region in his charge," (390).

Again, if anything is comparable to the French colonial soldier of the mid-to-late 1800's it is the SF. Traditionally thought of as lone warrior types that entered and left an area without a trace of their ever being there, SF seemingly had little contact with anything but their target. Their origins were to be anything but primary assault weapons. But, their role and numbers has led to a revolution in military affairs (RMA): as seen in Afghanistan; now in Iraq.

Case in point is the article, "The Mayor of Ar Rutbah," which appeared in the November/December 2005 edition of Foreign Policy. The author, SF officer Maj. James A. Gavrilis, explains how he and his 6 12-man teams were able to secure a Sunni city of about 25,000 at the time when most of the rest of Iraq was still waking up to the fact Saddam no longer governed. Explaining the nature of what their role was, he states, "We did not limit ourselves to certain functions or tasks, or fail to adjust to the realities on the ground such as stopping looting, providing electrical power, and other nation-building tasks. When nation building became our mission, we performed without any hesitation," (35).

The Politics of…

When speaking of tactics and roles of officers, as shown, French colonial troops and modern US troops—particularly SF—have more in common than one would think possible, especially considering that the former and latter are separated not only by at least 150 years but have unique political considerations attached to the time and place in which the occur.

"Political considerations" is really a euphemism for political sensitivities, for what was the norm in one age is often not the norm in another. Political sensitivities may strike some as just being pc, but it is a fact of life in liberal nation-states. "Going native" is itself a word fraught with implicit prejudice: that is, becoming a homicidal-sociopath is equated to being an Congolese, Najavo, or some other aborigine.

Essentially, French colonial warfare of the mid-to-late 1800's was politically problematic because it was the mid-to-late 1800's. Words such as "territorial expansion", "colony", and "subjects" were still buzzwords in political speak. Today, they are replaced by "developing nation", "popular sovereignty", and "the people". True, these have an idealistic ring to them, but the reality is the former words are just plain absent from the discussion. Partly due to the spread of popular movements over a 200 hundred plus year period; partly because in those movements the placement of human rights has, for good and ill, been given such esteem. Whether or not all can agree on what constitutes the bare-minimum level of rights a human is afforded, just the fact it has ramifications on whether or not intervention is deemed appropriate is something which never existed 150 years ago. Credit multiculturalism; technology; race-mixing; or all the above, human rights is an issue for any military practitioner.

Echoing this sentiment is Col. J.S. Roach, one of many SF men Robert Kaplan talks to in his 2005 book, Imperial Grunts. For Roach and the SF community at-large human rights was considered an aspect of psychological operations (psy-ops). Having served in El Salvador during the 1980's, Roach "…pounded home the point that violating human rights never makes sense from a 'pragmatic perspective,' because it causes you to loose civilian support, without which you cannot root out insurgents. "Human rights wasn't a separate one hour block at the beginning of the day. You had to couch it in the training so that it wasn't just a moralistic approach," (61).

And, it was what was direly missed in the French occupation and pacification campaigns in Africa. By default, any occupation, no matter how well meaning, is still an occupation. Thus, unless the invaded people en masse support it, hostility is inherently built into the reconstruction. Colonization had another level of hostility built in because colonialism itself "…meant the domination, and consequently the exploitation of one race by another," (390). This is not stating that colonialism is necessarily defined by one race dominating and exploiting another; as in Britain's domination of the American colonies, the race of the conquerors and conquered were identical when the Revolution began.

Several tactics as well as decisions played heavily against the French. One tactic, called "razzia", only sporadically used by the French, was elevated "…to the level of total war," (380) under Bugeaud. Scorched earth, as it is known in contemporary verbiage, is indiscriminate. Whole villages, towns, and people are decimated in hopes that the enemy will be among them. From a PR standpoint alone it accomplishes exactly what Col. Roach states one does not want to do; then, add in the fact that it may not just loose your civilian support but will no doubt create new insurgents amongst the rubble.

Also working against the French was their imperialist attitude. Despite seeing themselves as something apart from the regular mainland France army, colonial soldiers still acted as if their customs were entirely translatable to the African countries they battled over. Perhaps nowhere was this prejudice more apparent than in Morocco; perhaps because of the results.

"Despite their tribal rivalries," writes Porch in his essay, "Moroccans did share a common sense of living in the 'Dar al-Islam' and a common loyalty to the sultan," (394). Yet, the Moroccan "…protectorate stripped the sultan of his powers and Europeans administered in the place of Moroccans, while immigrants dispossessed the natives of their lands," (395). Also, though the French noted the importance of depriving "…the determined handful of warriors of the support and sympathies of the noncombatant population," (394) the attempt of "economic penetration…to persuade this soft center that its interests lay in supporting the French," (394) was a failure. Partly because the markets the French established to let villagers buy and sell their wares were fixed: that is, prices were set, and set high. Villagers had little reason to buy or sell goods in such places.

Another aspect was how the razzia, as policy and symbol, became a tool of retribution more than the administering of justice. Modern-day soldiers are not just to be equipped with the lighter loads the French used but, again, as Roach stated, violating human rights makes no sense if you are trying to win friends in a hostile region. Contrasting the French approach, is what Maj. Gavrilis writes in his article:

We asked people to tell us where the

guns and munitions were, but we did

not ask who shot at us last week. I

was not going to pursue the teenagers

who had been directed to shoot at us

by the senior Fedayeen. As long as

they did not take up arms again, they

could go on playing soccer. By

quickly establishing an Iraqi

alternative to the regime, we made

resistance irrelevant. We skipped

over the gap where insurgency would

grow. Had we remained idle, we would

have missed the opportunities in

front of us. 32

Unfortunately, for the US the insurgency has been helped by human rights snafus, such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Also unfortunate for an invading army, human rights is a zero-sum game. A slip in human rights does a hundred more insurgents make. In light of this, it is no wonder the French failed.

Gavrilis, Maj. James A. "The Mayor of Ar Rutbah," Foreign Policy. Nov/Dec, 2005; pgs. 28-35 (pp.8).

Kaplan, Robert D. Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground. Random House: New York; 2005.

Porch, Douglas. "Bugeaud, Gallieni, Lyautey: The Development of French Colonial Warfare." Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age. Ed. Peter Paret. New Jersey: Princeton UP. 1986. 376-407.

Rumsfeld, Donald H. "Transforming the Military." Foreign Affairs. May/June, 2002; pgs. 20-32 (pp.13).

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World War IV: Islamism vs. the U.S.

With September 11th, 2001 it was made clear to anyone and everyone in the field of security and beyond that the relative quiet period of the post-Cold War 90's had lulled many into thinking if any new threat were to arise it would look and feel very much like the geopolitically-continental shift that had taken place post-World War II. As exampled in Thomas PM Barnett's book, "The Pentagon's New Map", much of the Brass and civilian insiders were hedging bets on which country would fill the bipolar void left by the Soviet Union: China, India, Pakistan, and—ironically enough—the sputtering democracy that was Russia; all and others were debated. But, instead, it was not a country-empire of the likes of Rome or the Soviet Union, with borders, socio-political norms, and an internally working system of government; it was a country resembling those in Robert D Kaplan's "The Coming Anarchy"—with porous borders, socio-political instability, and lacking a government able to control much beyond the capital. Though the nexus of a failed state (i.e., Afghanistan) and an opportunistic network of ideological brethren were able to wreak havoc on a country thousands of miles away, many inside & outside Washington believe the world does not live with the existential threat of nuclear annihilation several times over as it did during the Cold War. Yet, once again the whole world is a staging for war. With the Soviets there was at least a sense of self-preservation in their policies. There is none of this sense with the Islamic radicals. They welcome death. This is the prospect that makes this enemy worse than any seen before.

At its end, it has been approximated that had the US and the USSR begun a nuclear exchange the world would have been obliterated at least 10 times over. That it has the sound of hyperbole tells the story of the era. While history can make the conclusion that such a nuclear exchange never took place, it leaves out many of the finer details: one such detail being the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Crisis" is not an overstatement in this case. One, because of the uncomfortably close proximity of Soviet warheads to the US (just 90 miles away from the coast of Florida); two, the culture of distrust and ideological differences made for nearly incoherent discourse between the US and USSR; and three, hardliners in both Washington and Moscow were quite willing to shoot first and ask questions later. Robert McNamara, in the recent film "Fog of War", made the reality of the situation stark in showing war was averted only by the slimmest of margins.

While the Cuban Missile Crisis may have weakened stomachs to the idea of a direct war between two nuclear powers, it left much room open for proxy wars. Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan—all were staging grounds for the ideological struggle between communist-Sino-Asia and the democratic-West. Though the casualties of these indirect conflicts were not wiped out in atomic instant, they nonetheless numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The empirical fact of many socialist groups using words such as "wave" or "tide" showed "conquering" need no longer be about having military size and strength or occupying land of another country; rather, one need only ideological kinship to win. Perhaps in no better place was this shown than in Vietnam, where the US military never lost a major engagement but lost the "hearts and minds" of not only the native population but the American people as well. Such was the fear of countries falling to these "waves" that wars in far off places were even contemplated. In many ways the Cold War was a "Hot" war because this line of thinking made the world a staging area for the ideological struggle between democracy and socialism. In this sense it was World War III.

All this said, it is the void left by the Soviet Union which has made the present possible. Whereas the Cold War gave rise to geopolitical concerns as "buffer zones" and "client states", in which either the US or the USSR would form alliances to assure against the further spread of the other, these alliances became of lesser importance once the "20^th Century Great Game" was over (interestingly, the 19^th Century version of the "Game" was waged by then Czarist Russia against the English-speaking hegemony of that era— Great Britain—for all the marbles in Central Asia). Many of these border countries were unstable and/or ruled by oppressive dictators to begin with. Thus, when the Game was over, much of the support went away.

What has been left behind are many countries in name only, for the cycle of violence has left little internal government control; leaving a vacuum which sucks in scores of alliances unconcerned with the good of the native populace. Failed states have always been a danger. For, the cycle of violence could extend and destabilize surrounding countries. The element missing before, which makes them even more dangerous now, is the existence of al Qaeda. Afghanistan is not the sole example of this. This vacuum exists in West and East Africa (as a recent military raid into the failed state of Somalia showed: where a sizable al Qaeda network was disrupted—many of its elements killed). It also exists in Latin America, in the Tri-Border region. So named for where Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil meet at their corners. It would seem that Islamic Fundamentalists have little in common with Marxist revolutionary groups, but this is indeed not the case in that region.

This vacuum has also been demonstrated by the fall of the Saddam regime in Iraq. Debated, it was before the war whether or not al Qaeda's presence in the country was pronounced enough to invade. Only a few months after Saddam's fall this was no longer an issue. al Qaeda leaders made it explicitly clear they saw/see Iraq as one of their frontlines of the war against the West. Iraq has made another reality present itself: every Muslim held or Muslim state (where the net majority of the population identifies itelf as Muslim)—be it Syria, Egypt, Iran, or Indonesia—has a potential to become a vacuum for such a network of like-minded people as al Qaeda were that country's government to fall. Hence: firstly, any failed state already predominately Muslim as susceptible to becoming a training ground for and/or controlled by Islamic radicals; secondly, that these groups have explicitly stated their desire for martyrdom by any means—biologic, chemical, and/or nuclear—the whole world is once again a staging for war. With the Soviets there was at least a sense of self-preservation in their policies. There is none of this sense with the Islamic radicals. They welcome death. This is the prospect that makes this enemy worse than any seen before in the US's history. Read more!