The intention was to have this out on Friday but due to life type stuff I was just not happy with the article that I wrote so I didn’t publish. Mother’s Day and other activities kept me away from finishing it but I think we are all better for the delay. The hardest thing about this entire project is figuring out efficiency…on to the book discussion. Today is the first day of our book discussion for David Kilcullen’s latest book, The Dragons and The Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West. We originally discussed this project here and here, the book summary from Amazon can be found here.
The Plan
May 8, 2020 – Complete the Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2
May 15, 2020 – Complete Chapters 3 and 4
May 22, 2020 – Complete Chapters 5 and 6
May 29, 2020 – Epilogue, Wrap Up and Questions I would ask the Author
Lots to cover today but I think the best way to cover the first few chapters will be to get a handle on the background for this book according to Kilcullen, terminology and then an overview and my thoughts on the first two chapters.
According to Kilcullen, the concept for this book…
the return of great-power military confrontation started forming in 2012 with the convergence of state and nonstate adversaries on remarkably similar operating methods despite their radically different point of origin.
Kilcullen was beginning to note Russian and Chinese influence beginning to rise and fill the void left by The West’s hyper-focus on terrorism and the Middle East; developments in Russian and Chinese asymmetric and unconventional warfare.
Terminology
The West or Western – (All definitions are quotes or summaries taken from Kilcullen and should be used when discussing this book:)
is used to describe a particular military methodology that is an approach to war that emphasizes battlefield dominance, achieved through high-tech precision engagement, networked communications, and pervasive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. It is characterized by an obsessive drive to minimize casualties, a reluctance to think about long-term consequences of war, a narrow focus on combat, and a lack of emphasis on war termination-the set activities needed in order to translate battlefield success into enduring and favorable political outcomes.
Dragons – Capable state adversaries exemplified by Russia, China (big) North Korea and Iran (little dragons)
Snakes – Weak or failing states and non-state actors such as Libya, Iraq, Iran and various terror and transnational crime organizations.
Convergent Evolution – The way in which unlike actors confronting a similar environment can come to resemble each other.
Offset Strategies – policies implemented to ‘side step’ our conventional power or to stay below the threshold of a massive response.
James Woolsey – CIA Director 1993 – 1995 Key excerpt from confirmation speech:
In many ways, today’s threats are harder to observe and understand than the one than was once presented by the USSR…The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles to carry them; ethnic and national hatreds that can metastasize across large portions of the globe; the international narcotic trade; terrorism; the dangers inherent in the West’s dependence on Mid-East oil; new economic and environmental challenges – these and a number of other important threats to our security and out interests present intelligence problems that are extraordinary in the complexity and difficulty. And these challenges, if unmet, can decidedly affect our daily lives for the worse. And two surrounding oceans don’t isolate us anymore. Yes, we have slain a large dragon, be we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes. And in many ways the dragon was easier to keep track of.
Dragons and Snakes Chapter 1
Kilcullen describes the first 10 years after Woolsey’s testimony from 1993-2003 as defined by the chaos across post-Soviet Europe and the associated mission drift and “Threats without Enemies.” The post-2003 era was almost singularly focused on terrorism with a general misunderstanding that terrorism is…
multilateral, emergent, systemic process that looked more like an ecological system than like any traditional military opponent…an ecosystem of loosely related networks, fluid organizational structures, and temporary, shifting alliance of convenience among ad hoc cell and self-radicalized or remotely radicalized individuals.
I would also like to add that terrorism is a component of politics and you cannot separate the two. The Long War Journal’s Thomas Joscelyn & Bill Roggio, make this very clear in last week’s Podcast Generation Jihad Ep. 8 – The Islamic State’s Foundational Texts that we discussed here. Sometimes, I think we as civilians and military professionals forget that because our politics here are so ugly. But you cannot have terrorism without politics and therefore you cannot find a solution without addressing the underlying political underpinnings.
Kilcullen then defines strategy as…
about choices, prioritizing a range of necessary endeavors and grave dangers, of balancing, resourcing, and sequencing multiple tasks, all of which are important.
A defining event for both the Dragons and the Snakes actually happened earlier in the first Iraq war. Our enemies clearly learned how NOT to fight the U.S. as demonstrated by our complete destruction of the Iraqi military.
Kilcullen then covers one of the main dragons. He discusses Russia further in Chapter 4 but we will discuss some of the things he mentions here first. He identifies the key problem to Russian relations as: According to Western elites…
Russians should accede to a unipolar, US-led international system, an unequal partnership where the price of prosperity [is] political subordination, a permanent second-tier status…
Kilcullen outlined several overtures that attempted to normalize relations with Russia and in my opinion, seemingly glosses over the continued NATO expansion that we refused to allow Russia to be a part of. Personally, I believe that we generally underestimate the perceived threat that this expansion poses to Russia. NATO defines itself as:
a security alliance of 30 countries from North America and Europe. NATO’s fundamental goal is to safeguard the Allies’ freedom and security by political and military means. NATO remains the principal security instrument of the transatlantic community and expression of its common democratic values. It is the practical means through which the security of North America and Europe are permanently tied together. NATO enlargement has furthered the U.S. goal of a Europe whole, free, and at peace.
(On a complete side note, I was looking for an article other than Kilcullen’s book about ‘Putin asking Clinton to join NATO and stumbled into an opinion piece written in the Moscow Times listing 5 Reasons why Russia will never join NATO and stumbled into this little gem:
- China. If Russia ever became a NATO member, it would extend the alliance’s territory to China, which has a 4,000-kilometer border with Russia. This would upset the tripolar global security balance between NATO, Russia and China, and it would cause China — which is just as suspicious of enemy conspiracy theories as Russia is — to believe that Russia and NATO are joining forces to “contain,” or even weaken, China. It is clearly not in the interests of Russia or the United States, which both have deep economic ties with China, to heighten tensions or provoke China, even if Beijing’s fears are exaggerated.
Just a thought…back to the book)
I don’t know this as fact, but I assume that Russia has opposed every single country that has joined NATO and has never successfully stopped a country from joining until Georgia and Ukraine? Russia has used NATO’s own rules to help stop their admittance into the organization. If you recall, the Georgia and Ukraine both were deep in conversations about joining NATO prior to their Russian incurrences.
States which have ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes must settle those disputes by peaceful means in accordance with OSCE principles.
In regards to China, Kilcullen has seen them as attempting to achieve what their leaders consider the country’s rightful position as a global great power by utilizing a twin-tack policy of “peaceful rise” that
emphasized economic integration in the global economy. To achieve these goals, they used a combination of indigenous technological development, judicious purchases of dual-use and overtly military capabilities from abroad, technical and industrial intelligence gathering and, increasingly, cyber espionage and reverse engineering.
Kilcullen sees China’s integration into the global economy as a key component for their military aspirations. By so effectively intertwining themselves into the global market, any serious or forceful pushback against their aspirations will hurt the global supply chains and ultimately, the western consumer.
I am going to lump, what Kilcullen calls ‘lessor dragons,’ Iran and North Korea together. Both seek to legitimize their standing on the world stage with nuclear weapons. North Korea relatively successfully and Iran seemingly on the way. Their reason, to ensure their survival as attempts for regime change would be too costly. As evidence, Kilcullen discusses the Libya scenario where they peacefully gave up their nuclear ambitions and Kaddafi was eventually killed anyway.
Chapter 2
In chapter 2 Kilcullen discusses how Adaptive Enemies have become. He discusses the Mechanisms evolution in irregular warfare or “Combat Darwinism.” Kilcullen states the insurgents have learned through Social Learning, Natural Selection in Irregular Warfare, Artificial Selection and Institutional Adaption.
Social Learning – a process of local, bottom up adaption with officers and non-commissioned officers gathering, sharing and gradually codifying insights over hundreds of combat engagements…people learn not just by observation and imitation, but also through knowledge transfer within and among groups.
Natural Selection in Irregular Warfare – The fragmentation of the insurgent network is key to their evolution…it’s important to note that guerillas themselves are the tiny minority – 2 to 3 percent – of the insurgent iceberg. Group isolation tends to produce huge variation among guerrilla groups, even within a single theater of operations…variation, selective pressure, and replication – are the building blocks of evolutionary process.
Artificial Selection – The basic predator prey model of artificial selection. Kilcullen uses the example of the Pakistani Taliban under a decade of US drone strikes is the best example of artificial selection and how we have unintentionally made them better:
…through selective pressure on its leaders, over an eleven year period between 2002 and 2013, alleged US drone strikes helped turn a loose collection of local tribal militias, with no real goal other than to be left alone, into a unified, transnational terrorist group affiliated with other extremist organizations and directly targeting (even operating inside) the United States.
Institutional Adaptation – Terrorists / terror organizations use after action reports to refine their overall process. Nonstate and armed groups engage in conscious adaptation to their environment through lesson-learned processes…and continuous deliberate development of new capabilities.
This chapter is a really good look at how the enemy has changed overtime and how we have helped make them a better more efficient fighting force by eliminating the weak, dumb and unlucky ones.
Overall Thoughts
So far, I am really enjoying this book. This project has made me look at it differently than I am accustomed too so I am having difficulty being patient and am really looking forward to the detailed chapters on Russia and China and what Kilcullen sees as points where things could have turned out differently. For instance, China’s admittance into the World Trade Organization is mentioned but does he see that as a critical point? And most importantly, what is to be done? Can we wind the clock back on some of the arising conflicts? Are there solutions that don’t involve large-scale military confrontations? After decades of war, will the West be able to maintain alliances even though the course of action may be clear? Is the public too war-weary for this fight?
I really intend to discuss the next two chapters this Friday so happy reading!