1st Lt. Mike "Duke" Sanchez, of the 11th Economics Regiment (Chairborne) checked his harness in the red light of the cabin. M-48 calculator, primary and backup 0.7 mm automatic pencils with graphite refills, and his trusty p-686 laptop with the MilSpec edition of PowerPoint. Intelligence briefings had told them to expect moderate to heavy resistance from local Keynesian warlords and a faction of trade protectionist guerrillas. He found himself looking forward to the battle, should it come. He and his men had trained in the rigorous proving grounds of Chicago, and they knew themselves to be ready for anything the enemy might throw at them. They were spoiling for this fight, eager to be tested as men, as soldiers, and as economists. The REMFs of the 3rd Infantry Division back at base might make jokes about the "poor bloody accountants" being the first in, but there was jealousy in their eyes, too. He smiled at Sergeant Wilson, who headed up the 1st platoon, Alpha Company Coffee and Danish squad.

"Good to go, Sergeant?"

The sergeant smiled back at him. "Good to go, sir. Chairborne!"
The C-130 had reached the drop point. The game was on.

---

Dr. Thomas Barnett, instructor at the Naval War College, has caused a stir in the Pentagon with his recommendations for a re-conceptualization of the US military. His recommendations have found both sympathetic ears and opponents. The arguments Barnett makes deserve strong consideration, not only because they are less radical than they might appear at first glance (the foregoing satire notwithstanding), but because they may strike a cord as being compatible with, or even necessary for, a full implementation of the National Security Strategy presented by the Bush Administration subsequent to the events of September 11, 2001.

In this document, the Administration outlines what has come to be known as the Bush Doctrine During the Cold War, which lasted from the end of World War II until the early 1990's the United States and her allies had prepared for the possibility of war with the Soviet Union and the client states of the Warsaw Pact nations. Failed and failing states in the Third World were seen in the context of the bipolar struggle, and Third World dictators would seek to align themselves with one side or the other, sometimes playing the two off for maximum gain. It was a battle of containment versus expansionism - the Truman Doctrine versus the Brezhnev Doctrine.

With the ultimate collapse of Soviet Communism, the United States had an opportunity to re-evaluate its Third World foreign policy. Containment gave way to regional stability as a primary consideration, but the perception of instability as a threat to American interests was more dependent on immediate effects, and less on long term interests. Maintaining the status quo, in part a holdover of containment psychology and in part an ideal grounded in the Cold War era United Nations approach to preserving the peace drove foreign policy. Military intervention was not unknown, but was primarily used in reaction to immediate events in Haiti, the Balkans, and in Somalia. While not quite randomly chosen, these interventions did not require the exercise of considerable force. The perceived relatively weak involvement of national security interests dictated a weak will to battle, and troops were committed reluctantly with a low tolerance for casualties.

On September 11, 2001, America received the most brutal wake-up call in her history. Dysfunctional Third World nations, who could themselves pose no credible military threat to the United States, were now perceived as breeding grounds and potential sponsors of terrorist groups, which could present such a threat. The national security community faced a need to re-prioritize missions and threat evaluations. How should this re-evaluation affect American military force structuring? Are Iraq and Afghanistan the first two campaigns in a potentially long series of interventions? If so, what were the lessons learned, and how can we incorporate those lessons into success in later engagements?

Dr. Barnett's suggestions are quite interesting in this regard. The following series of posts will consider his proposals, and analyze other, similar proposals floating around military circles, seeking to find core areas of agreement as well as possible difficulties.

The recent discovery of a sarin-containing CW shell in Iraq does not raise any new questions. No one can deny that Iraq possessed chemical weapons, or that their known stockpiles are not accounted for. Although the question seems to have become unclear since the conclusion of the war, we knew at the time that significant CW and possibly BW agents were unaccounted for by all third party inspectors.


The fact: Significant stockpiles of chemical agents are accounted for. Ditto for possibly weaponized biological agents.


The question: What happened to them?


The possibilities:

1. Iraq destroyed them after 1998 but prior to the initiation of hostilities in 2002.
   
2. They were hidden inside Iraq
   
3. They were transported outside Iraq
   

Consider these in order:

1. Iraq destroyed them: The logic behind this one is a little twisted. One has to believe that Iraq destroyed the stockpiles after weapons inspectors left, and then failed to properly account for their destruction. Saddam's only motivation for the destruction of these weapons would have been to lift sanctions against Iraq, and to avoid war. By not making their destruction public and transparent, he would have short-circuited the only motivation he had.
   
2. They were hidden inside Iraq: It is probable that this one is true for at least a part of the chemical stores. It is known that Iraq didn't include special markings on chemical munitions, and thus was able to hide them among conventional shells. One theory is that this enabled Iraq to hide the weapons from detection from inspectors. Another, less likely theory, is that this was intended to ensure their use against an American invasion, even if the artillery commanders were reluctant to use chemical shells. Even if Saddam had intended to evacuate the chemical weapons, it is certainly possible that at least some of these would be missed.
   
3. Iraq exported them: This is again probably true, again in part. Chemical and weaponized biological agents that had not yet been put into shells and distributed would have been available in some central locations. These may have been loaded onto trucks and transported into, for example, Syria. This may have been done either by Iraqi sympathizers within Syria or directly with the knowledge of the Syrian government. Syria had been forging closer ties to the Iraqi Baathists, and had dealt in the clandestine export of Iraqi oil during the sanctions. Even if the Syrian government were more hostile, Saddam might have moved weapons into Syria, as he did in moving the Iraqi Air Force into Iran during the 1991 Gulf War.
   

So, we suppose that some combination of (2) and (3) are likely. Large stores may have been transported out of the country, and smaller stores of active weapons (like the mustard and sarin shells) probably exist in Iraq. It is also possible that at least some shells were also transported.

So, where might have this particular shell come from? One possibility is that it is of foreign, possibly Syrian, manufacture. Another is that it is of Iraqi manufacture, but came back into Iraq via Syria. A third is that it came from a munitions dump inside Iraq. The first two possibilities are unlikely, as preliminary indications are that the elements who created and planted the IED apparently thought they were dealing with a conventional artillery round. It would have taken special effort to use this round as a chemical weapon, and this was not done. Indeed, it would have made more sense to engineer a dedicated IED design to disperse the gas than it would to have left it inside the shell, which relies on it being fired from a gun which imparts a spin to the projectile. If the shell was imported from Syria as a chemical weapon, these would have been taken into account. Baathist officers and trained chemical weapons specialists exist within the ranks of the insurgents.

On the other hand, if this was part of a captured store and was confused with conventional artillery rounds, we would have seen exactly what we saw - a rigged device identical to that designed to explode a conventional shell, as has been done with many other IEDs based around conventional rounds. Therefore, the likely possibility is that this round was hidden among a store of conventional rounds that fell into enemy hands, and it is also probable that this is not the only such round in their possession.

The problem is that now they know it, and we can expect dedicated chemical weapon attacks, possibly in the near future. The possibility of the export of these weapons from Iraq to other terrorist groups is grave, but if other chemical stores are already in Syria it may also be academic. Selling the weapons might generate income or favors for the combatants in Iraq, but this must be weighed against their own priorities, i.e., destabilization of the situation on the ground.

A chemical weapon may be used against a military target, or it may be used against a civilian target. The latter is more probable, since the intent is to destabilize rather than to militarily confront coalition forces. Civilian targets include both coalition compounds (e.g., the Green Zone), open-air markets, command and control facilities including Iraqi police and government installations, and other such targets.<

The situation is grim, as the record thus far of securing against terrorist attacks is far from perfect.

Fix Bayonets!

---

This past weekend, stories have come to light about a Scottish unit fighting in southern Iraq. The unit was ambushed by troops from Sadr's militia armed with assault rifles and RPGs. The Scotsmen fought back, and finally defeated the enemy with a bayonet charge. To the student of military history, this movement brings back images of Ia Drang and Little Round Top, where a unit - outnumbered, outgunned, surrounded, and out of ammunition takes stock of their situation, and decides to attack. The final bayonet charge, carried by desperation, rage, and esprit de corps, remains one of the most terrible, noble, and great maneuvers, even in this time of modern warfare. A week before, a soldier from El Salvador, out of ammunition and seeing a comrade down and surrounded by enemy fighters charged and routed them using only a small knife.

If you are to lead your troops into battle, it only makes sense to want the most unfair fight possible, with the cards stacked heavily in your favor. The more unfair the fight, the greater the kill ratio. The greater the kill ratio, the more of your men make it back home, and the fewer of the enemy to fight the next battle. This is why modern armies put so much time and effort into what the US Army calls "force multipliers." All else being equal, one ten man unit is the same as another. When additional factors are figured in, though, the balance tips. These factors include on the one hand human factors like training, esprit de corps, and leadership. On the other hand, they include technological factors like superior equipment, close air and artillery support, communications, and logistics.

The West in general, and America in particular, enjoys a wide advantage in almost all of these areas, but it is sometimes seen to be heavily weighted towards the latter, technological factors. As detailed by Victor Davis Hanson in many of his writings, the Western advances in science and technology, made possible by the development of capitalism in the 18th Century, yield an extraordinary advantage in military force. Not only are troops equipped with superior weapon systems, but they can produce extensive production lines required to field large armies in times of total war, even expanding them despite heavy attrition. Conversely, armies that are backed by weaker economies are strongly subject to the laws of attrition. In the extreme case, many Third World armies have essentially a fixed supply of equipment, or are entirely dependent on re-supply from outside sources, with natural limits placed on both the quantity and quality available.

One may also reasonably conclude that the United States and other Western countries enjoy an edge in training, which extends in this case into leadership and military discipline. This is less of a foregone conclusion based on a cursory evaluation of the political and economic climate than is the case with technological factors. The American Army was forced to re-invent itself after the Vietnam war. Training issues were addressed, from the level of flag and field grade officers through the ranks of senior and junior NCOs, down to the level of the private soldiers. In doing so, the Army sought to address issues ranging from "intangibles" like professionalism and esprit de corps to the hard military sciences of tactics, strategy, and logistics and personnel management.

Nevertheless, leaders of third World armies make an appeal that they hold the balance in morale, in the will to battle and to victory. They ascribe it variously as motivated by socialist or ethnic unity, or to religious fervor fighting on the side of God. The West, they say, is decadent and weak-willed. This has been proven untrue, time and again, on the battlefield.

Red + Green != Merry Christmas
The Watermelon Phenomenon (Green on the outside, Red to the core) has gotten some commentary lately, most recently in an Iain Murray piece on Tech Central Station. Murray points out that the Red/Green coalition seems to make no sense. The self-proclaimed advocates of humanity should, on the face of it, make poor allies of the likes of Earth First-ers. Based on the rhetoric of the Left, Mr. Murray would seem to be correct. What he fails to take into account, at least in this article, is that the proclaimed goals of the Left have nothing to do with the actual goals. In reality, the Left has as much outright hostility to Man as the environmentalists. They share the same objectives, and are natural allies.

In the earlier days of the Communist movement, the Left (now the Old Left) made an appeal to the contributions of Communism to the betterment of mankind. They were terribly wrong, of course, and were responsible both directly and by proxy of over one hundred million deaths over the past century, but at least before the tragedy that was the Soviet Union was seen for what it truly was, it is possible, perhaps, to forgive them as well-intentioned but poorly informed (even if one can remain in shock at tle level of willful ignorance and intellectual dishonesty required to maintain such a position). By the middle of the century, however, even willful ignorance was not enough. Socialist and Communist regimes were exposed as the furnaces of humanity they are. It was no longer even possible to speculate that the Russian citizens were better off under the Communists than they were under the Tzar, much less than they would be under a Western capitalist democracy.

Leftists were the self-declared foes of industrialists, but they still viewed industry as the proper path for the nation. When the minds of production (which is to say the businessmen and industrialists) were rejected, they attempted to institute by fiat mindless production. But Man is not an ant. Mindless production does not work for Man. He must choose between mindlessness and production. Communism and Socialism had been touted as the most efficient means of production (shortcutting wasteful competition and socially detrimental exploitation), and Communists as late as Khrushchev predicted that the more efficient Soviet system would "bury" the West.

When this last was finally inescapable even to the most radical of the Leftists, they faced a dilemma. They were forced to choose between the benefit to mankind they had long cited as their primary goal, namely industrialization and modernization, and opposition to the industrialists and the capitalist system, which were now properly seen to be necessary to their goal. Beginning largely in the 1970's, the Left has chosen anti-capitalism over progress, and have thus become natural allies of the evnironmentalists.

The true goal of the Left was never modernization. It was never the betterment of the human condition. It was about punishing the successful for their success, it was about making the world hospitible, not for the best and brightest, but for the worst and most despicable. When it became obvious that their hatred would lead necessarily to a society unable to maintain any society above that of a medieval peasantry, they enthusiastically embraced medievalism.

Welcome to the Duffer's Guide. The title is a tip of the hat to The Defense of Duffer's Drift, a short piece intended to point out some fundemental principles of small unit combat, and well worth reading for entertainment value as well as information for armchair tacticians.

I will be posting comments as I see them on the current world situation, including the Iraq War. My background is in intelligence and military history, and now complex systems theory. Let it be said at the outset that these posts may include opinions and occasional rants, so let this message be a sort of global "IMHO" tag.

Thanks for reading.