Failing Sun Tzu

The recent attack on Israel by Hamas and Iran gives us an occasion to review the failures of those whose job it was to prevent such things. They fail Sun Tzu's core dictum to "know thyself, and thy enemy." 

Consider, for example, the findings of this blue-ribbon panel called the "Task force on Extremism in Fragile States." It was published in February of 2019, so we can consider it a kind of five-year plan by the very people who got us into this mess (read the list of task force members), on the subject of how to get us out of it. 

It has three top-level recommendations, none of which survived contact with the bureaucracy. The main recommendation is to create an "initiative" to align all the various government authorities and agencies to address the problem. I have seen versions of this suggestion in high-powered 'how do we tackle extremism?' reports since the Defense Science Board report of 2004 that thought military strategic communications should be moved from the Pentagon to the Strategic Command in the hope of aligning various authorities and powers on psychological operations, information operations, public affairs, public diplomacy, etc., etc., in a way that would combat extremism.

Like everything else we've tried, after twenty years it hasn't worked. Reforming the ossified Federal government is beyond the strength of even the most well-respected, elite, tied-in-to-power clique. Neither did Congress undertake any of their priorities. It was, like all these panels, a complete waste of time and attention. The bureaucracy is too old, too stiff, and too unwilling to yield either money or power to allow itself to be reformed, or to accept a higher authority that would "align" it. Even where new bureaucracies are stood up on top of other ones -- Homeland Security, the ODNI -- the old bureaucracies maintain their independence and carry on as before. The top-level just generates paperwork.

As for Congress, it is not really interested in governing. Congressmen are interested in money, but actual governance they like to delegate to the executive branch.

This is failure to know thyself.

As for the enemy, there is also the usual problem of clarity of thought. The definitions of "extremism" and "fragility" are given in part III.
Extremism
As used by this Task Force, “extremism” refers to a wide range of absolutist and totalitarian ideologies. “Extremists” believe in and advocate for replacing existing political institutions with a new political order governed by a doctrine that denies individual liberty and equal rights to citizens of different religious, ethnic, cultural, or economic backgrounds. “Violent extremists” espouse, encourage, and perpetrate violence as they seek to create their extremist political order. Extremism is not unique to any one culture, religion, or geographic region....

Fragility
According to the Fragility Study Group, fragility can be defined as “the absence or breakdown of a social contract between people and their government.” Fragile states suffer from deficits of institutional capacity and political legitimacy that increase the risk of instability and violent conflict and sap the state of its resilience to disruptive shocks. Fragility also enables transnational crime, fuels humanitarian crises, and impedes trade and development.
Now the problem that they're really interested in they also name as "Salafi-jihadist," but they really want that last sentence: "Extremism is not unique to any one culture, religion, or geographic region." So instead of tackling what is already a very big problem, they elect to obscure it into a much larger category, which would require even more resources and moving parts to tackle. 

Along the way, they make a striking concession to relatively hard-right American critics like the Center for Security Policy (which the SPLC considers a hate group, a label they haven't yet followed the DOJ/ATF in wrongly assigning to the Hells Angels). It is only on the hard-right that one sees Islamic politics described as "totalitarian." In fact that description is understandable but incorrect: Islam's political philosophy is medieval, not a modern project like totalitarianism, and it only intends to assign totalizing power to God. Like totalitarian modern politics, Islamists like the Taliban or Iran do intend to encroach on what Westerners consider private matters -- sexuality, the appropriateness of music or art, and so forth. They do not imagine the kind of actual observation and control of all aspects of life that is coming into practice in the Chinese social credit system, or even in our own alliance between social media tech firms and the major government bureaucracies. They also envision a degree of tolerance -- coupled with submission, but tolerance -- for deviations from their ideas for those of certain protected minorities. Christians who pay the tax can worship more-or-less freely, and drink alcohol; Jews as well, at least until the end times. 

Meanwhile, the Task Force ends up excluding some other groups that I would think are more properly considered "extremists" or even "violent extremists." It was a violent anarchist who started World War I, for example, but he wouldn't qualify as an "extremist" under this definition because anarchists do not aspire to totalizing or absolutist control. The mobs that burned American cities the very year after this report came out would not have qualified as 'violent extremists' or, indeed, as extremists at all insofar as they were anarchists instead of Marxists. 

Look at this chart from page 20 for an example of lack of clarity:

Marxist totalitarians do not "cast secular governments as illegitimate," but in fact insist on secular government. They do not "use mosques" to "proselytize." They do not "propagate fundamentalist religious ideologies." By refusing to be clear about what they are even talking about, they end up lost in a fog of their own making.

Hamas is its own problem, not wisely roped in even to a discussion of "radical Islam" per se. It's unique, linked to the problem of Iran and Twelver radicalism but obviously distinct from it. It's unlike even the other radical Islamic groups opposing Israel. Trying to treat all of these as if they were symptoms of a bigger problem that's easier to name leads to ongoing lack of success at actually addressing the problem. 

This is failure to know thy enemy.

What Sun Tzu says about those who fail on both of those scores is that they will not know victory in a thousand battles. We've won a lot of gunfights, and even some things you might call "battles," like Second Fallujah or Third Mosul. We haven't won any part of the war.

I hope that Israel wins its war, but the honest truth is that they'll have a better chance if we don't try to help.

4 comments:

  1. I think this is an accurate assessment.

    One problem I see is that the destruction of the bureaucracy, though much to be desired, leaves a period of extreme vulnerability, extending anywhere from a few days to a few years depending on sector, and much injustice would follow. I am one who reluctantly believes it would nonetheless be worth it.

    Yet I also know my biases. I am not in a vulnerable postion myself (though widespread disruption makes us all vulnerable) and I also am caught up short by Chesterton's Fence. We would destroy more wisdom than we currently appreciate. We don't know what we don't know. And for me, it will be others who pay the price, so I had best not be too righteous about it.

    The risks both ways are great. Which is the greater?

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  2. Chesterton's wall paradox is slightly different, in that it's meant to apply to institutions whose purpose has been forgotten. "I can't see the use of this wall" is a problem because the wall didn't just grow there; somebody put it there for a reason. You should know the reason before you remove it.

    We know what the Department of Defense was for, though. We likewise know what all these other institutions were meant to accomplish.

    Sometimes I have been wondering if we really need to replace them at all -- if just clearing them out might be enough. I realize that you, and Janet, and others have some reasonable concerns about that concept, some of which you raise here.

    Maybe it's a good start just to agree that they no longer do the thing the wall was wanted to do. Maybe we need a new wall and maybe we don't, but the wall we have is no longer doing what it was supposed to do.

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  3. Anonymous5:22 PM

    For at least the past five years (since I started teaching civics/government, so probably much longer) political scientists have added "executive branch agencies" as a fourth branch of government. The books gloss over that this is NOT in the Constitution, probably because 1) it wasn't a deliberate plan by anyone, and 2) because to do so opens a philosophical worm can no high school teacher cares to deal with.

    That Congress in essence turfed law-making to an uncontrolled part of a different branch doesn't surprise me, especially the most recent Congresses (post 1970). They quail from dealing with things that are necessary but politically unpleasant, even when reminded by the SCotUS that lawmaking is indeed Congress' job.

    LittleRed1

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  4. Anonymous5:26 PM

    Americans are learning very fast, especially those in the south, that the enemy is indeed the USA Military that wanys them DEAD not by a little but by a lot.

    VA Denying Benefits to Victims of Mandatory Vax?

    From the beginning, it was obvious that experimental Covid vaccines made no sense for healthy young servicemembers, to whom the vax was more of a threat than the virus. Yet the moonbats in charge demanded they roll up their sleeves. It looks like myocarditis has resulted. Now the VA reportedly refuses healthcare benefits, claiming that the vaccine imposed by the Pentagon was not service-related.


    GOP senators demand answers on whether gov’t will care for soldiers injured by mandatory COVID jabs

    'We must keep our promise to support our service members, including ensuring those who come to the VA for help with COVID-19 vaccine injuries are justly compensated and receive the care that they deserve,' a letter to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough states.

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/gop-senators-demand-answers-on-whether-govt-will-care-for-soldiers-injured-by-mandatory-covid-jabs/

    Don't Fail Sun Tzu
    Dont join the US Military

    Greg


    ReplyDelete