National Security

Lacking Perspective

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Things are pretty grim. Armed gunmen are getting bolder. Agents of the duly elected government are at risk, with many of them being assassinated in front of their families. Police officers are specifically targeted, often being kidnapped so they can be tortured to death. The message is simple: Join the side of law and order and you will be killed. The favorite method of execution is to behead the victim, a tactic favored by terrorists.

Sounds like the most overwrought prose from a journalist describing the situation in Iraq, or maybe the Palestinian Territories. But I’m talking about the drug war being waged in Mexico at this very moment. The Washington Post article behind that last link states that 600 people have died this year.

I doubt very highly that either their figures or analysis of the situation is accurate. I have reason to believe that things are much worse. StrategyPage.com states that over 1,200 people have been killed this year. What is most alarming is that the drug gangs are actively recruiting regular Mexican Army deserters, men that have had training in combat, weapon use, and who are able to plan and carry out complex operations.

There are a few questions about this situation that need to be asked. The most important is: How did the drug gangs manage to become so powerful that they are able to take over whole towns, defy the Federal government, and assassinate important officials?

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The Vietnam War (eventually) resulted in an American victory

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There is a pretty heated discussion about the war in Vietnam, among other things, in the comments of this post by Ginny, so these observations by Jerry Pournelle should contribute some useful context:

Viet Nam was a US success because a great part of Soviet transport production including trucks and such was built in the USSR, transported at great expense to Viet Nam and destroyed by USAF. When North Viet Nam invaded the South in 1975 they had more armor than the Wehrmacht had at Kursk, and more trucks than Patton ever had in the Red Ball Express. This was all replacements for similar amounts of materiel destroyed in 1973 when the US at a cost of 663 US casualties aided ARVN in repulsing a 150,000 troop invasion — fewer than 40,000 ever got back home — bringing with it more tanks than the Wehrmacht had at Kursk and more trucks than Patton ever had — none of which ever got home.
 
Viet Nam helped convert the USSR into Bulgaria with missiles. They neglected their own infrastructure to send materiel to Viet Nam for us to destroy.

As Pournelle also writes in his post, Afghanistan was yet another war of attrition that finished them off. One important reason why the Soviets didn’t realize all that in time was that they lied to each other. If displeasing your superiors with reports about problems is risky, you simply report successes all the time. The West in turn didn’t notice what happened because our spies didn’t get to hear anything but the misinformation Soviet officials were feeding each other. That’s also why the victory in Vietnam didn’t feel like one for decades. While Iraq isn’t Vietnam (it can’t be repeated frequently enough), the example of the long-term success that the Vietnam turned out to be should serve to demonstrate the virtue of patience. Iraq will only turn into a defeat (in the long as well as the short run) in case of a premature troop withdrawal (but that is an issue for another post).

Musings On Intelligence

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Read a few things this week that gave me pause on the subject of intelligence.

Kent’s Imperative – “Network analysis in historical contexts”

Haft of The Spear – “The Power of Math”

The Small Wars Council – ” Blackwater Brass Forms Intelligence Company ”

Bill Sizemore – “Blackwater brass forms intelligence company”

Total Intelligence Solutions, inc.

The longitudinal implications here are very interesting.

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Moving Foreign Policy Into A Networked Age

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Through the kind invitation of my friend, columnist and former FPRI analyst, Bruce Kesler, the well-regarded blog, Democracy Project, is running my guest post “Modern Foreign Policy Execution” subtitled “Instead of Crowning a New Czar, Bush Should Ignite A Revolution“, where I offer some suggestions for changing the decidedly broken, interagency process for foreign policy. A brief excerpt:

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