July 30, 2007

Could We Recognize Success Against Terror? Try This

 

“We haven’t had another attack in the U.S. since 9/11, so our policy must be right.” (President Bush on various occasions)

 

“The cheese came when I pushed the lever, so pushing the lever must be getting me the cheese.” (Rat in psychology experiment)

 

“We have to fight them over there or we will fight them here.”, “Iraq is the main focus of the ‘War on Terror.’”, “Iraq is definitely a part of the War on Terror.”, “Stay the course.” These also have passed for strategic statements from the president and others for several years.

 

It’s certainly the case that some people around the world want to harm us and our way of life. They have had some limited success – September 11, 2001 being the most obvious case. We need to generate a robust, thoughtful and strategic response. I would like to help raise the level of discourse through application of a few common-planning principles.

 

This approach requires defining an overall goal as concretely as possible. I’m a reasonably aware person, and I could not now articulate the administration’s goals for what it calls the “War on Terror”. Could you? Can they?

 

First, referring to this challenge as the “War on Terror” discourages the clear thinking we are trying to achieve. It’s more Madison Avenue hype than strategic direction. When they shoot our friends it’s “terror”. When we bomb villages, it’s “legitimate warfare”. The phrase muddies the waters and makes it more difficult to define the desired impact of our actions. Are we fighting against all terror, or only terror by certain groups? How do we know when we’ve won?

 

In conventional war, the objective is to get the enemy to surrender. Getting all groups that wish to harm us to surrender seems an unrealistic expectation. Wiping them all out – the administration’s sometimes-stated goal – seems similarly unrealistic, even aside from likely “collateral damage”.

 

For the purposes of this exercise, I propose as the overall goal the marginalization of our violent Islamic adversaries and elimination of any significant negative impact on our people and interests. Some people will always wish us harm – militant Islamists and others. Most don’t make the news or our political campaigns, because mercifully they are quite unsuccessful. To me, our “success” would be that violent Islamic groups enjoy a similar insignificant impact in the United States and around the world.

 

It’s often useful to identify indicators that would demonstrate the achievement of an overall goal. Here these might include no further attacks, decreased membership in these groups, decreased military resources and political support and less media visibility. I imagine you can think of others.

 

Once the overall goal is clear, it drives the definition of operational objectives in various areas, the total strategy whose achievement will produce the overall goal – impotence of violent Islamic groups. Then those involved – military, Homeland Security, police, politicians, et al – can focus on producing the package of operational results, confident in their contribution to the ultimate goal.

 

Clearly, much depends on accurate definition of these operational objectives – the strategy. Defining them is a key task of the experts, perhaps a National Security Council that was really doing its job. Several occur to me, as examples:

 

1.) Political support for this agenda in the mainstream Muslim world.

2.) Strong relationships with allies and others with similar interests.

3.) Our military forces in the strongest possible readiness.

4.) Comprehensive security arrangements for potentially vulnerable homeland

     targets.

5.) Best possible understanding of priorities and interests of adversaries.

6.) Strengthening of moderate Muslim groups, domestic and international.

7.) Successful police-style interventions to interdict individual attempts at

     mischief by these groups and weaken their infrastructure.

 

Once selected, progress can be monitored on each aspect of strategy, according to indicators of success of each. Our track record in most of these areas has not been good to this point. Interestingly, our best record seems in the policing area, which the administration frequently discounts in favor of larger military agendas.

 

Such reviews should strengthen each aspect of the overall strategy, and the strategy as a whole, by demonstrating any weak links. If by chance all of the operational objectives are being achieved, and progress on the overall goal is still poor, it may suggest reviewing the strategy itself – that is, the total package of operational objectives, to see if any are missing or poorly selected.

 

There is more to this quite straightforward planning approach. I intend to expand on it in future pieces.