"Despite the expenditure of thousands of hours and millions of dollars, the US military does not yet have a particularly effective way of dealing with the threat that IEDs pose."
Too static a description. What has happened is that U.S. technical countermeasures have forced insurgents to use IED devices that are lower tech and open them to greater risk of capture or death. It's a constant "
arms race" between the two sides.
The fact that IEDs are still being used in massive numbers and are still taking the lives of US soldiers strikes me as prima facie evidence that the US strategy is not particularly effective. Yes, insurgents are forced to use devices that pose a greater risk of capture or death, but the casualty numbers do not seem to be decreasing.
I still maintain that the only actually effective strategy would be one that focuses on social infrastructures rather than technical requirements.
"I still maintain that the only actually effective strategy would be one that focuses on social infrastructures rather than technical requirements."
I'm not actually disagreeing with you there. Ideally, these things should be fitting hand in glove together.
Soldiers on the ground though (the interviewees), will always be more interested in the tactical evolution of tech for understandable reasons.
Well, it is still remarkable that the American military is getting increasingly interested (again) in the 'social' context of its adversaries (much as it is remarkable that this was the first thing they forgot soon after Vietnam). But I agree, that as long as this context is translated into a 'technical' problem that can be solved with the correct and improved application of strategy, tactics, and platforms, not enough is gained. FM 3-24 should make for some interesting reading in this regard. What's at stake is not only to understand the social structure/network within which IEDs emerge as the weapons of choice, but also the social effects 'our' presence has on those structures. It seems to me that the military still looks at these places assuming a 'view from nowhere' and therefore remains aspect-blind to the social (rather than purely military) exchange between 'them and us'.
The NYT published an interesting article on the issue today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/0...edcd8fe&
ei=5070
Anybody want to sign up for that?
Patrick,
I think that the official discourse emanating from the US military must, as always, be taken with a large pinch of salt (or, as Al Pacino puts it in Donnie Brasco, with a punch of salt).
Sure, boys with toys and all that, a lot of 18-50 year olds getting all orgasmic about a whole new range of buttons to push and mounted scopes that can see past corners, etc. But I think that the US military leadership, even as it denies the social grounding and the relationality of its own deployment and pushes the tech agenda forward _in the media_ is becoming acutely aware of the context they operate in.
A good example is the story posted above about the experimental use of anthropologists and other social scientists in the field. I recently saw another story of a similar bent, only regarding Iraq's tribal issues. And while I was in DC, a few people from the Pentagon were already mentioning here and there the need to consult with other social scientists (legal sociologists, cultural anthropologists, etc.) None of this is surprising though - the US military is simply re-learning lessons from previous wars (hence the huge revival of ideas of OOTW, "the savage wars of peace" from Max Boot, stories from the Philippines, and the new manual on counter-insurgency by Nagl & Petraeus, to name but a few). As operations in Iraq and Afghanistan become more complex, and as you point out, casualties do not decrease significantly, the US military s bound to start adapting its posture to those conditions.
In a way, it has already - the Peacekeeping & Stability Operations Institute at Carlisle Barracks has not been disbanded as planned, instead it has been beefed up with a rafter of social scientists, the CIA is once again recruiting anthropologists and sociologists, the DoD has passed directive 3000.05, etc. In other ways, the US security establishment is trying to change its mindset and deplyment from (to use the phrase of a former US special forces officer I interviewed) "blowing shit up" with high-tech gear, to "building social relations leading to success". Or, to quote Nagl again on what's become a typical quip, "to win this war by drinking tea".
Now, this presents its own set of problems, both og which have to do with that great determinant of social leraning in clompex environments - time. On the one hand, the US did not take the time to properly train and brief its pubescent grunts about what they would find on the ground _after_ the so-called "kynetic phase" of operations was over, or how to deal with it for that matter. Secondly, and most importantly, the learning cycle for the US armed forces is VERY long. From battle damage assessment, to brainstorming, to policy change, to doctrine change, to training, to deployment, any good idea takes a huge chunk of time before it hits the ground - a fact which Pentagon officials and US military brass are painfully aware of and often acknowledge. Which, come to think of it, shows that whatever they say, they are _very_ aware of the social, complex, relational and "thick" nature of US warfare (no pun intended!).
Commenting by HaloScan.com
