|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
Brett M. Decker
Brett M. Decker is an award-winning journalist, author, communications strategist and bank executive. For the past four years, he was senior vice president for the Office of Communications at the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Previously, Decker was based in Hong Kong as an editor and editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal. He has held positions on the Editorial Board of the Washington Times, as national political reporter for the Evans & Novak Inside Report and television producer for the cable program Insights with Robert Novak. Decker served as a speechwriter to Majority Whip (later Majority Leader) Tom DeLay in the U.S. House of Representatives.
A former Governor of the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents' Club, Decker has written hundreds of articles for publications such as the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, Far Eastern Economic Review, and International Economy. His work has appeared in journals throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas. On December 8, 2008, his first book, Global Filipino (404 pages, $27.95) was published by Regnery. The book contains laudatory forewords written by three of the four post-Marcos presidents of the Philippines, including President Corazon Aquino. Former President Fidel Ramos calls it “a great read.” President Joseph Estrada wrote that, “Brett M. Decker writes about the history and politics of the Philippines with a passion and detail that is a true credit to his craft. For the foreign reader, the combination of this subject and this author makes for an insightful introduction to the history, politics and personalities of the Philippines today.”
A native of Michigan, Decker has a bachelor's degree in political science from Albion College, a master's in government from Johns Hopkins University, and a master's with distinction in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College. He currently teaches Asian politics courses as an adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins. Before his exile from his hometown of Detroit, Decker worked in the bodyshop building Lincolns on the late shift at a now-shuttered Ford factory.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Brett's Home Page |
Brett's Archive |
Email Brett |
The Race for Malacanang
Brett M. Decker
Philippine voters are looking for change. But will they get it?
(From today’s Wall Street Journal Asia)
The presidential race is on in the Philippines. Although the election is not until May of next year, the main players have declared their candidacies and jockeying for position is well underway. Much is at stake.
Simply put, the governing system is broken. In 11 years since the end of Fidel Ramos’s reformist administration, the nation’s democratic institutions have reverted to oligarchic command reminiscent of the Ferdinand Marcos years. Congress is not a check on the presidency but rather acts as its servant. Major government contracts all pass through Malacanang Palace, and corruption is rampant.
The situation has had a suffocating effect on the business climate. Economic growth in 2008, at just 4.6%, was the slowest in seven years; government debt is at a record high of $88.3 billion, or 56% of GDP; 23 million Filipinos live in poverty in a country of 90 million. Thanks to the global economic downturn, remittance payments from overseas workers, which are vital to the economy, are expected to plummet. Filipinos are looking for change.
The frontrunners from the opposition coalition are Senators Manuel (“Mar”) Roxas II of the Liberal Party and Manuel (“Manny”) Villar, Jr. from the Nacionalista Party. Mr. Roxas comes from one of the most distinguished political dynasties in the country. His grandfather was the first president of the independent Philippines. A provincial capital and Manila’s main boulevard carry the Roxas name. In his 2004 Senate run, he received 20 million votes, the most votes cast for anyone seeking any national office in Philippine history.
Mr. Villar boasts a genuine rags-to-riches story. He went from being a delivery boy to building one of the country’s largest construction empires, centered on his flagship company Vista Land. Forbes magazine lists Mr. Villar as the 11th richest man in the Philippines. He is one of the only politicians who can outspend Mr. Roxas in a campaign.
Both candidates will lean heavily on their economic credentials. Mr. Roxas is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, a former Wall Street investment banker, and served as Secretary of Trade and Industry during President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s first term. Mr. Villar’s $425-million fortune is evidence of his business acumen, and his company has won kudos for building low-cost, high-quality housing for the poor.
Messrs. Roxas and Villar both champion the free market and promise reforms to the current government’s state-directed, protectionist policies. Mr. Roxas has argued for lowering or eliminating tariffs. He also supports a stronger currency, comprehensive deregulation, and cutting tax rates for businesses and individuals. Mr. Villar has focused on helping small- and medium-sized companies compete, especially through greater access to credit and reduced red tape.
Contrast that with the ruling-coalition candidates. The leading contenders are the current vice president, Noli de Castro, and Senator Loren Legarda. Mr. de Castro, who enjoyed a long career as a prime-time news anchorman, is mostly seen as a likable lightweight. He spent only three years in the Senate before being elected vice president in 2004 and has no legislative record and few clear-cut positions on issues. Ms. Legarda is chiefly known for advocating new environmental laws, such as strict emissions caps, which raise hackles in the business community. She also was one of only five senators to vote against the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement with the U.S., under which American troops are allowed on Philippine soil to help combat Islamic extremism.
There will be a lot of machinations between now and election day. On the opposition side, leaders worry that Messrs. Roxas and Villar would split the vote and hand the election to Ms. Arroyo’s anointed successor. There’s already talk of trying to unite the two on a joint ticket. Mr. Roxas could harness his popularity in the agricultural south of the country, while Mr. Villar could deliver votes from northern Luzon. The only problem would be deciding which candidate would be at the top of the ticket -- neither is likely to give up his presidential aspirations without a fight.
Meanwhile on the ruling side, Ms. Legarda is the favorite at the moment, but that could change. Mr. de Castro’s best chance is to paint Ms. Legarda, who changed her party affiliation four times in five years, as fickle and unpredictable. But that will prove a tough task given that he is an independent with no party to back him up. Ms. Legarda would benefit from being the only female candidate in the race in a matriarchal society in which two of the last four presidents have been women. And there is the danger that whoever does not get the nod would switch allegiance and campaign for the opposition out of sour grapes.
The biggest wild card is former President Joseph Estrada. Even after his 2001 overthrow and subsequent imprisonment for plunder, the 71-year-old former actor remains a beloved national figure. He has said he would consider entering the race if the opposition does not settle early on a winnable candidate. Mr. Estrada had a mixed economic record during his short presidency. Another dark horse is Senator Panfilo (“Ping”) Lacson, a former general, who is celebrated among the working class. Famous mostly for cleaning up the Philippine National Police, he’s the first senator to swear off pork-barrel spending.
The Philippines has long been regarded as “the sick man of Asia.” Its economy lags behind neighboring Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia despite many advantages, such as an English-speaking population, a large skilled workforce and an old, close relationship with U.S. businesses. There are candidates for president in 2010 who are well-suited to address the nation’s problems. It’s an even bet whether one of them can make it to Malacanang Presidential Palace.
Mr. Decker, a former editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Asia, is author of “Global Filipino” (Regnery, Dec. 2008).
|
Posted
2/23/2009 11:40:05 PM |
|
|
|
Controverting an insurgency
Brett M. Decker
Force and flexibility are a winning combination
Contemporary insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have generated renewed interest in previous uprisings and what measures were undertaken to subdue them. The most common counter-insurgency case studies tend to consider America’s war in Vietnam, the French campaign in Algeria, and Britain’s handling of the Malayan Emergency. To a large degree, until recently, the U.S. military’s extensive experience in “small wars” has been neglected in academia, an oversight that has applied to the Filipino insurgency against U.S. forces following the defeat of Spain in the war of 1898. Only a small number of scholars specialize in this precursory conflict. One of them is Texas A&M Professor Brian McAllister Linn. In The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902, Mr. Linn provides a concise overview of U.S. military operations in part of that controversy. Although useful for his demonstration about how U.S. forces adapted after interaction with the enemy, it does not suffice as a stand-alone history of the Philippine-American War.
In the first page of the preface, the author specifically limits the scope of the work at hand. He makes clear from the outset that, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902 “is primarily a military history concerned with U.S. Army operations and policies at the local level. The focus is thus on how American soldiers developed and implemented pacification policies and methods designed to deal with specific conditions in their immediate areas.”[1] In other words, this book is not intended to be a broad overview of the multifaceted aspects of national policy and strategy that are central to the Philippine-American War. It does not delve deeply into the relevant machinations of statecraft that led up to and continued throughout this war. Similarly avoided is lengthy commentary into the international dimension of U.S. activity in Southeast Asia. For insight into why the United States undertook such a costly endeavor and how the decision was made in Washington, the reader must make do with a short nutshell summary in chapter one.
In the first chapter, Mr. Linn does provide some useful historical information to put his subject in context. After Commodore George Dewey quickly and easily vanquished the outdated Spanish fleet in the Battle of Manila Bay, U.S. policymakers were faced with what to do next in the Philippines. Capturing the capital of Manila would be advantageous in the larger war against Spain and could serve as the first wave of an occupation army should the White House decide on a larger and more permanent role in the region. At any rate, an opportunity to gain some relatively easy ground against Spain presented itself. To create more pressure on the European colonial power, the Americans teamed up with Filipino independence groups who helped encircle the Spanish garrison within the 17th century walls of the Intramuros section of the capital. There were mixed signals over whether U.S. forces were liberators who would grant independence to Filipinos after the defeat or Spain or simply a new colonial master. When U.S. intentions to establish a protectorate under U.S. rule became likely, an insurgency erupted. The guerrilla resistance movement undertook raids and ambushes to keep U.S. troops off balance, and on occasion perpetrated atrocities against fellow Filipinos to discourage them from collaborating with the Americans.
This book presents a short overview of guerrilla tactics that is handy for a casual reader unfamiliar with how small bands of insurgents can take advantage of the weakness inherent to large forces that are comparably less maneuverable. In many instances, because occupation forces are stationed at crossroads or other important junctures in an effort to keep thoroughfares secure and potential chokepoints open, they make easy targets at these obvious fixed positions. Insurgents, on the other hand, can hit a target and then disperse among the population, a defensive move that is simple to orchestrate since insurgents do not wear uniforms and can thus be immediately indistinguishable from townsfolk. Further undermining the effectiveness of occupation forces is that they often cannot leave their posts to pursue insurgents because that could leave important assets unprotected. As the author describes the situation in the Bicol region of southern Luzon, “The region’s dense vegetation, low hills and few roads allowed [the guerrillas] to set ambushes and snipe at Army patrols almost routinely… they not only inflicted casualties but forced Army patrols to constantly deploy and engage in the exhausting and time-consuming work of sweeping the hills and hemp groves.”[2]
Mr. Linn writes about various ways U.S. soldiers adapted to these challenges in the Philippine countryside. Among them are forward-thinking initiatives such as using native Filipino police units for patrol duty and utilizing U.S. resources to improve the infrastructure, health and standard of living of local inhabitants, thus gaining their support and introducing opportunities to develop willing intelligence sources. In some cases, co-opting local clergy helped pacify their flocks. The introduction of such non-military pacification methods varied from area to area, and in some regions more brutal measures were used. For example, concentration camps were built by one U.S. commander so that his troops could clear an area, remove the inhabitants to a camp and then hold the zone.
The simple fact of the matter is that a unified strategy never was instituted to quell the various isolated insurgencies in different parts of the country. For much of the conflict, U.S. commanders were not even certain what Washington viewed to be a suitable goal for war termination. It is not easy to match tactics to strategy, and strategy to policy, when the desired end state is not clearly articulated. Perhaps more startling is that the White House originally avoided a policy-strategy match by design. Out the outset, because he did not want American intentions known internationally, President William McKinley purposely provided vague directives to keep his options open. Such a fluid approach was only possible because the president was confident in U.S. power and certain the available force could squelch resistance when necessary. In the meantime, U.S. commanders were ordered to keep a lid on things as best they could so peace would gradually be instituted as America’s colonial policy was established over time.
Mr. Linn counters the common misconception that the Philippine-American War was a minor confrontation that was neither very important nor overly demanding of U.S. attention. To the contrary, the deployment of troops was significant, particularly given the size of the Filipino population this force was charged to dominate. At its peak, the U.S. troop strength topped out at 70,000 soldiers.[3] This might not sound like a lot compared to the gargantuan forces mobilized later in World War I and World War II, or even in view of the large national armies fielded in the 19th century, but it nonetheless represented a major presence for the mission at hand. For comparison, it is useful to consider the U.S. contingent for current operations in Iraq. U.S. forces in the Philippines in 1902 equaled roughly half the maximum U.S. force in Iraq, yet a century ago there were only 7 million Filipinos while there are 28 million people in modern Iraq.
Mr. Linn’s most original contribution to the study of the Philippine-American War is his exposition of how U.S. forces adapted when faced with unfamiliar, asymmetric tactics employed by the enemy. Central to this subject is an appreciation for the varied nature of the fighting across the archipelago. Not only was there no consistent or coordinated strategy on the part of the guerrilla forces, this author argues that for the most part there was no unity of effort put forth by U.S. forces either. Instead, different field commanders instituted a multitude of courses of action in reaction to the individual situations they faced on the ground. The benefit of this uncoordinated approach was that it freed units to interact with the enemy and then adapt as they deemed appropriate. As the author writes in his conclusion, “Their extended service [in one area] allowed them the opportunity to experiment with innovative and individualized counterinsurgency methods.”[4] This inherent flexibility generated successful creativity in the Army.
The technical details of this book are impressive. The clarity of the author’s writing makes an academic subject easy to digest, and he took pains to be precise in explaining why he chose certain terms over others. For example, to make clear why one term is inappropriate, he related that, “‘The Philippine Insurrection’ suggests a rebellion against a constituted authority when in fact the war broke out before the United States exercised control beyond the city of Manila.”[5] Such exact distinctions are educational in their own right. His organization of material is straightforward, and the sources he consulted are diverse, especially his recourse to diaries from those involved in the war and fellow academics’ dissertations on the topic. One trait that helped the overall effectiveness of his argument was a very professional tone, which stands as a definite improvement over some more biased works on this subject. For example, Stanley Karnow’s In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines is sneering in its contempt for U.S. policy. Likewise, from the first line, it is obvious where Russell Roth is heading when he opens Muddy Glory with a century-old view stating that, “we must go on slaughtering the natives and taking what muddy glory lies in this wholesale killing until they have learned to respect our arms.”[6] Mr. Linn thankfully eschews such vitriol.
Although not a ruinous shortcoming, the short shrift Mr. Linn dedicated to larger issues does limit the appeal of this book because it necessitates that the reader consult other works to discover relatively rudimentary details about this insurgency, who conducted it and why. Given its short 170 pages of text, it seems that one chapter of 25 pages or so could have addressed this weakness and made this book a more satisfying stand-alone source. As it is, one has to go elsewhere. For insight into what motivated America’s political leadership to invest its blood, treasure and national reputation in a tropical archipelago on the other side of the planet, Rene R. Escalante’s The Bearer of Pax Americana: The Philippine Career of William Howard Taft, 1900-1903, scrutinizes the idealism of President McKinley’s policy of “benevolent assimilation” and sets forth the methods his successors employed in attempting to create a little American-style democracy in Southeast Asia. Mr. Escalante’s conclusion is that U.S. incentives were largely economic. He writes that imperialism was a matter of survival at the turn of the 20th century. In order to continue to expand the U.S. economy and compete with the major European powers of the age, he asserts that, “Proactive leaders saw in advance that the long-term solution to their economic woes was to acquire overseas territories where they could dump their surplus products and capital.”[7] In The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives, the contributors analyze the success of U.S. diplomats in creating effective governing institutions in the Philippines, and what this meant for America’s place in the world. The authors conclude that it is relevant that, “policymakers and administrators indeed attempted to ‘transplant’ American civilization and thereby transform Philippine society.”[8] In short, there was a lot more than commercial interest riding on the U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency operations in the archipelago because a grand experiment was envisioned.
A few additional books are noteworthy for meticulous investigation into military action on the fields of battle during the Filipino insurgency. In Battle for Batangas: A Philippine Province at War, Glenn Anthony May studies resistance against U.S. occupation in one of the last regions to capitulate. Of note is his observation that the insurgency lacked enthusiasm among the lower classes because in most regions guerrilla leaders were comprised of the existing elites who were anxious to maintain their privileged place is society amidst the vacuum created by the Spanish departure. “Thus,” he writes, “so long as the anti-colonial struggles were controlled by elites, lower-class participation had to be coerced.”[9] The class dynamic made it difficult to recruit guerrilla fighters. It also limited the support insurgents could muster among their own people, many of whom hoped their life might improve under U.S. stewardship. This situation proved disastrous because insurgencies must be able to hide among and receive support from locals if they are to successfully outfox and outmaneuver more powerful opponents.
Another deficiency of Mr. Linn’s book is that its study is limited to four districts on the most populous island of Luzon, which is in the extreme north of the 7,000-island archipelago. Although he mentions that communications were a problem for U.S. forces, he examines four districts that at least were on the same island. While he is right to highlight the command-and-control breakdown on Luzon, where most of the fighting was focused, it is pertinent to note that these difficulties were even more calamitous on islands farther from the capital, and these locales were the sites for some of the most vicious interactions of the war. The Balangiga Conflict Revisited, by Rolando O. Borrinaga, is useful because it recounts fighting and occupation policies on the central-western island of Samar, which witnessed some of the insurgents’ most successful attacks. It was here that the so-called “Balangiga Massacre” of U.S. troops occurred, which was the largest single defeat of U.S. forces in the war. It was also in retaliation in Samar that U.S. commanders instituted “bayonet rule,” orders to kill any boy over age ten, and maneuvers to reduce defiant areas to “a howling wilderness.”[10] Mr. Linn mentions these episodes, but they are out of context because he only considers operations on Luzon, where these events did not happen. As his thesis repeatedly reminds, each situation in each area was highly unique. Expanding his research beyond Luzon would have reinforced his narrative.
While Mr. Linn focuses on the countryside, some familiarity with urban operations provides a balanced perspective on the overall war effort. In The Hills of Sampaloc: the Opening Actions of the Philippine-American War, February 4-5, 1899, Benito J. Legarda, Jr. quotes heavily from first-person accounts about U.S. tactics and positions in and around the capital of Manila. He also provides a helpful rundown of the instruments of war and the material disadvantage of resistance forces. “The Americans had not only their own artillery but also what they had captured from the Spanish in Manila,” he writes. “Artillery would prove decisive in the fighting, and the Filipinos had only a motley assortment of captured pieces, including some antiquated smooth-bore cannons.”[11] This material dimension was so lopsided that strategy at times was seen as a luxury by some U.S. leaders. The imbalance of power intimidated many insurgent leaders and convinced them to surrender, thus playing a central role in the eventual outcome.
The utility of these other books on related subjects is not intended to devalue what Mr. Linn offers his field of study. They merely give a more top-to-bottom survey of the numerous dimensions of war that he does not cover. The limited scope of The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902 is not due to the author’s lack of comprehensive knowledge of these broader issues involved. In other books, he has written extensively on the factors related to this conflict that fall outside the limited parameters of U.S. military operations in the four Luzon districts he considers. For example, in Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940, he goes to greater lengths to detail what was at stake for U.S. interests in the Far East. The discussion in it takes a decidedly more universal direction than his previous work. In the preface of this second book, Mr. Linn writes that, “Imperialist officers such as Leonard Wood and Douglas MacArthur argued that the security of the United States depended on trade and power projection in the Far East… [and that] the Philippines were valuable not just for strategic or commercial reasons, but as a transfer point for American values and institutions to Asia.”[12] The first four chapters of Guardians of Empire, or nearly half the book, spell out the minutiae of U.S. policy in the Far East and describe strategic developments over several decades, as well as exploring the more intangible motives for U.S. decisions. The extra context makes this second book a more satisfying read overall.
He is even more ambitious in his most recent publication, The Echo of Battle: the Army’s Way of War,[13] which was released in 2007. In this book, he tries to delineate three identifiable patterns in the way the United States prepared for war before every conflict from the War for Independence until the present actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. He gives the U.S. Army failing grades in each case. Some reviewers thought he overreached in this thesis and forced conclusions that ignored the most basic element, which is that America enjoyed a long track record of success in war.[14] Whether or not this criticism is valid, the point is that the limitations of his book on the Philippine-American War were intentional. In his bailiwick, Mr. Linn is a respected authority.
The volatile nature of current events has introduced the history of counterinsurgency operations to a new generation of readers. There are many lessons from the Philippine-American War that are still relevant today. This is especially true regarding the need to pursue non-military pacification programs and the utility of co-opting preexisting social structures in an occupied land. The Filipino insurgency offers many useful examples of good and bad counterinsurgency operations. Mr. Linn’s book is a welcome introduction to the topic.
WORKS CITED and CONSULTED
Borrinaga, Rolando O. The Balangiga Conflict Revisited. Manila: New Day Publishers, 2003.
Bruscino, Thomas A. (Assistant Professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College). “Our American Mind for War.” Claremont, CA: Claremont Institute Publications Online, 26 May 2008.
Escalante, Rene R. The Bearer of Pax Americana: The Philippine Career of William Howard Taft, 1900-1903. Manila: New Day Publishers, 2007.
Francisco, Mariel N., and Fe Maria C. Arriola. The History of the Burgis: How the Elite Made It to the Top of the Pile. Manila: Raintree Publishing, 1987.
Go, Julian, and Anne L. Foster, editors. The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Karnow, Stanley. In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989.
Legarda, Benito J., Jr. The Hills of Sampaloc: the Opening Actions pf the Philippine-American War, February 4-5, 1899. Manila: Bookmark, 2001.
Linn, Brian McAllister. The Echo of Battle: the Army’s Way of War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Linn, Brian McAllister. Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Linn, Brian McAllister. The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
May, Glenn Anthony. Battle for Batangas: A Philippine Province at War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.
Miller, Stuart Creighton. Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982.
Roth, Russell. Muddy Glory: America’s ‘Indian Wars’ in the Philippines, 1899-1935. Hanover, MA: The Christopher Publishing House, 1981.
# # #
[1] Brian McAllister Linn. The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989, pp. xi-xii.
[2] Ibid., p. 102.
[3] Ibid., p. 24.
[4] Ibid., p. 170.
[5] Ibid., p. xii.
[6] Russell Roth. Muddy Glory: America’s ‘Indian Wars’ in the Philippines, 1899-1935. Hanover, MA: The Christopher Publishing House, 1981, title page.
[7] Rene R. Escalante. The Bearer of Pax Americana: The Philippine Career of William Howard Taft, 1900-1903. Manila: New Day Publishers, 2007, p. 252.
[8] Julian Go and Anne L. Foster, editors. The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003, p. 9.
[9] Glenn Anthony May. Battle for Batangas: A Philippine Province at War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993, p. 288.
[10] Rolando O. Borrinaga. The Balangiga Conflict Revisited. Manila: New Day Publishers, 2003, pp. 7-21 & 155-158.
[11] Benito J. Legarda, Jr. The Hills of Sampaloc: the Opening Actions pf the Philippine-American War, February 4-5, 1899. Manila: Bookmark, 2001, p. 19.
[12] Brian McAllister Linn. Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997, p. xii.
[13] Brian McAllister Linn. The Echo of Battle: the Army’s Way of War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
[14] See: Thomas A. Bruscino (Assistant Professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College). “Our American Mind for War.” Claremont, CA: Claremont Institute Publications Online, 26 May 2008.
|
Posted
2/21/2009 5:40:30 AM |
|
|
|
The return of Martial Law, and other stories
Brett M. Decker
Michael Alan Hamlin interview with Brett M. Decker
Originally Published on: December 31, 2008
Last week, Global Filipino: The Authorized Biography of Jose de Venecia Jr., Five-Time Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, was officially released in Manila. Three former presidents of the Philippines-Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada-were present at the launch in Ortigas. However, Brett M. Decker, the book’s author, was absent due to a family emergency. In his first public interview on the subject, Brett, a longtime friend, house guest and colleague, discussed his controversial book with this column.
MAH: What surprised you most during the writing of this book?
BMD: What really surprised me was how reluctant Joe de Venecia (JDV) was to criticize President Arroyo, even after her family and allies ousted him from the speakership. Right up to the time the manuscript went to the printer, he was having second thoughts about publicly attacking her. “We were allies for so long,” he would lament. JDV is a very sentimental person who is not naturally vindictive.
MAH: Do you think this ugly split between GMA and JDV could have been avoided?
BMD: President Arroyo missed an opportunity to minimize political damage when the scandal over the national broadband contract first made news. JDV is not instinctively a renegade and is very pragmatic. If the President would have offered a way for him to continue to serve the country in a prominent position, he might have taken it. For example, she could have made him Foreign Minister. JDV is well-known and well-respected internationally and would have brought overseas prestige to this administration. Fair or not, on the international scene, President Arroyo is seen as a petty, small-time kleptocrat of a third-world nation of diminishing importance. The image problem is very real and discourages foreign investment. The Philippines has potential to be much more competitive in the region but clearly won’t make significant progress with its current leadership.
MAH: Do you think the final published draft of the book is too critical of the President?
BMD: Last week, President Estrada congratulated JDV for going public with his allegations about corruption in the Arroyo administration, but he added that he hopes there is a sequel in the works because obviously “JDV knows many things about this administration and he has many stories to tell.” I couldn’t agree more. The truth is that this book barely touches upon the massive corruption in the Philippine government or the many problems plaguing President Arroyo. The book isn’t about her. We had to address the ZTE scandal because it led to the Arroyos ousting the Speaker, which obviously is central to a story about the Speaker.
MAH: What other stories could JDV tell?
BMD: Former Speaker de Venecia was one of GMA’s closest advisors and defenders for many years, so he should know where some of the bodies are buried. Several senior administration officials have told me that there have been discussions in Malacanang about what conditions would be necessary for President Arroyo to declare martial law, or at least to institute major emergency powers unprecedented since Marcos. I would be surprised if JDV did not overhear some of those deliberations, and I think that the Philippine public has a right to know what the President has considered in regard to curtailing civil liberties. Some very extreme measures were being discussed during a couple of times when her presidency was threatened.
MAH: You don’t really think the President has considered moving towards a police state?
BMD: She has proven herself willing and capable of doing anything to maintain her grip on power. Don’t forget that she originally pledged not to seek election after being installed to finish out Estrada’s term. She reneged on that promise just as her father President Diosdado Macapagal reneged on his promise not to run for a second term four decades earlier. As the Hello Garci tapes revealed, her subsequent election was anything but clear-cut. Now she is putting muscle behind the charter-change movement wherein she could retain power by becoming prime minister. The Philippine Constitution wisely restricts a president to a single six-year term to limit the power any single executive can accumulate. President Arroyo already has been in power two more years than what the constitutional framers considered to be safe-and it is obvious that her family does not want to relinquish what such power can do for them.
MAH: What lesson can be taken from the political mess in the Philippines?
BMD: The tragedy is that Gloria Arroyo had an opportunity to make the Philippines a better place where more Filipinos could prosper. She had political pedigree, foreign support, and comes from the small circle of elites that runs the country. Outside of violent revolution, which I don’t think is in the Filipinos’ collective nature, reform must come from the elites, and she could have brought substantive change if she had been courageous enough to break from the practice that one must pay to play in her country. She wasn’t, and it is the poor who continue to suffer the most as a result.
|
Posted
2/21/2009 5:34:56 AM |
|
|
|
A new generation of warfare
Brett M. Decker
Militaries learn while the battle space evolves
The appropriate posture for deployed U.S. military forces is a hot topic of debate in America's presidential election. To deflect attention from the fact that he opposed a surge strategy that successfully pacified Iraq, Democrat Barack Obama repeatedly is insisting that the strategy that worked in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan as well. Republican John McCain counters that counterinsurgency operations are never cookie-cutter endeavors and that flexibility and ability to adapt to the specific situation on the ground are universal counterinsurgency principles that certainly can be applied in Afghanistan. Despite what Obama likes to believe is true, the contemporary way of war is winnable for a superpower--it simply can take some time for militaries to recognize and adjust as warfare evolves.
Col. Thomas X. Hammes’s book The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century offers an in-depth narrative on different historical stages of warfare and what the author perceives to be war’s Fourth Generation (4GW), which he says is where we are stuck now. This historical backdrop sets up his main thesis, which is that the United States military and its political leadership need to understand unconventional war because it is the wave of the future. Because the United States is so powerful in conventional military terms that its superiority cannot wisely be confronted by conventional means, enemies will increasingly seek unconventional methods to attack America and her interests and allies. To be ready for the conflicts of the future, Col. Hammes provides a comprehensive alternative for what the future of war might look like, how the military can recognize a new mode of warfare as it is implemented by enemies, and how to respond to it.
This book is useful in that it provides experienced analysis of the situation on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reader gets to see how a senior military leader sees the conflict and gets a glimpse of how commanders in the field assess contemporary combat scenarios and how operational options are considered. The author succinctly sums up the relevance of his topic in Chapter 1: “Not only is 4GW the only kind of war America has ever lost, we have done so three times: Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. This form of warfare has also defeated the French in Vietnam and Algeria and the USSR in Afghanistan. It continues to bleed Russia in Chechnya and the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in other countries against the al Qaeda network. The consistent defeat of major powers by much weaker fourth-generation opponents makes it essential to understand this new form of warfare and adapt accordingly.”[1] Failure to adapt will lead to further defeat, which is a very real threat as military bureaucracies are notoriously hesitant to change. The old adage that the army is always ready to fight the last war is all too true too often.
To prove his point, Col. Hammes walks through the history of the development of modern warfare. One of the controversial academic points he makes is that warfare is evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary. He writes that changes in warfare occur in response to major changes that are happening in society at the time. In reference to the different stages of the generational evolution of warfare, he explains that, “Each evolved as practical people developed real-world solutions to specific tactical problems.”[2] For example, the First Generation was based on putting as much power at one point in a line or column as possible. Mass conscription of the Napoleonic era meant more force was available to overwhelm an enemy if that force was concentrated in the right spot. This evolved into the defensive trench tactics of World War I as more precise artillery took a more prominent role over infantry. The Third Generation (3GW) was based on maneuver, which restored the pride of place of the offensive through the use of tanks and more mobile firepower. In this context, 4GW is a natural evolutionary stage because U.S. superiority in 3GW necessitated something new, and the cultures of many places were ripe to snipe at hegemony.
One of the inconsistencies in the author’s stance is that he simultaneously states that war evolves technically as a solution to new societal developments while strongly criticizing the prominent theorists of the schools of thought that espouse views on network-centric warfare and force transformation. He sniffs at the notion that these schools see technology (especially hi-tech weaponry and new information technology) as the main driver of change in how wars are fought. On this subject, he condescendingly comments that, “The pro-RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs) position is simple: Technology is the answer. Unfortunately, they never clarify exactly what the question is.”[3] However, it seems to me that if Col. Hammes is correct that societal changes alter how we conduct war, then the network-centric school of thought is trying in good faith to predict where society (and thus warfare) will go in the Information Age. Of course, as Col. Hammes complains, many expensive hi-tech weapons systems are pushed by the Pentagon’s need to guarantee large budget outlays in the future and military contractors’ interest in big defense contracts, but that does not mean all the theories are irrelevant. The author tends to look at competing threats as either/or propositions when the reality is that the United States needs to be ready for all of the above.
There has been some criticism of the Hammes book among several prominent commentators on military affairs. One mixed review was penned by William S. Lind, author of (among other works) the Maneuver Warfare Handbook and (with former Senator Gary Hart) America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform. Although mostly complimentary of the Hammes effort, Mr. Lind (who is quoted extensively by Hammes) argues that the colonel veers off course when discussing the big picture of Fourth Generation warfare, especially when he ipso facto equates it with insurgency. According to Lind, “In doing so, he equates the Fourth Generation with how war is fought. It is usually fought guerilla-style, but that misses the point: What changes in the Fourth Generation is who fights and what they fight for. This error leads to others, such as believing that Fourth Generation war focuses on the mental level. Hammes writes, ‘The fourth generation has arrived. It uses all available networks-political, economic, social and military-to convince the enemy’s political decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit.’ In fact, Fourth Generation war focuses on the moral level, where it works to convince all parties, neutrals as well as belligerents, that the cause for which a Fourth Generation entity is fighting is morally superior. It turns its state enemies inward against themselves on the moral level, making the political calculations of the mental level irrelevant.”[4]
U.S. challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan have revived academic and literary interest in the topics of insurgency and unconventional warfare so there now is a growing wealth of other works in the field on the same subject. Among the most articulate is Lt. Col. John A. Nagl’s Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam in which the author dissects the difference in the successful approach the British took to squash the 1949-60 insurgency in Malaya and the unsuccessful U.S. efforts in Vietnam during the following decade. The crux of the matter, as Lt. Col. Nagl sees it, is that, “Counterinsurgency requires the integration of all elements of national power--diplomacy, information operations, intelligence, financial, and military--to achieve the predominantly political objectives of establishing a stable national government that can secure itself against internal and external threats.”[5] Max Boot’s The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Basic Books, 2002) reminds that the United States has a long and mostly successful history at low-intensity conflict--an exercise which is important to counter the defeatist mindset of those like Obama who claim that insurgencies cannot be vanquished by democracies. All investigate the phenomenon of weak forces enjoying advantages over much stronger powers. These insightful works are only a few on an impressive list that gets longer by the day. The more we know about the subject, especially what was done wrong in the past, the more likely we are to act and react efficiently and intelligently to future challenges.
In the final analysis, Col. Hammes’s The Sling and the Stone is a useful addition to the growing canon of material that studies the history, development, role and practitioners of insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare. When U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Marine Lt. Gen. James F. Amos wrote and published a new U.S. counterinsurgency manual (known as FM 3-24) two years ago, it had been more than two decades since America’s land-war services had thought about counterinsurgency enough to release a new compendium for how U.S. forces should view it and handle it. The more analysis the better because this manner of warfare is the future as it represents the only way weaker states and non-government groups can challenge the overwhelming force and technical superiority of the U.S. military. If the first rule of war is to know thy enemy, Col. Hammes and his book further that goal. As the author convincingly states his case: “As the only Goliath left in the world, we should be worried that the world’s Davids have found a sling and stone that work.”[6]
[1] Col. Thomas X. Hammes. The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century. Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2006, p. 3.
[2] Ibid., p. 207.
[3] Ibid., p. 7.
[4] William S. Lind. “Review: The Sling and the Stone.” On War: Free Congress Foundation Commentary No. 90, Nov. 5, 2004.
[5] Lt. Col. John A. Nagl. Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. xvi.
[6] Col. Hammes, p. 5.
|
Posted
10/9/2008 7:19:55 AM |
|
|
|
The enemy that dare not speak its name
Brett M. Decker
Islamic religious fanaticism is central to terrorism
America's two presidential candidates are duking it out over who is best-suited to be commander-in-chief of the world's only superpower. At the heart of the debate is a disagreement about how to handle the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrat Barack Osama consistently has advocated withdrawal to avoid defeat and humiliation similar to that suffered in Vietnam. Republican John McCain, a hero of the Vietnam War, insists that there are inherent differences in America's current enemy and the enemy a generation ago. The simplest way to separate these wars is to define classical and contemporary insurgency and how it applies in the relevant cases.
The fundamental difference between classical and contemporary insurgency is based on different global contexts of the times. In the past, when the nation state or a centralized government was the major institutional guarantor of stability, insurgents sought to undermine and replace that power base. We can refer to that phenomenon as classical insurgency. Insurgents, to be able to confront and defeat superior enemies, must be flexible and adapt as times change. Thus, as governing and business institutions evolved from a largely national posture to a broader international focus, insurgent organizations adapted to keep pace with the times and assumed an identity, operational vision and battlefields less defined (and less constricted) by national boundaries. Likewise, contemporary insurgents harbor less cohesive post-insurgency plans. A more globalized but less precise philosophy of insurgency is part and parcel to what we understand to be contemporary insurgency. Modern insurgency has gone global to upset the apple cart that is our modern interconnected world.
One example of contemporary insurgency is the modern jihadist movement. One of the dangerous characteristics of this contemporary insurgency is the popular support aspects of its agenda have among wide swaths of Muslims internationally. As Michael Vlahos explains in his report, “Terror’s Mask: Insurgency Within Islam,” the modern Islamist insurgents enjoy an unprecedented meeting of the minds among their ideologically targeted population. Referring to what he calls an overarching “web of significance,” Dr. Vlahos puts forth that much of the world’s Muslim population and their cultural and societal institutions share a similar world view as the insurgents. “While al Qaeda and the Taliban represent extreme interpretations of particular aspects of Sharia,” he writes, “what is important is how their message resonates… their continuing appeal tells us that the resonance is strong indeed.”[1] In other words, while many Muslims might not agree with some of the tactics undertaken by al Qaeda and other Islamist militants, many do in fact agree with the greater vision of a muscular and purified Islam with a more preeminent place in the world. Contemporary Islamist insurgents thus have an advantage over counterinsurgents in that they do not have to focus on winning hearts and minds because many are predisposed to their struggle already.
The religious nature of the conflict makes this enemy hard to defeat because it takes advantage of one of the West’s cultural weaknesses: political correctness. In the modern age, free thought and freedom of belief are valued to such a degree that there is no recognition that some thoughts and some beliefs are dangerous. Diversity of opinion and religious ecumenism, including the religious opinion that society should be destroyed, ironically are considered to be cultural strengths. This dogma is so unquestionable that it is impermissible to question any unorthodox perspective, including that of al Qaeda. This politically-correct sensitivity makes it complicated to define the enemy because it cannot be honestly identified as a religious-based one in the interests of not offending any religious sentiments. This presents a predicament, as Dr. Vlahos puts it: “Can we defeat an enemy that we are afraid to name?”[2] Contemporary insurgency takes advantage of a Western intellectual constipation that prevents its commanders from openly discussing many aspects of the current war. This weakness did not frequently set back classical counterinsurgency efforts because the insurgent enemy clearly was defined as independence/usually Communist forces.
The central religious element of the Islamist movement takes insurgency to new levels not common in classical insurgencies. Because it is an insurgency within a religion as much as one against ruling powers, it has literally millions of sympathizers within that intramural ideological dispute. Because Islam is found all over the world, this insurgency has no borders, and so is potentially unlimited (or very difficult to limit) in scope. Obviously a global insurgency is harder to contain and defend against than a classical insurgency that has more concrete targets in a more easily defined space. For example, the aim of the Malayan insurgency of 1948-1960 was to kick out the British colonial power (and later the new native government of the newly independent Malayan state) and was limited to Malayan territorial borders. Today’s Islamist insurgency has no such borders and for that reason can select from literally millions of soft targets all over the map. With such an unlimited target area that is impossible to protect, the insurgents can strike a blow for their cause practically by hitting anyone, anywhere at any time. Because the battle space is so spread out, the insurgents do not have to go for the throat and finish the job by actually defeating the established power in the field; modern insurgents can win by merely continuing to exist and frustrating the major powers that seek their elimination in vain. (Classical insurgency had been heading in this direction for some time, but the insurgent ability to bide time has been more fully realized by the current global conflict.)
This theme of classical-versus-contemporary insurgency is addressed in the journal Survival by David Kilcullen, chief strategist of the U.S. State Department’s counterterrorism office. In an article entitled “Counterinsurgency Redux,” Mr. Kilcullen discusses the difference between classical insurgency, which was most commonly found in “the so-called wars of national liberation from 1944 to about 1982,” and contemporary insurgency, which he describes as based more on resistance to the established power and attempts to spoil the established power’s position than to seize power itself.[3] As he explains, “For example, in Iraq multiple groups are seeking to paralyze and fragment the state, rather than to gain control of its apparatus and govern. Insurgents favor strategies of provocation (to undermine support of the coalition) and exhaustion (to convince the coalition to leave Iraq) rather than displacement of the government. This is a ‘resistance’ insurgency rather than a ‘revolutionary’ insurgency. Insurgents want to destroy the Iraqi state, not secede from it or supplant it.”[4]
Chaos can be the goal of contemporary insurgency because its ultimate aim is to destroy society. Oftentimes contemporary insurgents have no strategy and no plan for a post-insurgency power vacuum. Because contemporary insurgents need no unified vision, force multiplication is simpler because coordinated effort is unnecessary above and beyond immediate destruction. For this reason, one significant difference between classical and contemporary insurgency is that the former sponsored a guerrilla counter-government while the latter does not.[5] Modern jihadist insurgency is in no need of a blueprint because fundamentalist belief is that power ultimately will be established as “God wills it.” The end game of classical insurgents was eventually to take control and govern a defined space, so the struggle had parameters. An intrinsic aspect of contemporary jihadist insurgents is the spiritual sanctification that can be earned through religious war. Such fanaticism has fewer limits, especially in the growing radical Islamic world. Classical insurgency was prolonged by design; contemporary jihadist insurgency recognizes no beginning and no end. As ever, this war is a contest of wills.
[1] Michael Vlahos. “Terror’s Mask.” Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, May 2002, p. 10.
[2] Ibid., p. 1.
[3] Kilcullen, David. “Counterinsurgency Redux.” Survival: Vol. 48/Winter 2006-2007, pp. 1-6.
[4] Ibid, p. 4.
[5] Ibid, p. 5.
|
Posted
10/7/2008 7:09:52 AM |
|
|
|
Whatever it takes
Brett M. Decker
Does the West have one hand tied behind its back in terror war?
I recently had the fortune of meeting a real hero, Navy Cross recipient and bestselling author. Lone Survivor is Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell’s account of the June 2005 mission in Afghanistan during which his whole team and a helicopter full of SEAL reinforcements were killed fighting the Taliban in the mountains along the Pakistani border. The book gives useful insight into SEAL training and preparedness before providing a gripping narrative of the showdown against the al Qaeda-backed Afghan radicals. As Petty Officer First Class Luttrell explains it, the SEALs (as well as other U.S. combat troops, especially Special Forces) are capable and equipped to defeat any foe on the battlefield, but what limited their effectiveness in the Afghan mountains were counterproductive rules of engagement (ROE).
The view expressed by this combat veteran is relevant because it is his opinion that his comrades in arms were lost because they second-guessed and then reversed what their training and instincts recommended they do because they were afraid of legal ramifications for using force deemed unnecessary by political standards back home. Specifically, he recounts how his team came across what were certain to be Taliban scouts on a mountainside trail. The four SEALs did not have the capacity to take them prisoner in the middle of a mission in which they needed to move quickly through hostile territory, but they could not kill the scouts because they were unarmed and dressed as goat herders. The result was that U.S. forces had to let the enemy go free with the near certainty that their location would be reported by the scouts--which in this case it was, leading to the largest loss of life in one engagement in SEAL history.
The enemy understands the limitations (many established for humane reasons) on Western troops and takes advantage of them. As Luttrell explains it, “those ROE are very specific: We may not open fire until we are fired upon or have positively identified our enemy and have proof of his intentions… they (the ROE) represent a danger to us; they undermine our confidence on the battlefield in the fight against world terror. Worse yet, they make us concerned, disheartened and sometimes hesitant” (pp. 37-38). Luttrell discusses the prosecution of Marines over combat decisions in Iraq and how fear that mistakes will be treated as crimes makes warriors timid in battle. His conclusion is that, “There is no other way to beat a terrorist. You must fight like him, or surely he will kill you” (p. 28).
Lone Survivor leaves the reader with one poignant question with serious ramifications for the War on Terror: Can our warriors do what is necessary to win in the field?
For a gripping first-hand look at the war in Afghanistan, buy and read: Luttrell, Marcus, with Patrick Robinson. Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10. New York: Little-Brown, 2007.
|
Posted
10/7/2008 4:28:33 AM |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
