Commanding Heights Strategic Lessons from Complex Operations Edited by Michael Miklaucic PUBLISHED BY THE CENTER FOR COMPLEX OPERATIONS and THE CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY AND NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON, DC July 2009 The views expressed in these essays are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. All information and sources were drawn from unclassified materials. Portions of this book may be quoted or reprinted without permission, provided that a standard source credit line is included. This book was published by the Center for Complex Operations and the Center for Technology and National Security Policy, National Defense University, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, DC. CCO publications are available online at www.ccoportal.org. Contents Preface vii By Hans Binnendijk and David A. Sobyra Introduction ix By Michael Miklaucic Essay 1 Command in Afghanistan 2003–2005: Three Key Lessons Learned 1 By David Barno Essay 2 Understanding the Situation 9 By Frederick Barton Essay 3 Reflections on Post-Conflict Politics of Reform: A Voice from Inside Iraq 21 By Nesreen Barwari Essay 4 Preemptive Post-Conflict Stabilization and Reconstruction 31 By Barbara K. Bodine Essay 5 Lessons Learned in the Fog of Peace 39 By L. Paul Bremer Essay 6 Complex Operations in Practice 47 By Peter W. Chiarelli iii Essay 7 No Formulas: Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo 55 By Wesley Clark Essay 8 The Balkans Revisited: Kosovo 1999 63 By Timothy Cross Essay 9 Retaining the Lessons of Nation-Building 73 By James Dobbins Essay 10 Missions Accomplished and Unaccomplished 81 By Jan Eliasson Essay 11 The Politics of Complex Operations 87 By James Kunder Essay 12 Reconstructing Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Lessons from Iraq 95 By Lewis W. Lucke Essay 13 Effective Civilian-Military Planning at the Operational Level: The Foundation of Operational Planning 105 By H.R. McMaster Essay 14 Lessons Learned in Democratic Transition and Building Civil Society 115 By William Montgomery Essay 15 Striking the Right Balance 121 By William L. Nash iv Essay 16 Understanding and Responding to Fragile and Failed States 127 By Andrew S. Natsios Essay 17 Implementation in a Multiparty Environment 133 By Ronald E. Neumann Essay 18 Beyond the Cold War: Pakistan and Somalia 139 By Robert B. Oakley Essay 19 Every Complex Operation Needs a BG Rich Ellis 149 By Thomas W. O’Connell Essay 20 Post-Conflict Reconstruction Challenges: Some Observations from Iraq 155 By Robin Raphel About the Contributors 163 v Preface By Hans Binnendijk and David A. Sobyra he Center for Complex Operations (CCO) was established within the Center for Technology and National Security Policy T(CTNSP) at National Defense University in February 2009. Its purpose is to address a widely perceived need for improved interagency interoperability in analysis of, planning for, and intervening in complex operations worldwide. Complex operations include reconstruction and stabilization operations, counterinsurgency, and irregular warfare— operations that must draw on all elements of national power to succeed. The goal of the CCO is to help improve the effectiveness of U.S. efforts in pursuing our national interests in complex operations, and to save lives. Created as a collaborative initiative by the Departments of State and Defense and the United States Agency for International Development, the CCO represents a whole-of-government approach to complex operations, and embodies the “three D’s” of diplomacy, defense, and development. The objectives of the CCO are to: • Provide for effective coordination in the preparation of United States Government personnel for complex operations. • Foster unity of effort during complex operations among o the departments and agencies of the United States Government, o foreign governments and militaries, o international organizations and international nongovernmental organizations, and o domestic non-governmental organizations. • Conduct research; collect, analyze, and distribute lessons learned; and compile best practices in matters relating to complex operations. vii viii • Binnendijk and Sobyra • Identify gaps in the education and training of Department of Defense personnel, and other relevant United States Government personnel, relating to complex operations, and to facilitate efforts to fill such gaps. This ambitious mandate sets a daunting agenda that must be addressed if the United States is to meet the national security challenges of the 21st century. These challenges have evolved substantially during the past two decades. The existential threat of nuclear warfare that dominated national security thinking for 50 years disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union. What ensued was not the global peace some had expected and many hoped for. Instead, we entered an era of diffuse and multi-dimensional threats. The enemy is not always obvious. Our national security goals are sometimes unclear. Recent experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has demonstrated the limits of our understanding of complex operations. It is critical that we continue to learn from these experiences. The CCO aims to help institutionalize the practice of effective learning from experience. It is our hope that these essays, which represent 20 different views of complex operations, will convey some sense of the magnitude of the challenge of complex operations. The essayists include senior diplomats, development experts, and military leaders with a broad range of experience, not only from Iraq and Afghanistan, but extending back to earlier complex operations in the Balkans, Haiti, Somalia, and even Grenada. From these diverse views should emerge principles that constitute the strategic lessons of complex operations. We would like to thank all the authors whose essays appear in this volume, as well as the many senior leaders who have pledged to support the efforts of the CCO in the future. In particular we want to recognize the efforts of Michael Miklaucic, the CCO Director of Research, Information and Dissemination, who edited this volume, and Ms. Jacqueline Carpenter, whose energy, passion and creative ideas kept the project moving. We also want to thank the CCO staff—Neyla Arnas, Nicholas Brechbill, Bernard Carreau, Dale Erickson, Christopher Maletz, Scott Moore, and Daniel Troy—without whose tireless efforts this volume would not have been possible. Finally, we would like to thank Lindsey Geddes, Scott Miller, and Robert Ooi for their dedicated support throughout this project. Introduction By Michael Miklaucic he natural tendency of people to view problems from the perspective of their home organization is widely acknowledged Tin Washington. The corrosive effect this has on unity of intent and unity of effort is also acknowledged, documented, and lamented. As long as the stakes are small, the costs of such parochialism are apparently endurable. Our recent frustrations in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, have elevated the problem of so-called “stove-piping” to a high profile. The proposed remedy to stove-piping is the “whole of government” approach to complex problems. Also known as the “comprehensive approach,” the putative advantage of whole of government approaches is that they lift the level of analysis to a higher altitude, providing a better view of the full extent and complexity of the problem in question. The inevitable decrease in resolution, or granularity, should be more than balanced by an improved strategic perspective. Regrettably, however, the discipline of the whole of government approach has not been consistently applied, as bureaucratic inertia pushes back against proposed new practices. Despite countless testimonials of commitment to whole of government collaboration, true collaboration remains ad hoc and dependent on specific circumstances, rather than institutionally hard- wired into the practices and behaviors of departments and agencies. Although efforts are being undertaken to improve collaboration, interagency secondments remain de-incentivized and bureaucratically cumbersome, thus discouraging the growth of a cadre of whole of government professionals. Interagency collaboration also remains stunted by incompatible communications systems, operational practices, and organizational cultures. ix x • Miklaucic Complex operations, in which multiple agencies assume complementary roles and operate in close proximity—often with similar missions but conflicting mandates—accentuate these tensions. The tensions are evident in the processes of analyzing complex environments, planning for complex interventions, and implementing complex operations. Many reports and analyses forecast that these complex operations are precisely those that will demand our attention most in the indefinite future. As essayists Barton and O’Connell note, our intelligence and understanding of the root causes of conflict, multiplicity of motivations and grievances, and dispositions of actors is often inadequate. Moreover, the problems that complex operations are intended and implemented to address are convoluted, and often inscrutable. They exhibit many if not all the characteristics of “wicked problems,” as enumerated by Rittel and Webber in 1973: they defy definitive formulations; any proposed solution or intervention causes the problem to mutate, so that there is no second chance at a solution; every situation is unique; each wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem.