Book Discussion: The Dragons and the Snakes, Part 2 – Chapter 3

I should have known better than to try to cover two Chapters at a time in a Kilcullen book…grumble. For the second installment of our book discussion on David Kilcullen’s latest book, The Dragons and The Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West we will discuss Chapter 3 only. We originally discussed this project here and here, the book summary from Amazon can be found here and Part One of the discussion can be found here. Therefore, we will have to modify the plan. Here is the updated version:

May 8, 2020 – Complete the Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2

May 15/18, 2020 – Complete Chapter 3

May 22, 2020 – Complete Chapter 4

May 29, 2020 – Chapter 5

April 5, 2020 – Chapter 6, Epilogue, Wrap Up and Questions I would ask the Author

Again, lots to cover today but I think the best way to go over Chapter 3 is to go over some terminology, hit the wavetops, and then discuss some commonalities and how I hope Kilcullen ends the book. I have also included some of the terminology from Chapters 1 and 2 for reference.

Terminology

The West or Western – (All definitions are quotes or summaries taken from Kilcullen and should be used when discussing this book:)

is used to describe a particular military methodology that is an approach to war that emphasizes battlefield dominance, achieved through high-tech precision engagement, networked communications, and pervasive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. It is characterized by an obsessive drive to minimize casualties, a reluctance to think about long-term consequences of war, a narrow focus on combat, and a lack of emphasis on war termination-the set activities needed in order to translate battlefield success into enduring and favorable political outcomes.

Dragons – Capable state adversaries exemplified by Russia, China (big) North Korea and Iran (little dragons)

Snakes – Weak or failing states and non-state actors such as Libya, Iraq, Iran and various terror and transnational crime organizations.

Convergent Evolution – The way in which unlike actors confronting a similar environment can come to resemble each other.

Offset Strategies – policies implemented to ‘side step’ our conventional power or to stay below the threshold of a massive response.

James Woolsey – CIA Director 1993 – 1995

Democratization of lethality – lethal capabilities that were formerly utilized almost exclusively by nation-states, i.e. cyberspace, the urbanization of war, the connectively explosion and transformative technologies, utilized by non-state groups and hyper-empowered individuals.

Fitness Landscape – the combat environment where adaptation occurs…a fitness landscape maps the potential combinations of characteristics for a given organism in that environment, so that any point on the landscape represents a particular combination.

Terrorism – (not in the book verbatim but I think is necessary to understand the overall conversation) from Oxford – The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. [emphasis mine] from FBI.gov :

International terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored).

Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.

Chapter 3

The focus of Chapter 3 in ‘Woolsey’s Snakes’ in which Kilcullen primarily covers terrorism and terrorist activities. In it he covers:

The Fitness Landscaper for Adversaries – in which Kilcullen notes that since the end of the Cold War the operating environment has become dramatically more crowded, cluttered, urbanized, coastal and connected.

But is this true? I was born in 1976, so I was primarily a child of the 80’s and I remember a very crowded operating environment. Just look at some of the highlights from the Reagan Administration: The Cold War, the confrontation with Iran (described in detail in The Twilight War) and the Iran-Contra Scandal, Nicaragua vs the U.S., Terrorism (which Kilcullen noted in the rise of Hezbollah) and the Madrid airline office attacks, the Russia – Afghanistan war, Grenada, Libya, and our involvement in the Iran-Iraq war just to name a few. It’s true that the U.S. did not get tied up in any forever wars then but I think looking at the current problems and thinking that these are the worst of times sort of lacks a historical perspective and suffers from some recency bias. No, I am not diminishing today’s threats, I just think that it is important to keep perspective that today is not all that different.

Air Supremacy, but with Severe Limitations – here Kilcullen describes the fitness landscape where adversaries that employed characteristics such as stealth, dispersion and modularity are more suited to todays operating environment where the West has been basically unchallenged in the air but the use of fire power is increasingly limited by increasingly tight legal and political constraints.

Kilcullen then devotes several pages to our self-imposed constraints via Rules of Engagement. Personally, I don’t think Kilcullen would agree with McFate’s Hearts and Minds Don’t Matter, that we discussed here,  but I think that would agree that in some ways we have been our own worst enemy with our self-imposed limits on how we are fighting in today’s conflicts. Kilcullen looks at it from the perspective that our rules have created a space where our adversaries can thrive and in that I do not disagree.

Another key feature Kilcullen notes as a challenge is that analysts are currently overwhelmed by the omnipresent surveillance. Again, we collect so much information that it is hard to decipher what actually has value and what is noise. This is closely tied to the proliferation of consumer smart systems and the ability for our adversaries to communicate in many new ways but also offers them a precision that they never before had. They are using the technologies that we developed against us thus displaying the following adaptive traits:

Stealth, Dispersion, Modularity, Autonomy, Hiding in Electronic Plain Sight, ‘Hugging,’ Media Manipulation, Pollical Warfare, and Technology and connectivity hacking.

Kilcullen spends the rest of the chapter discussing the Adaptive Trends in Irregular Warfare by examining each of Al Qaeda, ISIS (and off-shoots) and Hezbollah. He covers how a Cycle of Catastrophic Success has been experienced by each of these groups with the notable exception of Hezbollah.  This section of the chapter is very good if you want to take a deep dive in the evolution of these groups but I think the most interesting is the success demonstrated by Hezbollah. Hezbollah has always remained just below the threshold of the cycle of catastrophic success that Kilcullen describes which has led to the partial destruction or at least severe degradation in each of the other groups. It should also be noted that Hezbollah has been around much longer than the other organizations. They have displayed a strategic / tactical patience that the others have, at times, lacked. But I ask the question, if there was not US intervention in Iraq after the rise of ISIS would this section of the book be very different? Would they still hold large amounts of territory thereby eclipsing all that Hezbollah achieved? But I guess that is the point. ISIS, pushed too far by having both an out and inward focus. They risked the ‘state’ by executing attacks abroad.  

All of the groups described have utilized terror tactics to achieve political goals. I think that this is really important to keep in mind as you read this chapter. It is why I have included the definition of terrorism near the beginning of this discussion. Now, I want to be clear, I am not defending the actions of any of these groups but I believe it is important to note that the popular support that these groups receive is at least partly due to these pollical aspirations. It should be noted, that a lot of the support that ISIS received from inside Iraq was a reaction to the real and perceived threat of the majority Shia population that assumed power.

Chapter four is going to move on from the ‘Snakes” and discuss Russia but I wanted to leave a little something to consider and I hope that Kilcullen touches on it near the end of the book in his conclusion. What is to be done? By that I mean, policies could have been supported that may have changed things. For instance, there was a plan that was roundly criticized at the time that called for the partitioning of Iraq. I still do not necessarily support the idea but, I do wonder how things could have been different if it were enacted? Or, if the relatively recent integrity of the country really matters, what about Federalism? In most places, the minority populations find themselves under a tyranny of the majority or under the boot of a tyrant. This oppression adds fuel to groups that seek to exploit this. Kilcullen quotes the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, “When we entered Lebanon, there was no Hezbollah. We were accepted with perfumed rice and flowers by the Shia in the south. It was our presence there that created Hezbollah.”

If the future of war is durable disorder like Sean McFate believes, should we not consider potentially radical solutions to problems that are going to persist? Maintaining the arbitrary lines drawn on a map has proved costly and, in some ways, impossible. Solutions for these problems are going to require some seemingly radical proposals and I hope that the policy makers and the influencers like Kilcullen are considering them.