Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Before I write this, let me say that there is probably no contemporary military analyst more astute, creative and visionary than John Robb. With that said, his post on global militias strikes me as a sloppy. His basic argument is that nation building as a counter insurgency strategy is ineffective, and instead the only effectual COIN strategy has been “militias” whose tactics, operations and general profile is very similar to the guerrillas they replace. He gives three examples of the open-source militias to counter the open-source insurgency:

What does work to slow the spread of temporary autonomous zones and open source insurgencies are open source militias. While messy (and many times as bad as what they replace), these militias do work:

• Colombia. The AUC blunted the spread of the FARC and other revolutionary groups.
• Sao Paulo, Brazil. Neighborhood militias have purged neighborhoods of the PCC (a criminal drug gang).
• Iraq. Anbar awakening and other militias have radically diminished al Qaeda’s operational sphere.

The most basic point is that the AUC is hardly better than the groups they replaced, which Robb even admits is going to be a likely outcome with a new era of using militias to fight insurgents. The second point is that it’s unclear, from the data-points Robb cites, whether the militia strategy can be effective in the long term. Robb hand waves around this, and talks about a “grand strategy of delay (it holds disorder at bay while allowing globalization to work).” I’m sorry, but if one proposes that our preferred COIN strategy be giving guns and moneys to indigenous criminal gangs whose rise we can’t predict or be too closely involved in — because the open-source militia “process works according to its own rules, it cannot be forced” — then one must have a better idea of the end game. If Robb’s goal is some sort of stable central government, but he’s pretty unclear on how to get there using the counter-militia model.

But Robb is certainly correct in identifying the trend, so what’s to be done with the fact that we’re likely to live in a world where amorphous, networked insurgents take on similarly amorphous and adaptive militias? The main problem with Robb’s analysis is that he’s largely taking a snapshot of (parts) of the global scene. One would hope that these militias, after they root out the insurgents, would be a bit more than, as Robb says, “less hostile to the government and commercial interests than the guerrillas.” If that’s really all we can expect, then this is hardly a prudent strategy to pursue.

If we look at Iraq, we have the Anbar Awakening happening largely with the oversight of American troops providing large amounts of logistical and material support. More importantly, in so much as Al Qaeda in Iraq is being routed out by Sunni tribes, we still have large, seemingly intractable political divides that the counter-militia strategy have exasperated. The reason why AQ in Iraq was able to gain a foothold in the first place was because Sunnis accommodated them as part of their anti-US and anti-Shia insurgency. In Robb’s estimation, the issue in Iraq is AQ and the greater lack of reconciliation among Sunni and Shia factions doesn’t seem to be all that important. But it is important, as long as the main power groups in Iraq remain hostile towards each other, we’ll have no meaningful central government and incorporation of these Sunni militia and tribes into the central government and military will fail, as it already is, because the Shia central government (rightfully) doesn’t trust forces who were previously trying to kill them to be in the Army.

Robb has identified what is likely to be a growing trend in conflict, insurgencies will promote localized counter insurgents. The problem is the extrapolation from that basic insight. Conflicts, especially Iraq, are more than foreign insurgents vs local militias and , for the time being, the only ways to stop an insurgency or a civil war is either the total defeat of one side or the redress of insurgents grievances and some sort of accommodation with a stable political process. If Robb is right that nation building is indeed passe and his model for open source militia is indeed the future, the best policy recommendation following that insight is simply that we should probably withdraw from Iraq and not get involved in any conflict that will lead to this insurgent-milita dynamic, seeing as they’re essentially unwinnable and irresolvable.

Adam Elkus has some smart things to say about all this.