1/ From Andrew Bace­vich, in the LRB:

Con­sider the views of John Nagl, a former sol­dier, counter-​insurgency enthu­si­ast and some­time adviser to Petraeus and McChrys­tal. Accord­ing to Nagl, ‘pop­u­la­tion secu­rity’ – the cen­tral ele­ment of McChrystal’s pro­posal – ‘is the first require­ment of suc­cess in counter-​insurgency, but it is not suf­fi­cient. Eco­nomic devel­op­ment, good gov­er­nance and the pro­vi­sion of essen­tial ser­vices, all occur­ring within a matrix of effec­tive infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions, must all improve simul­ta­ne­ously and steadily over a long period of time if America’s deter­mined insur­gent ene­mies are to be defeated.’ The imper­a­tive, Nagl argues, is for the United States to wage a ‘“global counter-​insurgency” cam­paign’ – in Pen­ta­gon par­lance, GCOIN. Indeed, Nagl and other counter-​insurgency enthu­si­asts believe that with Petraeus’s ‘surge’ having demon­strated the effi­cacy of FM 3-24 in Iraq, the US mil­i­tary has already embarked on such a global cam­paign. Afghanistan is merely the next step.

In giving McChrys­tal what he wants, Obama, whether wit­tingly or not, has signed on to this larger cam­paign. Bush’s policy of rely­ing on Amer­i­can mil­i­tary prowess to ‘change the way they live’ is now Obama’s. Cui bono? For defence con­trac­tors, ‘counter-​insurgency experts’ and the var­i­ous insti­tu­tions that make up the national secu­rity state, GCOIN – jus­ti­fied as nec­es­sary to pre­vent another 9/11, enforce the Carter Doc­trine and uphold the Pax Amer­i­cana – promises to be the gift that never stops giving. Per­pet­ual war now looms as a real prospect, car­ry­ing with it abun­dant oppor­tu­ni­ties for exer­cis­ing power, reap­ing profit and sat­is­fy­ing per­sonal ambi­tion. Lost along the way is the promise of ‘change’ that vaulted Barack Obama to the White House in the first place.*

2/ From CNAS’s Andrew Exum:

If [Matthew Ygle­sias] thinks this blog­ger — or anyone else advo­cat­ing the U.S. mil­i­tary take population-​centric coun­terin­sur­gency more seri­ously — is in the pocket of the military-​industrial com­plex, he does not under­stand the acqui­si­tions impli­ca­tions of an insti­tu­tional move toward COIN, a form of war­fare in which expen­sive weapons plat­forms like the F-22 have little utility.

On the other hand, I guess this is good news. After being accused of being a Lud­dite for the past three years, I must be doing some­thing right if people are now tying me and my opin­ions to large defense con­trac­tors. I think you’re going to have a very tough time, though, argu­ing that those making the case for a fun­da­men­tally low-​tech COIN cam­paign in Afghanistan are car­ry­ing water for Boeing, Lock­heed Martin, & Co. I very much doubt big defense cor­po­ra­tions are charmed by this researcher saying things like lan­guage and cul­tural train­ing matter as much as or more than the latest and great­est piece of mil­i­tary hardware.