Tag Archive for: Iraq

Revisiting the Iraq War

Image courtesy of Flickr user Ewan McIntosh

Seven years, 12 volumes of evidence, findings, and conclusions, and one executive summary later, the Report of the Iraq Inquiry, more commonly referred to as the Chilcot Report (after its chairman, Sir John Chilcot), is available for one and all to read. Few people will get through all of it; the executive summary alone (well over 100 pages) is so long that it calls for its own executive summary.

But it would be a shame if the Report were not widely read and, more important, studied, because it contains some useful insights into how diplomacy operates, how policy is made, and how decisions are taken. It also reminds us of the centrality of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, and of the aftermath, for understanding today’s Middle East.

A central theme of the Report is that the Iraq War did not have to happen, and certainly not when it did. The decision to go to war was partly based on faulty intelligence. Iraq constituted at most a gathering threat, not an imminent one. Alternatives to using military force—above all, strengthening Turkey’s and Jordan’s lackluster enforcement of and support for the UN sanctions designed to pressure Saddam Hussein—were barely explored. Diplomacy was rushed.

Making matters worse was that the war was undertaken without sufficient planning and preparation for what would come after. As the Report rightly points out, many in both the US and British governments predicted that chaos could emerge if Saddam’s iron grip were removed. The decisions to disband the Iraqi army and to bar all members of Saddam’s Ba’ath Party (rather than just a few of its leaders) from positions in the successor government were huge mistakes. Iraq was not just a war of choice; it was an ill-advised and poorly executed policy.

Much of the Report focuses on British calculations and then-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s support for US policy. The decision to associate the UK with the United States was a defensible strategic choice for a smaller country that derived much of its influence from the closeness of the bilateral relationship. Where the Blair government got it wrong was in not pressing for more influence over the policy in exchange for its support. George W. Bush’s administration might well have rejected such efforts, but the British government could then have exercised the option of distancing itself from a policy that many believed was unlikely to succeed.

Many lessons should be taken from the Iraq War. One is that, because assumptions fundamentally affect what analysts tend to see when they look at intelligence, flawed assumptions can lead to dangerously flawed policies. Nearly everyone assumed that Saddam’s non-compliance with United Nations inspectors stemmed from the fact that he was hiding weapons of mass destruction. In fact, he was hiding the fact he did not have such weapons.

Likewise, before they started the war, many policymakers believed that democracy would emerge quickly once Saddam was gone. Ensuring that such fundamental and consequential assumptions are tested by ‘red teams’—those not supporting the associated policy—should be standard operating procedure.

There is also the reality that removing governments, as difficult as that can be, is not nearly as difficult as creating the security that a new government needs to consolidate its authority and earn legitimacy in the eyes of the public. Creating anything like a democracy in a society lacking many of its most basic prerequisites is a task of decades, not months.

The Report said little about the legacy of the Iraq War, but it is important to consider. First and foremost, the war disrupted the regional balance of power. No longer in a position to distract and balance Iran, Iraq instead came under Iranian influence. Iran was free not just to develop a meaningful nuclear program, but also to intervene directly and via proxies in several countries. Sectarian fighting poisoned relations between Sunnis and Shia throughout the region. The alienation felt by soldiers and officers of Saddam’s disbanded army fueled Sunni insurgency and, ultimately, led to the rise of the so-called Islamic State.

The war had a profound effect not just on Iraq and the Middle East, but also on the UK and the US. The British parliamentary vote in 2013 against participation in any military effort to penalize Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for defying explicit warnings not to use chemical weapons in his country’s civil war was surely related to the view that military intervention in Iraq had been a mistake. It is also possible that some of the mistrust of elites that led a majority of voters to support ‘Brexit’ stemmed from the Iraq War experience.

The Iraq War and its aftermath similarly affected the thinking of US President Barack Obama’s administration, which had little appetite for new military ventures in the Middle East at a time when many Americans were suffering from ‘intervention fatigue.’

The danger, of course, is that lessons can be overlearned. The lesson of the Iraq War should not be that all armed interventions in the Middle East or elsewhere are to be avoided, but rather that they must only be undertaken when they are the best available strategy and when the results are likely to justify the costs. Libya was a recent intervention that violated this principle; Syria has been even more costly, but in its case for what was not done.

The Iraq War was costly enough without people learning the wrong lessons from it. That would be the ultimate irony—and only add to the tragedy.

The benefit of hindsight: the Chilcot report

Image courtesy of the UK Ministry of Defence

It took seven years of painstaking investigation, the examination of approximately 150,000 government documents and a 2.6 million word report extending over 13 separate volumes for a British committee of inquiry headed Sir John Chilcot, to reach the unremarkable conclusion most analysts already reached a decade ago. The British government of the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair committed the country to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 on ‘flawed intelligence and assessments’ and on a ‘far from satisfactory’ legal basis.

Nonetheless, the Chilcot Committee report, released in London yesterday, isn’t wasted energy as it dispels some of the more lurid conspiracy theories surrounding the Iraq war, and provides a dispassionate and astute narrative of a military campaign which drew in many other nations and ended up being controversial in all of them.

The indictment of Britain’s political, military and intelligence establishments is severe and relentless; they all stand accused of misjudgement and, occasionally, sheer ineptitude. British military commanders are likely to find the criticism particularly painful, in the immediate aftermath of the occupation of Iraq; London’s generals tolerated and often connived in the creation of a publicity frenzy surrounding the allegedly superior British ability to administer occupied territories. Unlike the Americans, who apparently only moved around Iraq in menacing columns of armoured vehicles and never interacted with the locals, the plucky little Brits were, supposedly, all tact and cuddliness, fearlessly interacting with the ‘natives’, helping old ladies cross the road or organising football matches for local children. That dexterity was, we were told, due to centuries of accumulated experience in policing the far-flung corners of Empire, a honed talent which supposedly, passed through the genes to current generations of British soldiers and officers.

Sir John Chilcot exposes all that narrative as nonsense. Soon after Iraq’s occupation was completed ‘the UK’s most consistent strategic objective’, writes Chilcot, ‘was to reduce the level of its deployed forces’, and the search for an exit from Iraq turned into a frenzy. Officials, Chilcot writes, ‘spent time and energy on rewriting strategies which tended to describe a desired end state without setting out how it would be reached’. Ultimately, British soldiers abandoned any pretence of controlling southern Iraq and the city of Basra which were left under their care; they remained largely confined to barracks, as British spooks and intermediaries paid off various local militias so that the British contingent would be spared further attacks.

At the same time, the Chilcot report does dispel some of the more persistent myths surrounding the Iraq episode. There was no deliberate attempt by Prime Minister Blair to lie to Parliament and the public. Civil servants and political advisers didn’t allow themselves to be used by the then prime minister; Chilcot documents a number of occasions when Blair’s close advisers quite properly warned him about the potentially baleful consequences of his proposed actions. Nor was there a ‘plot’ to manufacture intelligence information, or a ‘pact’ between the intelligence services and Blair to generate evidence boosting the case for military action against Iraq.

Still, John Chilcot makes two critical observations which have been sadly ignored in the current media coverage, but are of great and enduring importance to any Westminster-style government.

The first is that even top ministers and senior officials in London appeared to have been largely unaware or disinterested in exercising their legal right to access privileged, classified information before making their fateful decisions. In his determination to obtain a legal justification for the Iraq operation, Prime Minister Blair leant heavily on the government’s Attorney General to provide a positive legal opinion which ‘ticked all the boxes’ on the road to war. The Attorney General duly provided an opinion which found that although resort to arms was permissible; this right was of a qualified nature. But as the Chilcot inquiry found out, none of the nuances of that legal opinion were communicated to the British Cabinet, and not one of the senior ministers in charge of the relevant departments preparing for war showed the slightest interest in seeing the Attorney General’s full legal opinion, as they were legally entitled to do.

The other major problem identified by Chilcot is, of course, the handling of intelligence material. Britain’s security services stand accused not so much for providing faulty information—that’s a hazard of their trade—but more for failing to insist that their material shouldn’t be used by Blair to claim that the British government had established ‘beyond doubt’ that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. That wasn’t the case, and Chilcot urges future governments to ensure ‘a clear separation of responsibilities’ between assessing intelligence and making a case for a policy choice.

There are also areas where the inquiry’s report rekindles rather than settles old controversies. Sir John Chilcot relies heavily on a previously unpublished confidential British Government memo from July 2002, in which Blair tells US President George W Bush: ‘I will be with you, whatever’. That commitment, given without consulting Cabinet colleagues eight months before the March 2003 invasion, is deemed by Chilcot to have made it ‘very difficult for the UK subsequently to withdraw its support’’ from the Iraq adventure.

Without the benefit of hindsight, the prevailing view in London and other Western capitals was that the ‘War on Terror’ unleashed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks had transformed the United States forever, and that those allies who ignored America’s new-found obsession with destroying its enemies would simply relegate themselves to perpetual irrelevance. As Blair saw it at that time, going along with Washington’s obsession to depose Saddam Hussein seemed a small price to pay in return for preserving Britain’s special relationship with the US.

History will record a different verdict: the leader who was once one of Britain’s most popular leaders is now one of the country’s most divisive prime ministers. Much of what Britain did a decade ago will probably go down in history as sheer folly. But, as is often the case in such matters, most wisdom comes from hindsight.

Combatting Islamic State: the impact of high-value targeting

Last week’s confirmation that Australian Islamic State member, Neil Prakash, had been killed in a US air strike has been greeted as a cause for optimism in the war against the terrorist group.

But what’s the real impact of removing a person like Prakash? And what role, if any, should high-value targeting have in conflict scenarios and the broader fight against terrorism?

Prakash was significant both to Australia and Islamic State for a number of reasons.

He was the most high-profile Australian foreign fighter in the Middle East. Other well-known Australians have either died, including Mohamed Elomar and ‘Ginger Jihadi’ Abdullah Elmir, or, as in the case of Khaled Sharrouf, have maintained a low-profile.

Prakash also became an active recruiter for Islamic State, focused particularly on sourcing potential Australians fighters and supporters. Based in Syria, he had largely taken on the lead recruiting role after Mohamed Ali Baryalei death in October 2014.

Finally, Prakash reached out to inspire and plan terrorist acts in Australia, most recently the Anzac Day plot that was disrupted only days before his death in Mosul.  

Prakash was a Australian living and operating beyond the reach of Australia’s laws. Domestic legal measures—like control orders, passport cancellation, citizenship renunciation—were either irrelevant or largely ineffectual in the combat zone he had lived in for the past three years.  But his actions fighting in a war, and his allegiance to Islamic State meant he was an enemy combatant in a military action recognised under international law. He died as a combatant.

Prakash’s death is also significant in that it’s an indicator of the ongoing military degradation of Islamic State’s fighting forces in Iraq and Syria.

From the heady days of al Baghdadi’s declaration of a caliphate in June 2014 followed by a year of offensives leading to effective control over key cities, population and territory in Iraq and Syria, the erstwhile IS government has lost almost half of the area it controlled, and much of its other resources. As high-value targets like Prakash and Abu Wahib (also killed in a US strike this week) are removed from the battlefield, Islamic State’s leadership and capability are weakened.

Military defeat at every turn, territory and resources eking away, leadership being slowly dismantled. In a conventional military conflict, such developments would spell the enemy’s demise. But Islamic State is an insurgent group with a strong cultural and ideational base, rather than a conventional and state-based military force.

The group’s ability to recover from these leadership losses depends on the particular roles they performed. It might take some time to find a replacement for Prakash’s network into Australia, but there are many involved in recruitment and plotting who will keep the online activity going.

As we saw with the video of the Ginger Jihadi, the social media propaganda machine can easily produce imagery of another Australian to engage supporters here, regardless of the individual’s ability.

And as Musa Cerantonio and others have demonstrated, in the online environment of contemporary violent extremists, you don’t need to be anywhere near the fighting or the caliphate to inspire and recruit others to the cause.

Similarly, the death of Abu Wahib will detract from Islamic State’s tactical capability in Anbar province, where he was leading the insurgent group. And Anbar is one of the key areas of focus for the next stage of the US-led coalition’s campaign. But the group has demonstrated previously that it has others to fill vacant roles.

Attacking high-value targets plays an important role in the overall military campaign. Despite the best efforts of Islamic State’s online propaganda machine, such defeats are impacting its supporters. The allure of the caliphate has worn off for many would-be foreign fighters: recruitment is down an estimated 90% from a year ago with an average of 200 a month now heading for the conflict zone compared with 1,500 to 2,000 per month in early 2015.

As the last fighters battle it out in Iraq and Syria, others have already moved to the new arenas in North Africa and Yemen—some of which include already declared wilayats—to join some local insurgent groups already in place, in order to attract the next wave of foreign fighters.

For Islamic State in particular, the move to external operations is a mixed experience. The pending end of the proclaimed ‘caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria undermines its legitimacy. But the move outwards to new fighting fronts guarantees its survival, at least for now.

Prakash’s death removes one of the key links funnelling violent extremists to and from Australia. He had recruited Australian foreign fighters and inspired others through his online activity, though had failed to achieve any operational impact on Australia in his small-scale plots. But he was persistent in seeking to attack Australians. The threat he posed has now been neutralised.

Australian authorities demonstrated considerable capability in tracking Prakash’s online engagement, and disrupting plans for fresh attacks. The US high-value target strike is another blow against Islamic State, but new threats will arise in other places. The key to this long-term and multifaceted campaign is to maintain the focus, momentum and commitment.

*An earlier version of this piece incorrectly referred to Mohamed Ali Baryalei’s arrest in September 2014. Baryalei was in fact killed in October 2014. The version above has been corrected.

A Molan moment on Iraq

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Having an argument with Jim Molan is enlightening and rewarding. The ex-Major General delivers a triple treat.

With Jim, you always know:

  1. Where he’s coming from
  2. Where he’s aiming
  3. And where he’s crunched you

With a Molan moment, you get it in the front—not always the way in the swamps, forests and fogs of Canberra.

The dark arts of politics and bureaucracy can be a tale of bastardry and backstabbing, leaks and sabotage. Witness ructions involving Mr T. Abbott and Mr M. Turnbull.

Turn from that familiar Canberra recipe for low farce and high drama to my Molan moment on Australia and Iraq.

Jim has posted here responding to the final two columns of my six part series on ‘Iraq lessons’. Some of Jim’s points I agree with. My nod is the bow prior to some ju-jitsu to redirect the force of the Molan thrusts.

Use the triple treat formula to see where I was coming from and my aim.

The series started with Australia’s original role—‘present at the creation’—in a regional catastrophe that keeps growing. The focus of the Iraq lessons series was what we did or didn’t do in those moments of choice and decision in 2002-03. Thus, the second column used the Flood report and the Parliamentary inquiry to prod the intelligence on Iraq WMD.

Two columns followed on the way John Howard took Australia to war: the fib that we were considering all options and then the political benefits and malign policy impacts of the fib—especially the fact that there was no cabinet submission on the costs and benefits of going to war in Iraq.

The two concluding columns imagined what should have been in the cabinet submission that never was.

Jim’s ‘major criticism’ is that by concentrating on the decision to invade I didn’t consider what happened after the invasion. Fair enough. Then apply ju-jitsu to Jim’s argument:

‘My view is that the invasion may not have been all that smart but having invaded, the Coalition couldn’t walk away. Graeme quotes Howard as saying: ‘It was inevitable that after Saddam had been toppled a degree of revenge would be exacted, but a stronger security presence would have constrained this’. Perhaps this failure was at least as blameworthy as the decision to invade in the first place.’

Indeed, Australia couldn’t walk away because we were an invading and occupying power. And those issues of blame and failure—invasion and then force level—start from the same place.

Jim’s major criticism of my focus invites discussion of a significant fact—the decision to join the alliance to attack Iraq makes it unique in all Australia’s wars. Unique.

Australia had never before launched a war. In Iraq we did. This is the only Australian war where we (our coalition) started it.

Run back through our wars since federation: Afghanistan, Kuwait, Vietnam, Confrontation, Korea, WW 2, WW 1, the Boer War.

In no case, apart from Iraq, was Australia among the initial aggressors. Every other time we began by playing defence, not offence.

We previously mobilised and joined alliances in response to attack (the Boers and Vietnamese and Taliban might argue, but the regime-protection, defence-not-offence model can encompass those conflicts).

I don’t believe in a binary wars-of-necessity versus wars-of-choice division. All wars have elements of choice and necessity, even if only the choice to fight or surrender.

Yet on the necessity-choice continuum, Iraq is further out toward the choice transition point than any other conflict, well beyond Vietnam or Korea.

In Iraq, Australia chose to be part of the invasion force that launched the fight. This unique war-of-choice status flows through to the crunch Jim delivers on the WMD intelligence. No need to rerun the intelligence column. Merely apply ju-jitsu to Jim’s conclusion:

‘It’s not the nature of intelligence to be irrefutable.’ Exactly.

In no other case has Australia signed up for a preventive war based on intelligence. In every other Australian war, the shooting had begun when we joined. Australia had never helped launch a war based on intelligence assessments because all our previous wars were going concerns.

Jim says he never met anyone in Iraq who’d drunk the Washington neocon Kool-Aid. Again, I’m sure that’s true.

The Washington point needs to be made, though. In Iraq, we have been dealing with nemesis for so long we lose sight of the US hubris that brought us here.

The Bush boys knew they had the power to shift reality. See the rightly notorious 2004 White House quote attributed to the Bush consigliore, Karl Rove:

‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’

Some Kool-Aid, that. History and reality bit back.

Jim has problems with my conclusion that the US alliance was the central, overriding reason Australia went to Iraq.

If you want to devote time to this, read Howard’s autobiography and see how those events are framed by the US. A quicker method is to consider, as Jim did, the key sentence I quoted from Howard’s retrospective on Iraq:

‘Australia’s decision to join the Coalition in Iraq was a product both of our belief at the time that Iraq had WMDs, and the nature of our relationship and alliance with the United States.’

Don’t be misled by the order Howard gives in listing his two beliefs/reasons. Consider only their relative strength in the Howard universe.

Simple test: If you had to choose just one of those two reasons as the most important, which would it be? My weighting is US alliance 75% versus Iraq WMD 25%. And even that might underestimate the strength and thrall of the alliance.

Only the alliance was a strong enough reason for Australia to join the US in starting this war.

Debating ground forces against Daesh: does the fight against Al-Shabaab offer any insights?

Boots on the ground

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris, we’ve seen a reinvigorated debate about ‘boots on the ground’ in the fight against daesh, and the US is slowly edging towards greater ground operations in Iraq and Syria. The debate has so far offered little reflection on the lessons that can be drawn from other theatres in the current (as opposed to historical) fight against Jihadi insurgencies. Somalia’s fight against Al-Shabaab (AS) appears to represent a good example of the difference ground troops can make in fighting insurgency, so what can it teach us with regards to daesh?

It’s important to establish that there are significant differences in the cultural, historical, economic, and socio-political context between Iraq and Syria, and Somalia. Their respective Jihadi insurgencies are also different; daesh is much wealthier and greater in strength of numbers and military hardware than AS ever was.

However, there are similarities in the trajectories of insurgency groups which establish themselves as governance structures. Simply put, once such groups start administrating and governing a territory, resources, and a population, they can follow similar paths of development.

Take for example the resources that to a large extent fund AS and daesh’s governance. Although charcoal (AS) and oil (daesh) have different origins, production processes, and properties, they’ve been exploited and administrated in a similar fashion. Both charcoal in Somalia, and oil in Syria and Iraq have throughout these insurgencies been successfully produced, taxed, and transported, notwithstanding international sanctions and efforts to stem their trade. And all of that has been done mostly by civilians and local businessmen who aren’t necessarily ‘aligned’ to, or formal members of the two organisations. Most of them would trade in those resources regardless of who governs; life—as they say—must go on.

In Somalia, the African Union Mission In Somalia (AMISOM) troops have been fighting a largely militarily successful offensive against AS since mid-2012 and have in the past three years gained nominal control of most of AS’ major urban strongholds. Because AMISOM troops are more heavily armed than AS, the group has for the most part avoided head-on confrontations. Daesh certainly appears better equipped than AS but it’s conceivable that a well-armed ground force supported by airstrikes (which AMISOM doesn’t have) would be successful in dispensing with daesh in head-on conventional battles.

But what happens next? As the example of Somalia has clearly shown, once the military part of the operation is done, the supporting social services and policing are key for gaining, and maintaining the support of the local population. This in turn should help further fight and marginalise the insurgency by denying it local support. However, those capacities are weak in Somalia, hence Al-Shabaab’s consistent ability to infiltrate state security structures and continue mounting devastating attacks in areas nominally under AMISOM control (including the capital Mogadishu).

That’s directly relevant to the ground troop fight against daesh. Is there a capacity within Iraq or Syria for those supporting services once daesh is nominally no longer in control of major urban strongholds? Simply put, what will come after the expected victorious military ground offensives against daesh, and how will it help gain the trust of the locals and foster inclusive governance which would serve as a bulwark against the organisation’s resurgence?

There are those like David Kilcullen who argue that boots on the ground are the answer to daesh, but that such an operation must resemble the ‘surge’ that already proved so effective in almost annihilating daesh’s predecessor al-Qaeda in Iraq in the late 2000s.

That’s a valid argument, but still raises two obvious problems. One, it’s arguably only a matter of time before such ground troops are seen as a foreign occupational force, particularly if they consist of only Western troops. This could be partially mitigated by including regional Sunni Arab countries, but such contributions appear unlikely especially given their currently overwhelming focus on Yemen (and latent sympathy for daesh). Shia militias are already operating as ground forces in the region, but their unpopularity with the locals in Iraq is what helped cause the rise of daesh in the first place

The second and potentially more difficult problem is the length of time ground troops would be deployed. How long would such a ‘surge 2.0’ need to last? It’s here that Somalia offers an answer many don’t want to hear: AMISOM troops have been fighting AS since 2007 and that fight appears to be far from over.

If the fight against AS has any lessons to offer, it’s that if ground forces are deployed, what comes after their expected military victory is what will define the ultimate success of any such ground force deployments.

ASPI suggests

Welcome back to ASPI Suggests after a week in which we paused to remember those who died or suffered for Australia’s cause in all wars and armed conflicts.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition party is reported to have taken about 80% of declared seats in Myanmar’s first national election since the civilian government was introduced in 2011. The New Yorker looks at whether Suu Kyi—a celebrated symbol of democracy and Nobel Peace Prize laureate—and the NLD will be able to control the country’s military.

On a related note, the US Studies Centre this week released the first of its reports into the emerging US security partnerships in Southeast Asia, focusing on prospects for the development of a limited security partnership between Myanmar and the US (PDF). The USSC’s project will take Myanmar, Vietnam and Indonesia as case studies, with the Indonesian report set to be released next week—watch this space! Also on Southeast Asia, the East-West Center has published a short piece on how the new Guidelines for US–Japan Defense Cooperation will impact on the region, calling for the nations to strengthen their unity within ASEAN in the face of negative outcomes from major power dynamics in the Asia–Pacific.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will speak to an expected crowd of 55,000 at Wembley Stadium in London later today. After his Bharatiya Janata Party’s dismal loss in Bihar state elections earlier this week, it’ll be important that the rally shows strength and support for the politician as it’s broadcasted in India. And if all else fails, the rally will at the very least involve the largest fireworks display ever seen in the UK.

Looking to the Middle East, the Iraqi city of Sinjar fell under fire on Thursday as Kurdish Peshmerga forces backed by US Special Operations-coordinated airstrikes aimed to take the city back from ISIS. Sinjar is important both strategically and symbolically: recapturing it would disrupt the ISIS supply line that runs from Mosul to Raqqa, and it’s also the location where thousands of ethnic Yazidis were massacred and enslaved last year. For a good overview of the significance of the city and the offensive, take a look at this piece at The Wall Street Journal. For a longer look at the success Syrian Kurds have had in building a ‘quasi state that is astonishingly safe’, read Jonathan Steele at The New York Review of Books.

Over the past few weeks Ahmad Chalabi passed away, Tony Blair made a qualified apology on Iraq and George H. W. Bush told us what he really thinks about the service of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in his son’s administration. As it seems that everything old is new again, it should come as no surprise to hear that the Pentagon is expected to ‘this week’ announce a plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, as Obama again pushes to come good on his 2009 executive order to shutter the facility.

And with the New Year’s holiday period on the horizon, the Commander of the US Special Operations Command has continued the recent tradition of releasing his reading list for 2016. The collection ranges from tomes on leadership and strategy through to those that consider ‘The Threat’, intelligence and technology & innovation. Muck in here (PDF).

Podcasts

Brookings’ Will McCants, author of The ISIS Apocalypse: The history, strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State, was interviewed on CBC Radio this week, where he discussed the early life and rising power of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Listen to the conversation here (25 mins).

In the face of shifting power dynamics in the Asia–Pacific, Foreign Policy hosted an interesting debate (50 mins) between Rosa Brooks, Kori Schake, David Rothkopf and Ed Luce on whether or not the US is ceding its position as global innovation hegemon to the East, and who the US’ most important strategic partnerships of the future may be.

Videos

A VICE News filmmaker recently spent over a month shadowing the Syrian arm of Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, as the group wages a battle against both Assad’s military and Islamic State. The documentary piece takes stock of Jabhat al-Nusra’s successes and challenges, and includes interviews with senior commanders on the subject of military doctrine.

This week saw the release of a new report, Working With a Rising India: A Joint Venture for the New Century, authored by the Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force. The report was launched with a panel discussion and a Q&A, and is well worth a watch for those interested in the trajectory of the US–India ‘joint venture’. Catch up with the video here, and the full report here.

Events

Canberra: Mark your calendar for next Tuesday 17 November so that you don’t miss Danielle Cave on the intersection between Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Sign up here.

On 23 November, DFAT chief Peter Varghese will deliver the 2015 John Gee Memorial Lecture on the topic of Australia and the challenge of weapons of mass destruction. Register online.

Iraq lessons: the impact of the Howard fib

Australia played its part in the blunders of the Iraq war by committing early and without questioning the US.

The Howard government claimed to be considering all options, but in reality it closed down consideration. Options weren’t called for. Getting wrong answers to questions posed about Iraq would make it harder for the Prime Minister to take Australia to war.

The previous column explored the nature of John Howard’s fib in 2002 and early 2003 about Australia carefully exploring all options, including the option of opting out of an invasion.

The fib was an open secret that had important political benefits and malign policy impacts.

The fib miasma held the government together, sidelined the public service and provided some small political cover as Australian public opinion turned decisively against the looming war.

The politics of Howard’s fib and the way he deployed it was masterful—a virtuoso performance by a determined Prime Minister taking his country into a conflict it didn’t want. If you hanker after strong leadership, see how Howard took Australia to Iraq.

In his autobiography, Howard notes that by January 2003—two months before the invasion—a Fairfax poll found only 6% of Australians favoured joining the invasion without UN approval.

In the face of ‘widespread public hesitation’, Howard found the unity of the Liberal and National parties ‘remarkable’. Howard recalls one cabinet meeting late in 2002 when the National Party’s Warren Truss recounts a question from a staunch Party supporter: ‘Can’t we just this once not go along with the Americans?’

This was a question that John Howard worked hard to close down inside Canberra, even as it raged across the country. The Prime Minister knew he was playing for the highest stakes. In his diary in March, 2003, on the eve of war Howard wrote: ‘I think all of us realise that if this does go ‘pear-shaped’, then that would be it for me. I should take the rap, for the sake of the party’s future.’

To meet his commitment to George W. Bush and the US alliance, Howard silently put his leadership on the line (a wager he never voiced in public). Such determination has its admirable qualities. But this act of will and power fed the fib miasma that closed down any real thinking about what the Iraq war would mean.

In Canberra, the ‘open secret’ side of the fib dominated. Options or opinions weren’t sought, much less debated.

As the column on Iraq intelligence noted, the Office of National Assessments suddenly changed its judgement on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, responding to ‘policy running strong,’ delivering for the boss.

In the government and bureaucracy, Howard closed down any consideration of options. He needed compliance with the commitment already made to George W. Bush in mid-2002, not dangerous arguments about the perils of what was being planned.

Detailed paperwork coming out of the bureaucracy about the dangers of invasion or the geopolitical consequences of Iraq imploding could be leaked against the government. Any leaks or warnings would weaken the Howard hold on the Coalition parties and further feed public opposition. Simple solution: ensure no such document gets written.

There was no big debate or argument inside the bureaucracy. No big-picture or into-the-future paper was produced on the prospects or the dangers. The role of the public service was to sweat the details: John Howard and the National Security Committee of Cabinet would do the rest. There’s no paper trail leading from the bureaucracy to Cabinet. Howard didn’t ask for it. Thus, he wasn’t given it.

Not asked, the bureaucracy didn’t speak. The submissions to Cabinet, the arguments and pro-and-con documents don’t exist. Howard told Robert Garran:

 ‘…There was no cabinet submission on the costs and benefits of going to war in Iraq. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was not asked for, and did not offer, any advice on the pros and cons of supporting American intervention.’

Underline: no costs and benefits consideration.

Paul Kelly got the same story, in detail, from the top public servants in Defence, Foreign and Prime Minister’s.

The Defence Secretary, Ric Smith, told Kelly:

‘The message from ministers by that time (November 2002) was that they did not want strategic advice from the Defence Department. This reflected a conviction that ministers knew the issues and would take the decisions for or against the war.’

Underline: no strategic advice wanted.

The Foreign Affairs Secretary, Ashton Calvert:

‘DFAT did not argue against that war role. In my view there was a strong and shared sense of policy direction on Iraq from Howard and Downer. In my view they didn’t need advice on what they should do because they had, in effect, made up their minds.’

Underline: minds made up.

The head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Peter Shergold:

‘Ministers felt it was their responsibility to decide whether or not Australia entered the war. It would be wrong to think they were not interested in advice but the advice they wanted … was about the conduct of the war and capabilities, not the decision to go to war.’

Underline: don’t ask, don’t tell—off to war we go.

Making up your mind is one thing. Having a closed mind in making that decision is a recipe for policy disaster.

Australia would help to invade, conquer and occupy—then leave immediately. Iraq’s future? The consequences for the Middle East?

Not our problem, thanks. All issues for the US. Washington would do any thinking needed.

Australia went to war with eyes wide open and brain hardly engaged—all commitment and no responsibility. Lots of loyalty, less smarts.

Iraq lessons: the Howard fib

John Howard

John Howard’s decision to go to war in Iraq was constructed on a fib.

The fib was used repeatedly throughout 2002 and almost to the very start of the invasion in 2003. The fib was that Australia still had an open mind on going to war. The Prime Minister’s fib was that Australia was weighing all the options and had yet to commit to a US-led invasion.

Even at the time it was used, the fib was transparent. In the history of the open secret, the Iraq fib is a fine example.

Use the word ‘fib’ instead of ‘lie.’ This is a political distinction (not to be tried when disciplining children or giving evidence under oath).

The fib in its political garb is designed to conceal or avoid the whole truth. There’s a bit of truth within the fib but the assertion isn’t wholly true. The fib is the politics-as-usual version of ‘being economical with the truth.’ Neither a bent untruth nor a straight lie—many shades of shadiness.

The bit of truth in the fib is that if Saddam Hussein had totally and abjectly surrendered—fully revealed that he had no Weapons of Mass Destruction—Australia would, indeed, embrace the option not to go to war.

Short of that, Australia was all in. And committed. Contemplate the neocon fervour of Bush and the boys in 2002 after the successful invasion of Afghanistan. Saddam’s history and his weak and confused signals of compliance showed how hard it would be to get Washington to take Iraq’s ‘yes’ for an answer. This was a war of choice that the Bush White House embraced. Australia’s embrace was less enthusiastic but it was early and ardent.

Now, examine the fib. We know it was a fib because John Howard tells us so. Howard’s brisk chapter on Iraq in his autobiography makes explicit the lack of any question, or much debate, about Australia joining the US in the war.

Australia didn’t keep its options open. It didn’t even explore the options. No questions asked of the US. No internal questions asked in Australia. Howard is explicit in exposing the fib without regret or repentance.

The book recounts the White House talks in June 2002, where George W Bush understood that Howard ‘would keep my options open until the time when a final decision was needed.’ But the ‘tenor’ of Howard’s comments to Bush meant the US knew it could rely on Australia’s military commitment.

The Australian Defence Force planners working with the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, through 2002 couldn’t have had too many doubts about Australia’s commitment to the Iraq invasion they were helping to devise.

The ‘tenor’ of that White House deal was a Howard military promise that had already been clearly signalled by Canberra. Open secret, indeed. The pledge wasn’t, however, the story Howard gave Australia all the way to the invasion on 20 March, 2003. For the whole time, Howard told Australia the ‘options open’ version.

The fib was that Australia had the option of stepping back and not joining an American invasion. For Howard, the opt-out option was untenable—almost unthinkable. But the public version was that Australia was thinking hard about the opt-out option. In fact, options were not explored or called for because such work might have produced dangerous negative answers, exposing the fib to dark truths.

In reading Howard’s autobiography, published in 2010, note how the calculations required by that long-gone fib still throb. See this in a characteristic bit of Howard caution in the use of language. Many years of listening to John Howard as prime minister and closely parsing his transcripts can produce a habit of mind that notes what is avoided or redefined as well as what is said.

Thus, Howard writes of the decision to join the US and Britain ‘in the military operation against Saddam Hussein’ or ‘taking out Saddam’s regime’. The word ‘war’ doesn’t appear. Rather than invading Iraq, in the Howard telling the allies decide ‘to go into Iraq.’ By the end of the Iraq chapter, Howard can manage ‘invasion’ a couple of times while still preferring his ‘go into’ formulation, but he can’t use that ‘w’ word.

Whether you prefer to call Howard’s approach a fib, an open secret or politics-as-usual, it had a big impact in Canberra and an influence across Australia.

The fib miasma held the government together, sidelined the public service and provided a fig leaf of cover as Australian public opinion turned decisively against the Iraq war. Next, the effects of the fib…

Australia’s Iraq nightmare

Australia's Iraq nightmare

Australia helped bring disaster to Iraq.

As an eager ally, we were present at the creation of a regional catastrophe that just keeps on growing.

Today’s horror means that Australia’s past role in Iraq is a toxic subject for the Coalition government. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Don’t look back.

Tony Blair’s qualified apology for Iraq draws Australia towards a nightmare it has hardly examined. Blair used CNN to admit mistakes in intelligence and planning, but not in waging war: ‘I apologise for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong. I also apologise for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime.’

Blair stands with John Howard in saying it was a good idea to invade and get rid of Saddam Hussein. Yet Britain and Australia are today in different places over what they did as US allies. Britain lost 179 service personnel and, politically, Mesopotamia swallowed Tony Blair and New Labour.

By contrast, none of the forces Australia deployed were killed in action and John Howard resides—Reagan-like—upon the Liberal uplands.

Tony Blair is troubling the headlines for reasons that will cause clouds to roll towards Howard’s reputation. The chill rises from the inquiry into Britain’s role in Iraq chaired by Sir John Chilcot.

The labyrinth life of the inquiry since it was established in 2009 shows that going into the maze of government actions is akin to Clausewitz’s fog of war. Chilcot has ended his right-of-reply process and edges towards publication.

The British report will offer sidelights on Australia’s role. Where will Australia be glimpsed? What did we say in the debates? How often was Oz in the room?

Chilcot should prompt a ‘lessons learned’ review of Iraq as Peter Hartcher rightly urges: ‘A full and realistic admission of the errors involved would be immensely useful. To admit a mistake is the first step in avoiding a repeat. We mustn’t continue to blunder blindly from one catastrophic misjudgement to another.’

Don’t hold your breath for a full or realistic anything, whatever Chilcot reveals about Australia’s role. Malcolm Turnbull seeks to placate the Liberal Party right wing. An Iraq investigation would be seen as Malcolm going to war against Howard in the same way that Gordon Brown set up Chilcot partly to trash Blair’s legacy (in politics, the internal bastardry is ever the bitterest).

The Libs dread what a full Iraq inquiry would stir up. In that fear, the Liberals are channelling US Republicans—and not just on Iraq.

As an example, Elizabeth Drew had a typically sharp column the other day for The New York Review of Books on the ‘taboo’ topic of whether George W. Bush could have prevented the 9/11 attacks. The Drew piece draws together plenty of evidence that George W. was more intent on the longest-ever presidential summer holiday than thinking about terrorism:

Did he do all he could given the various warnings that al-Qaeda was planning a major attack somewhere on US territory, most likely New York or Washington? The unpleasant, almost unbearable conclusion—one that was not to be discussed within the political realm—is that in the face of numerous warnings of an impending attack, Bush did nothing.

The point about Drew’s conclusion on Bush and 9/11 is that she’s working from what’s in the public realm. There’s a lot we now know.

In the same way, it’s possible to do some lessons learned—a cheap Chilcot—on Australia and the Iraq war. Lessons learned is more palatable for politicians and public servants than a right-royal-official-ramble to name, shame and blame.

As the Turnbull government isn’t likely do anything akin to the Chilcot pilgrimage of Privy Counsellors to pry and purge, let’s instead do a lightning lessons learned using available sources. First up will be intelligence.

Security and military engagement in uncertain times

Military engagement can’t be devised or judged in isolation from its strategic objectives. It is tactical—a means to a strategic or political end. And this places a necessarily weighty responsibility on decision makers to have a plan for the day after, and for the decade after that.

The Middle East is currently undergoing its most significant reshaping since World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The extent of the fallout from conflict and extremism was recently described by David Petraeus as a ‘geopolitical Chernobyl’.

I would suggest that never has it been more necessary to have a view about the end game, nor perhaps more difficult in the current circumstances facing the Middle East. Australia needs to guard against being dragged into a fiendishly complex proxy war where a range of countries in the region will feel compelled to pursue their own interests.

It was just over a year ago that most Australians became aware of a new force seeking to violently reshape the Middle East, and the world. The organisation which calls itself Islamic State has its antecedents in al Qaeda (AQ) and al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)—organisations that we came to understand something about. But even a year ago we had very limited information about Daesh relative to the danger it presents today.

Labor supports Operation OKRA—the Australian Defence Force’s contribution to the international effort in Iraq. Our reason is principally and overwhelmingly humanitarian.

We accepted that as a member of the international community, Australia has a responsibility to protect, to respond to a legitimate request from the Iraq government and to join with other nations to protect vulnerable civilians from mass atrocity crimes.

Not insignificant to our consideration was the Iraq Government’s assessment that its aspirations for a more inclusive and democratic Iraq, and modest gains it had made, would be thoroughly undermined by Daesh. I am not going to pretend that Iraq was exhibiting consistent or significant progress on political and democratic reform, but for the first time in many years we could see inching gains in the right direction including Nouri al-Maliki’s replacement by Haider al-Abadi.

Iraq has specifically requested international support to defend itself against cross-border attacks by Daesh that the Syrian government is either unable or unwilling to prevent. By doing so Iraq has established legal authority under the principle of collective self-defence.

Labor sought its own advice on the application of the principle, and we agree that it applies.

Labor’s support is subject to several requirements. First, we have asked for a commitment that Australian operations in Syria are limited to support of Iraq’s collective self-defence; we won’t support mission creep. Second, we have requested the Government’s assurance, in advance of extended operations, that an effective combat search and rescue capability will be in place to meet the additional risks if the worst happens and RAAF personnel are downed in hostile territory. Third, we have urged the Government to engage with the UN, and to formally notify the UN Security Council about Australia’s decision. Fourth, we have called on the Prime Minister to address Parliament and outline Australia’s long term strategy in Iraq and allow for appropriate parliamentary discussion.

But our objectives for the Middle East need to be much more significant than defeating Daesh. In Iraq, our involvement is to allow the country to stand on its own two feet by supporting internal efforts toward peace and security.

The recent history of Iraq reminds us of the dangers of tactics without a comprehensive and realistic strategy. We “won” the last war, and Saddam Hussein was overthrown, but there was no strategy to govern, no vision of what the day after and the decade after would look like. The people of Iraq have suffered the consequences ever since.

The vacuum that was left created rallying points around the sectarian and ethnic fractures of the region, and was the breeding ground for AQ, AQI and Daesh. The de-Ba’athification of the public sector and demobilisation of the army were disasters that fed sectarian division and recruitment for AQ and Daesh, which boasts senior Baathists among its leadership.

A solution for the Middle East demands diplomatic efforts and the revival of a political solution. In particular, no one should believe that Syria can be bombed to peace.

The immense scale of displacement and suffering and the impacts of the Syrian conflict on neighbouring countries and Europe along with the increasing threat of Daesh and its territorial ambitions may now be so compelling that there’s new hope for a political outcome.

Alan Behm has recently observed that we’re coming very close to a situation so fractured that no one is being served by the status quo. Renewed efforts may break the impasse.

There have been roadblocks to effective UN action before now but this may be the moment they can be worked past. The US–Iran nuclear deal has been negotiated. There are reports that Russia is demonstrating an interest in a resolution to this conflict because of the risks it poses to its regional interests.

There are also reports of Russia’s desire to work with an international coalition, which would require more than careful navigation with the interests of so many parties in outcomes for Syria—Iran, Hezbollah, Turkey, Kurds, the list is extensive.

The humanitarian crisis in the region also demands a more significant response. We cannot let a generation of children grow up in refugee camps and temporary accommodation with no access to a proper education. And we cannot allow neighbouring countries, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon to shoulder the burden any more.

In Syria we must use all available diplomatic and political means to secure support from the international community to developing a durable solution to the current crisis. This engagement should focus, in the short term, on providing safe havens and humanitarian access in Syria, meeting the urgent humanitarian assistance needs of the region. In the longer term we support an inclusive political process which can resolve the conflict in Syria.

In 1965, when the Australian Government had made the decision to send Australian troops to Vietnam, Arthur Calwell said:

‘When the drums beat and the trumpets sound, the voice of reason and right can only be heard in the land with difficulty.’

His message was that decisions on matters like military involvement require courage and conviction, must reject populism and guard against recklessness. And in that tradition the Australian Labor Party will continue to contribute to decisions on the side of reason, in the cause of humanity, and always in the interests of Australia’s national security.