Irregular Warfare Podcast - Two Sides of the COIN: Good Governance vs. Compellence

Episode Date: January 1, 2022

In counterinsurgency warfare, how can powerful states reform corrupt or repressive governments into legitimate ones? Our guests on this episode, Jacqueline L. Hazelton and Anne-Marie Slaughter, discuss this fundamental challenge and explain two competing models of counterinsurgency that take different approaches to it. The first is the good governance model, which has dominated both scholarship and COIN practice over recent decades. But the second, the compellence model, might actually better explain COIN success in the past. The discussion concludes with a reflection on both the opportunities and the limits of US power in potential future interventions. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. My name is Kyle Atwell, and I am the co-founder and president of the Irregular Warfare Initiative. Before we get into today's really interesting episode on the topic of military intervention and counterinsurgency, I am being joined by Sam Winter-Levy, our editorial director, to discuss a new resource for the community of irregular warfare professionals. Earlier this year, IWI began expanding online, publishing written articles by researchers and practitioners on irregular warfare topics. Recent articles range in topic from the failure of state building in Afghanistan by Dr. Melissa Lee from Princeton University, the role of special operations forces in great power competition by Dr. Jack Watling from the British think tank RUSI, a criticism of the over-the-horizon counterterrorism approach by retired Marine Special Operations Colonel Andy Milburn, and a piece on the myth of a purely conventional

fight with China by David Knoll, Kevin Pulpiter, and Sam Plafinger from the Center for Neighborhood Analysis, and many more. And now we are excited to share that we are launching a monthly newsletter, which you can receive in your inbox. The newsletter will feature links to recent articles and podcasts, roundups of other work by members of the IWI community, and announcements of upcoming virtual and in-person events. We hope this newsletter will become an invaluable learning resource for irregular warfare researchers and practitioners. To learn more about the community of irregular warfare professionals we're building, to get similar articles directly into your inbox, and to find out more about how you can publish with us, search Irregular

Warfare Initiative on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. Thank you again for listening to today's episode of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We hope you enjoy the conversation. It's also, I think, valuable to note that Taiwan, South Korea, they were corrupt, oppressive autocracies that they had to go through this process. The United States did not present them with liberal democracy and have it take off like a balloon.

There are processes and it's got to come from within domestically. I actually have been thinking about a much bigger global paradigm that says we've got to stop focusing on great power competition. We've actually got to stop focusing on the world as a system of states. That exists. I'm not saying we pretend it's not there, but I think we need an alternative paradigm and the two can actually be laid one on top of the other that is people and planet centered. laid one on top of the other, that is people and planet centered. Welcome to episode 43 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm Abigail Gage, and I will be your host today along with Kyle Atwell. Today's episode explores models for success in counterinsurgency warfare, but even more broadly, how nations leverage their national

power during interventions. Our two guests start the conversation by outlining the role that military interventions and counterinsurgency have played in recent history and their relevance for the future of national security. They then discuss two competing models of counterinsurgency. First, the good governance model or winning hearts and minds, which has dominated both scholarship and coin practice over recent decades. And then a competing model called the Compellence Model, which one of our guests argues better explains counterinsurgency success. They conclude with a discussion on both the opportunities and limits of U.S. power in potential future interventions.

Dr. Jill Hazelton is an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College. Her book, Bullets Not Ballots, Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare, was published by the Cornell University Press. Jill is an affiliate of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation and an associate at the International Security Program at the Belfer Center Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter is the CEO of New America and the Bert G. Kerstetter 66th University Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. From 2009 to 2011, she served as Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State, the first woman to hold that position.

Prior to government service, Dr. Slaughter was the Dean of Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Jill and Anne-Marie. Dr. Jill Hazelton, Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. Kyle and I have been looking forward to this conversation for a long time now. It's our pleasure. Delighted to be here. Thank you. Today, we're going to discuss success and failure in counterinsurgency

warfare and even more broadly, interventions. To frame this conversation, I'd like to start by talking about why this is an important topic for today. At a time when the United States is the strongest country that has ever existed, when threats to U.S. security have never been lower, the United States has been losing wars since the great victory of 1991 in the Gulf. Somalia, Haiti, of 1991 in the Gulf. Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, a 20-year-long GWAT in the Mideast, Southeast Asia, and Africa. These have not gone as well as the United States would have liked. The political objectives have been extremely ambitious, and the achievements have been limited. The best we can see is probably what we found in Bosnia and Kosovo, where the hot war is over. There is still serious ethnic and other political violence. There's increasing crime.

There is increasing illiberalism in government. There is division by ethnicity, and there is danger for recurrence. So what? The problem with this interventionist hangover from the Cold War, when everything everywhere was potentially a threat to U.S. security, the hangover of these interventions, which mean well, is that the moral and human costs to the United States and to its partners, as well as to the target state, do not meet these ambitious goals of democratization, liberalization, good governance, standing up professional militaries, reducing or ending political violence, helping defeat insurgents and terrorists, and other unachievable goals. There are also two larger issues at stake here beyond the day-to-day military intervention

conversations that we hear. The first is to what degree a grand strategy of liberal interventionism has served U.S. interests since 1945 or from the end of the Cold War in 1989, if we want to start there. The second is the need to recognize that U.S. power is limited and its military power is limited, not only within its own territory, but even more within other states' territories. Wow. So I'm going to agree on some things. I'm going to disagree on a number of them, but I am the designated liberal interventionist here, which I assume is better than liberal hawk, which I've also certainly been called. I don't actually accept the title, although I certainly have called for intervention. And I very publicly with respect to both Libya and Syria. And I think

that what happened in Bosnia and Kosovo is certainly not perfect, but a whole lot better than the hot war. And particularly in Kosovo, where really an entire population was set to be displaced. And in fact, they were able to return to their homes and a very uneasy peace has been brokered. So I don't think this is the answer, but I think it's a lot better than the alternative. That said, I also think that it's very hard to stop an intervention. In other words, the idea of a responsibility to protect where you go in and you stop a government from committing genocide or crimes against humanity, against its own people. The image was Kosovo or Rwanda, where in Rwanda, you sort of look at these folks with machetes and think, surely we could have stopped that. In fact, if you, certainly Iraq, which I did not support,

but Iraq or Libya, there are plenty of examples. I think it's very important to do this today because I agree that we do not face a major threat. Well, we face existential threats, but they're not from other powers. They are from nature. They're global threats. And this entire way of thinking about global politics, where we can fix things happening in other countries with force is not only, I think, wrong, but it's also a terrible distraction from where we should be focusing. You listed, Jill, kind of a series of past interventions. It's been a key feature since the end of the Cold War. Is this a conversation that will continue being relevant moving forward?

Or as the United States kind of pivots toward strategic competition, is this going to be a less relevant conversation to be having? I think for two reasons that this conversation is going to remain immediately relevant. The first is the natural human impulse to do something. We see Rwandans wielding machetes and we think we must do something

and we can do something. The second reason I think we have to continue arguing against frequent military intervention is that it just doesn't work when the goals are grandiose. I agree completely with Anne-Marie that Kosovo and Bosnia are positive examples. That is because what has been attained is far less than would have been liked by anyone who advocated intervention. And that's why the arguments for intervention are not only driven by this human impulse to do something, there's also this sense that the United States can do anything, right? That it can achieve what it needs to achieve. And its primary tool for 20 years has been the tool of military force. And then also,

what continues to make this intervention discussion of primary importance is the speeded up environment in which we live in. Everyone's getting the alert second by second about what is happening in Syria or what is happening in Mali. And that imposes a sense of urgency that is not at all helpful in trying to design policy and make policy choices. You mean you can't build states really, really quickly? Who'd have thunk it? I think it is worth asking who's actually claiming we can't anymore. In other words, the neocons are certainly not saying that we can build democracies.

President Biden is saying we are not using military force. It's very striking when he looks at Ukraine. He says under no circumstances will U.S. troops be put on the ground. Many people might have called for intervention. The U.S. troops or U.S. troops be put on the ground. Many people might have called for intervention, the U.S. troops or U.S. support of African Union troops in Ethiopia. You're not hearing that. So I do think for the moment, the Donald Trump folks are absolutely not America first. We're not sending American troops abroad in search of dragons to destroy. And most of the Democrats I know, the progressive Democrats, think it's all imperialist and we should stay home. And the folks like me who are liberal internationalists are very chastened and would not support anything more than a very

limited and very multilateral intervention in extreme circumstances. I think the question of who's advocating these things changes slightly over time. I don't think that this belief that the United States can accomplish what it needs to, particularly with the military tool, and that it must do so, which really comes under the aegis of American exceptionalism, that's not going to go away. I don't see anything changing overall in the big picture since it's going to make people think differently. We have seen before cycles when the United States said Black Hawk Down in Somalia was terrible and we're not going to do that for a while. And then along comes Bosnia, then along comes Kosovo. So we see this sine wave where intervention continues to appear not only possible,

but plausible and even necessary. So that's fair, because I remember, I definitely remember, of course, that starts after Vietnam, right? We were very chastened. We go back, we have the War Powers Act, we have the Church Committee in the 70s. We're not going to do any of that. But you have Nicaragua in the 1980s, you've got other cases, and then the 1990s. So I take that point. I will say that I think American exceptionalism is under attack very openly by the left and by younger millennials and Gen Z, but younger people who again think, first of all, that we've got a huge number of problems at home, and second, that the kind of global issues we ought to be focusing on, exceptionalism makes no

sense. There's plenty of American exceptionalism on the right. It's just that at least right now, it is tied to a nationalism that is not looking for interventions, I guess, in part because it's my sense that the military is more than tired of being used as that instrument. Maybe not. That raises this really great point. And to use Jill's imagery of the sine wave, the American public goes through waves of nationalism and interventionism and underlying all that is the idea that we can do good in the world. And so I think this brings us around to the basis of interventionism and state building for the last 20 years, that good governance model that the U.S. has been building its counterinsurgency efforts on. and this idea that we can counter insurgencies and build legitimate governments. So could you, Jill, describe what the good governance model is and what role it played

both in theory and practice? I would be glad to. The good governance model is based on the belief that bad governance causes insurgencies and thus logically it flows from the model that the introduction of good governance reforms will help defeat the insurgency. Reforms in this context, these are domestic political changes that better serve the people. Things like free and fair elections, respect for human and civil rights, a professionalized military, reduced corruption, all these things which are very appealing. The good governance model has not been presented in the form of a testable theory as far as I could find until I did so in my book. The idea of good governance as a solution to insurgency is a backdrop to prescriptive

and explanatory work on counterinsurgency success. It's a set of beliefs about what people want and how they should get it. It's based on this U.S. ideal of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is a powerful and a very attractive belief. It's also very sticky. And that's part of what makes it so dangerous. But there is this belief that if there's ever anything the United States chooses not to do in the military slash security realm, it means no one will ever believe anything the United States says again. And I'm exaggerating that slightly for clarity, but we do actually see these views expressed

as we speak. Yeah, Jill, I think that's important. I'd like to push you a little bit more on the good governance model, particularly for those who maybe aren't familiar with its kind of history. So I don't think it was necessarily invented out of nowhere. There was, I believe, a scholarship that still continues to support and test good governance model as a theory of counterinsurgency. And then also, if I understand the counterinsurgency doctrine the U.S. embraced, it essentially tried to take this theoretical approach to counterinsurgency and make it into a doctrine or into a way of implementing force. So what is kind of the track record historically of the good governance model that led us to

believing this would be the solution in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and other places around the world? I'll push back in turn. We see theories about counterinsurgency that involve elements of good governments. Oh, if we give half the people in this community money and we don't give the other half money, will that make the government more popular in that community? We see things like that. We do not see a test of the good government model turned into a testable theory. And that's a real gap in the literature. I would be delighted if more people worked on that. And you're right, this does not come out of nowhere. This goes back at least as far as the colonial wars that followed World War II. The United States and Britain in particular believe

that in some places at some time, providing good governance would solve the problem of the rebellious locals. Right. And then from that, we have the codification in military manuals. You're absolutely right. Again, without testing and without questioning the assumptions of the model, which is the primary problem. without questioning the assumptions of the model, which is the primary problem. The work on counterinsurgency does not question the assumptions that underpin the good governance model. So we've seen this belief appear in various forms after World War II, in the proxy wars of the Cold War, ending the Cold War, El Salvador is another example. And then to a degree in the post-Cold War period, when the framing was very much more about humanitarian intervention than it was about insurgency. But then after 9-11 and

the GWAT period, we see once again this insistence that good governance is a solution to political, violent political unrest in other countries. I see a lot of different strands there. So I'll just start by saying where I agree on the good governance model is that I just don't think we've ever been able to install it. Even that term tells you what's wrong with it, as if you were plugging in an appliance, right, in a country. You don't do that. But in particular, the core of good governance has to be basic justice and fairness. So my friend Sarah Chase has written multiple books on what happened in Afghanistan that effectively we set up a kleptocracy because we bring so much money. When the United States arrives, you're just swimming in money without capacity to spend it fairly.

And there are plenty of places in the United States that aren't so clean. But when you get corruption to those levels, you often then find a population will prefer a strong man, you know, even the Taliban, at least the first time around, to chaos and gross corruption and unfairness. So I would agree with you to that extent. But I think, you know, is good governance the same as democratization? Because we actually have a lot of evidence that over time, more mature democracies, and I'm choosing my words very carefully, are better, are stronger, are less vulnerable to insurgency, and are more peaceful. And so if you take the lessons of the 20th century, and you look at Germany and Japan, who were enormous aggressors, right, for a century. And you look at what happens or

South Korea or Taiwan, you know, these countries that have actually made it. It's I don't think wrong to say that liberal democracy, if that's what we mean by good government, is a better system for the people and for the planet. So we don't have any idea how to create that. And our efforts to go in on strictly humanitarian grounds or security grounds, because I thought in Iraq that he really did have nuclear weapons. So there were people who supported that for that reason. Once he didn't, what are we doing? Or once we've stopped the worst of the humanitarian disaster, what are we doing? And there, I agree with you, there's a kind of, well, we have to do something. We're Americans. It's kind of can-do. We can't just pull out. And that then gets us into a

situation where we're actually making the circumstances often worse and certainly not better. We do know that over time, democracies can develop. Germany and Japan are terrible examples when we're looking at civil wars, internal conflict. There are very good reasons why those are outliers. And what happened there doesn't apply. It's also, I think, valuable to note that Taiwan, South Korea, they were corrupt, oppressive autocracies for quite a long time. And US audiences tend to forget that they had to go through this process. The United States did not present them with liberal democracy and have it take off like a balloon. There are processes and it's got to come from within domestically. And this is one of the big

differences between the good governance model and my own theory. Jill, let's transition to talking about your theory now. You developed the competence model and present it in your book, Bullets, Not Ballots. Could you lay out for us what the major differences are between your competence model and the good governance model. The good governance model argues that the goal of good governance is to gain popular support for the government and reduce support for the insurgency. And that's completely logical. But what I find when I actually look into these cases is that popular support has nothing to do with it. Popular support did not increase. Corruption did not decrease. Repression did not decrease.

What succeeded in countering insurgencies in the cases I look at, and I think the theory extends much farther than just the subset that I examined, what defeats insurgencies is not pretty at all. It includes accommodating or co-opting other political actors who have information, who can cooperate, and who can provide military power. It involves tight military control of as many civilians as possible. Prison camps we're talking about. The British in Parliament discussing the Malayan emergency were afraid that people would start calling the camps in Malaya concentration camps, because that's exactly what they were. So we see tight control of civilians to prevent the flow of resources to the insurgency, and we see the co-optation of very unpleasant people who have a lot of power. And none of this has anything to

do with democracy or liberalization. And the reason for that is reforms along the path of a good governance model, reforms mean regime suicide. Repressive extractive governments are not repressive and extractive by the state or because they don't know any better. This is not ignorant. They're repressive and extractive and violent and brutal because it serves the interest of the elites. And that is, I think, the main point that we need to understand about what succeeds in counterinsurgency. It's a matter of bringing all of these ugly people, the warlords, political entrepreneurs of violence together in a state building process. And the one who comes out on top, the one who can defeat all the rest, whether that's a partnership or one actor, is the one who wins. I want to pose a hypothetical because I think that that makes a lot of sense. But I'm

thinking about an area I would care a lot. So let's assume now the Taliban is in charge in Afghanistan. But there are many folks who have fled and there's some in Afghanistan who have a vision of something that looks more like a republic, something that certainly allows women to have basic rights. Now, again, I'm not naive about sort of how that vision got squeezed down over the past decade. But let's say those folks then, you know, start fighting and the Taliban is being the Taliban. It's very hard in that situation for the United States not to want to help. So let's assume we're not going to send in troops ourselves. But so many of these insurgencies, as we all know, they're proxy wars.

Right. So we see our side and then we see put whoever you want on the other side. The Russians, the Iranians, the Chinese, radical Islamic terrorism, the enemy. And it's very hard for us not to think, well, we're not going to go in there and do it, but we're going to help our side. I'd like to say we shouldn't, but it would be hard for me in that situation if somebody says, look, these folks are fighting for a government that is at least going to treat women better. And the Taliban really is horrific. What do I say? What do I do? Wonderful question. I would be so happy to talk about Afghanistan. The fundamental problem is the United States has not sufficiently recognized the agency of local actors. Again and again in Cold War proxy wars and since, we see locals learn

how to walk the walk on democracy and human rights and so on and never actually make any changes. They simply slow roll the Americans as long as they can and the Americans hang in there hoping that reforms will come. They never do. So I think if policymakers accepted that the United States is not able to direct the actions and choices of the locals, that these Afghans, that these Iraqis, that these Malians have agencies, they have control over their own decisions, and the United States cannot change what their interests are, then we can have a more reasonable discussion about what's achievable if the U.S. or another great power is intervening to try to help. There are a number of things we can talk about that the United States can do in Afghanistan that

may support the Taliban, but are far more important than whether or not they're supporting the Taliban, because it means saving lives. Let me jump in and make sure I'm framing the conversation that we walked down the path of so far. So one of the core problems is that initially, the initial source of kind of an internal conflict or civil war might be that the government was a weak government that was not delivering services. And that led to a portion of the population rebelling that the government was a weak government that was not delivering services. And that led to a portion of the population rebelling against the government. So the idea is that if we

can go in and improve the government, we can remove kind of the source or driver of the insurgency and the conflict. But you're arguing that the kind of model we've used where we try to maybe sometimes over-ambitiously build liberal democracies in our image is not very effective, even maybe less. And I'd be kind of curious for more that even just more modest reforms in the human rights practices of maybe the armed forces or something like that might even be difficult. Is that kind of a correct kind of approach? And then so where we're at right now is that state building is a nasty business and we're trying to figure out what are the implications for how the U.S. approaches this nasty business while maintaining its ethics. Is that kind of the correct summary?

That seems like a reasonable jumping off point for the next section of the discussion. I would challenge your assumption that insurgency is necessarily a popular movement and is necessarily about the people wanting more rights or more goods and services. There is a wealth of research, as you know, on the causes of insurgency and the causes of terrorism. And I don't think we can make the easy assumption that it's popular discontent with the government that causes insurgency. We can also see insurgency caused by other political actors, political entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs of

violence who would like to replace the government, but who are not leading popular movement. I think that's a great example of examining foundational assumptions before moving forward with the rest of the discussion. And I would add to that, I accept the way you framed it, amended by Jill. I would say where that takes me are two fundamental questions. If we can't do anything by force, whether by sending arms to those we like or intervening directly, what can we do that really does make a difference? So I really do want to hear those. And I also want to hear, are there limits? Because I still feel where, if it is a Rwanda, I don't think we could have gone in and solved the Tutsi Hutu crisis, which had been long in the making.

I do think we might have been able to save half a million lives. And similarly in Kosovo and similarly in cases where you are displacing an entire population or you're simply bound and determined to murder as many people as you can. or you're simply bound and determined to murder as many people as you can. So I would love to hear what limits, if any, are there to this view and what can we do if we can't do by force? To the larger question of urgent humanitarian intervention to prevent massacres, prevent the destruction of the people, the destruction of our communities. I think we have to keep in mind that it's better to do no harm. There's a fair amount of disagreement over Rwanda. What could the United States and other major actors actually have done in the timeframe that was available? If it takes 10 days for the 82nd Airborne to jump in and set up a perimeter around where they are,

10 days is already half a million dead, right? So there are simply logistical limitations to what the United States and other great powers can do. This is true for Darfur as well in Sudan, right? There were severe logistical limitations on how foreign armies could get in, could stay, and could get out. And I think we have to recognize those constraints. I accept that. Although, again, I would have said in Kosovo, we bombed Serbia. It was counter to our interests in the sense that there were liberals in Serbia who were absolutely fighting the regime who said, you know, you have just cut our legs out from under us because, you know, you're now bombing us, the nationalists.

But it really did get people back into Kosovo. It really did finally freeze this piece. Dayton was diplomatic as well as using force in Bosnia. I'd look at things like East Timor, much smaller, but there are cases where a timely intervention just says, stop, freeze in place. It may not make it a whole lot better, but it's not going to be worse, right? You're just stopping what otherwise would be just slaughter. But I take the point about logistics, I take the point about ambition, and I take the point about how hard it is then to stop. But I also think it's possible to tell governments, you may go kill your own people,

but as with Bashar al-Assad, you can't do it with chemical weapons or barrel bombs. We're not going to get involved in the Syrian civil war, but we're going to tell you these are illegitimate tactics and we're going to take action with other nations. So let me ask that hard, blunt question. We've talked a lot about the challenges, the timelines for the reasons for interfering and not interfering. In general, we've talked a lot about the necessity of a limited approach, but that often means we can't take the ideal approach. And that might mean we have to partner with people to protect our core national interests that are the kind of ugly state builders you've previously described. And so should we embrace even people who go against our national values if it accomplishes

our security or national interest? I think, of course, we do. And looking through history, we've been, obviously, we've worked with some very unsavory characters, in many cases, not justified in the sense that it would, but I can't remember which great statesman said, you know, he may be an SOB, but he's our SOB. It's attributed to many, but the point, and I do think that a large part of the problem here is, again, this just basic competition, right? If they want this, then we want that, and we're not going to ask questions. And of course, you know, the folks in Vietnam were, there are many cases of people who we have been very close to who have been extremely unsavory. But take Libya. I would have said we should have intervened with Benghazi. I really did think at the time that it looked like he was going to go door to door and exterminate the folks of Benghazi. And I think certainly Gaddafi would have done that if he thought it would have won him the war. At that point, I think we should have brought in a diplomatic

process to freeze Libya as it was. It probably wouldn't have held up. And so it might have been futile, but you don't know that. And the question there is, do you want to get caught trying or not trying? And I would have been willing to try that. But I would have said, if Gaddafi goes, we have no idea what's going to come. But what we do know is that if we fight until he goes, we are going to flood the zone with arms, so many people are going to die and then have, you know, revenge motives, etc. So, you know, that is, I think, the business of diplomacy. It's telling that Samantha Power's book is called The Education of an Idealist, because she's basically saying, you know, you serve in government, you want to get things done, you're going to have unsavory bedfellows. This is the thing. There's a tremendous moral

cost to trying to reach these wildly ambitious political objectives, things like reforming someone else's government. But the problem is that the stakes for the United States are so low in these so-called small wars that I do not think that the moral and human costs excusable. That's why my policy prescription is to stay out whenever possible. I think we have to excise the proxy element that Anne-Marie mentions from policymakers' minds. We're not in the Cold War anymore. This is not a relevant paradigm anymore. Stop it. The threshold for working against our values has to be pretty high, then, in a sense, you're saying, as far as our core national interests are challenged,

and they're not necessarily challenged in recent conflicts. Yeah. And when you talked about sending in enough forces to do the job, one problem is what we saw in Iraq. If you occupy a foreign country, then you are necessarily going to get a nationalist backlash, which is not going to be better, right? Whoever follows Diem can't possibly be as bad as he was. Whoever follows Gaddafi can't possibly be as bad. Anyone but Assad, right? We see this again and again. But the problem is that this attitude fails to recognize that Assad, Gaddafi, Diem were all acting the way they were because it served their interest to do so. There were structural reasons in their countries, in the domestic politics of South Vietnam, of Libya, of Syria, that means their choices made perfect sense from their own perspective.

But we've laid out a lot of good reasons to limit the use of military interventions in our conversation today and reconsider who we do and do not work with when we are addressing our national security interests. As we approach the end of our conversation today, what would you each say are the major implications from our conversation for both policymakers and practitioners? And what should they take away from our conversation today? I agree with Anne-Marie that there's a tremendous amount that the United States and partners can do when there is internal conflict, when there are humanitarian crises. There's support for negotiations when the time is right. There's support for humanitarian efforts such as providing food while recognizing that any kind of intervention will advantage some

actors and disadvantage others. That's a given. It is not impartial to intervene. In Afghanistan, for example, and I'm very glad to return to Afghanistan because this is a perfect example, there are a number of voices that say we should not give any other support to Afghanistan to feed starving babies and freezing mothers because it would support the Taliban. That's a moral position. I would say that saving lives is a more moral position. Yes, perhaps feeding stations supporting livestock recovery from the drought, warm clothes and shelter, education, medical, health, other efforts to improve the lives of Afghans. That is where the international community has had the greatest effect over the past 20 years. It's not the military building schools or handing out soccer

balls. There's a tremendous amount that the international community can do to help. I agree on Afghanistan. Indeed, I think the United States has an enormous obligation to the people of Afghanistan. And as terrible as the Taliban government may be, we are not going to repay that debt by holding the Afghan people hostage. At this point, we pulled out, they came in. Our responsibility is to see as many people fed and clothed and sheltered over the winter as we possibly can. And if that strengthens the Taliban, then so be it, because we pulled out. And I supported the pullout, but still. I think in response to your question, I think in response to your question, I actually have been thinking about a much bigger global paradigm that says we've got to stop focusing on great power competition.

We've actually got to stop focusing on the world as a system of state. That exists. I'm not saying we pretend it's not there, but I think we need an alternative paradigm. and the two can actually be laid one on top of the other, that is people and planet-centered. So what I would do in these contexts, and here I do agree with Jill, is to start figuring out the human costs of whatever action we take, both now and as best we can down the road. So, you know, you intervene and you protect X number of people. You probably kill a certain number of people in the process, including civilians. You support this government or make it harder for this government one way or another. And you also look again, not at their ideology, but at, you but at how well people are faring under them. And then you start looking at the longer term costs of what that would look like. Again,

of course, it's speculation, but your goal is to say, in the end, the whole reason we would fight a war unless we're directly attacked or support a government is surely because we want to save as many lives as possible. I mean, even in communism, right, we had the view that communism was terrible, not just because it was an alternative economic system, but because people really were dying or starving or otherwise not flourishing under it. So I think we need a new calculus, and that would include the environmental costs of whatever we're going to do, and the sort of thinking about what that will do to an economy as well. I have no argument whatsoever with Anne-Marie's broader, richer goals. My fundamental advice for

U.S. and other policymakers thinking about military intervention would be, first of all, recognize the limits of U.S. power and even more so the limits of military power. Recognize the agency of the locals. They're not going to do what you want them to do just because you want them to. And third, set achievable political objectives. So I don't think we're going to disagree there, perhaps nearly as much as anyone would have thought, given where we have been and where we started this conversation. I would recognize the limits of U.S. military power, for sure. I think there are other kinds of power we have only begun to tap. And yes, we have diplomatic power, but diplomatic power, we often connect that to military power. It's who are our allies, and to be an ally, there's some military component there.

We're going to come to your defense. And yet, as I look at where this country is moving, and we will be a plurality nation, and the groups of Americans, none of whom will be a majority, will reflect the entire world. And our businesses, accordingly, will be connected to the entire world. And our civic groups will be connected to the entire world. They are now, and they will just be more so. So I would like to think about our catalyzing power, our convening power, our mobilizing power, our civic power, our corporate power in ways that can make lives better. And again, I'm not pretending that our big rivals just disappear. I actually think, though, they are not the imminent

threat to us that a kind of competitive great power frame insists on. I want us to defend ourselves, don't get me wrong. But I would like to look at this century as a century where the United States could exercise plenty of power to make the world a better place and to live up to our values, starting at home, which is where we should be starting. We've run out of time for this episode. Let me end by thanking you for joining us tonight. It's been a real pleasure.

Thank you so much for the invitation. And Anne-Marie, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Oh, Jill, it's been a pleasure. I really look forward to reading your book and I've enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much for joining us for episode 43 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, Laura and Shauna explore the role of Air Force Special Operations Command in Irregular Warfare with Lieutenant General Jim Slythe and Dr. Rick Newton. Following this,

Shauna and Andy discuss influencing partner forces during advise and assist missions with Dr. Barbara Elias of Bowdoin College and retired Marine Lieutenant General Larry Nicholson. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. You can follow and engage with us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you enjoyed this conversation, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. One last note. What you heard in this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those of Princeton, West Point, or any agency of the U.S. government. Thanks again for listening. See you next time. Thank you.