I think this discussion of Star Wars and counterinsurgency at Andrew Exum’s Abu Muqawama blog is ultimately emblematic of the somewhat smug and insular nature of the COIN community. One ought to simply consider the possibility that Star Wars characters don’t employ insurgent/counterinsurgent tactics because Star Wars is telling us that COIN dogma is wrong. To say that the Rebel Alliance ” simply staged two conventional assualts on the Empire’s center of gravity: the Death Star” is, I think, to misconstrue the situation. What’s going on is that nobody on either side of the war seriously disputes the notion that “fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battlestation.”

Leia, in a very COINish moment, does say “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” But that’s before the full capabilities of the Death Star are apparent. Once it’s clear that the Empire can destroy planets wholesale, the rebels are in agreement with Tarkin and the Emperor that sufficient firepower, deployed without conscience, can, in fact, win the war. Thus, the rebels only hope for staving off defeat is a bold attack on the Death Star itself. As Exum’s correspondent notes, “they got lucky” in terms of destroying the Death Star so it made perfect sense for the Emperor to simply respond by trying to build a new one. Here, again, both sides agree that a fully operational Death Star can end the war, so again the rebels need to mount a somewhat desperate attack. And they win!

But the lesson here isn’t that the rebels are being irrationally conventional; the lesson is that there are limits to the logic of counterinsurgency doctrine. Overwhelming force and brutality really can be applied to good effect if you’re really willing to unleash it in an evil way.

Vacant storefront on 1300 block of U Street; good place for a Wendy's? (cc photo by NCinDC)

One of the enduring mysteries of urban life is the prevalence of vacant storefronts. This is understandable in a truly depressed area where the whole local economy has broken down. But if you take someplace like U Street in Washington DC where there are tons of thriving businesses, it seems bizarre that there are also lots of vacant storefronts. Surely there’s something, at some rent, that could make a profit. And surely some rent would be better than no rent. But as Justin Fox writes, the markets seem not to clear even in super-prosperous areas like Broadway on the Upper West Side.

His theory, also endorsed by Felix Salmon is that the culprit is unduly long lease lengths:

If prevailing leases are low, or tenants hard to find, the developer will quite rationally choose to keep the property empty. Leasing at a low rate will lock in a loss, while keeping the property empty has significant option value: at some point in the future, rents might well rise, and the developer can at that point lock in a profit instead. This is why successful property developers generally need very deep pockets: anybody who needs immediate cashflow, in the form of rent today, is in an invidious bargaining position and is likely to lose out over the long term.

I buy this, but only to an extent. If you look at suburban strip malls, the same long lease dynamic applies, but widespread strip mall vacancies are normally a sign of specific economic distress. The current recession has less to a lot of them, but in normal economic times you tend not to see this. Instead, even depressed areas reach a low-rent equilibrium. Possibly this is because strip mall property is less speculative in nature than urban property. But I think the specifically urban nature of the problem probably has something to do with the level of regulatory uncertainty surrounding new retail endeavors in most American cities combined with the reluctance of many neighborhoods to play host to the sort of “uncool” national retail chains that could better manage the risks involved.

The UN Relief and Works Agency, which oversees assistance to Palestinian refugees, was considering the idea of including a unit on the Holocaust in history lessons to Palestinian schoolchildren. It seems like a good idea to me that, among other things, might help the kids better understand the context for their current situation. Hamas leaders, however, are having none of it:

Hamas spiritual leader Younis al-Astal lashed out after hearing that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the main U.N. body aiding Palestinian refugees, planned to introduce lessons about the Holocaust to Gaza students. Adding the Holocaust to the curriculum would amount to “marketing a lie and spreading it,” al-Astal wrote in a statement. [...]

Many Palestinians are reluctant to acknowledge Jewish suffering, fearing it might diminish their own. Attitudes toward the Holocaust range from outright denial to challenging its scope.

Israeli officials are using this argument as a pretext for why western governments shouldn’t reconsider their attitudes to dealings with Hamas. Meanwhile, the actual situation in Gaza is incredibly dire. As Brian Katulis, Marc Lynch, and Robert C. Adler wrote for CAP in July:

In the six months since unilateral ceasefires by Israel and Hamas were announced on the eve of President Obama’s inauguration, the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have suffered from shortages, including basic medicines and services. In early March, the International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Economy for the Reconstruction of Gaza that was held in Egypt raised a total of $4.4 billion in pledges from the international community for the Palestinian Authority. But stringent import restrictions imposed by Israel and the continued divisions among Palestinian factions have impeded these funds from delivering much benefit to Palestinians.

A recent ICRC report emphasizes that the Israeli blockade has pushed unemployment to over 40 percent, while depriving the population of regular access to running water, to say nothing of proper medical. They warn that tens of thousands of children are going malnourished due to “deficiencies in iron, vitamin A and vitamin D.” The indifference of both the Israeli government and the Hamas leadership toward the practical aspects of this humanitarian crisis is truly appalling.

Another concern I have with the Cordesman piece is the offhand reference to the idea that “a significant number of such U.S. reinforcements will have to assist in providing a mix of capabilities in security, governance, rule of law and aid.”

I sometimes get the sense that people from a military background believe that the United States government, or perhaps some other government, has acquired some time-tested and proven methods of creating the rule of law in anarchic, multi-ethnic, impoverished states and that if only we put smart counterinsurgency generals in charge who realized the importance of unleashing the rule of law then we could lick that corruption problem. In fact, the problem with promoting the rule of law is that we have basically no idea how to do this. Thomas Carothers oversees the Carnegie Endowment’s “Democracy and the Rule of Law” program, so I always think it’s sobering to recall that he’s pretty skeptical about the prospects for promoting the rule of law. Check out his recent article, not particularly related to Afghanistan, called “Rule of Law Temptations”:

In this context of ever-increasing interest and often enthusiasm for rule-of-law development among Western policymakers and aid practitioners, a tendency exists toward uncritical and sometimes wishful thinking about the subject. Some of these lines of thought represent what can be described as temptations, to believe certain things about the rule of law and its place on the international stage that are misleading and sometimes unhelpful. At least four such temptations—concerning consensus, reductionism, sequencing, and ease—are identifiable and deserve attention.

In other words, buyer-beware about strategies that casually toss off the idea that we’re going to put the rule of law in place somewhere and that’s what’ll make our strategy work.