War From the Ground Up (30 page)

Luck also played a major role. Lord Healey's account implies a linear narrative from military action to political outcome: ‘a textbook demonstration of how to apply economy of force, under political guidance, for political ends'. As Christopher Tuck has argued, in his work on conflict termination in the context of the Borneo conflict, the ‘end' that resulted was not as deliberate a goal as Lord Healey's retrospective view might imply.
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Indeed, the Indonesian Army counter-coup in October-November
1965 was preceded by the PKI's coup, which might well have been successful.

Strategy, even when properly conducted, involves an element of luck, as conflict is unpredictable. After all, the same British government failed in the other major action which involved British troops at the time in South Arabia and Aden. The understandable hubris associated with entirely rational and linear retrospective narratives of why particular approaches succeed, often proposed by the victors, tend in many cases, as here in the case of Borneo, to overplay the role of any operational approach and to underplay the role of luck. This can encourage the mistaken notion that there genuinely exist certain approaches that work in any context.

Finally, although not actually part of the Confrontation, it must be mentioned that the Indonesian military counter-coup, which secured General Suharto's position, triggered the killing of around 500,000 Indonesian ‘communists' in 1965–6. This is a separate story for which there is not space here to do justice, but it must be taken into consideration in any evaluation of the aftermath of the conflict.

The Indonesian Confrontation is an example of successful strategy that was able to control the narrative by understanding the language of force. The case study is an example primarily of the utility of a pragmatic mindset. The actual British operational approach that was developed to deal with Borneo was a product of its time, and cannot be transplanted to the present day. Moreover, the Borneo case study is an example of a strategy that was intimately attuned to the importance of information and audiences; operational thought needs to be constructed within a conception of strategy that recognises that strategy is not just the orchestration of tactical actions themselves (the use of force), but also the construction of an interpretive structure, the strategic narrative, which gives meaning to those actions.

One could well argue that a campaign such as the Indonesian Confrontation would be impossible for Britain today, in a far more open and complex information environment. That would probably be correct. (Of course there is an argument that if a conflict, or more typically, a behaviour within a conflict, is successfully kept secret it is not known about, which creates a circular argument. The extent to which covert operations are publicly known about is a separate theme which is not the concern of this book). How then can the strategist today retain the
utility of a pragmatic mindset in a more complex and fragmented political and information environment? This is the subject of the next two chapters, which look at strategic narrative: the tool which seeks to achieve cognitive coherence between an operational approach and its political context.

The overnight insertion march from the helicopter drop-off point to the village of Lam in January 2008 was possibly the coldest night of the tour, with temperatures well below zero. There had been an insurgent meeting in this remote village the day before, but we had just missed them. In the event we spoke to the villagers, who spent most of the day crouched outside their mud houses to absorb heat from the sun. There was no water in the village, as the river was dry in winter; it had to be collected from a well a few miles away. These villagers truly had virtually nothing. Their concern was simply to survive the winter. In that context, wider political issues had little traction with them. Whether insurgents used the village as a transit point between Helmand and Kandahar Provinces was not their problem. In such circumstances our narrative, and indeed the insurgent narrative, held little of interest for them. Any strategic narrative, to be persuasive, must have emotional as well as rational purchase on an audience. This chapter considers the construction of strategic narrative in contemporary conflict; but first we must define its function.

‘Strategic narrative' is a contemporary term, but is a formalisation of a concept that has been present in all conflicts. Strategic narrative is the explanation of actions. It can usually be detected chronologically before conflict starts, in some form, as the explanation for participation in, or initiation of, the conflict; strategic narrative also operates as the explanation of actions during and after conflict.

Figure 13: Gurkha patrol through snow in the village of Lam, North Kandahar Province, January 2008.

Strategy seeks to relate actions to policy. A policy outcome is ultimately an impression upon an audience. It can be a physical impression, which in war would typically be defined in terms of death and destruction. It can simultaneously be a psychological impression, typically defined in terms of an evolution in political alignment, not necessarily by consent. For strategy to connect actions to policy it must therefore invest them with a given meaning in relation to its audiences, both prospectively and retrospectively.

Policy starts as an abstract idea, because by logic it has not been achieved yet; policy finishes as a set of accomplished facts, the policy end-state, which in many cases may not meet the original intent, and may not represent a clear end point, as policy in a conflict merges into post-conflict policy. In this sense strategic narrative accompanies policy throughout the lifetime of the conflict (before, during and beyond the period of actual fighting): it explains policy in the context of the proposed set of actions in the abstract, and then explains those actions, having been executed, in terms of how they relate back to policy.

Strategic narrative can be found in various forms which differ in accordance with the rhetorical context. The way the British Prime Minister justifies participation in Afghanistan to the British public differs in style and content from the narrative he might give to international audiences. A British soldier would explain the actions of his patrol to an Afghan audience differently depending a number of factors. Is he speaking to an individual or a group? Is the audience already familiar to him? If so, what is the nature of the existing relationship? What is the socio-political background of the audience? What are the operational circumstances of the discussion? The list goes on. Strategic narrative effectively proposes to its audience a structure through which to interpret actions. In another, intrinsically related, sense it is the expression of policy aims in narrative form. The last chapter, for example, set out how, by adjusting the strategic narrative of Britain's involvement in the Borneo Confrontation from a colonial to a Cold War context, the United States administration was persuaded to understand, or tolerate, Britain's actions in that conflict in a different way.

Strategic narrative should be adjusted to the audience. An Afghan peasant, for instance, is not particularly interested in who has power in Kabul; what the coalition and Afghan government are doing locally is far more important. Conversely, a provincial governor might be more concerned by national politics than the local situation in his province. For strategic narrative to vary is normal, in the same way that a salesperson pitches a product differently to resonate with a particular customer. The problem comes when a product is pitched so differently to different customers that it loses credibility because the versions are inconsistent. This is the challenge for strategic narrative today: the strategist has to consider how a narrative can gain purchase on audiences whose political persuasions vary widely, without coming apart. The model at
Figure 14
illustrates an ideal form in which each narrative is ‘nested' within a wider narrative, and is thus consistent.

General Stanley McChrystal stated in 2009 that counter-insurgency ‘is about having a consistent conversation with the Afghan people'. In the context of national level strategic narrative, Captain Wayne Porter of the US navy and Colonel Mark Mykleby of the US marines have argued that the US needs to close the ‘say-do gap': a convincing narrative means consistency in words and actions across the globe.
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David
Kilcullen has argued that it is important to ‘exploit a single narrative' in his ‘28 Articles, Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency':

Figure 14: Idealised strategic narrative model (based on a fictional context): each narrative is nested.

Since counter-insurgency is a competition to mobilise popular support, it pays to know how people are mobilised. In most societies there are opinion-makers … who set trends and influence public perceptions. This influence … including the pernicious influence of the insurgents—often takes the form of a ‘single narrative': a simple, unifying, easily expressed story or explanation that organises people's experience and provides a framework for understanding events… To undercut their influence you must exploit an alternative narrative: or better yet, tap into an existing narrative that excludes the insurgents.
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This narrative should be realised in a coherent set of actions which give it expression.
Figure 15
illustrates how strategic narrative binds together the various lines of operation in Afghanistan.

The diagram draws out how strategic narrative is not just concerned with audiences exterior to one's side, or coalition. One of its key functions is to achieve unity of effort, ideally to give coherent expression to that side's ‘will', as Carl von Clausewitz would put it. In a 2010 lecture on the UK government's counter-terrorist strategy (named the ‘Contest' strategy) Charles Farr, the head of its implementation at the Home Office, stated that: ‘people work on Contest in High Commissions and Embassies around the world, in Departments in London, in local authorities, and in policing units up and down this country, they talk about the strategy and they refer to it'.
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The first part of this quotation exemplifies how strategic narrative is essential to overcome potentially fragmented and geographically disparate institutional boundaries on issues that require a cross-government approach. The second part speaks to the importance that a strategy have purchase on those whom it seeks to direct. This may be common sense, but effective, unifying, strategic narratives that are alive in the minds of their protagonists, are less common than distant, bulky tomes that few people one one's side have actually read, and fewer still are inspired by. Third, this aspect of strategic narrative points to the fact that to draw a sharp distinction between strategy and strategic narrative is misguided: as the explanation of actions, strategic narrative is simply strategy expressed in narrative form.

Figure 15: On the vertical axis are the various levels at which ISAF operates in Afghanistan. On the horizontal axis are Lines of Operation (LOOs). In this case the LOOs are drawn from the ISAF Regional Commander for Southern Afghanistan's priorities at the start of the summer of 2010. The actual substance of the horizontal and vertical axes is only used as an illustration; levels of operation and LOOs can be adjusted in number and substance as required. The boxes to the side show the types of action that are conducted at each level to support each LOO. Only two LOOs are expanded upon here for simplicity, and there would in reality be far more in each of the boxes. However, what this diagram illustrates is that lines of operation have to provide mutual support for one another, and activity at each level needs to be consistent with that above and below it. Strategic narrative plays a vital role in ensuring this coherence between actions, in the sense that it explains to people what is being done, so that people understand those actions in the manner intended by strategy. This includes achieving unity of effort among one's side, as well as explaining actions to other audiences. (ANSF, top right, signifies Afghan National Security Forces.)
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