Originally published at the Huffington Post: Critics of Obama’s war strategy seem to want him to fight a new kind of war with old weapons.

As I described last time, they judge success and failure by traditional measures — in particular, by who controls how much ground.

But in a new kind of war — counterinsurgency — such measures don’t always apply, at least not in the same way.

Think about all the anxiety over how much territory ISIS currently holds, and the calls for U.S. “boots on the ground.”

Yes, boots on the ground might very well win territory faster. But in counterinsurgency, territory is just one dimension among many, and the others can matter more. When and how you control territory can be as important as whether you control it at all.

U.S. war planners learned this lesson, at great cost, in Vietnam. They had to learn it all over again after the invasion of Iraq.

In both cases, they tried to control territory that turned out to be quicksand.

That was because while ground may have been won, the political and social environments were not. In both cases we were fighting on behalf of governments that didn’t have the support of big segments of their country’s populations — they were illegitimate. And so there was no foundation on which to build a lasting victory. Instead, there was “quagmire.”

The result of this painful learning was the emergence of a new doctrine of counterinsurgency, based on American experiences as well as those of colonial powers. The doctrine was established by the U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, published in 2006 (and since updated). It was put into practice in the strategic turnaround known as the Iraq Surge.

The Field Manual recognizes that in fighting an insurgency, strategy can’t just be “enemy-centric,” as it was in the past. It must also be “population-centric:” it must address and fix the social factors that give rise to the insurgency in the first place.

From the Manual:

Western militaries too often… falsely believe that armies trained to win large conventional wars are automatically prepared to win small, conventional ones. In fact, some capabilities required for conventional success — for example, the ability to execute operational maneuver and employ massive firepower — may be of limited utility or even counter-productive in COIN [counterinsurgency] operations. Nonetheless, conventional forces beginning COIN operations often try to use these capabilities to defeat insurgents; they almost always fail. [Counterinsurgency Field Manual, 2006 edition, Introduction, page ii.]

This sounds a lot like the kind of plan for which Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, for example, keep beating the drum.

Instead, says the Manual:

…success in the form of a durable peace requires restoring legitimacy, which, in turn, requires the use of all instruments of national power. A COIN effort cannot achieve lasting success without the HN [host nation] government achieving legitimacy. [ibid, page 39.]

This population-centric approach was behind the Sunni Awakening in Iraq, which provided critical social support for the military surge.

You can see population-centric thinking at work in what President Obama is doing now:

• Insisting that the Iraqi government become more legitimate, in the eyes of both civilians and soldiers
• Pushing Iraq to defend itself as much as possible with its own forces
• Forming an alliance of Sunni Arab states against the Sunni extremists of ISIS.

But the adoption of population-centric strategy doesn’t mean the enemy-centric kind has been discarded (though some feel the U.S. military initially swung too far in that direction). Sometimes you just have to take out the bad guys, the people who will never stop attacking you, no matter how much social good you do.

And we’ve seen that happening, too, first in the killings of Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama Bin Laden, and now in the air strikes on ISIS. There’s something new about these enemy-centric actions, too, though: they aren’t massive, conventional attacks. Instead, they’re targeted, both for their direct effect and to avoid harming and alienating the larger population.

Critics, judging by the old-war measure of success, complain that the air strikes aren’t winning enough territory. I doubt if that’s the point, at least for now. The strikes appear to be aimed at ISIS’ leadership, its infrastructure and its sources of financial support: the oil installations that had been yielding millions of dollars per day.

In addition to his immediate strategy of employing both population- and enemy-centric approaches, Obama has a third element in play, one that works at a larger scale and over a longer time span: energy policy. The main reason we’ve been tangled up for so long with so many illegitimate regimes is, of course, our dependence on their oil. From day one of his administration, reducing that dependence has been one of Obama’s highest priorities. He’s pursuing it, with more success than is often reported, through alternative energy, domestic oil and gas drilling, and conservation — his “all of the above” strategy.

The president isn’t doing this just because he wants to help the environment, although of course that’s part of it. A smarter energy policy also leads towards greater national security, through ending the oil-fueled foreign policy distortions that help spawn the insurgencies we keep having to fight.

Naturally, reasonable people can debate elements of Obama’s strategy — neither fracking nor drones, for example, are uncontroversial — or with the strategy as a whole — nothing, after all, is certain.

But the debate over both the strategy and its elements would be more useful if more people understood their meaning: a new way of fighting a new kind of war.

Critics who call for simplistic solutions like “getting tough” — some go so far as to recommend imitating Vladimir Putin, of all people — are trying to re-fight the wars of the past.

Originally published at the Huffington Post: President Obama has faced a lot of criticism lately for not being “tough enough” on ISIS. Most of it seems to boil down to this: Why won’t he do what we always do?

• Why didn’t he leave (unwanted) forces in Iraq?
• Why didn’t he arm the Syrian rebels?
• Why isn’t he putting boots on the ground?

In other words: Why won’t he double down on the failed strategies of the past?

To be fair, some of the attacks carry more weight than the rest. For example, complaints from military leaders that they aren’t being given enough freedom to get the job done. They may well be right — and I expect they know more about the subject than I do (odd as it may be to hear that from a pundit).

But what if military victory — at least as traditionally defined — is not the primary objective? What if, instead, the goal is to escape the seemingly endless need for military victories — each one ending up so transient and inconclusive?

After all, we’ve been stuck in an entropic cycle of such “victories” (and some defeats) for decades, each one leading to the need for more. To a large extent, it’s been a cycle of support, accommodation and intervention on behalf of governments that can’t, or won’t, take care of their own people. We beat back a threat, and sow the seeds of three new ones.

People who complain that Obama’s foreign policy has no theme might look no further than this: just like he’s always said, it’s time for a change.

• Maybe he could have strong-armed the Iraqi government into accepting an ongoing US military presence. And when would that presence stop being needed?
• Maybe he could have stuck by his “red-line” comment armed the Syrian rebels (because, apparently, not changing your mind has a mystical power that outweighs all others). That would have required arming only the moderates we could trust among a hellacious tangle of those we couldn’t. How well has that worked in the past?
• And yes, maybe he could put boots back on the ground now, and that might lead to the earlier destruction of ISIS. But what then? Long-term occupation, presumably: using military might to keep a lid on a powder keg.

What if, instead, Obama’s objective is to protect the United States from any direct threats, while helping and pushing other countries to protect themselves?

Beginning with the hard work of establishing the only solid foundation of security: legitimacy.

If that were Obama’s goal, the right response to terror might look a lot like what the one we’ve been seeing. In his six years in office, Obama has managed to cripple Al Qaeda, even while he’s been withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan. Before attacking ISIS in Iraq, he arranged for a new, more representative Iraqi government. He formed an alliance that for the first time includes Arab states. And the attacks he’s leading are focused on degrading ISIS’ leadership, infrastructure and financing more than seizing control of ground.

It’s almost as if winning and occupying physical territory might not be the only choice for fighting the new, stateless threat of terrorism.

It’s almost as if change actually means change.

Originally published at the Huffington Post: Back in 2005, Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat made a persuasive argument that the globe was coming together on a level playing field, thanks to the equalizing forces of technology and peaceful economic competition.

But nearly 10 years later, it looks instead like the world is falling part. Among the most disturbing signs:

• Vicious gang violence afflicting cities and towns across the U.S.
• Mass killings happening roughly every two weeks in this country
• A new terrorist threat that some experts say is worse than al Qaeda
• Russia abandoning the 21st Century and expanding its borders by force.

Each of these phenomena is frequently described as “senseless.” And yet here they are.

What’s going on?

Here’s one possible explanation: While for some the world may indeed be flat, for many others it’s hollow.

Think about how you succeed in the flat world. If you’re highly educated, technologically adept and culturally flexible, you can do very, very well. You have a place in history’s richest global economy. You’re a candidate for the 1 percent.

But if you aren’t those things? You’re being left out and left behind.

For many, this means relative poverty. But what may be even worse, for some, are the alienation, humiliation and meaninglessness that come with it.

In the flat world, many people feel homeless.

That feeling may help explain otherwise senseless behavior.

From the outside — and from above — joining a gang looks insane. You’ll likely make less than minimum wage to shoot people who are a lot like you, and you end up in prison or dead. But to young recruits, a gang doesn’t look crazy at all — it looks like family. In a gang (they’re led to believe), they’ll belong, they’ll be respected, and their life will have meaning.

One of the best books I’ve read this year — and a must-read for anyone who wants to understand gang violence — is reporter Julia Reynolds’ Blood In The Fields: Ten Years Inside California’s Nuestra Familia Gang (disclosure: I know Julia Reynolds through my work on reducing gang violence in and around Salinas, California). As Reynolds recounts, while the true business of Nuestra Familia is selling drugs, what draws and binds its Norteño street soldiers is the myth of The Cause, a highly distorted version of the nonviolent United Farm Workers movement:

Mando [a gang recruit] learned that while the Norteños’ war was going on in the prisons, all that Cesar Chavez stuff was going on in the fields. The northern inmates adopted Chavez’ symbol — the Aztec-style huelga eagle — because Chavez was taking a stand… Chavez’ beliefs were pretty much the same, Mando decided. If you looked at history, Chavez wanted equality. He wanted respect [my emphasis]. It was just a different situation. [Page 62, hardcover edition.]

Although the disturbed loners who commit mass shootings look different from gang bangers, the two groups’ apparently insane behaviors have similar roots. As Ari N. Schulman wrote last November in the Wall Street Journal, mass killers are seldom mentally ill:

Instead, massacre killers are typically marked by what are considered personality disorders: grandiosity, resentment, self-righteousness, a sense of entitlement. They become, says [State University of New York director of forensic psychiatry Dr. James V.] Knoll, ” ‘collectors of injustice’ who nurture their wounded narcissism.” To preserve their egos, they exaggerate past humiliations and externalize their anger, blaming others for their frustrations. They develop violent fantasies of heroic revenge against an uncaring world [my emphasis].

Compare this to what draws young men to ISIS, aka ISIL or the Islamic State. An unnamed diplomat cited Sunday by Fareed Zakaria puts it succinctly:

The most dangerous aspect of the Islamic State, this diplomat believes, is its ideological appeal. It has recruited marginalized, disaffected Sunni youths [my emphasis] in Syria and Iraq who believe they are being ruled by apostate regimes. This appeal to Sunni pride has worked largely because of the sectarian policies of the Baghdad and Damascus governments. But the Islamic State has also grown because of the larger collapse of moderate, secular and even Islamist institutions and groups — such as the Muslim Brotherhood — throughout the Middle East.

In other words, however deluded all these people may be in devoting themselves to murder and suicide, what’s driving them is the desire for belonging, respect and meaning.

What’s the connection with Russia’s invasions of Crimea and Ukraine? The immediate cause of this aggression is the bad luck that Vladimir Putin is in charge. But how do we explain Putin’s popularity at home, which has recently topped 80%? State control of Russian media certainly plays a part. But the fuel for Putin and his media is nationalism, which grants belonging, respect and meaning to citizens.

For the cosmopolitans who are succeeding in the flat world, nationalism can seem almost quaint, a fading background to the global pursuit of rational self-interest. (Friedman described it as the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention.)

But for those who are failing, as Russia has been for a long time, nationalism can feel like all they have. Others turn to a gang, revenge, or a twisted form of Islam.

None of this, of course, remotely excuses invasions, gang violence, massacres or terrorism.

But it may be a warning that we can’t just flatten the world.

We also have to find ways to fill it up.