Strategic Intelligence and Civil Affairs to Understand Legitimacy and Insurgency Avoiding the Stabilization Trap Diane E. Chido Strategic Intelligence and Civil Affairs to Understand Legitimacy and Insurgency Diane E. Chido Strategic Intelligence and Civil Affairs to Understand Legitimacy and Insurgency Avoiding the Stabilization Trap Diane E. Chido DC Analytics Erie, PA, USA ISBN 978-3-030-20976-6 ISBN 978-3-030-20977-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20977-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. 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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland This book is dedicated to the two most important men in my life, my beloved son, Zachary, and my beloved partner, Matthew. Thank you both for your endless love and support. F oreword I remember when I first arrived in Skopje, Macedonia, in 1994. Just a few blocks from the office building that housed the US mission (there was no embassy, yet) was a shopping district. Macedonia was the poorest of the former Yugoslav Republics and was embargoed from the south by Greece and asked to enforce sanctions to the north against Serbia. Despite all this, in the middle of this shopping district, there were per- haps a dozen kiosks all selling gold. Each did a brisk business. Every day, dozens of people showed up, made their purchases, and left. Indeed, of all the shops in the market, these were among the busiest. This surprised me. Amidst all the poverty, in the middle of a war, with factories shuttered, and enemies to both the north and south, who had the money or the interest to buy gold? As I watched more closely, it became clear what was happening. Customers would bring wads of newly minted Macedonian Denars, well- travelled Deutsche Marks, or even US Dollars and exchange them for just a few links of gold. They weren’t buying jewelry, they were preparing for when this latest experiment in governance failed. Most of the Macedonians alive at that time had lived in three countries without ever changing address. The only economy that worked was the informal one. The only thing that was certain was that someone else was calling the shots—but that they were in the line of fire. How does someone survive, take care of their children, their family, in such a situation? In a word—relationships. In these kinds of environ- ments, you are either part of “us” or part of “them.” If you are “us,” then helping you makes us stronger, more resilient. If you are part of vii viii FOREWORD “them,” however, you are just a tool to be used or an enemy to be thwarted by any means possible. Stability is much less common than those in the developed world would like to admit. In unstable environments, where relationships mat- ter most, what gets done is less important to the local players than who does it. Breaking promises to support me and mine is not only allowed, it is expected. Failure to understand and appreciate the role of relationships in stabil- ity operations has very real costs. In other countries in similar situations, I have seen shops full of reasonably priced goods despite government promises to enforce sanctions or embargoes. I have had local bankers, once I got to know them, tell me that they quite literally made up all the numbers they briefed so convincingly the day before to international investors. I have even had our putative allies sign contracts with their putative enemy, while they were talking to me (unaware that I read and spoke the local language). Diane Chido knows all of this. She has spent decades working, under- standing, travelling, and living in foreign countries. More importantly, she has spent almost as much time studying the cultures, tribes, languages, economies, leaders, and people that make up much of the unstable part of the world. Her observations are informed by both experience and research and are the better for it. Is this to say that this slim volume is the final word on the topic? No. But it is a useful addition to the debate. The dangers of an unstable world are too numerous and dire to ignore. As the pace of technology quickens and threats proliferate, there is no excuse for not challenging conventional wisdom and recasting our mental models of how the world really works. In these two things, this monograph succeeds admirably. Department of Intelligence Studies Kristan J. Wheaton Mercyhurst University Erie, PA, USA P reFace The purpose of this study was to delve into the Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction, particularly the entwined issues of Stable Governance and Social Well-Being as they appear not from the policy- maker perspective, but from that of the population upon whom policies are enacted. This monograph recommends that the US begin to identify opportunities for enhancing legitimacy by supporting some types of alter- native governance it otherwise might view as threats to state authority, failing to recognize that hierarchical, centralized states are not the only effective governing structures. The Army should enhance and redirect its strategic intelligence and Civil Affairs capabilities toward these efforts. Erie, PA Diane E. Chido ix a cknowledgments This research was generously funded and guided by the US Army Peace Keeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI), without which it would not exist. Special thanks go to all my friends and colleagues who took the time to share their expertise and provide comments and enthusi- astic discussions as this work evolved. You have been too generous to be implicated in the final product, thus all errors are mine. Thanks to Colonels Brendan Arcuri, Jay Liddick, Steve Marr, Dan O’Rourke, Ms. Tamara Fitzgerald, Mr. Scott Braderman, and especially Mr. Ryan McCannell, who hated it, so his comments were a big help. Eternal gratitude to Mr. Jim Cooney, who, thanks to his shared interest and expertise in gover- nance, helped me talk (and talk) through it all. Thanks to Ms. Anca Pusca and Ms. Katelyn Zingg for their support and production skills. xi a b bout the ook This book describes the common pitfalls of US military interventions in efforts at stabilization, which supports post-conflict societies by establish- ing stable governance, rule of law, a safe and secure environment, eco- nomic development, and social well-being for all members of the population. These efforts are often unsuccessful and can even cause harm when mission teams do not understand the populations with whom they are interacting and when policymakers, who also lack this knowledge, fail to plan appropriate strategy and missions. The book recommends priori- tizing a relational approach to stabilization with a professional and well- resourced Civil Affairs and strategic intelligence approach to engagements over the current preference for transactional, often lethal operations. xiii