There are growing fears that Southeast Asia is rapidly emerging as a new beachhead for the extremism of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Particular attention has focused on Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state. Scores of nationals—possibly more than 500—are believed to have traveled to participate in the group’s struggle in the Middle East, many of who were apparently recruited from prisons where a strong sense of jihadist solidarity has been allowed to develop among inmates. Several Islamist entities have also openly campaigned for ISIL, organising mass rallies across the country that have since seen well over 2,000 people express support for the movement and its cause.

Although Indonesia may be at the forefront of current concern, the problem certainly isn’t confined to this state alone. Between 30 and 150 Malaysians are thought to have volunteered to fight for ISIL in Syria and Iraq, many of who have returned home exhorting the virtues of domestic militancy. Several planned attacks linked to those volunteers have already been pre-empted, some of which have disturbingly involved individuals who have subsequently been linked to the official state apparatus. And in the Philippines there are strong indications that ISIL elements have sought to recruit followers from universities in Mindanao, while at least two rebel organisations have pledged oaths of allegiance to the movement: the Abu Sayyaf Group and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.

On a wider level, there are concerns that veterans from ISIL’s campaigns in the Middle East could work to rekindle the type of cross-border Southeast Asian terrorism that previously occurred with Jemaah Islamiyah. It’s known that Indonesians and Malaysians have worked together in the Middle East and in August 2014 came together under the ISIL banner to form the Katibah Nusantara Lid Daulah Islamiyah—a special Malay-speaking unit of roughly 100 men. An entity of that sort could certainly be leveraged as the vanguard of a transnational fighting force that spearheads attacks not just nationally but also more broadly throughout the region.

ISIL’s spreading influence in Southeast Asia has led to the introduction of a suite of domestic counter-measures aimed at blunting the group’s operational activities and limiting the space in which it can pursue its logistical and operational activities. Although those moves are to be welcomed, problems remain. In Indonesia, for instance, prisons continue to act as a major hub for ISIL recruitment and little if anything has been done to outlaw support for the group’s radical ideology. Equally in Malaysia the introduction of draconian national security legislation has sparked protest from civil libertarians and the Bar Association who assert that it threatens basic rights, is an unnecessary departure from due process and is open to abuse for silencing bona fide critics of the government.

More generally, efforts to debunk the ISIL propaganda machine remain underdeveloped, especially in terms of generating an effective counter-narrative that credibly resonates with a target demographic. In addition, region-wide counter-terrorist strategies have yet to take on a forceful stance as they continue to be held hostage to the prevailing ASEAN norms of unanimity in decision-making and non-interference in internal affairs.

In looking to the future, a number of recommendations can be made. Nationally, three priorities stand out. First, governments must strive to ensure any measures they introduce are proportional, transparent and accountable. Second, moves to extend mitigation efforts to radical, but non-violent Islamists should be carefully weighed against their potential to ingrain a perception of general repression. Third, the counter-terrorist mission should always remain under the overall ambit of the police, as at root the challenge posed by sub-state extremism is a law enforcement issue.

Regionally, greater emphasis needs to be given to formalising genuine counter-terrorist cooperation. That’s an obvious area for collaboration that could give real meaning to ASEAN’s emergent Political and Security Community.

Australia, which has also witnessed a worrying trend of ISIL-inspired domestic radicalisation, is well placed to support those efforts, both on a bilateral basis as well as within multilateral forums such as the meetings of the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting Plus. However if Canberra is to credibly advance the importance of balanced and limited counter-terrorist strategies, it’s essential that its policies are consistent with this missive. To that end, the current administration of Malcolm Turnbull would be wise to address lingering questions that have been raised over the country’s own emergent response to ISIL, not least be ensuring any introduced measures are subjected to adequate control and justified through vibrant and transparent political debate.

I was recently asked to give a lecture at ANU about the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). For those born after 1990—of which I encounter a distressingly large number in my professional life these days—RMA was the buzz-phrase du jour for military types entranced by the clinical performance of American forces and technology of the Gulf War in 1991. Predating the popularisation of ‘shock and awe‘ by over a decade, the application of advanced sensors, stealth and precision weapons including cruise missiles seemingly heralded a new wave of warfare in which strategic aims could be easily achieved through technology, and with remarkably few losses. (On the winning side at least—the other guys didn’t fare so well.)

So striking was the coalition victory at the time, that embarrassing failures like the ‘great Scud hunt‘ barely registered. And since there was no full-scale invasion of Iraq, the profound difficulties of counterinsurgency, even for RMA-enabled forces, didn’t spoil the celebration. It was difficult for the few hardy souls swimming against the tide to get a hearing. Israeli scholar Martin van Creveld managed to publish a major book arguing that high-tech state on state war was so yesterday about the same time that Iraq was running up the white flag in 1991:

We are entering an era … of warfare between ethnic and religious groups. Even as familiar forms of armed conflict are sinking into the dustbin of the past, radically new ones are raising their heads … Already today the military power fielded by the principal developed societies in both “West” and “East” is … more illusion than substance.

Van Creveld’s timing might have been poor, but his message was eerily prescient viewed from 2015. His prediction of the coming of low-tech adversaries who aren’t state-based, but instead spring from tribal and religious groups was spot on. I well recall him speaking to a packed audience of ADF capability developers back in the mid-1990s. They were falling over themselves to sign up for the RMA, especially Air Force—always the first in line for new technology. As a budding professional contrarian, I was learning at the feet of the master when he flicked through a few ‘ooh-ah’ slides of precision guided weapons and other sophisticated weaponry before dismissing it contemptuously  as ‘high-tech junk’.

As we now know, the past 20 years has been as much van Creveld as RMA. ‘High tech junk’ carried the first phase of the second war against Iraq, but it proved remarkably ineffective in the later insurgency phases, which are arguably still running today. In fact, you don’t hear RMA mentioned much anymore. Partly that’s because fashions change and new buzzwords take over—anyone for network centric warfare?—but partly because it never was what it seemed at the time.

The largely futile hunt for Scuds in the deserts of Iraq in 1991 actually better represented the long-term trends in warfare than did the hideous tactical error of Iraqi forces in concentrating their forces and digging into well-defined positions. That just made them a perfect showcase for the effectiveness of superior ISR in finding them and precision firepower in destroying them. As I’ve written here in the past, the trend in warfare over centuries has been towards an ever more rapid deployment of ever more accurate and lethal weaponry. The RMA was simply ‘more of the same’ in those trends. The result has been an ever greater dispersion of forces in order to limit exposure to the new technologies, resulting in lower daily casualty rates.

When operating against technically sophisticated adversaries, irregular forces take that advice to heart, melting away into the jungle, mountains or the civilian population. Ambushes and raids by small groups who choose the time and place of engagements are the order of the day. Even groups such as ISIL who aim to seize and hold territory can minimise their exposure to coalition air strikes by staying close to civilian centres. They’ve also modified their combat tactics to be less obvious targets when manoeuvring in battle.

The response to these tactics can’t be even more investment in ‘silver bullet’ platforms, doubling down on ‘high-tech junk’. The answer to a foe that’s highly dispersed and adaptable isn’t ‘shock and awe’, it’s ‘here and now’—the ability to be there to act decisively when they fleetingly show themselves. If you look at the platforms that have been most effective in the Afghanistan and Iraq–Syria theatres, you’d conclude that the persistence and ability to hit a target with adequate (rather than awesome) force that a Reaper drone brings with it is preferable to the greater firepower but ephemeral presence of a $100 million fast jet. Both use the ISR and precision weapons of RMA, but one does it far more efficiently.

Of course, that’s only one facet of modern warfare. The danger of state-on-state confrontation hasn’t gone away, and there are different challenges to face in that realm. But for reasons I’ll explain in my next post, some of the answers might have more in common with the prosecution of irregular warfare than you’d first think.

Welcome back for 2015! Of the news items and commentary surrounding this week’s Charlie Hebdo shooting, consider reading these thoughts by The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch on which is mightier: the pen or the gun.

Turning to Asia Pacific matters, CSIS has a new report ‘Pivot 2.0’ or, as I like to put it, ‘how the Administration and Congress learned to work together and love the rebalance’ in which a number of leading experts share their recommendations for bipartisan action on trade, China, defence and resourcing (for the Mark Thomson fans), Korea, India, and Southeast Asia.

If that isn’t enough pivot talk, Murray Hiebert and Gregory Poling also have a snappy summary here of how the Obama administration can ‘advance the rebalance’ in each ASEAN state. Read more

Below is an extract from ASPI’s publication released today, Strike from the air: the first 100 days of the campaign against ISIL.

It’s apparent that the campaign to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL is going to last for years. Apart from a steady squeezing of ISIL, which has slowed its advance and destroyed quantities of American military equipment, the coalition’s strategy has achieved little. ISIL’s position at the end of 2014 remains strong. Among its strengths is its continuing capacity to develop effective propaganda that helps to recruit foreign fighters. ISIL continues to have a substantial funding base and is well armed. Core areas of territory remain solidly under its control in Syria and Iraq. ISIL’s broader weaknesses include the unattractiveness of its ideology to any but a small minority of potential recruits. The organisation’s shift to more conventional military capability has overextended it and caused it to suffer significant casualties, which mightn’t be sustainable for long.

The US’s position is strengthened by its unparalleled capacity to use air power, which will degrade ISIL over time and prevent it from making easy gains of territory. However, that strength has to be offset against a set of broader problems and challenges for the US. First, it’s clear that President Obama will keep the US military role limited. Washington won’t deploy large-scale ground forces. Second, there’s no credible longer-term strategy to address the Syrian crisis. In effect, Obama has created a holding strategy that contains ISIL in Iraq and hits obvious targets in Syria, and is waiting for a new US President in 2016 to develop a more definitive strategy. Read more

Peter Leahy at the recent launch of his Strategic Insights paper Another century, another long war highlighted, as I have in previous posts, the critical need for a regional political strategy to support operations currently underway against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. The complicating factor, of course, isn’t just what that strategy is, but who should design it and lead its execution.

In discussing the absence of a natural leader in a recent blog post, I rhetorically suggested that the UN Secretary General should step up to the job. But while it’s a central role for the Secretary General, it’s highly unlikely the current incumbent could undertake it.

I also suggested that in the absence of a political strategy there’d be a range of implications for the region that would be increasingly difficult to manage and would continue to undermine the fight against ISIS. Three of those are now unfolding. First is the future place of the Kurds in the region, second Assad’s ongoing position in Syria, and third the continued stress on the political structure of Iraq. Read more