Following up on an issue I mentioned last month, Rafsanjani was named chairman of Iran’s Assembly of Experts.

From Stratfor:

Summits organized by academics and crisis management experts will inevitably carry a deep flaw: There is no enforcing mechanism for any of the agreements they come up with.

And since the situations where crisis management experts are needed are ones where the parties involved do not trust one another, the viability of any agreements will depend upon how enforceable they are… which brings us to the question of the use of force and coercion.

Yesterday’s WaPo:

The U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has suggested he will recommend a cut in U.S. troop numbers around March when he delivers long-awaited testimony to Congress next week.

Any sovereign state - that is, any community which wishes to maintain an capacity for independent political action - may have to use or indicate its capacity and readiness to use force - functional purposive violence - to protect itself against coercion by other states. Given the State system, peace is possible only when there is freedom from all fear of coercion; and in the absence of any supranational authority enforcing a universal rule of law, such freedom from fear still depends at least partly on independent or collective military capability. Such is the conventional wisdom which will continue to rule mankind…

Michael Howard, The Causes of Wars, p 85.

During the latter part of the nineteenth century, the superiority of European weapons turned what had previously been a marginal technological advantage over indigenous forces… into a crushing military ascendancy, which made it possible for European forces to establish a new imperial dominance throughout the world over cultures incapable of responding in kind. …Military planners have been terrified of being caught without the contemporary equivalent of the Maxim gun from that day to this.

Ibid, p 103.

For in [China in the 1940s and Vietnam in the 1960s], more perhaps than in any previous conflicts, war really was the continuation of political activity with an admixture of other means; and that political activity was itself the result of a huge social upheaval throughout the former colonial world which had been given an irresistible impetus by the events of the Second World War. Of the four dimensions of strategy, the social was here incomparably the most significant; and it was the perception of this that gave the work of Mao Tse-tung and his followers its abiding historical importance.

Ibid, p 108.

When [operational] techniques failed to produce victory, military leaders, both French and American, complained, as had the German military leaders in 1918, that the war had been ‘won’ militarily but ‘lost’ politically - as if these dimensions were not totally interdependent.

Ibid.

…in the conflicts of decolonization which culminated in Vietnam, operational and technological factors were subordinate to the socio-political struggle. If that was not conducted with skill and based on a realistic analysis of the societal situation, no amount of operational expertise, logistical back-up or technical know-how could possibly help.

Ibid, p 109.

…new weapons systems hold out the possibility that operational skills will once more be enabled, as they were 1940-1, to achieve decisive results, either positive in the attack or negative in the defense. But whether these initial operaitonal decisions are then accepted as definitive by the societies concerned will depend, as they did in 1940-1 and all previous wars, on the other two elements in Clausewitz’s trinity: the importance of the political objective, and the readiness of the belligerent communities to endure the sacrifices involved in prolonging the war.

Ibid, p 113.
[Same analysis could apply to initial operational successes in OEF and OIF.]

Another Milan Vego article, this one on operational deception in the information age.

Deception is as old as warfare. It can magnify strength for both attackers and defenders. It is among the least expensive military activities in terms of forces and assets. Yet for all its proven value, it generates little enthusiasm in the U.S. military. No operational deception plan was prepared for the Kosovo conflict of 1999, nor has one been evident for operations in Afghanistan. A popular view in today’s information era is that deception is outdated: a stronger force need not deceive an enemy to win while a weaker party cannot deceive a sophisticated enemy that has information superiority. Yet new information technologies offer both sides more, not fewer, opportunities for deception.

Again, we see the assumption of dominant knowledge leading to flawed conclusions.

[Deception] can overload collection and analytical capabilities or block information, thus denying an accurate and timely picture of the operational or strategic situation. Deception can introduce noise into the collection and analysis of intelligence and weaken the clarity of signals.

Greater digital connectivity can actually give an enemy more opportunities for deception, as already overloaded analysts are forced to sift through intentionally misleading data.

Not sure I agree with Vego’s argument that the goal of deception necessarily needs to be causing enemy decisionmakers to reach specific (false) conclusions. Rather, creating confusion could be adequate, depending upon the larger strategic context. Using deception to place an adversary in an environment of threatening ambiguity might be entirely sufficient for operational goals.

The larger the objective, the more diverse and complex the methods used. In tactical deception, ruses or feints could be sufficient, while on the operational level, both military and non-military measures may be needed. Methods range from spreading rumors and feeding false information to combat actions. On the highest level, diplomatic, political, economic, and informational instruments of national power are used to achieve strategic deception. Information plants and controlled enemy agents are often employed. Ruses, feints, demonstrations, and displays can tie down enemy forces in certain areas to ease resistance in the main sector.

Neal Stephenson junkie that I am, my first thought was of Detachment 2702.

On a subject that Adam brought up recently,

Another method is conventional attack against an information system such as computer network server farms or telephone switching facilities. The array of targets is enormous, and the more an enemy relies on information technology the greater its vulnerability. Hence the weaker side can also plan and execute deception because sophisticated technology is inherently vulnerable to even the most basic camouflage and concealment. Simple deceptions can be effective against some types of information attack while more advanced methods are needed to counter sophisticated efforts…
Technology, no matter how sophisticated and available, cannot erase the need for wider awareness of the usefulness of deception on all levels of military activity.