Why Does Lockheed Spend Money on Think Tanks?
Andrew “Abu Muqawama” Exum of the Center for a New American Security was kind enough to come out of blogging retirement to respond to my post — and Matthew Yglesias’ follow-on — about think tanks and their role in selling the Afghanistan surge. Writes Exum: “If he [Yglesias] thinks this blogger — or anyone else advocating the U.S. military take population-centric counterinsurgency more seriously — is in the pocket of the military-industrial complex, he does not understand the acquisitions implications of an institutional move toward COIN, a form of warfare in which expensive weapons platforms like the F-22 have little utility.” It’s worth reading the whole post — and the comments. And as much as I love the image of Exum swimming, Scrooge McDuck-like, in a bath of gold Krugerrands while plotting F-22-centric counterinsurgency, I think he somewhat misses the point. Contractors have an enormous stake in population-centric counterinsurgency: The coalition depends on the private sector for
