“On behalf of the Stanford Military Service Network, I would like to present a copy of the book, Start Up Nation, to Corporal Dan Panzarella, US Marines, who volunteered to go to Afghanistan as a combat replacement, where he served as a squad leader which was a job higher than his rank. “

“i think that counterinsurgents would make excellent entrepreneurs. this is an idea that i think should form an important subset of this generation’s GI Bill; and it is different from the WWII era (no COIN in that war).”

“good article. one of the original sources on this is Fallows, “What Did You Do in The Class War, Daddy?” Washington Monthly, Oct 1975; and Webb, Fields of Fire, draws a not so thinly veiled character based upon that article, and it is a major theme of that novel. Interestingly, some of those people who crossover from the civilian elite to military service become successful authors (Fick, a graduate of a Jesuit prep, and Dartmouth before writing, One Bullet Away; Gallagher, son of two lawyers… before writing — blogging — Kaboom; Bing West, graduate of a Jesuit prep and Princeton before writing The Village and a bunch of other stuff). Also, it may be that some of those who cross that divide from “civilian elite” to military are also some of the best COIN service-members.”

“and to connect this article to another article you linked to: this is the reason that veterans are at 15% unemployment. if you take the idea from gladwell, outliers, that it takes 10,000 hours to become proficient in a skill, then take the higher complexity of military skills, and of civilian skills, this is why it is very difficult for exiting service-members to transition.”

While there is an enduring civilian-military divide that cannot be healed quickly or completely, there are distinct, small-scale steps that can be taken to heal that divide which will benefit both the military and the civilian spheres in the United States. This essay is about the positive effects of the counterinsurgency as entrepreneurship theme in several specific examples for both the military and the civilian world in the United States.

First, the civilian. The major challenge for the United States as I write this in mid-July, 2010 is economic. Unemployment is at 9.5%, despite several stimulus programs, the last dating back to early 2009 when a new President successfully asked Congress to inject enough money into the economy to prevent another Great Depression. Most of this money was injected in a top-down manner, which the Chairman of the Fed once described as raining money from a helicopter. Yet, the Kauffman Foundation showed in a recent research report that “newly created and young companies are the primary drivers of job creation in the United States.” The best answer to the economic problems that confront the United States is not to pour more money (after bad?) into large companies that are considered “too big to fail.” Rather, for real, new job growth, the country is best served by a wave of entrepreneurial start ups. The question is, where to find entrepreneurs?

While these economic problems were building from 2005 to 2008 — when a crash occurred — another branch of the Federal Government was training and incubating entrepreneurs. The US Department of Defense was adopting counterinsurgency (COIN) in response to the growing Iraq insurgency. COIN requires an intense selection process at the small unit level, such as a Rifle Company of 150 men. The majority of service-members were not suited for COIN, and were shuffled into roles such as Quick Reaction Force. A typical Rifle Company may have created seven teams of 5 to 10 men, known as A-Teams to join together with foreign military units, including Iraqis but also other foreign militaries such as Estonians, to form Joint Security Stations (JSS) where the American service-members were in the minority. A typical A-Team of 7 Americans might join 100 Iraqi Police to control a district with 10,000 Iraqis. The 7 Americans were selected because of their talent at cross-cultural communication, in addition to their normal military skills. My observation is that those particular American service-members who were thus selected for the hardest COIN mission are also extremely well suited to be entrepreneurs. Why? For one, having taking the physical risk of relying on foreigners for their safety in their mid-20s, these particular individuals are probably able to withstand the uncertainty in cash flow, marketing, compliance, and other mental gymnastics that are required in entrepreneurship. For another, with a shrinking world where the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) (and emerging second-tier BRICs, like Indonesia, Turkey, and other) countries are both important end markets, and ahead of the US in innovation, cross-cultural communication will be absolutely required of entrepreneurs. Finally, these Americans should be encouraged to pursue entrepreneurial ventures in what the military calls “unit integrity” — ie, in the teams in which they operated in the JSS locations in Iraq or Afghanistan. Veterans from “Band of Brothers” in World War II to more recent conflicts build up detailed knowledge of how their peers think, and this leads to the ability to operate together in a business environment.

On the civilian side, my policy recommendations are relatively simple to state:
1. Private companies (entrepreneurship think tanks like Kauffmann, finance companies, venture capital firms, clean energy companies, and technology companies) should back COIN veteran entrepreneurs, either in separate entities, or in entrepreneurial divisions of established companies.
2. Government information resources (eg, Department of Defense, or VA data-bases) should be used to data-mine for COIN veterans, especially in unit integrity for such backing
3. New Webb GI Bill resources should be directed towards COIN Veterans to promote entrepreneurship through appropriate academic content (for example, entrepreneurship, accounting, and finance classwork at an MBA or Business program)

Second, the military. On the military side, there are benefits in the most likely operational environment for the coming 10 to 20 years for a robust cross-seeding between civilian entrepreneurship and military COIN. First, a word about the environment that is likely. In an article published in May, 2010, “US Mulls Value of Major Counterinsurgencies,” budgetary constraints were cited in limiting future counterinsurgencies. Andrew Exum, a leading COIN theorist and blogger at CNAS, was quoted as follows, “[COIN] is a good way to get out of a situation gone bad, [but it's not the best way to use combat forces]… I think everyone realizes counterinsurgency is a losing proposition for U.S. combat troops. I can’t imagine anyone would opt for this option.” Going forward, though, there are many places — Somalia, Yemen — where a type of Inkspot COIN (for regular infantry) together with CT (for special operations and intelligence assets) might be the preferred operational profile. For example, in Somalia, the US might respond to a failed state harboring an Al Qaeda organization with CT alone (such as the SEAL raid in recent years), or with 2000 Marines (a Marine Expeditionary Unit) building an Inkspot COIN footprint at Baidoa and/ or Mogadishu from which SOF teams conduct CT. This type of footprint might be the profile which is the long-term model for US involvement in Afghanistan after the July 2011 deadline to reevaluate the mission; as well as for the other failed- or semi-failed-states where Al Qaeda organizations will continue to metastasize.

In the specific geographic locations where American chooses to plant an Inkspot COIN center, it will be very useful to show that the economic benefits of siding with the Americans are disproportionately favorable to the locals who are within the American security umbrella. This might be 20,000 or 30,000 locals in a few districts at the outskirts of a city of 500,000 or 1,000,000. An American infantry company can establish security in a relatively short period — several weeks. To accelerate economic development within the Inkspots, there are probably no better civilian organizations to draw upon than entrepreneurial ventures in the areas of finance, clean energy, and technology. The Economist recently noted that emerging markets finance may be ahead of its Western peers in many respects; that global entrepreneurship is thriving; and that immigrants to America contribute disproportionately to American entrepreneurship. Notably, American small unit leaders often turned to immigrant service-member disproportionately when staffing up the A-Teams to occupy JSS locations because of their cross-cultural skills. When American troops prepared for COIN, they often did ride-alongs with American police, and they were assisted in Iraq by police trainers to develop the appropriate skills in their Iraqi Police counterparts. Similarly, it will be useful for future American infantry soldiers tasked with a COIN mission to have a network of entrepreneurial organizations to draw upon in conducting economic development in future Inkspot COIN locations. A US service-member who separated in 2008 after two tours in Ramadi leading the successful implementation of the Mattis/ Petraeus COIN doctrine might return to society to get his MBA, start a small, growing company that adds positively to American GDP, and in periods of severals weeks in the coming decades assists future Company-grade American non-commissioned officers and officers in implementing the economic aspects of COIN in strategic ink-spots. The former service-member/ entrepreneur might host a Sergeant in his company for 2 weeks, and then fly in to advise the same Sergeant for 2 weeks in a JSS/ Combined Action Platoon (CAP) on the outskirts of Baidoa (in a Somalia Inkspot COIN scenario), supplying economic connectivity through money, information, energy, or other vital business resources.

Personally, I have seen several examples of individuals who cross the so-called divide between “civilian elites” and the military. While the general rule is that there is a troubling divide between these two spheres which is toxic for American society, the exceptions to the rule provide some of the most promising and interesting examples of how America can benefit from a systematic effort to cross the divide on a personal and team level built upon turning former COIN veterans into entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial teams.

First, Owen West. Owen is a former Marine who served as Recon Marine Officer in the mid-1990s, then attended Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) in the late 1990s. By the 2000s, he was a successful trader at Goldman Sachs, and a family man. Yet, he left his lucrative job to serve two tours as a Marine in Iraq, including one as an advisor during a volatile and dangerous period as the Iraq insurgency raged, and before the widespread success of COIN during the Surge. During his advisory tour, Owen used his finance training to organize a small piece of battlefield innovation — a mobile fingerprinting device enabled by the rapid supply of appropriate technology from a fellow Stanford GSB graduate, Jim Hake, who had founded an organization, Spirit of America, after a successful entrepreneurial career of his own. The device aided West’s team in census tasks which deterred insurgents in his area, an episode which is recounted in Bing West’s books on the Iraq War.

Second, Jim Hake. Hake founded Spirit of America (SoA) after a successful business career. SoA as a private organization was perhaps able to make up for in speed what it lacked in bulk in comparison with government agencies. Reacting quickly to a national need that he perceived in the aftermath of the first months after 9-11, SoA supplied US Service-members with donated resources like school books, soccer balls, radios, or the technology to implement the finger-printing device that Owen West used during his advisory tour. (Having known West from college and graduate school, I put West in touch with SoA, when Owen was sending around emails in preparation for his advisory tour.) SoA is a non-profit that is run with the transparency and accountability that Hake learned in his business career and through his MBA program.

Third, Luke Larson. Larson served two combat tours in Ramadi, Iraq from 2005 to 2007, which spanned the period when COIN was widely implemented through the so-called Petraeus doctrine. He saw both the frustrations of attempting to fight and insurgency with traditional fire-and-maneuver operations such as a city-wide sweep in October 2005 during which he saw fellow Marines wounded for poor reasons, and he saw the successful implementation of COIN in 2007 when his Rifle Company (he was 2nd in command as executive officer during his second tour) broke down into 7 A-Teams located in 7 dispersed JSS locations where the teams of less than 10 Marines relied on the 100 Iraqi Police at their location for their ultimate protection. What Larson experienced in his Rifle Company is the micro version of what hundreds of thousands of American infantrymen experienced in their own COIN experience. Larson wrote about this in a historical novel, Senator’s Son; similarly, Matt Gallagher wrote about this COIN experience in a memoir, Kaboom, which grew out of a blog.

Larson’s novel and Gallagher’s memoir can be compared to two Vietnam era works — Jim Webb’s Fields of Fire, and Bing West’s The Village. Senator’s Son begins with a fire-and-maneuver sweep through an insurgent held area, just as Webb’s novel ends with a similar operation. But, in the An Hoa basin of 1969 where Webb’s real-life Delta Company, 1/5 operated, COIN techniques like CAP were a minority of operations that had been tried on a limited basis only and rejected by top level Vietnam War commanders, as John Nagl recounts in his book, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. Larson’s novel can be compared to Webb’s novel because both authors drive home a moral lesson: veterans are best equipped by their experience to make the call about when to commit Americans to a COIN war. But, whereas Webb’s novel ends with a fire-and-maneuver operation that illustrates the failure to implement COIN, Larson’s novel ends with the successful transition from fire-and-maneuver operations to successful COIN.

Gallagher’s memoir of 2008-09 COIN at the outskirts of Baghdad is comparable to Bing West’s memoir of 1966 COIN in a South Vietnamese village. But, again, as Nagl’s study points out, COIN techniques were not widely adopted in Vietnam through a failure of the US Military as a “learning organization.” Perhaps this is why West gave Gallagher’s work such a compelling review. By the time that Gallagher’s armored recon platoon, and later his company, operated in their zones North of Baghdad, Nagl and West’s books had contributed to the US Military becoming a “learning organization” that successfully adopted COIN in time to prevent another period of post-Vietnam doctrinal wandering which Nagl warns about.

I succeeded in connecting Larson with a local Stanford GSB and Stanford alumni chapter, where he will speak about his novel and Iraq COIN experience in late July 2010. Larson — who is now getting his MBA at Thunderbird, and who has been accepted by Oxford for another MBA — will speak at an event billed as “A Unique Form of Entrepreneurship – A Marine’s Lessons from Iraq” by the local Stanford GSB club president. Further, the local Stanford GSB chapter president wrote in the copy for the event: “Come listen to Luke Larson’s perspective on Operation Iraqi Freedom and the counter insurgency techniques that the Marines used in the most decisive event in the turnaround of the Iraq war: the Sunni Awakening. Larson was awarded the Bronze Star with V for valor on his first tour…. Now pursuing a MBA at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, he has translated his unique entrepreneurial training on the ground in Iraq to a counterinsurgency doctrine that has soldiers acting as stakeholders rather than warriors.” Also in attendance at the event will be another of Larson’s fellow Marines, Mauro Mujica-Parodi III, who served in the same two combat tours with Larson, and who is now getting an MBA from Kellogg.

Larson and Mujica-Parodi are examples of the former COIN service-members that I believe should be given special assistance by American private organizations, with informational (but not financial) support from the US Government in forming entrepreneurial ventures. There are at least 5 to 10 other Marines in their Rifle Company that they would probably take with them into such ventures, including a Sergeant frocked to the rank of Lieutenant because of what KilCullen expresses at “Rank is Nothing; Talent is Everything.” For the 10-20 best COIN Marines in Lima 3/7 as entrepreneurs, there are a similar set of 10 to 20 COIN service-members as future entrepreneurs in the hundreds of Infantry Companies that served in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to present. Decades after the events of 1941-45, Major Winters worked in business with comrades from the Easy Company of “Band of Brother” — yet, World War II saw little, if any, examples of an Infantry Company that transitioned from fire-and-maneuver against another state-sponsored military to sustained COIN. Similarly, veterans of the Iraq and Afghan COIN operations will likely remain comrades for life — but their COIN experience will be directly relevant to entrepreneurship in particular. So too, COIN veterans maintain a connection to their units, just as Gallagher recently expressed in a blog post. As COIN veterans like Larson and Gallagher succeed in their civilian ventures, it will be quite normal for them to contribute to the active duty military units who may be the core of security and economic development in Inkspot COIN operations.

My parents immigrated to America a year before I was born in 1969. My mom, Erika Hartgen Wasito, worked in a commercial bank in Hamburg, Germany, where she met my father who was a radio operator on an Indonesian merchant marine ship. When they arrived in San Francisco, CA, they rented an apartment from my future Godparents, LtCol (Ret) Joe and Nina Robustellini, at 1401 Diamond Street in Noe Valley, a San Francisco neighborhood. My father left when I was four, leaving my mom to raise my sister and me as a single, working mother. We moved across the street to 1424 Diamond. Joe became a de facto father to the Wasito kids, and my German grandparents came over for 6-months at a time.

Joe played baseball with me, played chess, and I read National Geographic and World War II history incessantly. With the support of my Godparents I attended the local Catholic school, Saint Phillips, and then the San Francisco Jesuit College Prep, Saint Ignatius. When we were growing up, my Godparents always took the position that all Americans, regardless of origin, should speak and write English first. I grew up speaking German too, but never really saw the need to become proficient. As a young girl in Hamburg, Germany, my mother had watched Hamburg burn during US Air Force (Army Air Corps at the time) fire bombing; Joe Robustellini, as a young officer, had served in the 8th Air Force in England at the same time (though not as a bomber crew member). But, in the 1970s, as the Wasito kids grew up, my mom, Joe, Nina — and sometimes my German Grandparents — celebrated holidays together.

Joe Robustellini had been a Sergeant in the US Army in 1940, having enlisted in the mid 1930s. He came from Northern California, where he has kin to this day. At the outset of World War II, Joe went to Officer Candidate School, was commissioned, and served in a Heavy Bomb Group near Cambridge, England, during World War II. Joe married Nina during World War II, but they could never have kids due to health issues. Joe retired with 20 years at the rank of LtCol in the mid 1950s. Then he worked another 20 years in a Federal job at Letterman Army Hospital in the Presidio, San Francisco, CA until the mid 1970s. At the age of 65, with a total of 3 government pensions, he went to Accountemps to stay active. Soon, a law firm hired him full time, and he worked almost until his death at the age of 88. On weekends, he would collect aluminum cans decked out in his Army issue utilities from decades ago to fill up the time with something of social and economic worth. But, like all things, he did not just idly collect cans — he did so with a system, and Saturday mornings would find my Godfather and me stomping them into bright, shiny discs, shoveling them into a large container, and taking them to the recycling facility where we collected a few dollars.

Too, he paid for good grades. So, I collected high grades. My sister would end up a so-called Double Domer — Notre Dame and Notre Dame Law. I graduated from Harvard and Stanford Law. Joe Robusellini attended all of those graduations, though my mom and Godmother did not survive until the last diplomas were collected. A picture of Joe Robustellini, my sister, me, Nina Robustellini, and my mom, below:

At Harvard, I studied American History and Literature, with an odd focus: The early Puritans, and the Vietnam War. Inspired maybe by the Jesuits, I was interested in the original ideas of “A City on a Hill” of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which was a joint stock company and a religious endeavor, all rolled into one. But, having studied about the American military in a successful “big war” by going through Joe Robustellini’s collection of World War II histories, I also wanted to study why America lost a more recent war against something called guerillas. For the longest time as a child, I thought news reports referred to American soldiers being killed in the jungle by gorillas. I was curious about why American technological dominance did not result in a win during the Vietnam War. I ended up taking classes on the Vietnam War with Eliot Cohen, as well as foreign relations classes with Sam Huntington. I wrote my thesis at Harvard on James Webb’s novel, Fields of Fire.

Among other sources, Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie and Krulak, First to Fight, pointed the way towards a technique that would work in counterinsurgency (COIN) — the combined action platoon or CAP. Yet, in Vietnam, the CAP program was a small minority of operations. When I asked James Webb in a phone interview what he thought of CAP, he said that such a small outpost would have been run over by a NVA main force unit in the An Hoa Basin where his Marine Company operated in 1969. Years later, I would find these same sources quoted by John Nagl in his influential work, Learning To Eat Soup With A Knife. In the Iraq War, the US Military did in fact adopt COIN techniques like CAP (aka, JSS…) in the Surge of 2007 lead famously by General Petreaus.

After Harvard, I went into the Marines. I went through Marine Platoon Leaders Class (PLC), one version of Marine Officer Candidate School (OCS) that did not give me any money for college, but did not require any drill during the school year. I boxed for four years, after playing a year of football, and participated in the Golden Gloves my senior year. In the Fleet Marine Force, I was a Rifle Platoon Commander, Weapons Platoon Commander, Rifle Company XO, then had some Operations Section assignments at Battalion and Regiment. Without a doubt, the best thing about the experience is the people — the high quality, lifelong friends are the best reward. My co-author on a book project about Lima 3/7, for example, was a machine gunner attached to my Rifle Platoon, then one of my Marines in Weapons Platoon, then my driver on the staff. On deployments, or drives up to Ft Irwin for cross-training with the Army, we would talk military history for hours. Years later, when he had completed his degree, we became friends, and then started to collect interviews for this book project. Below are photos of my squad leaders and me in Thailand; and photos of me with a Kuwaiti counterpart officer at a peacetime exercise in Kuwaiti.

Now, as I work on a book about a Marine Rifle Company during 4 Iraq deployments from 2003 to 2007, I have come upon a thematic intersection with Andrew Lubin’s terrific post, above. As the Rifle Company of about 150 Marines sought to optimize its teams for the Combined Action Platoon mission in Ramadi, 2007, the leaders found that the best Marines were not American-born. Rather, they found that the best Marines to interact with the Iraqis were often immigrants — for example, from central Asian republics near Russia; or Marines who were married to a Brazilian wife. Out of 150 Marines, the Rifle Company organized 7 teams comprised of no more than 10 Marines each for a total of 70 Marines to be embedded with much larger Iraqi Police units in dispersed districts in Ramadi, 2007. The remaining Marines would form a centralized quick reaction force. Below is a interview with two Marines, one a Lieutenant, and the other a Sergeant (frocked to Lieutenant), talking about how they selected Marines for the CAP mission in Ramadi, 2007:

And so, on 4th of July 2010, I end my reflection on what it means to be an American. Lubin has it right. The best Americans all along have been those who come to this country, and are therefore aware of the great benefits of being a citizen. Too many take it for granted. The leader of the Iraqi and Afghanistan Veterans has been posting on his facebook page about the divide between the small minority of Americans who do serve in uniform, and the great majority who do not. It makes it harder to get employment for veterans. But, those Americans who do wear the uniform for at least a few years have gained much more, I think.

As a Rifle Platoon Commander — even in peace time — I developed a very close relationship with the fire support within the Rifle Company. Our particular mortar section leader used a call sign, “Thumper.” In live fire exercises such as at Range 400 at 29 Palms, I would call for fire from Thumper, dropping 60 millimeter mortar rounds 100 meters in front of my platoon — well within “danger close.” Thumper was absolutely competent, well regarded through the company. A Filipino-American Marine, “Thumper” walked ahead of my Rifle Platoon on a company hump in Thailand during Cobra Gold 93 (picture below). His name was Corporal Taliban.