Compass Points - Week in Review
Crucial articles and comments
March 10, 2024
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Happy Sunday!
Compass Points has received many questions about the Marine Corps report to Congress. Under the latest National Defense Authorization Act, Congress is requiring the Marine Corps to report and brief what Force Design has done to the Marine Corps. The report was due on February 15, 2024, with the brief to follow. As far as Compass Points can determine, the required report has not been submitted and the required brief has not been scheduled.
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Sunday is a good day to look back at the week.
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We started on Monday with a warning from Jim Webb. On Tuesday, Gen Zinni and BGen McAbee's started a discussion of "Then and Now." Then, a powerful article by Grant Newsham and a hearty 'Welcome Back!' completed the week. In all, it was a week of particularly good discussion.
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Monday 4 Mar – World Wide Webb
As Houthis sink vessel Rubymar in the Red Sea, Compass Points reviews an early warning by Jim Webb that for the Marine Corps a narrow approach to conflict is rarely a good idea. "There is no greater danger in military strategy than shaping a nation’s force structure to respond to one specific set of contingencies . . ." -- Jim Webb, "The Future of the U.S. Marine Corps"
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Tuesday 5 Mar – 'Then and Now'
Gen Zinni and BGen McAbee review a 30-month period of Marine Corps operations in their article, "Then and Now" and pose the question, this is the pace and scope of operations the Marine Corps could do at one time, can it still do the same today?
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Wednesday 6 Mar – FONOP Report
When small nations are causing large problems to global navigation, that is when the Navy must conduct Freedom of Navigation Operations. The FONOP might be simply sailing through contested waters, or it might require something more. It might require an Amphibious Ready Group - Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable).
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Thursday 7 Mar – Hatred and Hubris
Grant Newsham's latest article for the Asia Times, "US Marine Force Design 2030: Hatred and Hubris" is a hard-hitting analysis of the Marine Corps' Force Design 2030.
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Friday 8 Mar – Welcome Back!
Compass Points says, 'Welcome Back!' to the 26th MEU, the MV-22 Osprey, the Commandant, and HMLA 269 and asks some questions as well.
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Saturday 9 Mar – 'Then & Now' Comments
Gen Zinni and BGen McAbee stimulated a broad discussion of Marine Corps global, crisis response capabilities. Readers responded with always thoughtful and often passionate comments.
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Compass Points appreciates all the great discussion this week and thanks all our readers who served as seminar leaders this week by providing topics, articles, and comments. Many thanks!
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- - - - - Compass Points Mission & Values - - - - -
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Compass Points Mission
Provide an independent source of broader thinking, deeper understanding, and better decisions, for a stronger Marine Corps.
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Compass Points Values
We believe the Marine Corps must be responsive, relevant, and ready today, and more so tomorrow.
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We believe the Marine Corps is never owned by any small group of people, but is always held in sacred trust by every Marine and friend of the Corps, past, present, and future.
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We believe Marine Corps success in garrison, in the field, and in operations is a complex ecology of the physical, the intellectual, and the spiritual.
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We believe in the complexity of combat.
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We believe good data is good, but waiting for more and more data is not necessarily better.
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We believe no information system can or will sweep away the fog of war.
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We believe nothing is more uncertain than certainty.
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We believe planning is good, but first plans rarely survive first contact.
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We believe Marines must prepare to battle skilled, devious, and unpredictable adversaries.
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We believe Marines must be always ready to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or repel enemy assault by fire and close combat.
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We believe in combined-arms, multi-mission capable Marine Corps units that can quickly arrive anywhere, and address any conflict or crisis.
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We believe the Marine Corps must experiment with new technology constantly, and adopt it prudently.
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We believe in practicing and perfecting proven methods, while also experimenting with and adopting new methods.
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We believe in the Marine Corps culture of teamwork, trust, creativity, and courage.
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We believe in candid culture among Marines, never cancel culture.
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We believe the strength of the Marine Corps comes from the valor at the heart of each Marine. Each Marine draws strength from the entire Corps of Marines. Together, all Marines are joined across time and geography by the unbreakable red stripe of service.
“Present At Creation”, the title of Dean Acheson’s book re his years in the DOS, is fitting in connecting LtGen Van Riper to - IMPO - the “Golden era of PME” in the Marine Corps. The combination of that officer, Gen Al Gray, a very bright and perceptive C/S of MCU, Mike Wyly, and a series of very talented Colonels & their faculties at Quantico, did what many thought impossible: making the USMC our Gold Standard in PME for the nation. Undoing the damage we’ve suffered won’t be easy, but, I am confident we have active duty leaders, reinforced by a stellar array of retired senior leaders who can show the way forward. The absence of an ARG/Marines in our NEO at Khartoum should tell us we got a lot of heavy lifting to do, and our heavy weight graybeards are a blessing in our favor. Semper Fi!
WHAT NOW Commandant? Where is the MAGTF? US reportedly airlifts embassy staff out of Haiti as gangs besiege political area
Officials say marines deployed for night-time evacuation amid intense fighting in Port-au-Prince
Tom Phillips Latin America correspondent
Sun 10 Mar 2024 10.05 EDT
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The US has reportedly started airlifting embassy staff out of Haiti under the cover of darkness after dozens of heavily armed gang fighters tried to seize the political quarter of its capital, Port-au-Prince.
Haiti’s gangs began an offensive to topple the government on 29 February, storming and ransacking police stations, prisons and hospitals and laying siege to strategic locations, including the port and airport.
The prime minister, Ariel Henry, who was out of the country when the rebellion began, has found himself stranded in Puerto Rico, with one US official warning last week that his unpopular government could fall “at any time”.
The gang insurrection intensified late on Friday as dozens of criminals converged on Champ de Mars, a palm-dotted downtown area of Port-au-Prince that is home to government ministries, embassies, consulates, banks and hotels, as well as Haiti’s supreme court and official presidential residence.
Gang members reportedly torched the interior ministry, which was built after the 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of the capital, and opened fire on the presidential palace before being pushed back by troops.
“If the Champ de Mars falls … it’s the end,” one police officer warned in an interview with the AyiboPost news website.
Barbecue, the leader of the G9 gang, stands with his fellow gang members in Port-au-Prince earlier this week.
Is the feared gang boss ‘Barbecue’ now the most powerful man in Haiti?
Read more
The newspaper Le Nouvelliste said the gangs had launched a “systematic operation” to drive police from the strategic heart of Port-au-Prince. “Downtown Port-au-Prince has fallen; there is no doubt about it any more,” the newspaper reported on Saturday morning alongside a photograph of a burnt-out police station.
Lionel Lazarre, the head of the national union of Haitian police officers, told the AyiboPost his colleagues were struggling to withstand the onslaught. “The police are on their knees,” he said.
Police appeared to still control the Champ de Mars area on Sunday, but foreign governments have urged their citizens to leave Haiti amid fears that Henry’s embattled administration could be days or even hours from collapse.
On Sunday, the Miami Herald said US marines had been flown into Port-au-Prince to reinforce embassy security and evacuate non-essential staff. US defence officials told the newspaper that the middle-of-the-night operation had been conducted via helicopter at the request of the state department.
Haiti’s security situation has progressively deteriorated since Henry became prime minister and acting president after the 2021 assassination of Jovenel Moïse. Since then, politically connected gangs who make their money from kidnapping, drug smuggling and extortion have taken control of more than 80% of Port-au-Prince, with such groups gaining further ground in recent days.
Daniel Foote, the former US special envoy to Haiti, predicted the gangs would “simmer down” if their demand for Henry’s resignation was met.
However, Foote believed the security situation had become so acute that a large international intervention was now the only way to restore order. He said such a mission would need to involve between 5,000 and 10,000 police officers and be led by a major economy with experience in police-capacity building, such as the US, Canada, Britain, France or another EU country.
People in front flames with black and red Haiti flag behind them
Haiti: what caused the gang violence crisis and what might happen next?
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Foote said the planned UN-backed deployment of 2,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti would be woefully insufficient. “That’s just a suicide mission, worst case, and a waste of money, best case,” he said.
As the violence intensified over the weekend and Henry’s would-be successors jockeyed for position, the authoritarian leader of El Salvador presented himself as an unlikely saviour. Nayib Bukele has thrown tens of thousands of Salvadorians in jail as part of a hardline crackdown on his country’s gangs that has led to plaudits from members of Latin America’s populist right and Republican politicians in the US.
“We can fix it,” Bukele tweeted on Sunday in response to a post about Haiti by a rightwing blogger. “But we’ll need a UNSC [UN security council] resolution, the consent of the host country, and all the mission expenses to be covered,” Bukele added.
Caribbean leaders will meet in Jamaica’s capital, Kingston, on Monday to discuss the crisis. Last week, the chair of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) group, Guyana’s president, Mohamed Irfaan Ali, said its leaders were determined to help their Haitian counterparts find a political solution.
“The fact that more people have died in Haiti in the early part of this year than in Ukraine must give everyone in Haiti and in the international community serious pause,” Ali said.