Iraq and Afghanistan have forced the American military to begin to think about 21st century warfare in a realistic way. Post-cold-war, the military gave lip service to the idea of reforming and rewriting how it fought wars, but actually continued down the same conventional path it had before. They talked about transformation but rarely backed up that talk. One of the ways in which that mindset was reinforced and perpetuated was in who got promoted (especially to the most senior ranks) and the doctrine put forth as the official way of war.
Thus, to be promoted in the Army, it was much better to have come from the Armor branch than the Special Forces. The former excelled at conventional war, while the latter focused more on counterinsurgency. As one army officer said “Everyone studies the brigadier-general promotion list like tarot cards — who makes it, who doesn’t. It communicates what qualities are valued and not valued.” [See here ] A most telling sign was the initial failure of H.R. McMaster to be promoted from Colonel to Brigadier General. McMaster, a University of North Carolina Ph.D, had led an effective counterinsurgency campaign in Tal Afar in the early days of the Iraq War. He was widely seen as a protege of General David Petraeus. But he was passed over twice for promotion from Colonel to Brigadier General, a message that other Army officers received loud and clear: “When you turn down a guy like McMaster that sends a potent message to everybody down the chain…the message everybody gets is: ‘We’re not interested in rewarding people like him. We’re not interested in rewarding agents of change.” [See here] That was it why the frequent publicity about General Petraeus and his emphasis on counterinsurgency in Iraq was somewhat been misleading. Though Petraeus lead an effective counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, the issue of whether those lessons got incorporated into the military mindset remained open.
But then something interesting happened. In 2007, the Pentagon appointed Petraeus to head the promotion board, essentially sending a message to the Army that the traditional ways were not acceptable. That led to the promotion of H.R. McMaster (and a number of other Colonels whose expertise was in counterinsurgency) to brigadier general. Essentially, the civilian leadership of the military was forcing the military to adjust to new realities, despite a fair amount of resistance.
And today we see more of this play out. McMaster has now been given the job of rewriting the Army’s Capstone Document, essentially how the Army views the future wars it will wage. The document was last rewritten in 2005 and was resolutely conventional:
The previous Army Capstone Concept was written in 2005 by now retired Maj. Gen. David Fastabend, who was a strategic adviser to Gen. David Petraeus during the 2007 surge in Iraq. Fastabend is an extremely smart guy. The 2005 document suffered, however, by giving irregular warfare short shrift and emphasizing the “aerial blitzkrieg” forcible entry concept and the “see-first, shoot-first” idea of perfect situational awareness. Both theoretical concepts were tied closely to the Future Combat System (FCS) program. FCS was to provide the Army with a better protected and more lethal forcible entry option than the 82nd Airborne; the “vertical mounted maneuver” idea runs throughout the 2005 document. So too does the “information dominance” notion. It says advances in sensors and networks will “enable transition to a force protection and survivability model no longer as dependant on the heavy armor and passive protection that characterizes modern mechanized forces.” The past eight years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have challenged both notions.
McMaster’s role in rewriting this Capstone Document is very much a sign that the Army that learned from Iraq is in the ascendancy, at least for now. Interestingly, McMaster appears to be trying to defuse the tension between conventional and counterinsurgency advocates altogether by using language that seems to privilege neither:
We have to be able to defeat the enemy, conduct security operations, and also conduct a broad range of activities while conducting stability operations – and be able to transition continuously across the spectrum of offensive, defensive, stability and civil-support operations
By emphasizing the “spectrum” of conflict, McMaster seems to me to be giving comfort to everyone in the argument and saying that their particular area will be nurtured. He was, apparently, more direct in a recent talk:
I heard McMaster speak at a Washington DC event recently where he said the ongoing debate within the Army between those who say the service must prepare for major combat operations and those who argue irregular wars are the future is a false one. Future opponents will not allow the U.S. military to define wars as it sees fit. All wars are different, so too are the lessons, and rapid adaptation is the key. He said the U.S. military takes an engineer’s approach to developing solutions to warfare, but the enemy typically does not; war is art, not science.
The doctrinal rewrite comes immediately before the Quadrennial Defense Review, a every-four-year Defense Department look at how America views the world and its security situation. McMaster’s discussion of a “spectrum” of combat echoes Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ invocation for the 2010 QDR:
The strategy strives for balance…between trying to prevail in current conflicts and preparing for other contingencies, between institutionalizing capabilities such as counterinsurgency and foreign military assistance and maintaining the United States’ existing conventional and strategic technological edge against other military forces
Gates’ hand in all this has been critical in forcing the services to confront something resembling reality, the Army not least of all. It has been, sadly, a radical concept that the military should aim to win the wars it is currently fighting and be ready to fight similar wars in the future; radical, but ultimately essential.
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See also these earlier articles: 1, 2.
38 comments
August 29, 2009 at 10:38 am
TF Smith
Okay, but here’s an even more radical concept:
The United States military should aim to defend the Constitution, people, and territory of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Period, Full stop.
This is the oath I took:
I, TF Smith, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).
Nothing in there about trekking out to the boondocks and beating up the locals in the Ruritanian Liberation Army, or the People’s Crusade of Zanj, or the Sahelian Revolutionary Contingent, or the Istiqual City Rotarians, for that matter…
In my lifetime, I have seen the US military committed to not one but (arguably) seven or eight land wars in Asia; other than Kuwait, which was a reasonably clear-cut case of preventing the conquest and forced annexation of one internationally-recognized nation state by another nation state, and which was sanctioned by the international community through the very organizations that were set up at the end of WW II to try and prevent a WW III, I remain unconvinced any of the others had or have any legal basis or justifiable strategic rationale of any type.
Frankly, I’d prefer it if the services were concentrating on conventional operations, because that is where the only significant threat to the continued existence to the United States is going to be found; anything less is a law enforcement responsibility.
Ours but to sit and cry…
August 29, 2009 at 11:22 am
ekogan
I don’t understand why anybody would think that the US military will fight large conventional wars in the future. Today, all the large powers have nuclear weapons. Any medium sized power who feels threatened by the United States is going to acquire nuclear weapons – see North Korea and Iran. So it seems that a war with any country which could give the US a fair fight would either devolve into a nuclear exchange or be very limited.
August 29, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Vance
TF, I think the bit there about obeying the orders of the President (and your officers) makes room for the execution of all kinds of policy.
August 29, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Charlieford
Bacevich 2012?
August 29, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Charlieford
Actually, I’d like to throw out a more serious response. I spent the summer mainly catching up on Iraq and Afghanistan reading, which became along the way counterinsurgency reading. So along with The Gamble and the Unforgiving Minute and Joker One and Tell Me How This Ends, I also read The Accidental Guerrilla and the US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual (not a beach read, either of them), along with the usual blogs and what not. And I’m caught in this uncomfortable place. After opposing Iraq and being incensed at all the deceit and frustrated beyond belief by the Bush/Rumsfeld insistence that all was going swimmingly, I became by 2006 not just mad, but alarmed at what was happening. Books like Assassin’s Gate and Fiasco and Cobra II were oases of sanity, comforting in their insistence that someone was right and someone was very wrong in their assessment of what was occurring. But now we’re in a situation where we have people running the show–Obama, Petraeus, Gates, McMaster, Kilcullen, Nagl, etc.–who disagreed with or had serious dissents from aspects of the original decisions to go to war or how to fight them, they are fully aware of the risks involved and of how difficult and expensive this will be, yet they are quite insistent that we make the effort. Silbey, this was a very welcome posting about how our military has reinvented itself (partially, at least) in the face of certain “lessons learned” in Afghanistan and Iraq, but how would you address the issue of why? Are these “good wars” now? If so, how do you make the case?
August 29, 2009 at 2:04 pm
DaKooch
Excellent synopsis of the current strategy debate within the military. You ever audit any courses at Carlisle?
August 29, 2009 at 4:03 pm
David Fitzpatrick
David,
This is a VERY nice piece. I do want to nit-pick one small yet important point.
HRM is not an expert in C-I by training, per se. He is a cav officer, thoroughly conventional in his background and training. Commanded a cav troop in the 1st PG War (and fought a famoulsy successful tank battle with retreating elements of the Republican Guards). He commanded the 3rd ACR in the Iraq occupation. He took over from, I believe, a portion of the 4ID who occupation policies had been disastrous (interestingly, 4ID was commanded then by Odierno), and he therefore undertook to change the way the occupation in his area was undertaken. He had little or no training in counterinsurgency. What he did have was a great deal of common sense, a nimble mind, and a Ph.D. in history that opened his eyes to ways of seeing the world that went beyond the narrow tactical view of most army officers.
It was these things that helped then-Colonel MacMaster develop into a C-I expert, and it speaks volumes for the kind of education all career military officers ought receive (spoken as someone who retired from the Army as an LTC)
Dave Fitzpatrick
August 29, 2009 at 4:11 pm
TF Smith
1) The goal of being sucessful at “fighting large conventional wars in the future” is to avoid having to fight large conventional wars in the future;
2) I have yet to be persuaded that any of the LWIA mentioned above had anything to do defending the Constitution of the United States – I saw no threat to my nation and democratic government from the NKPA, NVA, etc and see none today from the Pushtunistan Liberation Army or whoever it is that is the threat-of-the-week to Our Way of Life;
3) Dr. Bacevich has a point; so did CW Mills; so did Dave Shoup and DDE and SD Butler and various and sundry others, all the way back to G. Washington; we ignore them to our cost;
4) I’ll offer the cynical answer – now the critics get to fight the war their way!
5) I would suggest neither of the present conflicts meet the definitions of just or legal wars, as commonly accepted. That alone should make it clear that neither are necessary, much less “good.”
August 29, 2009 at 10:50 pm
David
Col Mansoor – Petraeus’s executive officer and another history Ph.D. guy – spoke at Davis about a year ago. He started with a slide that said C-I conflicts were 70% political and only 30% military. He ended by saying that they almost had the security situation under control and were soon going to turn full attention towards the reconstruction and governance part of the operation. That was five years into the war and two years after my own largely unproductive tour as a Civil Affairs officer —- 70% political and we’ll get to it right away, just as soon as we finish the door-kicking part.
McMaster’s statement, “we have to be able to defeat the enemy,” misses the reality that the principal task is avoiding creating an enemy. I was in Diyala province during a particularly violent period but the vast majority of violence was intra-Iraqi, not anti-American. Most attacks were the result of political conflicts over who was going to control the spoils of American reconstruction dollars. Iraqis came to us with real political questions about wealth and power and we responded with naïve answers about parliamentary procedures and representative government. Given time that violence expanded and now Diyala is one of the most dangerous provinces for American troops.
The American military is a pragmatic, can-do organization. At the company or battalion level it is not at all good at subtlety or real politics. After Saddam fell, the task was to knit diverse communities together into something resembling a nation. Some 100,000 dead and 4.5 million refugees suggest we failed.
To hope, at this point, that if only we had more sophisticated generals in charge we might be able to win this thing seems delusional at best. Killing more enemies isn’t going to fix the political problems we allowed to fester. If Iraq ends up being anything less than a complete mess it will be the result of decisions made by Iraqis, not Americans. Focusing on American officers as the solution to the problem seems to me to be just another example of the very egotism that has blinded us to the real dilemmas before us.
August 30, 2009 at 12:53 am
Ceri B.
TF Smith: Good stuff, well said.
I keep coming back to the point Jim Henley, IOZ, and others have made: when Americans find themselves in a foreign country where a substantial portion of the population wants them gone strongly enough to take up arms and risk their own lives to make the Americans go away, there’s a very strong likelihood that the Americans there should go away. The list of vital national interests compatible with our own laws and international treaties calling for the suppression of substantial resistance is not long; the list of national wishes incompatible with either our own laws, treaties, or both that might call for counter-insurgency fighting is much longer.
August 30, 2009 at 1:42 am
wrybread
A little background on HR and the 3d ACR at Tall Áfar can be found in “Brave Rifles at Tall Áfar,” a chapter in In Contact! (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/download/csipubs/robertson_contact.pdf). The focus is fundamentally on Lt.Col. Chris Hickey, commander of 2/3 ACR.
August 30, 2009 at 6:34 am
elblot
The vast majority of the time counter – insurgency equals imperialism – it is a pretty simple equation. Rather than getting better at it we need to avoid it.
The new CI crowd may be less doctrinaire and more adept than the “old” army, but that only makes them a greater danger to our Republic.
http://www.americanempireproject.com/
August 30, 2009 at 9:26 am
silbey
Good comments, all. The range and sophistication of the issues y’all raised is remarkable.
@TFSmith & eblot: I think we want to be really careful about advocating that the military deliberately avoid having counterinsurgency abilities because that essentially means it has a veto over foreign policy. That seems to me to be a worrying encroachment on civilian control of the military. Remember that in the 1990s, the military often tried to hamstring Clinton’s policies by being very derogatory about ‘nation-building.’
@Ceri B., I take your point and have actually advocated that (since our goal in Iraq for better or worse) was to depose Saddam Hussein, once that goal was achieved, we should have up and left, albeit supporting Iraqi reconstruction financially. Having said that, I can certainly see an argument to getting (let us say) Iraq to a point where there is at least a stable, elected government of some sort, so that the wishes of the greater part of the population are represented (with all the issues of corruption, incompletion and inefficiency that has happened there). Also, I do wonder how one measures a “substantial proportion of the population” and how substantial it has to be to get us to leave?
@David F. That’s a good point; thanks for the note. I think it reinforces my larger point about the Army; that the guys who learned from Iraq didn’t necessarily start off as CI gurus, but were flexible enough to adjust.
@David; Mansoor’s now a professor at Ohio State and my (wild ass) speculation is that he moved on because of what originally happened with McMaster’s promotion being denied. I have no evidence for that, though. As to McMaster’s statement about ‘defeating the enemy’ my sense is that he was speaking about the Iraqi situation in 2005 etc, when there was a substantial enemy to defeat. Now, _how_ you defeat it is interesting; you may defeat it by convincing large numbers to come over to your side, for example.
@charlieford, Your comment I find most interesting of all (sorry, everyone). It’s at a level above what I was focusing on with this post, but it is, in many ways, a most critical question about American efforts abroad: what responsibilities, moral and otherwise, do we have in nations like Afghanistan or Iraq? I don’t think the question of “why” has an easy answer, and I shy away from labeling anything a ‘good’ war. I do think there is an argument to be made that, as we have managed in Iraq, we should stay in Afghanistan and attempt to see if the same tactics work there in quest of building a government that is reasonably stable and reasonably responsible to its population (male _and_ female). How long an attempt, how stable, and how responsive, I couldn’t tell you.
August 30, 2009 at 10:35 am
TF Smith
Ceri (I think; the names and posts are not lining up): Thanks – this is very oold school, but we have plenty of dragons at home to slay…
This should be written in letters of flame in the White House, Capitol, Pentagon, Carlisle, Leavenworth, West Point, etc:
“The principal task in counterinsurgency is avoiding creating an enemy.”
Silbey – I’ll put it this way: in what strategic situation would it ever be in the United States’ interests to support a counter-insurgency campaign?
Given the lessons of the cold war (ad nauseum), it seems that when the governments of one of our client states is so hated by its own citizens that:
A) they take up arms against it and
B) said government does not possess enough loyalty among its own people that they can not be mobilized to defeat the insurgency with their own resources, then
C) the wise public policy to is cut our losses and lessen our investment before the “helicopters off the embassy roof” moment.
Such an approach would have served the United States much more effectively in the short and long runs than the strategies that were chosen in reality since 1945…
August 30, 2009 at 10:48 am
Charlieford
Thanks silbey. I understand your ambivalence (if that’s what it is). I’m sure most of the folk interested in the topic have been following (or at least are aware of) the Afghanistan debate Exum’s been hosting over at Abu Muqawama http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2009/08/afghanistan-strategy-dialogue-my-thoughts.html (and similar discussions such as those between Stephen Walt and Peter Bergen http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/20/safe_haven_2_a_response_to_peter_bergen ). Most of the analysts and opinionators who do weigh in on the side of “let’s-give-it-a-shot” seem similarly ambivalent, certainly well aware of the risks involved. This is not, it seems to me, the return of the best and brightest” ( http://www.firstthings.com/print/article/2009/01/001-the-return-of-the-best-and-brightest-41?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=500&width=700 ) They’re saying anything but “every statistical measure we have indicates there’s light at the end of this tunnel.” But as much as I respect the turn the military has taken–and it truly has been heartening and inspiring for this child of the Vietnam War who never expected to find himself completely revising his dark estimations of that institution [but then I readily admit my estimations weren't all that well-informed, either]–I wonder if this turn will, or should, “preach,” as they say. Reading Kilcullen, to take just one example, one is impressed with how much his discourse derives from the enlightenment worldview rather than that articulated by the revivalist side of our heritage–his discussions utilize medical analogies, eg, and are far from the high moral dander associated with neo-conservatism. But, if you’re going to offer (relatively) realistic assessments of the chances of success and the risks and complications involved and if you’re even going to resist dehumanizing and demonizing the enemy and wrapping the whole enterprise in apocalyptic and Manichean rhetoric, is it possible to generate the popular will to support the war(s) in question? And without that, isn’t the enterprise in Afghanistan, eg, doomed from the start (given the absolutely massive amounts of work that, according to Kilcullen again, needs to be done there in addition to the fighting)? And if we (almost) know that the public will demand we extricate ourselves before the work can be brought to its admittedly uncertain conclusion, what does that say about the morality of the effort now? Just wars do need reasonable chances of success, and technically, I suppose, we can at least make a case for the chance being “reasonable” (but only “a case,” and only barely, I think–taking very seriously into account the points made by TF Smith, above, and Bacevich et al). Even Exum admits he reads Bacevich and isn’t certain he’s not right. But if we split the difference between our uncertainties and come up with “let’s give it a chance over the next 12 to 18 months” aren’t we involved in something immensely murky and dangerous at a whole lot of levels? As in, doing harm not only to the casualties among our own troops (and their families), but to the Afghanis who will be fighting us only because we’re there (giving it the old college try), to the reputation of our military (thus increasing the chance of future enemies deciding to give it a try themselves), to Pakistan (which now has lost prestige among its armed forces after trying and failing to impose order on the FATA), and on and on and on? Kennan famously said, “if we go into Iraq as the president says we should, we don’t know where we’ll come out,” but isn’t it just as true that “if we stay in Afghanistan or Iraq we don’t know where we’ll come out,” and that, while the same is true if we leave, our staying (as in Vietnam?) may only be delaying whatever reconciliations and arrangements these people will inevitably have to make for themselves, anyway? Anyway, thanks silbey for your generous comments toward my rambling and only half-informed thoughts on these matters.
August 30, 2009 at 11:05 am
David
“Remember that in the 1990s, the military often tried to hamstring Clinton’s policies by being very derogatory about ‘nation-building.’”
Had Bush been ‘hamstrung’ by military leaders willing to speak honestly about the limitations of their power I think we all would have been better off.
August 30, 2009 at 11:20 am
Erik Lund
Okay, thought experiment. What if the function of an armed forces is the function that we see? “Turning boys into men,” someone said. Not in the idiotic perspective that sticking bayonets into people is a masculine life passage, but in that kids go into armies and come out electricians, truck drivers, heavy duty mechanics, and your local computer repair shop guy.
How does a counter-insurgency heavy army serve that purpose? And if it doesn’t, are our tax dollars being well-spent?
August 30, 2009 at 11:50 am
silbey
in what strategic situation would it ever be in the United States’ interests to support a counter-insurgency campaign?
I can come up with some hypothetical examples, but down this road is that awkward Internet discussion where people argue about non-existent analogies. I will point out that counterinsurgency has been extremely useful in past American history, from the Revolutionary War, to the entirety of the 19th century, to the Civil War, to all the small wars we’ve fought.
In any case, that wasn’t my point. My point was that allowing the military to decide what it’s going to be skilled at and what not solely for political reasons is giving them veto power over the civilian administration and by extension the voters and is a much larger violation of the Constitution that you swore to uphold.
Had Bush been ‘hamstrung’ by military leaders willing to speak honestly about the limitations of their power I think we all would have been better off.
Really? You’d like a United States where the military feels free to disobey the orders of the civilian administration? Where it might have refused to obey Lincoln’s orders to retake the South? How about a military that gives official opinions about political candidates?
Look, I share the frustration about the Bush administration’s actions, but I don’t think allowing the military even more influence into civilian policy making is a good idea. (And note that the military *didn’t* really understand its limitations in counter-insurgency at the start of the Iraq War).
(thoughts on charlieford’s comments when I have to time to contemplate them).
How does a counter-insurgency heavy army serve that purpose
Good Lord, Erik, there’s no use for psychologists, linguists, helicopter pilots, those with military policing skills, logisticians, economists, and community organizers in our globalized world? In an America stripped of its heavy manufacturing, the products of a counter-insurgency army may be *more* useful than a conventional army.
August 30, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Charlieford
I just found Marc Lynch’s very useful summary of the Afghanistan debate, and will just copy it all in, for those who are interested. It’s at his blog at Foreign Policy (who’s Af-Pak Channel is also essential): http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/ I trust that that’s ethical since this is sort of an advertisement?
“The Afghanistan Strategy Debate. This really seemed to pick up after I left – including Obama’s attempt, likely in response to the emerging questions, to articulate a strategic rationale back on August 17th. Kudos to CNAS’s Abu Muqawama and Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel for providing central nodes of this debate. My sense right now: The pro-escalation side probably has the better of the tactical argument, in terms of the best response once the U.S. decides upon the strategic necessity of combatting the Taliban “insurgency”. But the anti-escalation side probably has the better of the strategic argument: U.S. vital interests in Afghanistan to justify the expense remain vague, the arguments made for the costs of “losing” the counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan are relatively far-fetched (please, no more “credibility of the West” or “flytrap” arguments), the critical “safe havens” argument suffers from the profound weakness of the availability of alternative safe havens all over the broader region, and the costs of waging such a war successfully aren’t being taken sufficiently seriously. But a close argument tilts towards the status quo, and won’t stop the enormous momentum already built up in the US government towards the escalation strategy. Sunk costs and credibility considerations probably weigh more heavily than they should. The main impact of the debate will at best be to force the administration to more sharply calibrate its goals and its commitments – which may matter in the future – rather than to actually derail the current strategy right now.”
August 30, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Erik Lund
“Good Lord, Erik, there’s no use for psychologists, linguists, helicopter pilots, those with military policing skills, logisticians, economists, and community organizers in our globalized world? In an America stripped of its heavy manufacturing, the products of a counter-insurgency army may be *more* useful than a conventional army.”
Fair enough, Silbey, but with the possible exception of the helicopter pilots, your list looks pretty focused on officer ranks, who maybe don’t need that much help. Where’s the feed into the “aristocracy of labour?” Tool-and-die makers who make as much money as university professors sort of stuff. Plumbers in the top 1% income bracket.
Okay, that last one is a bad example.
I know, I know, we live in a “post industrial age.” Except are we? The statistics of deindustralisation count your local computer sales and service guy as a member of a “service economy.” But he just built a computer for me.
And tried to sell me on a Ponzi scheme, to be sure, but his track record on the computer side is actually pretty good.
August 30, 2009 at 3:15 pm
David
I think you’re overstating your case in suggesting that if the military offers resistance to a mission for which they are ill equipped it amounts to disobeying orders and usurping civilian authority. It’s hard to imagine that we’re facing a grave risk of the military suddenly refusing to fight. Certainly that very theoretical risk doesn’t much compare to the real costs we’ve already incurred in Iraq.
Far worse for us would be to emerge from this war with a military that thinks it has discovered the secret to successfully occupying foreign countries. Our failure in Iraq was largely political. The military had few answers to the internal divisions that pushed the country towards civil war. You’re giving too much credit to improved doctrine if you think it would allow us to avoid repeating those errors.
August 30, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Ceri B.
Silbey: “Look, I share the frustration about the Bush administration’s actions, but I don’t think allowing the military even more influence into civilian policy making is a good idea.” I won’t claim to be speaking for TF Smith and others, but for me, the big worry is in the opposite direction. Having a military trained and prepared to suppress native will to self-government creates temptations in civilian authority to rationalize and do just that.
I’m skeptical that there are just that many occasions when a professedly democratic republic without imperial aims needs to be destroying the native will to resist outside occupation. It could be that I’m selling the idea short, but I’ve been following the debate and not seeing very many examples, real or hypothetical, that seem like they actually fit with our own laws and our treaty obligations.
“Good Lord, Erik, there’s no use for psychologists, linguists, helicopter pilots, those with military policing skills, logisticians, economists, and community organizers in our globalized world?” Maybe this is just my ignorance speaking, but I’d like to think that none of these things has to be justified in terms of suppressing local self-government efforts. Maybe even justified as things that might help make it less frequently necessary to get into suppression.
As a matter of civilian policy, I would like the US military oriented away from long-term occupation and all that goes with it.
August 30, 2009 at 4:12 pm
TF Smith
Okay, so what’s the lesson from US history regarding insurgencies and counter-insurgencies?
1) The US was able to establish its independence through what amounted (in the 18th Century) to conventional warfare (using a mix of quasi-regulars and militia, and both offensive and defensive, nearly fabian, tactics);
2) The US was able to preserve itself through what amounted (in the 19th Century) to conventional warfare between nation states; attempts by the opposition to raise significant guerrilla campaigns were defeated by conventional means and inspired diplomacy;
3) The US was able to preserve itself through entirely conventional warfare in the first of two truly threatening conflicts in the 20th Century; again, conventional means and inspired diplomacy defeated any attempt by the enemy to use guerilla tactics;
4) The US was able to preserve itself through entirely conventional means against the second great threat of the 20th Century, even to the point of avoiding active warfare with the major nation state opponent; inspired diplomacy helped as well. The proxy wars that were fought in the contest were, almost ineivitably, defeats or near-defeats of the US in those cases (most notably Vietnam, Iraq II, and Afghanistan) when the US took over the war efforts of the self-same proxy states; in cases where the US did not (the Huks, Greece, Korea-behind-the-lines), US proxies “won”…;
As far as the various and sundry “small wars” of the 20th Century, I can not think of one that ever addressed a strategic threat of any significance; moreover, I would be hard-pressed to think of one where a counter-insurgency campaign was mounted where it would have made any significant difference to the US whether the local proxy “won” or not.
August 30, 2009 at 5:03 pm
silbey
your list looks pretty focused on officer ranks
I don’t think anything I mentioned is particularly focused on the officer ranks, except maybe economists.
I think you’re overstating your case in suggesting that if the military offers resistance to a mission for which they are ill equipped it amounts to disobeying orders and usurping civilian authority.
Too often “offering resistance to a mission for which they are ill-equipped” becomes cover for offering resistance to a mission which they’d rather not try. After Vietnam, the military divested itself of its hard-won counterinsurgency expertise because the experience had been so traumatic.
Having a military trained and prepared to suppress native will to self-government creates temptations in civilian authority to rationalize and do just that.
And I don’t necessarily have a problem with doing it that way. I do have a problem with the military unilaterally deciding to do it that way.
I think you also might contemplate a world in which the American military is not good at counter-insurgency and uses massive firepower as a substitute.
To take TF Smith’s list:
1. The Revolutionary War involved on the American side a large amount of insurgent and counter-insurgent warfare.
2. The 19th century witnessed a large amount of counter-insurgent warfare on the American side, particularly in the west.
3. The 20th century (including World War II) witnessed a fair amount of insurgent and counter-insurgent warfare on the American side.
It is only in the sanitized American military history that we haven’t practiced insurgency and counter-insurgency throughout.
Finally, as a larger comment, I have serious doubts that a U.S. military that lacks counterinsurgency expertise would prove any deterrent to a civilian administration that is bent on war. How long between our withdrawal from Vietnam and the U.S.’s next invasion of a small country?
–
To talk to Charlieford’s point, I think I come down to the analysis that we do have a reasonable chance of success there and that the model developed in Iraq should transplant with modifications to Afghanistan. I think also that signs of success should be fairly rapid (ie in that 18-24 month window) and will tell us whether the Iraqi model transplants. Given that, I’d say we should take a shot at helping the Afghanis build themselves a reasonably enduring and representative government. The thing we’ve always done in the past, the “Tom Friedman The Next Six Months Is Critical Repeat Ad Infinitum” has to stop, though. After 24 months either things aren’t improving and we pull out or things are improving and we pull out.
August 30, 2009 at 9:14 pm
TF Smith
Dr. Silbey –
With all due respect, this statement sort of floored me:
“After Vietnam, the military divested itself of its hard-won counterinsurgency expertise.”
What expertise would that be? Don’t fight a land war in Asia? Last time I checked, the insurgents won that one…although by the time Saigon fell, of course, it wasn’t a guerilla army driving T-54s in battalion strength through the streets…
US victory in the Revolutionary War depended on conventional warfare at Saratoga and Yorktown; the ACW was won in conventional battle; and WW II was won in conventional battle.
I really have to ask about this statement: “(World War II) witnessed a fair amount of insurgent and counter-insurgent warfare on the American side.”
Please give me an example, any example, of the US Army waging a counterinsurgency effort during in WW II – what campaign, battle, or action of WW II in any theater where the US Army was fighting could possibly be defined as an Axis insurgency?
This is a statement that I am REALLY curious about…
August 30, 2009 at 9:56 pm
David
“I have serious doubts that a U.S. military that lacks counterinsurgency expertise would prove any deterrent to a civilian administration that is bent on war.”
I agree, but that’s pretty clearly at odds with what you have been arguing, ie: “I think we want to be really careful about advocating that the military deliberately avoid having counterinsurgency abilities because that essentially means it has a veto over foreign policy.”
I know the gray area tends to drop out of blog posts but I think you’ve been overstating the threat from those who don’t see the future of C-I in the same rather favorable light you do. The track record of Vietnam and Iraq — long, costly, indecisive wars that divided the country and wrecked presidencies, all for precious little national security gain — ought to warn us off being too optimistic. The evidence that we’ve turned a corner on this is really very thin.
August 31, 2009 at 12:03 am
Ceri B.
Silbey: “I think I come down to the analysis that we do have a reasonable chance of success there and that the model developed in Iraq should transplant with modifications to Afghanistan.” Okay, and I say this without sarcastic intent, we’re operating on different enough premises that there’s probably not much point in continuing the exchange. I see no reason to believe anything I’d regard as moral and legal will emerge in either Iran or Afghanistan, nor any reason to believe that my government will refrain from massacring the natives and enabling tyranny with a wide range of justifications. (Yes, I am indeed very deeply pessimistic about this, but then every time I think I’ve hit some stable bottom, they find a way to make it more horrific.)
August 31, 2009 at 5:51 am
Prof B
It’s a very good post, which does indeed do a very good job of summarizing the within-Army strategic debate. Some random responses without tags:
1. Whether CoIn “should” be the future or “is” the future of the Army is not a military question — it’s a political question. The National Military Strategy follows from the National Security Strategy. Ought the Army be prepared for CoIn? Almost certainly. Ought CoIn be the template by which operations are planned, resourced, and officers — yes, at this level of analysis, officers are all that matter — that I’m not so convinced of.
2. Has the Army learned from Afghanistan and Iraq? Based on the difference between my tour in Iraq in 03-04 and now, I would have to say that the answer is an obvious “yes.” Are those lessons transportable? Again, I’m not so convinced. Take the differences between Afghanistan and Iraq — the former is still a semi-pastoral country centered on the family/village/clan, the latter was a (archaic term alert) more-or-less Second World industrialized nation-state (not the notional “cobbled together” “three groups” “artificial boundaries” nonsense one so often hears) with a latent labor force that could have been turned to economic productivity but was instead turned to the war-making.
I recall quite distinctly that, in the first New York Times I’d read in months, there was a story about Iraqis celebrating the downfall and one “young man” told the reporter to tell the Americans that if we got them wages they’d love us forever as much as they did that day, but if we didn’t get them wages they’d hate us as much as they loved us that day. I noted that in my journal at the time as the “center of gravity” in Phase IV. But I was a lowly Captain — who the hell expected me to know anything?
Point being that just because something “works” in Iraq doesn’t mean it’s going to “work” in Afghanistan. Frankly, if it were me, I’d have my guys getting wages to the street in Iraq and simply killing people in Afghanistan — the Taliban (at least the most motivated wing of the Taliban) do not seem to me to be the kinds of guys who will choose working at an Afghan equivalent of the 7-11 over killing Americans. With few exceptions, most Iraqi “insurgents” I encountered would have been all-too-happy to make that tradeoff. (Sorry if that offends, but that’s what you have an army for, I’m afraid.)
3. I share TF Smith’s skepticism about the Army’s CoIn past. Huks, Villistas — insurgents? Maybe. A CoIn campaign? With all due respect (loosely defined) to Max Boot, not so much. I don’t think we should mistake tactical innovation with campaign planning.
And in places like Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, where the Marine Corps fought its “small wars,” American tactics were largely conventional, with the “CoIn” part being sub-contracted to the Blackwaters of the era, the “National Police” (viz, Somoza, et al.)
And as far as “divesting” itself of CoIn experts after Vietnam, empirically I think that needs more evidence. First, I’m not certain there were “CoIn experts” in the Army during and after Vietnam, with the exception of the Special Forces guys — and even then I’m not certain that, taken as a whole, SF even “did” CoIn during Vietnam, with the possible exception of operations with the Hmong. In Laos and Cambodia and North Vietnam and, to a greater or lesser degree in South Vietnam, much of what SF did was more by way of what used to be called “Direct Action” than CoIn.
And the SF guys were still around, and though it is true they didn’t ascend to the heights of strategy and doctrine construction, I’m not sure they necessarily wanted to. None of the ones I knew — and I went in the Army in 1983 — wanted to; they preferred being “special.”
That story is a pretty familiar one to students of bureaucracy and public policy — like nearly all armed services, the Army was institutionally leery of “special” people — but that had been the case in WWII as well. Frankly that wasn’t an unsound policy, given what was taken as being the “real” or institutionally core mission — fighting a land war with the Soviets in Europe. Now one can debate whether that was a realistic planning assumption (my own view is that, until the mid-1970s, it was a good a planning assumption as any), but that was the mission — and though there were roles for what we called the “Secret Squirrels” in that mission, they were (a) secret and (b) often tangential to the main effort.
I think what you really see in the CoIn/not CoIn debate is a kind of cultural clash over what constitutes the appropriate Clausewitzian legacy in a 21st-century armed force.
August 31, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Erik Lund
I know that this little excursion is going to take into territory where I’ll have to defend my troop from wandering groups of aggressive sociobiologists, but Prof B brought it up:
“I recall quite distinctly that, in the first New York Times I’d read in months, there was a story about Iraqis celebrating the downfall and one “young man” told the reporter to tell the Americans that if we got them wages they’d love us forever as much as they did that day, but if we didn’t get them wages they’d hate us as much as they loved us that day. I noted that in my journal at the time as the “center of gravity” in Phase IV. But I was a lowly Captain — who the hell expected me to know anything? ”
You want peace and social order? You make a world where all the young men are working hard to buy themselves nice cars with good stereo systems so that they can parade down Cornwall Avenue serenading the girls on the beach.
Conversely, no work, no money, no girls –that’s when you’ve got trouble. An army that takes the kind of kid who can’t and doesn’t want to go to school to learn to be a linguist, economist or psychologist and turns him into an HVAC technician makes peace at home. The trick, in this vision, is to export it to the countries it becomes necessary to occupy.
August 31, 2009 at 1:47 pm
silbey
What expertise would that be?
The expertise that an enormous number of soldiers and marines had earned over the course of the Vietnam war itself. That the U.S. did not win in Vietnam is not the same thing as not being able to learn from their experiences. Most of that experience and expertise was junked except for the vague thought of “we’re not going to do that again.”
US victory in the Revolutionary War depended on conventional warfare at Saratoga and Yorktown;
It was won at least as much in the insurgency in the south, and in a largely-ignored counterinsurgency effort against loyalists that still hasn’t been written about effectively.
And forgive me for being impolite, but arguing that the Revolutionary War was won at Saratoga and Yorktown is a desperately simplified view of that war.
of the US Army waging a counterinsurgency effort during in WW II – what campaign, battle, or action of WW II in any theater where the US Army was fighting could possibly be defined as an Axis insurgency?
I said “insurgent and counter-insurgent”; on the insurgent side, I would point to the guerilla actions in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation and the coast-watcher program in the Pacific islands. On the counterinsurgent side, the campaign waged against Japanese coast-watchers in those same islands shares lots of those characteristics, but hasn’t been written about effectively.
I agree, but that’s pretty clearly at odds with what you have been arguing
I don’t believe it is; vetoes can be overridden. That’s not the same thing as them not existing, and the military having one over what should be civilian policy is dangerous.
I know the gray area tends to drop out of blog posts but I think you’ve been overstating the threat from those who don’t see the future of C-I in the same rather favorable light you do.
I think you’re drastically overreading what I wrote in the actual post. I didn’t put phrases like “begin to think about” “that the Army that learned from Iraq is in the ascendancy, at least for now” because I was trying to write out the gray areas. And the end of my latest response–”After 24 months either things aren’t improving and we pull out or things are improving and we pull out”–allows for the very real possibility of complete failure.
(Yes, I am indeed very deeply pessimistic about this, but then every time I think I’ve hit some stable bottom, they find a way to make it more horrific.)
I think you might read some detailed histories of World War II to discover what the bottom really looks like. Nothing we have done in Afghanistan or Iraq compares in sheer barbarity to the firebombing of German and Japanese cities in that war.
Frankly that wasn’t an unsound policy, given what was taken as being the “real” or institutionally core mission — fighting a land war with the Soviets in Europe. Now one can debate whether that was a realistic planning assumption (my own view is that, until the mid-1970s, it was a good a planning assumption as any),
Good comment, Prof B. I think there’s an assumption in the above that is dangerous though, which is that it was an “either/or” choice: either focus on the Soviets or focus on Coin. That’s not the case, and McMaster, to bring this around full circle is right to talk about a “spectrum” of conflict, rather than an assumed model.
August 31, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Martin Wisse
You know what’s the most visible aspect of the counterinsurgency mindset? Abu Ghraib.
August 31, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Silbey
@Martin. If you’re trying to win hearts and minds, Abu Ghraib is the last thing you want to do. It’s about as far from the counterinsurgency mindset as firebombing cities is.
August 31, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Charlieford
Martin, take a look at the US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, and I think you’ll be plenty surprised. Just read the intros and the first chapter. (Of course this is doctrine, and practice won’t always measure up, but at least we should start with the doctrine.)
Here’s Nagl’s forward http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/841519foreword.html
and the most interesting part of the first chapter http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/841519.html
COIN is, as silbey said, famously and sincerely serious not only about protecting the population but being very aware of the “public relations” dimensions of one’s actions.
Also, see Admiral Mullen”s (Chairman, JCS) recent comments http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/28/strategic_communication_getting_back_to_basics?page=0,0
August 31, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Michael E. Lynch
There’s a red herring here that keeps getting overlooked, largely because it got picked up in the press by someone who doesn’t understand, and has been perpetuated: The Army did not ‘diss’ McMaster by not selecting him for BG the first time around. Here’s how this works:
1) McMaster started out in Year Group 84 (YG84). I was in the same year group, though he was USMA and I was ROTC.
2) With normal selections at every grade, the officer is first eligible for selection to BG at the 26 year mark. For McMaster, that is next year, 2010.
3) McMaster was selected below-the-zone (early) for every rank from Major through Colonel. That effectively put him 3 years ahead of everyone else in his year group. The term “passed over” is not really appropriate. “Not selected early” is a better way to look at it.
4) The fact that he was not selected the first time for BG is not a travesty, and does not signal the end of the Republic. It simply means that he is not the only extremely talented officer we have. Each Army branch typically only gets one or two (most one) BGs each year, so picking up McMaster early may have caused the Army to lose some other talented yet older officer. The Army gets it right 95% of the time picking general officers.
5) Having now been selcetd for BG, he still remains ahead — his classmates will finally reach the board next year.
6) Having Petraeus on his BG board certainly sealed his fate because he and Petraeus are close, but I believe McMaster was going to make flag rank eventually regardless of who sat on the board.
A lot of people think highly of McMaster, myself included, but he has his detractors. I have only met him once (we were never assigned to the same place, and I have since retired), but close observation reveals that he’s a quality officer. He’s been fast-tracked since his Captain days in Desert Storm, and that has ruffled some feathers.
The REAL measure we need to look at is where his career goes from here. He’s got a staff job as a BG now, and he’ll need to go to a second BG job in a year or so — probably ADC in a division. If he’s then promoted to 2-star, the pattern will continue or accelerate: staff job then command, or vice-versa. It’s also a mistake to assume that beacsue he goes to a staff job that he’s been shunted aside — these jobs help round out the officer’s experienace, and they also put key people in key places, like the job he’s in now at Fort Monroe. Positions above 2 star are all nominated by the President, so we’re then we’re beyond selection boards and such. Fear not: McMaster is only 47 — He’ll be with us another 15 years. I’ll bet my retired ID card he’ll make 4 stars.
September 2, 2009 at 11:37 am
Charlieford
Just fyi, I went to a discussion yesterday at Notre Dame featuring David Cortright and Mary Ellen O’Connell on the question, “Is Afghanistan a ‘Good War’?” The consensus seemed to be that the goals are worthy but the strategy is so flawed as to vitiate the good-ness of the goals. O’Connell was hoppin’ mad about the use of drones for the purpose of taking out Taliban leadership. According to her figures, in 2009 just up to July there had already been as many drone attacks as in all of 2008, and according to her figures, all drone attacks together have killed as many as 700 civilians in the course of getting 12 Taliban. She believes this is a case of clear disproportionality. Cortright stressed the need for a “civilian surge”–the State dept. and aid folk who can rebuild and bring services and etc.–and said increasing the number of combat troops was the wrong thing to do. He used the term “occupation effect” (which seems to cover the same process as Kilcullen’s “accidental guerrilla syndrome”). I had to go teach a class and didn’t get to ask my question, which would have been, “How, in a dangerous environment such as Afghanistan, can you have a civilian surge? Isn’t Kilcullen correct that the military simply has to step into that breach, providing armed humanitarian and development assistance while preotecting the population, Afghani officials, and NGOs that are willing to go there, until the place becomes viable? Isn’t the issue less how many additional troops McChrystal will be requesting and more, what will they be doing?”
September 2, 2009 at 1:15 pm
silbey
’t the issue less how many additional troops McChrystal will be requesting and more, what will they be doing?
I think your analysis is spot-on. The civilian thing is chicken and egg: you can’t put civilians in there while the security is bad, and security will remain bad until you have people doing “civilian-like” things. That tends to be the military.
And McChrystal seems to be channeling a lot of the lessons of Iraq. He’s essentially shut down the use of a lot of air support for exactly what you think, which is that it kills lots more civilians than Taliban, and angers a population we should be trying to win over.
September 2, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Charlieford
That’s good to hear. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I’m immensely impressed with what our military’s done since 2000 and whenever it was, in terms of really re-thinking these conflicts and how to fight them–and then following through. It’s a rather stunning example of a very large and famously sclerotic and tradtional institution actually changing. When does that happen.
September 2, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Charlieford
I should mention that O’Connel says the drone attacks, in Pakistan at least (and other areas other than Afghanistan such as Yemen), are under the auspices of the CIA, which is apparently immune to the insights affecting the Army and Marine Corps. She thinks the CIA is still thinking in terms of body counts and trophies on the wall.