Gates And The Future Of The American Army

Robert Gates has a long and distinguished record of saying unpleasant things which need to be said.  He did it again today in remarks at West Point delivered to the Corps of Cadets.  Among his ruminations on the future of the US army were his view that the US should not again fight a ground force heavy intervention of the Iraq or Afghan sort anywhere in Asia, Africa, or the Mideast.  He also and correctly noted the army will have to change its culture regarding career development or run the risk of losing its best junior and mid-rank officers to the tedium of clerical and budgetary work.

His view of our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan merit close study  While he refrained from offering any direct criticism of the decisions leading to either war, his cautionary not to say pessimistic thought about any future repetition give a strong hint as to how he would have done the job had he been in the Pentagon back in 2001-3.

It is important to understand that Dr Gates did not retreat behind an update of the preposterous refrain of so many decades, "No more Vietnams!"  Rather he implied that the US may find it necessary to intervene in failed or failing states, or states which offer cover and comfort to hostile non-state actors, but any such future operations must not be massive exercises in regime change and nation building.  In his understanding, interventions must be of (to use an archaic but respectable term,) "punitive."  These would be conducted primarily by air and naval assets but of necessity would include specialist ground formations tasked with the neutralization or capture of designated personnel or facilities.

Interventionary operations, if the Geek is understanding the tenor of Gates' position correctly, would be short, sharp, well-defined as to goals but would leave the larger political questions up to some entity other than the US military.  Certainly, this is how it should have been in Afghanistan.  The military should have been focused simply on destroying al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime.  Much of this could have been undertaken successfully by air assets, but the use of ground formations would still have been necessary.  With the evolution of remotely operated aerial vehicles, this sort of operation could be conducted more efficiently now or in the future than it could have been a decade ago, but even so specialist ground troops will remain essential in the years to come.

The prime concept governing interventionary operations must be a combination of economy of force and economy of time.  The job must be done swiftly and with the lowest possible investment in the "men-at-risk" category.  Since political, social, and economic reconstruction and reform are both lengthy in duration and intensive in human capital requirements, this area of task must remain beyond the competence of the military.

It is legitimate to infer from Dr Gates' words that the best adventure in regime change is the one which is undertaken using indirect means.  This implies little if any role for the military particularly the ground forces.  The Gates view is historically justified.  The only sort of regime change which will work is one which is conducted by the locals, one which arises organically from legitimate political disaffiliation on the part of a segment of the population.  Indeed, that is an operational definition of insurgency.  The outsider may play indirect roles in applying pressure to the status quo regime and support to the dissidents, but must not go any further.

Dr Gates stated categorically that the army will have its hands full justifying the expense of maintaining its heavy formations.  With this proposition, the Geek disagrees.  The threats confronting American national interests are not confined to those of failed, failing, hollow, or captive states or the non-state actors which flourish in those soils.  The threats also include large, complexly organized, technologically advanced states with ambitions which will run counter to the interests of the US, its allies, and clients.  The two top candidates on this list are China and Russia.

Again, the primary tools of deterrence and the war fighting on which deterrence is based are air and naval in nature.  But the utility of heavy ground formations in this area where diplomacy and war intersect cannot and must not be minimized.  The hoary question attributed to Joe Stalin when told the Pope was opposed to some Soviet initiative, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" applies to the Men in the Kremlin and the Trolls of Beijing today and into the foreseeable future.

The credible capacity to coerce which includes the credible capacity to deter is based on the perception that a country possesses both the means and the will to wage war effectively.  As the nuclear deterrent slides down in direct relevance, the metric of war fighting will rest increasingly on conventional air, naval, and ground forces.  In the latter category the primary index will be the size, number, and perceived competence of heavy formations.

The essential task confronting both the Army and Marine Corps in the era of the Incredible Shrinking Budget will be that of maintaining a credible capacity to fight both interventionary and conventional inter-state wars.  This may require some very creative out-of-the-box thinking on the part of both services with the final result being some sort of division of tasks with the heavy, conventional conflict duty accruing primarily if not exclusively to the Army.  Admittedly, the notion of preparing for the least likely of wars is frustrating to those who spend entire careers doing so, but boredom is the price of deterrence.

The fundamental nature of war is essentially unchanged and unchangeable, but the devil now and into the future resides in the details.  The world is not on the verge of universal peace and long term stability.  Governments such as those in Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela show this as do events in the Mideast.  Russia has announced an enormous military redevelopment program which will see a quantum level improvement in the materiel basis of the Russian military forces over the next decade.  The Chinese show no indication of abandoning their drive for a military second to none across the board: air, sea, ground, cyber, and space.

Nor is there any use appealing to the fiction on the banks of the Hudson river.  The UN has unlimited ambitions but no real capacity in its primary, arguably only, reason for existence--keeping and enforcing the international peace.  Similarly, there is no joy in the position so often adopted by the self-appointed academic, media, and political elites in Western Europe and the US, the notion that nationalism and the nation-state are dead or rapidly dying.

The reality remains that the US will continue to have national and strategic interests which will need to be defended against the hostility of other states.  Another reality will continue: There are states and non-state actors who are hostile to the US--regardless of who is occupying the Oval this year.  So will a third reality: the US must look first and foremost to itself in pursuing and defending its national and strategic interests.  Then, of course, there is the inconvenient fact that the US remains a Great Power, not as great a Great Power as just a very few years ago but a Great Power nonetheless.  This is a status that cannot be surrendered; it can only be lost or taken away by the acts of others.

This means the US will have to fight more interventionary conflicts.  It means the US must be able to show each and every day for years to come that it has both the means and will to fight a high intensity war against a peer.  This means that the US Army and other services will still have a job and We the People must be both able and willing to pay the associated costs.

The alternative remains what it always has been: A curtailment of American freedom to act on the global stage, and, when night falls, surrender to the forces of fear and hate.

The Iranian Parliament Doesn't Get The List Right

Today the Iranian parliament, adopting the role usually played by a yapping small dog with delusions of adequacy, declared the US Army and CIA to be "terrorist organizations." The resolution is currently nonbinding, but that could change if it is stamped good-for-go by the Council of Experts, which is a collection of mullahs.

"Well," says the Geek, "I'll be gosh-darned! Ain't that a hoot."

Of course the US Army is a "terrorist organization" if you define the term terrorist so loosely that it has no meaning. So is the US Marine Corps.

Can't help wondering why the sagacious statesmen of the Iranian parliament left the leathernecks off the list. The USMC has always featured a top rank placement with previous adversaries of the US.

During WW II the Japanese claimed repeatedly that to become a Marine, a man had to kill at least one member of his family. Now, that's a real terrorist, wouldn't you agree?

During the Korean War, the Chinese termed the Marines, "gangsters" and recycled the old Japanese charge. Not much inventiveness there, but it was a nice effort.

A decade or so later Hanoi played echo chamber for the "family killer" and "gangster" charges while adding that Marines were fed drugs so they would be "zombies" behind the trigger.

Wow! That's enough to make the Geek shiver.

Come on, Iranians! Can't you at least add the Marine Corps to your little list?

Then, what about the Air Force?

Heck, they were the bunch who used the most depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, which seems to have you lads so upset. On top of that, where is your knowledge of military history?

The American Air Force along with that of Great Britain engaged in a prolonged terror campaign against the civilian population centers of Germany. It was even admitted as being just that in formerly classified high-level documents.

Then, it was the Air Force (admittedly still part of the Army at that time, but straining to break free of ground pounder control) that delivered the atomic bombs on Japanese cities. It was the Strategic Air Command of the USAF that kept the bombers flying and the missiles standing by during the Cold War--and still does today.

Gosh, as Ross Perot used to say, "The devil is in the details."

Better add the Air Force to your list before you send it upstairs to the mullahs.

Perhaps you ought to add the US Navy to it as well. Aren't all those missile launching submarines enough to make you shudder--even a little? And, what about all those aircraft carriers? You might even want to consider the Navy's SEAL component. Can't you give those boys enough credit at black operations to feel even a little scared?

Now that a case has been made for expanding your "terrorist list," the Geek respectfully suggests that you take CIA off.

The Agency's primary function is the provision of intelligence. You might not know it, but nearly ninety percent of all raw information coming into the intelligence component of CIA is from open sources. Most of the rest comes from technical means. Only a teeny bit comes from classic spies. That's not too scary is it? Hardly causes you a shiver--unless you're hopelessly paranoid.

Oh! The Geek gets it! You guys are shaking in your collective sandals because of the Agency's clandestine/covert action capacity. That's what has you holding your breath with flat footed fear.

Chill out, fellows. Let ole doc Geek give you a historical tranquilizer. As the "family jewels" documents make clear, CIA has never been big on the concept of assassination. Not for moral reasons. No. For purely pragmatic considerations with "it doesn't work" on the top of the list.

(If the Agency's heart and soul had really been in the Kennedy brothers desire to kill Castro, the Cuban jefe would have been examining the root systems of daisys for the past forty-five years.)

Sure, Agency personnel and contract employees have trained paramilitary forces. Agency people have even (perish the thought) conducted such operations themselves over the years.

Now, wise and deep thinking parliamentarians of Tehran, get a grip on this!

As you ought to bloody well know courtesy of your own al-Quds Force and your Hezbollah proxies, to be a terrorist organization a simple standard must be met.

For your edification and deliction here is the standard. Through the use of violence or the threatened use of violence against civilian and governmental targets, the organization or its members must seek to alter the policies or structure of the target government and society.

For your further edification, the US military and intelligence community alike do not target civilians or even distinct personalities within a hostile regime. Indeed, the post-World War II history of US military operations both ground and air show an extreme effort to minimise civilian casualties.

So, upon consideration of the last two easily documentable historical realities, why don't you just withdraw your resolution? The Geek knows it must feel good to yap and yammer. Try to grow up just a bit and get a grip on reality.

This resolution of yours is as wrong as a soup sandwich.