Military Solutions To What Problems? Posted by David Shorr

The current issue of The Atlantic has a lot grist for the debate over the purpose and efficacy of American military might. What caught my eye in Andrew Bacevich's piece on counterinsurgency doctrine and Jeffrey Goldberg's article on McCain were a false choice, a falacious choice, and a genuine dilemma.

The piece on McCain is about his views on war, particularly through the lens of Vietnam and the parallels with Iraq. Goldberg asked McCain's friend Sen. Lindsey Graham to shed new light on how McCain approaches the Iraq debate. Graham cited a belief that

"Some political problems have military solutions." A related McCain belief that's even more out of sync with America's current mood: wars are quagmires only until someone figures out a way to win them.

I'm glad the reporter got at these issues, though the choices of the words related and mood strike me as odd. The first quote doesn't really say much, because it's not the real question. Of course there are sometimes military solutions to political problems, but are there political problems for which there are no military solutions? According to the second statement above, apparently McCain believes there's always a military solution (at least once a war is engaged). I'd say the public's skepticism toward this proposition is more than a mood -- it's a conclusion for the current case and if not an enduring belief, at least a persistent wariness.

Another nugget Goldberg came up with was a quote from McCain's favorite book on terrorism, Philip Bobbitt's Terror and Consent:

The war against a global terror network, al Qaeda, is in an early phase. Yet already owing to the Coalition invasion of Iraq, terrorists from this network or any other cannot someday call on Saddam Hussein to supply them covertly with weapons with which to attack the West when he would not have dared to have done so directly, and when he, but not they, had the resources to buy into a clandestine market in WMD.

This is a fallacy we hear all the time from hardliners. If you decisively remove a threat, you have improved security. For me, even if you set aside the absurdity of extrapolating Saddam's WMD capability, you're still left with a ridiculous way of looking at things. It's an accounting system in which your actions are always a net positive because you don't let negative consequences appear on your balance sheet.

A few words about Bacevich's article on Gen. Petraeus, John Nagl, and the question of how oriented toward counterinsurgency the US military should be. I really see both sides of this one. I do believe that stability operations are important (don't forget, for many of us, Bosnia and Rwanda were formative policy experiences). But as with the wider issue of force (see above), you do have to be careful not to delude yourself about unrealistic social/political engineering projects.

Comments

[Peace]

I agree with Bacevich that the United States needs to concentrate on developing a conventional army and ignore COIN warefare. There is no real victory with COIN warfare without a political soluton. A successful COIN doctrine can at best manage a moment of stability like Vietnam from 1968-1975 or Iraq right now. But without any political solution military gains will collaspse like they did in Vietnam because the Americans failed to create a viable government in the south. However a large conventional American army kept the Soviets at bay during the Cold War. But if one concentrates too much on COIN warfare they could face defeat to a more conventional foe much like the French in the opening stages of the First World War or the Israelis in 2006. A strong conventional force can at least deter the Iranians or the North Koreans. What scares me is that the McCain administration wants the army committed to COIN but at the same time wants it to fight conventional battles with Iran,North Korea, and quite possibley Russia. McCain's foreign policy will be a disaster for the American army.

[JDB]

Although I'm no proponent of going to war with Russia over Georgia, the recent Georgian conflict should have been a reminder to Pentagon planners that, despite the self-assuring rhetoric, all future conflicts will not be of a COIN, CT, "low intensity" or "asymmetrical" nature. The U.S. and NATO must ensure that its forces are capable of full-spectrum contingencies, to include more conventional force-on-force conflicts.

The so-called experts declared that Gulf War I in 1991 was to be the last conventional conflict, that is until the invasion of Iraq again in 2003. The use of air power to curb Serbian aggression in the mid-1990s and as air support for the KLA in 1999 was supposed to mean the irrelevance of the U.S. Army in ground combat. Afghanistan in 2001 - 2002 was supposed to mean the rise of SOF as the means of fighting 21st century warfare. Iraq was originally envisioned to be a very light, SOF-focused attempt to overthrow Saddam from within, a la Afghanistan. One draft plan had the 82nd Airborne parachuting into Baghdad airport, leading and organizing what was supposed to be a spontaneous, popular uprising.

All of these concepts and declarations have been proven wrong. Again, as throughout history, we are fighting the last war: assuming that the tactics, techniques, and procedures that led to victory (or defeat) previously can be applied whole-cloth to the current situation. And time and time again we've been proven wrong.

To this end, back in May I posed a question to a senior German Bundeswehr general that, with the U.S. military becoming "Iraqitized" (the structure and equipment being designed to fit COIN and force protection measures in Iraq), isn't there a real concern that not enough resources and planning are being put into making the U.S. and European militaries capable of fighting other contingencies outside of the Mid East.

The general dismissed the idea of future force-on-force wars, stating, "Future wars will be asymmetrical, and the means of fighting those asymmetrical conflicts must focus on cyber security. The next war will be a cyber war; armies won't meet each other the way they did in the Gulf War or in the Second World War." He was only partially correct: Russia initiated their attack on Georgia with a cyber strike, disruption command, control and communications, while the very real tanks, bombers, and artillery advanced southward.

This doesn’t mean, however, that we necessarily need to expand the military. Proposals to increase the forces by 100,000 seem capricious and nonsensical. The key is to ensure that those in uniform receive the proper training, equipment, and guidance to conduct appropriate missions, be they foreign internal defense, civil affairs, disaster relief, CT/COIN, or conventional contingency operations.

There is a saying in the military that no objective is really secured until you have a 19 year old with a rifle standing on it. Regardless of the lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, that will hold true for whatever conflict the U.S. finds itself in for the foreseeable future.

[c.l. ball]

Your third point -- the dilemma of what to do when massive social engineering seems necessary -- is one that the Obama campaign and the Democrats need to seriously address over Afghanistan. Sen. Obama has made clear that the withdrawal from Iraq should be accompanied by an increase in US military commitments in Afghanistan. But how much of a commitment? Obama's July pledge of two more combat brigades is now outdated; Gen. McKiernan is publicly calling for three more beyond the currently planned deployments.

McCain cannot provide those brigades under his Iraq plans, but are Democrats prepared to expand the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan substantially? Given the ethno-political and socio-economic conditions there, is it plausible that the outcome won't be similar to Iraq?