’10 Years Of Abject Failure’: Army, SOCOM, Marine Leaders Focus On ‘Strategic Landpower’ - Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., Breaking Defense.
… Destroying a particular target is a complicated but solvable problem of physics. Defeating a formal unit is a more complex but well-studied question of military art. It’s massively more complex — a “wicked problem” — to anticipate the reactions of an entire society, or even understanding them swiftly enough to realize what’s happening, such as an insurgency, before it’s too late.
Strategically, that failure to understand the human factor is the root of the “abject failure” that the Army, Marines, and SOCOM are determined not to repeat. Politically, because humans live on land and are best understood through face-to-face interaction with other humans on the ground, emphasizing human factors is central to the argument that ground forces remain relevant. And institutionally for Special Operations, which is all about face-to-face interaction with foreigners, it would be a big boost in status to have formal, doctrinal recognition that there is a “human domain” of war…
Comments
If we should acknowledge that insurgencies are generally unavoidable in these circumstances (foreign, forced, rapid and radical state and societal change),
And if we should say, therefore, that our "abject failure" in the past 10 years was in not being able to smoothly, quickly and efficiently put down these unavoidable and self-inflicted insurgencies,
Then what specific aspect of the human domain should the Army, Marines and SOCOM concentrate on (fear?) to make things go more smoothly, quickly, correctly and efficiently in the future?
"... 10 years of abject failure ..."
What is it then -- specifically -- that we abjectly failed to do in the past 10 years?
Was it: To cause Iraq and Afghanistan -- ever so smoothly, quickly and efficiently -- to become ordered, oriented, organized and configured more along modern western lines?
Can this abject failure be traced to a lack of understanding and appreciation of something that resides within "the human domain?"
If so, what is this specific aspect of the human domain -- that we failed to adequately understand, address and appreciate -- that relates most directly to our inability to smoothly, quickly and efficiently transform these states and societies more in our image?
G. Martin and RantCorp:
Let us say that the war in Vietnam -- much like the war in Afghanistan -- should be seen only as battles; battles which are fought within a much larger context. This being: the "long war" to transform outlier states and societies more along modern western lines.
This war continues after the conclusion of its most recent major campaign: the initiative to -- via containment etc. -- transform the outlier great powers of Russia and China (to wit: the so-called Cold War).
Thus, while the battle for Vietnam may have been lost, the latest campaign to favorably transform the outlier great powers is considered to have been largely won; with Russia and China -- and numerous other states and societies -- being significantly transformed as per our requirements and our desires.
Afghanistan et. al?
Originally thought -- due in part to "end of history" thinking -- to be part of a more-simple and more-easy "mopping up" operation; undertaken to favorably transform the lesser and remaining outlier states and societies (under the guise of dealing with problems caused by "weak, failing, failed and/or rogue states").
Our understanding now?
We have a new and difficult front to contend with in our continuing "long war" to transform outlier states and societies along modern western lines. This requiring a major new campaign and major new strategy.
Recap:
I. The War: To transform outlier states and societies more along modern western lines.
II. The Campaigns:
a. Outlier Great Powers 1 (World War II - Germany and Japan).
b. Outlier Great Powers 2 (The Cold War -- Russia and China).
c. Lesser and Remaining Outlier States and Societies (ongoing).
III. Selected Battles:
a. Vietnam: A battle lost but a campaign (Outlier Great Powers 2) largely won.
b. Afghanistan: No determination yet as to the battle or the campaign (Lesser and Remaining Outlier States and Societies).
GM,
Sorry to have lost you. I reread my comment and fell asleep about half way thru so I know where you’re coming from.
You wrote -
'I don't view the current leadership as anything but responding to systemic pressures. I don't see any differences no matter who is in charge- the system overcomes them no matter who they are from my vantage point.'
You have reiterated the lack of leadership empowerment in individuals and across entire pay grades many times and I doubt if anyone disagrees with you. However what you may not be aware of is that the problems you have identified are prevalent in every large organization outside of the military that I am familiar with. In fact the industry I am currently employed (aerospace) it is even worse than my experience with the military. To varying degrees across the whole of industry and commerce, whether it be the automobile industry, mining, health, agriculture, public sector, banking, state/federal government Machiavelli and Kafka are definitely the god of worship for many personnel in middle and senior managers. However, I would suggest it has always been so and will always be thus. However despite these people doing their worst the job gets done and to a level of success that makes the US the world’s most powerful economy.
In other words why is the military failing when other equally challenged large organizations (many of whom do not rely on guaranteed tax payer handouts) are successful? I was offering a battle/war dialectic debate in the hope it might shed light on the problem you and everyone else have experienced.
You wrote-
'The machines of the North were the ones that finally won the war. It wasn't insurgents and the will of "the peoples" that overran Da Nang and Saigon'
I was not contending that it was an insurgent army that wound up the VN War but a people’s army based primarily on light infantry with a small element of heavier Arms.
The fall of Hue and Da Nang saw 120,000 PAVN/VC up against 150,000 ARNV/RPF. The events you referred to as evidence that MBTs winning the VN war occurred two years after we had shot our bolt and deserted our allies. So I am not sure of the relevance. But having said that the ARVN forces had a 4 to 1 advantage in armor, a 150 to nil advantage in naval craft and a 400 to nil advantage in aircraft. If the conflict was a conventional one why the complete rout of best equipped and best trained units in the ARVN by such a poorly mechanized numerically smaller attacking force?
Though there was some heavy fighting in defensive positions – most notably the 18th Div at Xuan Loc - many losses were caused by panicked troops being ambushed or cut off whilst fleeing. IMO the ability to emerge almost anywhere from the interior and attack the ARVN positions along the coast suggests to me the dominance of the primarily light infantry tactics the PAVN/VC had developed since WW2 allowed them to swarm the ARVN/RPF positions at will.
When the T 62 Tank crashed through the gates of the undefended Presidential Palace in 1975 the NVA did possess mechanized units up to and including sophisticated BM 21s,152mm artillery and SA-2s but IMHO this did not represent their primary Arm of decision. Your suggestion that by this time the 30 years of light infantry mastery had morphed into a mechanized force spearheaded by Armor I respectively hope we can agree to disagree.
You wrote-
“Lack of political will on our side does not make a conventional war into a "people's war".
Let’s add up the Butcher’s Bill that reflects what you consider our ‘lack of political will’- 2,700,000 US personnel served in VN, 58000 killed, 153,000 WIA, 1500 MIA. 3000 fixed wing aircraft lost, 6000 rotary wing lost, 5.25 million fixed wing sorties, 7,000,000 tons of bombs dropped and 10 years of effort down the tube. I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree that reflects ‘lack of political will” on behalf of the US body politic.
My ‘inflammatory’ remarks ‘tiny men, tiny minds...etc’ was a poor attempt at irony – i.e. the big bad guy getting his ass kicked by the little guy – but I obviously should avoid a repeat.
No worries I appreciate the exchange,
RC
You started to lose me here:
<em>"It is difficult to imagine a more abject example of the folly of Air, Sea, and Land Battle than Vietnam. The defeat in VN at the hands of tiny people, with tiny minds, a tiny army living in a tiny backward country should have stabbed a cold ideological bayonet into the very heart of our military leadership and compelled us to understand that victory in battle might be decided by machines but victory in war will always be decided by peoples"</em>
From there you continued to lose me with a seemingly hubristic, know-it-all attitude. You seem very assured of your prognostications and a little- to me- self-righteous.
I don't view the current leadership as anything but responding to systemic pressures. I don't see any differences no matter who is in charge- the system overcomes them no matter who they are from my vantage point.
In terms of Vietnam: ignoring the seeming inflammatory language ("tiny minds, tiny people"- really?), the machines of the North were the ones that finally won the war. It wasn't insurgents and the will of "the peoples" that overran DaNang and Saigon. It was tanks. Lack of political will on our side does not make a conventional war into a "people's war". It only underlines the issues with democracies undertaking wars of choice IMO.
<blockquote>It is difficult to imagine a more abject example of the folly of Air, Sea, and Land Battle than Vietnam. The defeat in VN at the hands of tiny people, with tiny minds, a tiny army living in a tiny backward country should have stabbed a cold ideological bayonet into the very heart of our military leadership and compelled us to understand that victory in battle might be decided by machines but victory in war will always be decided by peoples. No matter if, as in VN, we are foolish enough to spend more money on mechanized battle systems than the rest of the world combined it will not alter the final outcome.</blockquote>
Just as historians who look at Revolutionary and Civil War history, or even WWI, II, and Korea miss the point and tend to apply different circumstances to today's wars, ROE, and equipment, you too seem to be guilty of that in this instance.
Clearly, if we fought Vietnam today, there is no way it would have lasted 10 years with 58,000 casualties...for starters because nobody would volunteer for that war and its level of losses today, and second because our technology would help us shorten the war and reduce casualties in many ways...countered by ROE and a kinder, gentler world hurting us in others.
Clearly Linebacker carpet bombing would not have occurred if Vietnam was delayed 50 years due to ROE and civilian collateral damage concerns. At the same time, the superior fighters/bombers and precision munitions of today, plus stealth and JSEAD capability would have dramatically reduced our losses. Our more survivable and redundant AH-64D/E, UH-60s, and CH-47D/F would have suffered fewer losses. Marine MV-22s rapidly could have reinforced fire bases with tethered aerostats for security while K-MAX UAS and precision GPS airdrop resupplied patrols. Our body-armored and well-helmeted troops would have survived more bullets and mortars/rockets/RPGs. Finally, Reapers/Predators/Gray Eagles could have overflown the Ho Chi Minh trail making targeting of resupply and reinforcement efforts all the more difficult for the NVA and Vietcong. The 1972 Easter Offensive if transported in time to 2013 quite possibly could have resulted in separate South and North Vietnams, if we had attacked into the North to exploit successes with today's modern equipment.
I tend to agree with you about the risk of limited nuclear weapons going off in the U.S. That is a far cry from the thousands that threatened us during the Cold War. However, the same nuclear escalation risks that kept us from going into or bombing North Vietnam or its ports to a greater degree are why AirSea Battle is unnecessary and dangerous. You don't fly into the center of nuclear states with large stealth bombers when adversaries don't know that you are hunting non-nuclear missiles instead of nuclear ones.
Finally, it is hard to fathom the Muslim Brotherhood winning any future election in Egypt, nor does it seem they could finance any nuclear undertaking of a large nature without being detected and thwarted by the Egyptian military. Some terrorist group will get a hold of WMD and use it in a large U.S. city sometime in the next 20-30 years. However, that is a far cry from terrorists or sanctioned rogue states building massive missile armadas to deliver such weapons against Iron Dome and U.S. equivalents of today and the future.
IMO the conflict in Pak/AF provides a critical opportunity to correct a fundamental flaw in the way the US aligns military strategy with its foreign policy. We often hear how a sizable proportion our well educated and dedicated senior military leadership in-explicitly become entangled in Machiavellian webs of vanity, careerism, deceit , avariciousness , sycophancy, messianic delusions, pork, Kafkaesque empire building, illicit sex blah, blah, blah and in doing so render our vastly superior Air, Sea and Land forces strategically impotent .
IMO the implausibility of such glaringly obvious shortcoming going unnoticed in so many stellar military careers (it appears other western armed forces are no less maligned) suggests to me something unique to military affairs is impacting leadership which cannot be explained away by normal human frailty and weakness.
Many folks go to great lengths to explain how the conflict in AF/Pak is not war and because we believe it is when it is not, strategy shaped on this mistake is stillborn from the get-go. The crux of the argument being not all violence is war – war has a distinct nature and the existence of certain war-like characteristics does not preordain a state of war exists. No doubt there is a great deal of truth in that but who’s viewpoint should we listen to? Whom is in a position to best understand whether the conflict is large scale civil unrest or war? I would suggest if the natives believe a state of war exists then it doesn’t matter what Johnny foreigner says or argues – war it is.
We could be forgiven for believing our military leadership should understand war and given a reasonable transition period our tactical and operational excellence should quickly align with the HN’s strategic goals as well as our own. But as we all know this has not happened for a very long time. In fact much has gone horribly wrong.
While the answers to these failures have stubbornly remained elusive to our own political and military masters such is not the case for our smiling Asian friends and our/their inscrutable Asian foes.
IMHO rather for want of personal integrity in our political and military leadership I believe our obsession with modernity and materialism has caused us to make the profound mistake that war and battle are the same thing. More precisely we believe war is a series of battles and if we shape our conventional GPFs to win any battle on land, sea and in the air we will win wars. To Afghans, Paks, Indians, Chinese, Iranians, Syrians, Iraqis and Vietnamese this is completely stupid. As far as they are concerned battle-proven mechanized excellence is of little consequence to a nation’s war fighting capability.
It is difficult to imagine a more abject example of the folly of Air, Sea, and Land Battle than Vietnam. The defeat in VN at the hands of tiny people, with tiny minds, a tiny army living in a tiny backward country should have stabbed a cold ideological bayonet into the very heart of our military leadership and compelled us to understand that victory in battle might be decided by machines but victory in war will always be decided by peoples. No matter if, as in VN, we are foolish enough to spend more money on mechanized battle systems than the rest of the world combined it will not alter the final outcome.
In VN we refused to go to war in the north and in doing so avoided war in the heartland of the NVA. More importantly we avoided the Red River Delta for the simple reason we refused to go to war with the PLA. Instead we chose to fight a meaningless series of battles in the south of the country.
Needless to say if our leadership had chosen war in the north the experience of VN would have been a much greater catastrophe than it ended up being. However the avoidance of a greater disaster rings hollow for want of our better appreciation of the gravity of war and the frivolity of battle. In other words we should have listened to many who understood this and kept out of VN in the first place.
In Afghanistan the gravitas of our failure to understand this difference has become such a crippling burden that we have convinced ourselves that for lack of a suitable foe (whom we deem worthy to engage our GPF in battle) we are taking our ‘bat and ball’ and leaving war to others. Once again we have scoped down onto battle for the simple reason we refuse or are unable to fight war.
Safely back in the homeland we will no doubt renew all our shiny machines and spend a fortune on new ones. There will no shortage of charging around proving grounds, surging across the ocean and launching no end of exotic weapon systems and platforms off numerous Battle Groups in toothless displays of battle-fixated ‘shock and awe’ firepower.
The strategic narrative justifying all of this is we await the Chinese to do battle with us somewhere on the 165 million square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately the chances of the Chinese rewriting Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’ to illuminate their simple minds as to the ‘Art of Battle’ seems as remote as a Clausewitz inspired rewrite titled ‘On Battle’ . I would suggest a collectivized frontal lobotomy of PLA leadership to be more likely.
As in VN, Iraq and AF we repeatedly insist our GPFs provide excellent tactical answers to the wrong operational questions in a vicious cycle of infinite regress that chokes the life out of any strategist attempting to align tactics and operations with a worthwhile strategic outcome.
So what?
It is not only Asian nations that understand that war is the graduate level of policy and battle is grade school. Non-state actors also understand the difference and none more so than ALQ and the MB. Unfortunately for us recent developments have provided an unexpected boost for both of these organizations to achieve their war aims.
The Navy has removed the deluded Messiah from the ALQs leadership and in the hands of AaZ ALQ has an patient, intelligent and astute leader whose deep hatred of Israel realigns ALQ strategy with that of the MB and the ‘Arab Spring’.
ALQ did not move to the AF/Pak region so as to better fly airliners into some US public buildings, blow up public transport across the Europe, cut people’s heads off on the internet and generally ‘piss off the entire world’. That would be a pointless battle-minded pursuit. They are in the region to acquire a nuclear weapon from which they hope to fabricate a nuclear IED (NIED)with which to attack Israel.
Up until the successful democratic election of the MB in Egypt ALQ’s underground organization would have found fabricating a NIED from scratch impossible. In recognition of that reality they have had to be in a position where stealing one (i.e. a Pakistani one) was the only realistic possibility. But now that is no longer their only option.
A MB government makes available the economic, political, industrial and military infrastructure of a large country and gives ALQ the second option to fabricate a nuclear weapon from scratch. All that this ALQ-MB alliance requires is a Pakistani sympathizer who has access to the technical drawing. So rather than the sole option of starting a civil war in AF/Pak and snatching a handful of nukes in the resulting chaos a file attached to an email from an ‘atom spy’ would open a second front from where ALQ can double down on the effort to achieve their strategic objectives.
The bloody events of the coup in Egypt have draped the cloak of martyrdom on the MB who prior to the coup was already the most democratically popular political party in Egypt. When the MB are returned to government the collective leadership of the Egyptian military will no doubt be given the same treatment as the hundreds of unarmed people they ordered to be shot down in the streets. The Face book/Twitter imagery showing civilians carrying wounded kids away from the confrontation and being shot in the back for their trouble are a MB recruiting sergeants’ godsend.
The 'new' Egypt will dispense with their current battle-centric Army and adopt the Persian model of a huge UW force shielded by a nuclear arsenal. In the fullness of time when they are duly ready the two Armies will begin to squeeze their neighbors and slowly encroach on Israel from opposite fronts.
The IDF (the ultimate disciples of ‘battle is best’) will sporadically lash out with battle and in doing so stoke the fuel of the coming fire-storm. Ironically this mind frame is the very opposite of the hard men of Shin Bet who despise this battle-rattle and like their Arab foes respect and fear the more resonant drumbeat of war.
Some folks will suggest that a Sunni –Shia Pact will never happen but that’s exactly what we told the Polish Jews when Molotov was having a not so secret meeting with Ribbentrop in August 1939.
Inevitability there will come a point when the Sunni wolf chooses to lay with the Shia sheep. When this happens we will be forced to bear witness to a second attempt by modern ‘civilization’ to exterminate the Jews.
From the splendid vantage points we have constructed to intercept the Chinese Armada we will have a birds-eye view of the effects of the only battle device that trumps everyone and everything. Once again we will experience what happens to human beings when they find themselves on the surface of the sun.
Unfortunately for all of us the last time we sunk this low the world was a more genteel place and the in the summer of August 1945 the Japanese were offered an opportunity to surrender. IMO this time round we will not be so blessed. This time no quarter will be asked for and none will be given.
"Here comes the sun......ditter ditter.......and it's alright",
RC
Concur on all points, if human domain doesn't include us the concept will fail miserably. I also agree with the warnings you provided, if the intent of this concept is to simply to be able to contest for influence and control of this domain it will result in more stereotypes (much like the ones we have in our current COIN doctrine) and template solutions to dominate this domain. These warnings do not necessarily result in invalidated the concept, but it clearly demonstrates the need for caution.
I would agree with "the human domain" if we included ourselves in the domain- as well as our "domain"-oriented institution. If we spent as much time trying to understand how we see the world - and how our institution influences that understanding as we do "the other". For some reason "the human domain" seems to refer only to others- we have to understand them and their faulty world views so that we can teach them the "Truth". We never seem to want to include our own faulty paradigms in our domain analyses- our philosophical approach to the world is objective and infallible. Until we do that we will continue to listen to people promising decisive effects from some abstract and cherry-picked historical formula and blaming execution or strategy if success eludes us.
A few quotes from <em>Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes</em> by Patrick Porter come to mind:
“Just as [the recent cultural turn of our military] turns attention to neglected areas, a stress on culture carries dangers of its own. It can easily be done badly. Ironically, a stress on the peculiarities of others can reinstate stereotypes instead of challenging them.”
“Those who argue most forcefully for the military utility of cultural knowledge can have the most flawed ideas about it. …a plea for Americans to ‘know the enemy’ revive[s] the rhetoric of colonialism in new form, but with a bodyguard of cultural sensitivity.
“But this (British COIN doctrine being imbued with a minimum force philosophy and unequalled levels of cultural insight) is a false history… In reality, campaigns like Malaya and Kenya were not culturally sensitive, except in the sense of leveraging local hatreds. In Kenya they employed torture, hangings, indiscriminate bombings, sadistic violence, dismemberment, and killings in custody. In Malaya there were detentions without trial, executions, jungle bombing campaigns, and forcible resettlement of the population into camps. Divide and rule and exemplary punishment marked these campaigns more than ‘hearts and minds’.”
“Restraint and awareness are respectable in themselves. But there is no automatic relationship between cultural sophistication and victory. ‘Lesser wars’ are about power and survival as well as ideas and identity. History leaves us an uncomfortable insight: that occupations of brutality can succeed. The gentler gamester is not always the soonest winner. Conversely, cultural knowledge might not tilt the conflict in one’s favour.”
“The new American FM on COIN, … influenced by classic enthnography, shares aspects of this view of culture, as logically consistent, bounded, highly integrated, internally coherent, and animated often by a single unifying narrative.”
I also disagree with Curmudgen's assertions which is a repeat of our COIN doctrine which hasn't produced a success anywhere. Since you thoroughly adddressed what is in my opinion the wrong mindedness of identifying and addressing underlying causes I will only add that in some select cases in the world action by the government can mitigate some the driving factors of an insurgency if they act boldly and early, but once an insurgency starts the factors multiply daily, and if it is based on greed and hatred we have no capability to spread love. Normally there are multiple actors and multiple drivers of the conflict, attempting to address one creates another and so forth.
Coercion still has its role in any conflict, even if we're uncomfortable with that idea. Coercion certainly has its limits, but a government conducting COIN would rapidly lose if it didn't maintain a credible coercive capability. One simply needs to remember that once the insurgents realize they can't win militarily they'll pursue more of political warfare strategy.
I do disagree with you Grant if you're implying human domain isn't important. I agree wholeheartedly that our default answer to protect the population approach is ill informed, but that gets to back to the issue of the COIN doctrine being flawed partly because it is proscribtive (doesn't facilitate learning). It doesn't promote gaining understanding and developing/designing appropriate courses of action based on that understanding, instead it prescribes go out and protect the people.
I think if we had a better (we'll never have a perfect) understanding of the human domain we would understand what we can and can't do (assuming we understand our very real limits to our influence through coercion or soft power). That in turn would lead to more realistic policy goals and supporting strategies. A fair amount of effort went into understanding the human domain during WWII, so humans as part of warfare isn't exactly new. I'm not sure what Curmudgen's point was some people don't get that the world is changing. Perhaps that is directed at those who embrace our colonial era COIN doctrine? During Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq (perhaps Korea) some our leaders thought we could shock and awe our way to victory with our technology, and clearly we have proven that we can triumph in tactical battles with this approach, but these tactical successes failed to lead us to achieving our strategic ends. We need to embrace the totality of conflict and war, not just winning the tactical fights. Just because we currently enjoy a signficant technological edge doesn't mean we ignore the human factors.
Grant to your comment below about systems I don't have an answer other than we can change the current system (probably more realistic), or we can try to break it and see what systems emerge, but systems will emerge that may or may not be better. Realistically I don't think we can break them because they're tied into numerous laws and funding procedures, so that means a lot of people in different places protecting their pet rocks. Much less threatening to change the current one.
I respectfully disagree that we have to understand root causes or that there is utility in the "human domain".
Root causes of complex entities like "the will of the people", "insurgency", etc. are - according to complexity theory, emergence, etc.- very difficult, if not impossible to figure out. Our love of the linear and the logical makes us think there are "centers of gravity" and "root causes"- but the reality is - in my understanding- much more complex. Root causes don't exist- unless one traces all the causes back to the proverbial snake who suckered Adam and Eve. And, even if one could i.d. a root cause- knowing what to do is another problem all-together.
Which brings me to the "human domain". I think "understanding people", working towards their "will", helping them with security, development, and governance, etc., etc.- none of that is guaranteed to help us in any way. People just aren't linear robots. If COIN theory was right then quant funds would always predict the right stuff in the markets and make money. If no-one has a lock on Wall Street I find it incredulous that we suggest we can follow some formula or concept and be successful in dealing with human population groups. I 100% agree with LB that flexibility is the key. I think a more objective look at history would show that treating population groups badly has worked in the past to bring order. Just because our current sensibilities can't imagine treating people badly doesn't mean we should whitewash history.
Actually, I don't think we are too far out of agreement, and yes, maybe I over stated the insignificance of the human domain. I actually do believe that as an institution we could do a better job there, but I also think we are drawing the wrong conclusions from the past 10 years of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A more culturally sensitive military is not the answer.
You mention that understanding the root cause is the key to success in defeating an insurgency. I agree completely and think we can reach a point of understanding those issues by working with the nation we are trying to assist. The problem has to be theirs before it becomes ours, and the decision to address those problems has to come from the leaders of that country not ours.
While I don't disagree with you on everything, I disagree with you on the utility of the human domain. What we learned (I hope) is that coercion is no longer an acceptable means of dealing with a civilian population, even on that is willing to take up arms against you. It doesn't work unless you are willing to take it to its logical conclusion and exterminate the population, a popular strategy in Africa during the colonel period. The reason that you killed everyone was because if you did not, if you only killed the ones fighting against you today, then others would take up the cause tomorrow. Better to kill them all now and be done with it. It was an effective strategy. Without that option coercion and suppression only leads to more insurgents. You would think we would have learned that from watching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the last 40 years or so.
If you want to stop an insurgency (or a revolt) you need to understand the root causes. That, I hope, is what understanding the human domain will bring to the table.
What I see are two camps: one that understands that the world is changing and one that wants to pretend that it is not; one that wants to face the challenges head on and one that wants to retreat into a comfortable past. I already know which one is likely to win, until the next time we get this wrong.
All the talk about understanding the human terrain is a bunch of malarky. If everyone of our soldiers and Marines had a degree in social science and anthropology and spoke Arabic, Pashto, and Dari, the outcome of the past 10 years would hardly have been different. As an institution we are fooling ourselves.
Our strength is in flexibility. No one knows what the next conflict will look like. On top of that, it is our civilian leaders who commit the nation to war. The military gets a vote, but not the final say. Creating a force with a broad range of capabilities is the key. The services should be distinct. Let the Marines focus on amphibious warfare, the Army on large scale maneuver, and SOF on niche capabilities which include regional expertise and language. The operational art is in employing a combination of these forces at the right place and time to achieve strategic objectives.
As someone once told me, "the human domain is about external entities- the enemy, the locals, the friendlies. It is about humans. It isn't about internal entities- that is referred to as 'the human dimension'."
Does that mean internally we aren't humans- we are a dimension???
Lol---
I think our lack of understanding ourselves is a problem- if not THE problem. And when I say "ourselves" I'm talking about the way our institution thinks in the macro sense and forces us to think through organizational bureaucracy. Our systems preclude us from being to think in ways beyond the "yes" mentality of our conference rooms...
True, we did not understand the "human domain" of Iraq and Afghanistan going in, and arguably we understand them little better coming out. But that is not why we produced so little of strategic value out of so much tactical energy applied across the range of miltiary, diplomacy and development.
We are looking for a fall guy to hang our current failures upon and a savior to prevent future ones. I doubt "Human Domain" is it, as human domain is a tactial construct to inform and improve tactical operations in populace-based conflicts. Tactics, however, are not how or why we fell short of our goals.
We fell short because we defined strategic goals and ends far beyond the capacity of any foreign invading force to achieve.
We fell short because we parked our Bradleys and MRAPs on the soveregnty and legitimacy of the nations we entered and did what we wanted, how we wanted to do it. And when that didn't work we did even more of what we wanted how we wanted to do it. Doubling down on bad cards doesn't work in Vegas, and it surely does not work in intervention efforts designed to make some place, some government, some people less of a concern to what we currently perceive our vital national interests to be.
We love tactics though, and we love the "rightness" of what we set out to achieve. Until we can step back and honestly discuss and assess what was wrong about what we set out to achieve we will never get to concepts that lead us to achieving more reasonable ends in ways that are far more respectful of the sovereignty and legitimacy of others - and that make interests that are truly vital (not just currently politically popular to call vital) as secure as they need to be.
Our failings in understanding of human nature in general dwarf our understanding of human culture in any particular time or place. Lets get the foundation right first, as that is what our strategic failures are built upon.
"<em>We will ultimately have to adjust our system of systems (DOTMILPF) to facilitate the cultural change we need to implement mission command and free people to think. We're largely a product of the system, so if you don't change it I think it is asking a little bit much for the people at the end of the pipeline to change. The downsizing of the force is an opportunity to keep our best and focus on leading the revolutionary change we need to make.</em>"
One must assume then, that the system of systems isn't the problem. I'd think that "revolutionary" change implies a breaking of the system...
It seemed that those who attended this meeting largely concluded that if we simply understood the human domain better we could win. What understanding the human domain better more accurately would enable is for planners and decision makers to determine what realistically can be accomplished and where so called human domain factors present significant risk to our desired ends. As most of us now realize the so called decisive combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were far from decisive.
Lots of thinking on human domain lately that I'll try to capture in an article since I have almost convinced myself contrary to my previous stance that we need to address human domain in our doctrine. I'm not backing off my position that this is simply common sense (that unfortunately isn't common), but frankly since we're too stupid to consider it if it isn't in our doctrine telling us what to think. Why we to be reminded that war is ultimately about humans, not just opposing military or paramilitary forces is question worth pondering, because if we can identify the answer to that we may be able to come up with a relatively simple approach to create a collective paradigm shift within the military that enables our talented officers and NCOs to actually use their brains much like they did before they entered the Borg (or military). Doctrine was never intended to be so directive, but our military culture has devolved to the point where it embraces doctrine like a zealot embraces religion. We have a faith based belief if we follow it then we'll accomplish our mission. We have encouraged our officers and NCOs to dismiss the value of curiosity and creativity when it comes to gaining understanding of the operational environment and developing feasible (to include non-traditional) approaches to achieving our desired goals. Of course there are many people who are exceptions to this rule, but exceptions to the rule don't define our Army.
We approach planning in some respects with pre-set solutions consisting of six phases outlined in our Joint Planning Pub, although JP 5-0 states in the small print these are only suggested phases. Perhaps font needs to be enlarged, because those who entered the borg have embraced "the" prescribed six phases and thou shall not deviate.
Army doctrine and Joint Doctrine both perceive shaping operations as operations designed to gain a relative advantage to facilitate decisive operations. In my opinion we foolishly believe that a so-called decisive operation exists, and subsequently most, if not all, of our doctrine evolves around this notion. This doesn't facilitate creative thinking in developing an approach to prevent conflict through a more subtle and holistic shaping effort that looks for opportunities beyond deterrence. It also hasn't enabled a strategic success in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq. One can make an argument that the common interpretation of Clausewitz's wisdom has had a very negative effective on our military's thinking.
I think our desire to develop doctrinal based plans consisting of quantifiable objectives with associated effects and then tasks to achieve those effects are largely a waste of time that result from illusionary thinking. There are alternative approaches to addressing non-tradition (non major battle focused) security challenges that nest with the concept of mission command. Assuming we could evolve our force to once again (at least in SF) to be curious and creative, and provide them with a strategic context of the environment and what our nation desires the operational environment to look like they could then develop and adjust their own objectives based on their interaction with the environment where they will develop a much more nuanced understanding than the staff ever will. The commander and staff still owe them a very well thought out mission and intent, but they don't need a laundry list of measurable objectives. They will need higher to truly embrace mission command and give them the freedom to be both proactive and responsive as they work towards the desired state as they interact with the environment. Commander and staffs will enable and provide guidance when necessary. All this will require a significant change in our culture, but it seems to align with the vision described in CCJO 2020.
I disagree with some of Grant's comments below related to systems. We will ultimately have to adjust our system of systems (DOTMILPF) to facilitate the cultural change we need to implement mission command and free people to think. We're largely a product of the system, so if you don't change it I think it is asking a little bit much for the people at the end of the pipeline to change. The downsizing of the force is an opportunity to keep our best and focus on leading the revolutionary change we need to make.
It makes sense that SOF is doing this- because they have to exist in the conventional world of DoD. But, it is sad too, because in adapting the systems and processes that DoD has, we become more like the rest. Above the ODA level I am wondering what, if anything, SOF has to offer that the rest of DoD doesn't have- especially if our systems and processes force us to "see" warfare the same as everyone else does. I'd argue the strengths of SOF in the past have included the ability to see things in unconventional ways.
Specific comments:
<em>"Defeating a formal unit is a more complex but well-studied question of military art. It’s massively more complex — a “wicked problem” — to anticipate the reactions of an entire society, or even understanding them swiftly enough to realize what’s happening, such as an insurgency, before it’s too late."</em>
It is possible that understanding an entire society- especially during an insurgency- one has to have the tools to do so and that our system does not prepare us to do so. Our system prepares us very well for situations wherein our objectives are clear, timelines are relatively short, and our national interests are self-apparent. Our entire system of systems with all its incumbent processes is very highly tuned to get the right person with the right training, equipment, education, command structure, plan, doctrine, etc. to a place to accomplish those clear objectives. Tweaking the margins of that system of systems and expecting it to also work in situations wherein we have no idea beforehand what DOTMLPF solution will work best is bordering on fantasy. Art implies creativity- and yet this effort is going in the exact opposite direction- SOF is becoming a more determinist organization- which will definitely get more $ and missions and attention, but I would argue will make us less effective in dealing with shaping ops- which to me implies reliance on less of a set plan and more of a nimble, decentralized, and less deterministic force.
<em>"Strategically, that failure to understand the human factor is the root of the “abject failure” that the Army, Marines, and SOCOM are determined not to repeat."</em>
This is what I have the most problem with: the idea that we can institutionalize the understanding of humans and that will lead to strategic success. I didn't see a huge problem at the tactical level with how our forces dealt with "the other". Sure, there were some real blunders- but what the media ignored were the 75% good relations. It is in keeping with our cultural understanding and worldview that if we treat folks nice and understand them at the tactical level- that will help us win- and if we aren't winning, we must not be acting nice enough. The problems I saw were more in the realm of the strategic and operational levels not understanding the paradigms they were operating under and how they were getting in the way of understanding. If we want to address that problem- then we have to look at our own systems first- instead of assuming they are good and synching them more.
<em>"And institutionally for Special Operations, which is all about face-to-face interaction with foreigners, it would be a big boost in status to have formal, doctrinal recognition that there is a “human domain” of war…"</em>
And thus we have the real reason for this effort: a big boost in status and formal doctrinal recognition. Yes, this is important- but only if one assumes that SOF adapting conventional systems and processes and growing closer to the conventional force will have more positives than negatives. The possibility that the system of systems that runs DoD http://www.afms1.belvoir.army.mil/files/primers/HTAR%28shortversion%297… (it is relatively the same throughout the services) IS the problem- or at least gets in the way of being effective in "the human domain" more than anything else- should give us all pause. I think it is highly probable that everyone would improve if DoD adopted some of SOF's processes and "anti-systems" approach to many things as opposed to the other way around...
Likewise, how it is a "wicked problem" to anticipate that an out-of-touch local government, seeking to rapidly and radically transform the political, economic and social face of a country such as Afghanistan, that this such initiative might also produce an insurgency?
Herein, it being the failure of the governing entity (foreign or domestic) to read, acknowledge and understand the incompatible nature of its transformational initiatives -- vis-a-vis the wants, needs and desires of the local population -- which brings one to ask how many functioning synapses are present and accounted for?
"Strategically, the failure to understand the human factor is the root of the “abject failure” that the Army, Marines, and SOCOM are determined not to repeat."
I submit that we must be much more direct, honest and specific than the amorphous term "the human factor" to identify the root cause of our problems. For example, consider this more specific description:
"Strategically, the failure to understand that:
a. While the goal of the United States is to transform different states and entire societies along modern western lines,
b. Different states and societies often do not wish to -- nor often can they -- readily trade (1) their ways of life for (2) modern western ways.
This is:
1. The essence of the "wicked problem,"
2. The root cause of "10 years of abject failure" and
3. The problem that landpower must learn to deal with and address in the 21st Century -- should they wish to remain relevant.
Thus, if the Army, the Marines and SOCOM do not wish to repeat the mistakes made in the past 10 years, they must specifically address and come to terms with that portion of "the human factor" that relates to the head-on clash between:
a. The long-standing goals and objectives of the United States/the western world and
b. The often diametrically opposed and/or often very different goals and objectives of various other states and societies and individuals and groups.
Linda Robinson:
"Looking at everything that has happened over the last decade until now, we are not good enough at "shape and influence" -- the military term for getting people, groups and governments to do what we want them to do without having to shoot at them first."
Herein, and consistent with my argument above, should we say that the problem has less to do with our ability to "shape and influence" and more to do with the incompatible nature of the product which we are selling/pushing, to wit: modernization/westernization?
"War" being the common result of asking/demanding that states -- and/or populations -- do something that they simply cannot do?