Blog Posts

by Lieutenant General Michael A. Vane, U.S. Army

In the past few weeks and months numerous points and counterpoints have been made regarding CSDA...Connecting Soldiers to Digital Applications. Many of these points are valid; many are not. I would like to take a few minutes to clarify some of the concerns or misperceptions regarding this Army initiative.

First of all, there is no denying that the world as a whole and our Army in particular are in the midst of a technology firestorm. The explosion of smart phones in the civilian sector highlights the potential of these technologies and digital applications for the Army. If we do not get on board these evolving technologies, then the rest of the world will leave us standing at the station. The potential returns from these technologies are simply too great, particularly for enhancing training and tactical functions.

That's why the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) and the Army's Chief Information Officer have initiated a pilot program under CSDA to explore the value for the individual Soldier. CSDA is not a materiel acquisition program, but a series of pilots and assessments that will evaluate the value added of smart phones and cellular connectivity to support new training approaches of the Army Learning Concept 2015 and the creation of a persistent learning environment. These assessments will also explore smart phone potential for accessing operational and institutional information. The great potential by employing commercially available devices is that it may permit the Army to rapidly update and share information at a fraction of the cost of developing military unique solutions via traditional methods.

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In my March 4, 2011 column at Foreign Policy, I first drew the comparison between the Obama administration's handling of Libya and the situation in Iraq 20 years ago, just after Kuwait's liberation from Saddam Hussein's forces. Events in Libya since then and Obama's speech last night have only reinforced the comparison.

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Here is the article lineup for the latest issue:

Human Security in Complex Operations by Mary Kaldor

Enhancing U.S. Support for UN Peacekeeping by Nancy Soderberg

Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: Putting Inter into Interagency by Eric A. Jorgensen

Interagency National Security Teams: Can Social Science Contribute? by James D. Orton and Christopher Lamb

The Comprehensive Approach in Afghanistan by James G. Stavridis

Conflict Prevention in East Africa: The Indirect Approach by Brian L. Losey

Rethinking the Fundamentals of State-building by Roger B. Myerson

Nation-building Interventions and National Security: An Australian Perspective by Michael G. Smith and Rebecca Shrimpton

The Commander as Investor: Changing CERP Practices by Rebecca Patterson and Jonathan Robinson

Airpower in Counterinsurgency and Stability Operations by Norton A. Schwartz

Ministerial Advisors: Developing Capacity for an Enduring Security Force by James A. Schear, William B. Caldwell IV, and Frank C. DiGiovanni

Metrics for the Haiti Stabilization Initiative by David C. Becker and Robert Grossman-Vermaas

Civil-Military Operations in Kenya's Rift Valley: Sociocultural Impacts at the Local Level by Jessica Lee and Maureen Farrell

ISAF Lessons Learned: A German Perspective by Rainer Glatz

An Interview with William E. Ward - PRISM Interview

Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety Book Review by Michael J. Mazarr

President Obama's Full Speech on the U.S. Mission in Libya, 28 March 2011

News / Opinion

Obama's Remarks on Libya - New York Times transcript

Obama Cites Limits of U.S. Role in Libya - New York Times

Obama Vigorously Defends Libya Intervention - Washington Post

Obama Defends Libya Fight - Wall Street Journal

Obama Tries to Navigate a Thorny Path on Libya - Los Angeles Times

Obama Speech Outlines Policy, to Mixed Reviews - Stars and Stripes

'Deadly Advance' Obama's Trigger - Washington Times

Mission Necessary to Protect 'Common Humanity' - Christian Science Monitor

Obama Cites 'Responsibility' of U.S. in Libya Intervention - USA Today

Brutality in Libya Required Swift Action, Obama Says - Boston Globe

President Obama Defends U.S. Role in Libya - Boston Herald

Obama Defends Libya Intervention - BBC News

Libya: Obama Defends U.S. Military Involvement - Daily Telegraph

Obama: Libya Action Necessary, Limited - Seattle Times

Obama Defends Military Mission in Libya - FOX News

Obama Says Libya Massacre Would Stain World Conscience - Bloomberg

Obama on Libya: 'We Have a Responsibility to Act' - Associated Press

Obama Vows U.S. Forces Won't Get Bogged Down in Libya - Reuters

White House: 'No Mercy' is Not a Doctrine - Washington Times

Obama Speech on Libya Suggests Fluid Approach - New York Times

Reactions to Obama's Address on Libya - CNN News

Speech Draws Praise, Questions, Criticism In Congress - Wall Street Journal

McCain Praises Obama's Libya Speech - Weekly Standard

Obama Speech Buoys Residents in Rebel-Held Eastern Libya - VOA

Analyst View: Obama Sets Out Libya Strategy - Reuters

Where's the Strategy to Preserve Success? - Washington Post editorial

President Obama on Libya - New York Times editorial

Clear, Cogent but Not Always Persuasive - Los Angeles Times editorial

The President's Speech - Washington Times editorial

More Clarity on Libya from Obama - Washington Post opinion

Strong on Justification, Short on Strategy - Washington Post opinion

You've Come a Long Way, Baby - Weekly Standard opinion

Obama Made His Case - Washington Post opinion

In Obama's Speech, Echoes of JFK - Washington Post opinion

Libya Speech: Satisfactory, but Not Satisfying - Foreign Policy opinion

Obama Doctrine's Murky Details - Washington Post opinion

Obama Talks Big Picture, Not Details - Foreign Policy opinion

Speech Leaves Questions Unanswered - National Journal opinion

The President's Speech on Libya - Abu Muqawama opinion

Why Libya? Because We Could - Foreign Policy opinion

Everything and Nothing - National Review opinion

Obama Puts Forward False Choices on Libya - New Yorker opinion

President's Speech Was Shrewd and Sensible - Slate opinion

Double Vision Over Libya - Washington Times opinion

Jumping the Gun in Libya - Washington Times opinion

Team Obama, World Police - Washington Times opinion

Obama Fails to Make Case for Action - American Spectator opinion

A Doctrine of Limited Intervention - MSNBC opinion

Maria Costigan asks Jill Hazelton, Research Fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center, in a recent interview.

BLUF We have a conventional wisdom on counterinsurgency right now, which is counterinsurgency as state-building ­­­­­­- the development of healthy, participatory, well-governed states will defeat insurgency. But this process is very long term and it has actually never been done. It's an ideal. The ideal involves building the civil arm of the state to serve popular interest, to gain the broad allegiance of the populace, including instituting broad reforms that affect the lives of the people the state in fundamental ways. And it involves limiting the use of military force in order to prevent the alienation of civilians by causing unintentional causalities. And all of those things are powerfully appealing to us. They make sense normatively as what we want and what we like and what we think states should do for their citizens. But, as I said, this model has never actually been put into effect. And that's important because the United States is shaping a great deal of its foreign policy around this type of counterinsurgency - in Afghanistan particularly right now, but also in some other weaker states, where jihadi violence or support for jihadi violence has been a problem- Yemen and Somalia, for example.

Much more at the Belfer Center.

"The photos published by Rolling Stone are disturbing and in striking contrast to the standards and values of the United States Army. Like those published by Der Spiegel, the Army apologizes for the distress these latest photos cause. Accountability remains the Army's paramount concern in these alleged crimes. Accordingly, we are in the midst of courts-martial, and we continue to investigate leads. We must allow the judicial process to continue to unfold and be mindful that the government has distinct obligations to the victims and to the accused, which include compliance with the court's protective order to ensure a fair trial. That said, the Army will relentlessly pursue the truth, no matter where it leads, both in and out of court, no matter how unpleasant it may be, no matter how long it takes. As an Army, we are troubled that any soldier would lose his 'moral compass' as one soldier said during his trial. We will continue to do whatever we need to as an institution to understand how it happened, why it happened and what we need to do to prevent it from happening again."

U.S. Department of Defense

Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs)

While the situation in Libya continues to change rapidly, the most prudent course of action for the United States is to execute a strategy that would minimize the U.S. commitment to Libya and protect the United States from a potentially protracted and resource-intensive conflict, according to this policy brief by Center for a New American Security (CNAS) experts Andrew Exum and Zachary Hosford.

In Forging a Libya Strategy: Policy Recommendations for the Obama Administration, authors Exum and Hosford argue that U.S. interests in Libya, which include the protection of civilians and providing momentum to the revolutionary fervor sweeping the region, come at a potentially high cost to the United States. In addition, continued engagement may detract focus and resources away from other critical issues in the region and globally. Exum and Hosford offer four policy recommendations for the United States that limit the U.S. expenditure of blood or treasure:

Forging a Libya Strategy: Policy Recommendations for the Obama Administration

America, Libya, and the "Arab Spring"

Monday, March 28, 2011, 12:30-2:00 p.m.

Click here to watch this event live online at 12:30 p.m. EDT.

With the initiation of Operation "Odyssey Dawn" in Libya, the United States has entered a third war in the greater Middle East. While American and allied military forces have been successful in establishing the "no fly" zone authorized by the United Nations, the Obama administration's policy and strategy is uncertain, opaque, and conflicting in its goals and rationales for action. There is no consensus about what a post-Gaddafi government in Tripoli might be like, or how the outcome in Libya will shape the "Arab Spring" sweeping the region. In addition, US domestic opinion is sharply divided. Discussing this complex and confusing situation will be AEI scholars Thomas Donnelly, Paul Wolfowitz, and Danielle Pletka, joined by Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack from the Brookings Institution.

Panelists:

Thomas Donnelly, American Enterprise Institute

Paul Wolfowitz, American Enterprise Institute

Michael O'Hanlon, Brookings Institution

Kenneth Pollack, Brookings Institution

Moderator:

Danielle Pletka, American Enterprise Institute

Click here to watch this event live online at 12:30 p.m. EDT.

Issue # 2 articles include:

Coping with Nonstate Rivals by Dr. Eitan Shamir

Seek and Destroy: The Forgotten Strategy for Countering Armed Rebellion by William F. Owen

Special Forces: Strategic Asset by Dr. Simon Anglim

Cyber Power and Strategy: So What? by Danny Steed

The 'Narrative Strategy': A politicized Strategy for Leaving Afghanistan by Tom Wien

Infinity Journal is a digital journalzine, a journal-magazine mix, that intends to bring a better understanding and new perspectives to the issue of strategy. It offers readers two simple ways to read each issue. The online edition provides the best viewing experience, allowing for full page control and interaction, similar to a printed magazine but without the cost of subscription or the hassle of paper. The PDF version has been optimized so that it can be used across a wide range of devices, from your computer all the way down to cellular phones or portable gadgets.

BLUF Tucked between the Mediterranean and the Sahara, the Libyan town of Brega was a rather somnolent back-of-the-beyond place on the Gulf of Sidra in the north of the country. Oil workers went there for its high wages and decent schools—an engineer at the Sirte Oil Company earned ten times more than his counterpart in the armed forces.

No longer. Brega, which sits on an oil lake, has become a battlefield in the fight against the government of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. Bombs drop among oil depots filled with hundreds of thousands of barrels, and in the past two weeks, the company managers have had to deal with four changes of regime. To hedge bets they keep in touch with both the rebels in Benghazi, to the east, and the Qaddafi regime in Tripoli, to the west.

The battle for Brega and a nearby but larger terminal, Ras Lanuf, has significantly upped the stakes in Libya's conflict. It is being fought halfway between Colonel Qaddafi's tribal heartland of Sirte and the rebel base in Benghazi, a city of 800,000, and has drawn traditional desert tribes into the revolution, including the large Maghraba and Zawiya clans, on whose coastal scrubland Brega lies. It also threatens to draw in an outside world jittery that southern Europe's nearest oil supplies are now jeopardized.

Much more at The New York Review of Books

Last month, the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University released a report entitled Small Nuclear Reactors for Military Installations: Capabilities, Costs, and Technological Implications. Authored by Dr. Richard Andres of the National War College and Hanna Breetz from Harvard University, the paper analyzes the potential for the Department of Defense to incorporate small reactor technology on its domestic military bases and in forward operating locations. According to Andres and Breetz, the reactors have the ability to solve two critical vulnerabilities in the military's mission: the dependence of domestic bases on the civilian electrical grid and the challenge of supplying ample fuel to troops in the field. Though considerable obstacles would accompany such a move -- which the authors openly admit -- the benefits are significant enough to make the idea merit serious consideration.

Micah J. Loudermilk is a Research Associate for the Energy & Environmental Security Policy program with the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University.

Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) Has Obama been seduced by air power?

2) Marine Corps takes a calculated risk with its future

Has Obama been seduced by air power?

After one week, Odyssey Dawn, the operation aimed at protecting Libya's civilians from Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's forces, seems to be bumping up against the limitations of its U.N. Security Council mandate. Coalition military officials believe they have demolished Qaddafi's air force and have suppressed his air-defense systems. But in spite of increasing airstrikes against Qaddafi's tanks and artillery, his ground forces are still on the verge of crushing rebel resistance in Misrata and are thwarting attempts by the rebels near Benghazi to advance westward.

Many of President Barack Obama's advisers, particularly those who served in Bill Clinton's administration, may have some nostalgia for how the former president appeared to deftly employ coercive air power on two occasions in the Balkans and, in doing so, avoided bloody and politically ruinous ground wars. Clinton's successor was not so lucky. Having observed the dramatically different political consequences for the Clinton and Bush administrations, Obama may be expecting air power to similarly deliver Clintonian success for him.

Obama may unwittingly be placing his hopes for easy success in Libya on Col. John Warden, a retired U.S. Air Force officer and chief planner of the strategic air campaign against Iraq in 1991. Warden explained his theory for using air power to achieve decisive effects in the latest issue of Air & Space Power Journal.

According to Warden, war planners should view their adversary as a system and devise a strategy that inflicts war-winning damage on its critical nodes or weak points. For Warden, enemy military forces in the field -- currently the focus of air strikes in Libya -- are merely the end point of the system's long chain of motivations, decisions, and processes. Enemy forces destroyed in the field can be replaced if the system creating, supporting, and leading them remains in place. Focusing only on those forces will likely lead to a stalemate. Much better, according to Warden, is to focus strikes against an adversary's leadership, and the processes and infrastructure that recruit, train, equip, support, and control their war effort.

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Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker: Diplomat and Partner Extraordinaire by General David Petraeus, Army Magazine. BLUF: "Our nation owes Ryan a tremendous debt of gratitude. In awarding him the 2011 Marshall Medal, the Association of the United States Army helps express the deep appreciation we all have for Ryan Crocker's decades of service to our country - and, in particular, for his service as Chief of Mission in Iraq during the surge."

Rapid Afghanistan Experience Project: Contemporary Lessons Learned

What is it?

In full collaboration with other Army operational readiness stakeholders, U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) leads the Rapid Afghanistan Experience Project (RAEP) consolidating the knowledge, skills, lessons learned, and the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) currently employed in the Afghanistan area of responsibility to rapidly improve continental U.S. (CONUS)-based pre-deployment training and better prepare Soldiers for combat in the Afghanistan theater.

What has the Army done?

The RCE conducted a roundtable in September with senior leaders from TRADOC, the Combat Training Centers (CTCs), the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), U.S. Central Command, operational forces, U.S. Forces, Afghanistan, and former Brigade Combat Team and Battalion Commanders and Command Sergeants Major to collect initial feedback from both the training and institutional communities. FORSCOM created the Rapid Afghanistan Experience Project, and continues to mature and refine the processes associated with collecting and disseminating Afghanistan-centric information across the force. This collaboration includes a classified website for tools, TTPs, links to other websites and portals, lessons learned and timely topics of interest. Access to the portal is open to the entire force on both NIPRNET and SIPRNET. The project already enabled two immediate improvements:

• A link to the Joint Training Counter-IED Operations Integration Center (JTCOIC), an invaluable storehouse of information operated by TRADOC

What does the Army have planned for the future?

Open discussion of lessons learned while training for and conducting operations in Afghanistan will provide areas for potential improvement. For example, a change to Pre-Deployment Site Survey rules authorizing multiple visits to Afghanistan would greater time for units to build understanding of the specific region in which they will operate. As more content is collected and shared across the force, the Rapid Experience website will link with similar collaborative sources-- such as The Center for Army Lessons Learned and the Warfighter's Forums (WfF). The combined results will drive continuous improvements in the way pre-deployment training is conducted at home station and the Combat Training Centers to provide a more regionally focused training experience.

Why is this important to the Army?

The Army is a continuous-learning organization improving itself through experience and training. Sharing our collective information, training, and experience is the key and the RAEP will be a premier way to accomplish this goal for our Soldiers and leaders.

Resources:

The Rapid Afghanistan Experience Project Portal on NIPRNET(CAC required)

The Rapid Afghanistan Experience Project Portal on the FORSCOM Homepage (SIPRNET)

Washington, D.C., March 24, 2011 -- The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), released by the State Department last December, provides a road map for the future of U.S. diplomacy and development. But in a political climate dominated by fiscal and budgetary constraints, the QDDR focuses on the need for new investments in civilian power when it should have focused on trade-offs, according to a new article in The Washington Quarterly by CNAS Vice President and Director of Studies Dr. Kristin M. Lord and Bacevich Fellow Brian Burton.

Lord and Burton praise many of the initiatives set forth in the QDDR but suggest that if the QDDR does not help produce real change, it could create disillusionment with the broader effort to strengthen civilian power in support of U.S. national interests. The United States will risk entering a period of "smart power fatigue" that will only further sap the strength of the agencies upon which U.S. foreign policy relies.

Former State Department Director of Policy Planning and co-director of the QDDR Anne-Marie Slaughter agrees with the article's call to set priorities in a resource-constrained environment, noting, "Leading through civilian power means directing and coordinating the resources of all America's civilian agencies to prevent and resolve conflicts. In this constrained economic environment, we will have to make tradeoffs, but diplomacy and development cannot fall by the wayside."

The Washington Quarterly article caps a year-long CNAS project on U.S. diplomacy and development designed to help inform the QDDR process.

Continue on for links to additional QDDR-related publications and resources...