... In Counterinsurgency 2.0, the Democrats and their military partners now emphasize a population-centric" over an enemy-centric" approach, rebooting the old clear, hold, and build" by adding a civilian surge" and a ramped-up humanitarian mission. The goal for Afghanistan is to flood the country with Foreign Service officers, diplomats, and aid workers to fight corruption and rebuild institutions. The military serves to protect populations, open up space" for democracy, and eventually marginalize the enemy.
So far it's not happening that way. The Pentagon has maintained a lead on operations, and according to reports, there just aren't enough State Department officials to make a dent in Kabul, so DoD is planning to take up the slack by directing capable Reserve officers (and probably private contractors) toward the civilian component.
Many have been left wondering what happened to Obama's promise to re-orient foreign policy so that it is not so military-centric and whether he will end up authorizing new forces beyond the 68,000 U.S. troops expected in Afghanistan by the end of the year.
We've basically turned our foreign policy over to the military," fumed one national-security analyst from a competing Washington think tank who did not want to be named. Every problem has a military solution. Every problem is a nail because we have a hammer. I think you're starting to see that at CNAS."
Open criticism of CNAS is rare because the COINdinistas are so snug in the Beltway bosom. While Republican warhawks love that CNAS speaks their language, antiwar liberals and others who chafe against the Long War find themselves derided...
Much more at The American Conservative.
Also, in the latest issue of Joint Force Quarterly, John Nagl and Gian Gentile continue the COIN debate with letters to the editor.
Comments
Steve,
You're right in that we agree on more than we disagree. In particular, I completely agree with your last paragraph.
I may have a slightly different take on your first paragraph. I would assert that, likewise, a unit can overcome a lack of a specific type of training if its leaders have professional knowledge. My first platoon sergeant is the guy who always sticks out in my mind, in that regard. He was always making sure that Soldiers understood not just <I>what</I> to do, but <I>why</I>. And his rationale was solid. He was not satisfied that they have skills that they could apply when ordered (that can be learned with a book and some free time). He also wanted them to be able to apply their skills in any situation, in the absence of orders. To do so, they needed some degree of professional knowledge. If leaders only teach skills, then they are not adding much to the unit. They need to impart knowledge. Otherwise, the next generation of Soldiers make up an Army that resembles what we had in the 1990s - automatons led by managers.
[I] I think prior to World War I we could be lazy because most units had a central core of veterans (officer and enlisted) who retained enough COIN-type skills to make up for any training lapses.[/I]
I said that more to reflect that prior to World War I there was no real full spectrum training. Low intensity conflict didn't exist in any training scenarios, nor was it discussed in what passed for doctrine at the time. The stable unit structure, however, ensured that there would be a core of men who'd been with the regiment for years who had that level of experience. When we lost that core, the failures of the formal training system should have become apparent. They didn't, but I also suspect that was partly influenced by the size of the Army at the time.
I tend to think a certain level of specialization is inevitable and even desirable. Where I think our system tends to break down is that in many cases it either does not allow broad specialization to develop or weakens it to the point that it becomes watered-down generalist mediocrity. The constant need to shift people from unit to unit also works against any shared professionalism in many cases...something that the older Army organization managed to maintain.
At the end of it, I think we agree more than we disagree. From my vantage point the flaw lies in both the personnel system and our training system. Both are based on conscription models and do not suit the needs of our force. Until those change, I fear we're just going to be reinventing the same wheel.
<I>"However, where the US has had issues in the past is retaining enough professional grounding to be skilled at both COIN and larger conflicts. I think prior to World War I we could be lazy because most units had a central core of veterans (officer and enlisted) who retained enough COIN-type skills to make up for any training lapses."</I>
I agree with the first sentence, but disagree with the second. If the force retains professionals, then it can rely upon them to properly respond to new threats. However, retention of personnel with specific skills has not been an issue. What "COIN-type skills" did/do we not possess? Maybe this is a simple matter of vocabulary, but I would assert that we have all of the necessary skills. We simply do a horrible job of leveraging them because we, as a military, lack the professional knowledge to do so.
This is partly a retention problem, but also a failure to improve. The need for professionalization has continually reached farther down the chain of command. Think back to as recently as the civil war. A college professor like Chamberlain could leave his day job and go lead a large formation of troops. As warfare got more complex and armies got more sophisticated, the need for professionalization became evident at lower and lower levels. I would argue that the penetration of professionalism into our ranks has receded over the past 50 years. But the need for it has moved in the opposite direction. The need for professionalization has been pushed to lower and lower levels as warfare has become more complex, occurred on a wider scale, and as our nation has held its military to higher standards.
The problem is not a lack of skills - "COIN skills" or otherwise. The problem is an inadequate ability to apply specialized knowledge to a wide array of situations. In short, our profession nearly ceased to be a profession because we ran the 1990s Army like a business that had a 1950s hierarchy. We were focused on safety and avoiding defects in things that were easily measurable, teaching skills (task, conditions, standard) rather than imparting knowledge, and gearing our collective training towards a very specific enemy that would be faced in the Mohave Desert or the woods near Leesville or in a quaint village known as Shughart-Gordon. That is a clear example of specialization versus professionalism.
Unfortunately, our reaction to our flawed methodology thus far has been to recognize that the enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan did not resemble the enemies at our CTCs and respond by trying to refocus our training on the new enemy. For the short term, that may be appropriate. In the long-term context that is being discussed, that's the wrong plan, imo. The right conclusion is to recognize that training for a specific type of enemy is an approach destined to fail. The solution is not that we need to train for combined arms war and hope that this transitions easily to "small wars." That's what caused the problems we're in now. The reverse is also a bad idea for the same reason. We need a higher level of professionalization among our small unit leaders.
It is understandable why Gentile disagrees with Nagl, and I share his disagreement. The structural changes that Nagl seems to favor would make us less capable of fighting a combined arms war. But Gentile goes too far, imo, in asserting that we need to make our primary focus one of training on combined arms war. That ignores the woeful inadequacies in our training thus far.
Our problem is not structural, as Nagl seems to argue. And our problem is not <I>the wrong</I> focus, as Gentile seems to argue. <I>Any</I> focus is the problem. We call ourselves professionals, but our training produces middle-managers and specialists - people with too much focus. We need to retain our organizational structure so that we are always task organized to properly bring force to bear on whatever scale is necessary. But we also need to stop focusing on one type of warfare (or various sets of skills). We need to create leaders who are professionals, able to apply specialized knowledge to whatever situation they encounter. Until we do that, we are not truly a professional force.
Schmedlap,
I'd say that you're correct in your assertion that option 2 in both cases is correct. However, where the US has had issues in the past is retaining enough professional grounding to be skilled at both COIN and larger conflicts. I think prior to World War I we could be lazy because most units had a central core of veterans (officer and enlisted) who retained enough COIN-type skills to make up for any training lapses. Changes to the personnel system destroyed that core, and our training and knowledge/skill retention systems failed to shift to compensate.
It's retaining those lessons that concerns me. In order to be full spectrum we have to have a full spectrum of knowledge, and at least twice in the last 50 years the Army has chosen to narrow its focus and paid the price for losing other lessons.
As I read (seemingly re-read) the ongoing debate between Gentile and Nagl, which is coming to resemble a series of talent shows between two people who simply perform the same trick over and over, I am left pondering two questions.
1. When a nation succeeds at counterinsurgency, is it generally due to having trained for counterinsurgency? Or is it due to the individuals who are attempting to defeat the insurgents having a solid professional grounding in the profession of arms and knowledge of politics?
2. When nations succeeded in a large-scale modern conventional war, is it generally due to having trained for it? Or has it had more to do with organizing mass industrial output and formulating a realistic theater-specific strategy?
Perhaps some history buff can verify, but I think the answer to both is, "the latter." If true, then this seems to make the arguments of Gentile and Nagl completely moot. We don't need to fashion our military to fight in some either-or fashion. We need to train our servicemembers to be professional Soldiers - Soldiers who have specialized skill <b>and <I>knowledge</I></b> (as opposed to automatons who simply thrust their bayonet when told). Do that and it doesn't matter if we're fighting insurgents or Nazis. True professionals can properly apply specialized knowledge across the full spectrum of operations.
Like I said over at Andrew Exum's blog, it's amazing to me how an administration change can reverse rhetoric. With some name and date changes, this could be an article written by a liberal critical of the Iraq surge. I guess that kind of thing is acceptable when one plays the partisan politics game.