Here we go again....

Robert C. Jones:
"Our biggest mistake in both, however, was not this mischaracterization of the nature and purpose of our operations. The biggest mistake was assuming that there exists some sort of grace period upon the end of conventional operational "victory." If the U.S. learns anything it should be that the day the insurgent wins is the day he becomes a counterinsurgent. The day conventional operations or unconventional operations conclude victoriously is also the day they transition to FID. There is no grace period.

What happens next is highly dependent on what happens during that transitionary lull that is often mistaken for "victory" or "peace;" when it in fact is merely a switching of roles as good governance did not exist before with the old team, and it certainly will not exist with the new guys either."

I agree with this. Currently US joint doctrine draws lines between Phase III "Dominate" and Phase IV "Stabilize." I think a more useful and expansive way to visualize the issue is: that if the campaign does begin with a traditional (conventional) approach to defeat an adversaries armed forces, then the simultaneous or sequential stabilization efforts are more akin to exploitation and pursuit, than to a formal change of phase (although that might be an eventual occurrence).

Ive never been a fan of pre-set phasing. No matter how much we assert that there can be actions from different phases executed simultaneously, thinking in terms of phases tends to drive our thinking sequentially and also facilitates thinking about the campaign as the total of a set of phases rather than as a whole (do units focus on achieving phase objectives, and overlooking opportunities to achieve campaign objectives?).

From the current FM 3-0, the definition of pursuit is:
"A pursuit is designed to catch or cut off a hostile force attempting to escape with the aim of destroying it. Pursuits often follow successful exploitations. However, they can develop at any point when enemy forces are beginning to disintegrate or disengage. Pursuits occur when the enemy fails to organize a defense and attempts to disengage. If it becomes apparent that enemy resistance has broken down entirely and enemy forces are fleeing, a force can transition to a pursuit from any type of offensive or defensive operation. Pursuits require speed and decentralized control."

We primarily think about this in terms of destroying organized formations. However, if we modify it to consider that we are actually forcing the change of the character of the conflict in that sector--not just destroying an enemy force, but setting conditions for insurgency, etc., then pursuit takes on new implications. Its not just forces properly resourced and positioned to physically destroy the enemy, but forces properly resourced and positioned to immediately prevent (or mitigate) that transition to insurgency or irregular ops (whatever we think it may be). This goes to Roberts point that there is no "lull" between conventional victory and the stabilization, just as we are taught that an advantage not followed up by exploitation and pursuit is an effort wasted.

Bill

I agree that a small tweak to FID is better than creating a host of overlapping companion operations.

As to Afghanistan though we did not "invade." We conducted UW with the Northern Alliance Insurgency and enabled their success over the Taliban government. So, whereas in Iraq we went from Invade to COIN (and I have argued since 6 months prior to going in that the "invade" part made no since in a war against AQ) But even with an invasion entry that destroyed the HN government, I still think FID is what comes next, invited or not. In fact, when you go to someone's home uninvited, all the more reason to be on your best behavior once you get there.

In Afghanistan we went from UW to COIN. I would argue that the Northern Alliance was the government for all intents and purposes once the Taliban abandoned the capital. So, we de facto had our governmental invite for FID to continue to support their transition from insurgents to counterinsurgents.

Our biggest mistake in both, however, was not this mischaracterization of the nature and purpose of our operations. The biggest mistake was assuming that there exists some sort of grace period upon the end of conventional operational "victory." If the U.S. learns anything it should be that the day the insurgent wins is the day he becomes a counterinsurgent. The day conventional operations or unconventional operations conclude victoriously is also the day they transition to FID. There is no grace period.

What happens next is highly dependent on what happens during that transitionary lull that is often mistaken for "victory" or "peace;" when it in fact is merely a switching of roles as good governance did not exist before with the old team, and it certainly will not exist with the new guys either.

I believe that the key to establishing good governance is to establish perceptions of legitimacy across the populace; and the key to establish such perceptions of legitimacy is in true reconciliation with the vanquished party.

We did that in neither Iraq nor Afghanistan and once the vanquished realized that our intent was to exclude them from participation and representation in what came next the rise of insurgency was inevitable.

The American Civil War (that I don't think was insurgency at all, but I digress) does provide an example of what happens when one transitions IMMEDIATELY into reconciliation operations to reincorporate the vanquished into what happens next.

In Afghanistan, not only was there no incorporation, there was hot pursuit and relentless targeting. In Afghanistan's "all or nothing" patronage culture I am sure the Northern Alliance had no problem with this. The vanquished is always excluded, which IMO is why Afghanistan is always so unstable. We were the ones that needed to be smarter and drive the reconciliation process from the very beginning. We needed to use our influence and position to conduct FID and drive reconciliation and the shaping of a new government designed for COIN (which is what the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights were more than anything). Instead we relentlessly pursued the vanquished with CT operations and facilitated the development of an Afghan Constitution that is the antithesis of what was needed. It codified illegitimacy of governance at all levels, it codified exclusion of the vanquished, and it disrupted traditional constructs of local patronage at the Province and District level creating a national, centralized Ponzi scheme that makes insurgency inevitable.

Its late, but it's not too late. It's never too late to do the right thing. The US needs to scrap the COIN/CT approach and immediately transition to FID with a focus on facilitating reconciliation and the future COIN success that a new Constitution will provide the framework for. CT efforts need to be scoped and focused on critical AQ nodes only.

But it all start by appreciating what operation one is actually conducting.

I can agree that we can do full spectrum operations as part of FID (to include SR and DA), my point is we were not invited by the HN government to conduct FID. We invaded, overthrew the government, and now we're conducting IDAD/nation building. FID doctrine works, but the context is different. It's apples and oranges, in the end FID works for me, but I think we need to expand the definition just a wee bit to capture what we're doing today.

Bill, I agree that "FID" is not the perfect answer. Some say "FID + IDAD"; Some say "SFA." Some say "IW."

I'm reluctant to put one more new term on the table, lest the legs buckle. But it isn't COIN. Actually the FID definition is pretty good, but the common understanding of FID is much more limited, and much more SOF than the actual mission is. Even our SEALs only think they are doing FID when they are training the HN forces; they're good guys doing great stuff so I don't quibble with them that all of the DA, SR and CT they were doing were all within a FID context the whole time.

Correction, the gap filler isn't COIN, but it also isn't FID.

I think your arguments are sound, and from your perspective I agree that the gap filler isn't COIN, but it also isn't COIN. As you pointed out we normally restrict our thinking to different doctrinal concepts instead of the purpose, and I suspect we lose sight of the purpose because we often can't see past the doctrine. A lot to think about, I think this is one of your best of many great posts. Bill

Bill,
Great points as usual. You gave me a flashback to similar conversations that I would have with Kirk when he was running the 3X (and always trying to recruit all of the horses out of my stable) about UW. The basis of my debate with Kirk is the basis of where we differ here and why I persist in supporting what probably seems like a minor nuance to most.

I think it is critical that operations be characterized by their primary purpose rather than by their primary tactic.
The GWOT pulled the entire government, but certainly DOD, out of their comfort zone and into a realm that most had little background training, education and experience in. We naturally focused on the surface issues. We focused on the tactics rather than the purposes (and when we did look at purpose, it got quickly hijacked by drilldowns on ideology, Islam, radicalization, Caliphates, etc; which are all again, tactics for motivating the operations, and not the purpose of the operations themselves).

The examples in the GWOT are many and often quite significant:

EX 1: Terrorism is a tactic; so therefore, counterterrorism is a tactic as well. It is not an operation; it is not a basis for a war, or certainly not a basis for foreign policy. It is a tactic. Many have pointed this out, that we declared war on a tactic. This has morphed a bit over time, to expand to war on every organization that employs such tactics ("violent extremist organizations"), but it is still tactic driven.
We need to focus on purpose. Shape a campaign that understands and is shaped to address the purpose and the reason for the purpose rather than the tactics chosen for achieving that purpose. (That discussion is a whole separate thread).

EX 2: UW is a mission. There are many TTPs developed primarily for UW, but the employment of those TTPs in the conduct of COIN, FID, conventional operations, etc does not somehow convert those operations to UW. This is what I argued with Kirk. When you call an operation UW it shapes the mindset of all who hear about it, and certainly all who are executing it. If the mission is not UW, those UW mindsets create avoidable problems. It was a mix of ego (wanting to be doing something very cool and important), a narrow analysis of the mission, and a perspective of "so what, close enough" that took us down a path that was creating growing friction.

EX 3: Current discussion. Is it COIN when one has intervened and destroyed the host nation government, but is having to deal immediately with the insurgencies that rise to challenge that fact?
Certainly one will have to employ solid COIN tactics, but what is the purpose? To plant the flag and establish our governance over a stabilized populace? If yes, then by all means, declare yourself and put your men in the proper mental state and call it COIN. If no, if ones purpose is to simply provide a gap-filling role until such time as the populace can establish new, legitimate, functioning governance, than that has FID purpose and should be named as such. Doing so again, clearly declares ones intent and properly shapes the mindset of ones men to the mission at hand. This is more than just nuance; this is more than just IO. This is also particularly important in Western militaries (especially the U.S. military) where concepts such as Commanders intent really mean something, and where the soldiers need to know "why" they are being asked to execute some task.

Purpose>Tactics=Name ones operations by the purpose for action, rather than for the action itself

Bob,

All good points, and while I agree just because the other fellow is conducting insurgency, that doesn't mean the U.S. government is conducting COIN, but if we were in fact the power that the insurgency was challenging (for a transition period) then we were in fact conducting COIN during that time period. Regardless, I strongly agree we don't want to be a position where we're conducting COIN, but sometimes it will probably be unavoidable if we intervene in failed states. I'm not sure what armed nation building is, but I think the SECDEF is correct when he described our mission in Afghanistan as such. We're doing FID also, but more is involved, and we're also conducting both integrated and separate CT campaigns.

Bill,

No, I understand where you are coming from, and I certainly agree, that for the populace faced with an occupying force it is definitely insurgency. (I see three types of insurgency: Revolutionary, Separatist and Resistance)

What follows isn't to school you, but I just want to flesh out my point for those who come here and think "what's the big deal if you call it COIN like everyone else, or FID like these SF guys do?" People need to think about this, because it's an important point.
This is for the larger audiance.

My point is that while there is indeed an insurgency, that unless we plan on staying and planting the flag, it puts our operations in the wrong perspective to see ourselves as the COIN force. Bottom line is that we will never have legitimacy in the eyes of the populace, and any government we put in power has a long row to hoe to get to earning legitimacy in the eyes of the populace as well. Just because we totally took out the HN government does not suddenly convert us to being the host nation government. We're a stand-in, no more and no less. All the responsibility and none of the legitimacy but stuck with the job.

When we deem ourselves as the COIN force we start drifting out of our lane real fast. Better to paint those hard lines on the road right up front and call it FID. As the FID force we need permissions to do things. As the FID force we need to act with constraint. As the FID force we understand that we need to facilitate the development of a government and security aparatus that the populace has blessed as legitimate. It is in the implied tasks that this nuance lays out that gets us to a more successful operation.

Just because the other guy is waging insurgency doesn't mean you are conducting COIN, or even somehow automatically validated to go ahead an change to COIN. It has to do with shaping effective operations, not about feeling good about ourselves. We can't be effective waging COIN in someone elses country. We can be effective waging FID. Much of the Iraq surge success was because in fact, GEN P switched to FID. We just kept calling it COIN because that's what the manual and the media said it was. No one was asking SF for input, and SF was too busy man-hunting to care anyway.

That manual has a lot of flaws, and that's one of the biggest. It's a compilation of COIN TTPS and cliches, colored by Iraq, but largely void of any understanding of insurgency itself.

timed out again, above post is mine. Bill

Bill, great laydown on FID. As you well know, even the SF community tends to see FID as meaning "training others" as opposed to operating in support of others. We're pretty close, one area where I diverge is that I don't think we're the COIN force when we defeat a nation's government and occupy unless we intend to stay and make it part of the U.S.

That last part is critical. Yes we invaded Iraq, yes we tore down their governmental structures, yes insurgency erupted to throw us out (resistance) to break off a Kurdish homeland (separatist) and to seize control (revolution). In addition, AQ with its own objectives as the UW force sent in foreign fighters to work toward the much larger purpose of getting the U.S. to back off on its overt presence in the Middle East in general. But we never intended to make Iraq the 51st state or a U.S. Territory. To me, the best way to keep ones head in the right mindset is to say from the very start "we are going to invade and immediately upon conclusion of major combat operations we will become engaged in FID." Which should cause some LT to raise his hand and say "but general, if we wipe out their entire army and police structure, who will we be doing FID with???"

That is a question someone really needed to ask the Centcom commander when he decided to toss GEN Zinni's plan that was based in keeping the Iraqi Army largely intact. It may be a semantic, but I believe it is a critical one.

If you go into a home on a domestic violence call and drag the abusive husband out to never return, you don't become the husband. You're still just a cop, you're there to help, but you don't intend to assume ownership of the entire problem, just the aspects of the problem born of your intervention. Husband's do COIN, anyone outside the family does FID or UW (Jody does UW - he doesn't want to own the problem either).

As to Mexico, yes, FID is the right mission even though I would argue there is not an insurgency problem in Mexico, but certainly a tremendous stability problem due to profit driven drug-related violence and associated competition for control. I hope that the U.S. is smart enough to appreciate that the military cannot solve that problem, only help to manage or mitigate the symptoms of the problem. If the US wants to help solve the problem it needs to tackle the tough issues of smarter solutions to deal with demand (and demand is going way up as the economy goes way down) and the illegality of the problem.

IF DOD did design on this problem and had any stones they would lay out for the president that very case. Address the Demand and illegality issues first; and if you do still opt to send in the military understand it can only mitigate the symptoms at best, but will also definitely have higher order effects that may well contribute to undermining Mexican legitimacy in ways that could convert this drug violence into true insurgency.

I believe there are two broad categories of scenarios where our conventional forces will execute COIN. The first is we overthrow a government and occupy a country much like we did in Germany, Iraq, Panama and Afghanistan. If were the ruling power, then "we" conduct the COIN (there is no host nation) if resistance against our occupation. However to get to this point, we need effective combat forces to overthrow the government like we did in Germany, Iraq, Panama, and Afghanistan. The second category is we provide assistance to host nation that is struggling with a serious insurgent threat and has requested U.S. assistance to combat the insurgents (this is still FID). This is also improbable, since it will most likely be conducted by SOF with a "few" conventional forces augmenting them.

Putting FID in context, DODs definition for FID is: Participation by civilian and military agencies of a government in any of the action programs taken by another government or designated organization to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness (Mexico could fall in this category), and insurgency.

Furthermore FID doctrine states that US military involvement in FID has traditionally been focused towards COIN, but "U.S. FID programs may aim at other threats to a HNs internal stability, such as civil disorder, illicit drug trafficking, and terrorism. These threats may, in fact, predominate in the future as traditional power centers shift, suppressed cultural and ethnic rivalries surface, and economic incentives of illegal drug trafficking continue."

FID is a whole of government effort, and DODs role falls into one or more of the following three categories:

1. Indirect support which is very limited support that focuses on building the host nations capacity (we do not directly work with the HN populace or engage the enemy).
2. Direct support (not involving combat operations) where U.S. forces provide direct assistance to the HN civilian populace or military, and actions could include civil affairs, PSYOP, logistics, intelligence support, communications support, and in some cases training HN forces.
3. Direct support involving U.S. combat operations against the insurgents if there is a Presidential decision to do so. This is rare, but who knows what the future holds. In this case we bring in conventional forces to conduct combat operations, which they better be proficient at. The goal is to suppress the immediate the threat and hand off to host nation security forces soonest, but as we know that rarely happens in practice.

The SECDEF did not say we wouldnt do would never do COIN again in the article. He said it is unlikely we will find ourselves in another Iraq or Afghanistan type scenario again where were conducting armed nation building. My take away is all the COIN training in the world wont enable us to overcome bad policy decisions, and I think that is recognized on the hill (show me where inadequate COIN training has resulted in a Taliban resurgence). Dont forget that the SECDEF pushed all the services to embrace the study of irregular warfare (which includes the study of COIN), so he understands the nature of irregular threats and has directed the services to adapt to this threat, but he also understands (read his book) that State on State wars and other threats (cyber, WMD, etc.) are very real threats.

For those who fear we wont conduct COIN training, what generic COIN training do you think the Army must conduct to maintain proficiency? I think COIN training is very specific to a specific country based on its culture and the nature of the conflict there, so Im not sure what a COIN training rotation at the NTC would look like unless it was focused on a specific country. I agree that COIN education (not training) for our leaders needs to continue in our officer schools to learn the principles of COIN, so if required to make a transition from combat operations to COIN theyll understand the character of the problem set theyre dealing with. It was clear that most did not in 2003.

I think the "return to the Fulda Gap" mindset is greatly exaggerated. The military was moving beyond the Fulda Gap scenario long before 9/11. One simply needs to review all the training and education in the 90s focused on military operations other than war, and lets not forget our peace operations in the Balkans. Does anyone think the developed the Stryker Bdes to fight in the Fulda Gap? They wouldnt have survived a week. If armor units train for high intensity combat that seems quite logical to me. As a steward of our tax dollars I cant imagine why we would ask the American people to fund the maintenance of an armor unit to simply have them train on COIN? We have other forces that do COIN if required, we dont have other forces that can effectively employ armor in combat. While not quite analogous, should we also have strategic bomber crews and submarine crews dismount and focus on COIN, or should we maintain those capabilities in a state of readiness?

Some of the arguments presented above are illogical in my view. Just because Salafi groups are here to stay doesnt mean we need to employ large numbers of conventional forces to fight them. We have been doing that now for 9 years with little effect other than undermining our capabilities to address other threats (I would argue greater threats).

Re: Commander responsibility for training

As a Marine, I have no experience of Army CTCs, but from my experience in the FMF from 2003-6, our commanders' ability to train their units in a uniform manner was unsatisfactory. Put simply, at the individual level our commanders were inadequate to the task of training their Marines appropriately for the spectrum of fighting we encountered in 2004.

Standardizing and centralizing training requirements enabled the Marine Corps to eliminate most of the procedural differences between East Coast and West Coast battalions, ensured that every deploying battalion had reached threshold proficiencies in combat marksmanship, and had completed the same COIN-centric training exercise. The 2006 Marine rifle battalion was in many ways a more professional unit than its predecessor in 2003, but at the expense of "white space" in the unit training calendar. Since then, the details of PTP have been scaled back, but the new firing tables and standardization of procedures and final exercises has remained. I suspect this is going to be a process of striking a balance between centralized command and decentralized execution, like much of the rest of the military life. (the tendency toward centralization will probably also prevail)

Regarding FSO:
If every unit trains for every slice of the spectrum, that unit will have minimal proficiency at everything. USMC recon is a case in point: with a finite number of training hours, the 0321 recon Marine can't be simultaneously expert at hydrographic reconnaissance, military parachute operations, close-quarters combat, and scout/sniper techniques. I assume that Soldiers aren't much different from Marines in this regard: you can only do a few things really well.

So to field a generally capable ground recon capability, you have to accept that some teams will be highly proficient at amphibious insertion and have atrophied skills in parachute insertion. Other teams will be experts at a variety of parachute techniques, but have minimal amphibious recon skills. That way, everyone can still retain a high degree of proficiency at the core skills of black- and green-side ground reconnaissance that's the core mission set.

On a Service-wide level, that implies fielding an infantry force in which all units are basically trained in company-level combined arms, but where some go on to focus on HIC ops and some focus on LIC ops. That degree of specialization is heresy to many, since it implies that some units will not be prepared for some contingencies, but it prevents you from falling into the trap of trying to be good at everything under the sun.

v/r

Zenpundit: " ... high handed treatement of that country"? So is that the cause of the insurgency?

Ken, no, I don't think we would really be stupid enough to attempt COIN in Mexico. It wouldn't succeed, and I don't think we would ever be stupid enough even to attempt it. I am skeptical of population-centric efforts at COIN anyway, as you may already know. I don't believe that there is a CoG in COIN.

The problems with the Southern border can be easily solved. We could militarize the border, amend the restrictive rules by which our men have to engage illegal immigrants and drug runners and other criminals (viz. SCOTUS decision in Tennessee v. Garner), and imprison any CEO of any company (even small companies) who hires any illegal, period, no exceptions. Easy. The problem would end overnight.

Illegal immigration and drug problems plague the Southern border for largely the same reason that piracy exists in the Gulf of Aden. We wish it to. We want it to be that way. Or said differently, we want piracy and illegal immigration more than we want the solution, which seems too difficult to stomach for our highly evolved and morally superior 21st century sensibilities.

Our problems exist because we want them to.

Hi Ken,

There are often, better ways. FID is preferable pop-centric COIN from a cost/benefit standpoint. Strengthening a weak government with civilian aid before an insurgency even arises is even better. Best of all is knowing when and where our critical interests are involved and when they are not.

Re: Mexico

I agree with you that US military intervention in Mexico would be, IMHO, a potential disaster. Right now, it won't happen. If the narco-insurgency were to collapse the Mexican state and/or scale up into Cambodian/Rwandan style killing fields, the spillover costs might make US intervention look like a form or crisis management to American policy makers.

Mexico in a worst case scenario will be politically impossible to ignore.

<i>Or could the translation be:

'Counterinsurgency is long term and expensive in all aspects. There are usually better, quicker and less expensive ways to achieve the same aims ways. We need to do a cost:benefit workup prior to just jumping in...'

Said another, shorter way 'Proactive beats reactive.'</i>

Sure, could be. But is that really what they're thinking? I know that, you know that. We can hope that the government understands it. But we can't assume that a sober assessment will proceed the next conflict.

I find the principle of Occam's Razor easier to believe. So it's more likely a case of "We were awesome at fighting World War II. Let's do that again. I just pulled some <i>Band of Brothers</i> episodes off the share drive."

Bottom Line: A retreat from training for Counterinsurgency based on a realistic future mission analysis is all well and good, but unlikely in this case. A retreat from the training based on intellectual laziness is bad, but very likely.

For what it's worth, the U.S. actually has an enviable record when it comes to COIN:

In the 1780s as the country emerged from the revolution with England and was quickly spiraling into insurgency, the founding fathers made the bold decision to scrap the Articles of Confederation all together and to produce a new constitution designed to address the conditions of insurgency that were growing rapidly in every state. That is COIN at its very best, and that document and the associated Bill of Rights continues to provide solid COIN service every day.

In the early 1960s, when the conditions of insurgency within the African American populace were building to a critical level, Kennedy and Johnson pushed through another landmark bit of COIN with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

COIN is something government does at home, and the best COIN is done long before the first shot is fired. We have a stellar record in that regard. COIN is governments fixing themselves so as to better serve their populaces, not to suppress challengers that emerge from populaces trapped under broken governments.

Where we fall down is that we do not hold our engagement with other nations to the same standards we hold ourself to. Why? Well, because we put our own national interests above the interests of both those other governments and certainly their populaces. That is what superpowers do.

When we convince ourselves that certain governments that serve those interests for us are "too important to fail" we then intervene in ways to sustain them in power that fly in the face of everything we do here at home. It's not that we suck at these interventions, its just that we tend to focus on holding back the challenger to the bad governments we're in bed with rather than using our considerable leverage and influence to get those governments to make the same concessions, to imploy the same controls on themselves that we understood to be critical to good governance and good COIN here in the U.S.

No, the U.S. is very good at COIN, it just isn't very good at understanding what it is they are good at.

<i>"We aren't going to be doing counterinsurgency again. We're not that good at it."</i>

Translation: Counterinsurgency is hard. We're going to go back to the easy stuff.

That being said, the 82nd should be training for HIC. It's just one division, and needs to maintain its expertise in its field. But if this is the attitude throughout the force, it's bad news.

Ken, I can never top your responses due to your experience and insider view of history, but I would like to add a couple of comments in response to Anonymous's reponse to mine.

First off Full Spectrum Operations does not mean a return to the Fulda Gap scenario; however, FSO does include high end combat, which as Ken stated we cannot afford to lose. It also includes the more probable lesser conflicts, so no one is even suggesting we throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think you're over reacting to one statement a former DOD official made. The correct perspective on that statement is that it is a personal opinion, not a policy decision.

Why are you using the projected RIF to justify keeping the conventional Army engaged in COIN as a primary effort versus being able to fight? Is that really in the best interest of our nation? Why? Please provide a reasoned answer on why keeping the conventional Army focused on COIN at the expense of preparing to dominate in combat (not the Fulda Gap) is so important?

It has been my experience that the more you study history and experience it the more you realize how unpredictable the world is. You simply can't wish away potential threats because you don't see them on your five meter range, or they don't jive with your world view.

As for probability I only suggested rescue of Americans as one potential scenario where we would have to do a forced entry, I actually could list more on a classified level. There really are credible threats to our nation beyond Al Qaeda that would require our Army to fight a tougher enemy than the one we're fighting today. Tougher in better armed, trained, etc..

Like you I worry that the military will face severe cuts in personnel if the wrong politicians begin banging on that drum because we never learn from history, but I don't think that justifies embracing COIN just to maintain force structure.

In short I think we need an Army that can foremost before anything else win in combat, whether low or high intensity combat. That is what we maintain an Army for. Nation building is a collateral mission we can support if directed, it is not our reason for existing. First things first when it comes to national defense.

Post above was mine. Timed out the first time.