What Scope of Military, and Civilians, Do We Need?

In short: More, please, of everything.

Yesterday I posted how “Startfor and Gerecht Clarify the Iraq Choices.” The central point clarified is that the U.S. military was and is both undersized and misorganized to meet the challenges that developed in Iraq. There are good explanations for this. Nonetheless, consequently our mission there and in that region is endangered, as well as our vital interests elsewhere. A significant expansion of our fighting forces is required.

Today, let’s address what that means. The short answer is that the U.S. needs to expand both its conventional and unconventional capacities, because both challenges are present and expected, and the consequences of inadequate preparedness are dire.

Understanding this -- and that major new expenditures and sacrifices are necessary -- is, also, vital among our political and commentating classes. An essential front in American engagement in the world is clarity of purpose and of public understanding. Without that, adversaries are encouraged to aim their actions at undermining our home front, and critics of good will are stimulated or of weak will to cave.

A home front which is confused by policies that are confused and whose expression are confusing is a core liability in the execution of any foreign policy, particularly in a war. Americans are reluctant to sacrifice, but will and rally to clear need, purpose and policies. Americans, too, have the common sense to see when sacrifice is seemingly wasted by leaders who are incoherent or who do not express clearly enough what is needed, instead disrespecting them by muddling by on the futile cheap.

James Joyner writes about “The Most Important Culture War,” outlining the needed counterinsurgency doctrine that must be emphasized and enlarged, even though counter to the big weapons-big divisions conventional capacities favored in most of the Pentagon. Joyner is correct, if perhaps too pessimistic that this counterinsurgency doctrine will last.

Fortunately, the combination of battalion commanders that have grown up mostly during the post-Cold War, the harsh lessons identified* in Iraq, and coffers overflowing with money has at least temporarily created an opportunity for a cultural change. The Army and Marine Corps will continue to get better at counterinsurgency. More billets will be allocated to Arab translators and fewer to tank gunners, at least for a while.

Whether these changes will stick after our withdrawal from Iraq is another matter entirely. If history is any indication, sadly, they will not.

Meanwhile, Fred Kagan writes about “New Thinking, Old Realities,” recognizing that there are real needs for a large conventional capacity. Kagan gives credit where due:

The most successful part of the administration’s strategy has been, surprisingly, the struggle against al Qaeda. According to the apostles of novelty, this should have been the greatest challenge of all for the supposedly hidebound U.S. security structure. Yet a combination of conventional and unconventional approaches has kept this threat largely under control. The administration applied conventional military power (primarily bombers) in a supposedly novel way in Afghanistan to remove the Taliban from power and chase al Qaeda to the hills. Since then, aggressive intelligence, special forces, and covert operations have kept al Qaeda’s leadership on the run and broken up or preempted a number of attempts to attack the United States again. Al Qaeda’s leaders spent 2004 telling each other that they were losing, and the evidence was on their side. Cellular terrorist organizations like al Qaeda are resilient, however; its leaders are still at large and its threat persists. In particular, were the United States to relent in its direct military pressure on this organization, it is highly likely that al Qaeda or splinter groups would prepare a more successful attack. It is possible that they will do so anyway, but to date, the Bush administration has succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations in defeating the most novel threat we face.

Kagan, then, points out where failure has occurred:

Efforts to find new solutions for supposedly new problems elsewhere have not worked out as well. The “small footprint” approach in Afghanistan and Iraq has led to disaster. In Afghanistan, the failure to complete the defeat of the Taliban through a significant occupation has allowed it to regroup. The Taliban poses a significant insurgent challenge once again, and Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s government no longer appears resilient.

In Iraq, the small footprint used in major combat operations clearly facilitated the rise of the insurgency. The slavish adherence to the “new” doctrines of a small footprint and putting the Iraqis in the lead on internal security has led to disaster. American forces were never allowed to establish security in Iraq and efforts to turn responsibility over to an unprepared and predominantly Shiite Iraqi military added to that failure.

Kagan tells us that we actually face old realities, requiring large forces, of many types, and the intelligence and will to use them:

The result of all of this new-think is impending disaster on many fronts. Iraq and Afghanistan are in danger of failing. North Korea already has nuclear weapons and will soon be able to deploy them against the continental United States. Iran is well on its way to nuclear capability. Somalia is falling into the hands of militant Islamists, and the situation there may well destabilize the entire region. Why are we doing so badly in the world?

The answer is that the world did not change as much in 2001--or in 1991, for that matter--as many observers thought. Our enemies did not, in fact, abandon traditional power politics. Misconceived though it might have been, Saddam Hussein fought a conventional war in 2003. Even Osama bin Laden rallied his terrorists to fight as conventional soldiers in 2001, digging trenches and setting up machine guns as the Taliban lost a lopsided conventional campaign. Iran maintains a large conventional army, which it has been modernizing as rapidly as possible. So does North Korea. Both are pursuing nuclear weapons in the most conventional way possible--not as terrorist-style suitcase bombs, but as Soviet-style missile-mounted warheads. Far from being impressed by our adoption of novel strategies--withdrawal from South Korea on the one hand and a small footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan on the other--the Iranians have seized the advantage in a very traditional way. They have seen that we are bogged down and distracted, that our conventional forces are overstretched, and that the danger of a U.S. attack is therefore very small. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is seizing the moment with traditional diplomatic delaying tactics while his scientists race to give him the weapons he desires. There is absolutely nothing novel in any of this.

It is time to wake up from the dream world of the 1990s. If history ended with the end of the Cold War, it has since started up again with a vengeance. Beyond al Qaeda, the United States today faces a host of traditional challenges. Large conventional militaries in Iran and North Korea support regimes seeking to develop nuclear arsenals. These threats can be deterred or defeated for certain only through the use or convincing threat of using conventional forces, because these regimes recognize no restraints on their behavior other than those imposed by superior power. The seizure of territory in Somalia by groups ideologically tied to our primary foe is reminiscent of Communist insurgencies in the Third World, which we fought during the Cold War with varying degrees of success. The insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan are unusual in some ways, but share common features with many other past insurgencies. Basic lessons from past counterinsurgencies should inform our approach to these challenges.
Above all, America’s conventional military strength remains critical, traditional power politics continue to control the world, and the lessons of thousands of years of human history still apply. In counterinsurgencies, the first requirement of success is the establishment of security throughout the country or region. This task is manpower-intensive and incompatible with a small footprint approach. Political, economic, and reconciliation tracks are not sustainable without security, as countless historical examples show. Success in Iraq--and Afghanistan--requires a heavier deployment of U.S. forces with orders not just to train indigenous soldiers, but also to bring peace to those troubled lands.

Military strength and the visible will to use it is also essential to persuading regimes like those in Tehran and Pyongyang to abandon programs they wish to pursue. We have been trying the diplomatic approach, unsupported by meaningful military threat, for nearly fifteen years with North Korea, and the result has been utter failure. A similar approach in Iran will not be more successful. It may not be necessary to attack those two states to force them to give up their weapons of mass destruction programs, but there is no hope of convincing them to do so if they do not believe that we can and will defeat them. Nor is there any likelihood that a “small footprint” (almost a “no footprint”) approach in the Horn of Africa will contain the Islamist threat there.

The United States is at war, and the enemy is the same one we have been fighting for sixty years. A totalitarian regime controls North Korea. Totalitarian ideologues hold power in Iran, have just seized power in southern Somalia, and seek power throughout the Middle East. Their goals are subtly different, but they share several key features: the destruction of democracy, which they hate; the elimination of liberalism and religious toleration; and the destruction of the United States.

Victory will require a mobilization of America’s military might and the willingness to use it. Adaptive and unpredictable enemies like al Qaeda will require us to change part of our approach and some of our forces constantly. Winning throughout the Muslim world will require economic, political, and cultural initiatives alongside the use of military power. But nothing will be possible without adequate military force, which the United States is currently lacking. If we do not begin the necessary mobilization of our resources now, then our military power will become irrelevant, our strategies will fail, and our security will falter.

Lastly, Daniel Pipes reminds us that “The West Must Learn The Public Relations of War.” Military might and success are underemphasized by Pipes, to make his point about the shift in the “center of gravity”, but his description of the rising importance of the home front is still right on. One of the keys to winning the home front is a better-informed political and commentating class, much better than we now have, whose ignorance lacks essential gravity, gravitas, and understanding of basic facts.

With loyalties now in play, wars are decided more on the Op-Ed pages and less on the battlefield. Good arguments, eloquent rhetoric, subtle spin doctoring, and strong poll numbers count more than taking a hill or crossing a river. Solidarity, morale, loyalty, and understanding are the new steel, rubber, oil, and ammunition. Opinion leaders are the new flag and general officers. Therefore, as I wrote in August, Western governments "need to see public relations as part of their strategy."

Even in a case like the Iranian regime's acquisition of atomic weaponry, Western public opinion is the key, not its arsenal. If united, Europeans and Americans are likely to dissuade Iranians from going ahead with nuclear weapons. If disunited, Iranians will be emboldened to plunge ahead.

What Carl von Clausewitz called war's "center of gravity" has shifted to the hearts and minds of citizens from force of arms. Do Iranians accept the consequences of nuclear weapons? Do Iraqis welcome coalition troops as liberators? Do Palestinian Arabs willingly sacrifice their lives in suicide bombings? Do Europeans and Canadians want a credible military force? Do Americans see Islamism as presenting a lethal danger?

Non-Western strategists recognize the primacy of politics and focus on it. A string of triumphs — Algeria in 1962, Vietnam in 1975, and Afghanistan in 1989 — all relied on eroding political will. Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, codified this idea in a letter in July 2005, observing that more than half of the Islamists' battle "is taking place in the battlefield of the media."

The West is fortunate to predominate in the military and economic arenas, but these no longer suffice. Along with its enemies, it needs to give due attention to the public relations of war.