Posted on 02/05/2005 3:16:58 PM PST by Valin
The Pentagon is primarily in the business of preparing for war, not waging it. War is waged by commanders in the field. What the Pentagon does is think long and hard about what the future of war should be like. It then directs vast R&D and acquisition programs to generate a force capable of waging war successfully in that domain. Its demands for intelligence tend to be future-oriented.
Right now, there is a debate raging within the Pentagon and the military as a whole about what the war in Iraq and the subsequent (and ongoing) occupation tell us about the future of war. This debate pits two fundamental, dominant visions of future war against one another. I consider this juxtaposition to be a false dichotomy, meaning a choice that does not need to be made and, frankly, should not be made.
The two sides in this debate are functionally derived: the “air community” versus the “ground community.” The air community tends to be known as the Network-Centric Operations (NCO) crowd, whereas the ground-pounders fall under the rubric of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW).
Net-centric operations are a long-term effort by the military to understand how the rise of the information age alters the fundamental nature of war. In the vernacular of NCO advocates, the past force was platform-centric, meaning we organized ourselves around the major "platforms", the machines we created to wage war (aircraft, ships, tanks, etc.). The future, by contrast, is network - centric: platforms are nothing more than nodes in a larger network whose main power isn’t its massed fire, but its ability to wield that force with pinpoint accuracy.
NCO defines the 20th Century's long march toward "winning from above," the notion that you can effectively bomb your way to victory. Going into Iraq, it seemed as though NCO was not only the dominant mode of future-war thinking, it had reached such an apogee that serious thought was given to radically slimming down the ground forces into a future, "transformed" force.
The trajectory of combat across the 1990s hadn't served the Army and Marines well in Pentagon debates. While the Air Force was winning wars "all by itself" in Iraq, the Balkans, and later-Afghanistan, the Army and Marines were left holding the bag in such crappy situations as Somalia and Haiti. Within the Pentagon, Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW) was strongly perceived—and is still perceived in many quarters today—as a form of war that the American public can't stomach in terms of losses incurred (“body-bag syndrome”), longevity (America's SADD: strategic attention deficit disorder), immoral acts (e.g., atrocities like Abu Ghraib and beheadings of hostages), and demand for resources (Senator So-and-So: "We spend more money in Iraq by breakfast than we've spent all year on [name his or her favorite cause]").
Right through "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq (May 2003), the NCO crowd seemed ascendant. Rumsfeld was right in both Afghanistan and Iraq: the small "footprint" force, armed with high-technology, could network its way to relatively bloodless (for our side) victories. In only a few weeks of major combat operations, neither war cost the U.S. more than 200 dead. That isn't just impressive, that's absolutely amazing.
But in that hubris lie the seeds of NCO's current problems, plus a growing backlash among the Fourth Generation Warfare crowd. The extremely spotty planning by the Pentagon for the occupation and postwar stabilization of Iraq enabled the rise of the disastrously efficient insurgency we face today. Arrogance about what could be achieved by NCO contributed to that bad planning, but frankly, far more of it was a result of the Pentagon's defensive response to the Army’s charges that Secretary Rumsfeld and his lieutenants were willfully disregarding its warnings about necessary troops levels on the ground.
You remember the debate: Rumsfeld versus then-Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki. Rummy said we could "win the war" with a small, highly transformed force, whereas Shinseki argued for massive ground forces (roughly 200,000). In the press and in our own wording of this debate, the argument became known as, "How many troops are required to win the war?" Later accusations revolved around whether or not "Rumsfeld sought to fight this war with too few troops!"
My problem with this description, as I've noted many times in my blog, is that it conflates two concepts: regime takedown and the post-conflict stabilization / nation-building effort. I call the former, the "war," and the latter, the "peace." So, in my more careful lexicon, I say that Rumsfeld was arguing—and arguing correctly—about how to "win the war," while Shinseki was arguing—and arguing correctly—about how to "win the peace."
The current fight between NCO and 4GW, over who "lost" the war in Iraq, is basically a repeat of the Rumsfeld-Shinseki argument. The 4GWers accuse NCOers of blindly stumbling from a 3GW victory over Saddam into a 4GW stalemate with the insurgency. But again, this accusation tends to conflate two very different situations: one the war, the other the subsequently botched peace. But the 4GW crowd’s answer can’t be simply, "Let's get ready for counter-insurgencies because NCO is powerless to deal with them."
4GW is essentially guerrilla war that seeks to defeat an enemy not militarily, but politically, and not on any one battlefield, but over years and even decades of low-intensity conflict. Mao is considered the father of modern 4GW, though it’s obviously been around as long as weak forces have met far superior forces. In his recent book, The Sling and the Stone, Thomas Hammes runs through the history of this modern variant of guerrilla war, from Mao to the Viet Cong to the Sandinistas of Nicaragua to the Intifadas of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Naturally, al Qaeda is considered very 4GW, coming as it did out of the great victory that was the Islamic insurgency's defeat of the superpower Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The answer on Iraq (and future situations) needs to be: "Let's get so good at the follow-on System Administration model that when our NCO force defeats a regime, we effectively shut down the possibility of 4GW by flooding the country with peace-maker troops capable of 4GW combat, staffed up big time with support personnel, lots of foreign coalition forces, and plenty of civilians experts all brought together in a larger force that's optimized for stabilization and reconstruction efforts." In other words, the best 4GW strategy is to prevent insurgencies before they start.
In short, our choice isn’t between Network-Centric Operations or Fourth Generation Warfare, it's how we focus each effectively on the logically-defined tasks of effective regime change, a list that covers both war and peace. A Pentagon debate that pits these two visions of war against one another is self-defeating and a waste of time. We must take advantage of the force-structure savings allowed by NCO (e.g., the smaller footprint) to build up our 4GW capabilities and marry those with the larger force requirements entailed in successful SysAdmin work.
In Asia today, there is a huge ongoing battle for "hearts and minds" that has nothing to do with a 4GW enemy. Yet, if this battle is waged well, it will do much to prevent such an enemy's rise in the future and diminish the appeal of enemies who already exist within the region. It is the battle to deal with the aftermath of the earthquake-driven tsunamis, the largest humanitarian assistance / disaster relief operation the world has ever seen. A truly transformed U.S. military, one that covers both the Leviathan and System Administrator functions effectively, will be a military that not only efficiently processes a politically-bankrupt regime like Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It will also be a force ready to deal with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to preemptively secure "peace victories," in situations like the one we face today in southern and southeast Asia.
For me, that is the force worth building for the future worth creating.
Copyright The New Rule Sets Project, LLC.
Excellent article...and quite accurate as to Pentagon politics. Which goup do you think Patton would ascribe to?
Why do I feel this is one of those articles to generate income rather than suggest potentials?
No one expected the level of terrorism that is current. Most thought the Iraqis would provide better intelligence on the Bathists and criminals. Egyptians, Syrians and other foreigners should not be able to find refuge. So, the level of troops to support pacification is greater than expected.
Was Shinseki smartly or stupidly right? I have my opinion.
Is this an anomoly? Wont know until we go beat up Syria.
It does indicate that most Arabs are more docile than ferocious, but it is the numbers of the fanatic that was misjudged. Their ferocity was anticipated.
ping for insight.
Patton would be in favor of whichever one is in favor of getting there sooner with superior firepower.
I dunno. I guess it just goes to prove once again that the UN is absolutely useless.
What was misjudge is that Saddam emptied his bomb dumps of millions of tons of explosives that gave the bad guys the tools to fight this terror war.
We need Heavy Mech to if we're going to win against a real enemy like China instead of these rundown crummy Muslim militaries.
RumDumb, with his support for Stykers and "Information Warfare" and "Transformation" at the expense of Tanks and Heavy Mech is doing everything in his power to make sure we get crushed by China.
Hopefully Tommy Franks will replace Rumdumb by 2006.
...there is a huge ongoing battle for "hearts and minds"...
Paradigm #2:
Democracy defeats Islam.
This is the basis of what we are doing. If these are not effective weapons against Islam, we will have to keep on looking.
Those goals (weapons) are classic and powerful and honorable. They may not be enough to defeat that 1300 year old dragon, Islam.
That's may work against Crappy IslamoNazi militaries, but how the F*&^ is "Transformation" going to 50 million Chinese soldiers from conquering East Asia?
RumDumb must go!
"going to 50 million Chinese soldiers"
Going to KEEP 50 million Chinese soldiers
And 50 mil is probably low.
Two lessons from the Iraq occupation:
The helicopter is not fitted for supporting urban operations- the area is not secure enough for them. The fixed wing Spectre is the right platform to support operations in urban areas. So the Army needs a fixed wing component.
The vast amount of information that drones and other air platforms can supply needs a huge human base to analyze it.
Vast areas could be observed at a "Big Brother" level if our air reconnaisance capabilities could be fully utilized. There's a large number of individuals in the US who could provide that analysis from their homes over the web ("Make Money at Home With Your Computer!").
IEDs and other ambushes could be made nearly impossible.
Nope. What we need is to use massive nukes, at least 1000 or so to thin their ranks!
Actually 50 million is probably the limit because even though "Technically" the Chinese could raise 150 million men, the logistics of supplying all those people with food, ammunition, equipment, and fuel would be too much for their economy to handle (I'm not convinced that the Chinese economy is going to keep on booming forever - their economic growth is a lot shakier than the Japanese growth during the 80's)
We can't nuke them because they have enough nukes of their own that they could take down a couple of major American cities and bases in East Asia plus Tokyo and Seoul down with them.
I don't think that we ever can have a 100% solution. We will always have to have the capability to smash what ever is in front of us. There is always a place for the direct application of brute force to bend an enemy to our will.
We always will need the capability to project our power anywhere in this world in a short time, and we need the power to keep the command of the sea, air, land, and space.
One of the basic rules that we have to follow is to determine what are our national goals. Then what are the strategies required to meet those goals. And perhaps most important from a practical point of view, is what is the cost of implementing those strategies.
Along with the fact that the fact that there are no 100% solutions is the fact that there is no min-max solution. There is no minimum cost maximum effectiveness way. Every solution requires precious national resources.
Indeed.
What makes you think Franks would be different than Rumsfeld?
Remember The President is the one in charge Franks (or whoever) will carry out what the Pesident wants...Just like Rumsfeld does.
When it comes to the military, Bush delegates a lot of the Technical decisions about the military to Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs while at the same time having control of overall strategy.
If a SecDef Franks told Bush that we need more tanks and Bradley's then I would bet Bush would go along because he delegates a lot of decisions regarding Defense.
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