A Force for Good

AS the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln returned home to San Diego this week from its relief mission in Indonesia, the main lesson of the United States military's remarkable tsunami relief effort has yet to be acknowledged: that the global war on terrorism, rather than distracting the military from performing humanitarian deeds, has made it far more effective at them. This is worth bearing in mind, especially now that President Bush's request for $82 billion in emergency military spending has re-opened the argument over Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's longstanding plan for remaking the armed forces as a leaner, more flexible military machine.

The fact is, the Navy of the 1990's could not have responded nearly as quickly and efficiently to the tsunami as did the post-9/11 one. This is largely because of structural changes made to fight the war on terrorism.

A decade ago, our carrier battle groups mainly did planned, six-month-long "pulse" deployments. Since 9/11, the Navy has put increasing emphasis on emergency "surge" deployments, in which carriers, cruisers and destroyers have to be ready to go anywhere, anytime, to deal with a security threat. The new strategy explains why, in late December, the Abraham Lincoln strike force was able to so quickly leave Hong Kong for Indonesia at a best speed of 27 knots.

In recent years the Navy has also instituted what it calls sea-swaps, in which crews are rotated in the middle of a deployment, without the battle group having to return to port. This allows the ships to remain on call in unstable areas of the globe while giving the initial crews a rest.

For example, the Benfold, a guided missile destroyer on which I have been embedded for four weeks - and which played a substantial role in tsunami relief - is now being maintained by a crew from another destroyer, the Higgins, as part of a sea-swap. Although the Benfold had intended to go to the Korean Peninsula before the tsunami hit, its navigators had sailing charts of Indonesia on hand because, as they explained to me, the war on terrorism necessitates a flexible, expeditionary mentality.

Sept. 11 has also encouraged America's blue water (oceanic) Navy to become more of a green water, street-fighting force, adept at littoral operations, whether that means infiltrating coastal terrorist hideouts or providing onshore assistance to disaster victims. While fighting terrorism has sharpened the Navy's skill at disaster relief, the humanitarian work in the Indian Ocean, it is now clear, has provided a major victory in both the war on terrorism and the more low-key effort of managing China's re-emergence as a great power. Not only did the Abraham Lincoln strike group show Muslim Indonesians that America is their friend, it also proved how helpful our sailors can be compared to the Chinese Navy, which floundered in its relief efforts. Clearly, by doing good, we have done well.

What holds true for the Navy also applies to the Marines, our seaborne land-fighting force. When the tsunami hit in December, the Third Marine Expeditionary Force, based on Okinawa, had just finished providing disaster assistance in the typhoon-wracked Philippines. Nonetheless, these marines quickly set off for Indonesia, bringing food, forklifts and desalinization equipment ashore with the same spirited aggressiveness that their fellow grunts have been demonstrating with assault rifles in Iraq.

There is no contradiction in this. Indeed, dealing with typhoons, tsunamis and guerrilla insurgencies all at the same time has brought the marines back to their roots as unconventional warriors. The "Small Wars Manual," the sacred text of the corps, is the product of the lessons learned in amphibious landings in the Caribbean, Central America and the Far East in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its focus is describing all the ways you can dominate the enemy with - but preferably without - firing a shot.

The official Marine motto may be "Semper fidelis," but the unofficial one is "Semper Gumby": "always flexible." The marine fighting in Falluja is interchangeable with the marine providing help in Sumatra. For the logistics of humanitarian assistance are similar to the logistics of war: both demand fast infiltration and the movement of equipment and supplies to a zone of activity.

For example, in humanitarian emergencies, often the greatest need is for fresh potable water, which nuclear-powered aircraft carriers can produce by reprocessing hundreds of thousands of gallons of seawater. Of course, the idea that our carriers will roam the world exclusively handling emergencies is naïve. That is not why they were built. But our more aggressive carrier strike groups are more likely to be in the vicinity of humanitarian disasters when they happen.

Not surprisingly, our troops put great store in being Good Samaritans. During the tsunami effort, I could see that this was particularly true of the helicopter pilots; because of their ability to land in tight spaces, they had a rare opportunity to outshine the fighter pilots of the carrier group. Yet their esprit de corps as units ultimately derives from shedding blood in the defense of American interests. Without such battles as Midway, the Philippine Sea, and Leyte Gulf, the Navy would not have the sense of mission that it does; just as the Marine Corps would not be the asset that it has been - both in Iraq and Indonesia - without the memories of Guadalcanal, Okinawa and Hue.

Liberal democratic societies have commonly been defended by conservative military establishments, whose members often lack the sensitivities and social graces of the elites whom they protect. As much as the military wants to help the downtrodden, it is not the Peace Corps. To wit, I have spent many months embedded with marines in Iraq, the Horn of Africa and West Africa, watching them fight, rebuild schools, operate medical clinics and mentor soldiers of fledgling democracies. I've learned that marines swear all the time out of habit, and love to be in on a fight, or otherwise they would not have joined the Marine Corps.

Yet those same swearing marines are capable of a self-discipline and humanitarian compassion - drawn, often, from an absolute belief in the Almighty - that would stun the average civilian. In Iraq, there was nothing more natural for marines (and soldiers, too) than to go from close-quarters urban combat to providing food and medicine, and back again.

A prime example of this outlook is Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, who was reprimanded last month for saying at a conference in San Diego that he finds it "fun" to kill people like the Taliban. Yet I stood next to General Mattis at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq - several weeks before the abuse scandal broke - as he spoke in the same roughhewn manner, this time warning Marine grunts against even the appearance of mistreating prisoners. I have also seen him at Camp Pendleton in California pleading at length with his troops to try to bond with the Iraqi people - to always look them in the eye - as a way of winning their respect.

Of course, this does not excuse his remarks on killing. But it does demonstrate why General Mattis has for a long time been particularly revered by young grunts: whatever he does - saving lives, taking them - is done to the nth degree.

America has not had a true citizen army for decades. Instead, it has an expeditionary military of professional warriors, drawn mainly from the working classes, who enjoy the soldiering life for its own sake. For them, combat and humanitarian relief are easily interchangeable, and efforts to reshape the military for the war on terrorism are vital to both functions. The troops are comfortable with their dual role; it is our job to supply them with what they need to do it best.

Robert D. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, is the author of the forthcoming "Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground."

Wow, I didn't think that NYT has any real reporters.

Don't believe everything you hear about the Times. It still has a reputation as "the paper of record", and it wants to recover what it lost with the Jayson Blair affair and some other recent lapses. It still has some very good reporters, e.g. John F. Burns in Iraq, and enormous resources. The main trick with reading the Times is to know how they slant stories and ignore inconvenient stories.

An OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR is a guest OpEd piece, not a regular columnist. Check the end of the article and see what you find about the author.

Robert D. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, is the author of the forthcoming "Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground."

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