American Armed Forces Articles

A couple of pieces in Armed Forces Journal.

One discusses the "new principles of war."

Some excerpts:

"...The post-Cold War era has generated new vulnerabilities and new forms of adversaries and combat applications. A decade of combat and complex operations has pulled up the roots of strategic thought and operational habits framed in response to a monolithic threat. That threat no longer exists, but it is imprinted into the U.S. military culture. The challenge is adapting to new demands, new threats and an evolving character of conflict. We must discard what is no longer relevant and reinforce everything that is immutable or enduring..."

True. But as most observers of history will note, the nature of war is always in flux. The problem with the American defense posture is it feels a good defense needs a good offense.

"...We need to gain a deep and nuanced understanding of any conflict we are about to embark on and acquire as thorough a grasp of the nature of the adversary as possible. This includes becoming well-informed about the culture of the adversarial social and political systems..."

This should be self-evident. Sun Tzu, Macchiavelli, and I believe even Clausewitz spoke about this. 

Buying loyalty only goes so far as the Americans have learned in their Asian adventures.

"...It is impossible for either policymakers or the military to succeed without an intimate appreciation of the local culture, and one can see this in America’s past interventions. Our lack of understanding of both the nature of the Vietnamese civil war and the weaknesses of the South Vietnamese government was instrumental to our debacle there. Likewise, our misunderstanding of the ethnic divisions in Lebanon, where our support for the Christian-dominated government risked our Marines and sailors in Beirut. Likewise, the American intervention in Somalia in 1992-93 was undermined by a limited understanding of the clan framework in that impoverished country.

The same problems worked against our efforts in Iraq for a long time. We have made progress at the operational and tactical levels over the past decade, and need to assess and institutionalize the frameworks, educational base and organizational improvements to preserve and increase the ability of American forces to think in terms of culture and see things from the perspective of others.

"..It should be clear by this point that understanding stands primus inter pares when it comes to the principles of war. Without a deep understanding of the nature of war and the societies involved, defining an achievable objective or end state is an exercise in delusion. Without a deep grasp of history and war, it is impossible to design a campaign for an offensive or to retain the initiative after the first clash of arms. Good planning requires branches and alternatives, not a fixed path..."

Yet, for all the talk of Obama's "cultural sensitivities" and "intellectual abilities" there's tough talk on Iran. A nation the U.S. knows even less about than Iraq I argue.

The second article is a sober account of American (indeed, international) success in Afghanistan.

"How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by U.S. senior leaders in Afghanistan? No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan. But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on."

A perfect reminder of what the first article cautioned against. Hilariously, Obama and Cameron (and presumably Harper) still claim the contrary.

Liberals and libertarians asked at the time: How can you invade a nation with Afghanistan's history; international aggreement notwithstanding? There have been successes - if you consider disrupting Al-Queda and killing Bin Laden as successes - but overall, in the long-run the author isn't so sure.