Bartholomew Roberts
Member
Saw this at http://63.99.108.76/ubb/Forum2/HTML/006085.html and thought it would make good discussion here as well:
U.S. Army War College 15th Annual Strategy Conference: Winning the War by Winning the Peace: Strategy for Conflict and Post-Conflict in the 21st Century
SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS:
· Many of our problems in Iraq spring from our inability to follow our own doctrine, to learn from past experiences, and to avoid making uninformed decisions out of theater.
· The Global War on Terrorism is here to stay. Consequently, we will need to increase the size of our ground forces. We also need to reorganize at the national level to fight it effectively.
· Although the Defense budget will remain adequate, the Federal budget deficit and increasing personnel costs (including more ground end strength) will force hard choices. As a result several favorite programs in all the services may be scaled back.
Iraq Reconstruction:
· Pre-conflict reconstruction planning was done pretty well but lacked integration.
· Four major concerns were oil well fires, massive refugee flows due to chemical warfare, food shortages, and epidemics. None of these happened.
· Critical contracts were delayed because they could not be written before the conflict began and the bureaucracy slowed moving money to get contracts in place. In the future we need a rolling pot of money to get contracts in place quickly.
· From the beginning lack of security made it difficult for the Organization for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (OHRA) to do its mission.
· Because the U.S. took out the entire Iraqi state and all its authorities, ministries had to be totally reconstituted from top to bottom. Wartime destruction of the communications grid was a major challenge.
· Iraqi infrastructure had not been maintained for decades but the country has the resources and skills to do well if the insurgency can be stabilized.
· The U.S. track record of walking away from difficult commitments has hampered our ability to get the Iraqis to cooperate.
· Five essential actions:
o Destroy and kill the insurgents
o Reestablish the Iraqi regular army
o Stimulate the economy
o Create a system to share oil revenues
o Establish a government of federated entities (the hard part)
· The U.S. did a horrible job of talking to the Iraqi people and is still not doing it well. We need a “world class†strategic communications capability that can work in other cultures and get the message out.
· Future reconstruction efforts must belong to the Combatant Commander and he needs an interagency group that works for him to do it.
· Three poor decisions made “out of theater†in mid-May caused things to turn against the U.S.
o Disbanding the Iraqi army
o De-Ba’athification down to 5-6 levels
o Eliminating the group of Iraqi expatriates that had been created to talk to the Iraqi people.
· Reconstruction planning started much later than it should have. George C. Marshall began planning for post-World War II reconstruction three years before the end of the War.
Grand Strategy for the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT):
· Because the GWOT is unbounded, unilateral, and preemptive, it represents strategic overreach by the U.S.
· On, balance globalization tends to enhance and entrench U.S. power. The future is very favorable for the U.S. relative to other states.
· Future strategy should leverage U.S. ability to change international institutions and reshape the world order in our interests.
· We need to get our grand strategy right. We’re using a lot of resources but not linked to grand strategy.
· The main imperative of our strategy must be establishing legitimate and effective government in large parts of the world that lack it. Many of our challenges are symptomatic of the good governance deficit, especially in the Islamic world.
· We need to replace the National Security Act of 1947 with something that integrates all elements of national power to meet our current and future challenges.
· 1814, 1941, and 2001 all reflect fundamental changes in threats to the U.S. that drove major changes in U.S. grand strategy. 9/11 was a watershed event that caused us to truly recognize the threat posed by radical Islam and WMD and shifted our balance of risk equation. The apocalyptic nihilism of Islamic fundamentalists makes deterrence impossible.
· Present institutions (national and international) can’t solve our post 9/11 problems.
· The war on radical Islamic fundamentalist terror will be long, costly, and unavoidable.
Fiscal and Political Sustainability:
· Outlook for the U.S. economy is good but the budget is worrisome if current policies on taxes and spending continue. We can afford a strong defense but can’t do it on borrowed money.
· The U.S. economy is resilient to shock. The past recession resulted from inevitable collapse of the ‘90’s boom. 9/11 had minor impact.
· The deficit is currently high at 4.5% of GDP. This is not an immediate problem but we’re on track to sustain large deficits for 10 years. Then the situation worsens dramatically due to boomers’ entitlements.
· Interest rates are expected to increase one or two percent, more if the U.S. becomes unable to borrow abroad. One third of U.S. debt is foreign held; thus, loss of confidence in the dollar could be a real problem.
· The U.S. will be forced to make hard choices on the revenue side also. Revenues are now at 16% of GDP, a historic low.
· Older and newer military equipment is more expensive to operate.
· The military medical budget grows faster than everything else.
· Cost estimates for DD(X) and LHAR are way under what costs will really be.
· Army is in the worse shape for risk. Historically huge cost risk (70%) is driven by FCS.
· Defense spending will decline as a percentage of the Federal budget and the economy. Over time there will not be seven percent increase per year in Defense. Enormous deficits will cause tough choices in Defense.
· Neither Kerry nor Bush are in competition for fiscal responsibility. Defense won’t have to tighten its belt for the next one to two years. The national political center of gravity is not to cut defense. Kerry is “hugging†Bush on defense but might increase Army end strength by 40,000 (to 520,000). $500 to $600B deficits are not sustainable.
· The speaker argued for a 50,000 increase in Army end strength to give the Army some breathing room on personnel tempo. To generate savings of two times the increase in personnel costs, he argued for the following changes in programs:
o FCS—keep in R&D for five more years.
o F-22—makes sense to buy some against the future Chinese threat but don’t need as many as planned. Buy more/refurbish F-15Cs.
o V-22—survivability problems. Use as a prototype and SOF platform. Buy 50 only.
o JSF—2500 manned aircraft makes no sense. Buy several hundred VSTOL models, cancel Navy buy. Buy 1000 or fewer total. Buy more/refurbish F-15Cs.
o DD(X)—Navy costing at only half what program will really come in at. Hull design is unseaworthy. A lot of other platforms can strike shore targets; thus, DD(X) is duplicative.
o Nuclear Weapons—We need only a few hundred. Modest force of only 1000 warheads is adequate.
o Virginia Class Submarines—do more overseas basing of other ships.
· Two crises, Iraq and the economic future, don’t permit easy, old-fashioned solutions. In two years the nation’s politics will cause hard choices in Defense.
· The GWOT hasn’t had a major effect on Defense spending. The increase from $300B to $400B in the defense budget is mostly a reflection of increased compensation, R&D for transformation, the end of the procurement “holidayâ€, and rising O&M costs (some for increased force protection).
· DD(X) and LCS: the Navy needs more, smaller combatants but the question is in what numbers with what capability. You can make an argument for DD(X) but it’s harder to argue for 24.
· Some plausible future scenarios, most of which are Army intensive missions:
o U.S. assistance to Musharraf in Pakistan
o U.S. intervention to prevent a nuclear war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir
o Conflict with Iran over the Straits of Hormuz
o China-Taiwan
o Peacekeeping operations in Indonesia, the Philippines, or the Congo
Insurgency and Terrorism:
· Insurgency is the only way weak actors can try to affect the global system.
· Radical Islam provides a powerful critique of the existing order but can’t generate a successful alternative state.
· U.S. will have to chose between a strategy of victory or management of terrorism.
· Key determinants of success (in Iraq and elsewhere) are the legitimacy of a new government and the effectiveness of economic reform.
· We are now seeing a global insurgency because the U.S. dominates and enforces global order. The good news is that it is based on a narrow, negative theology and ideology.
· Insurgency was the most prevalent form of conflict in the 20th century and probably will remain so in the 21st. Although there are some changes (IO, weapons, etc), the causes and requirements for combating them remain the same.
· Cordon and search approaches have never worked well. Sometimes the best you can do it to restore law and order and reduce violence to acceptable levels.
· Formulating a counterinsurgency strategy requires recognition of the nature of the enemy. Is Al Qaeda a snake that can be beheaded or a virulent mold?
· Why no small-scale Al Qaeda attacks since 9/11? Even small operations require infrastructure. After 9/11 the U.S. was seen as too hostile an environment; thus, terrorists may be waiting for a better opportunity. Since 9/11 there have been 25-30 attacks overseas.
Phase IV Operations
· Army doctrine phases operations as follows:
o I—Deter/Engage
o II—Seize Initiative
o III—Decisive Operations
o IV—Reconstruction
§ Secure
§ Stabilize
§ Build institutions
§ Handover/redeploy
· We historically plan for IV when we do III—can no longer do that. Planning must be simultaneous.
· In Iraq all the Iraq experts were put on phase III planning.
· U.S. military doesn’t like doing phase IV but it’s the only institution that can do it. If it can, the Army follows the Von Moltke model of only being engaged in decisive combat, then allowing the civilian leaders to take charge of the aftermath.
· Policy goals cannot be achieved without long-term Army commitment.
· Combatant Commanders should control reconstruction with civilian deputies and an interagency staff.
· U.S. has done a reconstruction operation every two years since 1990 but each one overwhelms our security apparatus. We need to improve the capabilities of other agencies or the military will continue to bear most of the load. However, civilian agencies have no planning capability, no lead agency, no way to move money quickly, and no stand-by capability.
· Afghanistan has one peacekeeper per 1000 population—needs 20. Iraq would require 500,000 troops at that level.
· In Iraq the CPA is vastly understaffed and confined to Baghdad. It’s now on its fifth plan for transition to Iraqi rules. Attempts to privatize reconstruction have run into problems because the U.S. doesn’t have its act together on contracting. Has led to serious problems, like training and equipping Iraqi security forces.
· The UN has much to offer in reconstruction operations
o Unique legal authority
o Unique moral authority
o Unique global membership to generate unique combinations of forces. In the Congo, 50 percent of the UN officers are African, greatly enhancing the UN’s ability to operate there. [The Congo was Africa’s World War—3.5 million dead, 17 foreign armies fighting there.]
o Burdensharing
Democratization
· The Arab-Israeli conflict is the central problem in the Middle East.
· The issue of political identify in the Arab world was never resolved—Iraq is the most egregious example. An election putting one ethnic group in power could lead to civil war, as in Algeria. The only solution elsewhere in the Arab world has been liberalized autocracy.
· In Iraq, if the follow-on Iraqi government doesn’t have a degree of legitimacy, it will be unable to get any public support to do anything else.
· You must first have a state to have democracy. The state must have a monopoly on the means of violence; thus, security is a preeminent requirement.
· Sadr’s Mahdi Army has committed numerous acts of terrorism to cow its opponents through fear.
Implications for U.S. Force Structure:
· We need to determine what the primary mission of the U.S. military is before we make changes to force structure.
· The U.S. military is a Western world asset. Most European forces fail the test of usability.
· We clearly need more ground power. It matters. Close combat capability is critical.
· One of the shortcomings of force transformation is that it ignores the uncertainty of war and tries to reduce combat to a targeting drill. Net Centric Warfare (NCW) doesn’t work in counter-insurgency. Today, the focus of all four services is on land. The enemy can use our networked awareness to make us deceive ourselves. Many low-tech opponents present no key nodes to attack.
· Training and education of military and other agency leaders is essential for effective counter-insurgency. We need to learn from past conflicts, particularly Vietnam.
U.S. Army War College 15th Annual Strategy Conference: Winning the War by Winning the Peace: Strategy for Conflict and Post-Conflict in the 21st Century
SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS:
· Many of our problems in Iraq spring from our inability to follow our own doctrine, to learn from past experiences, and to avoid making uninformed decisions out of theater.
· The Global War on Terrorism is here to stay. Consequently, we will need to increase the size of our ground forces. We also need to reorganize at the national level to fight it effectively.
· Although the Defense budget will remain adequate, the Federal budget deficit and increasing personnel costs (including more ground end strength) will force hard choices. As a result several favorite programs in all the services may be scaled back.
Iraq Reconstruction:
· Pre-conflict reconstruction planning was done pretty well but lacked integration.
· Four major concerns were oil well fires, massive refugee flows due to chemical warfare, food shortages, and epidemics. None of these happened.
· Critical contracts were delayed because they could not be written before the conflict began and the bureaucracy slowed moving money to get contracts in place. In the future we need a rolling pot of money to get contracts in place quickly.
· From the beginning lack of security made it difficult for the Organization for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (OHRA) to do its mission.
· Because the U.S. took out the entire Iraqi state and all its authorities, ministries had to be totally reconstituted from top to bottom. Wartime destruction of the communications grid was a major challenge.
· Iraqi infrastructure had not been maintained for decades but the country has the resources and skills to do well if the insurgency can be stabilized.
· The U.S. track record of walking away from difficult commitments has hampered our ability to get the Iraqis to cooperate.
· Five essential actions:
o Destroy and kill the insurgents
o Reestablish the Iraqi regular army
o Stimulate the economy
o Create a system to share oil revenues
o Establish a government of federated entities (the hard part)
· The U.S. did a horrible job of talking to the Iraqi people and is still not doing it well. We need a “world class†strategic communications capability that can work in other cultures and get the message out.
· Future reconstruction efforts must belong to the Combatant Commander and he needs an interagency group that works for him to do it.
· Three poor decisions made “out of theater†in mid-May caused things to turn against the U.S.
o Disbanding the Iraqi army
o De-Ba’athification down to 5-6 levels
o Eliminating the group of Iraqi expatriates that had been created to talk to the Iraqi people.
· Reconstruction planning started much later than it should have. George C. Marshall began planning for post-World War II reconstruction three years before the end of the War.
Grand Strategy for the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT):
· Because the GWOT is unbounded, unilateral, and preemptive, it represents strategic overreach by the U.S.
· On, balance globalization tends to enhance and entrench U.S. power. The future is very favorable for the U.S. relative to other states.
· Future strategy should leverage U.S. ability to change international institutions and reshape the world order in our interests.
· We need to get our grand strategy right. We’re using a lot of resources but not linked to grand strategy.
· The main imperative of our strategy must be establishing legitimate and effective government in large parts of the world that lack it. Many of our challenges are symptomatic of the good governance deficit, especially in the Islamic world.
· We need to replace the National Security Act of 1947 with something that integrates all elements of national power to meet our current and future challenges.
· 1814, 1941, and 2001 all reflect fundamental changes in threats to the U.S. that drove major changes in U.S. grand strategy. 9/11 was a watershed event that caused us to truly recognize the threat posed by radical Islam and WMD and shifted our balance of risk equation. The apocalyptic nihilism of Islamic fundamentalists makes deterrence impossible.
· Present institutions (national and international) can’t solve our post 9/11 problems.
· The war on radical Islamic fundamentalist terror will be long, costly, and unavoidable.
Fiscal and Political Sustainability:
· Outlook for the U.S. economy is good but the budget is worrisome if current policies on taxes and spending continue. We can afford a strong defense but can’t do it on borrowed money.
· The U.S. economy is resilient to shock. The past recession resulted from inevitable collapse of the ‘90’s boom. 9/11 had minor impact.
· The deficit is currently high at 4.5% of GDP. This is not an immediate problem but we’re on track to sustain large deficits for 10 years. Then the situation worsens dramatically due to boomers’ entitlements.
· Interest rates are expected to increase one or two percent, more if the U.S. becomes unable to borrow abroad. One third of U.S. debt is foreign held; thus, loss of confidence in the dollar could be a real problem.
· The U.S. will be forced to make hard choices on the revenue side also. Revenues are now at 16% of GDP, a historic low.
· Older and newer military equipment is more expensive to operate.
· The military medical budget grows faster than everything else.
· Cost estimates for DD(X) and LHAR are way under what costs will really be.
· Army is in the worse shape for risk. Historically huge cost risk (70%) is driven by FCS.
· Defense spending will decline as a percentage of the Federal budget and the economy. Over time there will not be seven percent increase per year in Defense. Enormous deficits will cause tough choices in Defense.
· Neither Kerry nor Bush are in competition for fiscal responsibility. Defense won’t have to tighten its belt for the next one to two years. The national political center of gravity is not to cut defense. Kerry is “hugging†Bush on defense but might increase Army end strength by 40,000 (to 520,000). $500 to $600B deficits are not sustainable.
· The speaker argued for a 50,000 increase in Army end strength to give the Army some breathing room on personnel tempo. To generate savings of two times the increase in personnel costs, he argued for the following changes in programs:
o FCS—keep in R&D for five more years.
o F-22—makes sense to buy some against the future Chinese threat but don’t need as many as planned. Buy more/refurbish F-15Cs.
o V-22—survivability problems. Use as a prototype and SOF platform. Buy 50 only.
o JSF—2500 manned aircraft makes no sense. Buy several hundred VSTOL models, cancel Navy buy. Buy 1000 or fewer total. Buy more/refurbish F-15Cs.
o DD(X)—Navy costing at only half what program will really come in at. Hull design is unseaworthy. A lot of other platforms can strike shore targets; thus, DD(X) is duplicative.
o Nuclear Weapons—We need only a few hundred. Modest force of only 1000 warheads is adequate.
o Virginia Class Submarines—do more overseas basing of other ships.
· Two crises, Iraq and the economic future, don’t permit easy, old-fashioned solutions. In two years the nation’s politics will cause hard choices in Defense.
· The GWOT hasn’t had a major effect on Defense spending. The increase from $300B to $400B in the defense budget is mostly a reflection of increased compensation, R&D for transformation, the end of the procurement “holidayâ€, and rising O&M costs (some for increased force protection).
· DD(X) and LCS: the Navy needs more, smaller combatants but the question is in what numbers with what capability. You can make an argument for DD(X) but it’s harder to argue for 24.
· Some plausible future scenarios, most of which are Army intensive missions:
o U.S. assistance to Musharraf in Pakistan
o U.S. intervention to prevent a nuclear war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir
o Conflict with Iran over the Straits of Hormuz
o China-Taiwan
o Peacekeeping operations in Indonesia, the Philippines, or the Congo
Insurgency and Terrorism:
· Insurgency is the only way weak actors can try to affect the global system.
· Radical Islam provides a powerful critique of the existing order but can’t generate a successful alternative state.
· U.S. will have to chose between a strategy of victory or management of terrorism.
· Key determinants of success (in Iraq and elsewhere) are the legitimacy of a new government and the effectiveness of economic reform.
· We are now seeing a global insurgency because the U.S. dominates and enforces global order. The good news is that it is based on a narrow, negative theology and ideology.
· Insurgency was the most prevalent form of conflict in the 20th century and probably will remain so in the 21st. Although there are some changes (IO, weapons, etc), the causes and requirements for combating them remain the same.
· Cordon and search approaches have never worked well. Sometimes the best you can do it to restore law and order and reduce violence to acceptable levels.
· Formulating a counterinsurgency strategy requires recognition of the nature of the enemy. Is Al Qaeda a snake that can be beheaded or a virulent mold?
· Why no small-scale Al Qaeda attacks since 9/11? Even small operations require infrastructure. After 9/11 the U.S. was seen as too hostile an environment; thus, terrorists may be waiting for a better opportunity. Since 9/11 there have been 25-30 attacks overseas.
Phase IV Operations
· Army doctrine phases operations as follows:
o I—Deter/Engage
o II—Seize Initiative
o III—Decisive Operations
o IV—Reconstruction
§ Secure
§ Stabilize
§ Build institutions
§ Handover/redeploy
· We historically plan for IV when we do III—can no longer do that. Planning must be simultaneous.
· In Iraq all the Iraq experts were put on phase III planning.
· U.S. military doesn’t like doing phase IV but it’s the only institution that can do it. If it can, the Army follows the Von Moltke model of only being engaged in decisive combat, then allowing the civilian leaders to take charge of the aftermath.
· Policy goals cannot be achieved without long-term Army commitment.
· Combatant Commanders should control reconstruction with civilian deputies and an interagency staff.
· U.S. has done a reconstruction operation every two years since 1990 but each one overwhelms our security apparatus. We need to improve the capabilities of other agencies or the military will continue to bear most of the load. However, civilian agencies have no planning capability, no lead agency, no way to move money quickly, and no stand-by capability.
· Afghanistan has one peacekeeper per 1000 population—needs 20. Iraq would require 500,000 troops at that level.
· In Iraq the CPA is vastly understaffed and confined to Baghdad. It’s now on its fifth plan for transition to Iraqi rules. Attempts to privatize reconstruction have run into problems because the U.S. doesn’t have its act together on contracting. Has led to serious problems, like training and equipping Iraqi security forces.
· The UN has much to offer in reconstruction operations
o Unique legal authority
o Unique moral authority
o Unique global membership to generate unique combinations of forces. In the Congo, 50 percent of the UN officers are African, greatly enhancing the UN’s ability to operate there. [The Congo was Africa’s World War—3.5 million dead, 17 foreign armies fighting there.]
o Burdensharing
Democratization
· The Arab-Israeli conflict is the central problem in the Middle East.
· The issue of political identify in the Arab world was never resolved—Iraq is the most egregious example. An election putting one ethnic group in power could lead to civil war, as in Algeria. The only solution elsewhere in the Arab world has been liberalized autocracy.
· In Iraq, if the follow-on Iraqi government doesn’t have a degree of legitimacy, it will be unable to get any public support to do anything else.
· You must first have a state to have democracy. The state must have a monopoly on the means of violence; thus, security is a preeminent requirement.
· Sadr’s Mahdi Army has committed numerous acts of terrorism to cow its opponents through fear.
Implications for U.S. Force Structure:
· We need to determine what the primary mission of the U.S. military is before we make changes to force structure.
· The U.S. military is a Western world asset. Most European forces fail the test of usability.
· We clearly need more ground power. It matters. Close combat capability is critical.
· One of the shortcomings of force transformation is that it ignores the uncertainty of war and tries to reduce combat to a targeting drill. Net Centric Warfare (NCW) doesn’t work in counter-insurgency. Today, the focus of all four services is on land. The enemy can use our networked awareness to make us deceive ourselves. Many low-tech opponents present no key nodes to attack.
· Training and education of military and other agency leaders is essential for effective counter-insurgency. We need to learn from past conflicts, particularly Vietnam.
Now only 3rd or 4th level (depending on position) are excluded.