All week SWJ friend and Intel Dump blogger Phillip Carter and Center for American Progress fellow Lawrence Korb have been debating issues related to U.S. national security over at the Los Angeles Times. Phil also practices government contracts law with McKenna Long & Aldridge in New York City. He previously served as an Army officer for nine years, deploying to Iraq in 2005-06 as an embedded advisor with the Iraqi police in Baqubah.
Today, Carter and Korb close their Dust-Up with a discussion on the kinds of conflicts the U.S. military can expect to fight in the future. Previously, they discussed congressional oversight of the armed forces, Adm. William J. Fallon's public disagreement with the administration, the use of evidence gleaned from torture and the Air Force tanker contract.
Carter focuses on a military that can handle all kinds of war...
Historically, the Army has trained for big wars and thought of small wars as lesser kinds of conflict, hoping that the skills for major combat operations would trickle down well to things such as counterinsurgency. Our fighting in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, particularly during their first few years, illustrates the folly of this idea. To paraphrase Army Lt. Col. John Nagl, one of this generation's leading defense intellectuals, counterinsurgency is the graduate level of warfare. It involves a fundamentally different approach, in which the use of force is highly constrained and the support of the local population is the objective (as opposed to the capture of terrain or destruction of the enemy). A military trained for combat operations cannot easily adjust to this modus operandi. The military must rethink its approach to training, organizing and equipping for warfare, and abandon the one-size-fits-all approach.
... while Korb discusses building the world's first responder.
After five years of war in Iraq and six-plus in Afghanistan, the United States military is facing a crisis not seen since the end of the Vietnam War. Equipment shortages, manpower shortfalls, recruiting and retention problems and misplaced budget priorities have resulted in a military barely able to meet the challenges America faces today and dangerously ill-prepared to handle the challenges of the future.
As operations in Iraq eventually draw to a close, we must plot a new strategic direction for our nation's military. Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, former head of the Army War College, has noted that the current crisis in Iraq presents the "opportunity to transform ourselves as we rebuild." As Phil points out, we have an awful track record of getting it right.