Observations on the Long War
Observations on the Long War by Conrad Crane, War on the Rocks
For more than a decade, I have been recording reflections about the course of the so-called “Long War” launched after the tragic events of 9/11. These are based on many unique experiences: being the recorder for the 2002 Army After Action Review on Operations Enduring Freedom and Noble Eagle, developing prewar Army plans to reconstruct Iraq, serving as lead author for the 2006 version of Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24 on counterinsurgency, visiting Iraq in 2007 for General David Petraeus, working on projects analyzing wartime assessment and war termination for the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Army Training and Doctrine Command, and innumerable conversations with insightful civilian and military veterans returned from the field. This commentary has also been shaped by many international travels and my own reading of history. I hope to provoke more critical thought about where the American military has been and where it should be going…
Here are my comments that I also posted at WOTR.
Some very important observations by Conrad Crane, the man behind FM 3-24 whose name you rarely hear associated with it.
I strongly agree with his conclusion about being “COINfused” – not to be confused but to have a fusion between the COINtras and COINdinistas.
But I have to take some exception to his comments about SOF and FID. I concur on the critical importance of FID and the FID approach but I disagree with his characterization that SOF has been drawn to much to the dark side (though the role reversal of SOF and conventional forces he describes in Iraq is accurate and interesting to consider – but that should be understood to be a function of those who designed, executed, and led the campaign plan). I think the Army and the US Army Special Operations Command have well articulated the Yin and Yang of SOF with Special Warfare and Surgical Strike and the vast majority of SOF and in particular US Army Special Forces, Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations forces are conducting Special Warfare with particular emphasis on FID. I think that what causes confusion is that there is a dominant narrative both in the press and in the military that revolves around the high payoff immediate effects of surgical strike and there is a major command and control headquarters that is conducting those operations. Special Warfare does not currently have that type of headquarters to integrate Special Warfare on a global scale. USSOCOM does not do that though the separate Theater Special Operations Commands at the Geographic Combatant Commands do command and control Special Warfare and FID operations. But they will never achieve the notoriety of the forces conducting surgical strike and therefore there is a perceived imbalance. His comment about headquarters and playing the super bowl is especially applicable to the conduct of Special Warfare and FID. The only super bowl capable headquarters we have is the surgical strike headquarters. I do also agree with his comments about Air Force FID and with the need for the Coast Guard to conduct FID.
But all his observation are very much worth pondering, discussing, debating and using as we move forward.
Might it be helpful — or indeed essential — to articulate, in some manner, what it is that we call the “Long War?
Here is my take:
It is the place-in-time in which:
a. The West — using its unique cultural identity as a primary weapon — has actively sought to transform outlying states and societies more along modern western lines. It is, likewise, the similar/same place-in-time in which
b. Outlying states and societies (such as Russia and certain states and societies in the Middle East and elsewhere) have sought to (1) use their own cultural identities as (2) a primary weapon to (3) defend against and oppose such unwanted aggression/transformation.
All questions, statements and suggestions — by both the author of this article and by those providing responding comments thereto — to be considered, evaluated and addressed within this specific context/theme, or one which is more accurate/valid?
Thus, for example, the applicability and usefulness — or lack thereof — of air power, SOFs and FID needing to be considered within the confines/borders of this — or some other — “Long War” characterization?
Bill C,
I’m afraid you are the only person I have ever encountered who believes in the possibility of either ‘a’ or ‘b’ as a strategic objective for the West. So IMHO the discussion you are trying to frame is one you can only have with yourself.
JMO
RC
David Kilcullen wrote a very nice paper ( at least, I think it was David Kilcullen) surveying studies of insurgency in Western journals? I can’t remember it exactly, but that was the general thrust of the paper. In the paper, some insurgencies were overrepresented, while others barely studied at all.
In the light of Afghanistan and IS/ISIS/ISIL, I find it interesting that certain insurgencies remain a less popular area of study.
For instance:
http://fas.org/news/pakistan/1995/950000-pak-kashmir.htm
Islam is in Danger is certainly a theme we have seen with the so-called global war on terror, and one theme in which we continually provide fodder for our enemies. We basically hand them, on a plate, everything they need to continue to expand.
Forget taking the side of Indians, Afghans, Pakistani, various Kashmiri groups, or their diasporas. Instead, think about the processes:
1. Local conflicts based competing agendas of religion, money, local power politics, ethnolinguistic identities, etc.
2. The regional national competitions between states.
3. The international competition between states and their non-stop use of proxies, one one day, another the next.
4. Western capitals as safe havens for exiles, immigrants, various Western political factions with interests in foreign policy.
5. Contractors and arms selling.
6. Propaganda in different guises, to rally fighters to the cause, to influence voting Western publics (by both insurgent and counterinsurgent), news coverage with its desire to sell and influence and be near the powerful, etc.
7. International business, licit and illicit.
So on.
Perhaps it is uncomfortable to study in this way given the implications for what we have been doing over the years in the Middle East, with the Kurds, or in Jordan with the CIA and FSA, etc.
That sort of scholarship likely would indict most everything that we do and have done, yet, I can’t believe that is the only reason that over the decades this area has been neglected. It seems to represent, until recently, some sort of blankness or blindness in the Western political consciousness as it cannot be fit easily into either progressive or conservative ideologies and politics, and doesn’t serve well an expansion of certain domestic power blocs, be they military or civilian. Both the right and left-and some non-interventionists–have an interest in these insurgencies only based on their own political interests, and, so the wider understanding and scholarship seems to happen quietly and carefully, outside the hot-headed and ADD world of policy.