With Afghan President Hamid Karzai visiting Washington this week, The Post asked experts whether the surge in Afghanistan was working. Below are contributions from Erin M. Simpson, Gilles Dorronsoro, Kurt Volker, John Nagl, Thomas H. Johnson and Andrew J. Bacevich.

Simpson: Any discussion of the effectiveness of the surge must begin with two observations. First, counterinsurgency is an exercise in competitive governance, meaning the troops "surged" to Afghanistan are only part of a very complex equation. Second, less than half the troops that President Obama authorized in December have arrived here. It's far too early to tell whether the so-called surge has "worked." ...

Dorronsoro: The surge in Afghanistan is not working. The only place where the counterinsurgency strategy has been tried so far is in Marja, where its results have been disastrous. The Taliban is still there, and the population neither supports the local government nor collaborates with U.S. forces. The Taliban has enough spies to kill people suspected of aiding the Americans, while the local Afghan government has no political capital...

Volker: ... Reversing the Taliban's military momentum: on track. Fighting smarter, to engage the local population: making progress, thanks to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's counterinsurgency approach. Pressuring the Taliban inside Pakistan: surprisingly successful. Training more and better Afghan security forces, so they can lead: lagging. Strengthening civilian efforts, including governance, anti-corruption policies and the economy: real problems here, especially in the relationship with President Hamid Karzai. Hopefully his visit will get us all on the same page. Implementing a regional political and economic strategy to help make Afghanistan sustainable: still on the drawing board. Our biggest liability is that regional actors and NATO allies believe we will pull out beginning in July 2011...

Nagl: The counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan that President Obama committed to twice over the course of 2009 is beginning to take hold. This strategy, like the one adopted in Iraq in 2007, is much more than an additional commitment of troops and civilian experts; it focuses on protecting the local population in order to provide a secure space within which political solutions to the underlying problems driving the insurgency can develop...

Johnson: A peaceful, stable and secure Afghanistan will never be realized merely through the provision of more U.S. combat troops. In reality the "surge" has had no impact on reversing a series of serious past American and Afghan political and military policy failures. Our experience in Vietnam is worth remembering: The United States and its allies had more than 2.2 million security forces, including 535,000 Americans, and lost in an operational area smaller than Afghan's Regional Command South. Merely to have the same troops-per-square-mile density we had in Vietnam, we would need 8.8 million security troops in Afghanistan...

Bacevich: In making Afghanistan the centerpiece of its retooled war on terrorism, the Obama administration overlooked this fact: The global jihadist threat has no center. "Winning" in Afghanistan, however defined, will neither eliminate nor even reduce that threat. What's more, past Western military forays into the Islamic world served chiefly to exacerbate violent jihadism. This pattern persists today. For evidence, look no further than neighboring Pakistan...

Read it all at The Washington Post.

As the Army moves forward, differences between conventional and irregular warfare are becoming less important, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told students and faculty at the Army Command and General Staff College here today.

"To some extent, much of the debate between low-end and high-end [warfare] misses the point," Gates said. "The black-and-white distinction between conventional war and irregular war is becoming less relevant in the real world." ...

The U.S. military has overwhelming conventional military dominance over any potential adversary in the world, but experience has shown that isn't enough, given the threats America faces, Gates said...

"Possessing the ability to annihilate other militaries is no guarantee we can achieve our strategic goals -- a point driven home especially in Iraq," he said. "The future will be even more complex, where conflict most likely will range across a broad spectrum of operations and lethality -- where even near-peer competitors will use irregular or asymmetric tactics, and nonstate actors may have weapons of mass destruction or sophisticated missiles."

The Army is working to institutionalize the lessons learned from counterinsurgency operations, Gates said, but the students and faculty at the staff college also must be at the forefront of thinking ahead to future conflicts that will traverse that broad spectrum of operations.

"You must develop the analysis, doctrine, strategy and tactics needed for success in 21st century conflicts that are likely to be very different from 20th century conflicts -- and different from conflicts we are in now," he said. "You must continue to be the visionaries, the pathfinders, the intellectual cutting edge of the Army."

The Army must modernize equipment for future conflicts and identify technologies that will continue U.S. military dominance, the secretary said. "Advances in precision, sensor information and satellite technologies have led to extraordinary gains that will continue to give the U.S. military an edge over its adversaries," he told the students and faculty. "But no one should ever neglect the psychological, cultural, political, and human dimensions of war or succumb to the techno-optimism that has muddled strategic thinking in the past." This is especially true for the Army and Marine Corps, which will lead -- and bear the brunt of -- irregular and hybrid campaigns in the future, he said...

More at American Forces Press Service.

Casey Says Army Needs Counterinsurgency Capabilities - Jim Garamone, American Forces Press Service.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said it is unfair that the press has portrayed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates as having to pressure the Army and its leaders to adopt counterinsurgency as a necessary capability.

"I spent 32 months in Iraq," Casey said here yesterday during a Defense Writers' Group breakfast. "I get it."

The chief said that when he served as commander of the 1st Armored Division in 1999 to 2001, he thought that if a division could handle conventional war it could handle anything below it on the scale of conflict.

"After 32 months in Iraq, I don't believe that anymore," the Army Chief of Staff said. Casey said he now believes the Army has to posture itself and train to operate across the spectrum.

In 2008, he said, the Army came out with a new full-spectrum doctrine that said Army formations will simultaneously "apply offense, defense and stability operations to seize the initiative and achieve the desired results."

"It is not an easy intellectual shift to move away from the idea that the Army is supposed to fight other armies," Casey said. "It takes a decade to fully ingrain a doctrine in an organization the size of the Army."

But, no one in the Army appears to be arguing with the need. "I don't find there are a lot of dinosaurs out there that say, 'We gotta go defeat the 8th Guards Tank Army [a major unit of the Red Army during the Soviet years],'" Casey said. "Most of the four-star generals in the Army have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. We understand it."

Still, some critics say the Army is concentrating too much on counterinsurgency doctrine and is not paying attention to conventional warfare. Casey said that this is because the time between deployments for soldiers is still too short.

If soldiers get two years between deployments, they will get the chance to train for all aspects of conflict. Right now, it is important that they train for the missions that confront them now.

In the future, the scenarios will be even more different...

More at American Forces Press Service.

Topics include:

1) Gates lectures the Navy. Next, he should lecture himself.

2) There is no Gulf of Tonkin in Korea.

Gates lectures the Navy. Next, he should lecture himself.

On May 3, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a stern message to Navy: The branch should not count on a taxpayer bailout to fix its shipbuilding problems. Virtually every recent shipbuilding program has been plagued with mismanagement and alarming cost overruns, resulting in a shrinking fleet and longer and more stressful deployments. Gates's advice to a gathering of naval officers and contractors was that they should break with the traditional and instead entertain some "outside the box" thinking. He assured his audience that there would be no increases in the Navy's procurement budget.

Gates's grim fiscal message for Navy planners comes at what might be an important inflection point in global naval power. There is no question, as Gates noted in his speech, that the U.S. Navy possesses overwhelming superiority. But the trends are not so friendly. While U.S. naval contractors struggle to put new affordable hulls in the water, China's fleet continues to rapidly expand. In recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Adm. Robert Willard, commander of Pacific Command, made note of China's preparations for "area denial," a strategy that concentrates anti-ship firepower to deny an adversary's access to a specific part of the ocean. According to Willard, China now has the world's largest conventionally powered attack submarine fleet, continues its testing of long-range, anti-ship, cruise and ballistic missiles, and will launch its first aircraft carrier in two years. During a recent visit to China, two Obama administration officials were told by their Chinese hosts that China would not tolerate any interference in the South China Sea.

In his speech, Gates denounced the Navy's response to the adverse trends Willard described. According to the secretary, the Navy's unimaginative answer is to replace its old warships with newer, more complex, and grossly expensive versions from the same family tree. As the costs of the new ships have exploded, the Navy has been unable to afford one-for-one replacements. The result has been a shrinking Navy and greater stress on the remaining ships and sailors.

Gates called for innovations in the Navy's thinking and design that would bypass the area denial strategy. The first of his suggestions was to greatly increase the Navy's striking range. For example, operating long-range unmanned strike aircraft from aircraft carriers would safely pull the valuable flat tops away of the most dangerous contested waters, negating an adversary's area denial plans. Gates also lauded the new "air-sea battle" concept -- an effort by Navy and Air Force planners to integrate their forces to achieve operating synergy. Such an approach could also provide another technique for bypassing an adversary's area denial strategy.

What is ironic is that Gates himself has stood in the way of his own solutions. While he discussed the need for long-range striking capability, it is Gates who has promoted the short-range F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. At more than $247 billion, the troubled F-35 is the costliest weapons program in history, but no one has been a stronger defender of the program than Gates. While he has slashed and canceled other programs, Gates's latest budget request defends the full purchase of more than 2,400 F-35s for all three services. With such a commitment to the pricey fighter, commanders will be stuck inside the area denial trap, exactly opposite to the outcome Gates hoped for in his speech. Meanwhile, an Air Force long-range strike drone is languishing inside yet another Gates-ordered research study, and the Navy's long-range carrier-based drone experiment proceeds at a leisurely pace. Under Gates's current budget, neither of these two solutions to the area denial problem will be available for at least a decade.

Gates is right to call for a shake-up in the Navy's thinking. But if he is wondering what is holding up some of his own good ideas, perhaps he should have a talk with himself.

There is no Gulf of Tonkin in Korea

South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak is receiving a quick and painful lesson in the politics of crisis management. On March 26, the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan exploded, broke in half, and sank in South Korean waters, killing 46 crewmen. South Korea's defense minister, aided in his investigation by U.S. naval intelligence, concluded that a heavy torpedo was the most likely cause of the disaster. Lee has declared the sinking "was no accident." Although he has vowed to take a "clear and resolute measure" against those who sunk the Cheonan, Lee has hesitated to explicitly blame the North Korean government for the attack.

With it well-known throughout South Korea that thousands of North Korean cannons and rockets loom within striking distance of Seoul, Lee is very unlikely to order even token military retaliation. Most South Korean voters will undoubtedly approve of this conclusion; they along with Lee are happy to gamble that North Korea's Kim Jong Il is not deliberately testing the limits of provocation.

With no follow-up action or talk from the North, why did the attack occur? One reason might be that a rogue North Korean sailor acted on his own, a breakdown in control Kim would not want the world to know about. Another is that Kim ordered the attack in retaliation for previous naval skirmishes between the South and North. The motivation for such a decision would have both external and internal dimensions. Kim might have wanted to remind Lee and his military staff that patrolling near North Korean waters (for, say, intelligence-gathering purposes) can be dangerous. Internally, Kim might have been under pressure from his military staff to permit the attack in order to protect the military's reputation inside the North Korean hierarchy.

If Kim approved of the attack, he probably took account of the South's likely response. If so, he didn't seem too worried. The South's prosperity, and the high level of risk aversion that comes with prosperity, ensure that Kim and his cannons looming over Seoul enjoy "escalation dominance."

Not able to strike the North directly, Lee tried the next best thing. On April 30, Lee met with Chinese President Hu Jintao to discuss the incident and, presumably, to enlist China's cooperation in reining in Kim. Three days later, Kim arrived in China for his own consultation with Chinese leaders.

The end result of the appeals to Hu will be a deep freeze in the status quo. China will continue to prop up Kim, avoiding the collapse in North Korea that it fears. China will have to dig a bit deeper into its pocket on Kim's behalf -- the South's previous "Sunshine Policy" is now in full eclipse. Lee will avoid a military escalation, a commitment he and his compatriots are all too happy to dodge. And at the White House, the Obama team is similarly pleased to avoid one more worry. So everyone ends up happy -- except perhaps those looking for justice for 46 dead sailors.

COINdinistas and Change in the U.S. Army in 2006

by General David H. Petraeus at AEI Online

... Well, let me take you back some four and a half years. Our effort in Iraq was beginning to struggle. Despite progress in a number of areas, the insurgency was spreading. Levels of violence were escalating. Political progress was at a virtual standstill. And in the wake of the February 2006 bombing of the Samarra Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shi'a Islam, sectarian violence, in particular, began to grow at an alarming rate. A sense of fear and terror grew through the summer as the violence began to tear apart the very fabric of Iraqi society. And while new operations periodically arrested the downward spiral at various intervals, in their wake the violence grew even more.

In truth, by late 2005, a number of us--including my Marine counterpart, General Jim Mattis--had felt it was important to produce a doctrinal manual on counterinsurgency operations. The developments in 2006 heightened the imperative to identify what changes might be necessary in Iraq as well. Indeed, as events marched on in 2006, we increasingly came to recognize the need for change if the forces in Iraq were to arrest a steadily deteriorating situation and help the Iraqis knit back together the fabric of their society.

Now here I want to emphasize the word "we" in that last sentence. What I'm about to describe was not a task I undertook alone. Indeed, you don't change an organization as large as the US Army by yourself. Quite the opposite. I may have been the front man for a good bit of our work, but this was the effort of a team of teams comprised of people who were passionate about transforming our Army. I just happened to be the coach of some of those teams after I left Iraq in the fall of 2005 following a second tour there and in September 2005 became the Commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The position at Fort Leavenworth brought with it considerable influence over the organizations capable of changing the Army as an institution. Indeed, the Combined Arms Center Commander's responsibilities included developing the Army's doctrinal manuals, which are the repositories of our big ideas; supervising some 15 schools and centers across the US that educate all of the Army's leaders; disseminating the big ideas and fostering debate about them through various additional organizations; overseeing the scenarios at the combat training centers where big ideas are put into practice by units preparing to deploy; and, finally, capturing lessons that need to be learned about the application of the big ideas. And that's why the folks at Leavenworth have long claimed to have their hands on the controls of the Army's "Engine of Change."

That notwithstanding, when my assignment to Fort Leavenworth was announced, some suggested I was being sent out to pasture. Indeed, as those of you who have visited that historic post know, it is located in the middle of America's heartland on the west bank of the Missouri River, that wonderful body of water that farmers describe as being too thick to drink and too thin to plow. Some observers--particularly some in this fair city, which reportedly likes to see itself at the center of every map--felt that Fort Leavenworth was a place where you went to think deep thoughts and never be seen again. That, obviously, was not the case...

Much more at American Enterprise Insitute.

Review of Dave Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One by Mark Safranski at Chicago Boyz.

I purchased a copy of The Accidental Guerrilla, intending to read it last summer but, being buried under my own academic course work, I was forced to put it aside until recently. I am not finished yet but I can say that Col. Kilcullen has written a seminal, if idiosyncratic, work on the theory and practice of counterinsurgency -- no doubt why some reviewers found The Accidental Guerrilla be difficult book to read, one that "...could be like a junior high school student's attempting "Ulysses." Or were aggravated by Kilcullen's format through which he enunciated a more nuanced understanding of the war and COIN than they found politically tolerable. Most readers in this corner of the blogosphere will find The Accidental Guerrilla an intellectually stimulating book from an author well grounded in the realities of Iraq and Afghanistan, who is the leading theorist of counterinsurgency today...

Abstractly, Kilcullen's "persistent-presence" has superior strategic qualities -- it isolates and demoralizes the enemy and daunts the latently hostile while connecting our side to the population and "pumping up" the morale of allies and sympathizers. The initiative is seized and control of the battleground is determined. Most of the time, this is an advantage, so long as the chosen ground is also tactically defensible, unlike, say at Dien Bien Phu. When Julius Caesar was carrying out his conquest of Gaul, he often divided his legions for their winter quarters, even though this entailed some risk, because doing so reinforced the political spine of Rome's local allies in tribes of uncertain loyalty and intimidated the malcontents or secured the population against raiding by still hostile Gauls or Germans from across the Rhine. Caesar did a lot better in Gaul than did the French in Indochina...

Much more at Chicago Boyz.

Care for a preview of Dr. David Kilcullen's newly released book on COIN? Then go here: Counterinsurgency, can be ordered and select portions read (Look Inside). Sure to be a classic - SWJ says so - here is the product description from Amazon:

David Kilcullen is one of the world's most influential experts on counterinsurgency and modern warfare. A Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, his vision of war powerfully influenced America's decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement "the Surge," now recognized as a dramatic success.

In Counterinsurgency, Kilcullen brings together his most salient writings on this key topic. At the heart of the book is his legendary "Twenty-Eight Articles." In it, he shows company leaders how to practice counterinsurgency in the real world, "at night, with the GPS down, the media criticizing you, the locals complaining in a language you don't understand, and an unseen enemy killing your people by ones and twos." Reading this piece is like reading a modern-day Sun Tzu--an essential read for officers in the field, and not infrequently an excellent source of wisdom for readers of all stripes, military or civilian. In such pithy adages as "Rank is nothing: talent is everything" or "Train the squad leaders--then trust them," Kilcullen offers advice that any leader would be wise to consider. The other pieces in the book include Kilcullen's pioneering study of counterinsurgency in Indonesia, his ten-point plan for "the Surge" in Iraq, and his frank look at the problems in Afghanistan. He concludes with a new strategic approach to the War on Terrorism, arguing that counterinsurgency rather than traditional counterterrorism may offer the best approach to defeating global jihad.

Counterinsurgency is a picture of modern warfare by someone who has had his boots on the ground in some of today's worst trouble spots--including Iraq and Afghanistan--and who has been studying the topic since 1995. Filled with down-to-earth, common-sense insights, this book is indispensable for all those interested in making sense of our world in an age of terror.

We here at SWJ kind of took a liking to Counterinsurgency's dedication:

For Dave Dilegge and Bill Nagle, founders and editors of Small Wars Journal. They gave the counterguerrilla underground a home, at a time when misguided leaders banned even the word "insurgency," though busily losing to one. Scholars, warriors, and agitators, Dave and Bill laid the foundation for battlefield success; our generation owes them a debt of gratitude.

Much appreciated Dave, it sincerely means a lot to both of us. Order Counterinsurgency today.

They say that intellectual history travels slowly, and by hearse. The old generation has to die off before a new set of convictions can rise and replace entrenched ways of thinking. People also say that a large organization is like an aircraft carrier. You can move the rudder, but it still takes a long time to turn it around.

Yet we have a counterexample right in front of us. Five years ago, the United States Army was one sort of organization, with a certain mentality. Today, it is a different organization, with a different mentality. It has been transformed in the virtual flash of an eye, and the story of that transformation is fascinating for anybody interested in the flow of ideas.

Gen. David Petraeus, who had an important role, spoke about the transformation while accepting the Irving Kristol Award Thursday night from the American Enterprise Institute. I spoke to him and others about the process this week.

The transformation began amid failure. The U.S. was getting beaten in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. Captains and colonels were generally the first to see this, but only a few knew how to respond. Those who did tended to have dual personalities. That is, they had been steeped in Army culture but also in some other, often academic, culture. Petraeus had written a dissertation on Vietnam at Princeton. H.R. McMaster, then a colonel, had also written a book on Vietnam. Others were autodidacts and had studied the counterinsurgency tactics that had been used in Malaysia, Algeria and El Salvador...

More at The New York Times.

While we always appreciate "we love you" commentary, we are really looking for some particulars beyond broad commentary to help us understand our impact and expand upon our strengths.

• What are the specific debates and themes in the site that have been most meaningful to you?
• How have they influenced action in the field? How did things play out on SWJ and impact something else?
• What particular impact has SWJ had for you?

Please discuss in comments below, and/or email to us. A bullet point is welcome, a richer narrative from your perspective would be even more welcome. With a deadline in about 24 hours, we'd GREATLY appreciate your opinions NOW and ask you to expedite whatever thoughts you can provide quickly. But with continued assessment and self-awareness on our plate, your comments are welcome whenever you are able to provide them.

Thanks.

The ticking clock does not disturb the preternatural serenity that Gen. David H. Petraeus maintains regarding Afghanistan. Officially, the U.S. Central Command is located here; actually, it is wherever he is, which is never in one place for very long. He is away about 300 days a year, flying to and around his vast area of responsibility, which extends from Egypt to where his towering reputation is hostage to a timetable - Afghanistan.

He earned his own chapter in American military history by advocating and presiding over the surge that broke the back of the Iraq insurgency. This was an instance of a military intellectual given full opportunity for the unity of theory and practice.

Today, however, only about half of the surge of 30,000 troops for Afghanistan, announced by the president in his speech at West Point five months ago, have arrived. The rest will be there by the end of August. Eleven months after that, the withdrawal the president promised - in the sentence following the one that announced the increase - is supposed to begin...

More at The Washington Post.

May 6, 2010

Reserve Officers Association

Washington, DC, United States

Open to the General Public

Registration Fee: None

Was the Iraq troop "surge" really responsible for today's strategic success? How was the 2007 decision made? Do the lessons of Iraq's surge apply to Afghanistan in 2010? Dr. Steven Metz will discuss these issues at the Operation Iraqi Freedom Key Decisions Monograph Series launch event at the ROA Building in Washington, DC, on May 6, 2010, from 9:30AM-11:30AM. Special guests include Joe Collins of NDU and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post.

Read more about the Operation Iraqi Freedom Series and the Strategic Shift of 2007.

This event is free and open to the public.

It's true, the Battle of Midway did occur 68 years ago. Ever since then the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers have employed their power almost exclusively in support of land campaigns, including the two current land campaigns that Gates so rightly wants his department to focus on.

But we also have an Air Force (and Army and Marine Corps aviation) supporting those campaigns. With money tight, shouldn't that bring some deserved scrutiny on the hugely expensive Ford-class aircraft carrier program?

Yes, it should. But today's New York Times also provided a reminder of why redundancy is a good thing. Fierce local opposition to the U.S. airbases on Okinawa may not only cause Japan's prime minister to lose his job, it may eventually create a big strategic hole in America's Western Pacific defense plans if (when) Kadena AFB falls to political pressure. After that happens, the Secretary of Defense (it won't be Gates) will be glad for the 7th Fleet's carrier strike groups.

Other reminders of the fragility land bases for tactical air power:

1. In 1986, the French decision to prohibit overflight by USAF F-111s launched from the UK and bound for Libya. Having to instead fly around Spain, aircrew fatigue contributed to a partially botched mission.

2. The final removal in 2003, due to political toxicity, of USAF basing rights in Saudi Arabia.

3. Political turmoil threatening, and sometimes closing, USAF bases in central Asia.

4. Saturation cruise and ballistic missile threats against USAF and USMC air bases in Japan and Guam.

5. The precision rocket, missile, and mortar threat against fixed tac-air bases which by necessity must sometimes be located in unsecure areas.

The fact that no other country, today at least, operates anything like a USN carrier strike group says nothing about their utility. I am surprised that Gates said this, especially to an audience of naval officers.

Is eleven the right number of carriers? Is $11 billion for a fully loaded Ford-class carrier the right price? Those are worthy questions. Gates had some good points in his speech and properly challenged his audience to come up with new ways of solving some of the Navy's problems. Gates mentioned some of his own ideas in his speech. Ironically, one of the reasons some of Gates's good ideas for the Navy (and Air Force) are not further along in their development is Gates himself. I will discuss this more soon.

Whatever its strengths and weaknesses, Gates's speech to the Navy League has opened up a timely debate over what America's grand military strategy should be over the next two decades. And how, within a tightening budget constraint, it should purchase that strategy.

(For an even more forceful critique of Gates's speech, see this post at the naval blog Information Dissemination.)