On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have confronted third-party national combatants. Known as "foreign fighters," these individuals have gained deadly skills and connections that can be exported or exploited to devastating effect in other locations. Over the past two decades this foreign fighters phenomenon has grown after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to the ethnically cleansed fields of the Balkans to Chechnya and beyond. But this is not a new problem. This conference brings together recognized academic and analytical expertise in order to not only delve into the foreign fighter problem, but also to recommend prescriptive advice on how to deal with this issue into the future.
Has Israel received a "green light" from both the U.S. and Saudi governments to execute an air raid on Iran's nuclear complex? Those were stories that came out over the weekend, one from a television interview of Vice President Biden and the second from The Times that reported that the Saudi government had given permission to the Israeli air force to overfly Saudi Arabia en route to Iran.
Since Monday, the Obama administration has made a somewhat confusing attempt to walk back Mr. Biden's statements. As for the alleged Saudi "green light," I will say more in a moment.
Destroying the Iranian nuclear complex will require not an "air raid" but a prolonged air campaign. Those who have in mind Israel's 1981 strike on Iraq's reactor at Tuwaitha and the 2007 strike against Syria's reactor at Dayr az-Zawr do not appreciate the scope and dispersion of Iran's nuclear complex. As this report from Brookings explains (see chapters four and five), destroying Iran's nuclear complex requires attacking dozens of targets amounting to many hundreds of bomb aim points. Since many of these facilities are hardened and defended, the air campaign target list would necessarily extend to Iran's leadership, command and control, air defense, and communications systems. This would likely extend the bomb aim point list into the thousands. Israel has very few aircraft with the range necessary to reach these targets. Thus, on paper, and with conventional munitions, it would take weeks for Israel to service the target list.
It strains credulity to believe, as The Times reported, that the Saudi government has given a "green light" to this concept, at least at this juncture. Once such a campaign had begun, it is impossible to guess which direction it would swirl. Saudi decision-making is too cautious to take this risk.
Under current circumstances an Israeli air campaign against Iran does not seem realistic. For now, Israel's strategy is political, with two elements. First, it is attempting to raise global awareness of the Iranian threat. A second longer-term aspiration may be to achieve some level of coordination with the Sunni Arab states against Iran. The last thing Israel wants is to be left alone with the Iran problem.
POSTSCRIPT
The conventional wisdom is that an air campaign against the Iranian nuclear program would only delay the program for a few years. Most analysts assume that Iran would be able to reconstitute the program within a few years after its destruction.
In his book Fiasco, Tom Ricks discussed the surprising long-term effectiveness of the three-day 1998 Desert Fox air campaign against Iraq's WMD programs. Ricks reported that Iraqi scientists and engineers working on the program were so demoralized by the Desert Fox strikes that Iraq's WMD programs never revived. Ricks discussed Desert Fox in order to demonstrate that containment, sanctions, and an occasional air campaign precluded the need to invade and occupy Iraq.
This is not an argument for an air campaign against Iran. But those who say it is a futile idea will also need to explain why it was not futile in the case of Iraq.
WASHINGTON, July 6, 2009 -- The defense secretary who presided over the department during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the U.S. involvement in Vietnam died today.
Robert S. McNamara, the nation's eighth defense secretary who served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, died here following a long illness. He was 93.
McNamara became defense secretary on Jan. 21, 1961, and served as such during the coldest part of the Cold War. In 1962, the Soviet Union began building missile sites in Cuba. The sites would have Soviet nuclear missiles capable of hitting any city in the United States in minutes. President John F. Kennedy and his advisors challenged Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev.
McNamara was a member of the small group of advisors called the Executive Committee who counseled Kennedy on the matter. In the view of many historians, the United States and the Soviet Union came closer to a nuclear war during this time than at any other in history. McNamara supported the president's decision to quarantine Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from bringing in more offensive weapons. During the crisis, the Pentagon placed U.S. military forces on alert, ready to back up the administration's demand that the Soviet Union withdraw its offensive missiles from Cuba.
Vietnam was the major issue for McNamara. During the Kennedy administration, U.S. involvement in South Vietnam was limited to American Special Forces advisor teams and their support. The numbers of U.S. troops in Vietnam reached 17,000 by the time Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.
In 1964, the so-called "Gulf of Tonkin incident" -- in which North Vietnamese ships fired on U.S. Navy vessels -- caused President Lyndon B. Johnson to retaliate by bombing North Vietnam. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving the president the authority to increase the number of U.S. troops and missions in South Vietnam.
The number of American troops in South Vietnam hit 485,000 by the end of 1967, and it reached almost 535,000 by June 1968.
McNamara loyally supported the war in Vietnam, but grew disillusioned. By 1966, he questioned whether the war could be won by deploying more troops to South Vietnam and intensifying the bombing of North Vietnam. McNamara traveled to Southeast Asia many times to assess the war first-hand. North Vietnam's Tet Offensive, launched in February 1968, was a strategic victory for the enemy. American servicemembers won every battle, but the heart had gone out of U.S. determination to win the war.
By the end of the Tet Offensive, McNamara had resigned, leaving office on Feb. 29, 1968. Johnson presented him with both the Medal of Freedom and the Distinguished Service Medal.
McNamara was born June 9, 1916, in San Francisco. In 1937, he graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in economics and philosophy, and he earned a master's degree in business administration from Harvard in 1939. In 1940, he married Margaret Craig, who founded the Reading is Fundamental program in the 1960s and died in 1981. He entered the Army Air Forces as a captain in early 1943 and left active duty three years later with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
After the war, McNamara joined the Ford Motor Co. as manager of planning and financial analysis. He rose through the ranks and was named the president of Ford on November 9, 1960. Less than five weeks after becoming president of Ford, McNamara accepted Kennedy's invitation to join his Cabinet. After leaving the Pentagon, he served as president of the World Bank.
The former defense secretary is survived by a son, Robert Craig; two daughters, Margaret Elizabeth and Kathleen; and his wife, Diana Masieri Byfield, whom he married in San Francisco in 2004.
I applaud the editors of Foreign Affairs for featuring Andrew Krepinevich's essay ("The Pentagon's Wasting Assets") in its latest issue. Better late than never. The issues raised by Krepinevich may seem new to the staff at Foreign Affairs, but they are not; Pentagon planners discussed these topics in the 2006 QDR and in annual editions of its reports on Chinese military power. Most notably, the latest issue of Proceedingscontains an essay written by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy and Shawn Brimley, one of Flournoy's main strategists, that discusses almost point-for-point Krepinevich's issues.
Flournoy is in charge of the latest QDR; we can be sure that the report will once again discuss Krepinevich's issues. But will Secretary Gates and his staff actually recommend any effective policies in response to these threats? It is one thing to discuss the issues. It is another to implement policies that will be highly disruptive and controversial.
Krepinevich and Flournoy remind their readers of threats that many have missed while attention has focused on the counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. What are these threats?
1) Disruption of U.S. satellite systems,
2) Cyber-attacks on U.S. telecommunication systems and computers,
3) Adversary anti-access/area denial capabilities in the Persian Gulf and western Pacific,
4) Ballistic missile threats against fixed U.S. bases overseas,
5) Precision indirect fire capability by non-state groups,
6) Growing vulnerability of surface naval forces,
7) Declining utility of short-range tactical aircraft.
The crushing U.S. victory in the Kuwait war in 1991 continues to reverberate. Actual and potential adversaries are challenging the U.S. at both the lowest and highest ends of the conflict spectrum while ignoring U.S. preponderance in the middle of the spectrum. The U.S. response to these challenges will thus emphasize efforts at the low and high end, leaving the middle to fend for itself.
At the low end, Krepinevich is surely right when he recommends an enduring U.S. commitment to security force assistance and foreign internal defense using an indirect approach. U.S. ground forces tasked to this mission (Special Forces and USMC SC MAGTFs among others) will grow in numbers, skills, and sophistication.
At the high end, Krepinevich sees an urgent need to acquire technology that is not yet mature. Anti-access/area denial capabilities, combined with ballistic missile barrages against forward bases, will push short-range tactical aircraft such as the F-35 out of range. The answer is unmanned vehicles of all types, launched from aircraft carriers, bases inside the United States, and underwater. Regarding threats in space, Krepinevich sees the need for a dispersed network of many small satellites, rather than a few highly capable units, along with a capability to quickly regenerate damaged satellite networks.
The Krepinevich and Flournoy essays imply changes that will be controversial. For example, one response to the cyber warfare challenge may be deterrence enforced with a demonstrated U.S. offensive cyber warfare capability. The U.S. had to adopt such a doctrine with nuclear weapons in the 1950s and may need to do so again with respect to cyber threats. Such a policy may be necessary to compel the Chinese and Russian governments to assume responsibility for cyber attacks directed against the U.S. that run through their territories.
Preparing for the low and high ends of conflict implies placing the middle of the spectrum on the back burner. This will be controversial and disruptive to the Pentagon bureaucracy and its defense contractor community. For example, under Krepinevich's vision the F-35, the Pentagon's single largest weapon program, has almost no utility due to its short range. The Pentagon should have leaped over the F-35 to the X-47 and successor UAVs. That is probably not possible now, although there is still time to accelerate UAV research and terminate early the F-35 production run. Developing an armed hunter-killer version of the Global Hawk could bridge the gap to an unmanned long-range long-endurance bomber.
The Navy's surface warship plan (another example from the middle of the warfare spectrum) has been in disarray for years and Krepinevich's reminder of the anti-access threat only adds to the stress, both to the Navy and to its shipbuilder contractors.
Finally, Secretary Gates has already terminated the vehicle portion of the Army's renamed Future Combat Systems program. The Army has yet to reconcile the conflicting goals of rapid strategic deployability with combat protection. Like other "middle spectrum" issues, this one will go to the back burner with relatively little risk; as surprising as it might sound today, within less than five years the vast majority of U.S. general purpose ground forces will very likely be back in their barracks.
Krepinevich's essay calls for action against some exotic threats that have received limited attention but that are ripening quickly. The Pentagon's planners are well aware of the problems. What remains to be seen is whether they have the courage to finally act on solutions that will be disruptive for both the global community and for the Pentagon's domestic constituents.
America's traditional means of projecting power abroad is growing "increasingly obsolete" and its billion-dollar military hardware could be as ineffectual against future threats as the heavily fortified Maginot line was in defending France against the Nazis, a senior Pentagon adviser has warned.
In a wake-up call to US military chiefs, Andrew Krepinevich, a leading architect of the counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, argues that the Pentagon is ill-equipped to counter rising powers such as China, hostile states such as Iran, the threat from irregular forces such as Hezbollah, and terrorists such as Al-Qaeda. It is also wasting billions on weaponry that could be outdated before it rolls off the production line.
In an interview, Krepinevich said the military, like many bureaucracies, was in danger of "drinking its own bathwater" and discounting new challenges, including the proliferation of precision-guided weapons and threats from space and cyberspace. Last week Robert Gates, the defence secretary, rewarded him for his prescience with a seat on the influential defence policy board at the Pentagon.
Aircraft carriers, navy destroyers, short-range fighter aircraft and forward bases such as Guam and Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean are becoming increasingly vulnerable to technology and tactics being developed by America's rivals, Krepinevich argues in the July issue of Foreign Affairs...
The military foundations of the United States' global dominance are eroding. For the past several decades, an overwhelming advantage in technology and resources has given the US military an unmatched ability to project power worldwide. This has allowed it to guarantee US access to the global commons, assure the safety of the homeland, and underwrite security commitments around the globe. US grand strategy assumes that such advantages will continue indefinitely. In fact, they are already starting to disappear.
Several events in recent years have demonstrated that traditional means and methods of projecting power and accessing the global commons are growing increasingly obsolete -- becoming "wasting assets," in the language of defense strategists. The diffusion of advanced military technologies, combined with the continued rise of new powers, such as China, and hostile states, such as Iran, will make it progressively more expensive in blood and treasure - perhaps prohibitively expensive - for US forces to carry out their missions in areas of vital interest, including East Asia and the Persian Gulf. Military forces that do deploy successfully will find it increasingly difficult to defend what they have been sent to protect. Meanwhile, the US military's long-unfettered access to the global commons - including space and cyberspace - is being increasingly challenged.
Recently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates argued in these pages for a more "balanced" US military, one that is better suited for the types of irregular conflicts now being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, he also cautioned, "It would be irresponsible not to think about and prepare for the future." Despite this admonition, US policymakers are discounting real future threats, thereby increasing the prospect of strategic surprises. What is needed is nothing short of a fundamental strategic review of the United States' position in the world - one similar in depth and scope to those undertaken in the early days of the Cold War...
'Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders?" During the bitter winter of 1914-15, the first lord of the Admiralty posed this urgent question to Britain's prime minister.
The eighth anniversary of 9/11, now fast approaching, invites attention to a similar question: Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to choke on the dust of Iraq and Afghanistan?
A comparable failure of imagination besets present-day Washington. The Long War launched by George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11 has not gone well. Everyone understands that. Yet in the face of disappointment, what passes for advanced thinking recalls the Churchill who devised Gallipoli and godfathered the tank: In Washington and in the field, a preoccupation with tactics and operations have induced strategic blindness.
As President Obama shifts the main US military effort from Iraq to Afghanistan, and as his commanders embrace counterinsurgency as the new American way of war, the big questions go not only unanswered but unasked. Does perpetuating the Long War make political or strategic sense? As we prepare to enter that war's ninth year, are there no alternatives?
Today, US forces are smaller and stretched even further around the world. The US base at Bagram, Afghanistan, for instance, is halfway around the world from the center of the 48 contiguous states near Lebanon, Kan. On any given day, about one-third of the armed forces are deployed abroad.
Moreover, on Independence Day, America's military stretch was aggravated by national political and economic turmoil. In its 233rd year, it would seem the nation is badly in need of retrenchment - not a retreat into the isolation of yesteryear, but a step back to take a deep breath, reflect a bit and sort out priorities...
In foreign policy, priorities really need sorting out. Precedence should go to long-neglected relations with Canada and Mexico and, by extension, Central America. With 5,000 miles of undefended Northern and Southern borders, the United States must have friends across those borders.
Beyond that, the United States should give priority to alliances with Britain, Australia and Japan, the island nations off the Eurasian land mass. India, the subcontinent cut off from Eurasia by mountains, desert and jungle, is a likely candidate to be added to that group. Israel, with which the U.S. has long had special ties, rates high priority.
Surge and Destroy - Michael Smith, Sarah Baxter and Jerome Starkey, The Times.
... About 3,000 British, Danish, Estonian and Afghan soldiers from Task Force Helmand are taking part in the operation north of Lashkar Gah while 4,000 men from the US-led Task Force Leatherneck are conducting Operation Khanjar -- Strike of the Sword -- around the Garmsir and Nawa districts. The arrival of US Marines -- part of an American surge that will involve pouring 17,000 US troops into southern Afghanistan -- has relieved some of the pressure. The British have given up control of the bulk of the province to the Americans and are now responsible mainly for the central area around the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, though some forces are also still in the north.
It's all part of a strategic change. In future, American and British troops will be expected to hold their ground, providing security for local people while denying the insurgents access to vital supplies, funding and recruits.
"You don't really need to chase and kill the Taliban," said General Stanley McChrystal, the former special forces chief and newly appointed US commander of all allied troops in Afghanistan. "What you need to do is take away the one thing they absolutely have to have -- and that's access and the support of the people."
... In a spectacular show of force, contrasting strongly with the British lack of equipment, heavily armed Marines, backed up by drones and fighter jets, stormed into the south of Afghanistan's most dangerous province shortly after midnight on Wednesday. It was the biggest operation in Afghanistan since the Soviet occupation, and the largest American assault since the Battle for Fallujah in Iraq in 2004.
The Marines' mission is to secure the villages along a stretch of river more than 55 miles long in the heart of poppy-growing territory. They also hope to choke the Taliban supply lines used to ferry guns, drugs and fighters in and out of Pakistan...
Charlie Rose - A conversation about Cyberwarfare with Michael McConnell, former Director of National Intelligence, James Lewis, Director, Technology and Public Policy Program, CSIS and David Sanger, Chief Washington Correspondent for The New York Times.
Our TypeKey / TypePad commenter authentication gizmo has stopped a LOT of spam, but it has also stopped lots of legit commenters dead in their tracks. For the few and proud who didn't have any problems with it, carry on, it is still an option. But for the many of you who have had troubles, you can now bypass TypeKey and comment away.
Michí¨le A. Flournoy, one of the highest ranking women in the history of the Pentagon, did not have a childhood that would immediately suggest a future as a defense policy intellectual who is rethinking how America fights its wars.
Her mother was an actress and singer who performed at the Copacabana, the legendary New York nightclub, and was the understudy to Vivian Blaine in Oklahoma" on Broadway. Her father was a cinematography director in television at Paramount Studios. She herself is a 1979 graduate of Beverly Hills High School who spent her summers playing, she said, a lot of beach volleyball."
But Ms. Flournoy, who went on to Harvard and then Balliol College at Oxford (I majored in rowing"), has spent her entire professional life immersed in the theory and practice of war, from the arms control debate of the 1980s to the counterinsurgency doctrine of today...
Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:
U.S. soldiers won't be back to Iraq
The government of Iraq declared June 30th a national holiday as it celebrated the planned withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq's cities. The celebration, which included a military parade in Baghdad, was marred by a car bombing in Kirkuk.
In an interview by satellite with the Pentagon press corps, General Ray Odierno, the U.S. commander in Iraq, explained that the removal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq's cities was both more and less than it seemed. He asserted that people familiar with day-to-day life in Iraq's cities would certainly notice the absence of U.S. patrols and combat outposts. On the other hand, Odierno reminded the reporters that the United States's 12 combat brigades continue to execute full spectrum operations" outside Iraq's cities.
Last February, President Barack Obama announced his administration's plan for Iraq. To implement the Status of Forces Agreement (SoFA) negotiated in 2008, the Obama administration intends to completely withdraw all U.S. combat forces by August 31, 2010, leaving 35,000-50,000 soldiers for training, support, counterterrorism, and force protection duties. By the end of 2011, both the SoFA and the administration's plan call for the final departure of U.S. forces.
Obama's disdain for the decision to invade Iraq is well-known. He campaigned for the presidency promising to end the U.S. military presence in Iraq and has frequently asserted that Iraq's future is the responsibility of Iraqi society and its leaders.
But some analysts are skeptical that Obama's plan will really lead to withdrawal. Writing on his Foreign Policy blog, the Center for a New American Security's Tom Ricks believes that Iraq will unravel, forcing the Obama administration to abandon its over-optimistic plan. On the other side, Duke Professor and former National Security Council staffer Peter Feaver wonders, in a post on FP's Shadow Government blog, whether the Administration's plan risks squandering the payments the U.S. has made in Iraq Misguided or not, the president seems highly committed to his plan. What possible change in circumstances would it take to force him to scrap it?
Only Obama can answer this question, but I believe it is safe to assume that Iraq's unraveling would have to be very severe indeed to compel him to reinsert U.S. combat brigades back into urban combat. At a practical level, the growing U.S. combat commitment in Afghanistan removes much of the capacity to significantly reinforce Iraq. Politically, President Obama would wish to avoid disappointing some of his most passionate supporters. And at a personal level, President Obama has none of the commitment to Iraq that President Bush had.
What are the metrics of failure" that could compel a turnaround in Obama's Iraq policy? Domestic Iraqi political difficulties would not likely suffice to change existing U.S. plans. Car bombs in Sadr City, Sunni versus Shiite fighting in west Baghdad, or Arab versus Kurdish bloodletting over Kirkuk, even if at 2007 levels, likely won't be enough change Obama's mind. He will view these problems as Iraq's, not his. The U.S. media is likely to sympathize with this view, reducing pressure on Obama to change course.
One thing that could change Obama's plan is the growing foreign influence inside Iraq. The top concern here is Iran. Happily, the Shiite religious parties most closely tied to Tehran performed poorly in last January's provincial elections, but they're hoping for a better showing in the January 2010 parliamentary elections. Second, can al Qaeda form a sanctuary inside Iraq from which it could launch global operations? That does not seem like a concern. Finally, an Iraqi government might feel the need to demonstrate its independence from the United States by fashioning an informal alliance with China or Russia that undermines U.S. interests in the region.
But even here, increased large-scale U.S. military action inside Iraq hardly seems the solution for these scenarios. Iraq may or may not fall back into renewed civil warfare. There is a remote chance it may succumb to unfriendly (to the U.S.) foreign influence. But none of these events will bring U.S. infantrymen back to the streets of Baghdad or Basra.
Who in the government is expeditionary" and who is irrelevant?
On June 25th, eight former U.S. secretaries of state (Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice) published an article in Politico calling for more congressional funding for the State Department. The secretaries argued that U.S. foreign policy will not be effective until the diplomacy and development portions of that policy are fully staffed with trained and funded civilian personnel. They noted that the additional funding needed for the Foreign Service and other civilian enablers of foreign policy are a tiny fraction of the Pentagon's annual budget.
Few object to this argument, least of all Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen. The question that remains is how eager the civilian portions of the U.S. government are to become truly expeditionary"? How —are foreign service officers, along with officials from Treasury, Agriculture, Justice, Centers for Disease Control, etc., to spend prolonged stretches of their careers in remote and dangerous outposts in some of the darkest corners of the world?
The era of persistent irregular conflict," if that is what we are in, will not occur in European or Asian capitals, but at forward operating bases and combat outposts. In these cases, the interlocutors of U.S. diplomats and development specialists will in many cases be tribal and non-state groups rather than government officials.
During this decade, the U.S. military has adapted to this reality. As it has done so, its uniformed members and contractors have in many cases taken over diplomatic and development tasks that had been previously performed by civilian portions of the government and drawn funding away from them. The militarization" of U.S. foreign policy is now worrisome, even (or especially) to the top officials in the Pentagon.
There are thousands of foreign service officers and other civilian employees of the U.S. government out in the field doing their work under difficult conditions. But are their agencies back in Washington adapting as well as the Pentagon has? In order to remain relevant, everyone, not just the military, needs to get expeditionary.
