From the WSJ article:

... Six years into the Afghan war, the Army has decided its troops on the ground still don't understand well enough how to battle the Taliban insurgency. So since the spring, groups of 60 people have been attending intensive, five-day sessions in plywood classrooms in the corner of a U.S. base here, where they learn to think like a Taliban and counterpunch like a politician.

The academy's principal message: The war that began to oust a regime has evolved into a popularity contest where insurgents and counterinsurgents vie for public support and the right to rule. The implicit critique: Many U.S. and allied soldiers still arrive in the country well-trained to kill, but not to persuade.

In April, the Army gave a 26-year-old Rhodes scholar, Capt. Dan Helmer, six weeks to get the school up and running. Capt. Helmer tells his students, who rank as high as colonel, that the important battles here are 80% political and just 20% military. He exhorts them to go to great lengths to understand local politics, culture and history, to make sure actions they take on the battlefield help convince Afghans that the Kabul government will serve and protect them...

For a synopsis of the good and the bad please see Ad-hockery in Afghanistan by SWJ's COIN counterparts and partners in crime (Charlie and AM) over at Abu Muqawama. An excerpt:

The Wall Street Jounal has a long and excellent article about the COIN Academy in Afghanistan. Establishing tactical schools in-country is a well known COIN best practice (the Jungle Warfare School in Malaya is perhaps the best known amongst COIN scholars). And, as part of our steep learning curve in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have put together such schools in both countries...

This no knock on Capt. Dan Helmer--the 26 year old Army captain and Rhode Scholar tasked with setting up the Academy. (Your faithful bloggers have benefitted from many email exchanges with him, and they all share a common mentor in fellow West Point Rhodie, LTC John Nagl.)

But, as he'll tell you, he's a freaking Army captain. Charlie is quite certain that Capt. Helmer is among the best and the brightest, but he's not among those who can get @^*% done in the Army (or Afghanistan). If we were serious about such things, we might assign someone with a bit more institutional clout. Someone who could get paper copies of FM 3-24 for the Academy (it's cool, the Army posts them online. The students just wait 47 hours to download them over what passes for an internet connection in Kabul). Someone who could actually institutionalize the Academy within the Army instead of it being a Frankenstein science project dreamed up by folks who've read ATOM one too many times.

We can't win the war without places like the COIN Academy and officers like Capt. Helmer. But we also can't do it with them alone...

What the SecDef Didn't Call For, But Should Have

By Matt Armstrong

Today, American public diplomacy wears combat boots. In the global media and the blogosphere, the military and its uniformed leaders shape the image of the United States. But that is not how it has always been. On the contrary, American public diplomacy was born out of the need to directly engage the global psyche and avoid direct martial engagement.

On November 26, 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, speaking at Kansas State University, recalled how the United States marshaled its national power at the beginning of the Cold War. Mr. Gates reminded his audience that sixty years ago the United States dramatically restructured itself in the face of a global threat and passed the National Security Act of 1947, created the United States Information Agency and the United States Agency for International Development, among other agencies and institutions. Key to the success of all of these was the timely creation and transmission of quality information, or truthful propaganda.

In his clarion call to revamp the current structures of government to meet modern threats, Mr. Gates sidestepped an obstacle that has been misinterpreted and misapplied over the last three decades: Public Law 402: United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, commonly known as the Smith-Mundt Act. Despite popular belief, the restrictions the Act is known for today were not designed or intended to be a prophylactic for sensitive American eyes and ears.

Understandably, Mr. Gates did not suggest revising the "anti-Goebbels" act, even if it is misunderstood (while his Department firmly believes themselves to be covered by the Act, a source tells me outgoing Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes was not aware of this until a few short months ago). Smith-Mundt has shaped the content and methods of communications from State and Defense through institutionalized firewalls created along artificial lines, fostering a bureaucratic culture of discrimination that hampers America's ability to participate in the modern struggle over ideas and managing perceptions.

Simple communications models of the 1940's have been replaced by global networks of formal and informal media. Perception overcomes fact as deliberation by both the consumers and producers of news shrinks to almost nothing. Too often, by the time the truth comes out, the audience and media have moved on. How America participates in this new world is central to the success of Mr. Gates' proposed reorganization.

What became known as public diplomacy was an alternative to hard power for manipulating the psyche of people in contested spaces, inside enemy countries, allied countries, and even within America's borders. Overseas, it exposed the lies of the enemy and highlighted our strengths, and even weaknesses as honest portrayals. Within our own borders, the psychological struggle inoculated the American public against enemy propaganda. Over the years, public diplomacy evolved and was manipulated as the threat to America transformed so that the public diplomacy of today is a shadow of what it was meant to be and the "five dollar" word "psychology" was relegated to the "dirty" practice of military psychological operations, or PSYOP. Today, public diplomacy is little understood, often denigrated, and artificially bifurcated in ways that would not be appropriate in the communications revolution of the 1940's, let alone today.

By the mid-1940's, it was clear the Soviet Union was spending heavily on propaganda in Western Europe and, despite the lies and distortions, it was having an impact. Friends, foes, and neutrals were second guessing previously positive perceptions of the United States. American propaganda, on the other hand, was at best a "silent whisper" that had little to no effect or worse, was counterproductive.

By 1947, in the backdrop of the vigorous debates over the National Security Act of 1947, Congress had enough and cut the funding for the Department of State's Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs (OIC) and by extension, the radio station of American outreach, the Voice of America (VOA). Congress was not questioning the act or need to propagandize, it was responding to the extremely poor quality and haphazard nature of U.S. efforts in light of communist inroads into Western public opinion.

Then, the key threat was not an overt invasion by the Soviet Union to take territory through military force, but the fear of communists capitalizing on economic and social unrest to expand their power and control through subversion and manipulation. To those paying attention at the time, policy and propaganda were inextricably intertwined. One of the most important realists of the time, Hans Morgenthau, noted that national morale and the quality of diplomacy, two of his nine elements of national power, were inherently unstable and subject to the effectiveness of domestic and foreign strategic influence. (2) The struggle for authority and relevance had shifted from the arena of power to the arena of ideas and international persuasion.

In 1947, as funding for OIC and VOA were cut, pre-Pearl Harbor isolationist Rep. Karl Mundt (R-SD) introduced H.R. 3342 to formalize State's information activities to ensure funding and quality thresholds. Co-sponsoring in the Senate was Sen. H. Alexander Smith (R-NJ). The intent of neither man was to curtail the overall information activities of the United States, but to increase its quality and to raise the volume of the "whisper" of State's information programs. The State Department itself admitted to lax oversight due to personnel and budget constraints, while the head of the House appropriations committee John Taber (R-NY) said if the "drones, the loafers, and the incompetents" were weeded out, he might allow a few million dollars for OIC. (2)

Rep. Mundt lined up an impressive list of supporters for the resolution, including Secretary of State George Marshall, Chief of Staff General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Undersecretary of States Dean Acheson, Secretary of Commerce W. Averell Harriman, and US Ambassador to Russia Lt. General Walter Bedell Smith. (3) With one voice, they said that it was "folly" to spend millions for foreign aid and relief without explaining U.S. aims. Secretary of State Marshall said, "We have no idea how little we are understood, how much we are misunderstood." (4)

Concerns over internal propagandizing focused on a government news service that might dominate the domestic media market. In this regard, two antecedents were cited in debating the Act. First was the Nazi domination of domestic media and its role in the rise of Hitler and the second was the Committee for Public Information (CPI) in World War I. The CPI was widely viewed as a personal news agency of President Woodrow Wilson. The most substantial resistance came from those defending the investments and market share of private and corporate radio and press. The issue was not that propagandizing to the American public was wrong, but that a government news service might dominate domestic media and thus infringe on a free press and the right to make a profit. William Benton, State's champion for Smith-Mundt, not only worked closely with American news broadcasters and business leaders to support the Act, but later collaborated with them to shape domestic information activities. It was not about the information, but who delivered it.

After passing in the House but stalling in the Senate, the special subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee with the co-sponsors, the Vice President, and others, visited twenty-two countries. (5) Their report stated:

Hundreds of millions are being expended by the Soviets; and the United Kingdom, although heavily in debt, supports a program employing some 8700 people as against our less than 1400 and costing three times ours. Even little Holland is spending nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year and spent half a million last year in the United States alone to defend and explain her policies. We are spending just over $30,000 in the Netherlands.

It is the opinion of this Committee that America is old enough and strong enough to warrant a change of Voice. (6)

The bill, passed in the House, was resubmitted to the Senate with a recommendation by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations of "do pass" and comments that propaganda campaigns directed against the United States by Communist parties throughout the world called for "urgent, forthright, and dynamic measures to disseminate truth." (7) The Committee noted the danger poised "by the weapons of false propaganda and misinformation and the inability on the part of the United States to deal adequately with those weapons." The Committee further noted that "Truth can be a powerful weapon on behalf of peace. It is the firm belief of the Committee that H.R. 3342, with all the safeguards included in the bill, will constitute an important step in the right direction toward the adequate dissemination of the truth about America, our ideals, and our people." (8)

For the USIA to be effective, the Smith-Mundt committee enumerated five key requirements of the Act:

Tell the truth.

Explain the motives of the United States.

Bolster morale and extend hope.

Give a true and convincing picture of American life, methods and ideals.

Combat misrepresentation and distortion.

Aggressively interpret and support American foreign policy. (9)

A few years later after the Act was passed, presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower, and subsequently president, made the "psychological struggle over minds and wills" an important element of his foreign policy. The USIA, as well as other propaganda efforts, was to concentrate on "objective, factual news reporting." (10)

Today, new terms like "strategic communications" and "smart power" emerged to fill the void left by the neglect and disappearance of public diplomacy's root concepts, purposes, and apparatuses. These, however, do not solve the problem of purpose and structure, they just repackage the tactics.

Gone is the active and constant struggle that shaped the discourse with foreign populations, requiring understanding the audience, their needs and wants as well as understanding enemy propaganda, and supported by the whole of government. It is now a binary fight, win (or lose) and move on, for emotional attractiveness through weakly, at best, coordinated efforts. Critics and champions alike of the new public diplomacy adopted the "winning hearts and minds" mantra ignoring the phrase's counterinsurgency roots that relied on a stick to back it up.

Resurrecting USIA and similar information assets requires removing the artificial handcuffs of Smith-Mundt. Today, the enemy, whether it is Al Qaeda, its affiliates, the Taliban, or insurgents of various flavors all know, understands, and manipulates information to undermine perceptions of security, commitment, and trust. Just as good tactics cannot overcome a bad strategy, reorganization cannot solve systemic problems and limits.

It is ironic that an act designed to increase the quality of American propaganda would itself become victim of misunderstanding and false interpretations. Smith-Mundt was not intended to protect sensitive American ears. If it was, then the President's press secretary could arguably be out of a job.

In his speech, Mr. Gates either took it upon himself or was tasked by the President to mobilize the public and Congress to support updated versions of initiatives put together in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to deal with the complex threats of today. Successful implementation of Mr. Gates' initiatives requires a fundamental awareness of the power of ideas, perceptions, and persuasion. However, as asymmetry of influence increases, the payoff of kinetic responses decreases. Precision guided media displaces precision guided munitions as weapons of strategic influence.

It is time to revisit Smith-Mundt and understand its intended purposes. This does not mean it is time to propagandize the American people, there are other parts of the government other than Defense and State that do that effectively today. It means refocusing on the requirements of a high-quality and integrated information apparatus, focused on truth and removing the then-useful constraints on domestic competition. Weak American information and outreach programs were not just a liability but a strategic threat. Today is no different.

Matt Armstrong blogs at MountainRunner. In a couple of weeks, he will be 50% of the world's population holding a Masters in Public Diplomacy.

1. Hans J. Morgenthau and Kenneth W. Thompson, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 6th ed. (New York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1985).

2. "The American Twang," Time Magazine, May 26 1947.

3. Robert William Pirsein, The Voice of America: An History of the International Broadcasting Activities of the United States Government, 1940-1962, Dissertations in Broadcasting (New York: Arno Press, 1979), 137.

4. "The American Twang."

5. Pirsein, The Voice of America: An History of the International Broadcasting Activities of the United States Government, 1940-1962, 137.

6. Department of State Semi-Annual Report of January 1st to June 30th, 1948, quoted in Ibid.

7. Ibid., 138.

8. Ibid., 138-9.

9. John William Henderson, The United States Information Agency (New York,: Praeger, 1969), 65.

10. The USIA's first director, Theordore Streibert, to President Eisenhower in 1953, quoted in Ibid.

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SWJ Editors Links

Smith-Mundt and the Battle for Hearts and Minds - Opinio Juris

Public Diplomacy and the SecDef - Abu Muqawama

MountainRunner at SWJ Blog - ZenPundit

Re: "What the SecDef Didn't Call For, But Should Have" - Consul-At-Arms

Public Diplomacy - USC Center on Public Diplomacy

Discuss

What the SecDef Didn't Call For, But Should Have - Small Wars Council

COIN Education -- Abu Muqawama

This blog was first started to be a resource for all those out there looking to learn more about insurgency and counterinsurgency. Charlie is a long-time student of COIN who now teaches it to the U.S. military, and Abu Muqawama is a one-time practitioner of COIN who now studies it formally. The real mission of this blog is to pass along some of what we've studied and learned in the hopes that the readership might find some interest in it all. Accordingly, the two of us keep the Counterinsurgency Reading List updated and have now added a new section for the Counterinsurgency Book Club to the right.

Defense Secretary Urges More Spending on the "Civilian Instruments of National Security" -- MountainRunner

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wants other agencies to step up, get funded, and do the work they excel at. He wants the other parts of government to not only start participating in the national security of the United States, but doing a better job if not simply starting to do something. Speaking at Kansas State University today, SecDef Gates sounded like a man truly concerned with national security, as he should, and concerned other parts of government are not being mobilized and funded to do their part.

America's long-term relationship with Iraq -- Westhawk

The U.S. and Iraqi governments have begun a negotiation on the structure of their long-term bilateral relationship. The very fact that this negotiation has begun indicates that the two governments must believe that the worst of the civil violence is now in the past. The two sides will terminate the United Nations authority for the multi-national force at the end of 2008. After that, the U.S. and Iraq will enter into a security assistance agreement, similar to scores of other such bilateral agreements the U.S. has with countries around the world...

Now that the War in Iraq is Over -- On Point

...what can the military do better in Afghanistan?

OK, we've not exactly won, but Gen Petraeus is sending a BCT home from Diyala Province and not replacing it. The "Concerned Citizens" Groups south of Baghdad, the Sunni "Anbar Awakening" are standing up in numbers and professionalism that was unimagined even 18 months ago. Do the Iraqi's like us? Hard to say, but so long as they're not killing us, let's be thankful for these small victories and let's pray that the trend continues.

Now, can we do the same in Afghanistan? We've got the same impressive military, AND some reasonable support from NATO. Plus we've been at it since 2001...so why aren't we rocking thru Afghanistan?

Because our message sucks...

Hunting al Qaeda in Iraq's Propaganda Cells -- Long War Journal

After a nearly two-month lull in videos released by al Furqan, al Qaeda in Iraq's primary propaganda arm, two new videos of attacks on US forces have been released over the past three days. Al Qaeda in Iraq is attempting to reestablish its propaganda presence in Iraq, while Multinational Forces Iraq is seeking to dismantle the network...

Give Up, And We'll Consider it a Deal -- Captain's Quarters

Osama bin Laden seems rather desperate to get the Western nations out of Afghanistan. In a new audio tape partially released by al-Jazeera, Osama tells Europeans that the American-led invasion of Afghanistan was unfair, because Mullah Omar's government didn't know about the 9/11 plot. Osama insists that he kept it very quiet...

A Conversation in Bagram, Afghanistan -- Austin Bay

Yesterday in Afghanistan an Air Force lieutenant colonel and I started one of those "well I don't know anybody and I've got to waste some time" chats. We were in the midst of a large crowd - a whole lot of chatting going on about life back in Kansas and how great it is in California. I could tell the man was tired. We talked for a bit, about Texas, about the Air Force. Then the momentum shifted, you know, when eyes connect and a bit of soul is exchanged. He started telling. He told me what he was seeing in combat - lots of action in the Himalayas, in the passes, airstrikes everyday on active Taliban. He'd put bombs on target - danger close missions with US infantry in contact - and he'd used his gun in strafing attacks, a Strike Eagle airman's means of direct action...

Men of Valor: Part III -- Michael Yon

The 4 Rifles first trip into Basra brought more than 15 hours of fighting that left a Pakistani driver killed, dragged away and never seen again by the British. Two British killed in action and many more wounded, a convoy of banged-up vehicles that ran the damage gamut from flat tire to complete destruction, and almost no break before it was time for Major Steve Webb to saddle up and move on again, his Welsh Warriors always taking point on another convoy...

The Saudis Are the Enemy -- Strategy and National Security Policy

I have long held that America's pathetic addiction to petroleum forces us into one of the most repulsive elements of our statecraft: a relationship with the barbaric and benighted nation of Saudi Arabia. Recent events have reminded me of that...

Managing the Barbarians -- Strategy and National Security Policy

For a long time I've felt contemporary American strategy is analogous to the process of "managing the barbarians" which states and empires (including the United States in its first century) have done this for thousands of years. We could learn a lot by looking at the techniques used to do this...

Moeller and Yates Stump for AFRICOM in Nigeria -- Threats Watch

Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, AFRICOM's Deputy to the Commander for Military Operations, and Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates, the Deputy to the Commander for Civil-Military Activities, toured Nigeria's capital of Abuja in an effort to garner support for AFRICOM's establishment among Nigerian government officials. Moeller and Yates, General William Ward's two deputies in the AFRICOM command structure, visited with the chief of defense staff, the foreign affairs minister, and the national security adviser. Nigeria is a crucial state to get on the AFRICOM bandwagon due to its status as a major power in West Africa...

On Uganda -- Chris Blattman's Blog (Chris has three recent posts up on the civil war in Uganda, all worth reading)

If Uganda is such a strong state, it raises the question why a conflict was able to persist so long. How does a rag tag band of guerrillas consistently defeat one of Africa's more disciplined and professional armies? Most theories credibly question the government's interest and resolve in ending the conflict. Looting eastern DRC occupied much of the army's attention in the 1990's, and battalions of 'ghost soldiers' - soldiers paid on paper, but don't actually exist - supposedly left government forces woefully outmatched by the rebel group. Since the Acholi dominated the former government army and politics for so long, some argue (very plausibly, but admittedly without much real proof) that the government was actually interested in subjugating the Acholi by letting them effectively kill and displace one another.

The Six-Week Emergency -- Captain's Quarters

How long does it take to get to the end of a political emergency? Longer than it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, but shorter than it takes to get to the next election, at least in Pakistan. Pervez Musharraf now says he expects to cancel the PCO that sent his nation into a paroxysm of unrest by December 16th, the first time that he has given an end date for the state of emergency...

The Devil You Know -- Max Boot

Many conservatives, even those generally supportive of democracy promotion, have been supporting Pervez Musharraf on the "better the devil you know" theory (articulated in this article by Arthur Herman.). That is a reasonable theory, but it hasn't worked out in this case: Musharraf simply hasn't delivered the goods. Far from waging the kind of all-out battle against Islamic extremists that he has repeatedly promised Washington, he has instead repeatedly compromised and allowed the jihadists to get stronger, not weaker...

The Special Forces Plan for Pakistan: Mistaking the Anbar Narrative -- The Captain's Journal

While the campaign in Iraq continues and the Afghanistan campaign continues to suffer from a lack of adequate force projection, Pakistan remains fertile soil for making jihadists. Concerning the going-forward U.S. strategy for addressing the problem, the New York Times is the recipient of leaked preliminary strategy plans for counterinsurgency in Pakistan...

War Movies -- Belmont Club

Roger Simon tries to understand why antiwar movies have been doing so badly at the box office. Brian de Palma's Redacted recently grossed so little worldwide it has excited the pity of even amateur movie makers. The artistic failure, Simon believes, is rooted in the distance between the film-maker and the subject. They don't care about the great perils facing the world. They don't care about the history of war-torn regions. They don't care about the causes of the war itself except as a backdrop to make a political statements. The action of Redacted might be located in Iraq, but everyone knows it is really set in Vietnam. A curtain descends between the artist and his subect, a "curious distance, almost alienation" prevents an accurate portrayal of human dilemmas of war. When the primary goal of the cinematic narrative is to portray the United States as Nazi Germany and Bush as Hitler, a cartoon without humor becomes the inevitable result...

The top general of the Marine Corps is pushing hard to deploy marines to Afghanistan as he looks to draw down his forces in Iraq, but his proposal, which is under discussion at the Pentagon this week, faces deep resistance from other military leaders.

Commandant Gen. James Conway's plan, if approved, would deploy a large contingent of Marines to Afghanistan, perhaps as early as next year. The reinforcements would be used to fight the Taliban, which US officials concede is now defending its territory more effectively against allied and Afghan forces.

Within the Pentagon, General Conway's proposal has led to speculation about which, if any, American forces would be best suited to provide reinforcements for a mission that, most agree, has far more political appeal than the one in Iraq. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has already recommended against the proposal, at least for now, a military official said Tuesday...

Conway says that Marines, who have been largely responsible for calming Anbar Province in Iraq, can either return home or "stay plugged into the fight" by essentially redeploying to Afghanistan...

Rick Rogers, San Diego Union-Tribune, on USMC current operations in Anbar, Iraq and implications for the Afghanistan mission - Marines' Duties go Well Beyond Combat.

... some Marine commanders and defense specialists question whether the Corps' expeditionary combat strengths are being wasted in Anbar.

The Marines are revered for their offensive capabilities, said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute think tank in Arlington, Va.

"At some point, we are going to have to ask why are we sending a quick-strike force to do nation building. It really would make more sense to send them to Afghanistan to chase insurgents than to have them helping locals in Anbar province build schools," Thompson said.

"If the mission becomes more reconstruction, then it is more of an Army job," he added.

The proposal for handing Marines the lead combat role in Afghanistan has been espoused by senior commanders such as Lt. Gen. [General] James Mattis, Helland's immediate predecessor at Camp Pendleton...

The future of war began with an act of faith. In 1991, Navy captain Arthur Cebrowski met John Garstka, a captain in the Air Force, at a McLean, Virginia, Bible-study class. The two quickly discovered they shared more than just their conservative Catholic beliefs. They both had an interest in military strategy. And they were both geeks: Cebrowski — who'd been a math major in college, a fighter pilot in Vietnam, and an aircraft carrier commander during Desert Storm — was fascinated with how information technologies could make fighter jocks more lethal. Garstka — a Stanford-trained engineer — worked on improving algorithms used to track missiles.

Over the next several years, the two men traded ideas and compared experiences. They visited businesses embracing the information revolution, ultimately becoming convinced that the changes sweeping the corporate world had applications for the military as well. The Defense Department wasn't blind to the power of networks, of course — the Internet began as a military project, after all, and each branch of the armed services had ongoing "digitization" programs. But no one had ever crystallized what the information age might offer the Pentagon quite like Cebrowski and Garstka did. In an article for the January 1998 issue of the naval journal Proceedings, "Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future," they not only named the philosophy but laid out a new direction for how the US would think about war...

And yet, here we are. The American military is still mired in Iraq. It's still stuck in Afghanistan, battling a resurgent Taliban. Rumsfeld has been forced out of the Pentagon. Dan Halutz, the Israeli Defense Forces chief of general staff and net-centric advocate who led the largely unsuccessful war in Lebanon in 2006, has been fired, too. In the past six years, the world's most technologically sophisticated militaries have gone up against three seemingly primitive foes — and haven't won once.

How could this be? The network-centric approach had worked pretty much as advertised. Even the theory's many critics admit net-centric combat helped make an already imposing American military even more effective at locating and killing its foes. The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar were broken almost instantly. But network-centric warfare, with its emphasis on fewer, faster-moving troops, turned out to be just about the last thing the US military needed when it came time to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. A small, wired force leaves generals with too few nodes on the military network to secure the peace. There aren't enough troops to go out and find informants, build barricades, rebuild a sewage treatment plant, and patrol a marketplace...

Much more, well worth the read...

Discuss at Small Wars Council

More than 600 service-members will be able to attend the annual training at the Peace Operation Training Center in Jordan Feb. 17 to Mar. 27 in support of the Central Command Theater Support Cooperation Program, at little or no cost to their units. The training is an integral part of the U.S. Army Forces Command training strategy for Soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, officials said.

Course topics include the hierarchy of tribes and the structure of Iraqi society, family social structures, women in Arabic society, Iraqi dos and don'ts, the Arabic language and cultural awareness.

The course consists of six rotations: one three-day senior leader seminar for brigade and battalion commanders, sergeants major and field-grade officers (O-4 and above), and five rotations of junior-leader training (O-3 and below).

Junior-leader rotations include three situational-training exercises on checkpoints, building searches and mounted patrols. The STX lanes focus on many aspects of Arabic culture and will be taught by Jordanian officers and supported by American observers/controllers/trainers and numerous role players.

STX missions involve searches, clearing and speaking with the media about a family home or mosque used to store money and weapon caches to support insurgents. Troops must learn to complete their missions while respecting the Arabic culture and religious beliefs.

This training can also be incorporated into home-station training at the squad and team level, officials said.

Cultural-awareness training is held in Jordan because the Jordanians are familiar with their Iraqi neighbors. The two countries share similar languages, histories and customs.

Points of contacts for reservations are Maj. Alfredo Ferrer at 404-464-1897 or alfredo.ferrer@arcent.army.mil and Maj. Keith Thompson at 404-464-4973 or keith.a.thompson1@arcent.army.mil.

For more information visit "Cultural Awareness Training" under useful links on the Third U.S. Army/USARCENT's homepage at www.arcent.army.mil.

(Maj. Keith Thompson is the training officer for Third U.S. Army.)

Hat tip to Phil Carter of Intel Dump for sending this along via e-mail.

1. How big of a change has there been in recent months in the military situation in Iraq?

2. Has the "surge" in troop levels played an important role here as well?

3. So is the problem in Iraq one of refining counterinsurgency tactics?

4. How will this play out in terms of Iraqi political reconciliation?

5. What's the likelihood of a future full-out clash between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites?

6. What's Iraq going to look like five years down the road?

Douglas Macgregor is a retired Army colonel and a decorated Persian Gulf War combat veteran who was an active duty officer (and Pentagon advisor) until 2004. He has authored three books on modern warfare and military reform. His latest is Transformation under Fire: Revolutionizing the Way America Fights. He is also authored Breaking the Phalanx: A New Design for Landpower in the 21st Century.

Macgregor writes for the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C. He recently replied by email to a series of questions about the current situation, and future prospects, in Iraq.

Hat tip to Small Wars Council member LTC Gian Gentile for the pointer.

His [Macgregor] answers are not of the "matrix" and as usual challenge conventional wisdom. Considering the MG Scales Op-Ed on culmination, Macgregor's answers offer up a different conceptualization of the war in Iraq and the way ahead.

Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Manhattan, Kansas, Monday, November 26, 2007

Full Transcript -- Department of Defense

Video - Kansas State University

Audio - Kansas State University

Excerpt (SWJ Links and Bolded Emphasis Inserted)

... In 1968, the first full year I lived in Washington, was the same year as the Tet offensive in Vietnam, where American troop levels and casualties were at their height. Across the nation, protests and violence over Vietnam engulfed America's cities and campuses. On my second day of work as a CIA analyst, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. And then came the 1970s - when it seemed that everything that could go wrong for America did.

Yet, through it all, there was another storyline, one not then apparent. During those same years, the elements were in place and forces were at work that would eventually lead to victory in the Cold War - a victory achieved not by any one party or any single president, but by a series of decisions, choices, and institutions that bridged decades, generations, and administrations...

All contributed to bring an Evil Empire crashing down not with a bang but with a whimper. And virtually without a shot being fired.

In this great effort, institutions, as much as people and policies, played a key role. Many of those key organizations were created 60 years ago this year with the National Security Act of 1947 - a single act of legislation which established the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the United States Air Force, and what is now known as the Department of Defense. I mention all this because that legislation and those instruments of national power were designed at the dawn of a new era in international relations for the United States - an era dominated by the Cold War.

The end of the Cold War, and the attacks of September 11, marked the dawn of another new era in international relations - an era whose challenges may be unprecedented in complexity and scope.

In important respects, the great struggles of the 20th century - World War I and World War II and the Cold War - covered over conflicts that had boiled and seethed and provoked war and instability for centuries before 1914: ethnic strife, religious wars, independence movements, and, especially in the last quarter of the 19th century, terrorism. The First World War was, itself, sparked by a terrorist assassination motivated by an ethnic group seeking independence.

These old hatreds and conflicts were buried alive during and after the Great War. But, like monsters in science fiction, they have returned from the grave to threaten peace and stability around the world. Think of the slaughter in the Balkans as Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s. Even now, we worry about the implications of Kosovo's independence in the next few weeks for Europe, Serbia, and Russia. That cast of characters sounds disturbingly familiar even at a century's remove.

The long years of religious warfare in Europe between Protestant and Catholic Christians find eerie contemporary echoes in the growing Sunni versus Shia contest for Islamic hearts and minds in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and Southwest Asia.

We also have forgotten that between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, two American presidents and one presidential candidate were assassinated or attacked by terrorists - as were various tsars, empresses, princes, and, on a fateful day in June 1914, an archduke. Other acts of terrorism were commonplace in Europe and Russia in the latter part of the 19th century.

So, history was not dead at the end of the Cold War. Instead, it was reawakening with a vengeance. And, the revived monsters of the past have returned far stronger and more dangerous than before because of modern technology -- both for communication and for destruction -- and to a world that is far more closely connected and interdependent than the world of 1914.

Unfortunately, the dangers and challenges of old have been joined by new forces of instability and conflict, among them:

- A new and more malignant form of global terrorism rooted in extremist and violent jihadism;

- New manifestations of ethnic, tribal, and sectarian conflict all over the world;

- The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction;

- Failed and failing states;

- States enriched with oil profits and discontented with the current international order; and

- Centrifugal forces in other countries that threaten national unity, stability, and internal peace - but also with implications for regional and global security.

Worldwide, there are authoritarian regimes facing increasingly restive populations seeking political freedom as well as a better standard of living. And finally, we see both emergent and resurgent great powers whose future path is still unclear.

One of my favorite lines is that experience is the ability to recognize a mistake when you make it again. Four times in the last century the United States has come to the end of a war, concluded that the nature of man and the world had changed for the better, and turned inward, unilaterally disarming and dismantling institutions important to our national security -- in the process, giving ourselves a so-called "peace" dividend. Four times we chose to forget history.

Isaac Barrow once wrote, "How like a paradise the world would be, flourishing in joy and rest, if men would cheerfully conspire in affection and helpfully contribute to each other's content: and how like a savage wilderness now it is, when, like wild beasts, they vex and persecute, worry and devour each other." He wrote that in the late 1600s. Or, listen to the words of Sir William Stephenson, author of A Man Called Intrepid and a key figure in the Allied victory in World War II. He wrote, "Perhaps a day will dawn when tyrants can no longer threaten the liberty of any people, when the function of all nations, however varied their ideologies, will be to enhance life, not to control it. If such a condition is possible it is in a future too far distant to foresee."

After September 11th, the United States re-armed and again strengthened our intelligence capabilities. It will be critically important to sustain those capabilities in the future -- it will be important not to make the same mistake a fifth time.

But, my message today is not about the defense budget or military power. My message is that if we are to meet the myriad challenges around the world in the coming decades, this country must strengthen other important elements of national power both institutionally and financially, and create the capability to integrate and apply all of the elements of national power to problems and challenges abroad. In short, based on my experience serving seven presidents, as a former Director of CIA and now as Secretary of Defense, I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use "soft" power and for better integrating it with "hard" power.

One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win: economic development, institution-building and the rule of law, promoting internal reconciliation, good governance, providing basic services to the people, training and equipping indigenous military and police forces, strategic communications, and more -- these, along with security, are essential ingredients for long-term success. Accomplishing all of these tasks will be necessary to meet the diverse challenges I have described.

So, we must urgently devote time, energy, and thought to how we better organize ourselves to meet the international challenges of the present and the future -- the world you students will inherit and lead.

I spoke a few moments ago about the landmark National Security Act of 1947 and the institutions created to fight the Cold War. In light of the challenges I have just discussed, I would like to pose a question: if there were to be a "National Security Act of 2007," looking beyond the crush of day-to-day headlines, what problems must it address, what capabilities ought it create or improve, where should it lead our government as we look to the future? What new institutions do we need for this post Cold War world?

As an old Cold Warrior with a doctorate in history, I hope you'll indulge me as I take a step back in time. Because context is important, as many of the goals, successes, and failures from the Cold War are instructive in considering how we might better focus energies and resources - especially the ways in which our nation can influence the rest of the world to help protect our security and advance our interests and values.

What we consider today to be the key elements and instruments of national power trace their beginnings to the mid-1940s, to a time when the government was digesting lessons learned during World War II. Looking back, people often forget that the war effort -- though victorious -- was hampered and hamstrung by divisions and dysfunction. Franklin Roosevelt quipped that trying to get the Navy, which was its own cabinet department at the time, to change was akin to hitting a featherbed: "You punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted," he said, "and then you find the damn bed just as it was before." And Harry Truman noted that if the Navy and Army had fought as hard against the Germans as they had fought against each other, the war would have been over much sooner.

This record drove the thinking behind the 1947 National Security Act, which attempted to fix the systemic failures that had plagued the government and military during World War II -- while reviving capabilities and setting the stage for a struggle against the Soviet Union that seemed more inevitable each passing day.

The 1947 Act acknowledged that we had been over-zealous in our desire to shut down capabilities that had been so valuable during the war -- most of America's intelligence and information assets disappeared as soon as the guns fell silent. The Office of Strategic Services -- the war intelligence agency -- was axed, as was the Office of War Information. In 1947, OSS returned as CIA, but it would be years before we restored our communications capabilities by creating the United States Information Agency.

There is in many quarters the tendency to see that period as the pinnacle of wise governance and savvy statecraft. As I wrote a number of years ago, "Looking back, it all seem[ed] so easy, so painless, so inevitable." It was anything but.

Consider that the creation of the National Military Establishment in 1947 -- the Department of Defense -- was meant to improve unity among the military services. It didn't. A mere two years later the Congress had to pass another law because the Joint Chiefs of Staff were anything but joint. And there was no chairman to referee the constant disputes.

At the beginning, the Secretary of Defense had little real power -- despite an exalted title. The law forbad him from having a military staff and limited him to three civilian assistants. These days, it takes that many to sort my mail.

Throughout the long, twilight struggle of the Cold War, the various parts of the government did not communicate or coordinate very well with each other. There were military, intelligence, and diplomatic failures in Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Grenada, and many other places. Getting the military services to work together was a recurring battle that had to be addressed time and again, and was only really resolved by legislation in 1986.

But despite the problems, we realized, as we had during World War II, that the nature of the conflict required us to develop key capabilities and institutions -- many of them non-military. The Marshall Plan and later the United States Agency for International Development acknowledged the role of economics in the world; the CIA the role of intelligence; and the United States Information Agency the fact that the conflict would play out as much in hearts and minds as it would on any battlefield.

The key, over time, was to devote the necessary resources -- people and money -- and get enough things right while maintaining the ability to recover from mistakes along the way. Ultimately, our endurance paid off and the Soviet Union crumbled, and the decades-long Cold War ended.

However, during the 1990s, with the complicity of both the Congress and the White House, key instruments of America's national power once again were allowed to wither or were abandoned. Most people are familiar with cutbacks in the military and intelligence -- including sweeping reductions in manpower, nearly 40 percent in the active army, 30 percent in CIA's clandestine service and spies.

What is not as well-known, and arguably even more shortsighted, was the gutting of America's ability to engage, assist, and communicate with other parts of the world -- the "soft power," which had been so important throughout the Cold War. The State Department froze the hiring of new Foreign Service officers for a period of time. The United States Agency for International Development saw deep staff cuts -- its permanent staff dropping from a high of 15,000 during Vietnam to about 3,000 in the 1990s. And the U.S. Information Agency was abolished as an independent entity, split into pieces, and many of its capabilities folded into a small corner of the State Department.

Even as we throttled back, the world became more unstable, turbulent, and unpredictable than during the Cold War years. And then came the attacks of September 11, 2001, one of those rare life-changing dates, a shock so great that it appears to have shifted the tectonic plates of history. That day abruptly ended the false peace of the 1990s as well as our "holiday from history."

As is often the case after such momentous events, it has taken some years for the contour lines of the international arena to become clear. What we do know is that the threats and challenges we will face abroad in the first decades of the 21st century will extend well beyond the traditional domain of any single government agency.

The real challenges we have seen emerge since the end of the Cold War -- from Somalia to the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere -- make clear we in defense need to change our priorities to be better able to deal with the prevalence of what is called "asymmetric warfare." As I told an Army gathering last month, it is hard to conceive of any country challenging the United States directly in conventional military terms -- at least for some years to come. Indeed, history shows us that smaller, irregular forces -- insurgents, guerrillas, terrorists -- have for centuries found ways to harass and frustrate larger, regular armies and sow chaos.

We can expect that asymmetric warfare will be the mainstay of the contemporary battlefield for some time. These conflicts will be fundamentally political in nature, and require the application of all elements of national power. Success will be less a matter of imposing one's will and more a function of shaping behavior -- of friends, adversaries, and most importantly, the people in between.

Arguably the most important military component in the War on Terror is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we enable and empower our partners to defend and govern themselves. The standing up and mentoring of indigenous army and police -- once the province of Special Forces -- is now a key mission for the military as a whole.

But these new threats also require our government to operate as a whole differently -- to act with unity, agility, and creativity. And they will require considerably more resources devoted to America's non-military instruments of power.

So, what are the capabilities, institutions, and priorities our nation must collectively address -- through both the executive and legislative branches, as well as the people they serve?

I would like to start with an observation. Governments of all stripes seem to have great difficulty summoning the will -- and the resources - to deal even with threats that are obvious and likely inevitable, much less threats that are more complex or over the horizon. There is, however, no inherent flaw in human nature or democratic government that keeps us from preparing for potential challenges and dangers by taking far-sighted actions with long-term benefits. As individuals, we do it all the time. The Congress did it in 1947. As a nation, today, as in 1947, the key is wise and focused bipartisan leadership - and political will.

I mentioned a moment ago that one of the most important lessons from our experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere has been the decisive role reconstruction, development, and governance plays in any meaningful, long-term success.

The Department of Defense has taken on many of these burdens that might have been assumed by civilian agencies in the past, although new resources have permitted the State Department to begin taking on a larger role in recent months. Still, forced by circumstances, our brave men and women in uniform have stepped up to the task, with field artillerymen and tankers building schools and mentoring city councils -- usually in a language they don't speak. They have done an admirable job. And as I've said before, the Armed Forces will need to institutionalize and retain these non-traditional capabilities -- something the ROTC cadets in this audience can anticipate.

But it is no replacement for the real thing -- civilian involvement and expertise.

A few examples are useful here, as microcosms of what our overall government effort should look like - one historical and a few contemporary ones.

However uncomfortable it may be to raise Vietnam all these years later, the history of that conflict is instructive. After first pursuing a strategy based on conventional military firepower, the United States shifted course and began a comprehensive, integrated program of pacification, civic action, and economic development. The CORDS program, as it was known, involved more than a thousand civilian employees from USAID and other organizations, and brought the multiple agencies into a joint effort. It had the effect of, in the words of General Creighton Abrams, putting "all of us on one side and the enemy on the other." By the time U.S. troops were pulled out, the CORDS program had helped pacify most of the hamlets in South Vietnam.

The importance of deploying civilian expertise has been relearned - the hard way - through the effort to staff Provincial Reconstruction Teams, first in Afghanistan and more recently in Iraq. The PRTs were designed to bring in civilians experienced in agriculture, governance, and other aspects of development -- to work with and alongside the military to improve the lives of the local population, a key tenet of any counterinsurgency effort. Where they are on the ground -- even in small numbers -- we have seen tangible and often dramatic changes. An Army brigade commander in Baghdad recently said that an embedded PRT was "pivotal" in getting Iraqis in his sector to better manage their affairs.

We also have increased our effectiveness by joining with organizations and people outside the government -- untapped resources with tremendous potential.

For example, in Afghanistan the military has recently brought in professional anthropologists as advisors. The New York Times reported on the work of one of them, who said, "I'm frequently accused of militarizing anthropology. But we're really anthropologizing the military."

And it is having a very real impact. The same story told of a village that had just been cleared of the Taliban. The anthropologist pointed out to the military officers that there were more widows than usual, and that the sons would feel compelled to take care of them -- possibly by joining the insurgency, where many of the fighters are paid. So American officers began a job training program for the widows.

Similarly, our land-grant universities have provided valuable expertise on agricultural and other issues. Texas A&M has had faculty on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2003. And Kansas State is lending its expertise to help revitalize universities in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, and working to improve the agricultural sector and veterinary care across Afghanistan. These efforts do not go unnoticed by either Afghan citizens or our men and women in uniform.

I have been heartened by the works of individuals and groups like these. But I am concerned that we need even more civilians involved in the effort and that our efforts must be better integrated.

And I remain concerned that we have yet to create any permanent capability or institutions to rapidly create and deploy these kinds of skills in the future. The examples I mentioned have, by and large, been created ad hoc -- on the fly in a climate of crisis. As a nation, we need to figure out how to institutionalize programs and relationships such as these. And we need to find more untapped resources -- places where it's not necessarily how much you spend, but how you spend it.

The way to institutionalize these capabilities is probably not to recreate or repopulate institutions of the past such as AID or USIA. On the other hand, just adding more people to existing government departments such as Agriculture, Treasury, Commerce, Justice and so on is not a sufficient answer either -- even if they were to be more deployable overseas. New institutions are needed for the 21st century, new organizations with a 21st century mind-set.

For example, public relations was invented in the United States, yet we are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about our policies and our goals. It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the internet than America. As one foreign diplomat asked a couple of years ago, "How has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world's greatest communication society?" Speed, agility, and cultural relevance are not terms that come readily to mind when discussing U.S. strategic communications.

Similarly, we need to develop a permanent, sizeable cadre of immediately deployable experts with disparate skills, a need which president bush called for in his 2007 state of the union address, and which the State Department is now working on with its initiative to build a civilian response corps. Both the President and Secretary of State have asked for full funding for this initiative. But we also need new thinking about how to integrate our government's capabilities in these areas, and then how to integrate government capabilities with those in the private sector, in universities, in other non-governmental organizations, with the capabilities of our allies and friends -- and with the nascent capabilities of those we are trying to help.

Which brings me to a fundamental point. Despite the improvements of recent years, despite the potential innovative ideas hold for the future, sometimes there is no substitute for resources -- for money.

Funding for non-military foreign-affairs programs has increased since 2001, but it remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military and to the importance of such capabilities. Consider that this year's budget for the Department of Defense - not counting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan - is nearly half a trillion dollars. The total foreign affairs budget request for the State Department is $36 billion -- less than what the Pentagon spends on health care alone. Secretary Rice has asked for a budget increase for the State Department and an expansion of the Foreign Service. The need is real.

Despite new hires, there are only about 6,600 professional Foreign Service officers -- less than the manning for one aircraft carrier strike group. And personnel challenges loom on the horizon. By one estimate, 30 percent of USAID's Foreign Service officers are eligible for retirement this year - valuable experience that cannot be contracted out.

Overall, our current military spending amounts to about 4 percent of GDP, below the historic norm and well below previous wartime periods. Nonetheless, we use this benchmark as a rough floor of how much we should spend on defense. We lack a similar benchmark for other departments and institutions.

What is clear to me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security - diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development. Secretary Rice addressed this need in a speech at Georgetown University nearly two years ago. We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military, beyond just our brave soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen. We must also focus our energies on the other elements of national power that will be so crucial in the coming years.

Now, I am well aware that having a sitting Secretary of Defense travel halfway across the country to make a pitch to increase the budget of other agencies might fit into the category of "man bites dog" - or for some back in the Pentagon, "blasphemy." It is certainly not an easy sell politically. And don't get me wrong, I'll be asking for yet more money for Defense next year.

Still, I hear all the time from the senior leadership of our Armed Forces about how important these civilian capabilities are. In fact, when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen was Chief of Naval Operations, he once said he'd hand a part of his budget to the State Department "in a heartbeat," assuming it was spent in the right place.

After all, civilian participation is both necessary to making military operations successful and to relieving stress on the men and women of our armed services who have endured so much these last few years, and done so with such unflagging bravery and devotion. Indeed, having robust civilian capabilities available could make it less likely that military force will have to be used in the first place, as local problems might be dealt with before they become crises.

A last point. Repeatedly over the last century Americans averted their eyes in the belief that remote events elsewhere in the world need not engage this country. How could an assassination of an Austrian archduke in unknown Bosnia-Herzegovina affect us? Or the annexation of a little patch of ground called Sudetenland? Or a French defeat at a place called Dien Bien Phu? Or the return of an obscure cleric to Tehran? Or the radicalization of an Arab construction tycoon's son?

What seems to work best in world affairs, historian Donald Kagan wrote in his book On the Origins of War, "Is the possession by those states who wish to preserve the peace of the preponderant power and of the will to accept the burdens and responsibilities required to achieve that purpose."

In an address at Harvard in 1943, Winston Churchill said, "The price of greatness is responsibility . . . The people of the United States cannot escape world responsibility." And, in a speech at Princeton in 1947, Secretary of State and retired Army general George Marshall told the students: "The development of a sense of responsibility for world order and security, the development of a sense of overwhelming importance of this country's acts, and failures to act, in relation to world order and security -- these, in my opinion, are great musts for your generation."

Our country has now for many decades taken upon itself great burdens and great responsibilities - all in an effort to defeat despotism in its many forms or to preserve the peace so that other nations, and other peoples, could pursue their dreams. For many decades, the tender shoots of freedom all around the world have been nourished with American blood. Today, across the globe, there are more people than ever seeking economic and political freedom - seeking hope even as oppressive regimes and mass murderers sow chaos in their midst - seeking always to shake free from the bonds of tyranny.

For all of those brave men and women struggling for a better life, there is -- and must be -- no stronger ally or advocate than the United States of America. Let us never forget that our nation remains a beacon of light for those in dark places. And that our responsibilities to the world -- to freedom, to liberty, to the oppressed everywhere -- are not a burden on the people or the soul of this nation. They are, rather, a blessing.

I will close with a message for students in the audience. The message is from Theodore Roosevelt, whose words ring as true today as when he delivered them in 1901. He said, "...as, keen-eyed, we gaze into the coming years, duties, new and old, rise thick and fast to confront us from within and from without...[The United States] should face these duties with a sober appreciation alike of their importance and of their difficulty. But there is also every reason for facing them with high-hearted resolution and eager and confident faith in our capacity to do them aright." He continued, "A great work lies ready to the hand of this generation; it should count itself happy indeed that to it is given the privilege of doing such a work."

To the young future leaders of America here today, I say, "Come do the great work that lies ready to the hand of your generation."

Thank you.

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Blog Links

Defense Secretary Urges More Spending on the "Civilian Instruments of National Security" - MountainRunner

Will the State Department Play Along? - The Captain's Journal

Secretary Gates' Address at K-State - Argghhh!!!

News Links

The Gates Critique -- Boston Globe

Defense Secretary Urges More Spending for US Diplomacy - New York Times

Gates Urges More Funds for State Department - Los Angeles Times

US Defense Secretary Calls for Increased Budget for 'Soft' Power - Voice of America

Gates: Civilians Needed in Terror War - Associated Press

Gates Wants US to Invest More in Diplomacy - Reuters