Michael O'Hanlon, his book "The Future of Land Warfare", and Me

Michael O’Hanlon has released his latest book entitled “The Future of Land Warfare” though it is a discussion of the future size and shape of American Land Power than about the future of warfare in conflicts that might call upon US land power.  O’Hanlon argues here for land forces that are at least the same size or even slightly larger than those currently fielded by the United States.  Three chapters survey possible conflicts or humanitarian disaster/relief situations that could emerge in different regions of the world and discuss what US forces and capabilities would be needed to respond.

The conclusions re US force structure represent somewhat conservative and mainstream military thought but as the author points out more than once, force planning must be done conservatively because it is less embarrassing to have more forces than you need than it is to have fewer.  I agree that ground warfare will remain the central defining aspect of war over the foreseeable future, simply because humanity remains tied to the 30% of our world that is its land surface.  I also think that his proposed 1 war + 2 regional crises formulation is a reasonable basis for this exercise.

I do have to quibble with him on a couple of points advanced during his discussion.  The regular US Army before the Civil War was about 15,000 men, but 97% of the men who fought that war for the United States did not enlist in the Regular Army, they enlisted in Volunteer regiments that were governed by separate (though very similar) legislation, regulation, policies, and procedures – in effect a massive army of citizen soldiers who resumed their civilian lives after the war.  I do not challenge his figures on the number of men who served under arms (Continental Line, State Line, Militia, etc.) during the American Revolution, the largest single battle of that conflict saw an American Army reportedly numbering about 10,000 men versus 22,000 Crown forces, significantly smaller than most battles fought in Europe during the latter half of the 18^th Century.

Michael dismisses the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) concept or perhaps more accurately the ideas, etc. put forward in recent years in the name of RMA.  While I agree that the RMA idea has too often been invoked by people wanting to sell either hardware or an associated theory of how we should be making war, I have to disagree with such out of hand dismissal just as I disagree with Thomas Kuhn’s belief that his theory on such revolutionary processes could not be applied beyond the hard sciences. 

However, it is easier for us to apply hindsight in identifying RMAs than to apply foresight.  Too much of the debate has focused upon technology and hardware and not enough upon the breakthrough revolutionary applications of technology.  Twenty-four years after tanks first appeared on the battlefield, Germany in 1940 in France fielded tanks that were generally inferior to tanks used by both the French and the British armies, but neither of the latter countries understood just how revolutionary was the German use of tanks on the battlefield.

The oft revived debate that the USA does not or has not had at key moments a coherent clear national strategy has seen me on both the sidelines and as a participant.  However, I have come to attribute the oft noted lack of a strategy to the reality in the years following the Second World War that the USA has been primarily a status-quo power.  Maintenance of the status quo has been at least our default national strategy even if not clearly expressed or artfully presented and supported in public debate.  I would argue however that in the face of the reality that the one constant of life is change, it is long past time for the USG to abandon the status quo.

We should have a national strategy that reflects the reality of a constantly changing world instead of wasting our time, treasure, and resources trying to maintain the status quo.  Our global strategy should examine where we want to be in that oncoming changed world and then work at achieving the changes to the world that we desire.  This strategy would have to be supported by the military forces appropriate for implementing the military elements of that strategy, but in the absence of such a strategy we continue to guesstimate instead.  I would note also in this context that Michael O’Hanlon asks how great a reliance the US should place upon its allies.  However, I believe he stops short of the even more pointed question of how much reliance do we want our allies to place upon the US?  How great a burden will we take up in that regard?

The challenge of formulating an effective national strategy is affected also by the persistence of American exceptionalism contending with a residual isolationism and a desire to further disengage from the world.  Recurring demands for American leadership partially reflect a reality shaped since World War II by US reluctance to see the UN or any other nation emerge as a rival source of leadership.  Yet, I am persuaded that the greatest obstacle is the absence of consensus on such critical questions as our national identity as a country or of a clear definition of what our interests are in the rest of the world.  Lacking answers to those questions we cannot have a clear national strategy.

Some other points that occurred to me in reading Michael’s book follow:

·        The mistakes made in 2003 were not due to the fact that no one in Washington DC anticipated or predicted the outcome in Iraq, but came about because those who offered warnings about this outcome were ignored and pushed aside by decision makers who had already decided.

• Nation-building remains apparently as much beyond our understanding and our capability as it was in the attempted reconstruction of the post-Civil War American South some 150 years ago.

• I would add in connection with the scenario discussions regarding India and Pakistan that in 1990, intelligence indicators were that the war we would have to deal with would be between those two South Asian nations.  Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait kicked that idea to the side of the road so to speak.  Also, it would appear that an Indian “Cold Start” doctrine and related planning would also prepare India to respond to a collapse of Pakistan requiring an Indian response to keep it from spilling over in any way onto Indian soil.

• No nation or group of nations has the power to deny any nation the right to decide for itself on matters of national security and defense, including NATO.  If NATO was to and is to retain its meaning and place on the world stage, it has to keep its doors open to membership by any nation that meets its criteria.  Russia’s absence from NATO today is as much or more a product of its own failure to meet those criteria and its insistence despite that fact that it receive special treatment and consideration and join NATO directly foregoing the tedious process followed by all other modern new members.  Likewise, in the face of a Russian invasion and occupation of even a portion of the territory of a NATO member state, a NATO failure to respond militarily would sound the death knell for the alliance, for where is the value in membership if NATO does not fight for even its smallest and most vulnerable members?

• As frustrating as we may find it now to deal with Putin’s Russia, the greater tragedy may well be that Obama’s successors will find themselves dealing with a post-Putin Russia that knows no other paradigm for interacting with the West than the one bequeathed to them by Vladimir Putin.

• The conflict in Syria and Iraq is on the verge and in my view already constitutes a single conflict with numerous fronts.

• China’s role and actions in a future Korean Peninsula crisis must not be seen as limited to militarily propping up the regime.  It is already clear the Beijing does not relish being confronted with a wave of refugees from North Korea in the even war breaks out on the peninsula.

• Historically, If you’re lucky, you start fighting the next war with the army that won the last war for you.  Of course, it’s rarely if ever the army you really need for the new war and you find yourself adjusting on the fly.  Even our best wargames rarely predict for us the war that we find ourselves fighting but they can still give us some idea of how we will fight the next war.

• A military force facing the challenges outlined by Michael O’Hanlon and others must fight better, faster, harder but especially smarter.  A critical element in fighting smarter is bringing the nation’s best from our civilian National Security agencies to the field with the force to help inform the decision-making of our military commanders.  This means that DoD, DoS, and the others must start working now to give their personnel the joint training experience that will prepare them to become 'expeditionary'.

Finally, the author presents an excellent explanation as well of why we cannot return to a draft-based military, though I agree that military service would be an important element in any proposed universal national service obligation.

This discussion also helped me probe deeper into my own mind experiment of a wholly Reserve/National Guard military.  Michael O’Hanlon’s calculations confirmed my conclusion that this would require significantly more people in uniform in order to provide the Inactive Reserve/Active Reserve/Active Force throughput.  The amount of time to be served in the Inactive/Active Reserve/Active Force needs to be carefully calculated in order to ensure sufficient active capability and the necessary reserve supports.  There would have to be some number of career servicemen and women to fill command and planning functions, especially in the Army, Corps, Division headquarters organizations what would be always in the Active Force.  Employment protections for the civilian jobs of the members of such a force would also need to be enhanced and enforced.   However, such a force once stood up could fulfill one element of a possible system of universal national service and would great reduce the chasm that has opened up between our military personnel and their civilian population in general.

A Film Review - Fury

I went to see Fury today and I can highly recommend it, especially for the lovers of tanks and World War II movies.  My personal MOS when I attended the Fort Knox School for Boys was Armored Scout Observer, though being National Guard oh those many years ago, I never served in that role in anger.  I enjoyed the film very much and it held my interest so well that I hardly noticed the film’s over two hour length. 

It is a fantastic thing to watch a movie about World War II in which I am not asked to pretend that an M-48 Patton tank is a German Tiger tank or that an M-24 Chaffee is a Sherman.  The last movies that come to mind to do that were “A Bridge Too Far” and before that “Kelly’s Heroes” (courtesy of the Yugoslav army and Tiger mock ups built out of Soviet MT-LBs) or some of the various Soviet era movies about their “Great Patriotic War.”  Of course, Soviet filmmakers had an advantage because the Red Army never threw away any of their T-34s, etc (they gave away a lot of them and one could get nit-picky about what year different model T-34s entered service, but hey they were still T-34s!).

The depiction of the weaknesses and strengths of the Sherman tank and the tactics that had to be used to overcome or take advantage of those are also reasonably well portrayed (as are the tricks and habits of living and fighting in the same place – your tank).  This was especially true of the battle by 4 Shermans against a lone Tiger tank firing from ambush.  Obviously, it helps when you are able to draw upon the resources of The Tank Museum at Bovington in the UK which has the only running model of the Tiger tank in the world plus the staff who know how to fight those two model tanks against each other.  (The Tank Museum at Bovington ranks as one of the top armored fighting vehicle museums in the world.  Two others are the Central Museum of Armored Fighting Vehicles at Kubinka, Russia and the Tank Museum at Saumur, France.  Much of the collection at the Patton Museum at Fort Knox, Kentucky has been moved to Fort Benning, Georgia and is not yet on display there.  I've had the happy opportunity to visit all of these museums personally, though there are others still on my bucket list.)

The story told in the movie takes place in April, 1945 though perhaps they don’t make that sufficiently clear, especially how every combat arms soldier in the American (and British) armies by that time is  desperately trying to not be the war’s last casualty.  The characterizations are all pretty well presented within the world view framed by the film though a couple of moments might be considered rather overdrawn and exaggerated, especially by those accustomed to the more classic Hollywood portrayals of American GIs.   Just about every incident depicted in the film can probably be demonstrated to have actually happened during the war – but the filmmakers exercise fully their capability to concentrate them all within a roughly two hour film rather than burden the viewer with the long hours and even days of military routine and boredom that were also a part of the reality of World War II.  The film also makes every effort to expose the viewer to the mud, blood, gore, and noise of the war, though the movie cannot share any of the myriad smells of war and a battlefield nor the blinding feel of the smoke from fires and explosions.

SPOILER ALERT:  The climactic battle of the movie brings to mind a Soviet tankisti epigram learned from the film “The Beast” (aka “The Beast of War”) about a Soviet tank crew (including a World War II veteran) fighting in Afghanistan, “Out of commission, become a pillbox. Out of ammo, become a bunker. Out of time, become heroes.”  With complete recognition that “it’s only a movie” I would suggest that it also shows why a cannon-armed armored vehicle will remain an important battlefield weapon for some time to come as five men in a tank engage several hundred lightly armed infantry supported by man-portable anti-tank rockets, crew-served weapons, and thin skinned vehicles.  (Personally, I might have dismounted the two turret mounted machine guns and positioned them to either flank of the tank and the road it sat on – but that’s perhaps just me and we never learn whether or not they have the mounts to use.)  

“I Need the COIN Cart in here, STAT!!” - Lessons on Counterinsurgency from the Human Body

A Commentary upon the program presented by General Stanley A. McChrystal (ret.), and Kristina Talbert-Slagle

General McChrystal and Dr. Talbert-Slagle gave an interesting presentation December 19 at The Brookings Institution on “Lessons on Counterinsurgency from the Human Body.”  The concept they presented, that the process of fighting an infection like HIV/AIDS in the human body offered parallels and insights into fighting a counterinsurgency campaign in a nation-state, is not new but neither was their presentation a waste of time.  The metaphor imagining a nation or society as a human body or biological organism dates back to the Renaissance.  As recently as the 1950s, officials spoke of fighting off the infection of communism in the USA and abroad.  Nevertheless, it may be that by the power of PowerPoint they presented this notion more effectively and thoughtfully than it has been in the past.

Right at the beginning of their presentation I really appreciated Dr. Talbert-Slagle’s comment that the body is a system of systems, an important concept for understanding both the human body and the body politic.  What the metaphor also offers is a clearer picture of the two-pronged approach that is the basis of counterinsurgency – one line of effort confronts the infection itself while the second line of effort addresses the challenge of maintaining and increasing the body’s strength to better fight off the infection.  This translates into a military effort against the insurgent combat arm and another line of effort to strengthen the current political/social/governmental institutions.

Their presentation included many references to Afghanistan and a lesser degree to Iraq, although I personally saw an even better match with Ireland from 1916 to 1923, a focus of my own recent research.  Ireland in this period is an excellent model which also highlights several additional and useful elements of the infection/insurgency metaphor.

For example, one reason the British authorities were not more alarmed over a possible rising during 1914, 1915, and into early 1916 was the proliferation of armed marching groups in Ireland that had been active over these years.  The British authorities were aware of the Ulster Volunteers, MP John Redmond’s Irish National Volunteers, MacNeil and Pearse’s Irish Volunteers, James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians Rifles.  Of these, the most dangerous were actually the smallest – Pearse’s Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army.  These would actually turn out for the Easter 1916 Rising.  Within the infection metaphor, each of the marching groups represented a separate infection.  This multiplicity of active “infections” served to mask the activities of the others making it harder for the government to make a timely diagnosis of which was the real threat requiring treatment.

Another critically important parallel between COIN and fighting infection is the need for the active participation of the patient.  Both geopolitical and medical experience suggest that it is critically important in counterinsurgency for the population and their leadership (in government and otherwise) to buy in to the COIN effort, just as the medical patient must take an active role alongside his or her doctor in deciding upon an effective course of treatment.

One questioner interjected an interesting issue when he noted that the earliest cases of HIV/AIDS occurred among gay men and that the associated stigma delayed serious action by the medical world, politicians, and society at large for several years.  While this point was acknowledged but not elaborated on during the presentation, I believe that a similar problem of stigma can be identified in connection with a state confronted by an insurgency.  Insurgencies almost always emerge in failing or failed states seriously troubled by corruption and poverty and related increases in violence and criminal activity, among other factors.  These and other signs of the breakdown of the state stigmatize that state and reduce the willingness of other governments and their electorates to be associated with the regime now targeted by an insurgency.  The troubled nation and its population have become “the other” – distinct and separate from the “us” of the US and the Western world.

The association of the metaphor and the already noted situation in Ireland gave rise to another thought as I pondered the implications of the metaphor.  Following the defeat of the Easter 1916 Rising, the British quarantined the infection by executing 16 people they identified as ringleaders and imprisoned almost 1,500 others identified as participants.  Although the situation in Ireland did not then worsen, it also did not return to the pre-Rising “normal”.  About a year later, Britain began releasing its prisoners and allowing them to return to Ireland.

These returning prisoners were in fact even more determined to win Ireland’s independence after their year in prison.  They returned with greater cohesion, unity, and purpose than before. In effect, Britain now faced a super-bug in Ireland, resistant to the treatments used in the past.  Ireland suffered a relapse as a new, more violent, prolonged conflict now broke out.  Finally, in 1922, Britain and Ireland signed a treaty ending British rule in Ireland.  Medically, what had happened over the period 1914-1922 was that the patient and physician had disagreed upon the proper course of treatment and neither really anticipated the dangers of reinfection by a new stronger (more virulent?) form of the ‘virus’.

What the two speakers have presented to us is not a solution to the challenges of insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare. They have revived and improved a metaphor that will help many people better understand the issues and challenges of counterinsurgency. The better both patient and physician understand the challenges and each other, the more likely they will successfully treat the disease.

Fight the Battle, Not the Game

In his discussion of the desirable attributes for a battlefield commander, Clausewitz wrote of the importance of “coup d’oiel” – perhaps best described as the ability to quickly recognize a truth that would ordinarily be missed or perhaps only perceived after long study and reflection. Whatever his other virtues, President Obama’s approach to his decision about what to do in Afghanistan clearly demonstrates that he is not choosing to rely on any personal sense of coup d’oiel in this instance. Given that we are already in October and what Clausewitz would have called the campaigning season is nearly over in Afghanistan, this deliberative process need not be considered a fatal flaw.

This morning (October 26), the Washington Post and other news sources are reporting that Obama’s deliberative process has included at least two war games exploring different US troop commitment levels. Given that the history of war gaming as a tool of military study and analysis (as well as an entertainment) is strewn with tales of political and military decision-makers mislead by war games, one can only hope that the decision makers have actually heard the cautionary voices of any professionals associated with these games.

In the most infamous war game incident, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) tried out its plan for the attack on the island of Midway in a war game in which the “American” side sank four JN aircraft carriers. The game directors restored the four carriers to the IJN side and the game proceeded to the anticipated Japanese victory. However, as naval historians and others will recall, at the actual Battle of Midway, the US Navy – aided by its ability to read Japanese communications – did go on to sink four IJN carriers and turn back the invasion force. (Many tellers of this story fail to point out that the game directors were not wrong in restoring the carriers because every war game has a whole list of questions to examine and in this case the game had to go on to examine them. The error would have been in the IJN failing to take note of the fact that the USN was still a potentially dangerous foe.)

However, this story also reflects a harsh reality about war games as an analytical tool – no matter how much data is piled up and analyzed for inclusion in the game, the war game is not predictive or prescriptive. A well planned and well conducted war game can clarify issues associated with a proposed course of action, but it cannot guarantee a specific real world outcome. In fact, the Prussian Kriegsspiel, a common ancestor of modern war games was no more than a tool that allowed Prussian officers to practice decision-making. It was not considered a valid or useful tool of analysis or for predicting the outcome of a military operation or campaign. (History also tells us, however, that even the Prussians would eventually attach almost mystical faith in their war gaming of various military plans and options.)

There are several reasons for limits upon what war games can tell us. One can be described in a paraphrase of the words of Chief of the General Staff Count Helmut von Moltke – “No war game scenario survives contact with the war gamer.” Or in the words of many a modern field grade American officer, “The enemy gets a vote.” No matter how well educated, informed, and talented they are, the war gamer will not exactly replicate the battlefield decisions that will be made by the real opponent. I know that many hobby and professional war gamers have designed a war game or a war game scenario only to find their expectations for that design shredded by the completely unforeseen and unexpected decisions of a war gamer seeing it for the first time.

Designers of (both hobby and professional) war games are familiar with the limits upon any attempt to model battlefield reality. Every one of them can tell of having presented the latest and most complex simulation to date, only to have someone point out how the design overlooks the extremely important factor of “X.” The reality is that there are just too many factors affecting and influencing a battle and its related decision making process to be captured in any war game.

I do wonder whether these war games factored in what is likely to be the real “schwerpunkt” or decision point of any renewed or expanded American military effort in Afghanistan: American public opinion. The Administration will have to do a very good job of selling its Afghan war strategy to the American people if it is to be given time for that strategy to bear fruit. Clearly, ongoing events in Iraq will color popular reaction to plans for Afghanistan. The US has the option to try and push the reset button in Afghanistan but they will not be able to reset public opinion on the conflict in Afghanistan without the investment of major political assets.

Note: Similar stories can be found about the use of war games during World War II by the German High Command as it pondered decisions on the Eastern Front. In a related note, it is ironic that as the Allies began the D-Day invasion of France at Normandy, many senior German commanders were out of position because of a scheduled German Army kriegsspiel on the subject of a possible Allied invasion.

A Rock and a Hard Choice

Last week the CATO Institute held its conference on the subject of Afghanistan and what the U.S. should do in the ongoing war there. The panel and conference were moderated by Christopher Preble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Panel members included Malou Innocent, Foreign Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute and co-author of Escaping the 'Graveyard of Empires': A Strategy to Exit Afghanistan; Celeste Ward, Senior Defense Analyst at the RAND Corp.; Patrick M. Cronin, Director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University; Robert Naiman, National Coordinator, Just Foreign Policy; and Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute, and co-author of Escaping the 'Graveyard of Empires'. You can see a podcast of the event at the CATO website. The two most striking points of the conference were the surprising degree of civility and the agreement that we need to do something different in Afghanistan (though without unanimity on what we should do differently) and we needed to start doing this something different soon.

My own thinking on the subject has recently been influenced by Death of a Myth by Bob Snelson on General Custer’s defeat at the Little Bighorn, published in 2005. I was struck by the author’s point that Custer’s battlefield decisions reflected how little he in fact knew or understood (beyond the tactical level) about the Native American peoples against whom he was making war. The army’s objective in this expedition was to attack the Sioux and the Cheyenne until they either moved onto the established U.S. government Indian reservations, or were annihilated. In essence, the U.S. Government had decided to use its military resources to compel these tribes to abandon their traditional way of life and its associated values and mores. Custer knew that the Indians would attempt to evade contact and combat with his force unless they perceived some advantage in fighting or a strong threat to the village and tribe that had to be countered. This understanding appears to be what led Custer to keep dividing his small command in order to cast a wide net that would force the warriors to come out fight.

The conflict between America’s Native peoples fighting to preserve their traditional way of life and an American government determined to see them acculturated or eliminated lasted for decades. It in fact resulted in the destruction of much of the traditional ways of Native Americans while many of the survivors were denied full membership in American society and ended up marginalized in their own homeland.

The United States deployed military forces to Afghanistan in pursuit of Al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors. Having brought down the Taliban regime, the efforts of the U.S. and its Allies moved away from military confrontation with and defeat of residual Taliban and Al Qaeda forces and forces were even removed from Afghanistan and sent to Iraq for the new war there. Our forces and assets remaining in Afghanistan became increasingly focused on social engineering and national building issues with the general ambition of building up a modern western-style nation state – to the detriment of Afghan elements still clinging to the more traditional system based upon clan and tribe. In the view of many Afghans, the U.S. goal is to compel them to abandon their traditions, their religion, and their entire culture.

It is increasingly clear that eight years after U.S. forces arrived in Afghanistan, the American people are unwilling to see the U.S. increase or prolong its commitment of time and resources to further push for any long term reshaping of that country. The Afghans themselves appear at least if not more reluctant to accept the sweeping changes pushed for by the U.S. and its allies, such as the elimination of poppy cultivation and full equality for women, among other things. Against the background of conflict between Al Qaeda/Taliban and the U.S. and its allies, too many Afghans are choosing the former as being less of a threat to traditional values and way of life. We need to decide that our most important objective is to deny Al Qaeda any sanctuary or presence in Afghanistan that would contribute to its terrorist plans and operations. Everything else must be considered a secondary and more long term goal. For the immediate future, the U.S. needs to decide now exactly what resources and forces it can commit and for how long – and adjust its goals accordingly.