I just came across this fascinating Spiegel interview with Gen David Petraeus, former head of 101st Airborne, now head of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, and one of the American generals who si generally agreed to 'get' counterinsurgency. Petraeus makes two points which I find especially useful.
The first, has to do with the ongoing cultural change in the US Army to viewing counterinsurgency as one of its primary tasks. Petraeus refutes a hoary old adage which has long bothered me that if you fight the high-intensity 'big' wars then you can more easily gear down to fighting low-intensity 'small wars', the latter being an example of what used to be called a 'lesser included contingency' or as dismissively 'operations other than war' in the sense of not being the proper job of a real army.
Basically, the 'little stuff' is damned difficult too; getting it wrong costs blood and treasure and leaves pure 'warfighting' forces balanced on a knife-edge between tactical success and strategic failure.
We used to say, that if you can do the "big stuff," the big combined arms, high-end, high intensity major combat operations and have a disciplined force, then you can do the so-called "little stuff," too. That turned out to be wrong.
The second, is a point that I obviously must agree with. Petraeus argues that counterinsurgency is 'war at the graduate level... thinking man's warfare'. And for that you need, naturally enough, thinking men (and women):
SPIEGEL: You propagate the idea that young officers should go to graduate school. Why does a soldier need a master's degree?
Petraeus: We're talking about how to react to unforeseeable, non-standard tasks, we're talking about environments that are very different to those we're used to. You have to work in a foreign language, you have to negotiate with people who come from another religious background or who don't even share what we would call the same core values. Now here you have a setting quite similar to graduate school, which takes you out of your intellectual comfort zone -- and that really is something a young officer should experience.
You know, we in the Army, we have to admit, that we're living sometimes a sort of a grindstone cloister existence. We work very hard; indeed, we have our noses to the proverbial grindsone. And we tend to live a somewhat cloistered existence much of our lives. So we have to try to raise, as one of my colleagues once put it, our sights beyond the maximum effective range of a M-16-rifle. Graduate school and other experiences that get us out of our intellectual comfort zone help us do just that.
Sounds like an endorsement for MA War in the Modern World to me. I must ring up the general and book an appointment.
7 comments:
This is a little shocking. I thought that we had left the whole big stuff/little stuff theory behind years ago. This connects somewhat to Theo's blog discussion on deep & shallow learning and effective & appropriate indoctination of comds.
How did the CMC go this time? Any bizarre twists? Did they turn the site of Disney World, Florida into a 1000 year no-go zone?
I like the bit about "lesser included incident". I suspect it's an outgrowth of the "lesser included offense" that was the bane of US Army sergeants in Germany when I was a reporter there. (They were charged with rape, defended with proof of consent, and were found guilty of adultery.)
I thought the CMC rather timid. The US president managed to insert some Special Forces teams (the moderator gave them a rough reception) but persuasion for surgical strikes were sound rebuffed by the cabinet.
David,
I met with some of the people working for General Petraeus in Fort Leavenworth at the Joint Center for International Security Force Assistance. I’ve also met with some others who while they don't work directly for the General, they do work for the Army War College, specifically at the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute at Carlisle Barracks. I talked a lot about the WiMW program and got some people interested in what we are doing. I'll send you an email with more details, but suffice to say while I don't have an open line to the General himself, I'm getting closer.
Are you interested in anything the Marine Corps University is doing? My current boss just left the Director's position there and he's got a lot of contacts as well.
Mike
Unfortunately my impression is that the 'big stuff/little stuff' is still very much ongoing in the US and it is quite possible that the 'we'd better figure out how to do nation-building' constituency which Petraeus represents will not prevail over the heretofore unassailable 'the US Army doesn't do small wars' consensus. This would be a terrible mistake in my view but I don't discouont the possibility that they will make it (again). There are a LOT of vested interests to be overcome here.
As far as the CMC went in the end it came out with a compromise rather like '62, unlike last year where it ended with war. The main thing was that everyone was much more active than you guys had been--which caused me some concern. The Soviets didn't quite steal a march on the Americans the way they tried last time. Khrusjchev wanted to go to NY to give a speech at the UN in person. I vetoed that, however. I just couldn't see that happening. Interesting idea though. But as Dan alluded to the Americans did try an innovative solution too by inserting SF teams into Cuba. Dan reckons I treated them roughly (one team was compromised) but the more that I think about it the less likely it seems to me that those guys had much of a chance. I shoulda roughed 'em up more! Ironically, Dan, who'd been playing JFK up until the penultimate day of the CMC, was no longer in charge at the end when I reckoned that if the Americans had gone for a big conventional strike they might have had a chance of taking out the missile sites in Cuba (the Soviets were very, very cautious). Still, the Soviets would have punched their teeth out in Berlin and we'd have had escalation anyhow. It begs the question whether nuclear powers can shoot at each other at all. A comparison with India-Pakistan over Kargil would be interesting. The Cubans were the most creative. For a second I thought they were going to try to take control of the Soviet missiles themselves which seemed to me a little, ahem, provocative and unwise.
Mike, very interested. Let's talk about this over email. I need to talk to my colleagues a bit about this too. We'd definitely like to exploit all the available channels though!
If anyone has recovered from their hangovers yet, Petraeus spoke at SAIS a little while back and you can listen to the audio at their website:
http://www.sais-jhu.edu/
Regarding: "it is quite possible that the 'we'd better figure out how to do nation-building' constituency which Petraeus represents will not prevail over the heretofore unassailable 'the US Army doesn't do small wars' consensus."
Having flash bakcs to our unit on the Russians in the 1st Chechen war.
Looks as though Petraeus' constituency is now in a better position to prevail as he'll be the new top Gen in Iraq. He'll be accompanied by Adm. Fallon, my boss out here in the Pacific, as the new CENTCOM CC.
Still waiting to see Bush's new Iraq plan to be laid out soon. Hopefully his personnel choices are an indication of which direction he intends to take us.
Also have been hearing of a much needed refocus on Afghanistan. It has been scary to see Taliban tactics evolve to include Iraq style IEDs and suicide attacks. Perhaps I'll post something in my blog about it.
Sean
David, nice post. I agree, there needs to be a greater population of thinking young men (and women) officers in the U.S. military. Unfortunately though, I think many young officers are motivated to go to grad school because it makes them more promotable, not because they are especially fond of strategic thinking. But I guess motivation is a non-factor if in the end, more officers have been taken out of their intellectual comfort zone and forced to tackle problems with no perfect solutions.
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