Center for a New American Security

I apologize for not writing on the blog this week. I have a lot of posts in my head but have been busy with other activities -- and writing for other websites.

Judah Grunstein of the World Politics Review commissioned a debate over the future of counterinsurgency and got responses from Steven Metz, Bing West, Michael Mazarr, and Starbuck. I contributed a piece arguing that the debate really misses the larger issue of what the hell our ground forces -- and especially our army -- are supposed to do.

Judah wryly noted that my article was itself textbook counterinsurgency: "Redefine the center of gravity (not COIN, but US Army); secure it from unnecessary collateral damage of kinetic ops; and construct narrative to encourage buy-in from on-the-fencers."

Anyway, I am always proud to participate in such debates, especially with other thinkers I very much admire. My article bears strong resemblance to a talk I gave earlier in the week at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in which I did my best to occupy the middle ground on a panel discussion with Gian Gentile and Max Boot.

***

On another note, SEAL Team 6 is doing its very best to make the president immune to Republican attacks that he's Jimmy Carter. My analysis of the hostage rescue operation in Somalia can be read on the website of the BBC.

The end of the ban on gays serving openly in our armed services has arrived and will get plenty of media attention in the next few days. But I predict that the U.S. Army's introduction of 360-degree assessments (.pdf) will not get even one hundredth the level of media attention as the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell but will have a much greater impact on the effectiveness of our uniformed military. We need to give the U.S. Army a lot of credit here. This is a huge step toward the elimination of toxic leaders within the ranks of the officer corps, and this matters, in term of military effectiveness, a hell of a lot more than who one sleeps with.

I have a tremendous amount of admiration for Gen. Marty Dempsey, but his professional reading list for the U.S. Army (.pdf) leaves a lot to be desired. As a service to the readership, I am offering my own professional reading list. I have kept the general categories used by Gen. Dempsey but have replaced the "leadership" category with one on civilian-military relations. My reading list is automatically superior to Gen. Dempsey's because mine does not include one of the worst novels ever written. I have denoted those books on which Gen. Dempsey and I agree with an asterisk. 

History and Heritage

The War for America, 1775-1783

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

Foote's The Civil War (YES, ALL THREE VOLUMES, DAMMIT)

The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War*

The First World War

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa (YES, I KNOW HE WAS A MARINE)

This Kind of War*

Street Without Joy: The French Debacle In Indochina

Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age

Surprise, Security, and the American Experience

Civilian-Military Relations

The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations

Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War

Critical Analysis and the Global Context

On War*

(read alongside Michael Howard's Clausewitz: A Very Short Introduction)

Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point*

The Culture of National Security

Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do And Why They Do It

Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Arms and Influence

...Mark Milley, who will be taking over command of the famous 10th Mountain Division. Always nice to see an Ivy Leaguer (Princeton, Columbia) in the general officer corps, if only because it confounds the West Pointers. Climb to Glory.

... GEN George Casey. Military historians and other security studies scholars will long debate what GEN Casey did or did not do in Iraq from 2004 until 2007, but that is not the purpose of this post. Many people know that GEN Casey began his military service in 1970 about a month before his father, MG George Casey Sr., became the highest ranking U.S. officer to die in Vietnam. GEN Casey's military career ended yesterday as his family dealt with another loss -- the death of GEN Casey's grandson. My heart and prayers are with the Casey Family in their time of grief, and I salute a dedicated public servant for a lifetime of selfless service to our nation.

Hey, did you see the U.S. Army's homepage today? They announced the Stetson hat will be the new official U.S. Army headgear. Hilarious April Fools joke, right? Because we can all remember that time when the U.S. Army decided the black beret would be the universal headgear so that all soldiers could feel elite like U.S. Army Rangers. That plan did not go so well when the U.S. Army's leaders, figuring a change of headgear was enough, neglected to then hold soldiers to a high standard of physical fitness, neatness of dress, care of equipment, etc. And so we were left with a bunch of overweight soldiers who looked like French pastry chefs. Good times!

Anyway, I spent the early morning hours trying to come up with some other great jokes and pranks the U.S. Army has played through its history (with some help from the gang on Twitter). What follows is hardly an exhaustive list, so add your own suggestions in the comments section.

• The Battle of Little Big Horn
• The personnel system
• The XM 2001 Crusader
• Airborne School
• Tommy Franks
• The Iraq War, 2003-2007
• The APFT
• "Dwell Time" between deployments
• The Chosin Reservoir (the Marines still do not think this was very funny, but honestly, they need to lighten up)
• The grey teddy bear fleece
• TRiPS
• And the reflective belt:

Stars and Stripes reporter Jeff Schogol takes on the new Army Physical Fitness Test.

Here's a question for the readership as we try and wrap our heads around the proposed cuts to the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. (I'm not smart enough to comment on the proposed cuts to the U.S. Navy and Air Force, respectively. Go here for comments on the former.) I was surprised to read this quote from Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Greg Newbold in the Times concerning the cuts to the USMC's Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle:

“We’ll just pray that we don’t have to go into harm’s way in the next 10 years."

Really? I have to confess that Lt. Gen. Newbold is one of my favorite retired general officers. I got to know him when he was serving on our board of directors and really respect his service, integrity and intellect. But the first thing I thought when reading this was, Holy cow, do we really need more forced entry capabilities?

I did the math in my head while riding on the Metro this morning and counted four brigades in the 82d Airborne, four brigades in the 101st Airborne (Air Assault), one brigade (4th) in the 25th Infantry Division (Airborne) and one brigade in Europe, the 173rd Airborne, in addition to the 75th Ranger Regiment. That's 11 brigade-sized elements capable of conducting forced entry operations in the U.S. Army alone. How many airfields are we going to need to seize? And would we have conducted as many amphibious landings in the Second World War if we had rotary-wing platforms as we do today?

My beloved U.S. Army made it through the proposed cuts in the defense budget relatively unscathed, so maybe I should keep my big mouth shut, but if I were a congressional staffer, the above is one of the questions I would be asking.

Readers, please sound off in the comments section of this post -- especially if my thinking is wrong-headed here.

Update: Some great comments here. Over the Twitter Machine, @ndubaz notes that what I am really talking about is forced entry capable brigades. He is correct. Another commenter wonders if I have lost my sanity: of course these brigades are not interchangeable, right? Again, correct. The 75th Ranger Regiment most obviously differs from the others, as does the 101st Airborne from the 82d Airborne. But I lumped all these brigades in for a reason -- the nuances in capabilities will not stand out to your average congressional staffer in the same way they will to, say, one of the many officers who have served in the 101st, the 82d and the 75th. Finally, Gulliver linked to this must-read piece by (Marines) Bob Work and Frank Hoffman. That piece, though, rests on the assumption that "Retaining the ability to project power and conduct landing operations into hostile territory remains strategically important to American global interests." Needless to say, that's an assumption that even folks to the right (or is it left?) of Andy Bacevich might contest -- especially given other capabilities within the ground forces.

Okay, this is one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time. This is such a post-DADT military...

I was on a plane to the Middle East on Sunday evening when I spotted these lines from Leon Panetta's op-ed in the Washington Post:

The main lesson from this attack is that, like our military, CIA officers are on the front lines against al-Qaeda and its violent allies. They take risks to confront the enemy, gathering information to destroy its networks and disrupt its operations. This is a vicious foe, one that has struck our country before and is determined to do so again.

As an agency, we have found consolation in the strength and heroism of our fallen colleagues and their families.

We have found no consolation, however, in public commentary suggesting that those who gave their lives somehow brought it upon themselves because of "poor tradecraft." That's like saying Marines who die in a firefight brought it upon themselves because they have poor war-fighting skills.

The op-ed was, written, I believe, in response to commentary like this op-ed by Reuel Marc Gerecht arguing that poor tradcraft was, in fact, at least in part to blame for the deaths of seven U.S. operatives and one Jordian agent. I myself do not know much of anything about the tradecraft of an intelligence officer at the CIA, so I am not going to pass judgment on what happened in eastern Afghanistan. What Panetta wrote above, though, sure does trouble me.

Panetta assumes that is beyond the pale to say that Marines or U.S. soldiers died in a firefight due to poor war-fighting skills, but that in fact has happened quite regularly over the course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every single firefight U.S. soldiers and Marines engage in is subject to an admirably honest after action review (AAR). Readers of this blog no doubt count themselves as veterans of many an AAR held everywhere from Fort Polk, Louisiana to Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan. In some military mini-disasters -- like the hapless convoy that was ambushed during the Battle of Nasiriyah and resulted in the capture of Jessica Lynch -- an extensive AAR process reveals that soldiers died because they did, in fact, possess poor war-fighting skills. (After Nasiriyah, that particular finding led many within the U.S. Army to stress the importance of basic rifle marksmanship and maintenance for even so-called "support" soldiers.)

The military is, by now, used to engaging in a pretty frightful AAR process that, when successful, lays bare the weaknesses of fighting organizations tested by realistic training or combat. When aggressive national security journalists don't think the U.S. Army or Marine Corps is being honest enough, they do not hesistate to say so. (Exhibit A.) So in conclusion, it is not, in fact, taboo to say that Marines died because they have poor war-fighting skills. Marines do sometimes die because they have poor war-fighting skills. And when that happens, the U.S. Marine Corps relies, like the U.S. Army, on a vigorous AAR process to identify faults in training, leadership and equipment.

One can only hope that the CIA is engaged in a similar process today. But when the director pre-emptively says that the "main lesson" of this loss is that "CIA officers are on the front lines against al-Qaeda and its violent allies", it makes me think the director, at least, is on the defensive. Because that's a pretty anodyne main lesson to draw from this. A visit to any tactical U.S. military unit in Iraq or Afghanistan -- where successes and failings are analyzed and provoke reforms on a daily basis -- tells you it doesn't have to be that way.

The CIA is, of course, conducting an investigation. But an investigation can be a lot different in tone and scope than an AAR. An investigation has a prosecutorial air about it and can focus on factors outside an organization. An AAR, by contrast, should focus on dynamics inside an organization. It should also be conductd in such a way as to encourage honesty from subordinate leaders and participants -- no one should fear for their career. A how-to guide can be found here. Tips and techniques from readers on how to conduct an effective AAR are encouraged in the comments section.

In related news, the report on the failings of U.S. military intelligence in Afghanistan -- and the accompanying recommendations for a way forward -- has been downloaded 9,864 times as of yesterday. That's a new record for a CNAS report. I heard the director of one of the civilian intelligence agencies thought the Flynn report was in part directed toward his agency. It wasn't, but his alleged knee-jerk response -- angry and defensive -- was revealing.