Iraq post-mortem

Combat operations have ended in Iraq and all but 50,000 troops have withdrawn (so long as you don't ask about the private security contractors who remain).

How did the U.S. do? Did "we" win?

Former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) isn't kind in this interview:

Hagel flatly rejects the notion — now conventional wisdom among many Americans — that the war in Iraq has been a success. “Did you see today’s paper?” he asked, holding up a front-page story in the Washington Post that described vast swaths of the country as being plagued by electricity outages.

“Look at the facts: No government, less electricity and people want us out,” Hagel pointed out. “Anyway you measure Iraq today I think you’re pretty hard pressed to find how people are better off than they were before we invaded. I think history is going to be very harsh in its judgment — very, very harsh.

Hagel stills says the Iraq war was the worst foreign policy decision since the Vietnam war and one of the five worst in U.S. history.

Hagel is no fan of nation-building, which is why he also says "I think we’re headed for a similar outcome in Afghanistan if we don’t do some things differently.”

Hat tip: Steve Clemons.

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New Army Doctrine

The Army just released a new doctrine and it echoes the September 2002 National Security Strategy, which declared that "America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones." That NSS served to justify wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were both very weak states when the US went to war with them.

The Washington Post, October 5 has the details on the latest strategic plan:

The Army on Monday will unveil an unprecedented doctrine that declares nation-building missions will probably become more important than conventional warfare and defines "fragile states" that breed crime, terrorism and religious and ethnic strife as the greatest threat to U.S. national security.

...Today, such fragile states, if neglected, will pose mounting risks for the United States, according to Lt. Col. Steve Leonard, the manual's lead author. Weak states "create vast ungoverned areas that are breeding grounds for the threats that we fear the most, criminal networks, international terrorists, ethnic strife, genocide," he said. "The argument against it is: Forget all that; you still have . . . near peer competitors who are on the verge of closing the superpower gap."

The Post ran this story on p. A16, but my local paper had it on the front page above the fold.

In the October 2008 Atlantic Monthly, historian Andrew Bacevich writes that the development of the so-called "Petraeus Doctrine" meant that the Army is again fighting the last war -- Iraq -- instead of the next one.

According to the emerging Petrae­us Doctrine, the Army (like it or not) is entering an era in which armed conflict will be protracted, ambiguous, and continuous—with the application of force becoming a lesser part of the soldier’s repertoire...Historically, expectations that the next war will resemble the last one have seldom served the military well.

Bacevich fears that civilians will not engage in a debate with the professional military, meaning that "the power of decision may well devolve by default upon soldiers."

The Post story certainly suggests that the debate has been resolved within the army:

The stability operations doctrine is an engine that will drive Army resources, organization and training for years to come, Caldwell said, and Army officials already have detailed plans to execute it. The operations directive underpinning the manual "elevated stability operations to a status equal to that of the offense and defense," the manual reads, describing the move as a "fundamental change in emphasis" for the Army...

"It's certainly going to shape how we will allocate resources and how we direct training," said Col. Mike Redmond, director of the Army's stability operations division, who is executing an action plan to implement the doctrine with 157 different initiatives, such as directing the Army's medical command to develop plans advising foreign health ministries.

However, Bacevich notes dissent from Gian Gentile, an Army Lt. Col.

Iraq bids to transform the entire force into a “dead army walking.” We who believe this to be the case may be in error on some counts. Preparing to fight the last war will not be one of them.

The Post also quotes Gentile:

"All we need to do is look at Russia and Georgia a few months ago. That suggests the description . . . of future war is too narrow," said Col. Gian P. Gentile, an Iraq war veteran with a doctorate in history who is a leading thinker in the Army camp opposed to the new doctrine.

"I don't think the Army should transform itself into a light-infantry-based constabulary force," Gentile said. Instead, he said, "the organizing principle for the U.S. Army should be the Army's capability to fight on all levels of war."

For a defense of the transformation, Bacevich recommends consulting John Nagl's book.

This is an ironic end to the Bush era, given what GWB said about nation-building in his 2000 debates with Al Gore.


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Edwards on the use of force

John Edwards told the Council on Foreign Relations that he would revamp the Bush Doctrine (May 23, 2007):

We must be clear about when it is appropriate for a commander-in-chief to use force. As president, I will only use offensive force after all other options including diplomacy have been exhausted, and after we have made efforts to bring as many countries as possible to our side. However, there are times when force is justified: to protect our vital national interests...to respond to acts of aggression by other nations and non-state actors...to protect treaty allies and alliance commitments...to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons...and to prevent or stop genocide.

The ellipses appear in the text -- I'm not editing his words.

In any case, Edwards seems to embrace just war principles.

Note that when asked how he would use force as President, candidate George W. Bush had a restrictive interpretation back in 2000. From the October 3 debate with Al Gore:

Well, if it's in our vital national interest, and that means whether our territory is threatened or people could be harmed, whether or not the alliances are -- our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force.

Readers may recall that candidate Bush was opposed to some uses of force -- for humanitarian purposes, especially, including nation-building. Bush often repudiated the so-called Clinton Doctrine.

Edwards would apparently bring back the Clinton Doctrine.


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Get more blog

As I previously mentioned, my blogging this week has been as a guest at Lawyers, Gun$ and Money. That gig will run through May 27, a bit longer than I originally mentioned.

Today, I posted "Loving the Yankee hating," which is a baseball post about the NY Yankees.

Wednesday, May 16, I posted "Nation-building, 2007." It is about the public relations image of "evil" states.

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It's a big job...

...but someone has to do it.

And according to the Defense Science Board, the State Department needs to play a much larger role in nation-building. The DSB also criticizes the Pentagon's efforts to date, in Iraq and elsewhere. From today's Boston Globe (sorry for the length of the excerpt, but it's great to be reading a very good paper on a daily basis):

'The Department of State will need substantially more resources, both people and funds, to fulfill its proper role in stabilization and reconstruction operations," the report states, saying that State Department diplomats can help rebuild civic institutions and win over local populations in ways the military cannot.

It also says nation-building efforts depend upon a ''stronger partnership and working relationship" between Defense and State, which have had a rocky interaction while headed by Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

The study, prepared under the aegis of scores of military and foreign policy specialists, concludes that US forces remain ill-prepared to take on nation-building efforts despite the fact that such missions -- both large and small -- have been undertaken at least once every 18 to 24 months since the end of the Cold War. Each of the six missions, according to the report, was ''more ambitious than the last."

Instead of treating postwar rebuilding as a key tenet of defense planning, the Defense Department does not regard it as a core mission, according to the 170-page report.

The Defense Department ''has not yet embraced stabilization and reconstruction operations as an explicit mission with same seriousness as combat operations," according to the study. ''This mind-set must be changed."

...The US government ''needs a strong and adequately resourced Department of State to lead nonmilitary aspects of stabilization and reconstruction and partner with the Defense Department to plan and execute these operations," the report says. This ''will require extraordinarily close working relationships to successfully accomplish these crucial tasks -- relationships that do not currently exist."

The report urges passage of the so-called Lugar-Biden bill, sponsored by Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana and Democratic Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, the chairman and ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee. The bill calls for establishing a new office in the State Department to coordinate nation-building efforts, a civilian Readiness Response Corps, and a $100 million contingency fund to provide a quicker response in the aftermath of future conflicts.

The report implicitly critizes the Bush administration for failing to develop adequate advance plans for the mission in post-war Iraq. It also says the US should have had a LOT more troops in Iraq: 20 occupation troops for every 1000 people. In Iraq, that would have meant 500,000 troops rather than 150,000.

In the future, DSB says that the Pentagon will have to train soldiers as much for nation-building as for combat.

Nation-Building

How long can the US sustain its occupation of Iraq without seriously threatening American security -- by materially diminishing the US ability to respond to other emergencies and by thoroughly sapping the Army's morale?

As I've blogged before, 16 of the Army's 33 active-duty combat brigades are deployed in Iraq, 5 others are deployed in Europe, Afghanistan and Korea and the other dozen are preparing to replace the deployed troops very soon.

As a result, the US has almost no capability right now to engage in new combat missions should it face an unexpected crisis or threat.

Major conflict in Iraq ended nearly 10 months ago, but the troops remain in Iraq to assure order -- performing constabulary functions and nation-building. Some, obviously, are also engaged in counter-insurgency fighting, but I'm not sure of the precise division of labor.

Fine. I personally value these functions of the US military -- though it would be great if they were better trained to performed these functions, and "socialized" to think that this is expected of them.

I'm not sure that either the Army or the Bush administration is really committed to nation-building tasks. For instance, in January 2003, the Defense Department announced that it was closing the Peacekeeping Institute at its own Army War College (which is effectively the Army's in-house thinktank). It reversed this decision later in the year when many non-governmental organizations and members of Congress complained.

Still, DoD opposition to these sorts of missions is fairly open and long-standing. After all, in November 1996, Bill Clinton's first Secretary of Defense William
Perry famously declared :

I've said before, and I will say it again, the U.S. Army is an Army. It is not a Salvation Army. We're not in the business of providing humanitarian relief.

When Perry repeated those words (as he did frequently), he often offered a set of specific conditions for the use of US troops in humanitarian work:

But under certain conditions the use of our armed forces is appropriate. First, if we face a natural or manmade catastrophe that dwarfs the ability of the normal relief agencies to respond. Second, if the need for relief is urgent and only the military has the ability to jump start the effort. Third, if the response requires resources unique to the military. And fourth, if there is minimal risk to the lives of American troops. In humanitarian operations, we only use force to protect our troops or members of humanitarian agencies helping us.

Perry's views are widely shared in the armed forces. Numerous uniformed leaders have been quoted as saying that their primary mission is fighting wars and that they should not be involved in humanitarian or peace operations if that detracts from their primary mission. In 1996, military analyst/writer Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr. quoted both Colin Powell and General John Shalikashvili (former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) making this exact point in the Clinton era.

And of course, George W. Bush echoed this point as presidential candidate during the 2000 debates:

Your question was deployment. It must be in the national interests, must be in our vital interests whether we ever send troops. The mission must be clear. Soldiers must understand why we're going. The force must be strong enough so that the mission can be accomplished. And the exit strategy needs to be well-defined.

I'm concerned that we're overdeployed around the world. See, I think the mission has become somewhat become fuzzy. Should I be fortunate enough to earn your confidence, the mission of the United States military will be to be prepared and ready to fight and win war, and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place. There may be some moments when we use our troops as peacekeepers, but not often.

Bush often made this point on the campaign trail and I think the military resents the long-term missions they are apparently facing.

The most recent Army Times has an interesting poll that perhaps demonstrates this point. Here's the question:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently told Senators that the present high demand on the military is "very likely a spike." How do you feel?

About 1/4 of respondents said "he's right," while about 2/3 clicked "he's wrong." About 8% responded "I don't know."

These recent results are consistent with results reported in October 2003 by the Washington Post from a Stars and Stripes survey last fall:

A broad survey of U.S. troops in Iraq by a Pentagon-funded newspaper found that half of those questioned described their unit's morale as low and their training as insufficient, and said they do not plan to reenlist.

The survey, conducted by the Stars and Stripes newspaper, also recorded about a third of the respondents complaining that their mission lacks clear definition and characterizing the war in Iraq as of little or no value. Fully 40 percent said the jobs they were doing had little or nothing to do with their training.

The findings, drawn from 1,935 questionnaires presented to U.S. service members throughout Iraq, conflict with statements by military commanders and Bush administration officials that portray the deployed troops as high-spirited and generally well-prepared....

In the survey, 34 percent described their morale as low, compared with 27 percent who described it as high and 37 percent who said it was average; 49 percent described their unit's morale as low, while 16 percent called it high.

The Post story acknowledges that the survey was not scientific -- and I suppose it is possible that the respondents reflected the strongest voices of dissent. Those who distributed the "convenience" survey said it was meaningful and Pentagon sources are quoted saying that they take it seriously. The closing line of the story is quite telling -- experts are worried that reservists may decide not to reenlist at "historically high" rates.

Notes: Steven Metz of the Army War College quoted then-Secretary of Defense William J. Perry as telling Congress as early as 1994:

"We're an army, not a Salvation Army."

Apparently, this originally appeared in the NY Times, August 5, 1994.

Second, I'm not sure how seriously we should take Bush's words from the 2000 debates campaign -- he seems to have abandoned a slew of foreign policy promises:

BUSH: Yes, I'm not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, "This is the way it's got to be. We can help." And maybe it's just our difference in government, the way we view government. I mean, I want to empower people, I don't -- you know, I want to help people help themselves, not have government tell people what to do.

I just don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into a country, say, "We do it this way, so should you."

The 2002 NSS isn't quite so humble:

In pursuit of our goals, our first imperative is to clarify what we stand for: the United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. No nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them. Fathers and mothers in all societies want their children to be educated and to live free from poverty and violence. No people on earth yearn to be oppressed, aspire to servitude, or eagerly await the midnight knock of the secret police.

America must stand firmly for the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law; limits on the absolute power of the state; free speech; freedom of worship; equal justice; respect for women; religious and ethnic tolerance; and respect for private property.

Still, it's very doubtful that the US military has the boots or will for pushing American empire too far.

Bush vs. Bush

I looked at Blair 1999 on Saturday, so I thought I'd look at Bush 1999 today.

Did everyone see the "G.I. Woe" article in The Washington Monthly this past March? Nicholas Confessore noted that

"the military is more overstretched now than it was when Bush took office. During the first three months of this year, the United States had more than twice as many troops on overseas missions at any given time as it did in 2000. It's getting harder to recruit new soldiers, and, on the whole, harder to keep the ones we have. The Army is so short of some specialties that it has imposed stop-loss on about 50,000 troops--that is, refused to let them retire or resign--while in January, the Marine Corps imposed a 12-month stop-loss order on the entire service. Large swathes of the U.S. military thus no longer meet the definition of a volunteer force. Nor, increasingly, do the reserves."

And this was prior to the war against Iraq. 130,000 US troops remain in Iraq.

The Army announced today that National Guard and Reservists in Iraq will have to serve one full year -- and that time served mobilizing in the USA won't count.

So the troops are going to be there awhile.

Why is this important? Well, when George W. Bush was a mere candidate for the nation's highest office, he thought the military was over-extended and blamed low morale on extended deployments from the Clinton era.

Specifically, on September 23, 1999, Bush gave a major foreign policy address at The Citadel in South Carolina.

The following excerpt from the meat of the speech should remind everyone of the kinds of military policies Bush was promising before the 2000 election:

"As president, I will order an immediate review of our overseas deployments -- in dozens of countries. The longstanding commitments we have made to our allies are the strong foundation of our current peace. I will keep these pledges to defend friends from aggression. The problem comes with open-ended deployments and unclear military missions. In these cases we will ask, 'What is our goal, can it be met, and when do we leave?' As I've said before, I will work hard to find political solutions that allow an orderly and timely withdrawal from places like Kosovo and Bosnia. We will encourage our allies to take a broader role. We will not be hasty. But we will not be permanent peacekeepers, dividing warring parties. This is not our strength or our calling."

Now, one might be tempted to ignore all this. After all, 9/11 changed everything, right?

Well, Bush claimed in 1999 to have already recognized the priority of these new threats. The Citadel speech emphasized future threats from missile and WMD proliferation, terrorist car bombers, plutonium merchants and rogue dictators (mentioning Iraq and North Korea specifically). In short, he warned about "all the unconventional and invisible threats of new technologies and old hatreds."

Bush said:

"For most of our history, America felt safe behind two great oceans. But with the spread of technology, distance no longer means security. North Korea is proving that even a poor and backward country, in the hands of a tyrant, can reach across oceans to threaten us. It has developed missiles capable of hitting Hawaii and Alaska. Iran has made rapid strides in its missile program, and Iraq persists in a race to do the same...Add to this the threat of biological, chemical and nuclear terrorism -- barbarism emboldened by technology. These weapons can be delivered, not just by ballistic missiles, but by everything from airplanes to cruise missiles, from shipping containers to suitcases."

Thus, in 1999, while aware of the threats posed by the bin Laden's and Hussein's of the world, as well as their potential WMD, Bush criticized the problem of military over-commitment. Bush warned that the Clinton administration was too "freely" using the military, somewhat preposterously claiming that the US was involved in an "average of one [military] deployment every nine weeks in the last few years."

As a result, "Resources are over-stretched. Frustration is up, as families are separated and strained. Morale is down."

He continued: "But our military requires more than good treatment. It needs the rallying point of a defining mission. And that mission is to deter wars -- and win wars when deterrence fails. Sending our military on vague, aimless and endless deployments is the swift solvent of morale."

In the Wake Forest debate with Al Gore, Bush added this when discussing Somalia and other Clinton-era deployments:

Somalia "Started off as a humanitarian mission then changed into a nation-building mission, and that's where the mission went wrong. The mission was changed. And as a result, our nation paid a price. And so I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building.

I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war. I think our troops ought to be used to help overthrow a dictator that's in our -- and it's in our -- when it's in our best interests.

But in this case, it was a nation-building exercise. And same with Haiti, I wouldn't have supported either."

I'm not sure if Bush will suffer additional domestic consequences for the enormous reversal in his position.

But this certainly bears watching.

Indeed, a new ABC News polls found that 48% of Americans now believe the war in Iraq increased the risks from terror. Only 40% said it decreased them.

The story also quotes a survey taken by PIPA at Maryland:

"A survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland also found that, by a 2-to-1 margin, more Americans say the U.S. military presence in the Mideast increases the likelihood of terrorist attacks. Three-fourths of those polled said current foreign policy creates a climate that makes it easier for terrorist to recruit new members and raise money."

There is better news for the President in that story, but it now doesn't seem certain that Bush can uniquely assure US security.