relief, or national reconstruction.
• Overseas crises that threaten U.S. citizens and property.
• Domestic emergencies that exceed the capacity of other federal and local government agencies to handle.
• Threats to our key repositories of information and to our systems of moving information.
This demanding list of requirements does not include many of the clean, clear war-fighting missions our military would prefer. We have sworn to defend against “all enemies foreign and domestic.” But today the “enemies” that threaten our well-being may include some strange, nontraditional ones.
At this moment in Iraq, we are dealing with the Jihadis, who are coming in from outside to raise hell; crime on the streets is rampant; ex-Ba’athists and Fedayeen are still running around making trouble; American soldiers are getting blown up; suicide bombings have driven out the UN and many NGOs; and there is a potential now for the country to fragment — Shia on Shia, Shia on Sunni, Kurds on Turkomans; you name it. It is a powder keg. If there is a center that can hold this mess together, I don’t know what it is. Civil war could break out at any time. Resources are needed; a strategy is needed; and a plan is needed.
This is not the kind of conflict for which we have traditionally planned. War fighting is only one element of it. Some people on the battlefield don’t play according to our rules. They do not come in military formations and with standard-issue equipment. They come in many different forms; and all of their agendas are different.
The destabilizing environment in which we may commit forces to confront many of these threats may be further degraded by the effects of urbanization, economic depression, overpopulation, and the depletion of basic resources. The world has become reliant on natural resources and raw materials that come from increasingly unstable regions, with the compounding problems of a poor infrastructure and environment. Access to energy resources, water sources, timber, rare gems and metals, etc., is becoming a growing rationale for intervention and conflict in many parts of the world.
We will also require that our forces continue to meet the peacetime demands of engagement and shaping. The importance of maintaining stable regions by building viable, interoperable coalitions with the forces of regional allies will remain necessary to ensure our security in key areas of the world. Military engagement produces dividends in deterrence, confidence building, and burden sharing, and also demonstrates our commitment and resolve. Yet these tasks will continue to tax our already thinly stretched forces.
Some proposals have been put forward to achieve — and afford — a military transformation by drastically cutting our force structure, removing forward-based and — deployed forces from overseas, and stopping modernization. Advocates of such a “strategic pause” think we can withdraw from the world and opt out of interventions that threaten our interests. They are wrong. They are blind to the world as it is. We cannot gamble on a self-ordering world. The risk to us could be great — even fatal — if we are not capable of dealing with an unforeseen threat that emerges from this disordered global environment.
The need right now is critical to transform our military in a deliberate and thoughtful, yet significant, way. Americans must acknowledge this need and support investment in this transformation for it to succeed. This will require a stronger and closer relationship between Americans and their military. This relationship has drifted apart, and has even been strained at times, since the end of the Vietnam War and the institution of the all-volunteer force.
What should be the shape of that transformation?
The military traditionally goes out there and kills people and breaks things. From that, we determine how we are going to straighten out the mess or resolve the conflict. Once upon a time, we looked at the other elements of national power — political, economic, information, whatever — to figure out how we could bring them to bear. That’s what George Marshall did at the end of World War Two. It has not happened in recent times.
The military does a damned good job of killing people and breaking things. We can design a better rifle squad than anybody in the world. We can build a better fighter, a better ship, a better tank, a smarter bomb. We are so far ahead of any potential enemy right now in those kinds of technological areas, in the areas of expertise, of quality of leadership, and of all the other elements that make military units great on the battlefield, that you wonder why we keep busting brain cells working to make it better, or to transform it into something else.
Transformation has to include finding better and more remarkable ways to tap into technology, our own brainpower, our training and education, and creative ways of redesigning our organization to make our military even more efficient and more powerful on the battlefield.
But transformation has to go beyond that.
What is the role of the military beyond killing people and breaking things?
Right now, the military in Iraq has been stuck with that baby. In Somalia, we were stuck with that baby. In Vietnam, we were stuck with that baby. It is not a
What could this mean?
It could mean that we return to a military that’s a calling and not just a job. For more than a quarter- century, we have been operating with an All-Volunteer Force — and the American people tend to forget that, until the volunteers stop showing up and reenlisting. The troops will start getting out because they’re deployed too long and too often. We need sufficient forces to meet our commitments, have the time for our forces to be properly trained, and provide for the quality of life that supports a first-rate military.
We were building an All-Volunteer Force with professionals, not mercenaries. The troops certainly don’t mind a better paycheck, but first and foremost they truly want to be the best military in the world. We owe them that and we owe them the care they deserve after serving our nation.
It could mean military civil affairs will change from being just a tactical organization doing basic humanitarian care and interaction with the civilian population to actually being capable of reconstructing nations. That will require people in uniform, and maybe civilian suits as well, who are educated in the disciplines of economics and political structures and who will actually go in and work these issues. Either we get the civilian officials on the scene who can do it — get them there when they need to be there, give them the resources and the training, and create the interoperability that is necessary — or validate the military mission to do it.
It could mean we would at last go into each of these messy new situations with a strategic plan, a real understanding of regional and global security, and a knowledge of what it takes to wield the power to shape security and move it forward. Where are today’s Marshalls, Eisenhowers, and Trumans, who had the vision to see the world in a different way, and who understood America’s role and what had to be done in order to play that role?
Our military men and women should never be put on a battlefield without a strategic plan, not only for the fighting — our generals will take care of that — but for the aftermath and for winning the war. Where are we, the American people, if we accept less; if we accept any level of sacrifice without an adequate level of planning?
It kills me when I hear of the continuing casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan and the sacrifices being made. It also kills me to hear someone say that each one of those is a personal tragedy, but in the overall scheme of things, the numbers are statistically insignificant. Bullshit. We should challenge any military or political leader who utters such words. The greatest treasure the United States has is our enlisted men and women. When we put them in harm’s way, it had better count for something. Their loss is a national tragedy.
As I reflect on my own forty years of military service, and my later years of diplomacy and peacemaking, I have to ask: “What is our legacy?” My son is now a Marine captain. What have we left for him to look forward to?
We all know that burgeoning technology will widen his horizons beyond anything we can imagine. It will also present new questions of ethics and morality that we have barely begun to fathom. Yet he must also live with the organization I have had to live with for forty years. Napoleon could reappear today and recognize the Central
