Is perpetual war our future

Andrew Bacevich brTo appreciate the full extent of the military crisis into which the United States has been plunged requires understanding what the Iraq War and, to a lesser extent, the Afghan War have to teach. These two conflicts, along with the attacks of September 11, 2001, will form the centerpiece of George W. Bush's legacy. Their lessons ought to constitute the basis of a new, more realistic military policy. brIn some respects, the effort to divine those lessons is well under way, spurred by critics of President Bush's policies on the left and the right as well as by reform-minded members of the officer corps. Broadly speaking, this effort has thus far yielded three distinct conclusions. Whether taken singly or together, they invert the post-Cold War military illusions that provided the foundation for the president's Global War on Terror. In exchange for these received illusions, they propound new ones, which are equally misguided. Thus far, that is, the lessons drawn from America's post-911 military experience are the wrong ones. brAccording to the first lesson, the armed services -- and above all the Army -- need to recognize that the challenges posed by Iraq and Afghanistan define not only the military's present but also its future, the next war, as enthusiasts like to say. Rooting out insurgents, nation-building, training and advising host nation forces, population security and control, winning hearts and minds -- these promise to be ongoing priorities, preoccupying U.S. troops for decades to come, all across the Islamic world. brRather than brief interventions ending in decisive victory, sustained presence will be the norm. Large-scale conventional conflict like 1991's Operation Desert Storm becomes the least likely contingency. The future will be one of small wars, expected to be frequent, protracted, perhaps perpetual. brAlthough advanced technology will retain an important place in such conflicts, it will not be decisive. Wherever possible, the warrior will rely on nonkinetic methods, functioning as diplomat, mediator, and relief worker. No doubt American soldiers will engage in combat, but, drawing on the latest findings of social science, they will also demonstrate cultural sensitivity, not to speak of mastering local languages and customs. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it in October 2007, Reviving public services, rebuilding infrastructure and promoting good governance had now become soldiers' business. All these so-called nontraditional capabilities have moved into the mainstream of military thinking, planning, and strategy -- where they must stay. brThis prospect implies a rigorous integration of military action with political purpose. Hard power and soft power will merge. The soldier on the ground will serve as both cop and social worker. This prospect also implies shedding the sort of utopian expectations that produced so much confident talk of transformation, shock-and-awe, and networkcentric warfare -- all of which had tended to segregate war and politics into separate compartments. brLocal conditions will dictate technique, dooming the Pentagon's effort to devise a single preconceived, technologically determined template applicable across the entire spectrum of conflict. When it comes to low-intensity wars, the armed services will embrace a style owing less to the traditions of the Civil War, World War II, or even Gulf War I than to the nearly forgotten American experiences in the Philippines after 1898 and in Central America during the 1920s. Instead of looking for inspiration at the campaigns of U. S. Grant, George Patton, or H. Norman Schwarzkopf, officers will study postwar British and French involvement in places like Palestine and Malaya, Indochina and Algeria. brIn sum, an officer corps bloodied in Iraq and Afghanistan has seen the future and it points to many more Iraqs and Afghanistans. Whereas the architects of full spectrum dominance had expected the unprecedented lethality, range, accuracy, and responsiveness of high-tech striking power to perpetuate military dominion, the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan know better. They remain committed to global dominance while believing that its pursuit will require not only advanced weaponry but also the ability to put boots on the ground and keep them there. This, in turn, implies a plentiful supply of soldiers and loads of patience on the home front. brWere the Civilians of the Defense Department Responsible brViewed from another perspective, however, the post-911 wars teach an altogether different lesson. According to this alternative view, echoing a similar complaint during the Vietnam era, the shortcomings of U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan have little to do with the actual performance of American forces in the field and everything to do with the meddling of bumbling civilians back in Washington. In its simplest form, fault lies not with the troops themselves, nor with their commanders, but with the likes of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, who prevented the troops from doing their jobs. brThe charges leveled by Major General John Batiste, who served in Rumsfeld's Pentagon but subsequently retired in disgust and became one of the defense secretary's loudest military critics, are representative of this view. Rumsfeld's dismal strategic decisions resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, Batiste declared in September 2006. The former general held Rumsfeld personally responsible for America and her allies going to war with the wrong plan. But that was just for starters. Rumsfeld also violated fundamental principles of war, dismissed deliberate military planning, ignored the hard work to build the peace after the fall of Saddam Hussein, set the conditions for Abu Ghraib and other atrocities that further ignited the insurgency, disbanded Iraqi security force institutions when we needed them most, [and] constrained our commanders with an overly restrictive de-Ba'athification policy. brNor was the problem limited to Rumsfeld himself. It included his chief lieutenants. According to Batiste, Rumsfeld surrounded himself with like-minded and compliant subordinates who [did] not grasp the importance of the principles of war, the complexities of Iraq, or the human dimension of warfare. The overall effect was tantamount to murder Rumsfeld tied the hands of commanders while our troops were in contact with the enemy. brHere lies the second preliminary lesson drawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, one that appeals to disgruntled military officers like Batiste, but also to Democrats eager to blame the Bush administration for any and all sins and to neoconservatives looking to absolve themselves of responsibility for botched wars that they had once cavalierly promoted. The corrective to civilian arrogance and misjudgment is obvious It requires tilting the civil-military balance back in favor of the generals, untying the hands of senior commanders. brFrom this perspective, the most important lesson to take away from Iraq and Afghanistan is the imperative to empower military professionals. The Petraeus moment of 2007, when all of official Washington from President Bush to the lowest-ranking congressional staffer waited with bated breath for General David Petraeus to formulate basic policy for Iraq, offers a preview of how this lesson might play itself out. brIs a Draft the Answer brThere is also a third perspective, which blames the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan on a problematic relationship between soldiers and society. According to this view, the All-Volunteer Force itself is the problem. As the military historian Adrian Lewis observed, The most significant transformation in the American conduct of war since World War II and the invention of the atomic bomb was not technological, but cultural, social, and political -- the removal of the American people from the conduct of war. Only after 911, with the Bush administration waging war on multiple fronts, have the implications of this transformation become fully evident. brA reliance on volunteer-professionals places a de facto cap on the army's overall size. The pool of willing recruits is necessarily limited. Given a choice, most young Americans will opt for opportunities other than military service, with protracted war diminishing rather than enhancing any collective propensity to volunteer. It is virtually inconceivable that any presidential call to the colors, however impassioned, any PR campaign, however cleverly designed, or any package of pay and bonuses, however generous, could reverse this disinclination. brFurthermore, to the extent that an army composed of regulars is no longer a people's army, the people have little say in its use. In effect, the professional military has become an extension of the imperial presidency. The troops fight when and where the commander in chief determines. brFinally, a reliance on professional soldiers eviscerates the concept of civic duty, relieving citizens at large of any obligation to contribute to the nation's defense. Ending the draft during the waning days of the Vietnam War did nothing to heal the divisions created by that conflict; instead, it ratified the separation of army from society. Like mowing lawns and bussing tables, fighting and perhaps dying to sustain the American way of life became something that Americans pay others to do. brSo the third lesson of the Iraq War focuses on the need to repair the relationship between army and society. One way to do this is to junk the All-Volunteer Force altogether. Rather than rely on professionals, perhaps it makes sense to revive the tradition of the citizen-soldier. brProposals to restore this hallowed tradition invariably conjure up images of reinstituting some form of conscription. In place of a system based on the principle of individual choice, those unhappy with the AVF advocate a system based on the principle of state compulsion. brThe advantages offered by such a system are hardly trivial. To the extent that Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed the operational, political, and moral problems produced by relying on a small professional force, a draft seems to offer one obvious way to alleviate those problems. brFor those who worry that the existing army is overextended, conscription provides a mechanism for expansion. Triple the size of the army -- in essence restoring the structure that existed during much of the Cold War -- and the personnel shortages that constrain the prosecution of ground campaigns will disappear. Sustaining the military commitment to Iraq for ten or twenty years, or even a century as Senator John McCain and many neoconservatives are willing to contemplate, then becomes a viable proposition. brWar planners will no longer find themselves obliged to give short shrift to Contingency A (Afghanistan) in order to support Contingency B (Iraq). brThe concept of surge will take on a whole new meaning with the Pentagon able to dispatch not a measly 30,000 reinforcements to Iraq or another few thousand to Afghanistan, but 100,000 or more additional troops wherever they might be needed. Was the problem with Operation Iraqi Freedom too few boots on the ground for occupation and reconstruction Reconstitute the draft, and that problem goes away. brCreating a mass army might even permit the United States to resuscitate the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine with its emphasis on overwhelming force. brFor those distressed by the absence of a politically meaningful antiwar movement despite the Iraq War's manifest unpopularity, the appeal of conscription differs somewhat. Some political activists look to an Iraq-era draft to do what the Vietnam-era draft did animate large-scale protest, alter the political dynamic, and eventually shut down any conflict that lacks widespread popular support. br (Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. This abridged piece is adapted from his new book, The Limits of Power The End of American Exceptionalism (Metropolitan Books, 2008). brInternet