Ace at Ace of Spades HQ reacts to SecDef Gates' recent West Point speech.
Money quote(s):
"He also talks about "reshaping" (that is, cutting) the Army's and Marines' budget because he thinks a large conventional mechanized-units-vs.-mechanized-units war is unlikely.
I don't know about that last part. I'd say we'll have few of those wars. And more of the smaller-unit/guerilla war. But I'd say the likelihood of either is pretty high. The former's at like 70% and the latter's at 100%. Just because most fights will be small-unit engagements doesn't mean large-scale warfare isn't going to happen."
There's a way to break down threats like this, into four quadrants, where you evaluate possible events in terms of both probability (i.e., likelihood) and risk (i.e., hazard or cost) as being either High or Low. So you get Low Probability - Low Risk, High Probability - High Risk, Low Probability - High Risk, and High Probability - Low Risk.
The probability that major mechanized combat is going to happen in any given year may be low, but the risk is so high that you have to prepare for it. After all, you can't just excrete a major mechanized force and the ability to project it globally on 11 months notice; it takes literally decades to build.
"After eight years of pacifying Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm not at all sure we were right to depart from the basic idea that nation-building was a bad idea.
This is less about Iraq and Afghanistan and more about the next war, which just might be Iran. Personally, I'd be on board for military action, but I would strongly prefer to leave the pacification and nation-building to the Iranians. Pay 'em, arm 'em, give them targeting lasers to paint targets for jet strikes, but I wouldn't support a massive, decade-long police action in a country with more than twice as many people as Iraq.
We used to do this a lot. We would arm indigenous fighters, train them, feed them intelligence, offer assistance. After 9/11, I think the decision was made that we had to show a very, very bright-line distinction between the real soldier -- professional, uniformed, acting under orders, scrupulously avoiding (to the extent possible) civilian collateral damage -- and the terrorist, and that led us to conclude, I think, that we couldn't just depart Iraq after smashing the Baathist state and let the Iraqis fight it out. Because there would be a whole lot of terrorist, civilian-targeting attacks, and we'd be on the hook for that."
"American troops are of course the most disciplined, ethical, and heroic in the world. So heroic, in fact, we typically expect them to put their own lives in danger for the purpose of reducing the chance of collateral damage. Few other troops would even consider such rules of engagement; our guys might complain about it, but in the end, they follow orders.
So if American troops are the primarily force in a country, we can expect the lowest possible number of civilian collateral casualties. But the question I'm asking myself now is: How much do I really care about the fewest number of civilian collateral casualties? In Iraq, if the deaths of 3000 American soldiers (in the later post-war campaign) saved, let's say, 60,000 Iraqi civilians -- was that a good trade? Or, more importantly, because the more important thing to me is the doctrine going forward: Would I be willing to make that trade in a hypothetical pacification campaign in Iran? Would I trade 3,000 US soldiers to make sure the fewest Iranian civilians died in the chaos that ensued after a decapitation of the state?
I think I'd say the Iranians will have to fight it out themselves."
Gates is only reprising MacArthur's (and Vizzini's) "never get involved in a land war in Asia" dictum. Odd how no one noticed both Iraq and Afghanistan are Asiatic countries before now.
The mathematics are a bit cold. Thinking the unthinkable is like that. But the calculus is necessary.
"I wouldn't support an Iraq-style American-troops-as-primary-combatants pacification.
And I don't even think that it matters what I think -- I don't think any President, Republican or Democrat or Tea Partier, is going to propose such a thing. Which makes this question very important, because unless the country can accept that arm-your-proxies style of limited warfare, I think we're going to have a Vietnam Syndrome going forward. Given the choice between no military action at all and full-scale invasion plus pacification/nation-building, I think the country will select, by large margins, "no military action at all," and I think that is very dangerous.
We will need to fight another country again, most likely sooner rather than later. We need a doctrine about such a war that can actually gain popular support.
I just don't believe the country will undertake another Iraq or Afghanistan you-break-it-you-bought-it plan, at least not for a long time. So I think those who believe that warfare must always be a possible tool available to us (even if only occasionally used) must formulate a doctrine in which the post-war pacification campaign is specifically ruled out and our goals in the post-war scenario are achieved by means other than heavy presence of American troops as primary combatants.
I just don't think the Iraq model of post-war pacification is an option in the next five to ten years, at least, for political reasons."
Frankly, I suspect we'll have U.S. troops, at some level of strength, in both Iraq and Afghanistan for at least five of those years, so I'd envision that, barring a catastrophic event that "resets" U.S. grand strategy, five to ten years is a very conservative estimate.
"(I)f we actually want to credibly threaten a country like Iran -- and do more than merely threaten, should it come to that -- we need a doctrine that has a chance of getting the nation behind it, and we have to begin conditioning the nation to realize what happens when disciplined, heroic American troops are not the primary combatants -- a lot of civilians are going to die, most likely, because only American troops (and some other professional Western-tradition troops) are brave enough to put the lives of civilians before their own."
