WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- The debate raging about the lessons the U.S. military should learn from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now has a poster child. The forthcoming edition of the quarterly specialist counterinsurgency publication Small Wars Journal features a debate between two men who have come to personalize the divide between the "conservatives" -- who say it is the military's job to fight wars above and beyond all else -- and the "crusaders" -- who see the military as an adaptive tool for the application of U.S. realpolitik: Gian Gentile and John Nagl.
John Nagl, a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security and recently retired Army lieutenant colonel, could be called one of the founders of the new counterinsurgency doctrine and a true believer of the Petraeus camp. He argues in his article that fighting the wars of today means seeing the world as it is and responding to it.
"The U.S. military's role in irregular warfare cannot be wished or willed away, and the Army has a responsibility to prepare itself to fulfill that role as effectively as possible. It is irresponsible to assume that current and future foes will play to America's strengths by fighting conventionally rather than through proven, cost-effective, insurgent-like asymmetric strategies."
On the other side is Col. Gian Gentile, director of the military history program at the U.S. Military Academy and bearer of the "conservative" argument. Gentile disputes the logic of placing nation-building above fighting and worries that the military core skills have atrophied as a result.
The real question, he argues, in view of America's ongoing military experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, is whether the Army should be prepared to conduct stability operations, nation-building, counterinsurgency and related operations for more than very brief periods. Experience to date both indicates the limitations of American military capability to reshape other people's societies and governments and points to the limits of American military and economic resources in the conduct of these operations.
Coming back, Nagl states in no uncertain terms that he's unconvinced by Gentile's concerns for conventional warfare. "When bullets are flying, soldiers are in harm's way, and the national interest is at stake, the Army must devote the last full measure of its devotion to winning the wars it is in. Future conflicts are important, but the present conflicts are critical," he writes.
In a somewhat ironic twist, Gentile worries that the military's adaptations have made its thinking rigid. He says the military is dogmatically accepting the wisdom of Petraeus and counterinsurgency doctrine, and thus failing to challenge underlying assumptions about conflicts in different parts of the world.
"When problems of insurgencies and other sources of instability present themselves to American military planners, the only option seemingly available is large numbers of American combat boots on the ground protecting the people from the insurgents. This is why the Army has become dogmatic."
Nagl and Gentile represent an emerging fissure in the military and broader national security community. On the one side are the Long War's true believers, who think it incumbent upon America to wage a protracted fight in the breeding grounds of extremism -- and adapt the military to do so.
And then there are the true conservatives, who say America's misadventure in Iraq has taught it a valuable lesson about trying to clean up the world. For them, the military is already overly adapted to counterinsurgency and should return to doing what it does best: defending the homeland and fighting when it must.
As with any good scrap, there are already those stepping in to break it up. Elsewhere in the Small Wars Journal, other defense experts seek to both moderate and synthesize the two arguments. In one, titled "Nagl and Gentile are both right, so what do we do now?" Robert Haddick writes the military must recognize the world as it is today but must not fall into the trap of overextending itself in open-ended conflicts around the world. He proposes adopting Nagl's plan for developing a 20,000-man Combat Adviser Corps to conduct prevention, shaping and deterrence operations in irregular conflict areas, while at the same time emphasizing the importance that the majority of forces focus on conventional capabilities.
Whether the country prepares for long, protracted, irregular conflicts has implications for the budget: It means more translators, civil engineers and specialized forces like "human terrain" teams, otherwise known as cultural anthropologists. And it may mean strongly modifying, delaying and/or even eliminating programs that don't directly serve this mission, such as the Air Force's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or the Army's ultra-modern, computer-networked $200 billion Future Combat System.
It is easy to get carried away on rhetoric. Experts who watch the Pentagon's budget say there has been little sign of revolution since Defense Secretary Robert Gates took charge. Any changes, they say, have been at the margins.
It is "a moderate readjustment of priorities, not a radical shift in philosophy," says Michael O'Hanlon, a defense expert at the Brookings Institution. O'Hanlon likened Gates's words on "Next-War-itis" to a rhetorical tactic designed to "light a fire" under the Air Force and Navy leadership to give him what he wants: namely, hastening the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles like the Predator and other new technologies that have been used with great success in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Steven Kosiak, vice president of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, agrees. "The broad-brush look at the force structure and the major modernization programs; I don't think it would be fair to say there's been a substantial change in (budgetary) direction under Gates," he says. Kosiak cautions that this isn't to say that changes at the margins, like the deployment of the MRAP vehicles or more UAVs, haven't been extremely important.
This may be because of the additional flexibility provided to the military by Congress in the form of special spending bills called "emergency supplemental appropriations," which means additional cash doesn't have to come out of the baseline defense budget. But this also may serve to indicate how the military and Congress regard the state of the adaptations: as temporary.
Both O'Hanlon and Kosiak acknowledge the difficulty in implementing institutional change in the military. "A lot of this is sort of like turning a tanker at sea," Kosiak says. "It takes a long time, and it's something you're not going to do in a short period of time."
Gates and many others say it's not about choosing one option or another. It's about striving for balance.
There's another voice that falls into this camp: President-elect Barack Obama. On the campaign trail, Obama often called for tempered, pragmatic adaptation in the military, saying the United States should buy less expensive warships, train more translators, increase special operations units and put more money into intelligence and non-military aid.
With word that he'll stay on as secretary of defense under Obama for at least the time being, Gates will have no shortage of advice on how to find the balance he's looking for.
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(Medill News Service)
