Whenever I hear about some general or military officer fussing about what went wrong in Vietnam or what is going wrong in Iraq, the first question I want them to answer is the following fill-in-the-blank. The reason I'm not teaching at the Army War College is: _________.I suspect the most common answer to that would be, I'm not smart enough, but they would likely answer 'politics'.
Having read a few books on military affairs in the past slew, it has become a cliche now to say "We're always fighting the last war." LTCOL Yingling offers much of that in his analysis of big things that are wrong.
The most tragic error a general can make is to assume without much reflection that wars of the future will look much like wars of the past. Following World War I, French generals committed this error, assuming that the next war would involve static battles dominated by firepower and fixed fortifications. Throughout the interwar years, French generals raised, equipped, armed and trained the French military to fight the last war. In stark contrast, German generals spent the interwar years attempting to break the stalemate created by firepower and fortifications. They developed a new form of war — the blitzkrieg — that integrated mobility, firepower and decentralized tactics. The German Army did not get this new form of warfare precisely right. After the 1939 conquest of Poland, the German Army undertook a critical self-examination of its operations. However, German generals did not get it too far wrong either, and in less than a year had adapted their tactics for the invasion of France.
After visualizing the conditions of future combat, the general is responsible for explaining to civilian policymakers the demands of future combat and the risks entailed in failing to meet those demands. Civilian policymakers have neither the expertise nor the inclination to think deeply about strategic probabilities in the distant future. Policymakers, especially elected representatives, face powerful incentives to focus on near-term challenges that are of immediate concern to the public. Generating military capability is the labor of decades. If the general waits until the public and its elected representatives are immediately concerned with national security threats before finding his voice, he has waited too long. The general who speaks too loudly of preparing for war while the nation is at peace places at risk his position and status. However, the general who speaks too softly places at risk the security of his country.
Failing to visualize future battlefields represents a lapse in professional competence, but seeing those fields clearly and saying nothing is an even more serious lapse in professional character. Moral courage is often inversely proportional to popularity and this observation in nowhere more true than in the profession of arms. The history of military innovation is littered with the truncated careers of reformers who saw gathering threats clearly and advocated change boldly. A military professional must possess both the physical courage to face the hazards of battle and the moral courage to withstand the barbs of public scorn. On and off the battlefield, courage is the first characteristic of generalship.
What's missing from Yingling's entire analysis, while he pokes some interesting points much more well probed by Ricks and Barnett, is the entire political business of procurement. It's a huge issue that there really isn't a lot of honest debate about.
We all know that Congress holds the purse strings, and all of the Democrat presidential candidates, the overwhelming majority of which are Congresscritters are saying very little (actually nothing) about what they would have America buy for the next war. We can all recall the huge uproar, which continues in a few odd spots, about the no-bid contracts offered to Halliburton and the fees charged by Blackwater in their security subcontracting to Iraq. But who in Congress has ever had the courage to get up and fillibuster about how slow and bureaucratic the government procurement process is.
We went through huge debates about whose fault it was to fail to get armor for the Humvees. But who in fact can get that stuff done, and what kind of oversight will the Armed Services Committee provide before the POs are signed and the goods delivered?
I've been watching Futureweapons on the Discovery Channel, and I know there is something called the Cougar which is the next generation transport vehicle which is an order of magnitude more safe than the current trucks on the battlefield in Iraq. Tell me which Congressman is offering that to "support the troops?"
How long has it taken to get us the V-22 Osprey? I read about that vehicle when I was in college over 20 years ago. Any idiot could see that it was more capable and useful than the Vietnam era Chinooks and PaveHawks. But you can bet there were Congressmen standing up on their desks to keep that military expenditure off their earmarks.
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On the greater questions of the mission that Yingling raises, we have a serious problem of maintaining a public debate about the strategic direction of the nation. I don't see anyone in the current set of candidates, left or right who appears ready, willing and able to sustain that discussion among the general public beyond those of us who regularly think about geopolitical matters. We very well may need a Czar, an official Tom Clancy who keeps us up to date. In the meantime, it falls to the Discovery Channel. Today, nobody does it better.
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