Which war to prepare for

Newsweek:

Great armies and navies are always tempted to fight the last war, especially if they won it. The British Army entered World War I wedded to the "up and at 'em" infantry advances of Waterloo—even though by the turn of the century the Maxim gun had made such tactics tantamount to suicide. Truly fearsome militaries prepare to fight the next war. Think of how the German Army used planes and tanks in a coordinated blitzkrieg to outmaneuver the Allies at the outset of World War II.

But what if a military must prepare to fight not one war, but two very different kinds of war? That is the challenge facing the world's greatest superpower at the beginning of the 21st century. The American military must continue to ready itself for high-tech warfare; it must still be able to fight "big wars" against rising powers like China. At the same time, it must anticipate what military planners blandly term "low-intensity conflict" but what Rudyard Kipling more aptly called the "savage wars of peace"—small, asymmetrical conflicts against determined partisans with wicked low-tech weapons like IEDs, the improvised explosive devices that have cost America so dearly in Iraq.

The tension over which war to prepare for has created a generational divide in the American military, particularly the U.S. Army, between old bulls who want to focus on all-out combat, drowning the enemy in precision firepower, and young upstarts who believe that in today's messy world of failing states, firepower is not enough—it is necessary to win hearts and minds. Many of the combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who are among the most capable and experienced young officers America has had in a generation, fall into the latter camp. But the uncomfortable fact is that the U.S. military may not have the resources to be able to fight both kinds of war with any assurance of victory. Though political leaders have barely begun to address the problem, the shape, size and funding of America's armed forces is one of the most pressing issues the next president will face.

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This article is not particularly insightful, but it does raise a question that is percolating in the Pentagon. The World War I analogy and Waterloo glosses over several intermediate steps which should have told event the old bulls that the high diddle up the middle approach would not work. The American Civil War proved that the machinery of warfare had overwhelmed the old tactics. The Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean was another lesson unlearned by the British army. It would take new machinery to reintroduce heavy and light cavalry to the battle field in the form of tanks and airplanes to break the stalemate.

Since World War II there has been a heavy focus on the machinery of warfare by the military. It has been successful in producing weapons that can overwhelm an enemy in conventional warfare. This part of the military is not going away.

The questions raised by the so called up starts is not a new one. Small wars have been around longer than the combat persisting struggles that use the machinery of war for victory. There will be even more of them if the Democrats are elected because it is their policy not to fight them. The real question is whether America has the patience to win a counterinsurgency operation. We are now five years into counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan which means we are not halfway to the average length of 11 years for such conflicts. In terms of military casualties, these have not been costly wars. The enemy generally avoids contact when possible and has focused most of its efforts against non combatants, particularly in Iraq.

The real problem is the ignorance of Democrats when it comes to counterinsurgency warfare. They at best have a McDonald's approach wanting instant wins or diplomatic nonsense rather than the hard work of winning. It is not the choices of the military that are the problem when it comes to warfare so much as the choices the Democrats want to make in dealing with our enemies.