We have to train for major combat operations and counterinsurgency

Mackubin Thomas Owens:

During the 1990s, the U.S. defense debate was dominated by those who argued that advances in technology, particularly information technology, had revolutionized military affairs and changed the nature of warfare. Under former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, this view -- now called transformation -- came to characterize U.S. military planning. Based on the example of the 1991 Gulf War, advocates of transformation argued that our technological edge would allow American forces to identify and destroy targets remotely, defeating an adversary at low cost in casualties.

Though the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have largely discredited staunch transformation advocates, a heated debate still rages about the shape of the future U.S. military. One side, the "Long War" school, argues that Iraq and Afghanistan are characteristic of the protracted and ambiguous wars America will fight in the future. Accordingly, they say, the military should be developing a force designed to fight the Long War on terrorism, primarily by preparing for "small wars" and insurgencies.

Critics -- often labeled "traditionalists" or "conservatives" -- concede that irregular warfare will occur more frequently in the future than interstate war. But they conclude that such conflicts do not threaten U.S. strategic interests in the way large-scale conflicts do. They fear that the Long War school's focus on small wars and insurgencies will transform the Army into a constabulary force, whose enhanced capability for conducting stability operations and nation-building would be purchased at a high cost: the ability to conduct large-scale conventional war.

This debate is relevant to all Americans, since its outcome has implications for both national security policy and civil-military relations. It raises two related questions. First, given its global role, can the U.S. afford to choose one path and not the other? And second, to what extent should military decisions constrain policy makers? In other words, can military doctrine and structure be left strictly to those in uniforms?

The danger of choosing one military planning strategy to the exclusion of the other is illustrated by the Eisenhower administration's "New Look" defense policy of the 1950s. The New Look, which made long-range nuclear air power the centerpiece of force structure, resulted in severe strategic inflexibility, namely the inability to respond to threats at the lower end of the spectrum of conflict. As a result, adversaries developed asymmetric responses to America's dominant nuclear capability -- "peoples' wars" and "wars of national liberation." The deficiencies in the New Look strategy led to its replacement in the 1960s by the strategy of "flexible response." This called for a capability to address threats from nuclear war to conventional war and insurgencies, such as the one in Vietnam.

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The "flexible response" strategy was not true counterinsurgency. It was about escalating responses based on the enemy reaction. In other words it turned the initiative over to the enemy. In Vietnam for example instead of using a force to space ratio, the military uses a force to force ratio which meant when the enemy increased its forces we had to respond with even more to keep the ratio. It also meant we hampered the effect of our forces by limiting strikes on enemy targets in the vain hope that the enemy would limit its attacks. It was a strategy for defeat.

What we need is a force that can fight major combat operations as well as counterinsurgency operations. For that we need a larger military so that when troops are not in combat they have the time to train for both contingencies. The Clinton cuts were a huge mistake that was compounded by the Bush administrations refusal to grow the military after 9-11. Now is a good time to increase the size of the military and also increase spending on the gear needed to fight both types of war.

Westhawk also comments on Owens piece.