Mullen changes use of force doctrine

NY Times:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, laid out new principles Wednesday for how to use the military in meeting contemporary threats, saying that overwhelming force can be counterproductive if used recklessly.

In a careful recalibration of well-known principles set forth years ago by a predecessor, Gen. Colin L. Powell, Admiral Mullen said the military “must not try to use force only in an overwhelming capacity, but in the proper capacity, and in a precise and principled manner.”

Speaking at Kansas State University, he pointed to new rules restricting the use of combat force in Afghanistan, where civilian deaths caused by American troops and American bombs have outraged the local population and made the case for the insurgency. That kind of restraint, at the insistence of the field commander there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, has been criticized in some quarters as reneging on the so-called Powell Doctrine, which favored overwhelming force to achieve unambiguous victories.

Even when the forces brought into combat are clearly superior, as in the huge assault on the Taliban stronghold of Marja in southern Afghanistan that began Feb. 13, there can be a difference from assaults of the past, Admiral Mullen suggested.

At Marja, he said, “We did not prep the battlefield with carpet bombing or missile strikes. We simply walked in, on time. Because, frankly, the battlefield isn’t necessarily a field anymore. It’s in the minds of the people.”

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I think Mullin is conflating two very different types of wars and the tactics and strategies needed for each.

When you are in a combat persisting war, where you stay in contact with teh enemy until he is defeated, you can accomplish that objective with fewer casualties on both sides by using overwhelming force.

When you are dealing with an enemy that uses a raiding or insurgency strategy, where they try to avoid contact until the can strike at isolated exposed elements, you still need a even greater force to space ratio, but you are protecting the people so you have to use less kinetic means. If you have enough troops to protect the people and can set up check points that will cut off the enemy's movement to contact, you can defeat his strategy.

If you confuse to two, you can have a bloody mess. Trying to modulate a combat persisting or "conventional" war will give an enemy hope that will allow him to resist longer getting more people killed on both sides. If you do not have an adequate force to space ratio in dealing with an insurgency, you wind up playing whack-a-mole chasing the enemy rather than letting him come to you.