The change comes through pain
Thomas Barnett
Dateline: SWA flight from BWI to PVD, 14 October 2004
When I briefed the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) yesterday, I got all of the usual questions, but a number of specific ones on how the Sys Admin force would come into being. The interest here is obvious: OFDA and USAID wish to see such a force arise because that's the force those offices would seek to combine talents with over time so that next time, we get the occupation right.
The crowd I was briefing yesterday consisted primarily of those individuals from OFDA and USAID that are working emerging issues in civil-military affairs, meaning the cooperation between development/disaster relief officials and military commanders in the field that will essentially determine whether we win the "second half" of any serious takedown/intervention effort inside the Gap. They know they have huge cultural and institutional firewalls to tear down if cooperation is going to improve in the future, but what was heartening to me was how well the message and the details resonated with this crowd. In short, they desperately want this conversation to continue.
Following the talk, one of my hosts sent me the following article, which only highlights how, as I always answer when asked "Who will force this Sys Admin force to emerge?" that it will be pain and failure that drive the process. My vision helps to explain and guide that process, but the process itself is driven by real-world events and experiences.
Here's the article from Reuters UK (hence some weird spelling):
US plans military retraining for terrorism war Tue 12 October, 2004 21:25
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration, beset by violence in Iraq and growing strains on the armed forces, plans to sharply increase the number of soldiers with non-combat skills as it pursues its war on terrorism, officials and analysts say.
Under a seven-year re-balancing program which will gather pace after the November 2 election, the Pentagon said on Tuesday it intends to create 100,000 military police, civil affairs, intelligence and other positions needed for stabilising war-torn countries.
The initiative represents an about-turn in the approach of President George W. Bush, who before the September 11 attacks on the United States adamantly opposed using the U.S. military for "nation-building", insisting its main function was warfare.
General Richard Cody, Army vice chief of staff, said at a recent defence briefing on Capitol Hill that the re-balancing of the structure toward non-combat roles was "the biggest change that we've done in 50 years."
Analysts estimate that the program will double the all-volunteer Army's pool of soldiers who can be called on for non-combat duties overseas but it would not enlarge the active duty force of 1.2 million troops.
Instead, the Pentagon intends to fill the new slots by retraining thousands of Army Reserve, National Guard and active-duty soldiers now assigned to traditional combat duties such as artillery, air defence, armour and ordnance.
An Army official said the long-term objective was to bolster the military's ability to fight the war on terrorism, which is guided by the Bush doctrine of intervention and regime-change in states seen as threatening the United States.
But the immediate goal is to relieve non-combat specialists already on duty overseas, especially National Guardsmen and Reservists hard-hit by repeat mobilisations and extended tours. The intensive use of those forces has prompted debate over a possible draft and the need for a larger force.
"After 9/11 hit, we obviously went into a new mode with the war on terror and our engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq," said the Army official, who asked not to be identified.
"The threats are asymmetrical, and we don't know where the next one will come from -- but we'll have to respond. This will help units deploy more rapidly for duties ranging from peacekeeping to combat to nation-building."
Planning for the long-term re-balancing of Army combat and non-combat duties began early in 2003 and accelerated that summer as the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq gave way to looting and a subsequent widespread insurgency.
At the same time the Pentagon scrapped plans to close its only institute devoted to peacekeeping and instead expanded its role in advising the Army on stabilisation strategy.
WINNING THE PEACE
"We have unrivalled conventional capabilities, but we did not have very much to win the peace," said Lawrence Korb, who served as assistant secretary of defence under the Reagan administration.
"Now, if you do another regime change, you'll have the capability to maintain order," Korb told Reuters.
Bush, accused by his Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry of creating "a back-door draft" by extending individual service in Iraq, routinely cites the transformation of the U.S. military in his stump speeches.
"We're working to minimise the number of extensions and repeat mobilisations by moving forces out of low-demand specialities, such as heavy artillery, and increasing the number of available troops with skills that are in high-demand," Bush said in a September 14 speech to the National Guard Association.
But the Army said it has trained fewer than 5,000 National Guard artillery specialists as military police under a provisional reorganisation in anticipation of the long-term re-balancing program.
The Army's structure was never intended to tackle extended nation-building missions such as Iraq and Afghanistan, analysts said.
"This is a race between re-balancing the force on the one hand and the exhaustion of existing capabilities on the other," said Hans Binnendijk, a National defence University professor.
Analysts believe the re-balancing programme will entail Navy and Air Force personnel as well as Army troops. And they expect the largest burden to fall on Reserve and National Guard forces who could make up 70,000 of the 100,000 new positions.
The program is being phased in. About 30,000 specialists will be trained in civil affairs, psychological operations, chemical and biological detection and special operations and as intelligence and military police from 2004 to 2009.
Of those, the Army said about 20,000 will be National Guard or Reserve.
Another 10,000 slots for military police, transportation specialists and quartermaster duties would be created from 2005 to 2008. Training for the remaining slots would occur over the course of the program, the Army said.
When will this vision come about? It will come about as it needs to. Not because I dreamed it up, or because anybody else has dreamed it up. It comes as a product of failure, which is how big organizations like the Department of Defense change
But it will also come from other countries simply refusing to do Leviathan work and demanding the right to specialize in Sys Admin work. Here's an example of this trend, courtesy of a reader:
Deutsche Welle, 13.10.2004 Germany Opposes US Plan in Afghanistan: NATO's mandate is to stabilize Afghanistan not fight terrorism At a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Romania on Wednesday, Germany objected to Washington's proposal for NATO forces to take over the US military mission in Afghanistan as part of next year's reorganization efforts.
German Defense Minister Peter Struck, who met NATO counterparts including US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for informal talks in Romania, told reporters he opposed the proposal to integrate the NATO peacekeeping force in Afghanistan within the 18,000 strong US-led combat mission fighting remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda.
NATO's mandate in Afghanistan is to stabilize the country, not to fight international terrorism he said. "The German government sees its mandate as protecting and helping, not fighting," Struck added. "Therefore, we are against a merger of the two mandates."
Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to NATO, said the aim of the United States is to combine the two missions under a single alliance commander, possibly as early as 2005.
"It's a very complicated issue," Burns said. "That's the direction the alliance has been heading for many months now," he added and hinted to reporters that the proposal would find several supporters in the near future.
New role for NATO?
NATO is in need of a reorganization in Afghanistan, Burns said. The transatlantic alliance has been in command of the 8,000-strong International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan since last year, but has struggled to drum up the troop numbers needed to expand the UN-mandated force outside of Kabul.
The alliance's weakness was particularly evident in the run-up to last week's presidential elections when NATO members only reluctantly relented to supplying more troops. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said although the alliance had succeeded in guaranteeing a peaceful election environment, there was still a good deal more to do in Afghanistan.
The United States, which provides the biggest number of troops in the war-torn country, has been pushing its European allies to commit more resources and to expand into western Afghanistan, where war lords and armed factions of the Taliban still hold sway.
While ISAF is primary involved in peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts, the separate US mission "Operation Enduring Freedom" includes heavily armed units fighting suspected militants and terrorists, notably on the Pakistan border in the southeastern part of the country. Several NATO members have criticized the fact that the two forces operate independently of one another.
German support for combat not likely
Struck said Germany generally supported the NATO initiative to increase its troops and expand its area of deployment, but he doubted his country's parliament would support a change of its mandate to allow its troops to take on a combat mission. With some 2,500 soldiers, Germany is the largest contributor to the ISAF peacekeeping mission.
"I will not accept that Germany continues to be heavily engaged in Afghanistan while others, despite their pledges, have held back from doing the same," Struck told the gathering of 26 defense ministers
"I do not believe that the German government will be prepared to deploy its current 2,500 soldiers in a fight against terrorism. We would prefer to continue using them for reconstruction efforts," he concluded.
DW staff (ktz) Dutsche Welle dw-world.de
Trust me, most of our allies want the Sys Admin force (A Washington Post story from today's issue, "NATO Considers Joint Mission in Afghanistan," shows France also to be opposed to mixing the Sys Admin and Leviathan efforts there). It's the force they can afford (see the Washington Post story from today's issue on Canada debating whether it can afford even four diesel subs with all its peacekeeping duties: "Canada Buries Sailor Killed in Sub Fire: Future of Four-Vessel Underwater Fleet, Bought From Britain, Now in Question"). It's the force that they public can support. It will feature the sort of American forces that these allies can actually keep up with and interact with confidently. People ask me often, "What sort of response do you get from the Europeans?" My answer is, "They are ready to start on the Sys Admin force tomorrow." thomaspmbarnett.com |
