BARNETT - Getting smart on Sys Admin: the crashing course
¦"Pentagon Intends to Refocus War-Planning Effort," by Greg Jaffe and David. S. Cloud, Wall Street Journal, 25 October 2004, p. A6.
¦"3,200 Peacekeepers Pledged on Mission to Darfur," by Colum Lynch, Washington Post, 21 October 2004, p. A22.
As the evidence continues to mount on how the U.S. screwed the pooch in Iraq in those first six months after successfully toppling Saddam's regime with ease, we hear of even more efforts within the Pentagon to learn from these mistakes, with the latest one being a Secretary of Defense directive to combatant commanders that—in the future—all war plans must include a significant peacekeeping or SysAdmin-like effort that stretches over the long haul. This directive demands that the Pentagon "involve the State Department and other civilian agencies—largely frozen out of Iraq war planning—in postconflict plans and operations." Biggest changes coming to the Defense Department naturally fall upon the Army, which is going to be redirected big-time toward nation-building. Why? You really can defeat enemies in war using the Air Force-dominated transformed force. But you need the Army to win the peace, whether they want to engage in nation-building or not.
So yes, everyone's force structure plans will suffer, but some more than others. I would guess the surface combatant Navy and the "heavy" (or armored) Army will have to surrender plenty of big hardware so that the Marines and the other Military-Operations-Other-Than-War elements of the ground forces can be plused up big time. But don't expect the Air Force to suffer too much, because they will continue to form the core of the warfighting Leviathan force, along with Navy's carriers.
Does it matter that the U.S. moves in the direction of sufficiently investing in their own Sys Admin elements? You bet. Without our "hub," nobody plays effectively in the Sys Admin universe. Check out the latest African Union plan to send a paltry 3,200 peacekeepers into Sudan. Guess who's providing much of the housing, transport, and command and control? It's some USAF C-130s and two defense contractors hired by State. This is Sys Admin on the very cheap, and it's likely to deliver very little in the way of settling Darfur.
But it reflects that old saying, "You want it bad, you get it bad."
Here's hoping the Pentagon's new plans yields a more robust Sys Admin capability in coming years, so we don't have to relay solely on Beltway contractors and a couple of Air Force wings—not to mention a prayer—to get the job done (or at least get the story off the front pages of the newspapers). |
