Barnett is starting a monthly newsletter that he is getting a good price for. The intro one is free. Here is a URL to the issue, and Barnett's article in it. Sorry for the "column" appearance. I don't know how to convert a double column PDF to a full page here.
PDF - newrulesets.com
The Pentagon’s Internal War
Over What Iraq Means
Written by Thomas P.M. Barnett
Editorial Director | Partner, The New Rule Sets Project, LLC
ThePentagon is primarily in the business of
preparing for war, not waging it. War is waged by
commanders in the field. What the Pentagon does is think
long and hard about what the future of war should be like.
It then directs vast R&D and acquisition programs to generate
a force capable of waging war successfully
in that domain. Its demands for intelligence
tend to be future-oriented.
The Pentagon’s system of planning is relatively
secure from outside influences, a good
example being the Pentagon’s ability
throughout the 1990s to ignore the rise of
this era’s profound globalization, along with
the transnational, largely religiously-inspired
terrorism that accompanied it. Yes, I can
find you lots of PowerPoint slides from planning
briefs across the 1990s that contain the
words “globalization” and “terrorism,” but frankly these are
presented as complicating factors to be managed, not the
focus of serious planning and acquisition. All such items
were considered “lesser includeds,” meaning situations and
threats that the Pentagon assumed it could handle with the
force it fielded, even though that force was largely optimized
for large-scale war against a large-scale enemy (“resurgent
Russia” through the mid-1990s, “rising China” ever since).
Wars, of course, interrupt long-range planning. They steal
time, attention, energy, and resources. But they also create
generations of new leaders. Over time, these officers rise to
the highest ranks and, on the basis of their experiences in
conflict, join and largely shape the debates about the future
of war. What do most “flags” (admirals and generals) do?
A huge proportion of them are found in the Pentagon,
tending to tomorrow’s force, armed with visions of future
war shaped by their prior careers.
Right now, there is a debate raging within the Pentagon and
the military as a whole about what the war in Iraq and the
subsequent (and ongoing) occupation tell us about the
future of war. This debate pits two fundamental, dominant
visions of future war against one another. I consider this
juxtaposition to be a false dichotomy, meaning a choice that
does not need to be made and, frankly, should not be made.
The two sides in this debate are functionally derived: the “air
community” versus the “ground community” Of course,
such naked descriptions are not typically used. The air community
tends to be known as the Network-Centric
Operations (NCO) crowd, whereas the ground-pounders
fall under the rubric of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW).
Since the maritime community, by and large, doesn’t have a
dog in this fight, it remains obsessed with China and the
Taiwan Straits scenario (along with the Korea scenario, to a
certain extent – featuring as it does, that long coastline). The
fleet, in particular, feels somewhat left behind by the air and
ground visions. Why? NCO favors carrier-based air above
all, and the tyranny of their combined cost and support (carriers
plus air wings) drains funds from the rest of the ship
categories (including submarines). 4GW, not
surprisingly, focuses on operations on land,
considering naval activities at most as port
control and riverine operations. These two
items remind the Navy far too much of
Vietnam, an operation it supported but in
which it was not an integral player. So naturally,
a debate about what Iraq means and
how it shapes the future force makes the
Navy rather nervous, because it can see only
cuts ahead.
Before I describe how I see the Iraq debate
unfolding, let me lay out the basics of the
two camps. I don’t pretend to be an expert in either, and I’m
sure as hell not a disciple, so my descriptions might seem
incomplete to the true believers in both camps. (“He just
doesn’t understand!”) Advocates on both sides are certain
that their respective visions encompass that which is truly
important and profound about the current era of globalization.
Both are certain that they see war within the context
of everything else – and it’s true that both visions do a better
job than any previous iterations. But the sheer fact of
this doctrinal stand-off testifies to the reality: neither yet sees
the forest for the trees.
Net-centric operations are a long-term effort by the military
to understand how the rise of the information age alters the
fundamental nature of war. In the vernacular of NCO
advocates, the past force was platform-centric, meaning we
organized ourselves around the major “platforms,” the
machines we created to wage war (aircraft, ships, tanks, etc.).
The future, by contrast, is network-centric: platforms are
nothing more than nodes in a larger network whose main
power isn’t its massed fire, but its ability to wield that force
with pinpoint accuracy. In short, if, in the past, wars were
decided along the dictum of “he who moves the ‘mostest’
the fastest,” then the future of war is about moving bytes
even faster than bullets: a “he who moves the data the
fastest” definition of victory. The rise of “smart bombs”
epitomizes this evolution. Instead of dropping tons of
gravity bombs to destroy a target, we now use high-tech >
6 FEBRUARY 2005
mapping, guidance systems, local target “illumination” (e.g.,
those Special Ops guys in Afghanistan with laser pointers),
and cruise missiles to achieve the same effect with far fewer
bombs, and likewise far less collateral damage.
NCOdefines the 20th Century’s long march
toward “winning from above,” the notion
that you can effectively bomb your way to victory. Initially,
that vision was all about long-range, high-tech artillery (think
back to World War I). Then it was all about massive aerial
bombing campaigns (WWII).
Next it was strategic bombing
with nukes (the Cold War standoff
during the 1950s and early
60s). Finally, in 1991, following the
frustrations of Vietnam where we
bombed and bombed to no apparent
effect, NCO achieved its current
form in Operation Desert
Storm. Add to that the Kosovo
bombing campaign and the seemingly
easy devastation wrought
upon the Taliban in Afghanistan. Going into Iraq, it
seemed as though NCO was not only the dominant mode of
future-war thinking, it had reached such an apogee that serious
thought was given to radically slimming down the
ground forces into a future, “transformed” force.
I used to joke about that a lot in my brief, noting to Army
and Marine audiences that in the Office of Force
Transformation (its staff, quite naturally, dominated by Air
Force and naval air officers), I had seen “the plan” to get rid
of the Army altogether. Right up to Iraq, I got a big nervous
laugh on that line.
The Army and Marines were right to be nervous. The trajectory
of combat across the 1990s hadn’t served them well
in Pentagon debates. While the Air Force was winning wars
“all by itself ” in Iraq, the Balkans, and later Afghanistan, the
Army and Marines were left holding the bag in such crappy
situations as Somalia and Haiti. (Our ground presence in the
Balkans was always fairly small.) You know the story on
“Black Hawk Down,” so you know what a loser argument
Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW) seemed to
be. MOOTW was almost a plaintive cry from the Army –
“Don’t leave us behind in some Third World hellhole!” –
while the Air Force raced ahead to its next fabulous, pristine
war-from-above. Within the Pentagon, MOOTW was
strongly perceived – and is still perceived in many quarters
today – as a form of war that the American public can’t
stomach in terms of losses incurred (“body-bag syndrome”),
longevity (America’s SADD: strategic attention
deficit disorder), immoral acts (e.g., atrocities like Abu
Ghraib and beheadings of hostages), and demand for
resources (Senator So-and-So: “We spend more money in
Iraq by breakfast than we’ve spent all year on [name his or
her favorite cause]”).
So naturally, the ground-pounder’s blood-and-guts mentality
was pitted against the flyboy’s technocratic tendencies.
Ground accused Air of forgetting what “real war” is like,
while Air derided Ground’s inability to deal with the hightech
world of today. So it’s the “bloody war” versus “bloodless
war,” the warrior spirit versus the the Borg.
Right through “Mission
Accomplished” in Iraq (May
2003), the NCO crowd seemed
ascendant. Rumsfeld was right in
both Afghanistan and Iraq: the
small “footprint” force, armed
with high-technology, could network
its way to relatively bloodless
(for our side) victories. In only a
few weeks of major combat operations,
neither war cost the United
States more than 200 dead. That
isn’t just impressive, that’s absolutely amazing.
But in that hubris lie the seeds of NCO’s current problems,
plus a growing backlash among the Fourth Generation
Warfare crowd. The extremely spotty planning by the
Pentagon for the occupation and postwar stabilization of
Iraq enabled the rise of the disastrously efficient insurgency
we face today. Arrogance about what could be achieved by
NCO contributed to that bad planning, but frankly, far more
of it was a result of the Pentagon’s defensive response to the
Army’s charges that Secretary Rumsfeld and his lieutenants
were willfully disregarding its warnings about necessary
troops levels on the ground.
Youremember the debate: Rumsfeld versus them –
Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki.
Rummy said we could “win the war” with a small, highly
transformed force, whereas Shinseki argued for massive
ground forces (roughly 200,000). In the press and in our
own wording of this debate, the argument became known
as, “How many troops are required to win the war?” Later
accusations revolved around whether or not “Rumsfeld
sought to fight this war with too few troops!”
My problem with this description, as I’ve noted many times
in the blog, is that it conflates two concepts: regime takedown
and the post-conflict stabilization/nation-building
effort. I call the former, the “war,” and the latter, the
“peace.” So, in my more careful lexicon, I say that Rumsfeld
was arguing – and arguing correctly – about how to “win the
war,” while Shinseki was arguing – and arguing correctly –
about how to “win the peace.” >
So, in my more careful lexicon,
I say that Rumsfeld was arguing
– and arguing correctly –
about how to “win the war,”
while Shinseki was arguing
– and arguing correctly –
about how to “win the peace.”
FEBRUARY 2005 7
Now here’s the rub on Shinseki: many inside “The Building”
(the Pentagon, to insiders) will tell you that Shinseki’s stance
was disingenuous in many ways. In short, he didn’t want the
war and so argued for a huge ground presence in order to
raise the public’s perception of long-term costs – almost a
form of public emotional blackmail. This charge had been
leveled against the Army in the past, as in its perceived footdragging
responses to our involvement in the Balkans during
the latter half of the 1990s, reflecting its Black Hawk
Down fear of being left holding the bag in some backward,
tribal land of savages.
Now,of course, the Army can look back on that
debate with “pride.” It made its usual Powell
Doctrine arguments about “overwhelming force.” As those
warnings were ignored, then the resulting quagmire only
demonstrates – yet again – that in “real wars,” 90 percent of
the casualties are ground-pounders dying in dribs and drabs
against a feral warrior force whose blast-from-the-past combat
tactics render irrelevant the entire NCO vision of future
warfare. Aha! Now the Army is not only needed, it’s having
to recruit personnel coming out of the Navy and Air
Force to fill its rapidly depleting rotations into Iraq! If that
isn’t justice, then what is?
Reenter the Fourth Generation Warfare arguments with a
vengeance. The 4GWers accuse the NCO crowd of winning
a Third Generation War by destroying Saddam’s regime
and military, only to lurch unwittingly into a Fourth
Generation War with the resulting insurgency – a “second
war” the U.S. military was completely unprepared to wage,
much less win.
Now before I lose you in the language, I have to go back and
give you a quick-and-dirty rendition on the generations of
war. The big writer here is William Lind, and you can
Google™ him to your heart’s content because he’s still quite
prolific on the subject. Lind introduced the concept of
4GW in a seminal Marine Corps Gazette article he co-wrote
with four military officers (all
Army and Marines) back in 1989
called, “The Changing Face of
War: Into the Fourth
Generation.” If Adm.
Cebrowski’s 1998 article,
“Network Centric Warfare: Its
Origin and Future” (with USAF
officer John Gartska) framed the
NCO debate, then Lind et al’s article did the same for the
4GW vision.
Very simply, let me sketch the four generations :
1. The First Generation is defined as extending from
the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) to the American
Civil War. This generation was driven by the rise of
gunpowder and the need to maintain order on the
battlefield. It was all about marching columns of
men lining up and shooting each other with rifles
and cannons, in a very orderly manner. Things
changed in terms of firepower in the mid-19th
Century, which is why the Civil War was so bloody.
If you simply lined guys up like that, the improved
rifles and cannons were going to shred them with
great efficiency, so things like Pickett’s Charge at
Gettysburg were tantamount to suicide runs.
2. The French military are credited with inventing the
Second Generation of warfare around the time of
the First World War, which Lind likes to short-hand
with the French dictum, “The artillery conquers, the
army occupies.” That’s the war the U.S. Army and
Marines learned fundamentally, retaining much of
its ethos today, except now it’s the Air Force that
conquers instead of artillery. Desert Storm was
very 2GW in its onset. Remember the 40 days of
bombing before we sent the troops in?
3. The German’s invented the Third Generation and
unveiled it as blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” in World
War II. Here, maneuver was added, so speed
replaced firepower. If 2GW was attrition, then
3GW was all about destroying your enemy’s rear-his
logistics and ability to wage war.
4. Fourth Generation Warfare is somewhat orthogonal
to all that. It is essentially guerrilla war that seeks
to defeat an enemy not militarily, but politically, and
not on any one battlefield, but over years and even
decades of low-intensity conflict. Mao is considered
the father of modern 4GW, though it’s obviously
been around as long as weak forces have met
far superior forces. In his recent book, The Sling and
the Stone, Thomas Hammes runs through the history
of this modern variant of
guerrilla war, from Mao to
the Viet Cong to the
Sandinistas of Nicaragua to
the Intifadas of the Gaza
Strip and West Bank.
Naturally, al Qaeda is considered
very 4GW, coming as it
did out of the great victory
that was the Islamic insurgency’s defeat of the
superpower Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Now in general, I like the concept of 4GW, because far
better than NCO, it seeks to incorporate the notion of war
within the context of everything else. In 4GW, military >
Now in general, I like the concept
of 4GW, because far better than
NCO, it seeks to incorporate
the notion of war within the
context of everything else.
8 FEBRUARY 2005
tactics are always subordinated to a host of larger considerations,
like the economic, political, and social pain inflicted
upon the opponent. Instead of trying to destroy the
enemy’s ability to wage war logistically or operationally (a
hopeless task against a far superior opponent), 4GW practitioners
seek to destroy the enemy’s morale or will to wage
war. In other words, it’s one long, "bloody nose" strategy to
brutalize your enemy’s soul and thus extinguish his will to
wage war.
Myproblem with 4GW is that it tends to revel too
much in its bloodiness, forecasting a Robert
Kaplan-esque vision of the future as one big West Africa
teaming with Mad Max-like savages who rape, pillage, and
murder while roaming the countryside in light trucks armed
with bolted-on heavy machine guns (the archetypal image of
Somalia’s “technicals”). Also, prior to 9/11, the 4GW crowd
was just as fixated on China as our preferred future opponent,
as was the NCO crowd (see Hammes’ book for continued
evidence of this tendency). Why? China was the
enemy of choice of all camps prior to 9/11, especially after
the Bush administration signaled its complete unwillingness
to do anything that smacked of “nation building” – something
that 4GW readily admits is part of any victory over an
insurgency-defined opponent.
The current fight between NCO and 4GW, over who “lost”
the war in Iraq, is basically a repeat of the Rumsfeld-Shinseki
argument. The 4GWers accuse NCOers of blindly stumbling
from a 3GW victory over Saddam into a 4GW stalemate
with the insurgency. But again, this accusation tends to
conflate two very different situations: one the war, the other
the subsequently botched peace. But the 4GW crowd’s
answer can’t be simply, “Let’s get ready for counter-insurgencies
because NCO is
powerless to deal with
them.”
The answer on Iraq (and
future situations) needs to be:
“Let’s get so good at the follow-
on System Administration
model that when our NCO
force defeats a regime, we
effectively shut down the
possibility of 4GW by flooding the country with peacemaker
troops capable of 4GW combat, staffed up big time
with support personnel, lots of foreign coalition forces, and
plenty of civilian experts all brought together in a larger
force that’s optimized for stabilization and reconstruction
efforts.” In other words, the best 4GW strategy is to prevent
insurgencies before they start.
I don’t want the military to get good at 4GW, I want the military
to get good at avoiding 4GW.
The NCO crowd is now on its heels over Iraq, putting the
very concept of “transformation” at risk inside the Defense
Department. This is wrong and short-sighted. We need that
NCO-transformed Leviathan force for the long haul,
because that’s the big hedge against any rising near-peer: it
effectively raises high barriers to entry onto the strategic
playing field. It’s also the force we’ll use to wage war across
the Gap as required. That force, however, needs to be complimented
by the SysAdmin function that takes the combat
logic of 4GW, along with its avowed emphasis on the
“everything else” context, and places that non-traditional
war-fighting ability at the disposal of a larger force that’s
designed to secure victories, win the peace, and shrink the
Gap.
In short, our choice isn’t between Network-Centric
Operations or Fourth Generation Warfare, it’s how we focus
each effectively on the logically-defined tasks of effective
regime change, a list that covers both war and peace. A
Pentagon debate that pits these two visions of war against
one another is self-defeating and a waste of time. We must
take advantage of the force-structure savings allowed by
NCO (e.g., the smaller footprint) to build up our 4GW capabilities
and marry those with the larger force requirements
entailed in successful SysAdmin work.
In Asia today, there is a huge ongoing battle for “hearts and
minds” that has nothing to do with a 4GW enemy. Yet, if
this battle is waged well, it will do much to prevent such an
enemy’s rise in the future and diminish the appeal of enemies
who already exist within the region. It is the battle to
deal with the aftermath of
the earthquake-driven
tsunamis, the largest humanitarian
assistance/disasterrelief
operation the world
has ever seen. A truly transformed
U.S. military, one
that covers both the
Leviathan and System
Administrator functions
effectively, will be a military
that not only efficiently processes a politically-bankrupt
regime like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It will also be a force
ready to deal with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to preemptively
secure “peace victories,” in situations like the one
we face today in southern and southeast Asia.
For me, that is the force worth building for the future
worth creating. 2
Our choice isn’t between Network-
Centric Operations or Fourth
Generation Warfare, it’s how we focus
each effectively on the logically-defined
tasks of effective regime change, a list
that covers both war and peace. |
