by James A. Russell
The apparent beheading of American journalist James Foley adds a particularly gruesome and tragic twist to the sports event-like reporting of our attempts to thwart the advances of the Islamic State in Iraq over the last week. Foley’s execution will only ensure that the “what to do about [...]]]>
by James A. Russell
The apparent beheading of American journalist James Foley adds a particularly gruesome and tragic twist to the sports event-like reporting of our attempts to thwart the advances of the Islamic State in Iraq over the last week. Foley’s execution will only ensure that the “what to do about ISIS” quandary confronting US policy makers in Washington will rise to the top of President Obama’s “to do” list.
Yesterday, we blew up some Islamic State armored personnel in northern Iraq. Tomorrow, who knows where our airplanes and missiles will strike? The public sits in rapt attention. Have we stopped the Islamic State today along Route 1 or somewhere else? Who will be the next unlucky hostage to forfeit his or her life in this awful real life drama?
America’s return to military action in Iraq — this time without ground troops – bespeaks yet another attempt to rescue the country and the region from the multiple and disastrous unintended consequences of invading Iraq in 2003.
What’s left of Iraq litters the landscape like shattered glass, its people scattered in surrounding countries, and posse-like militias taking the law in their own hands amid the wreckage of military and government institutions we tried to build from the ground up at the cost of billions of dollars and thousands of US lives.
We will be no more successful this time around than we were from 2003-10, when the US dumped a trillion dollars and tens of thousands of troops into what Winston Churchill described earlier in the 20th century as the “odium of the Mesopotamia entanglement.”
A strategic result today, no matter how many airstrikes we launch or how many Special Forces advisers we send in, is highly unlikely. The Islamic State cannot be “bombed” out of existence, no matter how outraged the public may be about its war crimes or Foley’s murder. Our Special Operations teams also cannot kill all the Islamic State leadership, no matter how well their skills have been honed on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The ordering of airstrikes and the dispatch of more advisers to Iraq is emblematic of a central strategic problem that has faced many presidents in the post-World War II era: fighting limited wars for limited objectives in the nuclear era.
The US’ answer to the defeat of its conscript army in Vietnam was the creation of the volunteer, professional Army. For the United States, the creation of this force was in many ways the most significant strategic consequence of the country’s defeat in Vietnam.
The idea behind this army seemed sound: a smaller, better-trained force would prove more tactically proficient than its conscript-manned predecessor. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, the hope was that turning over military campaigns to the professional army would divorce the public from the mostly negative experiences of using force, which would give military and political leaders a freer hand in using it around the world.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States deployed the best-trained and equipped army in the world against guerillas. As was the case in Vietnam, the Army and Marine Corps achieved no strategic effect before returning home — except in a negative sense with the breakup Iraq. After 10 years in the field, the US Army and Marine Corps could not be any better at fighting irregular wars — yet their tactical proficiency could not alter the negative strategic and political circumstances of the wars they fought.
What’s the lesson here? President Obama looks at these interventions as having failed and, on the one hand, seems understandably reluctant to send the Army back to places like Iraq. That caution would lead you to believe that the United States is thinking more carefully about interventions that amount to policing actions in the developing world. Sadly, however, that is not the case.
Like the post-Vietnam period, the main unintended consequence of our failures in Iraq and the so-far hung jury in Afghanistan has gone largely unnoticed around the country.
While failing to impose our will on guerilla adversaries in Iraq and Afghanistan, we essentially doubled down by expanding the country’s reliance on Special Forces and their proficiency at irregular war.
Not only have we expanded the size of the special forces and effectively created a fifth-arm of military services, we have also empowered the now global Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to orchestrate our special forces and irregular war campaigns. SOCOM will wield the same bureaucratic, institutional, and budgetary command as the regional commander-in-chiefs.
That is a counterintuitive and strange reaction to 14 years of fighting in which we achieved tactical proficiency at irregular war but could not wield that proficiency to strategic effect. Even stranger, the expansion of US reliance on Special Forces and the creation of an associated larger bureaucratic empire have happened with little public or political debate.
Who decided to create this service with its own manpower and funding? What makes us think that being clever and tactically proficient in irregular war will be any more successful in the future than it has proven to be over the last 14 years?
Why should failure at irregular war lead to bigger budgets for SOCOM and larger numbers of Special Forces? Why can’t the Army and the Marine Corps do these missions — as they demonstrated during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? These important questions are absent from America’s broken national discourse.
As a result, we better get used to the special event-like reporting on the Islamic State, which draws on the Iraq and Afghanistan template for developing world interventions. Just don’t expect these interventions to achieve strategic effect.
The inability to think through the lessons of more than a decade of irregular war symbolizes the intellectual fog gripping the foreign and national security policy establishment that has confused and blurred the distinctions between tactics and strategy.
We will be no more successful in future developing world military interventions than we have been in the past unless we stop believing that clever tactics supported by well-trained troops will somehow achieve our objectives.
Launching airstrikes at Islamic State convoys and sending in more advisers to Iraq is just another example of the triumph of tactics over strategy and fails to grasp the political dimensions of the struggle for power in Mesopotamia. We cannot police the politics of these struggles by bombing antagonists. We should not send teams of Special Forces into these situations just because we can.
Sending in advisors and authorizing airstrikes over Middle Eastern conflict zones involves the US in the domestic politics of situations we don’t fully understand and that do not directly threaten our interests.
Until we grasp the central truths about the distinction between strategy and tactics and the limits of our military power, we will continue to thrash around ineffectually in yet another attempt to address the problem of fighting limited wars for limited objectives.
Photo Credit: DoD photo by Airman 1st Class Cliffton Dolezal, US Air Force
]]>by Wayne White
An old military dictum still applies: no determined enemy can be stopped by air power alone. Much will depend on whether the Kurdish Peshmerga militia proves willing to make a stand against the forces of the Islamic State (formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). [...]]]>
by Wayne White
An old military dictum still applies: no determined enemy can be stopped by air power alone. Much will depend on whether the Kurdish Peshmerga militia proves willing to make a stand against the forces of the Islamic State (formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). Meanwhile, Washington has little choice but to remain cautious about committing itself to more than tightly focused airstrikes linked to narrow contingencies. Ironically, more extensive US air support might be made available if the Kurds show they are ready to make a strong stand.
The track record of Peshmerga fighting capabilities so far in this crisis is worrisome. After the Iraqi Army abandoned large areas all around the boundaries of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) over a month ago, Peshmerga units were quick to move in to fill the void, in part because most of these territories were mixed demographically, in dispute with Baghdad, and coveted by the KRG. When, however, challenged by Islamic State forces as of last weekend, the Kurds showed little desire to face off with the Sunni Arab extremist group in order to defend them.
Kurdish leaders argue that they lack sufficient weapons with which to face Islamic State forces. However, the Peshmerga probably outnumber the forces facing them, and most Islamic State fighters are no better equipped than the Kurds. The rugged terrain of much of Iraqi Kurdistan also provides defensive advantages. Finally, the Peshmerga do possess weapons such as heavy machine guns, rocket propelled grenades (RPG’s), light mortars, and formidable light anti-aircraft guns for use against opposing ground forces. Dug in properly using towns and mountainous terrain features as obstacles, with this array of weaponry the Peshmerga could inflict very heavy casualties on the Islamic State.
Such losses could give the Islamic State some real pause as its forces have yet to suffer high casualty rates in Iraq. Its ugly reputation has generally sufficed until now to frighten potential opponents into abandoning the field. This is what the Islamic State is counting on again to defeat the Kurds.
Furthermore, it would be very dangerous if the KRG is deluding itself into thinking US air strikes can stop the Islamic State. Without robust Kurdish resistance, ISIS would be capable of overrunning much of Iraqi Kurdistan, driving millions of Kurds and other refugees sheltered by them into Turkey and Iran. Aside from the obvious humanitarian disaster this would represent, billions of dollars of Kurdish real estate and infrastructure investment over the past 11 years for the creation of a prosperous new Kurdish region would fall to the Islamic State and be demolished or heavily looted.
If the Kurdish leaders and the Peshmerga do, however, muster sufficient willpower to stand their ground and confront the Islamic State, Washington might well reconsider its tightly limited aerial support role. With Kurds fiercely defending along identifiable lines, more US airpower could be usefully employed to take out the Islamic State’s heavy weaponry in a way that would level the military playing field for the Peshmerga.
Most of the heavy weapons the Islamic State is capable of putting into the fight would stand out rather starkly for American military pilots on the rolling terrain of northern Iraq. This would present the US with a real opportunity to take out large quantities of the US equipment the Islamic State captured in the wake of the Iraqi Army’s retreat some weeks ago.
The next few days will be defining: Washington will find out whether it has a partner in northern Iraq with which it can work in putting the brakes on the Islamic State’ advance on that front. So far I suspect the White House has wisely kept some cards well hidden. Nonetheless, it would be difficult to believe that if the Kurds stand their ground, give the Islamic State a bloody nose, but need help here and there to hold on, Washington would not be willing to increase the tempo of its air strikes in support of the Peshmerga.
Such a scenario also could be a lesson for Baghdad. Firm US backing for a determined KRG government and Peshmerga might provide a political boost for those Iraqi leaders pressing for what President Obama again called for last night: an inclusive Iraqi government that would provide Washington — and other governments — with a reliable partner in the struggle against the Islamic State throughout all of Iraq. Such a government inevitably would merit more additional US and international support than has been the case with the dysfunctional mess prevailing in Baghdad in recent months.
Photo: President Barack Obama meets with his national security advisors in the Situation Room of the White House, Aug. 7, 2014. Credit: Official White House photo by Pete Souza
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