- This topic has 2 voices and 2 replies.
-
Posts
-
Currently re-reading Col Harry Summers' book On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam WarThis rather landmark work was originally published in 1981 for the Army War College, where Summers was on staff. The genesis of the book is that the Army War College exists to conduct research and analyze the problems that the Army is facing, and to find solutions. The War College's greatest work started in the early 20th Century when it examined and tried to find a solution to the mobilization and logisitical issues that surfaced so blatantly in the Spanish American War. The result was that by World War II the US Army was a logistical juggernaut, and no modern army could hold a candle to the U.S. Army's ability to mobilize, equip, move, and supply combat divisions. But the operational analysis did not keep pace. After World War II focus for strategy and operational doctrine was focused on nuclear war, and conventional strategy suffered. Political scientists wrote policy addressing half of the Clauswitzian equation addressing why the nation should go to war. Military thinkers at the war college wrote the logistical doctrine on how to get the Army to war and how to supply them when they were there, and systems analysts within the Army addressed the means (weapons and equipment) necessary to fight the war. But the "how" was largely written by the nuke strategists. We had surrendered the lessons learned from all of the war plans and contingency plans war-gamed during the inter-war years.The thesis for this book, I think, is more pertinent today than many may think. The thesis is that leading into the war in Vietnam, there was a failure to coordinate military theory and strategy in relation to natioanl policy. The result was a faulty definition of the conduct of war that exhausted the army against a secondary guerilla force and a military strategy that failed to support the national policy of containing communism.In light of Bob Woodward's new book, there may be some parallels.Anyone else here read Summer's book?
I read it years ago in high school. It is sitting on a shelf in my basement. I may have to pull it out again and re-read it. That will have to wait until January though. I start my thesis course on 4 Oct and am pretty sure that will be fairly all-consuming until I am finished with it. I have already warned my wife that she will be a thesis widow for the next four months.As to the question of strategy, after the Gulf War the US fell victim to victory disease and stopped looking at whom potential opponents would be instead we focused on who we wanted our opponents to be. We wanted to fight a nice conventional battle and believe that terrorism and unconventional warfare would be sideshows. That is the root of our unpreparedness. You would think that Somalia and the continuing strife in Afghanistan would have led some of our planners into thinking about how to fight a counter-insurgency but it did not. Instead we waited until we were in one and then came up with something. it is almost as though we were following the late nineteenth century French Doctrine of muddling through that they tried to use against the Prussians in 1870.That is the curse of the American Military; we always plan for the last war. The only exception to that rule that I can think of is the Gulf War itself; and there I think we just got lucky that we got to fight the conventional fight we had been planning for with the difference that it was in the desert and not the plains of Europe. In the World Wars we got lucky as well because we got to watch the fighting and prepare for what we face before we got involved and at that we still made plenty of missteps before we got our act together. For examples look no further than Kasserine or Guadalcanal to see how unprepared we were. The US as a whole is still not forward looking; the way we are flailing around in Afghanistan proves that.
That is the curse of the American Military; we always plan for the last war.
Several years ago I read Defeat Into Victory by Field Marshall Slim (a fantastic, if somewhat pedantic work) and that is one of the things that stuck with me. After the war Slim (and several of his peers) were vilified in the press and before Parliament exactly for that - preparing for the last war and not the next one. Slim's reply was that it was an easy jibe for a MP to make when they had been preparing for no war at all.I guess that where my thoughts are going as I read through Summers' book is that we are again developing a reactive strategy -- that our doctrine is being shaped by technology instead of technology being shaped by strategy. Then I read the excerpts from Bob Woodward's book and how the President and the Cabinet are shaping strategy (as they should) but the response of the military leadership is somewhat lacking. "Victory" does not seem to be addressed in our current strategy. Our leaders talk of stability operations, peace keeping, nation building, and withdrawal.... But where is there discussion of victory conditions? Where are the National Policy goals and success conditions / criteria?Food for thought.
Technology has driven American strategic thinking since at least the late 80's when I joined the military. I am sure you are ware that the hot topic these days is knowledge dominance. It is though Pentagon planners don't realize that the vast majority of insurgents in Afghanistan or Iraq are like semi-guided missiles. They are given minimal training, weapons and pointed at a target and then they wait for a target of opportunity. It is only the spectacular attacks that take a lot of planning and many of those are coordinated through kinship and clan networks, two areas in which we will never gain knowledge dominance. The staff types seem to forget that their God's eye view in the D-TOC does not always translate into reality and ions on a map do not always represent the way things will go. I have said since the war started that what we need in command are warriors. Despite what I have said to ski on another thread. I think the war in Afghanistan is amenable to a military solution, but it would be extremely bloody for both sides and collateral damage would be immense. The public would not stand for what such a victory would require nor do we have commanders with the stomach to pursue such a strategy. Instead we are left with the weeping sore that is Afghanistan with no good prospects that it will get better anytime soon. We have handcuffed ourselves to the sinking ship that is the Karzai government and we will go down with it.
