I disagree with John Nagl. I do not think the agency's activities should have become more "military." You have a military to execute military operations and you have an Intelligence Agency (or 16 or so) to collect and analyze intelligence and perhaps conduct very selective covert action when needed. Competent military forces exist to execute the "military operations" that the CIA is executing from the Air Force executing drone or other air delivered strikes to Special Operations Forces capable of conducting what are euphemistically termed paramilitary operations (which are really aspects of Special Warfare and Surgical Strike). I would note in this article that Special Forces is only briefly mentioned in connection with paramilitary operations.
In terms of Counterinsurgency and Human Terrain Teams there is no discussion of SOF in this article. I think this is an area that should be examined and we should recall that there was a very poor relationship between the Special Warfare Center and School at Bragg and the Combined Arms Center at Leavenworth when FM 3-24 was written and I would say almost by mutual consent and but certainly based on distrust and animosity on both sides there was little to no SOF-Army/Marine collaboration on FM 3-24.
I mention this because as we all know in the post-Vietnam era we essentially purged COIN from US military doctrine (though some smart guys kept much of it alive in Foreign Internal Defense and Security Assistance Operations – recall that the brilliant Special Action Force of 1963 US Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine became the Security Assistance Force in 1980 Low Intensity Conflict Doctrine). I have an old boss and mentor who was tasked to develop a COIN course at Leavenworth in the 1980's and he traveled to various the schools in the Army in search of COIN doctrine there was none to be found.
Fast forward to 2006 and the development of Army and Marine COIN doctrine (as mentioned with little to no SOF collaboration). However, we have since matured in our relationships and we should be optimistic that we will not only not do what we did post-Vietnam as we wind down from Iraq and Afghanistan, nor will we return to the bad blood times of 2006 doctrinal development. I say this because the establishment of the Army, Marine, USSOCOM Strategic Landpower initiative and office (http://defense.aol.com/2012/11/01/army-creates-strategic-landpower-office-with-socom-marines/) provides an opportunity to not only capture and share lessons learned and develop doctrine but also can ensure positive collaborative relationships among the different forces that will be operating in the human domain on land.
V/R
Dave
The Legacy of David Petraeus and the Future of American War
By Armin Rosen
As the former CIA chief and military leader's official career ends, the grappling with his formidable legacy -- and what it might mean for future U.S. policy -- can begin.
Before he was embroiled in the lurid and increasingly complicated scandal that ended his brief tenure as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, General David Petraeus was an already-iconic military leader, the commander who rescued the U.S. war effort in Iraq, and who was brought in to help reverse course in a deteriorating Afghanistan. But before he even assumed command of U.S. forces in Iraq, Petraeus assisted in producing a document crucial to understanding the general's broader impact on American policy -- and on thinking about how and why America wages war.
Future students of Petraeus's intellectual legacy will likely start with the 2006 version of FM 3-24, the army's counterinsurgency manual, the result of an effort spearheaded by Petraeus and General James Mattis, and necessitated by the waning prospects of victory in Iraq. In the midst of a directionless and seemingly doomed campaign, the generals brought in a wide range of civilian scholars and military officers to help formulate the first update to the military's counterinsurgency field guide in over two decades. According to John Nagl, a defense policy scholar and retired lieutenant colonel, and one of the authors of the manual, Petraeus involved over 100 civilian journalists, scholars, and intellectuals for a two-day vetting and open discussion of a draft version of the document. "It was a great example of Petraeus's ability to reach out to a broader intellectual community to gather ideas, but also to gain support for the project. And it mattered."
As Stephen Biddle, a scholar and George Washington University professor who served on Petraeus's Strategic Assessment Team in Iraq in 2007, explains, the resulting manual conceived of warfare in jarringly unconventional terms. "Its primary logic is that you succeed in the war not by destroying the enemy but by protecting the civilian population and giving them a stake in the government you're trying to support," says Biddle. "The manual conceived of counter-insurgency as essentially an armed contest in good governance, in which the government we're trying to support and an insurgency are both competing for what are thought of as being a largely uncommitted middle of the population. The side that convinces the uncommitted middle to side with them, wins the war....The new doctrine is about how to provide governance, economic development and security to a threatened and largely uncommitted civilian population."
(Continued at the link above)
No comments:
Post a Comment