Some problems are best solved without outside help
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Boot
One thing I realized after the Berlin Wall came down was that the world just became a much more scarier place, with lots of brush fires, somewhat what the world was like pre-WWII or even WWI. .
At the risk of derailing this thread, I feel compelled to address Boot's comment above. I will say upfront that I think my remarks are germane to the overall topic. I think they highlight a fundamental sssumption that seems to underlay the idea that America's military should be doing SAF/FID missions. I propose that until this normative assumption is fully debated and resolved to the extent that we can clarify what our national goals are in conducting SAF/FID, we cannot effectively move to the next step of deciding what type of forces to employ to achieve those goals.
I suspect that what really happened in America, post-Wall destruction, is a shift of awareness. I suspect that the world is not all that much scarier. We just have had the opportunity to shift our focus away from a monolithic enemy--sort of a "road to Damascus" moment--and to see that a whole lot of folks around the world are pretty busy shooting each other up on a pretty routine basis. Being the good, paternalistic folks with a missionary zeal that we Americans are, we seem to feel the need to try to keep these folks from blowing each other away by meddling in their internal affairs. This is, to some degree, I suspect the same spirit that motivated the Monroe and Truman Doctrines. (It is also reflective of what is happpening in Texas with regard to the intervention with the FLDS, IMHO--but that is another thread not germane to SWC/SWJ).
I submit that performing SAFD/FID missions generally are not the kinds of things that are crucial to the nation's continued existence/territorial integrity/political sovereignty and, as a result, are not obligatory actions on America's part. We should continue to train our forces to have a general advising/training/nation-building capability more like the crowd control and infrastructure rebuilding efforts we demonstrate in the wake of a natural disaster like Katrina or the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Our SAF/FID posture should be predicated on an invitation from a host country and should be tailored to repond to the request for assistance from that country. If the request is for something other than what we would deploy at home as a response to a natural or humanitarian disaster, it would probably be in America's best interest to decline, while advising other potential "invitees" to keep their hands off the problem as well.
To bring this back to Boot's point--if the world today really is "a much more scarier place" I suspect America has itself to blame--for poking its nose in business where America does not belong.
I step down from the soap box
I concede that my point has been heard and acknowledged by my friends in JCISFA. No doubt they understand the pitfalls. However, this warrants continued monitoring.
Gian -- I used your name in vain -- because I do think of you as the wild-eyed prophet screaming from the bluffs over looking the Hudson. You are not alone, but I think there is a middle ground. Nor am I advocating an advisor corps like my Sosh brother, but...
I think we as a nation have little choice but to transition to the strategic defensive... As you so rightly state our conventional posture right now consists of a bunch of broken equipment, tired personnel, and young leaders not really experienced in full-spectrum operations...
So what does that mean for national security in general and the military in particular... IMO it calls for an economy of force approach (heavy on SFA) to build partner capacity to govern inside their borders, while we re-build the materiel and grey matter capacity to fulfill the security responsibilities outlined by wm (secure our borders, etc).
Tom--If I am one whom broke the truce so to speak--then I apologize to all. I rarely use bold text for obvious reasons, but got quite frustrated with myself that I had so poorly communicated the gist of my thoughts.
My head is both bloodied and bowed:D
Gian--see you on the high ground
Live well and row
Agreed. However, that accident of history
and confluence of circumstances is where we are. As we all know bureaucracies in democracies are loth to give up roles and missions because thsoe mean money and power, so we're stuck with that. :wry:
In an ideal world it would be an Army mission (purely on a size, location and capacity basis), it is not but it is critical that the Army not try to fob it off as they did once before and as the many Gian supporters in high places would like to do. Those folks were wrong before and they would be wrong again. :mad:
Shame the good guys -- much less the bad guys -- won't play the way we want them too... :rolleyes:
I think that comes back to one of our previous discussions
Quote:
Originally Posted by
wm
Please make the case for the necessity/causal linkage to American national self interest alleged in this post. The argument smacks of the same kind of "logic" that produced the domino theory as a justification for American involvement in SE Asia.
Propping up a political entity that is unable to gain support (and, therefore, legitimacy) from the people that entity was intended to serve seems like a guaranteed way to keep the flames of discontent burning and probably spreading to other polities with nascent legitimacy issues.
I suggest a review of a lesson to be learned from the prisoner's dilemma. It shows quite clearly that acting on a "lop-sided" perception of what is most in one's self interest turns out to yield what is least in one's self interest.
Who develops or determines decisions about how failed is failed enough that the international community has to act. Also in regard to determining why we should or shouldn't act I would think it should be just as important to identify why we shouldn't and be sure and provide best assessments of what that lack of action has brought about historically.
Finally lets not forget to look at those elsewhere who choose to act in a manner which they see beneficial to their own agendas and figure out if the ultimate question isn't really, Is one form of society better than another, If so which.
I think we could probably fill volumes with just these being discussed but all in all they seem to be the main points of contention throughout most of history.
If the strategy is flawed do we need the force structure?
wm and W. Owen make excellent points. It is an assumption, and a weak assumption that enhancing our capacity to conduct FID/COIN on a larger scale than we do now will address our national security objectives. That assumption depends on the willingness of our pals to do our bidding. Most nations won't want to be perceived acting on behalf of another nation.
What type of and what size (capacity) FID capability do we really need? To answer that we need to "clearly" articulate our national security objectives and strategy, conduct a realistic threat assessment (and realize it will probably be wrong, so be prepared to flex), then design the appropriate force structure across the government, not just within DoD. I do think DoD will need to increase their capacity to conduct FID, but perhaps it will not need to be as large as some of the proposals that have been floated. I think we must assume that we will still have to act unilaterally when we can't convince another nation to take care of problem that is a threat to our interests, so based on the emerging threats (new generation), what does this force structure need to look like?
Personally, I think the threats tomorrow will continue to be diverse and we'll need a why range of capabilities in our military and equally important throughout our government. In a perfect world, we would have international capabilities (e.g. a functional UN).
Better to think of SFA as the Tool Box, or the Framework
All good points - keep in mind that terms matter. Most of the discussion seems focused around FID, which in our mind we associate with an investment to bolster internal defense - and support a legitimate government against lawlessness, or subversion. This is absolutely an important mission.
However, if you are working with a state or a regional organization to build capacity for other reasons - it starts to look different. Much if it depends upon the end you are trying to accomplish.
Wayne:
Quote:
We need to be sure that we are invited in for that SFA mission by someone that is an appropriate inviter.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this statement. It is absolutely best when the HN or the regional organization comes forward to the Country Team or the GCC and says "can you provide some assistance". Part of what country teams and GCCs do is coordinate with HN leadership and the regional organization's members for just such purposes. Part of what we are saying is lets do this better then we are right now. Part of this has to do with a lack of capacity and partly a lack of capabilities, but there is also the issue of authorities. These are the types of issues we are trying to address by providing a broad, holistic framework that allows the various parts, be they FID, SC, SA, FMS, etc. to be brought into an integrated strategy that does not just look at problems from a binary perspective, but with regard to building regional capacity and stability as well. SFA is not a competitor to FID, SA or SC, its the toolbox that houses them so to speak. It provides the shell for the GCCs and above to think of policy and long term consequences with regards to the policy objectives they've been told to pursue.
Much in the same vernacular as BPC - there is in large part the assumption that you have a partner to work with. If someone rejects assistance, its on them, however, if they are sinking into the muck of insurgency, transnational crime, or the aggression of a regional bully, their neighbors may recognize it and ask for help to avoid the same fate. Moreover, neighbors may come forward together, or be asked to participate together since neither may have sufficient ends unto itself, in order to benefit each other - the "Partnership for Peace" is one such effort.
Their efforts also serve our ends in various ways since instability has a nasty way of spreading to places that do matter. These days, a terrorist that earns his spurs in a backwater locale, may himself become an exportable commodity - they are human capital. Further, the location may become a nexus for the importation, storage, refinement etc. of some nasty things. An example, even after we eventually have stopped conducting FID in Iraq - however long that may be, we will still be conducting SFA through SC, SA and FMS - its just a transition to another activity in order to reach the policy end. This is another reason why the broader policy offices in OSD and the rest of the IA are all players in SFA - before you can move forward in other areas you must have security with regards to internal and some degree of external - however, you can't always get to the former without the other elements of power playing key roles.
Even when considering partners, you could quickly run out of resources - there are just that many who'd like us to assist them more from improving their ministerial level capacity to combined exercises, to educating their leaders at home or here, to purchasing better equipment and receiving training and support on it, to sharing intelligence, etc. We can't meet the demand when you consider it from a holistic perspective - we'd ever have enough force structure to do so and meet our own requirements. As such, we have to be somewhat pragmatic about who and what we commit to.
Even if we were not heavily involved in OIF and OEF, we'd still be hard pressed to meet the demand if we let it be known we were "open and the shelfs were full, just come on in." I'm pretty sure the leadership understands that. We must be careful not to see this as a one size fits all sort of approach, and we must ask ourselves, "how does a particular effort support our policy objectives?" Then it must be held against the other efforts that also deserve our attention and prioritized in terms of time, units, money, etc. They are either pursued, scaled back, or put on hold - although if we do this right, we might have some regional organization with the ability and rationale to put forward their assistance over time - so as OE says, they can take care of it themselves.
The basics of this we've been doing for a long time - what is perhaps new is that we are looking at it in a holistic manner (the tool box), that we see the requirement to reevaluate the risk of inaction differently, that the nature of this enemy under these conditions presents a different set of consequences, and that as such we will require more resources to carry this out. Those resources are different both in terms of some of the traditional roles and responsibilities within and outside the military, and in terms of what the broader inter-agency may need to accomplish in order to meet current and future security challenges. There just is not much low hanging fruit left.
I also might add that one day we will probably find ourselves conducting SFA in a post conflict environment again. It might be after we closed the conflict, or it might be we were asked to assist after the belligerents had closed the conflict - and it was clearly in our interest to take the lead, as such the authorities are different, and so are the conditions.
Again, think of SFA as a tool box vs. a tool. We have good doctrine and practices for some of the tools, but what we lack is the overarching framework that ties this all together so that it passes the CFAS test, and better helps us meet our long short and long term policy goals.
Best, Rob