High Price of Coalition Operations

[Merv Benson]

She makes some good points. There have also been political costs to the multilateral fetishism. The "Mission Accomplished" speech was about telling those who had promised to help in Iraq after Saddam was defeated that it was time to come through. In hindsight, we would probably have been better off without the speech and without the "help." In reality this multilateralism was about appeasing unappeasible domestic critics who were charging that our efforts to liberate Iraq were "unilateral."

I do, however, think that the relationship with Poland has intangible benefits that go well beyond what is happening in Iraq.

[Tom Odom]

This seems to be a single case analysis extended beyond its limited intellectual reach. Clearly she focuses on the Iraq case; and she resolutely refuses to look any deeper into that case as an example of coalition warfare. I suggest reading Ricks on this aspect of what coalition members agreed to do versus what they were asked to do after Baghdad fell.

But the larger issues of coalition warfare or the many cases where coalition warfare have provided needed support and legitimacy, she largely ignores, notably Desert Shield and Desert Storm as well as WWII, Korea, and Vietnam to name a few other examples. If we are to use WWII as a marker for what the current threat means, then let's look at the painstaking and often painful efforts put into that coalition effort. WWII cooperation between the US, the UK, and the USSR was often a case of three way tug of war between FDR, Churchill, and Stalin. I don't think however any historian would suggest that unliateralism was the way to go.

GWOT is in my mind very much GCOIN--that is to say, our enemies think, act, and respond like transnational insurgents and as such they draw support from state actors and a global Muslim population. Our GCOIN effort must recognize that and act and react accordingly. I have over the past couple of months used Kaleev Sepp's COIN Best Practices article published in Military Review as a framework for discussions on COIN, often set in Rwanda from 1994-1998. The central tenet of COIN is the population is the objective. In the case of GCOIN that population encompasses the Muslim majority that does not accept Wahabist (al Quaeda) or extemist Shia (Hizballah) interpretations and the greater non-Muslim population of the world. Coalition building is therefore central in that effort.

More importantly, GCOIN means that non-lethal is the method of choice and that implies at the strategic level that non-military are the means of choice. For ourselves, I believe we need to structure our effort accordingly and restructure our national security apparatus to reflect and direct that effort. Do not misunderstand me by thinking that I am against the use of the military or the fact that certain targets must necessarily be killed. I do believe that many such targets ultimately will require a dirt nap. But I believe if you take the current discussions on "tactical" COIN and match them against the strategic fight, the parallels are striking and that they resonate historically.

Coalition warfare expensive? Yes, but non-coalition is most certainly more expensive and I believe ultimately self-defeating in this realm of conflict as set on a global stage.

Best
Tom