Mass Insanity: Latest Trend in Army Doctrine

[carl]

Smart old SOF Action officer (SOSAO): "I like this slide that shows the relative roles of SOF to Conventional forces across a spectrum of activities, and understand why you have placed "Unconventional Warfare" on the far right end of the scale where it is primarily "SOF enabled by GPF," but you're showing "Stability Operations" as the far left end of the scale for "GPF enabled by SOF."

The word slide means powerpoint which means the whole thing was doomed before it started.

[Bob's World]

Carl,

Agree that PowerPoint is a mixed blessing, but it was the least of the problems in this case. Our "understanding" of the past 10 years has sent our doctrine into a death spiral of well-intended bad ideas that have all fed on each other until we are now entering a true crisis of doctrine. The spin being applied by the services currently to preserve their self-interests in the budget crunch may well be what pushes us over the edge, as now bad ideas are being twisted by worse motivations, and the results are predictably sad.

I deal with this at some level almost every day, but even I had not realized how far gone we were until the good major and I had our little chat...

[Entropy]

It is pretty strange that unlike many other endeavors, we feel the need to constantly recreate a taxonomy of warfare.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Bob,

Trust me, if I could start tossing things into a doctrinal dust bin, "Irregular Warfare" would go in first, and "Security Force Assistance" would be hot on its heels. Then I would take all of the "IW" missions like FID, UW and COIN that have been so vigorously massaged to reflect current whims and good ideas, and rescrub the entire family to get back to basics, filter out the colonial / cold war biases, and clean up the overlaps and gaps.

The entire IW issue since 9/11 has been a less than honest effort to transform the force to deal with what is probably better categorized as low intensity warfare, but all categorizations will miss key elements. IW was used by the services and other elements to justify historical roles. The definition was locked in stone by the former SECDEF, and somehow we managed to describe it as encompassing five our doctrinal missions (CT, COIN, FID, UW, and Stability Operations). Since we were stuck with that to begin with, there was really no need to exert further effort into IW, since we already had doctrine for each of these categories. We missed an opportunity to look at the world from a more holistic view.

As for SFA, I don't follow your resistance against the desire to fix the massive shortcomings in our polices to effectively build partner capacity. SFA is not the same as FID as some (to include some senior SOF officers) frequently claim it is. The fact of the matter is we have bureaucratic processes, laws, and policies that prevent the effective execution of building partner capacity that need to get fixed. It is the right thing to do for the nation, because if we get it fixed we'll actually save billions of dollars over time, and the money we do invest in this endeavor will actually result in partner capacity being developed. We have very few examples of success in this area, especially in recent years. There is much more to it than laws and policies, we need to learn to get away from creating forces and force structure that mirror U.S. forces, but that will be easier if we minimize, not remove, GPF's role in many cases. GPF does what it does, and that is build large and expensive bureaucracies. The return on investment is questionable. In my view we have to get SFA fixed, I don't care what we call ultimately call it, as long as people realize it is larger than FID.

[Bob's World]

One critical question that we rarely truthfully and wisely address is "capacity to do what?"

The preservation in power of those who we believe will support our interests, but who ride significant segments of their own populace hard, and who offer no true means for the same to legally address their concerns with governance is bad business.

We delay the inevitable and make enemies of populaces all at once, and those populaces then become rich recruiting grounds for those who would conduct acts of transnational terrorism against us.

Now, if this capacity we seek to build is to employ against as a hedge against some aggressor state? Sure. Lets lend a hand to a friend. But if it is capacity to suppress and oppress one's own populace? That is a mission we need to start working our way out of.

We need to ask: "Are we here to liberate the oppressed? Or are we actually here to strengthen the oppressor?" Too often we are the latter, and while that used to be a reasonable way for a powerful state to secure its interests abroad, I believe it is now due for a belated retirement. We look for smart ways to assess security force capacity. What we really need is a smarter way to assess the nature of the grievance between the government and the segment(s) of their populace they intend to use that capacity against.

Times are changing. We need to change as well. But the changes that we've been working into doctrine over the past 10 years are largely headed in the wrong direction.

[Fuchs]

We look for smart ways to assess security force capacity. What we really need is a smarter way to assess the nature of the grievance between the government and the segment(s) of their populace they intend to use that capacity against.

Germany has had a foreign policy which included civil society support abroad;

Student exchanges, free university studies here for foreigners - to bring some 'western' liberal ideas into the world

Goethe Institute - basically cultural embassies which teach German language (good for trade, direct investment), promote German arts etc

Supporting intellectuals and opposition parties (in part even meeting them on a visit by the chancellor) by recognising them and speaking with them.


It's all very secondary and low-key, but it might be worth a look at. After all, it may have worked fine. Germany ranks really well whenever the BBC or another source asks world-wide about favourability ratings for countries.

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Imagine Obama launching a student exchange program with Saudi-Arabia; I bet the domestic political reactions would not be very "mature".

[Morgan]

I think Bob is DoctrineMan.

[Bill Moore]

Where our views diverge is you see SFA as a mission, which isn't necessarily incorrect, but I prefer to look at it as a capability to accomplish a task which is build whatever partner capability that the policy dictates. I think that when we decide to do it, that we need to be able to it effectively, and off line I can offer examples of how our flawed security assistance and title 10 programs fall short, and we end up spending millions (if not billions) and get little return on our investment because of it.

Now, if this capacity we seek to build is to employ against as a hedge against some aggressor state? Sure. Lets lend a hand to a friend. But if it is capacity to suppress and oppress one's own populace? That is a mission we need to start working our way out of.

The first point isn't open to debate, and of course we do lend a helping hand to our friends to help them protect themselves against hostile states. The second issue is a loaded with controversary. Should our national strategy be focused on liberating the oppressed? In that case should we undermine our economic interests that are intermingled with China's to help liberate Tibet? Our is China right, that Tibet is living in the past and they are trying to bring them into the future and liberate them from old and oppressive religious ideas? Is helping to professionalize the Philippine security forces detrimental to the citizens of the Philippines, or does it benefit them? It has been my observation that forces that are better equipped and trained are less likely to abuse their citizens than the poorly equipped, paid and trained security forces that are more thug like than security force like. I suspect we have no idea how the situation will turn out in Libya, will the new government and its security forces oppress its people? Will we mitigate that risk by training them? Is the risk greater that extremists will take over if we don't develop their security forces? There are no black and white answers to your final point, it is policy dependent, and we can only hope that policy is sound.

[slapout9]

Doctrine writers are still thinking in terms of the Enemy as a country or an Army as opposed to the Enemy as a System. Until we begin to truly understand and accept that....there is no fix to our doctrine. The 4GW guys were on to something.