Recruiting for SWC members because....

[John T. Fishel]

This is my opinion. As such it is clearly open to challenge. But it is based on a fair historical perspective and so might be worth something. At the height of the COIN revival I was fearful that we would fall back into the default mode of trying to forget about small wars as we did after Vietnam. We also did the same after every single major war we have fought. After the Revolution we fought Indians in the Northwest Territories and Florida but then along came the War of 1812 with a major conventional enemy (and we darn near lost the war). After New Orleans we fought Indians again all over the West. Then along came the Mexican War against a major conventional enemy and Scott, Taylor, and Doniphan led us to victory. After that we had to learn to fight Indians all over again. In 1861 along came the civil war with West Pointers fighting West Pointers. Big armies on the move. Lots of technical innovation. After it was all over and Sheridan had scared the French out of Mexico massing 50,000 troops on the border, we had to learn to fight Indians again. Then we fought Spain in 1898 - it is amazing how many former Confederate generals marched again to the sound of the guns in the blue and khaki uniforms of the US, Fitzhugh Lee and William Oates come to mind. In the aftermath, the dirty little wars in the Philippines and Caribbean raised up and Pershing chased Pancho Villa all over Northern Mexico but we had to learn that these weren't the kinds of wars we were prepared to fight because people were not only not learning the lessons, they weren't even recording them. WWI was followed by the Banana Wars which only the Marines were interested enough to record but they were also preparing for the next big one. They published their Small Wars Manual at almost the same time as their Tentative Landing Operations Manual which was a major influence on conventional operations in WWII.

The point of all this is that neither our political nor our military leaders like the small, nasty, dirty wars. We all want to fight the "big one" (why are we pivoting toward Asia? - not merely for the obvious and real threat of China). As the small wars wind down, interest fall off among both military and civilian national security analysts. This leaves the door open for smart, intelligent challenges to the prevailing wisdom of small wars - challenges like those of Gian Gentile both on these pages and his new book. As for our junior officers, they are looking at being assigned to units planning against conventional conflicts with China (perhaps) and certainly not toward Iraq now seen in the media as a totally foolish effort without any redeeming social virtue or Afghanistan which our president says we are leaving in 2014 regardless of conditions on the ground. The Administration has floated the idea of no residual force of any kind - the zero option. and who wants to be the last casualty of a war we have deemed is not worth fighting anyway? As a result, interest in our broad topic has died down.

This fact - loss of broader interest - makes our forum (Journal and Council alike) all the more important. Here we can not only record the lessons we needed to learn but debate them and, perhaps, allow the next generation to actually learn them and not make the same mistakes that we and previous generations made.

On that note

Cheers

JohnT

[Steve Blair]

I agree with you, John, and have commented many times here about the similarities I feared (and am seeing) between what the Army (and military generally) did after Vietnam and what they're doing now. It's been something of a historical pattern for the US, and one that is concerning (or should be, at least). Information, knowledge, discussion, and historical context for small wars are all things that need to be preserved and continued. If not us, who?

[Fuchs]

The pattern which irritates me is that the U.S. returns into the wars of choice business again and again, no matter how poor an investment it is.

I don't care about whether it's a very poor or skilled and thus simple poor investment. Neither should be done.

[slapout9]

I go all the way back to the Urban Operations Journal (precursor to the Small Wars Journal) I can still remember when we couldn't even break 100 as far as members go. So what happened? It is pretty typical as far systems thinking goes. We went from the formative phase to the normative phase (which lead to the revamped Journal section) to where we are now.........the adaptive or integrative phase. We have to change(adapt) or we will get all extinct and stuff Not a good option. More is less...we need to focus. The Journal is competing with the Council....not good IMO.... we may need to kill it! Or we need to kill the Council but we have to choose IMO. I always felt all naked and stuff when I posted at the Journal.... it is nice and cozy over here.....that might be good but could also be bad.

Some of us are facing age and health issues that were not present at the Big Bang. Nobody knows where Ken White is! We are in deep sh@@ just like the country. Only one thing left to or figure out. We need a great Strategic Reawakening(is that a word?) anyway just my random thoughts from the cultural center of the Universe.

[Bill Moore]

I agree with you, John, and have commented many times here about the similarities I feared (and am seeing) between what the Army (and military generally) did after Vietnam and what they're doing now. It's been something of a historical pattern for the US, and one that is concerning (or should be, at least). Information, knowledge, discussion, and historical context for small wars are all things that need to be preserved and continued. If not us, who?

Institutionally yes, at the individual level I still see a high level of interest. Those of us in the SW community have to take some responsibility also, because we have a number of amateurish articles that claim all future wars will be small wars, and there has been too much non-critical comments on our COIN doctrine within our own community. In many ways the Small Wars tribe isn't that much different than the Big Wars tribe.

If we were more self-critical and receptive to non-doctrinal ideas instead of being perceived as COIN doctrine Kool-Aid drinkers (doesn't apply to all, or even most, but it does to many of our most vocal and well known SW advocates), and we provided options that supported achieving the balance between capabilities that SECDEF Gates advocated we may be in a different place. I too share your concerns that we'll throw the baby out with the bathwater, based on the past decade of far less than successful small wars. If our community provides options for future defense policy makers that address all security concerns (and hopefully our diehards in SWJ realize there are more security concerns than Small Wars) then maybe we'll bring the more rational and deep thinkers on war back into the community? SWJ has provided a great service to the national security discussions from the tactical to strategic levels, we just need to realize where our nation is at now and find a way to contribute to that dialogue in way that keeps small wars in the discussion.

[Steve Blair]

Institutionally yes, at the individual level I still see a high level of interest. Those of us in the SW community have to take some responsibility also, because we have a number of amateurish articles that claim all future wars will be small wars, and there has been too much non-critical comments on our COIN doctrine within our own community. In many ways the Small Wars tribe isn't that much different than the Big Wars tribe.

If we were more self-critical and receptive to non-doctrinal ideas instead of being perceived as COIN doctrine Kool-Aid drinkers (doesn't apply to all, or even most, but it does to many of our most vocal and well known SW advocates), and we provided options that supported achieving the balance between capabilities that SECDEF Gates advocated we may be in a different place. I too share your concerns that we'll throw the baby out with the bathwater, based on the past decade of far less than successful small wars. If our community provides options for future defense policy makers that address all security concerns (and hopefully our diehards in SWJ realize there are more security concerns than Small Wars) then maybe we'll bring the more rational and deep thinkers on war back into the community? SWJ has provided a great service to the national security discussions from the tactical to strategic levels, we just need to realize where our nation is at now and find a way to contribute to that dialogue in way that keeps small wars in the discussion.

Bill,

One of the problems I've seen historically is that this topic is usually viewed as an "either/or" sort of statement. There's too often a tendency to shove one of the topics off the table to make room for the other (or the "flavor of the month"). Obviously there are more security concerns than Small Wars, but small wars are the problem that just doesn't want to go away. I don't vocally advocate for one over the other: obviously they're equally important in a sense, with one or the other getting priority depending on the international situation. But I do worry that (yet again) we'll shed any number of hard-learned lessons (or learn the wrong ones) in our rush away from the current situation. We've done that so well too many times in the past.

[gute]

Maybe some of our council discussions, opinions of the majority (or not) should make its way into SWJ as editorials. Maybe SWC Calls for Papers done through the forums and edited by the SWJ for publication on the website - dumb idea?

Just tryin to think outside the box.

[jmm99]

Admittedly, we at SWC are "Part of the Small Wars Journal Empire" ; but the "Empire" is neither the Rand Corp. nor the Brookings Inst. - its editorial staff is limited and SWJ articles receive no or minor editing. SWJ articles are very much a "roll your own" proposition.

The rules for submitting content to SWJ and its Blog are here, Submit Content. Those same rules provide a framework for creating full fledged articles within the confines of SWC.

First, write up the article in any word processor. I'd use .rtf format and then print the file to .pdf (I use doPDF; link). The .pdf file is then attached to an SWC post in the relevant thread (new or old); limit of 4 .pdf files per post, with 195KB per file.

To check file sizes, I selected the text from two recent SWJ articles: Back to the Basics: Chess, Poker & the Future of Warfare; and Thinking and Writing About COIN. DoPDF creates .pdf files of 65KB and 80KB respectively.

So, I think your idea is basically sound and a good one, but the SWC poster who aspires to article publication will have to do the heavy lifting.

----------------
Bill, Steve et al.

While I think post-Vietnam is material history, we shouldn't forget that reform of the Army and Marines was the end result - albeit with more than a little trauma. Surely, there will be a lot to talk about - e.g, how to provide effective low-, medium- and high-intensity forces on a limited budget.

I'd say take a knee and watch what happens over the coming year; and see what 2014 will bring.

Regards

Mike

[slapout9]

We did really lousy at the fund raiser this year to.