Granite State posted: With the ongoing debate about how to prepare the ground forces for both the full spectrum of small wars and the threat of major conventional war, how about letting the Marines focus on small wars, with maybe amphibious/forced entry as a secondary field?
Steve Metz and Frank Hoffman wrote a piece that laid out a number of options re the roles and missions of the Army and the MC. This was one of the options. One of the others was they divide up R&M regionally (I think the suggestion was the Corps take the Pacific). Again, my memory fails me as to where they published this and a very quick troll through my files did not locate it (but I have it somewhere, probably in electronic form) - Steve will be able to help on this piece.

I think MattC86 is right when he says that such a suggestion will not get very far, to quote him, 'because of (as Ken White would say) parochialism and turf wars'. I find it difficult to conceive of the Corps giving up its high end conflict capability (as a light infrantry) to focus solely on COIN, or perhaps more to the point, irregular warfare (but they have established a Center for Irregular Warfare, info about which you can find if you check the SW Blogs).

Tequila posted: Not the thinking of the current CMC. Most of what we are hearing out of that office tends towards the "forget Iraq and COIN, let's get back to our kinetic, expeditionary, amphibious warfare role."
Tequila, I had not considered this as a 'reason' for what Conway said in those several public speeches a couple of months back. His point was that the Corps was getting 'too heavy' (Conway reportedly specifically pointed to the growing number of MRAPs) and needed to return to its expeditionary, amphibious roots (not sure about the 'kinetic' part - see http://newsblaze.com/story/200710161...p-Stories.html
a link which I hope still works.)

Conway's speeches did make me smile quietly to myself (SQTM - see, even academics can come up with acronyms ) as what he was saying sounded pretty much like what the Corps was saying when it started to pull out of Vietnam in 1969. Though I suspect that the attitude Conway expressed, while undoubtedly shared by many within the USMC, was more a default (ie organizational culture) response than it was a hard and fast, well thought through, 'this is the future of the Corps' observation. In the least, Conway's articulation of these issues may be seen as a way to forestall the Corps being pressured into being solely a COIN/irregular war force. At bottom, the Corps would, and will always, fight tooth and nail to retain its expeditionary, amphibious character, lest it become seen as a second army, whatever its missions and roles.

The future of the Corps, I would suggest, is more likely - but not necessarily - to lay in preparing for what they term 'Hybrid Wars'. Hybrid Wars are a mix of conventional and irregular warfare, so yes, their future will be to work on being a light, expeditionary force that has the capability to fight across the 'Three Block War'. [On hybrid war, see Mattis and Hoffman, Proceedings, Nov 2005 and Hoffman, Preparing the Marine Corps for Hybrid War, at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/st...F=1445694_0306
There may also, possibly, be an emphasis on urban ops within this, given the Corps past emphasis on urban warfare that goes back to 1995 under Gen. Krulak (Krulak, Operational Maneuver from the Sea, Proceedings, Nov 97 - I think this is right). Though I expect an urban emphasis may be a hard sell within the Corps (this emphasis lapsed for a number of years after Krulak retired in '99), even though we can likely expect conflict to occur in towns, cities and megacities (which is what OMFTS suggested would be the case in the 21st Century).

MattC86 posted: Do you think that Gen. Conway's nixed proposal to take the Corps to Afghanistan and play whack-a-mole (to appropriate Eden's term) with the Taliban is rooted in an aversion to COIN and an affinity for "kinetic, expeditionary" operations?
Hmm. I have heard other reasons, such as it makes rotations and logistics easier, planning easier, predeployment training and exercising easier (I do not mean 'easy' easy, just easier than dealing with two different wars). Being a bit of a cynic (okay, more than 'a bit' of a cynic), I personally wondered whether there was an element of 'lets get out of Iraq while we can, before it all goes pear-shaped and we get blamed, and let's instead go where the possibilities of success are greater'. They were the first out of Vietnam, and seemed to not be tarred by what happened there in the same way the Army was. But I do not really think this was a reason - my default position is 'cynicism'.