Fight-Win or Full Spectrum?

[Norfolk]

How does preparing to fight one type of enemy make you any less able to fight another type? If it does, the clear assumption is that you are too stupid to adapt.

I submit that their confusion is most probably based on believing in "types of conflict" and not "types of enemy." COIN means fighting against insurgents. It's not a type of conflict. It's a type of enemy!

I'll both broadly agree and broadly disagree (and sit on both sides of the fence here, too). Wilf is right that a well-led, well-trained force should have no fundamental difficulty (though there will be a period of adjustment, obviously, which may see a little friction) in switching between conventional and "irregular" warfare. It's primarily a matter of solid, comprehensive training, and the ability to switch, psychologically, between the two - again a product of good leadership, preparation, and training.

The problem for the US Army and the USMC is that you have 150,000 troops (+/- c.10,000) trying to do the job of at least three times the number required. There is no time for solid preparation or training across the "full spectrum"; there is an increasing substantial number of field-grade combat arms officers who have rarely or even never manoeuvered a battalion or brigade either on EX or even in the field. They may have Staff College under their belts, but they have not developed the practical knowledge of how to actually manoeuvre units of formations in the field. That requires personal experience, preferably plenty of it.

With the almost gross over-stretch of the USA and USMC in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps only a year between deployments - that are each at least a year-long themselves, there is time between deployments for units and formations only to sweep everyone up, cobble them back together, refocus on some basic skills and especially upon the anticipated skills needed for the next deployment, and then pack up and head off. Obviously while engaged in COIN in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little or no time for unit- and formation-level combined arms field manoeuvres for the most part.

Complicating all this is the fact that battalions and squadrons have to spend part of their time (if they have time) completing the basic occupational training of new soldiers, as the 17- and 20-week infantry syllabi of the USA and USMC are too short to fully address all the basic skills needed and to a high-level of profiency in all those same basics at the same time. That, and the personnel system which undermines unit cohesion in the longer-term.

To address the matter of the article itself, the US and the Coalition are, in Strategic terms, stuck pigs. Ends, Ways, and Means must always include Costs and Risks. The latter two, as everyone knows, were given short-shrift, never mind the question of whether the invasion of Iraq was right in the first place. The US (and to a rather lesser extent, the Coalition partners) cannot expeditiously disengage from Iraq without serious consequences. Iran's strategic position might improve considerably. The Iraq Invasion was a win-win opportunity for Iran; first off, its potent local enemy, the Ba-athist regime, was removed as a military threat, and the Shi'ite factions that had Iran's backing gained considerable influence within the new Iraqi Government. Secondly, if the US was defeated or at least compelled to withdraw from Iraq by the insurgency, Iran would be left as the undisputed power with the most influence within Iraq; not quite a puppet-master, but certainly in a position to potentially sway Iraqi policy and conduct in ways inimical to that of the US and the Arab states.

On the other hand, there is no question that the USA and USMC have been figuratively bled-white by the scale, duration, and intensity of the Iraq mision. There is a serious institutional degredation beginning, and even if the troops were pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, the damage to the Army and Marine corps as institutions - loss of experienced junior and field-grade officers and NCOs, the lowering of recruiting standards, the damage done to the RC, the loss or serious damage to something like 40% of major equipment stocks, and the degredation of unit- and formation-level combined arms skills, will take perhaps 15 to 20 years to fully recover from. And none of this addresses the loss in lives of thousands of troops, or the physical and/or psychological wounded in the tens of thousands, troops who were too precious to loose.

The sad fact is, the US for all practical purposes got suckered into doing Iran's dirty work, while simultaneously getting its blood sucked. Kipling's literary warning against the West trying to hussle the East is most appropriate here. They are the masters of subtlety and guile, and it's a basic survival skill there; we are lucky if we amount to their rather dim pupils by comparison. The US cannot get out of Iraq without suffering the loss of a substantial portion of its standing and influence in the ME and especially the Persian Gulf. It cannot stay in Iraq without causing serious long-term damage to the Army and Marine Corps as institutions. Just as the invasion of Iraq was based, implicity, more on a hope that all would turn out just fine, and the US leave a friendly, restored Iraq quickly, the US is almost left with little more than hope that things will settle down enough to get out of Iraq very quickly, within a year or two at the most. Before institutional damage becomes deep and enduring.

Apologies for the long post.