Warrior Ethos

[Surferbeetle]

Schmedlap,

Great questions, glad to see that you are back. I will break up a few of your points and address them individually. Lets see if we can better describe the Civil Affairs elephant.

To be fair, those definitions don't seem to match what our forces are called on to do. Our forces needed to organize some kind of civil order or governance (preferably the latter), not just cooperation between locals and the US military. CA and CMO seem to be geared towards synchronizing existing civil governance with the military, rather than creating or organizing civil institutions in the first place. It seems to assume that some kind of governing framework is already in place and can be leveraged. Well, what if there isn't?

Let’s split hairs concerning your assumption that a governing framework does not exist (and as I recall you spent time in Iraq so I will use Iraq as a staring point). Nature abhors a vacuum, and in Iraq my assessment (and apparently yours as well when you describe gangs and militias) was that many different governing frameworks existed even though the GoI framework ranged from weak to non-existent depending upon time and place. None-the-less, a review of US history reveals that we have imposed military governments upon countries whose governments we deemed to have failed. The examples include Mexico, The Confederacy, the Philippines, Germany (WWI and WWII), and Japan. The question of who was legally in charge of Iraq during March 2003 until today, is beyond my technical expertise. Wikipedia, however provides a legal background/timeline on the occupation of Iraq and the status of forces agreement and perhaps you or JMM can shed some additional light as to its adequacy and applicability to this question.

The definitions from the links that you provided above (with my commentary in brackets)...

Civil Affairs - Civil Affairs units help military commanders by working with civil authorities and civilian populations in the commander’s area of operations to lessen the impact of military operations on them during peace, contingency operations and declared war. [Lessen the impact? That is not what has been needed, lately. What has been needed is the creation/organization of some kind of governance so as to prevent a situation from arising in which lots of people organize themselves into gangs, militias, and kill one another due to fear and competition for resources and power. That is not lessening an impact. That is preventing a new threat from emerging out of a vacuum.]

[Again, this does not meet the need that we have had lately. What was needed was to stand up some kind of indigenous civilian authority to mediate disputes and prevent the society from devolving into Hobbes' "state of nature"]

[Nice things to have, but you need some kind of governance. Otherwise, these projects do not have the intended effects. Does CA establish governance?]

[situational awareness and intelligence collection - but nothing about organizing the people into some means of governance]

] "The part is in bold could be a solution in Iraq or Afghanistan, if there are enough troops to do it. But there are not and were not. So those troops, instead, need to organize the locals to do it themselves. But that is not what the definition is describing.

Security and Stability are inseparable, as we both know from Iraq. From a purely military standpoint as a CA-Bubba I can’t work with the locals to bring the local Water Treatment Plant back on line (LOO-Restore Basic Services) or assist with elections (LOO-Conduct Free Election) or work with the local police forces to bring them back on line (LOO-Restore Security) without Infantry-Bubbas doing snap-TCP’s, cordon & knock ops, raids, etc. etc. Simultaneously we need SF-Bubbas training local military forces and Active, Guard, Reserve and CA-Bubbas with professional civilian skills (practiced every day) working with the locals on this problem. This is the essence of Civil Military Operations…CA planners (limited resource) helping GPF forces (larger resource) to work with the local population (largest resource) to stabilize the AO.

As you know well, it’s a tough nut/moving target and this is reflected in the progression of US Doctrine for these situations: Small Wars, Low Intensity Conflict, Operations Other Than War, Military Operations Other Than War, Stability and Support Operations, Security Force Assistance, etc., etc.

For your Saturday night reading pleasure GTA 41-01-001 is one of our easily accessible guides to Civil Affairs which is “Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.” and provides more insight into how our small Civil Affairs forces work the worldwide battlefield.

What was needed, so far as I can tell, is not defined in some existing term, so armed social work enters the vocabulary. It sounds, to me, like armed community organizing. Perhaps that is not the best term, either. Maybe armed social work is better. Maybe both are wrong. Fine. But it's beyond the scope of CA or CMO, imo.

IMHO Germany and Japan are examples of adequately resourced CA/CMO operations and Iraq and Afghanistan are poster children for what happens when we don’t adequately resource CA/CMO operations. Who is the Four Star General Lucian Clay of Afghanistan or Iraq?

Again IMHO we should consider adequately resourcing Civil Affairs Forces across all of the services with respect to people, language training, cultural training, industry training, and technical & advanced degrees (your link to the WSJ article on Korean enlistment rates with respect to highly educated professionals could be a part of the solution). This would be with the understanding that the nation that we are assisting will provide the bulk of the needed human capital to accomplish the mission....which of course will drive how we approach the problem set.

Lastly we need to incorporate CMO training from AIT and BOLC forward.

Ken, however brings out some pithy points that need to be reflected upon as well. If I may paraphrase: Since capabilities/tools are often used in emergencies without respect to long term impacts is this capability something that we as a nation want to invest in?

Steve