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Thread: COIN v. Conventional Capability Debate

  1. #61
    Council Member ODB's Avatar
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    Default Yes and no

    Quote Originally Posted by Sargent View Post
    Maybe there's something useful that can be done with the former service personnel -- a draft? If they're so keen to serve, why not go back on active duty? Oh yeah, because for doing the same jobs they get paid way more than the military personnel. And if it costs less to hire one of them than to send a Lance Corporal, it's because we the tax payers have already paid for their training, which the private corporations get to leverage at no cost to their own bottom lines. (Maybe we should demand a rebate from them?) But I think the cost savings is more like a shell game -- I don't think it's really costing us less in the long run.

    So, I'm not much of a believer. War is not business, and it cannot be run like one. It has costs, and trying to minimize those costs according to business principles is a bad idea all around. If we cannot afford those costs, then we need to rethink how we fight. Or we need to consider whether the effort is worth the cost. But to think we can cheat the costs of war is a foolish game.

    V/R
    Jill
    In the long run it is cheaper. No VA claims, no retirement, no family medical coverage. Think how much of this comes out of the defense budget alone. Is there anything wrong with me benefiting from my training? Afterall it was my time, blood, sweat,and tears that went into it? Is it any different than any other person out there? If said company trained me,then their competition comes along and offers me twice the money, do they owe them anything? Problem now is the knee jerk reaction, especially in SOF. Let's see, I can continue to do 6 month rotations making $50-$60 thousand a year or I can do contract work making 3 times that in the same amount of time. For me money isn't everything, besides I refuse to work with subpar organizations, very few of these PMCs today hire quality over quantity and the ones who do you never hear about unless it's them contacting you personally. Unfortunately as is the nature of todays world many quality guys jumped on this early on,got their share of the money,saw it wasn't what they thought it was and moved on, but not back into service. No thanks keep your money and subpar employees.
    ODB

    Exchange with an Iraqi soldier during FID:

    Why did you not clear your corner?

    Because we are on a base and it is secure.

  2. #62
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    Contracting tends to reduce the flexibility of any military force. By replacing soldiers with contractors, you automatically reduce the pool of manpower available for mowing grass, raising the flag, providing individual augmentees for wartime operations, or manning the defensive perimeter when the Chinese break through the lines. This creates a problem that can only be solved by either further stressing the remaining soldiers...or hiring more contractors. This leads me to my next point.
    I disagree in general principle. Contracting increases the flexibility of the military in giving it a fairly responsive ability to supply additional manpower and skillsets in response to demand, faster than the military can do so itself by either retraining existing personnel in other MOS's or increased recruiting.

    When the hazards are fairly low for contracting to represent a viable economic alternative to civilian jobs, it is a cost-effective way to get skillsets found in the civilian sector (logistics, maintenance, personal protection), where the civilian market for their skills pays for their sustainment between periods of demand, rather than the military paying them to practice in peacetime.

    Finally - and to bring us back to the COIN vs Con argument - we only have the luxury of extensive contracting because we operate in low-threat environments. Should we have to fight against a near-peer on a high-intensity battlefield, we may find ourselves having to reinvent numerous wheels. After all, the historical trend from, oh, 1792 to the recent past had been to reduce or eliminate contractors from the conventional battlefield, because they proved to be inadequate to the demands placed on them.
    Agreed that the utility of contractors drops off sharply as risk increases. Well, since the thread is about the HIC/LIC balance, why not utilize the savings in costs and manpower from contracting in a low-threat environment to enable more of the force to sustain their HIC training even during a LIC? Just because contractors are not a viable resource for HIC doesn't mean we can't leverage their abilities in LIC to ease the strain on the active force.

    And if it costs less to hire one of them than to send a Lance Corporal, it's because we the tax payers have already paid for their training, which the private corporations get to leverage at no cost to their own bottom lines. (Maybe we should demand a rebate from them?) But I think the cost savings is more like a shell game -- I don't think it's really costing us less in the long run.
    People will inevitably leave the service and take their skills with them. Do you expect every service member to remain active or reserve until retirement? Their skills remain useful to them and to others. The option of contracting gives us a very quick way to retain those skills without resorting to measures like a draft that would dramatically decrease recruitment. Yes, there's a short term cost in decreased retention, but the pool of people getting out early to cash in on contracting is far smaller than the pool that we are drawing from.

    I agree that contracting as a long-term solution can be addictively poisonous if contracting subsumes military functions rather than augments them, and becomes a long-term solution rather than a flex capacity. I gather that comes (as it does in business) from a misunderstanding of the real costs and benefits of contracting.

    So, I'm not much of a believer. War is not business, and it cannot be run like one. It has costs, and trying to minimize those costs according to business principles is a bad idea all around. If we cannot afford those costs, then we need to rethink how we fight. Or we need to consider whether the effort is worth the cost. But to think we can cheat the costs of war is a foolish game.
    I can think of few things more dangerous. The costs of war are not fixed, and even in a national wartime footing, are always subject to constraints. Today, military spending and recruiting competes in a vastly larger national economy. Our ability to generate combat power at the tip of the spear is inextricably linked to the costs at the other end. It appears you are confusing business principles of "best allocation of limited resources" for "minimize costs regardless of the consequences".

  3. #63
    Council Member Sargent's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ODB View Post
    In the long run it is cheaper. No VA claims, no retirement, no family medical coverage. Think how much of this comes out of the defense budget alone. Is there anything wrong with me benefiting from my training? Afterall it was my time, blood, sweat,and tears that went into it? Is it any different than any other person out there? If said company trained me,then their competition comes along and offers me twice the money, do they owe them anything? Problem now is the knee jerk reaction, especially in SOF. Let's see, I can continue to do 6 month rotations making $50-$60 thousand a year or I can do contract work making 3 times that in the same amount of time. For me money isn't everything, besides I refuse to work with subpar organizations, very few of these PMCs today hire quality over quantity and the ones who do you never hear about unless it's them contacting you personally. Unfortunately as is the nature of todays world many quality guys jumped on this early on,got their share of the money,saw it wasn't what they thought it was and moved on, but not back into service. No thanks keep your money and subpar employees.
    It's not cheaper if the war is lost. If we only look at combat service support, contractors almost cost us our independence, and I don't think the peril associated with hiring others to do that job has ever gone away.

    As for the issue of what former service personnel and their skill set, there's nothing "wrong" with what individuals are doing with their training. There is no law against it, and I don't even think it's unethical. And if the contractors are making money hand over fist, the companies themselves are making even more. And I'll point out that it was the companies which were the object of criticism regarding the training investment made by the taxpayer, not the individual service members. Look, the question was asked, what to do with these former service personnel who are an asset. The assumption was that we are best served by them in a PMC. I don't think that's true, and I gave an analysis of why it's not. It's nothing personal.

    I don't believe that the true costs of the contractors are being properly accounted. Alternatively, I don't think that the value of what may be gotten via the military benefits are well accounted for either. Does it cost more to constantly retrain new people or to retain them? In order to retain people, you have to give them a reason to stay. I'm absolutely certain that someone did a cost-benefit analysis and realized that even with the costs you list above the long-service family man/woman was still the better option, that even if they cost more in dollars, the intangible benefits were well worth it. Besides, again I have to say that the costs of war cannot be minimized in the same way that they can be for business.

    Let me offer another way to look at the contractor issue. I can't help thinking that part of the contracting objective is to minimize the number of "troops" we have deployed, because the American people might look at things differently if it were the case that we had 300,000 or so troops in Iraq. It would give them an entirely different sense of the war. So, in effect, there is a bit of a lie involved, in order to maintain public support. And that's a problem, because at some point the lie is going to catch up with them.

    MMX wrote: It appears you are confusing business principles of "best allocation of limited resources" for "minimize costs regardless of the consequences".
    I wasn't just talking about business principles and cost. I'm talking about the application of a business philosophy to warfare in general. There are many things that don't translate. But it's really at the heart of things where the translation breaks down: business seeks to achieve efficiency, whereas the application of that same idea to warfare does not work. Armed forces must be effective, and often to achieve that, they must be inefficient. So, while a throwaway B-school buzz-line like "best allocation of limited resources" might be vaguely transferable, what you realize in the conduct of warfare is that what constitutes "best" bears no resemblance to its definition in the civilian sector. Once you get beyond the platitude, the applications diverge widely.

    Please don't confuse this with a suggestion that profligacy is the only way to fight a war or manage one's armed forces. But it's a whole 'nother post to get into to consider how the military could do with a bit more wisdom in the allocation and use of resources.

    V/R
    Jill

  4. #64
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    Default Hey, editor

    Can someone pull this back over to the contractor thread or start a new contractor thread?

    As I recall, we were here to drain the conventional/COIN swamp, not play with the contractor alligators.

  5. #65
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Old Eagle has a point, the thread is wandering.

    The contractor stuff is mixed with some pertinent, some not.

    Dave, Bill or one of the other mods may wish to move those posts but I decided not to move 'em due to vague applicability (he said as he guiltily slunk away ).

    That said, we should try to stick to the topic which is COIN vs. Conventional Capability

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    Default OK Try this to get back on track

    Big Purple (not just Army) isn't buying into the COIN/FID/SFA stuff. It's all about fighting and winning the nation's wars --- as long as those wars are only MCOs against other near peer nation states and have to be done with expensive high tech equipment.

    Outsourcing the wars of inconvenience, since they are beyond what current SOF can handle, is the obvious approved solution. The RFP for advisor support from IAG is just one data point. ACOTA, which used to be led by the uniformed military, has basically been outsourced to civilian contractors. Luckily, many are former advisors from previous excursions abroad.

    What think?

  7. #67
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default I think you're correct in what will happen.

    As to what should happen, I'm not at all sure I disagree with what probably will happen. I do not think the American psyche is attuned to the patience level required for major COIN efforts; we have dumbed-down the education system, elected selfish politicians-for-life and developed a culture of dependency that does not bode well. Fortunately, most of the rest of the world is headed the same way and is slightly ahead of us. Regrettably, too few realize that everyone in the world is not nice and there are those that just do not play well with others. (/curmudgeonly rant)

    Pending the arrival of the Slapout Based Warfare doctrine, I'm inclined to emphasize conventional capability, develop a strategy that avoids COIN to the extent possible -- and I think that is an achievable goal -- while being prepared to wage a hybrid intervention or two employing a large stick in unfriendly neighborhoods coupled with post op massive spending of $$ to farm out the cleanup.

    That is not a case of wanting the bad guys to fight the war we want, it is a case of playing to our strengths and avoiding being sucked into an ambush designed by said bad guys to play on our weaknesses.

  8. #68
    Council Member Ron Humphrey's Avatar
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    Question I can see where your coming from

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    As to what should happen, I'm not at all sure I disagree with what probably will happen. I do not think the American psyche is attuned to the patience level required for major COIN efforts; we have dumbed-down the education system, elected selfish politicians-for-life and developed a culture of dependency that does not bode well. Fortunately, most of the rest of the world is headed the same way and is slightly ahead of us. Regrettably, too few realize that everyone in the world is not nice and there are those that just do not play well with others. (/curmudgeonly rant)


    That is not a case of wanting the bad guys to fight the war we want, it is a case of playing to our strengths and avoiding being sucked into an ambush designed by said bad guys to play on our weaknesses.
    But I just hope we continue to have at least some leaders who are aware enough of whats going on behind the scenes rather than simply going with what sells. If not our strengths as it were, may not be as immutable as we would hope.
    Any man can destroy that which is around him, The rare man is he who can find beauty even in the darkest hours

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    Default Asymmetric Warfare

    Pending the arrival of the Slapout Based Warfare doctrine, I'm inclined to emphasize conventional capability, develop a strategy that avoids COIN to the extent possible -- and I think that is an achievable goal -- while being prepared to wage a hybrid intervention or two employing a large stick in unfriendly neighborhoods coupled with post op massive spending of $$ to farm out the cleanup.

    That is not a case of wanting the bad guys to fight the war we want, it is a case of playing to our strengths and avoiding being sucked into an ambush designed by said bad guys to play on our weaknesses.
    Ken

    These words seem to be an attempt to resurface the "Powell Doctrine," which I find concerning. While we obviously want to play to our strengths, the very nature of so called "asymmetric warfare" is that a thinking enemy will play to our weaknesses, not our strengths. One can make an argument that part of the reason that 9/11 happened is because we pulled out of Somalia, thus demonstrating we didn't have the will to stick it out after getting a bloody nose.

    We could have responded to 9/11 in multitude of ways, to include launching a few cruise missiles and calling it day to conducting massive offensive operations followed by a rapid exit with the promise of returning if they don't play nice in the future. It may have worked, but as we all know it is hard to anticipate what the actual second order effects of any operation will be.

    Going back to the war is war comments (I don't agree), the way to win a war is to control the terrain, and in this type of war the terrain is the population. There are different ways to control a population, but we're not going to use all out terror for obvious reasons, so our response must be "COIN like".

    Here is my hypothesis: to win a war we have to control the terrain (the Air Force may disagree, but they can post their counter arguments here). In this conflict the terrain is the population; therefore if we're going to win we have to conduct COIN like operations to control the population. This is definitely a real war, and one that is as important to our national security as the Cold War was. Terms like "Small War", COIN, stability operations, etc., can be misleading in the case of GWOT (or the Long War), because these terms imply we're helping allies, or have limited objectives, and perhaps we have the option of saying it isn't worth staying in the fight. We don't have the option of withdrawing from this fight, so instead of arguing over the fact that we're losing some of our ability to fight a peer competitor (that doesn't exist), we need to focus on how to win this critical fight we're in today. We're shaping history now, and if we don't win this fight, we may not have to worry about the peer competitor fight later.

    Our mission is to win our nation's wars, not to win a specific type of war.
    Based on the argument above, I leave you with this question: How can we over do our adaption to this type of war, if it is essential that we win it? Why is TRADOC worried more about preparing Soldiers for a fictional future fight, instead of winning the war we're in now?

    What is interesting about this debate is that it is a debate to begin with.

  10. #70
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Not even. The so-called Powell Doctrine was actually

    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    These words seem to be an attempt to resurface the "Powell Doctrine," which I find concerning.
    the Weinberger Doctrine and both were a flawed attempt to avoid any FID process or COIN ops. Both were flawed and doomed to fail. Not least because they espoused 'winning' with 'overwhleming force.' Not always possible -- or necessary.

    Edited to add: They also mentioned support of the US populace and international support; both are desirable but will not always be attainable or necessary. Nor is overwhelming force always required, in many cases as you well know a precisely tailored and effective small force package can be more effective if the objective is limited in the tactical sense.

    I'm simply suggesting that we have an ability to pick our fights -- we have NOT done that well in the past -- and that we can develop the capability (which we should have started on after Eagle Claw. I know we did but only half heartedly due to a number of factors) to respond to provocations in a slapdown mode that can often, not always, negate the requirement to get too deep in the FID woods in a combat mode as opposed to a pre-combat mode which we should expand.
    While we obviously want to play to our strengths, the very nature of so called "asymmetric warfare" is that a thinking enemy will play to our weaknesses, not our strengths. One can make an argument that part of the reason that 9/11 happened is because we pulled out of Somalia, thus demonstrating we didn't have the will to stick it out after getting a bloody nose.
    Of course he will, so would you or I if we were he. My question is simply; why does 'he' always get to pick? Why do we allow that? Best way to stop a charge from detonating is interrupt the priming cycle...

    I submit 9/11 happened because of Carter's failed response to the Tehran Embassy seizure -- that could've been short circuited without a shot being fired -- plus Reagan's dumb decision to interfere in Lebanon and, worse, to tolerate with minimal response the bombs and kidnappings in Lebanon. Follow that wih Bush 41s failure to go to Baghdad in 91 -- been easier then than it is now -- and to even enter Somalia. Top that off with Clinton's ridiculous "get Aideed" command there to be followed by some screwups on the ground and a rapid withdrawal (and as an aside, Kosovo was nor help...). That's four President's worth of failure that led to 9/11. Note that in every case, the poor response was the effector...
    We could have responded to 9/11 in multitude of ways, to include launching a few cruise missiles and calling it day to conducting massive offensive operations followed by a rapid exit with the promise of returning if they don't play nice in the future. It may have worked, but as we all know it is hard to anticipate what the actual second order effects of any operation will be.
    Wouldn't have worked; Bush 43 did what HAD to be done IMO and though the Army didn't do it well, that's not Bush's fault. Had the Army done it well (I know there were other players and factors but the Executive Agent...), it would've been a little easier and a rapid withdrawal could probably have been effected. No matter, really, we are where we are.
    Going back to the war is war comments (I don't agree)
    That's cool; your prerogative but I think it is -- war is violent confrontation between two or more belligerents, period. Killing and dying, that simple. WarFARE, OTOH, differs wildly in many ways. War is war; the type of warfare determines who does what to who. That's not semantic B.S., it is a critical diffrentiation.
    ...the way to win a war is to control the terrain, and in this type of war the terrain is the population. There are different ways to control a population, but we're not going to use all out terror for obvious reasons, so our response must be "COIN like".
    I don't dispute that and I certainly do not advocate no capability, on the contrary, that capability must be grown, enhanced and retained to be used when necessary. I do think we need to look at when it is necessary...
    Here is my hypothesis: to win a war we have to control the terrain (the Air Force may disagree, but they can post their counter arguments here). In this conflict the terrain is the population; therefore if we're going to win we have to conduct COIN like operations to control the population. This is definitely a real war, and one that is as important to our national security as the Cold War was. Terms like "Small War", COIN, stability operations, etc., can be misleading in the case of GWOT (or the Long War), because these terms imply we're helping allies, or have limited objectives, and perhaps we have the option of saying it isn't worth staying in the fight. We don't have the option of withdrawing from this fight, so instead of arguing over the fact that we're losing some of our ability to fight a peer competitor (that doesn't exist), we need to focus on how to win this critical fight we're in today. We're shaping history now, and if we don't win this fight, we may not have to worry about the peer competitor fight later.
    Nor do I disagree with that.
    Our mission is to win our nation's wars, not to win a specific type of war.
    That is totally correct and I would emphasize the plural; wars, type immaterial. I'm merely saying that we have the capability to shape the potential battlefields instead of reacting to the other guy. I submit we have not done that at all well and we need to get a whole lot better at it.
    Based on the argument above, I leave you with this question: How can we over do our adaption to this type of war, if it is essential that we win it? Why is TRADOC worried more about preparing Soldiers for a fictional future fight, instead of winning the war we're in now?
    Agreed for here and now -- but my sensing is that TRADOC is trying to balance competing priorities and they have to do that. What about 2018? 2038?
    What is interesting about this debate is that it is a debate to begin with.
    Disagree. it is an important debate. Do we continue to react -- frequently, react poorly -- or do we initiate or preempt? Defuzing is better than demolition. I suggest it's better to cut the fuze than to clean up after the explosion.

    That means total preparedness to the best of our ability for whatever type of war comes down the pike; providing the FID and COIN support BEFORE the pot boils over, an ability to respond with tailored and effective force to provocations (and that may include everything from a Predator fired Hellfire on a car in Bafloofistan to a door kicking raid in the middle of the night 2,000 clicks from nowhere to minor FID work before a problem develops to a major FID and COIN op to full scale conventional war) and importantly an Intel community that does a better job. We have got to be prepared to do it all; ain't easy. Soldiering rarely is...
    Last edited by Ken White; 05-19-2008 at 05:33 PM. Reason: Addendum

  11. #71
    Council Member ipopescu's Avatar
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    Default Moving away from buzzwords

    I am getting more and more confused by the way people use various terms and concepts in this "conventional vs. COIN" debate. I'll use the above post just as an example, not because it is any better or worse than others in similar vain.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post

    While we obviously want to play to our strengths, the very nature of so called "asymmetric warfare" is that a thinking enemy will play to our weaknesses, not our strengths.
    If that's the "nature" of assymetric warfare, all wars against thinking enemies are assymetric, which actually is close to being true in the sense that wars are "duels" where one tries to take advantage of the enemy's weak points.
    "Assymetric" or "irregular" are terms which only have meaning when contrasted to something else - i.e. the symmetric (or regular), warfare. Unless someone also provides a definition of how exactly "regular warfare" looks like in today's day and age, then talk of assymetric to me simply seems to say that the other guys fight differently than we would want them to. Fine. But I don't see how this is particularly enlightening for the debate.

    Going back to the war is war comments (I don't agree), the way to win a war is to control the terrain, and in this type of war the terrain is the population. There are different ways to control a population, but we're not going to use all out terror for obvious reasons, so our response must be "COIN like".
    Winning a war is accomplishing your political objectives. Period.

    Sometimes, those objectives require controlling enemy territory, sometimes require control of the population, sometimes neither. It all depends on the extent of your objectives in that particular conflict.

    And "war is war" doesn't seem to me like a statement that's open to debate,
    if only because one would probably commit a logical fallacy by denying it. More substantively, I suspect that you mean that there are such large differences between "conventional" and "COIN-like" conflicts that these two missions need to be treated in largely distinct manners. This is debatable, and I think there are already enough arguments on this thread one way or the other.

    Here is my hypothesis: to win a war we have to control the terrain (the Air Force may disagree, but they can post their counter arguments here). In this conflict the terrain is the population; therefore if we're going to win we have to conduct COIN like operations to control the population.
    This is definitely a real war, and one that is as important to our national security as the Cold War was.

    Terms like "Small War", COIN, stability operations, etc., can be misleading in the case of GWOT (or the Long War), because these terms imply we're helping allies, or have limited objectives, and perhaps we have the option of saying it isn't worth staying in the fight.
    Which population? And what exactly do you mean by "control"? I don't mean to sound flippant, but unless you are precise about what you have in mind when applying the war terminology to the "War on Terror", as you do in the next paragraph, I cannot make an intelligent appraisal of your arguments. I can understand applying COIN models to specific cases like Iraq and Afghanistan; but when you talk about the war on terror as the equivalent of the Cold War in size and scope, I'm at a loss in comprehending what "controlling the population" looks like in that context and how exactly is the US military going to achieve that.

    Contrary to what you write, I believe almost everyone would agree that one of the most effective ways of defeating Salafist terrorism is by helping local allies address local threats on their own. And that we do have limited objectives in this conflict, just like in most conflicts. How would "unlimited" objectives look anyway in the current situation? I don't see how your next statement ("perhaps we have the option of saying it isn't worth staying in the fight") follows from the previous two.

    T We don't have the option of withdrawing from this fight, so instead of arguing over the fact that we're losing some of our ability to fight a peer competitor (that doesn't exist), we need to focus on how to win this critical fight we're in today. We're shaping history now, and if we don't win this fight, we may not have to worry about the peer competitor fight later.
    I think it's a little bit too much of a straw-man argument to imply that people worrying about losing our ability for HIC are motivated by the desire to prepare fighting against a "peer competitor that doesn't exist" and that they would jeopardize today's missions for that reason. I believe there are a good number of potential adversaries today (Iran, NK, China in a Taiwan scenario) which could test the US military's preparedness for missions closer to HIC than we see today in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, of course, the deterrent effect from our conventional capabilities is a cornerstone of our overall national security - the more stories one gets of an overstretched military bogged down in Iraq and unable to train for some of its basic missions - the worse it must be for deterring states like Iran from causing havoc wherever they can. Having said that, there is of course a good deal of common sense in the administration's argument that nothing would be worse than a "defeated military" - I'm just saying that sometimes people tend to paint this debate too much as "good" vs. "bad" guys.

    Our mission is to win our nation's wars, not to win a specific type of war.
    Yes, and largely uncontroversial I believe. The real questions are more along the lines of "What are the opportunity costs that we are willing to pay for today's wars versus preparing for future ones?", or "How do we best use our current limited (and likely declining) financial resources dedicated to defense in the near future to best accomplish our overall global strategic interests for the next couple of decades?" I suspect that my answer are really closer to your's than this post might imply, but I think these issues are really worth pondering and they are clearly not as black and white as you suggested.
    Ionut C. Popescu
    Doctoral Student, Duke University - Political Science Department

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    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    All insurgency, assymetric conflict, military operations other than war, and associated terms are under the legal heading of low-intensity-conflict. That is how they are dilineated in the original budgets. Or, so I've been led to believe.
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    Default Academic rigor

    ipopescu,

    My comments in this forum are not designed to stand up to academic rigor (at this time), but simply offer some counterpoints. I don't disagree with your critiques, and will respond appropriately when time permits. In short, my comment on why I don't agree with the "war is war" statement, must be taken in context. As you stated winning is defined by achieving your political objectives. While war is war at one level, as Ken stated, on another level it varies widely. For example, we fought a Cold War with the USSR. A war that had a few hot spots, but if it ever turned into a war where we had to defend Western Europe from the Red Hordes, then the nature of that war would have been very different, than say our participation in El Salvador. I personally find the comment that "war is war" can be misleading, overly simplistic, and potentially dangerous for policy makers. Clausewitz said the most important thing a policy maker/General (loosely paraphrased) must do before going to war is understand the nature of the war he is embarking on. Failure to do so, can lead to..........., well an OIF. On one level war is war, but what is the utility of that statement? Can I prepare an Army to fight in North Korea the same way we're countering insurgency in Iraq?

    Furthermore, as you noted throughout this thread, there is much concern that the Army is overly adapting itself to fight a COIN like war, thus some draw the conclusion that we're losing the ability to conduct so called conventional war. The argument is probably valid if you project into the future, but my point is we have to win the fight we're in, so the balancing act should tilt towards winning today's fight, with a distant eye on the war in the future.

    As for controlling the populace, that means preventing the enemy from using it to achieve his ends. In many cases that may be a relatively simple matter of countering radical ideology, building local government legitimacy, etc., while in other areas it will require robust security forces (as we see in Iraq) to loosen the grip the insurgents have over the populace. The strategy required will vary based on the threat, the populace, our capabilities, and our political objectives.

    I'm making a post for discussion, I'm not writing a thesis. Your points are valid, but you could make similiar points throughout the forum on numerous posts. I think we should be semi-casual in the post mode, and much more academic when we write articles. Otherwise we run the risk of reducing the discussion, which is normally a lot of give and take, and I think everyone leaves the forum a little wiser. My thoughts evolve overtime based on the comments on numerous contributers on SWJ. Thoughts? Bill
    Last edited by Bill Moore; 05-19-2008 at 09:08 PM.

  14. #74
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default I agree with Bill Moore that academic rigor in a

    discussion forum such as this isn't called for or necessary.

    OTOH, I disagree with Bill on this:
    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    ...While war is war at one level, as Ken stated, on another level it varies widely. For example, we fought a Cold War with the USSR. A war that had a few hot spots, but if it ever turned into a war where we had to defend Western Europe from the Red Hordes, then the nature of that war would have been very different, than say our participation in El Salvador. I personally find the comment that "war is war" can be misleading, overly simplistic, and potentially dangerous for policy makers. Clausewitz said the most important thing a policy maker/General (loosely paraphrased) must do before going to war is understand the nature of the war he is embarking on. Failure to do so, can lead to..........., well an OIF. On one level war is war, but what is the utility of that statement? Can I prepare an Army to fight in North Korea the same way we're countering insurgency in Iraq?
    Not that he's incorrect in what he says but that the statement cuts both ways. War means combat, killing and dying. Period. If you start a war people are going to die -- Politicians need to understand that and remember it.

    If one tries to shade that fact by offering modifiers like LIC, COIN and so forth in an effort to show how 'professional' one is and impress the dumb civilians, one removes the the onus of WAR from the discussion and the Politicians will always jump on that and try to do it on the cheap -- as Korea, Viet Nam and OEF /OIF all prove. If they think they can pull off an easy war -- when there is absolutely no such thing in reality -- then they will try to do so. We should also not talk about 'winning' and 'victory' particularly in a COIN op where the best you can hope for is an acceptable outcome.

    War is war; warfare is quite varied and there are many levels, types and nuances to include variance over the years in weapons and methodology. There is, for example, air warfare and there is ground warfare -- the two are not really interchangeable and that's sort of obvious if you phrase it that way. However, if one tries to sell an 'Air War' one might confuse the issue enough to convince the uninitiated that one can win a ground war from the air...

    Billy Sherman said two things on the topic that every politician should be made to say publicly when he babbles of war; "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." and "Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."

    Warfare IS the nature of a particular war, that we can have some control over...

  15. #75
    Council Member ipopescu's Avatar
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    Default Got that.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    ipopescu,

    I'm making a post for discussion, I'm not writing a thesis. Your points are valid, but you could make similiar points throughout the forum on numerous posts. I think we should be semi-casual in the post mode, and much more academic when we write articles. Otherwise we run the risk of reducing the discussion, which is normally a lot of give and take, and I think everyone leaves the forum a little wiser. My thoughts evolve overtime based on the comments on numerous contributers on SWJ. Thoughts? Bill
    I totally agree with that, and my feelings on the nature and role of the discussion are identical. I'm sorry if my comments seemed pedantic or academic; I assure you they were most certainly not meant in that way. Must be some early signs of beginning to think like an academic, and this really worries me as I am still so young
    Ionut C. Popescu
    Doctoral Student, Duke University - Political Science Department

  16. #76
    Council Member Uboat509's Avatar
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    Default

    I tend to agree with Bill on this one. I certainly see your point, Ken, but I don't like the broad sweeping statements like war is war. Broadly that is certainly true. It is a conflict between two or more entities, but I think that when you don't define the type of war that you are in or preparing to be in ie COIN, LIC, conventional etc. you leave it up to the listener to decide what the term war means to them. I think that the problem then becomes less about making John Q. Public understand that there is no such thing as an easy war but that it becomes an issue of making commanders prepare for the war as it will be fought not the war as they would like it to be fought. The US military has always prepared for war pretty well. The problem is that it has not always prepared for the right war. I have no doubt that had twenty Russian Guards tank divisions come screaming out of the Fulda Gap that we would have taught them the error of their ways. Unfortunately, reality had other ideas and we have just not found the fight we were prepared for but by God we were going to keep preparing for it. As has been bemoaned many times on this board, this is hardly our first COIN fight but not so you could tell by how it went for the first couple of years or so. Ask any of the commanders what they have been doing since Vietnam and they will tell you that they have been training their men for war, just the wrong kind of war. I think that these other terms like LIC and COIN and conventional warfare, which all broadly fall under the definition of war but have different requirements, are needed in order help keep commanders focused.

    There are a number of people now who are upset that we, as a military are so focused on COIN that we are letting our conventional warfare skills atrophy. I agree but I also believe that as soon as we are out of Iraq we will see a slow but steady shift in the other direction and eventually we will be back to the status quo, COIN is SF's problem, we fight the conventional fight, and we will go back to spending the majority of our resources and time preparing to fight a peer competitor threat that may not even realistically exist. Currently there is not one. Russia is rebuilding but that is going to take a long time. China lacks any real force projection capability and seems to be enjoying here growing economic power. The ROK army will Kim Jong Il's lunch if he tries to bow up. And Iran wouldn't likely be a conventional fight. I suspect it would be a repeat of Iraq with the part of insurgent being played by a professional army with much better equipment.

    SFC W

  17. #77
    Council Member Ron Humphrey's Avatar
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    Question I'm afraid your quite right on this one,

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    discussion forum such as this isn't called for or necessary.


    If one tries to shade that fact by offering modifiers like LIC, COIN and so forth in an effort to show how 'professional' one is and impress the dumb civilians, one removes the the onus of WAR from the discussion and the Politicians will always jump on that and try to do it on the cheap -- as Korea, Viet Nam and OEF /OIF all prove. If they think they can pull off an easy war -- when there is absolutely no such thing in reality -- then they will try to do so. We should also not talk about 'winning' and 'victory' particularly in a COIN op where the best you can hope for is an acceptable outcome.

    War is war; warfare is quite varied and there are many levels, types and nuances to include variance over the years in weapons and methodology. There is, for example, air warfare and there is ground warfare -- the two are not really interchangeable and that's sort of obvious if you phrase it that way. However, if one tries to sell an 'Air War' one might confuse the issue enough to convince the uninitiated that one can win a ground war from the air...

    Billy Sherman said two things on the topic that every politician should be made to say publicly when he babbles of war; "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." and "Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."

    Warfare IS the nature of a particular war, that we can have some control over...
    I have had the opportunity to listen to several conversations related to this with somewhat of a more civilian tint to the questioning and it seemed readily apparent that first and foremost pols must be encouraged to understand and accept as fact what real costs ANY form of conflict carries and that they have to pick a side if they choose to lean towards said conflict.

    The inherent costs don't seem to be a big part of the upfront decisions otherwise. Acknowledging my limited exposure to this phenomenon compared to many others here I would however be willing to admit a lack of in depth experience in actual political forums.
    Any man can destroy that which is around him, The rare man is he who can find beauty even in the darkest hours

    Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur

  18. #78
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default That's cool; we can disagree.

    Few points...

    Quote Originally Posted by Uboat509 View Post
    ...but I think that when you don't define the type of war that you are in or preparing to be in ie COIN, LIC, conventional etc. you leave it up to the listener to decide what the term war means to them.
    That presumes the listener understands what you mean by your professional terminology. The public is not the problem; the politicians are -- and they are mostly clueless, more so than is the mass of the public.
    The US military has always prepared for war pretty well.
    My life and experiences in it tell me you're way wrong on that. I spent forty five years training or helping to train for a land war in Europe. Never even been stationed there but I've eaten a heck of a lot of rice on multiple occasions in five countries while getting shot at. If we had been prepared for war, full spectrum, none of those would've been a problem. Because we prepared for the wrong kind of warfare (HIC vs. MIC and LIC), all of them were problems.
    Ask any of the commanders what they have been doing since Vietnam and they will tell you that they have been training their men for war, just the wrong kind of war.
    Not all of them, just most -- and at the direction of their commanders...
    I think that these other terms like LIC and COIN and conventional warfare, which all broadly fall under the definition of war but have different requirements, are needed in order help keep commanders focused.(emphasis added / kw)
    I agree and I really like your choice of words...
    ...Currently there is not one. Russia is rebuilding but that is going to take a long time. China lacks any real force projection capability and seems to be enjoying here growing economic power. The ROK army will Kim Jong Il's lunch if he tries to bow up. And Iran wouldn't likely be a conventional fight. I suspect it would be a repeat of Iraq with the part of insurgent being played by a professional army with much better equipment.
    All true. You left out Venezuela -- another LIC??? -- and the EU, not to mention a few others. Or that the ROK Army will expect some support. Or the new Prez decides to go to Sudan with a coalition...

    Hard to predict the future. We'll see what happens.

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