Weekend Reading Recommendations

Contents

1.  “An Un-intended Advantage“, JD Johannes, posted at Outside the Wire, 16 August 2008 — Our military is buff, let our enemies tremble.  Just like after Vietnam.  Recommended by the Instapundit as “an Iraq upside.”

2.  “Why the dust up in Ossetia should be a wake up call for the US“, Chuck Spinney, posted at Don Vandergriff’s blog, 16 August 2008 — Correct diagnosis must precede treatment, and and the always-interesting Spinney is a better diagnostician than most. 

3.  “The Lessons of Endless War“, Andrew Bacevich, posted at TomDispatch, 14 August 2008 — An essay adapted from his new book, Bacevich gives a simple yet powerful solution to our serious lack of a grand strategy — one which I strongly endorse.

Excerpts

1.  “An Un-intended Advantage“, JD Johannes, posted at Outside the Wire, 16 August 2008 — Our military is buff, let our enemies tremble.  Just like after Vietnam.  Recommended by the Instapunditas describing “an Iraq upside.”  And it is important, warning of our undeserved confidence gained from the Iraq adventure.  Excerpt:

Geopolitics and History invariably lead to the Clauswitzian politics by other means — war.  And in those other means, the United States has a distinct advantage over all others–not just in machines and materials–but where it counts the most: NCO and Officer Leadership.

On March 20th, 2003, when the U.S. led coaltion crossed from Kuwait into Iraq, very few officers and non-commissioned officers of any rank had actual combat experience.  Five years and several months later — the United States military is one of the most combat-experienced militaries in history.

Virtually every officer of the line has led Soldiers and Marines on daily combat missions.  Sergeants and Junior Staff NCOs have come up through the ranks not in garrison or on training exercises but in combat.  Virtually every U.S. Rifle Platoon has something the Russian and Chinese military do not — experience in a gun fight.

While many may not believe that the U.S. has started winning in Iraq, the General Staff’s of the authoritarian regimes know what is happening and surely must be wondering how their untested conscripts would fare against the battle hardened 1st Marine Division or 82nd Airborne. … If the authoritarian regimes were wise enough to download a copy FM 3-24 , the Counter Insurgency Manual, the U.S. officers and NCOs who implemented the tactics know all the tricks and how to subvert them.

2.  “Why the dust up in Ossetia should be a wake up call for the US“, Chuck Spinney, posted at Don Vandergriff’s blog, 16 August 2008 — Correct diagnosis must precede treatment, and Spinney is a better diagnostician than most.  Opening:

When Michael Gorbachev peacefully ended the Cold War and withdrew Russian forces from Eastern Europe, the US promised him that it would not take advantage of the situation by expanding NATO into the vacuum. But this promise was broken almost immediately, first by the Clinton Administration, and then again by the Bush Administration.

Throughout the 1990s, America viewed itself as the world’s last remaining superpower, or in Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s narcissistic phrase – “the world’s indispensable power.” Pundits gushed over abstractions like “America’s unipolar moment,” while thinktankers concocted geopolitical visions of American empires, New American Centuries, all made possible by a new era of unilateral coercive diplomacy, where move and countermove would be choreographed by quick and nearly bloodless precision military strikes, made possible by the US monopoly of the “Revolution in Military Affairs.”

The mixture of arrogance and ignorance set the stage for the triumphal foreign policy of the 1990s, but in so doing, it also set the stage for its grotesque mutation into a self-pitying overreaction to a heinous crime (9-11). The overreaction took the form of a self-righteous grand strategic attitude that the US can do anything it wants to and you are either with us or against us in our long global war on terrorism – a war that knows no identifiable bounds, no rules, and no discernible end, but also a war for which Mr. Bush steadfastly refused to mobilize the necessary resources or call for the necessary sacrifices to pay for its inevitably skyrocketing bill.

Which brings me to my second point: At the same time unlimited ambition became the rule in our relations with the external environment, a parallel unlimited ideology of triumphant capitalism and political cynicism at home encouraged the systematically looting of the economic base that was needed to support those unlimited ambitions. The looting mechanism is well known: …

3.  “The Lessons of Endless War“, Andrew Bacevich, posted at TomDispatch, 14 August 2008 — An essay adapted from his new book, Bacevich gives a simple yet powerful solution to our serious lack of a grand strategy — one which I strongly endorse. 

Tom Englehardt’s introduction:  In his remarkable new book, The Limits of Power, The End of American Exceptionalism, Andrew Bacevich suggests a solution to the American military crisis that might seem obvious enough, if only both parties weren’t so blinded by the idea of our “global reach,” by a belief, however wrapped in euphemisms, in our imperial role on this planet, and by the imperial Pentagon and presidency that go with it: reduce the mission.

Excerpt from Bacevich’s essay

To appreciate the full extent of the military crisis into which the United States has been plunged requires understanding what the Iraq War and, to a lesser extent, the Afghan War have to teach. These two conflicts, along with the attacks of September 11, 2001, will form the centerpiece of George W. Bush’s legacy. Their lessons ought to constitute the basis of a new, more realistic military policy.

In some respects, the effort to divine those lessons is well under way, spurred by critics of President Bush’s policies on the left and the right as well as by reform-minded members of the officer corps. Broadly speaking, this effort has thus far yielded three distinct conclusions. Whether taken singly or together, they invert the post-Cold War military illusions that provided the foundation for the president’s Global War on Terror. In exchange for these received illusions, they propound new ones, which are equally misguided. Thus far, that is, the lessons drawn from America’s post-9/11 military experience are the wrong ones.

… According to the first lesson, the armed services — and above all the Army — need to recognize that the challenges posed by Iraq and Afghanistan define not only the military’s present but also its future, the “next war,” as enthusiasts like to say. Rooting out insurgents, nation-building, training and advising “host nation” forces, population security and control, winning hearts and minds — these promise to be ongoing priorities, preoccupying U.S. troops for decades to come, all across the Islamic world.

Rather than brief interventions ending in decisive victory, sustained presence will be the norm. Large-scale conventional conflict like 1991’s Operation Desert Storm becomes the least likely contingency. The future will be one of small wars, expected to be frequent, protracted, perhaps perpetual.

… In sum, an officer corps bloodied in Iraq and Afghanistan has seen the future and it points to many more Iraqs and Afghanistans. Whereas the architects of full spectrum dominance had expected the unprecedented lethality, range, accuracy, and responsiveness of high-tech striking power to perpetuate military dominion, the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan know better. They remain committed to global dominance while believing that its pursuit will require not only advanced weaponry but also the ability to put boots on the ground and keep them there. This, in turn, implies a plentiful supply of soldiers and loads of patience on the home front.

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