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I did not have much time for blogging the other day when the good news of General Petraeus’ nomination to CENTCOM broke. However, blogfriend Pundita, who specializes in the political and economic nuances of the  inside-the-beltway shaping of American foreign policy, was kind enough to inquire of my opinion yesterday via email. Even kinder on Pundita’s part to use it in a post:

“Mark, What do you think of the nomination? Good move, or is it kicking Petraeus upstairs?
Pundita”“Miss P:
This is excellent news and yet more confirmation of the competence and vision of SecDef Robert Gates – as well as his political clout. General Petraeus was due for consideration for a significant posting after his tour of duty in Iraq and CENTCOM chief is among the best options.

Had Petraeus been sent to NATO or the Pentagon, that might have indicated an institutional retreat from the current, evolving COIN [counterinsurgency] strategy on the part of the Army’s old guard, just as they did in the wind-down of Vietnam.Moreover, the appointment of a traditional, conventional warfare advocate at CENTCOM instead of Petraeus could easily have been taken as a signal that the Bush administration was gearing up in it’s waning days to “broaden the war” by initiating a major conflict with Iran.

I expect that Petraeus is also the most ‘confirmable’ candidate, given the rhetoric of Democratic candidates on Afghanistan. And given that NATO is struggling in executing COIN consistently against the Taliban, Petraeus’ skill and experience will be needed to get things back on track without antagonizing our European allies.

On a related matter I’m very, very happy with Robert Gates. I think he just gave a ‘shape up or ship out’ warning to the senior brass.[1] What he said the other day to the cadets regarding John Boyd was akin to a Soviet General-Secretary giving a speech to the Supreme Soviet on the virtues of Milton Friedman. Or Pope Benedict praising Martin Luther.

….Dear Mark:
Thank you for your observations. I was not happy when I first heard Gates was on track for SecDef. Your analyses suggest I should stop sticking pins in his effigy — er, wait a minute, maybe it’s been working. Also, I note that you’re recommending John McCain signal that if he wins the White House he’s going to keep Gates as SecDef.Interesting points. And Gates in that position might dissuade President McCain from his views on Russia, which deeply trouble me”

Me too. I hope that Senator McCain broadens and deepens his foreign policy and defense teams in the coming months.  Russia and China are not our allies by any means but it makes little sense to try and provoke each of them into an active, anti-American, partnership. Let’s deal with these powers pragmatically when and where they are willing to get down to business and quietly but firmly pushback where they are negatively impacting our interests.

If some segments of the American Left can’t stop being apologists for the long expired Soviets then there are some on the Right who need to accept that America won the Cold War and that it’s time to move on.

PETRAEUS UPDATE:

Tom is already irritated.

SWJ BLog has the uber-round-up.

Dr. Dave Kilcullen begins a COIN series at SWJ Blog:

“Political Maneuver in Counterinsurgency”

Like the Romans, counterinsurgents through history have engaged in road-building as a tool for projecting military force, extending governance and the rule of law, enhancing political communication and bringing economic development, health and education to the population. Clearly, roads that are patrolled by friendly forces or secured by local allies also have the tactical benefit of channeling and restricting insurgent movement and compartmenting terrain across which guerrillas could otherwise move freely. But the political impact of road-building is even more striking than its tactical effect

….But the effects accrue not just from the road itself, but rather from a conscious and well-developed strategy that uses the road as a tool, and seizes the opportunity created by its construction to generate security, economic, governance and political benefits. This is exactly what is happening in Kunar: the road is one component, albeit a key one, in a broader strategy that uses the road as an organizing framework around which to synchronize and coordinate a series of political-military effects. This is a conscious, developed strategy that was first put in place in 2005-6 and has been consistently executed since. Thus, the mere building of a road is not enough: it generates some, but not all of these effects, and may even be used to oppress or harm the population rather than benefit it. Road construction in many parts of the world has had negative security and political effects, especially when executed unthinkingly or in an un-coordinated fashion. What we are seeing here, in contrast, is a coordinated civil-military activity based on a political strategy of separating the insurgent from the people and connecting the people to the government. In short, this is a political maneuver with the road as a means to a political end.

A nice piece, one that reveals the multiple dimensions of connectivity inherent in something so seemingly straightforward as a “road”. The connectivity itself is a weapon against disconnecting, isolating, hyperideological, insurgencies like the Taliban.

Incidentally, this isn’t America’s first foray into road building in Afghanistan; the Eisenhower administration, as a Cold War intrusion into the Soviet sphere of influence, built a modern highway for Zahir Shah that constituted, for many years, Afghanistan’s only paved road outside of Kabul.

A co-worker’s husband, Justin, who happens to be a hell of a nice guy, was just nominated for the Bronze Star. Incidentally, he had bureaucratically manuvered out of a safe and easy stateside assignment in order to lead an infantry platoon in Iraq.

A good dude.

I found this news snippet to be intriguing:

In a historic but little-noticed change in policy, the Army is allowing scores of husband-and-wife soldiers to live and sleep together in the war zone – a move aimed at preserving marriages, boosting morale and perhaps bolstering re-enlistment rates at a time when the military is struggling to fill its ranks five years into the fighting.

“It makes a lot of things easier,” said Frazier, 33, a helicopter maintenance supervisor in the 3rd Infantry Division. “It really adds a lot of stress, being separated. Now you can sit face-to-face and try to work out things and comfort each other.”

Throughout history, civilized societies have basically fielded armies with three different orientations: caste, professionals and citizen-soldiers.  The United States opted with the switch to the All-Volunteer Force under the Nixon administration to abandon conscription and adopt a professional ethos. The above policy of the U.S. Army is essentially a humane, on-the-spot, accomodation to demographic changes in the force and the exigencies of war in Iraq; but it also highlights an incipent trend toward the emergence of a military caste within American society.

Much like universities, the American military, as women have been gradually integrated into the services in ever wider roles, has become a social filter bringing men and women of prime marriageable age together. It should be no surprise that some of them, sharing similar values and career interests, are indeed marrying and raising families within the context of military culture. We would need many generations for this practice to play out in order to discern the results, but it would stand to reason that such a policy, if institutionalized, would accelerate the cultural divergence between members of the U.S. military and the mainstream of American society at large to the detriment of both.

The U.S. military as a caste apart, would not be, in my view, an ideal result. Obviously, the answer is not to further burden military personnel already serving in combat zones under the most difficult of circumstances. Instead, other policies should promulgated to narrow the “culture gap” by encouraging greater volunteerism among the civilian population, perhaps by a wider range of military service options and to give career military personnel increased time working in “para-civilian” roles, increasing their “Sys Admin” skill-sets which can later be brought to bear on the spectrum of missions the U.S. military is forced to handle.

My schedule recently did not permit much in the way of my normal, extensive, blogsurfing  that is the genesis of my regularly scheduled Recommended Reading posts. I would however, like to highlight Matt Armstrong’s recent, in depth, post on AFRICOM. Much like 7-Up, if the vision pans out, AFRICOM is to be “The Un-Combatant” Command. Sys Admin from the inception, interagency “jointness” in conception. But will that actually happen in the real world?

AFRICOM: DOA or in need of Better Marketing? No and Yes.

By Matt Armstrong

Like Mark Twain’s “death” in 1897 (he died in 1910), reports of AFRICOM’s demise may be exaggerated.  Concerns that AFRICOM hasn’t been thought out or is unnecessary aren’t supported by the actions and statements of those charged with building this entity.  However, based on the poor marketing of AFRICOM, these concerns are not surprising.

I attended USC’s AFRICOM conference earlier this month and between panel discussions and offline conversations, I came away with a new appreciation (and hope) for the newest, and very different, command. 

This is not like the other Combatant Commands (one DOD representative said they dropped “Combatant” from the title, but depending on where you look, all commands have that word or none of the commands include that adjective).  Also unlike other commands, this is “focused on prevention and not containment or fighting wars.”  This is, as one speaker continued, is a “risk-laden experiment” that is like an Ironman with multidisciplinary requirements and always different demands (note: thank you for not saying it’s a marathon… once you’ve done one marathon, they’re easy, you can “fake” a marathon… Ironman triathlons are always unpredictable, I know, I’ve done five.).  The goal, he continued, was to “keep combat troops off the continent for 50 years” because the consensus was, once troops landed on Africa, it would be extremely difficult to take them off. 

General William “Kip” Ward realizes that only once in several generations is there the opportunity to stand up a new command.  General Ward has worked hard to create something new and unique that addresses modern security dilemmas.  Modern communications and the vastness of Africa make a singular location for AFRICOM impractical.  For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone is nearly 1/4 the size of the U.S. and has 130 million people alone.  Across the continent political boundaries on the map mask tremendous language and cultural variations. 

The goal, as it was laid out in the conference, is to divide AFRICOM into four tiers because it is “easy to overwhelm our African partners in [both] enthusiasm [and] size.”

Read the rest here.