I Feel so…so..Cheap…with the Quick Links…But….
This is really good at the SWJ Blog.
A definite “must read”.
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November 14th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I printed the two articles and read them last night. Nagl argues better. Gentile has some important points which he makes less well than he could. The need to institutionalize all the needed capabilities comes through clearly in this exchange.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
hi Lex,
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I mentioned to Dave Dilegge last night that SWJ was en fuego with the quality and pace of it’s posts.
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I agree with you. To outsiders it’s obvious that the military needs to be facile at both "Big War" and COIN ( it’s obvious to a lot of insiders too) the same way you cannot have a choice between having sea or air power . Training suffers primarily because Clinton overcut troop levels in the 90’s – were it not for manpower shortages, soldiers would be rotating out of conflict zones on a more reasonable basis and undergoing the "normal" training that Col. Gentile sees as being shortchanged. However, An Adviser Corps or COIN command or whatever you’d call it would be an institutional competitor for budget space when the Army already feels squeezed by hyperexpensive Navy and Air Force platforms. So if you are a career armor or artillery guy, you will fight institutionalizing COIN with all your might as more COIN means fewer tanks, fewer big guns and fewer opportunities to employ them.
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The problem is that they also want to employ this hardware even where it makes no sense or is counterproductive to do so.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Agreed. SWJ is so good that it is impossible to keep up with it.
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As to the both/and v. either/or assessment, today they have piece called "Nagl and Gentile are both Right":
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http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2008/11/nagl-and-gentile-are-both-righ/
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This piece is even more correct than it seems to know, focusing on the Advisor Corps as a preemptive element. It also means that the real Army that kills people and smashes stuff has someone along to clean up the mess once the conventional war is over and won. For some reason, that element is not discussed. It would only strengthen the main argument.
November 15th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
As one of those armor guys, we have plenty of tanks within all components to conduct manuever/3GW warfare.
We are lacking in training, not platforms. That’s the rub between COIN and MW – where do you get the time to train on all the tasks required for both? And if you want to get into a more tangible question – where does the money come from to train on all these tasks? You’d have units living at various range and training areas for months on end, and it costs a lot of money to supply and sustain training operations.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:50 am
Ski correctly identifies the rub. If the US Gov is going to ask its military to do things, or be ready and able to do things, it has an obligation to train and equip people to do those things. Time, money, people, all have to be found and allocated, or the tasks either cannot be done or will be done badly, or will be done at excessive cost in time, money and worst of all, people’s lives. But based on what the US Gov, and the US people, appear to want their military to do, they need to find the means and the people to do all the tasks required, including waging and winning the current wars while preparing for and hopefully deterring future ones.