Winning the next war?

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Monday, April 6, 2009 - 2:50 PM Share

At the risk of treading on Tom Ricks's beat, I'm linking here to a fascinating talk at the Command and General Staff College (subsequently reprinted in Small Wars Journal) by Lt. Colonel Paul Yingling, one of the shining lights and fearless truth-tellers in the American military. Yingling has seen extensive service in Iraq, and his main theme is the inability of the "institutional military" to adapt to the challenges of a world where counter-insurgency and irregular warfare are becoming more important than the traditional "great power" focus of American military planning.

Why is that? Yingling pins the blame not on the officer corps itself, but rather on the incentive system that pervades U.S. military organizations. Troops in combat must "adapt or die," but the "institutional military" back home has a clear incentive "to procure expensive, high-tech weapons, even if those weapons are not the ones combat forces need." Moreover, junior officers "operate under powerful incentives to conform to senior officers' views, even if those views are out of touch with battlefield realities. Unlike combat forces, the institutional military operates under an incentive system that rewards conformity and discourages adaptation." Senior military leaders are "not bad people," he writes, "but they work in a bad system that rewards the wrong behaviors." The bottom line:

Our Armed Forces are incapable of internal reform on the scale necessary to prepare for the wars of the 21st century. Real reform will require political intervention, preferably by Congress, as statutory reforms are more durable than executive ones.”

I'm still not persuaded that the United States ought to be doing a lot of nitty-gritty counter-insurgency and "nation-building" operations, but Yingling's warnings about our institutional incapacity to adapt deserve to be taken seriously. And if we can't overcome the bureaucratic obstacles he's pointing to, what does that say about our prospects for success in places like Afghanistan or Iraq?

Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images

EXPLORE:AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ, MILITARY

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NUR AL-CUBICLE

4:45 PM ET

April 6, 2009

Imperial college

what does that say about our prospects for success in places like Afghanistan or Iraq

It says that we should start forming imperial colleges for training colonial administrators and problem-solvers.

GRAND SEN-OR

6:39 PM ET

April 6, 2009

It says that we should start

It says that we should start forming imperial colleges for training colonial administrators and problem-solvers.

Why not? But before you do that I suggest you change your Constitution. And once you change your Constitution than you may not even need those administrators and problem-solvers. Also "imparial" may mean something completely out of the books;->
BTW, Professor is not after empire-building business, he is trying to save the "state" in this confusion, he feels that it is slipping away from his grip;->

Grand Sen~or.

GRAND SEN-OR

6:30 PM ET

April 6, 2009

inability of the

inability of the "institutional military" to adapt to the challenges of a world where counter-insurgency and irregular warfare

Professor, here I'll be repeating myself;->
State has to give back the whole power, including military power to SPEEs. As being part of the Monopoly State structure, the Military has the same vulnaribility and the defects that State structure has. What Lt. Colonel Paul Yingling is observing in Iraq is primitive insurgency and irregular warfare of SPEEs fighting for their survival according to their laws and traditions denied by artificial mono-law state structure imposed by the EUS. Besides those SPEEs have deep historic SPE relations outside of Iraq. I mean this war goes on there forever if you like;->>

You know what has to be done, but you cannot afford to sacrifice "state", you are stuck with "state", to save the "state" you have to back off, like you did in Lebanon.
Now you want to try the same stupidity in AF-PAK before you change your constitution??!! Be their guest!

Grand Sen~or.

BRETT

8:11 PM ET

April 6, 2009

I'm still not persuaded that

I'm still not persuaded that the United States ought to be doing a lot of nitty-gritty counter-insurgency and "nation-building" operations, but Yingling's warnings about our institutional incapacity to adapt deserve to be taken seriously.

Only if you believe that having a Garrison Army should be the goal of the US military and government. The US military is rightly resistant to some of these changes, seeing as how the conventional military threat has never gone away, and the need for a strong conventional military has never disappeared (people tend to forget, for example, that an overwhelming conventional military means that you can win very decisive victories like that of the Gulf War I).

And if we can't overcome the bureaucratic obstacles he's pointing to, what does that say about our prospects for success in places like Afghanistan or Iraq?

It suggests that we should never get involved directly in those things, or, if not possible (and in Afghanistan's case, it really wasn't), we should minimize our exposure.

In any case, that's water under the bridge. A major failure in the Afghanistan effort will break the Obama Administration, which is why he's being so conciliatory on many other issues.