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The answers to Rumsfeld's
queries
By Dan Smith
(Posted
with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)
(Editor's Note: In a memo dated October 16,
distributed to his senior staff, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld raised a number of questions with
respect to military transformation, inspired in part by
the conduct of the "war on terror" and the US invasion
and occupation of Iraq. Much media commentary focused on
the contrast between Rumsfeld's positive public
pronouncements on military operations in Afghanistan and
Iraq and his characterization of a victory in those
countries as likely, but only as a result of a "long,
hard slog". Receiving less focus were his questions with
respect to broader US plans for military transformation
in the context of the "war on terror". )
To: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
CC: General Dick Myers, Paul Wolfowitz,
General Pete Pace, Douglas Feith
From:
Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Retired), senior fellow on
military affairs Friends Committee on National
Legislation.
Subject: Your October 16,
2003 memo re global war on terrorism
A copy of
subject memo came to my attention even though I am not
on the "to" or "CC" list. Obviously, you or a senior
member of your staff anticipated that I would be able to
provide a thoughtful, practical reply based on
independent, unbiased research. My responses follow each
of your queries.
Have we fashioned the right
mix of rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in
the US?
No. Rewards are insufficient to
accomplish one of the most basic requirements of
post-conflict reconstruction: disarming the various
factions and even individuals. The latter may be more
significant in Iraq than in countries ravaged by civil
war where large numbers of fighters are arrayed against
each other in some form of military or paramilitary
organization. When the leaders of the contending groups
agree to end armed conflict, one of the goals is to
disarm the fighters as part of the general demobilizing
and reintegrating effort. But in Iraq, the conditions
for demobilizing factions do not pertain.
This
connects to three other problems: a lack of personal
security for Iraqis, both private citizens and
high-profile individuals assisting the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) (although the latter,
particularly members of the Governing Council and state
ministers, do have security details); the large numbers
of weapons held by former Iraqi soldiers who simply
melted away to their homes as the coalition armies
advanced toward Baghdad; and the easy availability of
weapons and ammunition in the large numbers of munitions
dumps that are still not under coalition guard.
While the latter deficiency is slowly being
remedied through contracts for securing and destroying
excess and old munitions, until better and visible
control is established, confidence in the US will remain
low. Incidents such as the October 26 rocket attack on
the al-Rashid hotel, the multiple car bombings on
October 27, the downing of the Chinook helicopter
November 2, and even the frequency of daily attacks
against Western military forces, civilian contractors,
United Nations, Red Cross and other relief workers,
feeds this lack of confidence.
What would help
restore confidence that the US means what it says about
returning sovereignty quickly to Iraq - and at the same
time put an "Iraqi face" on security - would be to
recall Iraqi soldiers and officers up to and including
lieutenant-colonel rank and reconstitute their old units
through battalion level. Carefully vetted more senior
officers could form an Iraqi army headquarters reporting
to an Iraqi civilian authority operating under the
Governing Council. A parallel procedure should be used
to recall police units to operate under councils of
elders and other local leaders.
The inescapable
reality is that more professionally trained and
culturally sensitive security people are needed quickly
if the US has any hope of retaining the neutrality of,
let alone improved cooperation from, the general Iraqi
population. Troops and police advisers from European
countries may have the training, while those from
Islamic nations would be more culturally attuned. But
governments are not offering significant help to relieve
US forces.
Does the Department of Defense
need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip
and focus to deal with the global "war on terror"?
Definitely. The first step is to declare the
end of the global "war on terror". Next, the Pentagon
should shift from lead to supporting agency, with the
State Department becoming the new lead. The Justice
Department would assume a more prominent supporting role
in keeping with the emphasis that terrorist incidents
are criminal acts.
Al-Qaeda has been dealt a
blow and the regime that was most visible in its support
of global terror, the Afghan Taliban, has been replaced.
This is not to say that those Taliban and al-Qaeda
loyalists still at large pose no residual threat, either
to Afghanistan or, through other, loosely affiliated
groups, to other governments. But these groups seem less
interested in pressing a global jihad than in achieving
specific goals within the countries in which they are
operating. (This is true even in Iraq, where the US
presence acts as a magnet for jihadis.) They of course
will always accept money, equipment and training from
any source, al-Qaeda or not.
At least part of
the current US dilemma stems from an inability to see
simultaneously the two levels of terror in the 21st
century. The administration's emphasis on "global war"
masks the reality that all terrorist acts are local.
This suggests that the effort to stop or at least
control acts of violence directed against non-combatants
should remain at the local - or no more than a regional
- context. Were this done, the Department of Defense
would be able to re-form its plans and organization to
support the police and justice systems when these
civilian-oriented agencies determine they do not have
the resources to track, apprehend, or where necessary,
fight and defeat those committing acts of terror. Such
cases generally will occur in failed or failing states.
This is a key point, for it goes right to the
central questions of why military forces are needed and
how they should be employed to achieve the stated goals.
In an ideal world, disputes and
misunderstandings would be resolved without recourse to
the threat of or actual use of armed conflict. In the
obvious absence of this ideal, military organizations
exist to provide the same sense of security from
external attack that police forces provide on the
national and local levels. This deterrent/defensive
orientation is reinforced by various international
conventions that seek to regulate and minimize war's
effects. More significantly, the UN has as its primary
mission "to save succeeding generations from the scourge
of war", a continuing endeavor that involves first and
foremost employing non-military measures.
The UN
Charter does acknowledge that some threats to
international peace and security will not be remedied by
non-violent interventions. This reality points to the
question of how military force should be used. The UN
Charter calls for member states "to unite our strength
to maintain international peace and security" so as "to
ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the
institution of methods, that armed force shall not be
used, save in the common interest" as this is determined
by the UN Security Council. Thus, in addition to their
deterrent role, which contributes to avoiding the
scourge of war, armed forces acting under UN mandates
engage in peacekeeping, peace monitoring, and peace
making, roles that enhance international security
through cooperative actions in support of international
law.
Currently in the US military, there is a
mismatch between the demands inherent in these roles and
resources and capabilities to implement these roles. The
Pentagon - and the entire US government - seems trapped
organizationally and conceptually in what might be
termed the "Cold War time warp". Tanks and armored troop
carriers, the mainstays of classic warfare, send all the
wrong signals to populations whose main security
concerns are looting, murders, kidnappings, robberies
and car bombs.
Ironically, the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq have slowed efforts to transform
the US military into a lighter, more agile, and flexible
force that could effectively participate in UN peace
operations, including stabilization of failed states.
Changes that have been made include:
The army's shift to the Stryker Brigade Combat Team,
a new combat grouping that relies on speed and agility
to perform its mission;
The air force plan to organize wings that mix
various aircraft types (as well as reserve and active
duty component personnel), giving combatant commanders
the full range of capabilities in one well-trained
operational package;
The navy's new "sea base" proposal and existing
cooperative engagement capability system are prototypes
for what could be a shared joint command and total
battlespace awareness system.
The one area that
ultimately has to remain globally centralized is
intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination,
with the latter being tailored for and directed to
commanders at all levels from unified combatant
commanders to platoon level. This structure must truly
be "all source" both in terms of collection methods and
sources, including open source information. Moreover,
given the power inherent in organizations charged with
interpreting and disseminating information on which
national policy is based, continuous review of
intelligence activities and the rationale supporting
intelligence community conclusions is required.
Are the changes we have and are making too
modest and incremental? My impression is that we have
not yet made truly bold moves, although we have made
many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but
are they enough?
Simply, "Yes" and "No".
Changes to date have been too slow in reacting
to the post-1991 and then post-September 11, 2001
security environments. This is not just a Department of
Defense problem, where it is particularly evident in the
training and equipping of ground forces. Primarily,
needed changes in overall US national security (foreign
and defense) policy have been too slow, resulting, since
1991, in a general failure to organize international
backing to slow, stop and eliminate the root causes for
continued violence in the developing world that then
generates unilateral or multilateral interventions. In
short, the US has not placed enough weight behind the
fundamental concept of war prevention - unless one
believes (illogically) that making war prevents wars.
The demise of the state in the internecine
warfare that engulfed the republics of the former
Yugoslavia in the 1990s was a harbinger of the
challenges that were emerging around the world in the
post-Cold War era. But the assaults by various factions
on human security, human rights, and civil liberties
that drew condemnation and eventually military
intervention in Southeast Europe were not connected (or
not publicly connected) to the same plight of millions
on other continents. Only when a particularly
significant atrocity, such as the mass killing of Tutsis
and moderate Hutus in Rwanda, became known, was there
international intervention - and by then the
intervention (including military assets) invariably
would be directed toward the need for immediate
humanitarian relief.
Even in the current general
context of peaceful competing nation-states, the vast
majority of countries find it prudent to retain national
military establishments. And while the primary purpose
of regular military units remains "to kill people and
destroy things", an emerging, equally important
requirement in the post-Cold War and post-September 11
environments is the ability to act quickly, under the
aegis of the UN (or a regional security organization
and, in extremis, unilaterally until the UN Security
Council acts) to preclude or halt war crimes, genocide
and crimes against humanity. A further emerging need is
for a stand-alone, international civilian police
formation, modeled on the Italian Caribineri that can be
dispatched under UN auspices to help provide physical
security for a threatened population and to contribute
to reconstituting local police and other traditional
security structures.
A bold move by the
Department of Defense would be the conversion of one or
two current active duty ground divisions into a "heavy"
Caribineri force to be used in situations such as Iraq
today, where heavy armored divisions lack the proper
equipment and psychological orientation for interacting
with and gaining the trust of key segments of the Iraqi
population. These US forces are, to borrow a phrase,
"fit to kill", but for the most part this is not the
orientation that will be effective in either Afghanistan
or Iraq. The US should also press other countries to
create similar forces to allow for true multinational
operations under the UN.
Creation of these
self-sustaining units is not the only possible move, but
it would provide the president with an option to employ
regular military formations in those situations where
the display of raw military power would send the wrong
message to a population that needs the reassurance of
physical security and eventual justice.
Today, we lack metrics to know if we are
winning or losing the global "war on terror". Are we
capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more
terrorists every day than the madrassas and the
radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying
against us?
Focusing on the madrassas
(Islamic religious schools) and other institutions that
promote narrowly focused viewpoints, whether directed
against the US, the West, their own government or
international organizations, misses the crux of the
problem. (Were this a problem in auto mechanics, the
solution to eliminating harmful emissions will not be
found at the output end - the tailpipe - but at the
input - the engine combustion chamber.) It misses
because the real problem is the repression of human and
civil rights and liberties, often in the name of
"security", in countries whose regimes have been
supported or condoned by the US and other Western
nations.
The question does pertain to the
problem only to the extent that any narrowly focused
system of instruction invariably demands that its
interpretation of life be accepted unequivocally. As a
result, those who hold that valid alternative systems
and explanations exist are easily demonized and become
marked for extermination.
Changing this system
per se is not within the capability of the Department of
Defense. Killing or capturing those who commit terrorist
acts cannot be used as a metric of success, as
demonstrated by the "promotion" of mid-level al-Qaeda
operatives when senior persons are caught or killed. As
the Pentagon learned in Vietnam, body counts are
essentially meaningless when the number comprising the
enemy force cannot be ascertained.
What is
within the Department of Defense's purview is ensuring
that statements or actions by Pentagon civilians,
uniformed persons or individuals working under contract
to the Pentagon avoid denigrating other cultures and
belief systems and respect the customs and traditions of
indigenous peoples with whom there is contact. Examples
of unhelpful incidents include the president's July 3
"Bring them on" challenge, remarks by Lieutenant-General
William Boykin, and the detention of three elderly Iraqi
women in an apparent attempt to force the surrender of
one of the women's sons suspected of attacking US forces
in Iraq.
In Iraq itself, two provisional metrics
might be the level and trend in the number of terror
incidents and the geographic spread (or contraction) of
the attacks. On a wider, regional scale, the number and
extent of attacks that occur or that are thwarted could
also be a rough metric. Over the mid-term, valid metrics
of success include: tax collections flowing to the
central government, a steep and sustained drop in
assassinations of mayors and Iraqi police, and the
number and geographic spread of government-paid
teachers.
Does the US need to fashion a
broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of
terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort
into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal
of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The
cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions
against the terrorists' costs of millions.
See first paragraph in above answer. An
integrated US plan would include a large-scale foreign
education effort, including re-opening US cultural
centers throughout the world and using US
government-funded foreign broadcasts and other
information media to discuss and explain the
foundational principles underlying the US system of
governance. Other complementary programs might include
increased opportunities for foreign students to study in
the US and changes in US trade policies and foreign aid
(including debt cancellation) that would help create
conditions for improving the living conditions in
developing countries.
Not to be overlooked is
the reciprocal necessity to educate US officials and
ordinary citizens about non-Western cultures. This
suggests that any US effort would be more effective were
it part of a broader, multilateral, multicultural
strategy to break down barriers between peoples, which
those who practice terror try to exploit.
The
rationale for this admittedly long-range plan is to
undercut the narrow and frequently complete
misunderstanding (or purposeful misinterpretation) of
the principles of democracy - its rights, privileges and
responsibilities. The objective should not be to
convince but to sow the seeds of inquisitiveness and a
desire to learn more about what, in a number of
countries, is an alternative to current conditions. This
would be a less costly alternative in blood and treasure
to trying to prevent terrorist attacks through military
action or to the need to rebuild societies destroyed by
warfare. It would also serve to close the gap between
the rhetoric of US policy "intentions" and the programs
and activities that are actually implemented (eg,
rhetoric of multilateralism versus unilateral action).
Do we need a new organization?
No, at least not a new superstructure.
Recombining existing organizations to produce truly
joint forces that can react to imminent threats in
support of UN principles and creation of a stand-alone
Caribineri police contingent may be warranted. But as
indicated previously, what would be most useful is a
large increase in "soft power" capabilities the US could
bring to bear.
How do we stop those who are
financing the radical madrassa schools?
This is a development, not a "security"
question. The Department of Defense's contribution to
this effort, which properly belongs to the State
Department and the Treasury, would be information
gleaned through communications intercepts and
exploitation of documents and computer files that come
into the Department of Defense's possession.
Other than information, the Department of
Defense's role would seem to be to avoid giving new
cause for individuals to provide funds in reaction to
something said or done by Pentagon representatives.
Is our current situation such that "the
harder we work, the behinder we get"?
In a
sense, Yes. The insistence on dominating the security,
political and economic reconstruction of Iraq leads to
unintentional cultural gaffes and operational mistakes
that inhibit the development of trust between US
personnel and the indigenous population. A more
prominent role for the State Department among US
agencies and for the UN among international and
intergovernmental agencies would relieve the pressure on
the Department of Defense to implement programs with
which it has little modern practical experience.
Granted, such a reorientation would entail increased
coordination, but it would free the Department of
Defense to concentrate on what it does best - developing
better security through training indigenous forces and,
where necessary, taking direct action against those
committing terrorist acts. Such a shift would also lead
to greater participation by Iraqis in overall
decisionmaking.
It is pretty clear that the
coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or
another, but it will be a long, hard slog.
Agreed. The question is: will the US prevail
"badly"? That is, will the long-term end state of the
Afghan and Iraqi people be better than it was in the
1990s before the Taliban and Saddam Hussein regimes were
ousted? Unfortunately, the early results are mixed,
particularly given the low level of international
financial support evinced at recent donor conferences
($4.5 billion for Afghanistan and $13 billion for Iraq).
Perhaps a more important question is: Will the
US and the world be safer as a result of these two (and
potentially other) interventions? History will be the
judge, but at the moment, the weight of criticism
suggests that these two interventions have increased US
insecurity, endangered global instability and increased
terrorist recruitment.
Does the Central
Intelligence Agency need a new finding?
Not
being privy to classified information about the content
of current findings and executive orders, this is
difficult to answer. However, from what has been
reported by the media in terms of the reaction to
September 11 (eg, the US Patriot Act), the reported
activities of CIA operatives in Afghanistan and CIA
presence in Iraq, and information contained in
government documents such as the unclassified National
Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, it would appear
that the CIA has sufficient leeway to carry out its
mandate. In fact, some revisiting of legislative changes
may be in order, particularly if abuses are discovered
in the exercise of new authorities.
Should we
create a private foundation to entice radical
madrassas to a more moderate course?
No. This idea suggests - and would be seen
as confirmation of - an insensitive mirror-imaging of US
consumerism and lust for material riches. The majority
of madrassas must be regarded as principled
believers in what they preach and teach and attempts to
bribe them would more likely inflame already existing
passions. A better course is making available through
alternative means information about democracy, human
rights, and civil liberties.
What else should
we be considering?
Worldwide, the Pentagon
should proceed with plans to restructure forces and
re-base units. Specifically, Germany-based ground units
should be brought back to the US. A six-month schedule
of unit rotation for training with European allies
should be inaugurated, with equal time given to
warfighting and peacekeeping (Chapter VI and Charter
VII) operations. Re-basing US Air Force combat wings
should also be considered. Naval deployments (carrier
battle group and amphibious ready group) should be made
on the basis of anticipated or existing conditions where
a US presence would contribute to reducing tensions or
for scheduled training with allied navies rather than by
rote schedule.
Plans for reconfiguring US ground
forces in East Asia should be further developed. As
diplomatic progress is made in resolving the issue of
North Korean nuclear weapons, plans for re-positioning
US forces in Korea (including eventual withdrawal) and
then in Japan can be implemented.
To head off
the rise of new anti-US sentiment (or further inflaming
existing sentiment), the Pentagon should curtail
economic and military aid to countries with repressive
regimes or countries in which the military effectively
controls the powers of the state.
Transfers of
arms, spare parts and ammunition to repressive regimes
should be stopped. The Department of Defense should
throw its weight behind an Arms Trade Treaty that would
bind all countries from supplying such regimes with arms
and armaments. These measures, addressing the
"supply-side" of the arms trade, would not solve the
problem of spending scarce resources on weapons, but
would make acquiring weapons more difficult.
The
Department of Defense could continue training, as part
of a multilateral, UN sanctioned program, select units
controlled by regional security organizations to perform
peacekeeping missions when authorized by the Security
Council. Africa presents a viable prototype for this
activity.
Finally, in addition to forgiving
loans for non-military needs in developing countries,
the US should strike a bargain with developing countries
that owe money to the US for past purchases of military
equipment: the debt will be apportioned over a number of
years, with a percentage of the debt and interest
forgiven each year, on condition that the sums forgiven
are applied to basic human needs and services benefiting
the people of the debtor nation - eg, health clinics,
schools, fresh water developments, improved sanitation,
etc.
Colonel Dan Smith (Retired), a
military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, is
a retired US army colonel and senior fellow on military
affairs at the Friends Committee on National
Legislation.
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus)
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