A General Failure
By Charles Bird Posted in War — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
A Lieutenant Colonel in Armed Forces Journal makes the case that our failure in Vietnam and failings in Iraq are the result of the generals in charge:
These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America's generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress.
Lt. Col. Yingling outlines the generals' responsibilities:
The correct estimation of strategic possibilities can be further subdivided into the preparation for war and the conduct of war. Preparation for war consists in the raising, arming, equipping and training of forces. The conduct of war consists of both planning for the use of those forces and directing those forces in operations.
To prepare forces for war, the general must visualize the conditions of future combat. To raise military forces properly, the general must visualize the quality and quantity of forces needed in the next war. To arm and equip military forces properly, the general must visualize the materiel requirements of future engagements. To train military forces properly, the general must visualize the human demands on future battlefields, and replicate those conditions in peacetime exercises. Of course, not even the most skilled general can visualize precisely how future wars will be fought. According to British military historian and soldier Sir Michael Howard, "In structuring and preparing an army for war, you can be clear that you will not get it precisely right, but the important thing is not to be too far wrong, so that you can put it right quickly."
The most tragic error a general can make is to assume without much reflection that wars of the future will look much like wars of the past. Following World War I, French generals committed this error, assuming that the next war would involve static battles dominated by firepower and fixed fortifications. Throughout the interwar years, French generals raised, equipped, armed and trained the French military to fight the last war. In stark contrast, German generals spent the interwar years attempting to break the stalemate created by firepower and fortifications. They developed a new form of war — the blitzkrieg — that integrated mobility, firepower and decentralized tactics. The German Army did not get this new form of warfare precisely right. After the 1939 conquest of Poland, the German Army undertook a critical self-examination of its operations. However, German generals did not get it too far wrong either, and in less than a year had adapted their tactics for the invasion of France.
After visualizing the conditions of future combat, the general is responsible for explaining to civilian policymakers the demands of future combat and the risks entailed in failing to meet those demands. Civilian policymakers have neither the expertise nor the inclination to think deeply about strategic probabilities in the distant future. Policymakers, especially elected representatives, face powerful incentives to focus on near-term challenges that are of immediate concern to the public. Generating military capability is the labor of decades. If the general waits until the public and its elected representatives are immediately concerned with national security threats before finding his voice, he has waited too long. The general who speaks too loudly of preparing for war while the nation is at peace places at risk his position and status. However, the general who speaks too softly places at risk the security of his country.
Failing to visualize future battlefields represents a lapse in professional competence, but seeing those fields clearly and saying nothing is an even more serious lapse in professional character. Moral courage is often inversely proportional to popularity and this observation in nowhere more true than in the profession of arms. The history of military innovation is littered with the truncated careers of reformers who saw gathering threats clearly and advocated change boldly. A military professional must possess both the physical courage to face the hazards of battle and the moral courage to withstand the barbs of public scorn. On and off the battlefield, courage is the first characteristic of generalship.
In Vietnam:
America's defeat in Vietnam is the most egregious failure in the history of American arms. America's general officer corps refused to prepare the Army to fight unconventional wars, despite ample indications that such preparations were in order. Having failed to prepare for such wars, America's generals sent our forces into battle without a coherent plan for victory. Unprepared for war and lacking a coherent strategy, America lost the war and the lives of more than 58,000 service members.
Following World War II, there were ample indicators that America's enemies would turn to insurgency to negate our advantages in firepower and mobility. The French experiences in Indochina and Algeria offered object lessons to Western armies facing unconventional foes. These lessons were not lost on the more astute members of America's political class. In 1961, President Kennedy warned of "another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin — war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by evading and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him." In response to these threats, Kennedy undertook a comprehensive program to prepare America's armed forces for counterinsurgency.
Not only did we use the wrong strategy, we failed to adapt quickly and convincingly enough to a right one.
Having failed to visualize accurately the conditions of combat in Vietnam, America's generals prosecuted the war in conventional terms. The U.S. military embarked on a graduated attrition strategy intended to compel North Vietnam to accept a negotiated peace. The U.S. undertook modest efforts at innovation in Vietnam. Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS), spearheaded by the State Department's "Blowtorch" Bob Kromer, was a serious effort to address the political and economic causes of the insurgency. The Marine Corps' Combined Action Program (CAP) was an innovative approach to population security. However, these efforts are best described as too little, too late. Innovations such as CORDS and CAP never received the resources necessary to make a large-scale difference. The U.S. military grudgingly accepted these innovations late in the war, after the American public's commitment to the conflict began to wane.
The problem in Vietnam wasn't just poor strategy. There were plenty more factors that led to our loss. In Iraq, Yingling finds similar fault with the generals.
America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq. First, throughout the 1990s our generals failed to envision the conditions of future combat and prepare their forces accordingly. Second, America's generals failed to estimate correctly both the means and the ways necessary to achieve the aims of policy prior to beginning the war in Iraq. Finally, America's generals did not provide Congress and the public with an accurate assessment of the conflict in Iraq.
[...]
Having spent a decade preparing to fight the wrong war, America's generals then miscalculated both the means and ways necessary to succeed in Iraq. The most fundamental military miscalculation in Iraq has been the failure to commit sufficient forces to provide security to Iraq's population. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) estimated in its 1998 war plan that 380,000 troops would be necessary for an invasion of Iraq. Using operations in Bosnia and Kosovo as a model for predicting troop requirements, one Army study estimated a need for 470,000 troops. Alone among America's generals, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki publicly stated that "several hundred thousand soldiers" would be necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. Prior to the war, President Bush promised to give field commanders everything necessary for victory. Privately, many senior general officers both active and retired expressed serious misgivings about the insufficiency of forces for Iraq. These leaders would later express their concerns in tell-all books such as "Fiasco" and "Cobra II." However, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq with less than half the strength required to win, these leaders did not make their objections public.
Given the lack of troop strength, not even the most brilliant general could have devised the ways necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. However, inept planning for postwar Iraq took the crisis caused by a lack of troops and quickly transformed it into a debacle. In 1997, the U.S. Central Command exercise "Desert Crossing" demonstrated that many postwar stabilization tasks would fall to the military. The other branches of the U.S. government lacked sufficient capability to do such work on the scale required in Iraq. Despite these results, CENTCOM accepted the assumption that the State Department would administer postwar Iraq. The military never explained to the president the magnitude of the challenges inherent in stabilizing postwar Iraq.
After failing to visualize the conditions of combat in Iraq, America's generals failed to adapt to the demands of counterinsurgency. Counterinsurgency theory prescribes providing continuous security to the population. However, for most of the war American forces in Iraq have been concentrated on large forward-operating bases, isolated from the Iraqi people and focused on capturing or killing insurgents. Counterinsurgency theory requires strengthening the capability of host-nation institutions to provide security and other essential services to the population. America's generals treated efforts to create transition teams to develop local security forces and provincial reconstruction teams to improve essential services as afterthoughts, never providing the quantity or quality of personnel necessary for success.
After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for postwar stabilization, America's general officer corps did not accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American public. The Iraq Study Group concluded that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq." The ISG noted that "on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals." Population security is the most important measure of effectiveness in counterinsurgency. For more than three years, America's generals continued to insist that the U.S. was making progress in Iraq. However, for Iraqi civilians, each year from 2003 onward was more deadly than the one preceding it. For reasons that are not yet clear, America's general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq's government and security forces and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq. Moreover, America's generals have not explained clearly the larger strategic risks of committing so large a portion of the nation's deployable land power to a single theater of operations.
The intellectual and moral failures common to America's general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq constitute a crisis in American generalship. Any explanation that fixes culpability on individuals is insufficient. No one leader, civilian or military, caused failure in Vietnam or Iraq. Different military and civilian leaders in the two conflicts produced similar results. In both conflicts, the general officer corps designed to advise policymakers, prepare forces and conduct operations failed to perform its intended functions. To understand how the U.S. could face defeat at the hands of a weaker insurgent enemy for the second time in a generation, we must look at the structural influences that produce our general officer corps.
Sounds reasonable. Yingling proposes a new way of promoting soldiers to generals, noting that the best ones are smart, innovative, physically and morally courageous, well-educated and physically fit. I would add adaptable to the mix. If a chosen strategy is failing, then the leadership should be able to see it quickly enough and change the plan to get to a better solution. In Vietnam, we never mounted a serious counterinsurgency strategy, even though the situation desperately called for it. In Iraq, we're about two years too late, but at least it's happening now.
The cynical part of me wonders if Yingling himself isn't vying for a generalship, but he's had two tours in Iraq and some time to think through the situation, so I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt. The author may also be generalizing the problem too much. In both wars, the main military problem came down to its inability to plan and implement proper counterinsurgency doctrine. It's a tougher form of war to fight, and it places greater demands on soldiers and the upper echelons. We have overwhelming firepower, so no military force is going to confront us directly. The fallback strategy, therefore, is to mount insurgencies, using other means to expel the U.S. military presence. It worked in Vietnam, and it may work still in Iraq.
Update: An interview of LTC Yingling here. One of the key quotes: "Don’t train on finding the enemy; train on finding your friends and they will help you find your enemy." His detailed explanation of how U.S. forces pacified Tall Afar is illuminating. While it's easy to question the man's motives, he was one of the good guys in the field where it counts, and there is no doubt that he put his career on the line by writing the AFJ article.
Sounds reasonable. Yingling proposes a new way of promoting soldiers to generals, noting that the best ones are smart, innovative, physically and morally courageous, well-educated and physically fit. I would add adaptable to the mix.
If by "new" you mean "went out with the end of clan warfare," then you're right. Will these new, physically and morally courageous, physically fit, innovative, smart (well educated is already there, but let's presume the rest is not) be at the flank or the front of the cavalry charge? Ooh! Better idea! Let's equip them with broadswords, bright, shiny armor, and have them lead infantry rushes right into enemy lines for glory!
If a chosen strategy is failing, then the leadership should be able to see it quickly enough and change the plan to get to a better solution.
Thus destroying the experience gained by the folks who missed on the first pass. Sure, it worked for the Soviets during World War II, but I'm not sure executing or exiling thousands of men is viable here.
In Vietnam, we never mounted a serious counterinsurgency strategy, even though the situation desperately called for it.
Manifestly untrue. It just took us a few years to figure out how to do it, by which time Congress was already bored.
In Iraq, we're about two years too late, but at least it's happening now.
Well, if we're going to be honest, a truly effective counterinsurgency campaign, complete with black raids and mass executions, still isn't underway.
The cynical part of me wonders if Yingling himself isn't vying for a generalship, but he's had two tours in Iraq and some time to think through the situation, so I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Glory be, the first time we've truly had the chickenhawk argument advanced here by one of our nominal righties.
The author may also be generalizing the problem too much. In both wars, the main military problem came down to its inability to plan and implement proper counterinsurgency doctrine.
No, in Vietnam at least, the main military problem was the political decision not to bomb North Vietnamese supply centers for fear of killing Soviet and Chinese advisors and trainers.
It's a tougher form of war to fight, and it places greater demands on soldiers and the upper echelons.
So, what, the mid-level officer corps comes through without any stress?
We have overwhelming firepower, so no military force is going to confront us directly. The fallback strategy, therefore, is to mount insurgencies, using other means to expel the U.S. military presence. It worked in Vietnam, and it may work still in Iraq.
What a profoundly odd view of history.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
there are a couple of points worth an answer.
The CAP program was working in Vietnam for several years, but it wasn't on a large scale and the higher-ups eventually pulled the plug, even though the NVA were effectively repelled. I'll grant you the U.S. didn't have the stones to hit NV supply centers, but it's not convincing (at least to me) to say that that one tactic would've made the difference in the war when South Vietnamese had such a sh*tty and corrupt government and when our leadership kept making so many mistakes.
The U.S. military was not serious enough at applying COIN doctrine in Vietnam. The brutal COIN tactics that the French used in Algeria backfired because, once the people learned of the methods, they turned against the government. It'll never work if the country running COIN ops is a free nation. Brutality isn't necessary anyway.
Yingling is a big supporter of a significant counterinsurgency component in the armed forces. Judging by your response, you are apparently not. It makes me wonder: do support the Petraeus COIN plan and, if not, why?
I would also add Max Boot to the list of those who are less than satisfied with the leadership. Quote:
I think the strategy sincerely came from General Abizaid and General Casey. I think President Bush was clear all along that he would take the best military advice that he could get, and that was the advice that he was taking, and it was a well intentioned strategy, it was the light footprint approach that Rumsfeld was in favor of, that Abizaid and Casey were in favor of, which basically thought that the less we did, the better, and the more the Iraqis would step forward to take control of their own affairs. That was a perfectly reasonable strategy, but it simply failed, and we know it failed, and so it was time to try something different. And you know, frankly, I wish President Bush had tried a different approach earlier, because I think it had been apparent earlier that that strategy wasn’t working, but better late than never, and finally, he decided to change his defense secretary, to change his commanders on the ground, to try something different, and that’s what we’re doing now, and I think it’s incredibly important that we give General Petraeus and his team a chance to at least try to be successful, and to show what they can do over the course of at least a year or more without reaching to any premature conclusions about how the new strategy will work out.
[...]
And okay, there’s some truth to that, but that, you know, presidents also have to make sure that they’re getting the best strategy and the best generals. And if their generals are not implementing a successful strategy, they have to be willing to change. And I think President Bush finally woke up to the need to do that sometime around last fall, but I wish he’d done it a little bit earlier, because if we’d change courses earlier, I think it would have been easier to make greater progress.
And then there's that other nominal righty, Bing West.
The CAP program was working in Vietnam for several years, but it wasn't on a large scale and the higher-ups eventually pulled the plug, even though the NVA were effectively repelled.
Charles, why was military force in Vietnam drawn down over time?
I'll grant you the U.S. didn't have the stones to hit NV supply centers, but it's not convincing (at least to me) to say that that one tactic would've made the difference in the war when South Vietnamese had such a sh*tty and corrupt government and when our leadership kept making so many mistakes.
If you truly believe that supply centers, logistics, command and control facilities, training bases, and safe havens are irrelevant to any kind of warfare, let alone insurgency, then truly, there is nothing more for us to discuss.
The U.S. military was not serious enough at applying COIN doctrine in Vietnam.
No, the United States government was not serious about waging war there. Much as our gentle friends of the Left sometimes imagine otherwise, policy usually flows downward pretty well.
The brutal COIN tactics that the French used in Algeria backfired because, once the people learned of the methods, they turned against the government.
There's just a teensy bit more to that story, but given that I try to make it a policy not to encourage threadjacks, I'll simply say your reading is incomplete and leave it at that.
It'll never work if the country running COIN ops is a free nation. Brutality isn't necessary anyway.
(1) Is demonstrably untrue. (2) No, but nothing is necessary; it's merely highly helpful.
Yingling is a big supporter of a significant counterinsurgency component in the armed forces. Judging by your response, you are apparently not.
Now, Charles. Let's go back to what I wrote. I seem to be saying that the call to return to the warrior-king is ridiculous, not new by any stretch of the imagination, and would merely regress us to either early medieval -- or if you prefer, pre-Roman -- battle tactics. I suppose there's something to that, if you've decided to restructure our society to match; otherwise, it's profoundly silly.
I don't think I said anything about counterinsurgency forces and their place in the United States Military. Maybe you could point it out?
I would also add Max Boot to the list of those who are less than satisfied with the leadership.
I'm tempted to say that I'll quote that great sage Mr. T, and discuss pitying fools, but that would be a bit much. Rather, I wonder why you bothered quoting Boot or West, for surely, an appeal to authority -- such as it is -- neither resolves the argument on its merits, nor in this case, explains why we should revert to tribal warfare methods.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
but against the person advocating it? Doesn't make sense to me, Thomas. As for supply lines, I didn't disagree with you, except that I don't believe that hitting them the way you suggest would've been the magic bullet. We'll never know for sure because it wasn't tried. We finally did get to the Vietnamization plan, and it was sort of working, but SV was still stuck with a sh*tty and corrupt government that had only the tepid support of the people.
Plenty of people are in favor of adding a counterinsurgency component to the armed forces; indeed, I'd venture that a lot of folks think we already have that. (Some people might even call it "Special Forces," but who knows?) Merely because the blind chicken may or may not have found a nugget of corn, does not mean that we should not point out that the stupid bird keeps running face-first into the wall.
As to the rest: In the words of a mutual friend, Eh.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
Your blog entry -- and your comments in support of it -- have reinforced the simple truth that we let people blow smoke out of their fourth point of contact more or less at will.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
harping on the one apparent fact you know about Vietnam is tiring.
CAP worked and it didn't work. Just like a lot of other tactics.
Vietnam, however, stopped being a counterinsurgency around 1965 and by 1968 the counterinsurgency had been won. Harry Summers does the best job of describing our strategic failures. Not using CAP was not among them.
From what I read, Max Boot has the same experience as a commissioned officer and in the combat arms as you do, so I don't know why his opinion is dispostive of much.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
in the room. In both wars, the strongest supporters for the terrorists are the American left. Many of the American leftists supporting the terrorists in this war were, also, engaged in making sure our enemies won in Vietnam.
Ramsey Clark, Jane Fonda and John Kerry, plus many, many, members of the news media, have done their best to defeat us again. America did nothing to stop them during the Vietnam War,
and is doing nothing to prevent them aiding the enemy in this war.
The North Vietnamese told us they could not have won without the
help of our leftist.
"Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us. "
Someday, we will hear the same message from the terrorist leaders in Iraq. The American leftists are defeating America.
The Vietnam War lasted about 10 years. There will be a growing anti-war crowd for any U.S. war that lasts that long. You will also have an impatient news media. If the Iraq War lasts ten years, expect violent protests. It is the nature of our democracy.
A major consideration in war planning should be that we don't try to fight wars that we cannot win in a couple years. The only exception would be a defensive war against a major power.
I think the Pentagon planned to take out Sadam, his cronies, find the weapons, set up a pro-western regime, bribe them, and then get the hell out of there. There would be a pro-U.S. regime with money and covert operations, not a large-scale military occupation.
I don't think the Pentagon wanted to create the conditions for counter-insurgency warfare. It is prolonged, complex, expensive, and divisive warfare which gives propaganda opportunities to our enemies. You don't just plan to win, but plan to win fast.
The conventional military operations were easy. However, some arrogant political decisions based upon lousy intelligence resulted in this problematic occupation. Now the Pentagon is in an embarrasing predicament. They are fighting a long, controversial war that they didn't plan on having. Shortages in manpower will be just as important as leftist propaganda.
A long war gives the lefties a chance to grow in influence and be decisive. It is partly a self-fulfilling prophesy in U.S. democracy.
First of all, this is not a diary. This is you re-using somebody else's work almost without any contribution of your own. A diary would be where you summarize this article and engage the ideas therein. Instead, what you've done is to say, "hey, this guy's smart. Why don't we all read what he has to say?"
Second, like you I think Yingling has some good points. But there is more than a little reason to be skeptical about his motives, which you do not subject to any serious questioning. His suggestion that General staff officers should know a foreign language is common sense. After all, they have to deal with people who speak other languages all the time. On the other hand, the idea that all (or even most) generals should have graduate degrees in the social sciences or the humanities is a terrible idea. I have one of those degrees. In fact, I have two of them, and I'm going to get another in a couple of years. I know lots and lots of people with that kind of education, and I wouldn't trust any of them with the command of a company, much less a division or a brigade. We're the kind of people who can tell you what the generals did wrong after the fact. That's what we're good at. That's what we're trained to do. As for what the Generals should do right now, you'd be better off asking any junior NCO in the Army, Navy, or Marines. Yingling seems to be unduly influenced by the fact that he has one of those degrees, which apparently makes him smarter than the people in command.
A precedent embalms a principle.
- Disraeli