Before the First Shots Are Fired: How America Can Win Or Lose Off The Battlefield (Zinni, Tony; Koltz, Tony)

Notes from relevant books on Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Defence, Development and Humanitarian Action.

Zinni, Tony, and Koltz, Tony. Before the First Shots Are Fired: How America Can Win Or Lose Off The Battlefield. St. Martin's Press, 2014.

These are my personal notes from this book. They try to give a general idea of its content, but do not in any case replace reading the actual book. Think of them as teasers to encourage you to read further!

In this insightful book, the former Commander in Chief of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) reviews the need to make sure that military strategy and policy are aligned.  A historical account and an analysis of lessons learned of US military operations since Afghanistan and Iraq.

Preface

I began to reflect more and more on actions that happened away from the battlefield and how significantly these actions affected success or failure on the battlefield, especially those that were taken, or not taken, before we put our troops in harm’s way.

“War is too important a matter to leave to soldiers,” said French premier Georges Clemenceau—an idea often rephrased as “War is too important to be left to generals.” Truth is, I’ve never met a general who wants a war to be left to him alone. When our nation sends military forces into action, every general I have known wants his civilian political masters as committed, involved, and accountable as he himself must be.

One: How the Hell Did We Get Here?

Too often there is a disconnect between decision and conclusion. I’m sure President Kennedy did not foresee the consequences when he decided to greatly increase the number of advisors into Vietnam in the early 1960s, nor did President Johnson when he began sending in US ground forces there, nor did President Bush when he ordered the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq.

American troops had been fully committed to the war since the 1965 decision by President Johnson to send ground forces to the conflict. The initial advise, support, and train phase of the war ended with that decision,

We would bring peace, democracy, and freedom to these poor, beleaguered people. Eventually and unfortunately, we allowed ourselves to believe we would achieve these goals by battlefield attrition. We would shoot our way to victory. Sure, we mouthed the words of pacification and seeking to win hearts and minds. We even set up myriad organizations and programs to be measured from every which way to show we were winning this part of the fight. In reality, however, the priority for the United States was winning it all on the battlefield.

He and Ho Chi Minh knew what the insurgents needed from the people—fear, apathy, or support. Any of these would do. To counter the insurgents, we needed people’s courage, commitment, and rejection of the enemy.

two great barriers to a successful end. The enemy had a secure base of operations in North Vietnam, and the government we supported in the South was corrupt and out of touch with the people’s aspirations and needs.

One Vietnamese batallion Commander, “You do my job once and I will thank you. You do it twice and you have the job.”

They forgot that politics and policy must be aligned with the strategy, and the strategy must be aligned with the operational design on the ground. And that operational design must be aligned with the actions of the troops all the way down to the lowest tactical level.

And then there’s the “weight of other burdens” excuse. “One reason the Kennedy and Johnson administrations failed to take an orderly, rational approach to the basic questions underlying Vietnam,” wrote Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who served in those administrations, “was the staggering variety and complexity of other issues we faced. Simply put, we faced a blizzard of problems, there were only twenty-four hours in a day, and we often did not have time to think straight.”

And I’m sure they learned from the decade of botched handlings of these conflicts how constantly changing course adversely affects the end state.

“This has not been a ten-year war,” he told me. “It’s been ten one-year wars.”

Before I got to Afghanistan, I read reports that the cost of cleaning up, packing, and moving everything was expected to be nearly $6 billion. The scale of planning and executing these operations was monumental. During the three years we were scheduled to remain in the country, we had to close and clean up each month 20 bases, move 1,100 vehicles, pack and move out 767 containers, set up and run 140 wash points (all gear has to be cleaned and inspected before it can be sent home), and man and operate 37 inspection points

One service chief told me that the cost of maintaining a single Soldier or Marine in Afghanistan for one year was well over $1 million!

It is ironic that military leaders devote enormous time and effort to studying past conflicts to glean operational lessons and yet political leaders rarely make an effort to analyze and understand the political and strategic lessons.

Two: A Date Which Will Live in Infamy

“You know, General,” he said, “when the people of this region think about Americans, do you know what image they have?” He paused, then continued: “A soldier in full combat gear. And when they think about others, like the Chinese,” he added, “this is their image: investor, diplomat, humanitarian worker.”

We had already effectively contained Iraq. We had done it with fewer troops than report to work at the Pentagon each day; they rotated in and out of the region so there were no permanently assigned combat forces there. We had no US bases there, only those shared with the host countries.

To counter that threat, we developed the most powerful military in the world, and, for the first time in our history, maintained all military components on a large scale, even in peacetime.

In the nearly three decades from the end of World War II to 1973, when the United States ended the draft and created a volunteer military, the Congressional Research Service has documented nineteen military deployments of various kinds throughout the world, from combat to humanitarian aid. In the four decades after 1973, there have been 144 foreign military deployments.

However, discussions with the special representative of the UN Secretary General in Somalia made it clear to us that neither he nor the secretary general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, held any such understanding. They would not, in Boutros-Ghali’s words, accept a “poisoned apple.”

Three: Knowns and Unknowns

The detailed planning culture of the military did not reach other agencies of government. I have long felt that, unlike the military, the other government agencies we would need on the ground to rebuild a society lacked the resources, planning ability, and operations capacity to take on missions such as nation-building.

intelligence is only as good as the questions we ask and the way we task the intelligence community.

Cherry-picking intelligence, choosing not to ask honest questions, reaching conclusions before making an exhaustive and open analysis of the situation, or twisting and manipulating intelligence can lead to the disasters we have seen all too often in our history.

President Dwight Eisenhower came to the presidency from the strong planning culture of the military. “Plans are nothing, planning is everything,” he once said, famously. He understood that planning meant thinking deeply and thoroughly, anticipating potential setbacks. Planning meant constantly acquiring more insights. It was not simply a means to produce a plan. Plans rarely survived the first shot, but planning was an investment in understanding the total situation.

Eisenhower concluded that he needed advice and guidance on countering the threat from the best, most experienced experts—brilliant strategic thinkers like George Kennan, General James McCormack Jr., and a number of hand-picked senior military officers. A team was formed. The task became known as the Solarium Project.

Wilson created a group called The Inquiry

But there is a difference between simply making decisions and truly knowing and understanding the risks and consequences of a decision. That knowledge comes only from deep involvement and natural curiosity.

Weinberger Doctrine. The speech, entitled “The Uses of Power,” laid out six criteria:

·      The United States should not commit forces unless the vital national interests of the United States or its allies are involved.

·      American troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning.

·      US combat troops should be committed with clearly defined political and military objectives and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives.

·      The relationship between the objectives and the size and composition of the forces should be continuously reassessed and adjusted if necessary.

·      Troops should not be committed to battle without a reasonable assurance of support of public opinion and of Congress.

·      The commitment of US troops should only be considered as a last resort.

In 1990, in the run-up to the Persian Gulf War, General Colin Powell, at that time the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, posed eight questions that should be answered before US military forces were committed to action:

·      Is a vital national interest involved?

·      Do we have a clear, attainable objective?

·      Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

·      Have all other nonviolent policy means been fully exhausted?

·      Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

·       Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?

·      Is the action supported by the American people?

·      Do we have broad, genuine international support?

“How do you commit the military to missions with limited objectives, limited political will, and limited resources?”

The Weinberger and Powell doctrines, as well as the McNamara lessons, can serve as good general rules and guidance, but they are broad and don’t reflect the more complex issues of today’s conflict environment.

Four: The Buck Stops Here

It proclaimed the Carter Doctrine that committed the US to defend the Persian Gulf Region, and led to the creation of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) that evolved later into the US Central Command (CENTCOM). The Carter Doctrine was in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The Monroe Doctrine, and the (Theodore) Roosevelt Corollary to it, proclaimed that our hemisphere was off-limits to other nations, particularly Europeans, for colonization or intervention. The Truman Doctrine committed the US to support militarily countries under threat from, or resisting, communist aggression internally or externally. The Eisenhower Doctrine authorized military aid and support to nations facing armed aggression by communist-controlled nations. The Kennedy Doctrine proclaimed support for the containment of communism and the reversal of communist inroads into the Western Hemisphere. The Johnson Doctrine declared that communist-motivated revolution in our hemisphere would not be considered a local matter. The Nixon Doctrine provided for aid to allies facing threats from communism. The Reagan Doctrine called for support of anti-communist resistance movements. The Clinton Doctrine committed the US to act against threats of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The Bush Doctrine stated the right of the US to strike preemptively and intervene where terrorist threats to the US were present.

Obama’s two redlines, on Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons and Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, have been problematic for him.

Pointing to the instances in which growing casualties had provoked America’s withdrawals from Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, Yemen, and the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden claimed that the United States would never stay the course if the going got tough.

Military doctrine and planning are based on centuries of experiences that have been continuously examined and debated. The military is obsessed with reviewing past military decisions and studying historic military decision making. Gaming and exercises are another important element in the military’s preparation for handling crises. Political leaders have a very different—and, in my view, mistaken—understanding of their responsibilities toward future crises. Few political leaders review their own and past major decisions with anything like the military’s intensity and care, much less engage in programs of games and exercises that provide opportunities to prepare for a crisis. It’s a rare presidential administration, with its cabinet, the NSC, and other advisory bodies, that does not begin its term from scratch—uninformed and unprepared for the unexpected crises that will inevitably leap up to bite them. That problem is not intractable. It would not be especially difficult to create

Five: Europe First

In December 1941, while we were still reeling from the devastating attack, it might have been impossible to even imagine a strategic direction or design for fighting this war, but men like Roosevelt, Marshall, and Churchill knew the process had to begin and would evolve as events progressed.

Unlike many in the past, and many more in recent years, these leaders were not transactional in their approach to prosecuting the war in that they were not about fighting a series of disconnected battles and campaigns that had no strategic purpose or ultimate objective.

As an example, Marshall and Eisenhower resisted Churchill’s pressure to engage in operations that did not lead directly to achieving the strategic goal of bringing the war to the heart of Germany as soon as allied forces were capable of achieving it. Churchill’s dreams for sideshow missions in the eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere were rejected.

George Marshall would never have accepted what passes for strategy today.

Formulating strategy is hard. You have to imagine the future you might face, decide how to shape that future to your advantage, and design and implement a course of action to take you there. The alternative to building a meaningful strategy is the transactional, day-to-day, make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach—a proven recipe for disaster. The unfolding of the Obama administration’s handling of Syria is an example.

The first step in designing any strategy is to identify the vision.

Next, the strategy lays out the goals—

The George W. Bush administration went to war in Afghanistan without a fully articulated and workable strategy; and they later opened up an unnecessary two-front war by invading Iraq without a carefully thought out strategy for either theater of operations.

As a combatant commander, I operated most often at the seam where strategy and operations meet.

Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which made a series of inept decisions like disbanding the regular Iraqi military (after years of promising the Iraqi military that they would be left essentially intact if they did not resist), closing state-owned factories and putting people out of work, and poorly managing ill-conceived contracts with civilian contractors. The CPA reported to the Pentagon, hardly the department best suited for national reconstruction, learned little from their mistakes, and got no better over time. This was the cost of failure to create a plan that went beyond the military dimension.

The military were running zoos, recreational swimming pools, mediation groups, anticorruption task forces, governance development teams, and many, many other nonmilitary activities.

In 2009, at a smart power conference in Washington, DC, I proposed that if the other agencies of our government could not take on their responsibilities in post-conflict situations, we should make the military’s de facto assumption of them legitimate. I recommended that the military’s Civil Affairs organization become a unified command responsible for integrating all the agencies’ efforts and providing the planning, administrative, and logistical support for the interagency teams on the ground.

Six: My Fellow Americans

Words and ideas are now as important to victory in today’s conflicts as rifles and bullets.

Seven: Two and a Half Wars

The old saying that “colonels talk tactics while generals talk logistics”

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower was a newly promoted brigadier general with little command experience, serving in the world’s seventeenth-largest army (the Romanian army ranked above it). The US military was in every respect inferior to the mighty military machines of Germany and Japan that we would face. Four years later, our country had the most powerful military in the world,

Eisenhower’s Farewell Address famously warned of the growing power of a military-industrial complex (in his original draft it was a “military-industrial-congressional complex”).

One idea that caught fire was to significantly increase civilian contracting. Military personnel, it was thought, were performing functions that others could perform more easily, efficiently, and cheaply.

This concept, once implemented, evolved into what became known as the Total Force concept. You could no longer go to war without the Guard and Reserve. They came to have capabilities, such as transportation, military police, civil affairs, and logistics (these functions fall under categories called combat support and combat service support), that either did not exist in the active force or didn’t exist in the numbers needed to conduct serious missions. Lines between active and reserve forces were largely erased, and they are now seen as interchangeable.

The mission evolved from less and less combat to more and more engagement, reconstruction, and stabilization; and the Reserve unit brought with them a wealth of civilian skills greatly applicable to these tasks. The Marines and Sailors in the unit were older than in an active duty battalion. They tended to have more life and civilian career experiences and more college degrees (one corporal in my unit was a surgeon in civilian life). Their civilian skills were now more applicable to the tasks required in the phase of the operation we were now in.”

“purple mandarins” as one service chief quipped. (Purple is the color, and term, given to anything joint. It is what comes from blending Army green, Marine Corps red, Navy blue, and Air Force light blue.)

Goldwater-Nichols allayed the service fears by stipulating that the personnel who filled the joint structure would come from, and return to, the services. It also added a service component to all joint structures. This meant the services were totally integrated in joint organizations

“The only thing worse than fighting with allies,” Churchill said, “is fighting without them.”

Now that the UN has demonstrated that it cannot handle the more muscular and difficult missions like Somalia, a revitalized and reoriented NATO, with a more global mission and membership, could fill a much-needed role in the world.

How do you characterize the American style of war?

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives,” Charles Darwin observed. “It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

standing military structure should be seen as a large “reservoir of capabilities.”

You don’t know what game you may be called on to play. It could be baseball, football, or basketball. To meet that challenge, it makes sense to have a stable of triathlon-style athletes who have the required collection of basic skills—speed, strength, smarts, and endurance. When the whistle blows, you draw out the skills needed and organize them into the team you need.

Eight: The New Battlefield

Today, our enemies tend not to be nation-states but movements or international and local gangs. Combat power counts less, the narrative counts more. The battlefield is not defined simply as geography or terrain but as people’s minds, and that “contested ground” is cluttered with media, diplomats, aid workers, and politicians. We have rules. The enemy doesn’t. Victory is elusive, ill-defined, and non-traditional; measuring success or failure is difficult. Technology is only marginally helpful. No longer can actions be taken sequentially. Simultaneity is the rule. You can’t make fighting the battle your first priority, then pick up the pieces and tend to the population later. You take care of everything at the same time. Humanitarian assistance, building a governance system, repairing infrastructure, improving the economy, and installing social programs are just some of the activities that may take precedence over combat operations.

The first generation was war waged by states, the second was attrition or firepower warfare, the third was maneuver warfare, and now, the fourth, is warfare conducted by non-state entities (perhaps cyberwar and robots will be the fifth generation).

It’s like putting up a large building. You need an architect, a structural engineer, and a construction site manager.

Just as Lincoln was fortunate to have Grant, Franklin Roosevelt was fortunate to have George Marshall at his side throughout World War II—a master at fusing strategy with military operations on the ground.

Secure the people where they sleep. Give the people justice and honor. Integrate civilian and military efforts—this is an interagency, combined-arms fight. Get out and walk—move mounted, work dismounted. We are in a fight for intelligence—all the time.

Every unit must advise their ISF partners [international security force—the Coalition forces]. Include ISF in your operations at the lowest possible level. Look beyond the IED (improvised explosive device)—get the network that placed it. Be first with the truth. Make the people choose.

As he traveled around the army in the years before the war, Marshall, then army chief of staff (1939–45), noted his impressions, good and bad, of officers he met. By 1941, he had begun to settle on the people he felt we would need in the fighting he foresaw. His judgments were tough.

The Goldwater-Nichols Act (1986) created the combatant commands (their commanders were called commanders-in-chief) and formalized their operational lines to lead directly to the secretary of defense. The act further required the combatant commanders to communicate to the secretary of defense through the chairman of the JCS.

Nine: Body Count

Preoccupied with body count during the Vietnam War, fueled by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s obsession with statistical indicators, General Westmoreland pushed commanders to achieve the “crossover point” at which more of the enemy were being killed than could be replaced by infiltration or recruitment, essential to success in his strategy of fighting a war of attrition.

How do you know when you are winning a war?

But just adding troops wouldn’t be enough. We needed a new approach, a new “doctrine.” And we needed David Petraeus and his counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, whose aim was not just defeating the enemy but rebuilding society.

a direction without a destination.

Ten: Endings and Outcomes

Some of our wars and interventions have ended with the total defeat of the enemy—Germany and Japan in World War II. Some ended with the sides just separating and agreeing to disagree—Korea. Some ended with a US pullout and temporary support for our allies in the fight—Vietnam and Iraq. And some we just walked away from—Somalia and Beirut. There is no formula for the ideal ending, no guidance from military doctrine.

The military-to-military meetings left me profoundly moved; but the non-military meetings were a true education. Armitage was a brilliant negotiator and diplomat, and I was witnessing his skills firsthand. The issues discussed opened my eyes to the importance of the elements beyond the military

I gave it my best efforts, but nothing much seemed to come from them. One day, in frustration, I asked Bob Oakley what was the purpose of all our meetings and marginally meaningful agreements. “When they’re talking,” he said sagely, “they’re not shooting.” He was right. The violence and inter-clan and faction fighting were greatly reduced.

Another benefit to ongoing dialogue is the encouragement and hope it creates among the populace. Mogadishu became more and more alive again as word spread that the warring factions were actually talking. Crowds began to fill markets; traffic grew in the streets. Even the old respected police force began to appear on the street after long, fearful absence, to direct traffic and settle disputes.

This experience taught me the necessity of character and temperament, along with knowledge and experience, in a mediator. All the warlords admired Oakley.

the military and the diplomatic sides should be equally represented at the table in any mediation.

Will it be a mediation with a third party engaged in developing the solutions, or facilitation with a third party observing and monitoring as the two protagonists resolving their issues, or will it be negotiation with a third party in a position to arbitrate? Will it be done on one or more levels where executive or senior-level mediators work at one level (policy) and working group sets at another level (detailed procedures to be implemented)? Where will the discussions be held so that security, neutrality, or international visibility considerations can be met? Who will be involved? What kind of agreement is possible? Will the process come in phases—necessary if the issues are too complex or require incremental resolution to build toward a final status. How will implementation be monitored and issues adjudicated? Even the shape of the table can become a point of contention,

This was my first experience working with truly seasoned and professional peace mediators who did it for a living (diplomats may take on mediation, but it’s usually only an adjunct to their other primary duties).

The skills necessary for successful mediation or negotiation are rare in elected officials, and not necessarily inherent in good diplomats. It takes an unusual personality to be effective in this business.

“Nothing could be worse than Saddam,” he said. “Going in and removing Saddam’s regime is all good.” “We no longer go in, fix a problem, and come home,” I replied. “Sometimes the result is worse than the evil we try to cure.

I suggested that we review and question all of our accumulated commitments. “Erase the board,” I said. By that I meant we needed to periodically validate our commitments.

American troops to be stationed in their countries as a “trip-wire.”

Eleven: America and the World

Two troubling facts are clear. We tend to lead with one element of our power, our military, yet we have failed to develop necessary capacity within the other elements of power.

Our military has become “repurposed” as peacekeeper, humanitarian responder, nation-builder, insurgency fighter, and disaster reliever.

We need legislation like the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act or the 1947 National Security Act to restructure and fund the development of the “soft” components of smart power.

Since we realize we cannot go it alone, the next objective we should include in any security strategy is the building or strengthening of global and regional partnerships.

To sum up: our strategy should begin with an understanding of the world we live in, the role we play in this world, the balancing of our tools for exercising our influence and power, the setting of global goals, the building of more viable partnerships, and the insuring of consistency in our articulated strategy. But the most brilliantly crafted strategy is useless if it doesn’t guide our decision making and resource allocation.

First, we clearly need a “prudent force.” By that I mean a collection of military capabilities that we must have today and for the foreseeable future to deter or deal with an existential threat from a major military competitor.

Second, we need a rapid crisis response force.

Here are some thoughts that those who would lead us into conflict should consider first:

·      Do you know what you are doing? We see less and less military experience in our executive and legislative branches of government.

·      Is the case for war or commitment of our military clear?

·      Is the analysis leading to the decision to use force solid, thorough, and unbiased? There must be a “devil’s advocate” approach

·      Is the decision clear? The decision needs to be articulated in terms of specific political objectives.

·      Is the strategy thought out, clearly articulated, and constantly monitored and updated?

·      Is the narrative convincing?

·      Is there confidence that the operational design to conduct the mission is in harmony with the strategy and objectives?

·      Do the forces chosen provide the best chance of success?

·      How will progress be measured?

·      How will the mission end?

·      In the end, who is held accountable?

Epilogue

The good news is that a new generation of military leaders has experienced a decade-plus of exhausting wars and military commitments.

The talent and motivation are there. Let’s hope a will to act follows.