Preparing for More Iraqs
Defense Secretary Urges Military to Mold Itself to Fight Iraq-Style Wars
There has been some internal debate within the U.S. military about whether it should be restructured to be more effective in Iraq-style conflicts involving counter-insurgency operations and state-building. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates seems to have come down firmly in favor of this sort of transformation.
He fired a shot across the bow of several expensive weapons programs:
“I believe that any major weapons program, in order to remain viable, will have to show some utility and relevance to the kind of irregular campaigns that, as I mentioned, are most likely to engage America’s military in coming decades,” Gates said. “Without a fundamental change to this dynamic, it will be difficult to sustain support for these kinds of weapons programs in the future.”
Most of the key new weapons systems in the acquisition pipeline would have trouble meeting this test, and in particular Navy ship-building programs have to be considered at risk under this standard.
It is a welcome development to see the Secretary of Defense attempting to shape major procurement efforts to be in line with a strategic assessment of likely future threats. But Secretary Gates’ approach leaves out a significant political dimension. As a practical matter, irregular conflicts and insurgencies generally represent wars of choice for the United States. It is profoundly unlikely that an enemy will be able to wage an insurgency on our soil, and as a result, we are talking about fighting in conflicts that may involve U.S. national security and yet which are not purely conflicts fought in self-defense narrowly understood. Will the American public support fighting more Iraq-style conflicts in the foreseeable future? I think it is unlikely, and the longer we remain in Iraq — with mounting costs in lives and resources — the more unlikely it becomes.
Secretary Gates wants to prepare for the future, but in reality he may be proposing to better fight the last war rather than the next.
