Commentary & Reply

I'm sure their assessment of the strategic environment and the Army's role will engender an engaging and illuminating debate.They begin with a quote from Clausewitz: It is essential to understand "the kind of war on which [we] are embarking."Many good words follow, such as asymmetric, non-state actors, adaptive advantage, war of ideas.The word I expected was long.They seem to understand that we are committed to extended deployments in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and they foresee deployments to many other potential hot areas, but I don't see the linkage between this policy insight and the strategy and operational capabilities they are advocating.Since they state that "doctrine links theory, history, experimentation, and practice" and their article should have significant influence over emerging doctrine, I feel compelled to take issue with some of their uses of our history.First, I think they have an incomplete understanding of the Cold War and the Army that evolved during that 50-year period.Our Army did not simply sit in Europe preparing for a "symmetrical" conflict with the Warsaw Pact.Within that theater, we constantly looked for ways to transform advantages into accomplishments, and many of these had to do with building a strong alliance to replace ad hoc coalitions that had been a feature of our earlier experiences in warfighting on the continent.Those accomplishments are still important and relevant.But there was an ideological dimension to the Cold War, and "Wars of National Liberation" were part of the other side's effort to introduce asymmetry.As a result, much of the Army was expeditionary during the Cold War.In the 1950s and 1960s, various joint headquarters planned and exercised expeditionary deployments involving multiple Army divisions.That activity diminished when the Army became involved in an extended expedition to Vietnam-an expedition that was not in a "developed theater with access to extensive host-nation infrastructure" (their characterization of the basis for the design of the Army's Cold War logistics structure).At the time, the Army may have been so shortsighted that its leaders could not see that they had to master the lessons of the asymmetrical war in Vietnam while continuing to focus on the challenges in Europe.In fact, they probably taught and practiced the "conventional war" doctrine at the expense of "unconventional war" learning.No one wanted a long war in Vietnam, but Army

Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Law · Military History and Strategy · Peacebuilding and International Security