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More Brains, Less Brawn And Bullets

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 6, 2007

Another debate to do with Iraq and Afghanistan is building in America, one that could have important consequences for the West. This debate is being conducted in the Pentagon - and it has to do with the future shape of America's armed forces.

With its far-flung alliances and commitments, the superpower rightly wants a "full spectrum" of military capabilities to deal with everything from an all-out war to a small policing action. But precisely what the mix should be is increasingly contentious - and could prove expensive.

If the biggest threat comes from rising powers, such as a belligerent Russia or a pushy China, America and its allies will need to invest in aircraft, ships and advanced weapons to cope.

If the greatest challenge is the fight against militants and insurgents around the world - seen by some as a new and different "fourth generation" of warfare - then they will need more boots on the ground and, crucially, different sorts of soldiers wearing them.

Sadly for taxpayers everywhere, the emerging answer from America is that a modern power needs to prepare for both challenges. But there has been a clear swing toward manpower from technology.

The change has been striking. The "transformation" advocated by Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush's first defense secretary, envisaged that the armed forces would be slimmed down and money invested in "smart" weapons, reconnaissance systems and data links. Speed, stealth, accuracy and networks would substitute for massed forces.

The Army's idea of its "future warrior" was a kind of cyborg, helmet stuffed with electronic wizardry and a computer display on his visor, all wirelessly linked to sensors, weapons and comrades. New clothing would have built-in heating and cooling. Information on the soldier's physical condition would be beamed to medics, and an artificial "exoskeleton" would strengthen his limbs.

The initial success in toppling first the Taliban in Afghanistan and then Saddam Hussein in Iraq seemed to vindicate such concepts. But the murderous chaos in Iraq, and the growing violence in southern Afghanistan, have shown that America is good at destroying targets and bad at rebuilding states. Firepower is of little use and often counterproductive when the enemy deliberately mingles among civilians.

Robert Gates, Rumsfeld's successor, is thus presiding over something of a counterrevolution. Technological tricks are not being abandoned. But the Army is to get a bigger share of the defense budget and has been told to recruit more soldiers with it.

Precisely because America is so powerful against conventional armies, Gates expects its enemies to rely on asymmetric warfare. In other words, America must expect to fight protracted, enervating counterinsurgency wars that offer no clear-cut victories and risk the prospect of humiliation.

A new manual on counterinsurgency co-authored by the man now in charge of the war in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, overturns the notion that America doesn't "do nation-building." Counterinsurgency, it says, is "armed social work." It requires more brain than brawn, more patience than aggression.

The model soldier should be less science-fiction Terminator and more intellectual for "the graduate level of war," preferably a linguist, with a sense of history and anthropology.

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