Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned Friday the United States should avoid future land wars such as those it has fought in Iraq and Afghanistan but not forget the difficult lessons learned in those conflicts.
"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as Gen. (Douglas) MacArthur so delicately put it," Gates said in a speech to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Gates is preparing to leave office this year, so his speech could be read as a judgment on the difficult missions the military has taken on in the past decade - and a prediction that future conflicts will look radically different.
His words are likely to carry special weight because Gates was chosen as defense secretary by former President George W. Bush and given the job of rescuing the military from what many saw as an unwinnable war in Iraq by President Barack Obama.
Gates said he will step down this year, but he has not said when.
He said it is unlikely the United States will repeat "another Afghanistan or Iraq - invading, pacifying and administering a large, Third World country."
Future conflicts involving the U.S. military are more likely to be fought with air and sea power instead of large ground forces such as the one that invaded Iraq in 2003 and the one in Afghanistan, he said.
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