A Strategy for the War on Terror

My own view, based on my study of history from Suchet to Vietnam is that the proper style of war for the War on Terror is counter-insurgency. As such, I am troubled by Bill Bennet's, Bill Kristol's, and others' call for a more aggressive posture in the war on terror. These statements strike me as too much Westmoreland. General William Westmoreland once replied in a press conference that his strategy for counter-insurgency was firepower. His attrition strategy is largely responsible for making the Vietnam war a costly and unpopular war. Aggressive search and destroy missions ripped up the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies, but at too great a cost in American lives. The rival strategies advocated by Lewis Walt, Sir Robert Thompson, Victor Krulak, William Colby and John Paul Vann strike me a much closer to the right approach. You can read about the basics of this approach as advocated by the Marines here and here.

In this month's Atlantic, Robert Kaplan has a great article called Imperial Grunts. Kaplan is right on and puts his analysis right up front in the very first sentences. He draws the right lessons from our various small wars, notes the Small Wars Manual, and demonstrates the success of unconventional warfare approach of the Special Forces.

Bennett has an axiom which states that you are either on offence or defense. And its clear that one does not win on the defensive. If, according to the principles of conventional war, the object is to defeat the enemy in battle and break his will to fight, being on the offensive is pretty strait forward. However, in guerilla and other unconventional wars, offensive actions can be counter productive and the benefits of offensive and defensive can appear to be reversed. To make sense of this we need to understand the principle of strategic offensive and tactical defensive. This phrase has been applied to the campaigns of then Duke of Wellington. Wellington would advance into Jospeh Bonaparte's Spain threatening ket targets, such as Madrid (strategic offensive) but when the French began to prepare to face him, Wellington would adopt a tactical defensive. When Wellington was on the strategic defensive in Lisbon, the French could just go about the business pacifying Spain, but when Wellington advanced into the heart of Spain and then adopted a tactically defensive position, the French had to push him out. Yet, because of his defensive posture, Wellington chose the battlefield and was able to eliminate many of the advanatges of the French artillery and column formations. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the Coallition is on the strategic offensive. We have advanced into the world of the Islamic jihad and the terrorists must drive us out lest we convert these places into modern, liberal states. In Zarqawi's message last year, he expressed concern that as the Iraqi government endures it gains legitimacy and the police and security forces will look like the people and be of the people, making it harder to portray the terrorist campaign there as anything but attacks by Al Qaeda on the people of Iraq. Recall that in Vietnam, the North played the nationalist card, because the Americans did a lot of the fighting directly. If the Americans train, assist, and support local forces instead, nationalist claims wither. Likewise Islam vs the Infidel.

When you look at the Marine strategy of the Small War, you find that its about providing security to the locals, not attacking the enemy. Its about building schools, roads, hospitals, and water treatment. Its about hearts and minds, not about body count. Its not about adopting a more aggressive posture. When I hear that we should get more aggressive, I think I am hearing from someone of the Westmoreland school. This is spot on for conventional war. But off the mark for unconventional warfare.