When Baghdad was liberated in April 2003, a wave of looting swept the city and the countryside—illustrating what happens when a nation emerges from decades of dictatorship, and demonstrating the need for the U.S. military to develop better plans to prevent such lawlessness in future wars. We cannot afford to prepare for stability operations after a war has begun—preparation must begin long before the first shot is fired.
Virtually every knowledgeable commentator on Operation Iraqi Freedom has observed that coalition forces achieved great success during the "major combat" phase of the campaign, but thus far have failed to meet expectations during subsequent stability operations.1 Indeed, U.S. military defeats in the past half-century—Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq (thus far), and Afghanistan (perhaps)—share this common thread. In the field against other militaries the United States always has prevailed. Defeat has come from the inability to establish stable and viable postconflict societies. The Vietnam comparison can be overstated—there are as many differences as similarities. Nevertheless, as retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, former commander of Central Command, observed when comparing the two experiences, both suffered from "a lack of planning . . . and underestimating the task."2
The costs of these failures have been high—military casualties, abandoned allies, international criticism, and domestic political strife.
What also is clear is that the need for these kinds of operations will continue in the future because the United States now is in the regime-change business. It is stated explicitly in national strategy and is a key element in a global war on terror: "U.S. forces must maintain the capability to impose the will of the United States and its coalition partners on any adversaries, including states and non-state entities. Such a decisive defeat could include changing the regime of an adversary state or occupation of foreign territory until U.S. strategic objectives are met."3 In addition, regime changes have occurred in administrations both Republican and Democratic. As one commentator noted, "since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States has, on average, deposed the regime of a foreign state roughly once every three years."4
Regime change means the mission will not be complete without a successful stability operation. The goals may be more (establishing a prosperous, democratic government) or less (reduction in violence) ambitious, but a stability operation will be central to the success of the mission. Therefore, the ability to bring postwar stability, including suppressing an insurrection if necessary, is a core requirement for today's U.S. military, and getting better at this mission is a necessary part of preparing for future wars.5
Why Such a Poor Track Record?
We focus on what is familiar. The main reason for U.S. weakness in conducting stability operations is a lingering Cold War mentality—that the military exists for war fighting against similarly organized militaries of other nation states. Although the Department of Defense has made real adaptations to the post-Cold War environment, the inclination is to focus on familiar problems. The Defense Department recently articulated a new strategic initiative dubbed "10-30-30." The goal of this concept is to seize the initiative in a conflict within 10 days, swiftly defeat the enemy within 30 days, and be ready for the next major conflict within another 30 days.6 Speed in combat operations certainly reduces the risk of unexpected political events and gives opponents less time to react effectively, but is this where we should focus scarce resources?
Applying this concept to Iraqi Freedom, would getting to Baghdad faster (say by 1 April instead of 9 April) have made a significant difference? Our inability to complete the campaign in Iraq arises from our failure to suppress an insurgency, not from slowness in capturing the capital.
The Defense Department currently is procuring 79 major weapon systems at a total acquisition cost of $1.3 trillion. All but two are designed for defeating state militaries armed with conventional weapons. The two exceptions are the Army's Stryker light armored vehicle and the Navy's Advanced Seal Delivery System. Many of the other systems could be used for stability operations, but that is not their primary justification. That most acquisition programs are designed for combat operations against enemy militaries is appropriate because these operations are capital intensive and very demanding. The question is, do we have the right balance?
The current concept of transformation might be partly to blame because so much of the literature on this subject is aimed at developing space capabilities, advanced sensors, information networks, and precision-strike weapons to defeat conventional military forces. Retired Admiral William Owens describes transformation as technologies for battlespace awareness of enemy and friendly forces, advanced information networks to gather and distribute information, and precision weapons to strike enemy forces.7 All of this aims to make the U.S. military better at tasks it already can do well, and distracts from those areas where it is truly weak.
Some observers argue the nature of warfare is changing, that we are seeing a "fourth generation" of warfare where nonstate actors dominate.8 This warfare is characterized by the blurring of distinctions between military and civilian, peace and war, front and rear, battlefield and home front. It is driven by culture and religion, not nationalism. Thus, most of our equipment, doctrine, and training are either irrelevant or poorly suited.
It is someone else's job. Some argue that what happens after the fall of the enemy capital is the responsibility of others. Sometimes this is the case. After Desert Storm, for example, the reconstituted Kuwaiti government, aided by its Arab allies, conducted all the "clean up." Unfortunately, this convenient situation rarely happens. In general, the "Pottery Barn" rule applies: You break it, you buy it.9
So if it is our responsibility, who must take the lead? The State Department has no forces it can insert to run governments and control populations. Aid organizations provide humanitarian aid; they can set up hospitals and refugee camps, but cannot run a society. The CIA has some paramilitary capabilities, but these are limited, and no one would trust them to run a government. And political discomfort with the extent of contracting and the lack of visibility into contractor operations is putting limits on what can be expected from outsourcing to civilian contractors.
For many, the United Nations is the great hope. It can run both peacekeeping operations and associated humanitarian relief, and provide the legitimacy that many prospective coalition partners desire. But the United Nations also is very squeamish about conflict. The 1995 massacre at Srebrenica in Bosnia—in which a Dutch battalion moved aside when hostile Serbs attacked, resulting in the massacre of 7,000 Muslims—demonstrated the United Nations' limitations. U.N. operations also are slow to get moving. The process can take months. Thus, the United Nations might provide a viable long-term exit strategy, but it is unlikely to help with immediate postwar stabilization.
What is left? The U.S. military has the forces, logistics, mobility, and training to do essentially anything. It is the default option whether it likes it or not.
We'll do stabilization after we finish major combat. Occasionally, the United States needs to be reminded about Clausewitz's central dictum that wars are waged to accomplish political purposes and that victory is not won until the war's political goals are achieved. The inclination is to finish what appears to be the toughest job—defeating enemy military forces—before turning to stability operations. Unfortunately, stability operations will not wait. In Iraqi Freedom, major combat operations and stability operations occurred simultaneously. As cities were captured, there was an immediate need for stability even as major combat operations continued farther ahead. The lawlessness that arose after the collapse of government engendered reprisals against political enemies and looting that crippled efforts to revive the economy. Eventually, occupation efforts overcame these problems, but by then the insurgency had taken hold.
The populace will be shocked into docility. The hope in many quarters during Iraqi Freedom was that the combination of firepower, information operations, attacks on leadership, and social disruption of "shock and awe" (and its cousin, "rapid dominance") would so overwhelm the target population that resistance of any kind might be muted. The intention was to create "a level of national shock akin to the effect that dropping atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese."10 It was a promising idea and worth pursuing, but it failed. Clearly, the psychology of target countries (not just Iraq) is more complex and less amenable to manipulation than the U.S. military anticipated.
Stability operations are a secondary capability of current forces. Official strategy documents and most outside observers acknowledge the need for stability operations of some sort.11 With minor exceptions, however, all assume that existing forces and equipment, designed for major combat operations, will adapt. Indeed, well-disciplined and resourceful troops can step up to many challenges. Successful U.S. experiences in Bosnia and Kosovo support this notion. But there is a limit. The difference between using infantry and military police for population control highlights the value of using forces designed for the job. Infantry are trained to overwhelm opponents with firepower. Military police are trained as law enforcement officers; when attacked, they look to take out the attacker and no one else. The difference is not theoretical. During the first days of the occupation in Iraq, U.S. forces fired on a crowd in Fallujah, killing or wounding 100 civilians when troops guarding a school felt threatened.12 The question is not whether the shootings were justified. The question is whether this was the best response and whether other types of forces might have acted differently and begun the U.S. occupation of that town with a different tone.
Planning for stability operations will sacrifice strategic surprise. Some argue that planning for an occupation and associated political changes would prematurely alert opponents that the United States will attack and result in the sacrifice of strategic surprise. This implies the movement of hundreds of thousands of troops and tens of thousands of combat vehicles and advocacy of U.N., NATO, or congressional resolutions authorizing the use of force somehow would not alert an opponent to U.S. intentions, but this additional piece of planning would. This is difficult to believe. It also is not clear what achieving "strategic surprise" means when coalition forces include hundreds of embedded journalists, each filing daily stories.
There is not enough time to prepare. The United States had been developing a war plan to invade Iraq for about a year. There was time to develop an extensive information operations plan, a multinational air campaign, a complex fire support plan, and a detailed plan for flow of forces. There was plenty of time to develop a detailed plan for the occupation and to put the necessary forces and resources in place to execute it. Indeed, it appears the State Department had developed such a plan, but for unclear reasons, it was not used.13
What Should Be Done?
The situation is not hopeless. The United States has done well in stabilization operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as in Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II. Given our demonstrated weakness in recent stability operations in western and central Asia, however, and the high political and military price that weakness has exacted, we should shift some resources and attention from major combat operations to stability operations. Doing so might entail some increased risk in major combat operations, but we should be willing to accept more risk in areas where our capabilities are strong to reduce risk in areas of weakness. This is, in fact, exactly what the current strategy envisions: a capabilities-based approach to planning whereby "we plan to defend not only against those we know might threaten us—but also on how we might be threatened and what portfolio of capabilities we will need to prevail."14 The problem is that we have not internalized fully the implications of such an approach and implemented it aggressively.
We do not need more think tanks. There already is a vast literature on stability operations and associated subjects. Nor is creating more special operations forces the answer. These forces already are being greatly expanded, probably to their limit. If expanded too far, special forces are no longer special. There is no magic bullet. Solutions lie in fixing warfighting processes and adapting regular forces to the problems ahead.
Take stability operations seriously by integrating them fully into planning before a conflict. This might mean taking some risks during the major combat portion of the operation to help stability operations. For example, stabilization forces such as military police (MPs) should move behind the leading edge of combat forces so that, when a city is liberated, MPs immediately can restore order without allowing a period of lawlessness.15 To be effective, however, this force would need to include entire battalions of MPs, which would displace some combat forces and incur some risk—but also would facilitate a final settlement and hence ultimate mission accomplishment.
The Joint Operation Planning and Execution System needs expansion to include inputs from nonmilitary agencies that can help with postwar stabilization. Postwar plans for Iraq by the CIA, State Department, and others never had much impact, in part because these agencies do not contribute to the Joint Operation Planning and Execution System, which, despite efforts to broaden input, remains a very closed system.16
Establish the right force mix. Under great stress because of the deployments to Iraq, the Army has done considerable soul searching and is painfully restructuring its forces: increasing military police units by deactivating air defense and artillery units, creating new civil affairs and psychological operations units, fielding brigades equipped with wheeled armored vehicles (once considered a heresy), and expanding the number of its maneuver brigades by making manpower efficiencies elsewhere.
Expand the menu of nonlethal capabilities. A joint nonlethal weapons program was established in 1996. On the ground, the program has focused on police-type crowd control technologies and has produced some useful capabilities (nonlethal munitions, vehicle barriers, and tasers, for example) that are being used successfully in Iraq. The program is poised to produce a new generation of capabilities (directed energy, urban combat, long range, and antivehicle weapons) that might greatly reduce adverse effects on civilians.17
Collect lessons learned and finish revising the Small Wars Manual. As Lieutenant General James Conway, commanding general of I Marine Expeditionary Force, noted, "We don't have a lot of doctrine for this [kind of operation]."18 Most useful is the Small Wars Manual, which grew out of the Marine Corps' long peacekeeping/counterinsurgency experience in the Caribbean in the early 20th century. For a long time the Corps had been thinking about updating the manual, but the experience and credibility to do that were absent. Now the Marine Corps has a draft revision and is about to get a lot of new information.
Investigate new structures. In his now infamous "long hard slog" memo, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld mused that a "new institution" might be necessary to win the current conflicts.19 It was not clear what he meant, but one can speculate. For example, in Iraq the Italian force includes a militarized police force, the carabinieri. By combining civil and military police functions, the carabinieri represent a middle way more attuned to the civilian community than an army but more heavily armed than civilian police. The French have a similar institution in their gendarmes. These may not be models the United States—which has no national police force or the will to create one—can copy directly, but the idea of melding civilian and military institutions is promising.20
Create organizations to rebuild government and society. The inability to reestablish order, basic services, and economic life quickly in both Iraq and Afghanistan harmed the early days of our occupations and allowed insurgencies to develop. Commentators have wrestled with how to do it better. One proposal currently before Congress is to create a civilian reserve corps under the State Department—that is, civilians who are available for service overseas when called. This corps (the "Response Readiness Corps") would be mobilized to rebuild governments and societies after major military operations. By using civilians, this organization would bring key skills to bear and also would greatly expand the recruiting population (i.e., it would not be limited to healthy young people). It also would assuage some concerns about the extensive use of contractors by substituting government civilians.
A group at the National Defense University proposes creating two stabilization and reconstruction joint commands "to conduct core stabilization and reconstruction operations across a theater of operations" and that would operate "concurrently with combat units, moving in to establish control and security as combat units move forward, foreclosing the emergence of lawlessness and anarchy." These commands would be division-sized organizations comprised of a permanent headquarters and task-organized subordinate units with specialties such as military police, civil affairs, engineering, and psychological operations.21
Make everyone a rifleman. Long a hallmark of the Marine Corps, it should apply to anyone in theater because of both the self-protection capability and the combat mind-set it engenders. It comes at a price, however. The Marine Corps' training pipeline is seven weeks longer than the Army's as a result.
Hindsight is 20/20. It is easy to second-guess decisions made under great uncertainty. The point of analyzing our experiences, therefore, must be to improve for the future, not to affix blame about what might have happened in the past. What is clear is that uncertainty about whether the United States engages in nation building and associated stability operations has been swept away. It also is clear the great weakness in U.S. capabilities lies in what happens after major combat operations are over and stability operations begin. If the U.S. wants to achieve mission success in the future, it needs to create a more balanced set of capabilities.
Colonel Cancian served 33 years on active duty and in the reserves as an infantry and artillery officer. His last assignment was with the Marine Corps' combat assessment team for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
1. Many terms cover a class of operations involving activities beyond day-to-day engagement but short of major combat operations: small-scale contingencies, operations other than war, security and stability operations, peacekeeping, peace enforcement, counterinsurgency, and foreign internal defense. back to article
2. Quoted in "For Vietnam Veteran Zinni, Another War on Shaky Territory," Washington Post, 23 December 2003. back to article
3. Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Department of Defense, 30 September 2001, p. 13. back to article
4. Andrew Krepinevich, Operation Iraqi Freedom: A First-Blush Assessment (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2003), p. 7. back to article
5. See also Frederick W. Kegan, "War and Aftermath," Policy Review, Aug/Sept 2003. back to article
6. "Rumsfeld's New Speed Goals," Defense News, 12 April 2004. back to article
7. Admiral Bill Owens with Ed Offley, Lifting the Fog of War (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), pp. 10-16. back to article
8. William S. Lind, Col. Keith Nightengale, USA, Capt. John F. Schmitt, USMC, Col. Joseph W. Sutton, USA, and LCol. Gary I. Wilson, USMCR, "The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation," Marine Corps Gazette, October 1989. back to article
9. Attributed to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, in Robert Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004). back to article
10. Harlan Ullman and James Wade Jr., Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1996), pp. xvi-xvii, 12. back to article
11. The National Security Strategy states that "when violence erupts and states falter, the United States will work with friends and partners to alleviate suffering and restore stability," p. 9; the Quadrennial Defense Review notes the need to "maintain and prepare its forces for small scale contingency operations," p. 21. back to article
12. "Troops Kill Anti-US Protesters; Accounts Differ," Washington Post, 29 April 2003, p. A1. back to article
13. See Eric Schmitt and Joel Brinkley, "State Department Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq," New York Times, 18 October 2003, and James Fallows, "The Best Laid Plans Oft Go Astray," Washington Post, 27 January 2004. back to article
14. Annual Report to the President and the Congress for Fiscal Year 2003, Department of Defense, 2003. See also 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, pp. 17-18. back to article
15. "Rolling transitions" are described in Hans Binnendijk and Stuart Johnson, eds., Transforming for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 2003). back to article
16. For a description of the difficulties that nonmilitary organizations had in offering planning help for postwar reconstruction, see James Fallows, "Blind into Baghdad," Atlantic Monthly, January 2004. back to article
17. Graham Allison, Paul X. Kelley, and Richard Garwin, Nonlethal Weapons and Capabilities (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 2004). back to article
18. LGen. James Conway, USMC, interview, "The War in Iraq," History Channel. back to article
19. Secretary of Defense memorandum, 16 October 2003. back to article
20. LCol. Paul Schreiber, USMC, Cdr. Brian Kelley, USN, LCol. Gary Holland, USMC, and Cdr. Stephen Davis, USN, "Iraq after Saddam," Proceedings, April 2003, pp. 32-36; Robert M. Perito, Where Is the Lone Ranger When We Need Him? America's Search for a Postconflict Stability Force (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2004); Karl Lowe, Waldo Freemen, and James Kurtz, Relieving Stress on the Army—Options for Change (Washington, DC: Institute for Defense Analysis), Paper P-3417. back to article
21. Binnendijk and Johnson, Transforming for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations. back to article