The Marines saw the spectre of urban warfare early, but it took General Charles Krulak to get them to do something about it.
Look at the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq these days, and you would think that urban warfare has been a Marine Corps staple since the beginning. Actually, it wasn't until recent decades that the Corps began to examine the threat of urban areas seriously and to develop the means to fight in them more effectively.
By outward appearances, it would seem that the Marines were ahead of the curve. The Marine Corps Gazette published several serious articles on urban warfare in the 1970s and early 1980s. The service's first manual on urban warfare, Operational Handbook (OH) 8-7, Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT), appeared in November 1980. The Marine Basic Officer Course at Quantico instituted a two-hour class devoted to examining urban insurgency in 1984-some 20 years before the house-to-house fighting in Kabul and Baghdad. Today, Marines in the Basic Officer Course receive 128 hours of MOUT training.
But the data show that the early efforts were limited. Despite all the new emphasis, the time devoted to urban warfare training during the 1980s and 1990s was little changed from the seven-hour totals of the 1950s and was only half the 14-hour average that the Basie Officer Course had devoted to "street-fighting" in 1946.
Even after the U.S. experience in Somalia, there was little perceptible change. Operation Continue Hope in 1993, in which 19 U.S. soldiers died in the incident chronicled in the book Blackhawk Down, brought the realities of urban warfare home to Americans in a way that highlighted how likely street-fighting was in today's warfare and how difficult it could be. It was, however, still not enough to change the way Marines conducted operations on urbanized terrain. Strangely, the number of articles in the Marine Corps Gazette-one rough measure of interest in the subject throughout the Corps-actually dropped in the months and years following the Somalia operation.
The Marine Corps' big push on urban warfare training didn't come until 1995, when General Charles Krulak became commandant. While previous doctrine had stressed the importance of avoiding urban warfare whenever possible, General Krulak-convinced that cities and towns were likely to be the battlefields of the future-decided to address it head-on. Shortly after he assumed command, he created the pilot program for what later would become the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, dedicated to developing innovative approaches to urban warfare. In 1998, he launched the Urban Warrior Project, an experimental program for urban warfare training.
The response was commensurate: The number of articles in the Marine Corps Gazette discussing urban operations tripled in one year, doubled the next year, and increased still more the following year.
General Krulak also is known for coining two terms that are widely used today. First is the Three-Block War concept, which outlines a scenario in which Marines arccalled on to conduct combat operations, to serve as peacekeepers, and to deliver humanitarian aid-all within a few blocks of each other. He also came up with the concept of the Strategic Corporal, which describes situations in which Marine Corps noncommissioned officers will be called on to make decisions of strategic significance during urban fighting-often with mobs poised to attack and with cameras whirring. (Television network footage of a Marine shooting an apparently unarmed Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque two years ago brought this home to many Marines.) Both the Three-Block War and Strategic Corporal concepts described a plan for conducting urban warfare across the range of military operations.
General Krulak's vigor in increasing the Corps' emphasis on urban warfighting were in evidence in many of his speeches and letters. In 1998, he wrote to Colonel Anthony Wood, then director of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab:
[Project] Urban Warrior is going to be a very big event . . . not just for the Marine Corps, but for the nation. |It| is probably the only real opportunity to "get at" the difficulties inherent in the chaotic battlefield of the future.'
To the Forefront
General Krulak not only developed the institutions to examine urban warfare training, but convinced Marines to think seriously about urban warfare and how best to conduct it. By setting the agenda, he brought urban warfare to the forefront of every Marine's mind. That, in turn, dramatically increased the odds that the change would be permanent.
His determination and drive are clear in a January 1998 e-mail message that he wrote to the staff of the Warfighting Lab:
Again, I am very proud of what you all are accomplishing! I think we need to remember that in July of 1995 there was no lab! There were no assignments! No HunterWarrior! No Urban-Warrior! No money!! Absolutely no money! There was nothing . . . not even a building! What has happened in the last two years is nothing short of a miracle!2
By setting the agenda and changing the focus on urban warfare. General Krulak made studying and training for MOUT-arguably the most unsavory and inscrutable form of warfare-a higher priority. As historians Barry Watts and Williamson Murray said in their article, "Military Innovation in Peacetime," in Military Innovation in the Intenvar Period, "If senior leaders also manage to inculcate the requisite intellectual atmosphere and institutional processes within the military societies involved, then they will greatly enhance the chance for long-term success."3
More to Come
From all indications, the Corps is going to be fighting in urban areas for the foreseeable future. Any potential enemy of the United States undoubtedly will use the experience in Iraq as a textbook for how to thwart a U.S. occupation. Any invasion of Iran or North Korea undoubtedly would send enemy combatants streaming into major cities, donning civilian clothing, and trying to hold out until America becomes too exhausted to continue.
What the Marine Corps' increase in focus on urban warfare shows more than anything, though, is that for an organization to change to meet future threats, it needs both an accurate prediction of the future battlespace and an active senior leader who is willing to create the political incentives that will enable it to adopt a new set of strategic priorities.
The growing threat of urban areas is old news. More than a quarter of a century has passed since the Marine Corps published its first piece of doctrine articulating the urban threat. Unfortunately, the organization did not change to meet this change in threat until the late 1990s. But it has, and, much to General Krulak's credit, the change has made the Corps far more effective and successful than it would have been had he not spurred the service into action a little more than a decade ago.
Once the reality of the future battlespace was combined with dynamic, innovative senior leadership, change did finally happen. And one can only imagine with dread where we would be in Iraq today had we waited any longer to take the threat of urban warfare seriously.
1. GEN Charles C. Krulak, Private e-mail to COL Anthony Wood, Director of MCWL, Subject: re: Question For CMC: Fwd: I MEF Concept DEV CONF. Sent January 1, 1998. (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Archives, General Charles C. Krulak's Personal Papers).
2. GEN Charles C. Krulak, Private e-mail to COL Anthony Wood, Director ot MCWL, Subject: re: UW LOE. Sent January 24, 1998. (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Archives, General Charles C. Krulak's Personal Papers).
3. Barry Watts and Williamson Murray, "Military innovation in peacetime" in Murray and Allan R. Millet ed. Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996) p. 415.
Lieutenant Brooks is enrolled in the Infantry Officer Course at Quantico, Virginia.