I was really taken by the title of the forum this year [How Do We Overhaul the Nation's Defense to Win the Next War?], especially the part that says, "Win the Next War." Why are we asking that question? I say it is because we tend to defeat the enemy in battle, and we tend not to win the wars lately. So the question we ought to ask ourselves—if we are going to start thinking about what our military needs to do and what its role is—is, Why is that happening?
It used to be that if you defeated the enemy's forces in the field, what was left was mopping up or restructuring; the war was won on the battlefield. It has not happened in the 39 years I served, and it probably has not happened since the end of World War II. There is a difference between winning battles, or defeating the enemy in battle, and winning the war. It strikes me that we are constantly redesigning the military to do something it already does pretty well. Breaking the organized resistance in Iraq, even though it might not have been the greatest army in the world, was done extremely well. We are very proud of our troops and the way that was executed and led. But it was not enough.
At the end of the third inning we declared victory and said the game is over. It ain't over. It is not going to be over in future wars. We need to talk about not how you win the peace as a separate part of the war, but you have to look at this thing from start to finish. It is not a phased conflict; there is not a fighting part and then another part. It is a nine-inning game. At the end of the game, somebody is going to declare victory. Whatever blood poured onto the battlefield could be wasted if we do not follow it with understanding what victory is.
There is only one time in our history that we truly understood victory. Harry Truman, George Marshall, and Dwight Eisenhower understood it. Woodrow Wilson tried to get us to understand it, but we refused, and we were doomed to fight again in a second great war. We did not understand it after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And we failed to get it in Vietnam and in places such as Somalia, and we are in danger of failing again.
Right after I retired in 2000, before 9/11, change for the military—transformation—was the big topic in town. No one could explain what that was, but everybody wanted to know into what our military should morph. I did a dangerous thing when I was asked to speak here today. I went back and reviewed transcripts of some speeches I have given.
Right after retirement, the National Defense University asked me what I thought the future missions would be for our military, and the capabilities it should possess. 1 identified the following missions:
- To defeat a global power with sophisticated military capabilities. That always will be the priority for our military.
- To deal with regional hegemonies with asymmetric capabilities such as weapons of mass destruction that have designs to deny us access to vital areas of the world and regional allies.
- To deal with transnational threats that include terrorist groups, international crime and drug organizations, war lords, environmental security issues, health and disease problems, and illegal migrations.
- To deal with the problems of failed or incapable states that require peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, or national reconstruction.
- To be capable of dealing with domestic emergencies that exceed the capacity of other federal and local governmental agencies to handle.
- To protect against threats to our key repositories of information and our systems for moving information.
I still think these missions hold for our military in the 21st century. This was not any remarkable prescience on my part. You could have asked anybody who was looking at the world or global threats that we faced and you would have gotten the same answer. You could have asked anybody in our intelligence community what they foresaw as the requirement, and you would have gotten the same answer.
What is remarkable is the military's role is in these missions. The military traditionally is supposed to go out there and kill people and break things. Then, from that, we determine how we are going to right the disorder or fix the conflict. Usually we look at the other elements of national power—the political, the economic, information, whatever—that are going to be brought to bear, much like George Marshall saw it at the end of World War II. That has not happened in recent times.
The military does a damn good job of killing people and breaking things. We can design a better rifle squad, build a better fighter, a better ship, a better tank. We are so far ahead of any potential enemy right now in those kinds of technological areas, in the areas of expertise of quality of leadership, and all the things that make military units great on the battlefield, that you wonder why we keep busting brain cells wondering how to do it better, or to transform into something else. I am for transformation, if you define it as finding better remarkable ways to tap into technology, our own brain power, our training and education, and creative ways of redesigning our organization to make our military even more efficient and more powerful on the battlefield. But that is not the problem nor has it not been in the past.
What is the role of the military beyond killing people and breaking things? Right now, the military in Iraq has been stuck with this baby. In Somalia, it was stuck with that baby. In Vietnam, it was stuck with that baby. And it is going to continue to be that way. We have to ask ourselves now if there is something the military needs to change into that involves its movement into this area of the political, economic, and information management. If those wearing suits cannot come in and solve the problem—i.e., cannot bring the resources, expertise, and organization—and the military is going to continue to get stuck with it, you have two choices. Either the civilian officials must develop the capabilities demanded of them and learn how to partner with other agencies to get the job done, or the military finally needs to change into something else beyond the breaking and the killing.
What could this mean? It could mean military civil affairs changes from being just a tactical organization doing basic humanitarian care and interaction with the civilian population, to actually being capable of reconstructing nations. That we will have people in uniform who are educated in the disciplines of economics and political structure, and that actually we are going to go in and work these kinds of issues. The military commanders truly will be proconsuls and given that authority to do these jobs; they will set regional policy. This is scary stuff. But either get the civilian officials on the scene who can do it, get them there when they need to be there, give them the resources and the training, and create the interoperability that is necessary—or validate the military mission to do it.
The list of missions I outlined will not end here. We are going to find more and more that we have an entire region of the world—from North Africa to the Philippines and from Central Asia to Central Africa—that is chaotic and in turmoil. For decades more, we are going to be dealing with this problem. You are going to be fighting terrorists. You are going to be fighting against failed or incapable states that are sanctuaries for problems. You are going to try to rebuild nations. You are going to deal with crises and threats that threaten our people and our property. And it is all going to be mixed into one big bag.
In a place such as Iraq, you are dealing with the Iihads who are coming in to raise hell; crime on the streets is rampant; ex-Ba'thists still are running around; and the potential now is for this country to fragment—i.e., Shi'a on Shi'a, Shi'a on Sunnis, Kurds on Turkomen. It is a powder keg. Resources are needed; a strategy is needed; and a plan is needed. This is a different kind of conflict. War fighting is just one element of it. Some people on this battlefield are different; they do not come in military formations and with standard-issue equipment. They come in many different forms, and all their agendas are different.
We now are involved in culture wars. We do not understand the cultures in this region of the world I identified earlier. I have spent the past 15 years in this part of the world. And every time I hear people in D.C. talk about this region, they demonstrate they do not have a clue. They do not understand what makes people in this region tick. They do not understand where these people are in their own history. They do not understand what our role should be and what is in our best interests.
We are great at dealing with the symptoms and the tactical problems—i.e., the killing and the breaking. We are lousy at solving the strategic problems, having a strategic plan, understanding about regional and global security, and knowing what it takes to wield the power to shape security and to move it forward. Where are today's Marshalls, Eisenhowers, and the Trumans, who had the vision and saw the world in a different way and who understood what had to be done and what America's role is?
The Bush administration came in with an idea of transforming the military into something lighter, smaller, quicker—whatever. The bill payer was going to be heavy ground units. Now we have a shortage of exactly what we needed out there. Nobody listened to the military commanders in chief-the CinCs. In fact, the administration got rid of our name. The CinCs are now combatant commanders, whatever the hell that means. But these military professionals are at the edge of the empire, and they see what the requirements are firsthand.
We need to train our military officers and leaders for a different kind of mission. We do not need people who are only good at the killing and breaking; we need people that have the breadth of education, experience, and intellect to take on all the rest of these missions that they are going to be saddled with when the shooting stops or subsides. They are the ones who are going to count on the ground units more than anything else. I think that is the key issue in any discussion as to what happens to our military from here on out.
Let me finish by saying that we should be extremely proud of what our men and women in uniform did out there. It kills me when I hear of the continuing casualties and the sacrifices being made. It also kills me to hear someone say that each one of those is a personal tragedy, but in the overall scheme of things, they are insignificant statistically. We should challenge any political leader who utters such words. The greatest treasure the United States has are our enlisted men and women. When we put them into harm's way, it had better count for something.
Our military men and women should never be put on a battlefield without a strategic plan, not only for the fighting—our generals will take care of that—but also for the aftermath and winning that war. Where are we, the American people, if we accept less; if we accept any level of sacrifice without an adequate level of planning. Almost everyone of us attending Forum 2003, many my contemporaries, had our feelings and our sensitivities forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. We swore never again would we do that. We swore never again would we allow it to happen. I ask you, is it happening again? You are going to have to answer that question, just like the American people are. And remember, everyone of those young men and women who is lost is not a personal tragedy, it is a national tragedy.
Editor’s Note: On 4 September, the Marine Corps Association and the Naval Institute sponsored Forum 2003. This year’s event in Arlington, Virginia, attracted more than 850 attendees. General Zinni delivered the luncheon address, abridged and edited for publication here. For the full transcript of the address, log on to www.navalinstitute.org.
Retired Marine Corps General Zinni served as the Commander in Chief of Central Command from August 1997 to July 2000. He has participated in presidential diplomatic missions to Somalia, Pakistan, and Ethiopia-Eritrea and was the former U.S. Peace Envoy to the Middle East.