I admit, I had worries about Gates when he came on board:
When Gates was nominated in late 2006, conservative suspicions and liberal hopes coincided. Gates, then a member of the Iraq Study Group, was expected to ease the American retreat from Iraq and begin the American engagement with Iran. Foreign-policy realism was back.
I may have had worries about Rumsfeld's commitment to ground forces and remained suspicious of revolutionary approaches to military hardware, but he fought the war. I did indeed worry that Gates was brought on board to retreat under the cover of "realism" that had nothing to do with the reality of the Long War.
So while I think Rumsfeld gets too harsh a rap for his tenure and deserves credit, too, for that time, I stopped worrying about Gates a long time ago. He, too, fights.
And he has an attitude on the war in Iraq that I share:
Far from treating Iraq as a distraction, Gates has posed the question: Why not concentrate on winning the wars our soldiers are currently fighting? In a series of groundbreaking speeches, Gates has argued that asymmetrical conflicts in the "long war" against "violent jihadist networks" will remain the likely face of battle for decades to come, that "procurement and training have to focus on that reality," and that shaping civilian attitudes in these conflicts will be just as important as winning battles.
Yes, we must win this war. The military is a tool to win our wars and not a tool that must be maintained at the price of losing wars. You could certainly make the argument during Vietnam that it was not worth risking NATO Europe to win in Vietnam. But in practice, we lost in Vietnam and wrecked our Army anyway. Would it really have been worse to win in Vietnam? How much more harm could victory have done to the Army?
I break with Gates in assuming we must focus on counter-insurgency as the main focus of the Army and Marines. Who believes our country will enter battle like this again in the near future? When the counter-insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan are won, that's it for a decade at least.We need to maintain that knowledge in the military and be prepared to teach allies how to fight counter-insurgencies, but I just don't see and American army going overseas to fight an insurgency again for quite some time. Congress won't declare that war.
But for Iraq and Afghanistan, this is quite appropriate:
There have been at least three practical outcomes of the nicely rhymed Gates Doctrine -- "the war we are in ... is the war we must win" -- in Iraq and beyond.
Quite. we must win this war.
First, Gates has pushed to deploy technologies immediately useful in low intensity conflict, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles.
This is the logical path to win the war we are in right now. Planning for the next generation's weapons is surely appropriate. But the priority is what helps the troops heading out next month.
Second, Gates is institutionalizing the teaching of counterinsurgency strategy. The old theory, says my contact, went: "If we could do the big stuff -- major combat operations -- we could take care of the little stuff, the asymmetrical stuff. But the little stuff turned out to be more prolonged and difficult."
This is only partly true. Yes, the knowledge of counterinsurgency (COIN) must be institutionalized. But any good soldier can fight COIN if well led. Remember that the surge offensive that used classic COIN approaches used the basic American soldier and Marine who had been trained as general purpose soldiers. The troops didn't change. The officers and senior NCOs changed how they used our excellent troops.
Third, Gates argues that while American military power can be a prerequisite for stability, winning asymmetrical wars requires other elements of American power.
Yes, the military needs help from the rest of the government. COIN is not all about military power, though security that military power provides is the requirement for all else. The rest of our government must be deployable just as our military is. And our public must support our efforts that will take time to get results.
But this isn't even just about indicting the State Department. Or Treasury or Agriculture or Energy or Justice. Even our military isn't entirely focused on winning the war we are in:
Elements of the defense establishment, he charges, have been "preoccupied with future capabilities and procurement programs, wedded to lumbering peacetime process and procedures, stuck in bureaucratic low-gear." Recently -- seven years after 9/11, five years after the Iraq War began -- Gates noted that portions of the military are still not on a "war footing."
I've never bought the argument that we have to mobilize our society for the Long War. We have a long fight and struggle ahead of us, and we should not exhaust our will to wage war by pretending we can gear up for an all-out effort for three years and then declare peace and go back to normal. This doesn't mean our public should ignore the war or the military personnel fighting the war. But our efforts need to insulate the civilians world from the effects of war to maintain support over years and decades.
But our military has no excuse for not being fully involved. Surely, with the Navy and Air Force playing supporting roles while the Army and Marine Corps bleed, it is natural that the ground forces expend more effort (and blood) in the war and stay focused on these fights right now.
And it is natural that the Navy and Air Force would look more broadly than Iraq and Afghanistan and look ahead for future wars that they might have to bear the burden in fighting.
But the priority must be supporting the ground forces right now. When the choice is between supporting the ground forces now or buiding a great weapon for a decade in the future, the latter goal must take lower priority. The future Navy and Air Force won't escape the fallout from a war that the Army and Marines are allowed to lose by failing to support them.
Win the war we are in right now, and the military that wins it will be better prepared to win tomorrow's war--even if it doesn't have the weapons that we planned to have by then.
Heck, with victory, our people might even be more willing to fight a COIN war if we are faced with such a threat.
Gates fights. That's a good enough attitude for me. And really, it's the most realistic approach available.
