Already, there is proof that the American Army's conventional fighting skills have atrophied. Three former combat brigade commanders in Iraq recently submitted a paper to Army Chief of Staff General George Casey, outlining how the Army's field artillery branch has lost the conventional fighting skills of firing guns at an enemy in open combat due to many years of counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. They refer to the artillery branch as a "dead branch walking." ...
There are a range of scenarios that might include the US having to engage in heavy fighting. One of them involves a possible failed North Korean state. Focusing on counterinsurgency and nation-building operations will not prepare the Army for such a possibility.
The American Army must do what it takes to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But good counterinsurgency tactics practiced by proficient combat outfits cannot compensate for flawed strategies and policies.
Considering events today in Georgia and the recent past of Israel in south Lebanon, the Army must soon refocus itself toward conventional warfighting skills, with the knowledge that if called on to do so, it can easily shift to nation-building and counterinsurgency as it has done in Iraq.
If it doesn't, it courts strategic peril.
We needed to unbalance the Army to win the war in Iraq. It would have been folly to lose the war in the mistaken belief that a defeat would not harm the Army more than a stressful victory. I believed we needed to risk breaking the Army if that is what it would take to win the war. Win and we can rebuild the Army by giving our troops a well-deserved rest. Lose the war and we'd have to rebuild the Army anyway as soldier would flee the defeated Army.
Our Army is not breaking in any case, as some have argued. It is stressed, but it is battle hardened. All it needs is time to rest and undergo proper training for troops and leadership to restore it to its fighting trim. Right now, we could not repeat our lightning invasion of Iraq at either our 1991 or 2003 forms.
And we have plenty of history to show us that armies that function as police have no business on a battlefield. Most so-called "armies" are nothing but national police forces. Our Army had to refocus to win in Iraq, but that cannot be the last word on the focus of our Army (and Marine Corps).
This does not mean we abandon our hard-learned lesson of counter-insurgency (COIN). But it should mean that we understand that well-trained American troops are capable of becoming great counter-insurgents very quickly if well led by officers who understand COIN as well as they understand combined arms, high intensity warfare:
The debate over needing specially trained troops separate from the main military to fight insurgents has been made obsolete by the creation of an entire army whose troops match what COIN advocates once wanted for a select subset of the army. Developing the leaders and maintaining the doctrine to lead these troops should be the goal.
We very rapidly adapted a conventional Army to defeat the Iraq insurgencies as we fought that war. The reverse is not possible during war. A policing army thrust into combat against a real army will be broken and destroyed. It will not get the opportunity to adapt.
We must restore our conventional capabilities when the Iraq War is won and our troops stand down from the daily fight.
