After a decade of war and trillions in past, present, and future costs, there is still no clear path to guide the nation’s defense through the impending shackles of reduced national spending. To elucidate a path, it is necessary to trample upon the touchy questions of what is the purpose of the military and how effective has the organization been in achieving its objectives. Unfortunately, it is much easier to shout out words such as freedom and patriotism or oppression and tyranny, then to impartially analyze a subject that encompasses so much of what is both tragic and heroic.
Three Criteria for Success
For instance, the task of ascertaining whether the travails of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan were justified, or not, depends upon defining the goals of these operations. The vague haze of political discourse, however, offers little help. So to propel the monologue, I’ll take the polemical step of defining three concrete objectives for both endeavors: establish a democratic government, establish a government favorable to the US, and prevent genocide. Weapons of mass destruction is a slippery fish best left in the past, while routing out Al Qaeda and terrorism is one result of establishing a favorable, democratic government.
While these objectives may be an illusive trifecta, few would argue that a violence-free, democratic regime, favorable to our interests in either Iraq or Afghanistan would be a failure. And while such a regime located in the Middle East may be a neocons opium dream, this list of objectives at least provides criteria for judgment and accountability.
Success or Failure
Under these criteria, the operations in Iraq may be considered a moderate success. The country’s politics appear to be superficially democratic and the government is not entirely hostile to our interest. The aftershocks of violence are still dramatic and could escalate tragically, yet the U.S. military has largely withdrawn and the country is stable without an absolute tyrant squeezing the people’s neck. (Note: this analysis was written prior to the ISIS debacle and Iraq should likely be considered a failure too.)
Afghanistan, however, may be the never-ending failure benevolently passed down to us from the English and Russians, with the English opting for seconds. The cartel of a government shares our interests as much as the lethal individuals wearing its military’s uniforms. And the only consolation regarding the level of violence is that it may still be within a standard deviation of what Afghanistan’s people have always known.
Cost
Setting aside the success or failure of the outcome, we are missing one component of the argument that even a Harvard MBA could see: cost. Dismiss the word cost lightly, for while slogans sound grand - “no cost is too high when lives are on the line” - they implicitly ignore that lives lost are themselves a cost, not one that is as easily tallied as dollars and cents, but still a price paid for the undertaking. A trillion dollars and ten thousand lives is far greater than a billion dollars and a hundred lives. Moreover, while the discussion is macabre, the analysis is necessary both to weigh the risks of the endeavor and to judge the results.
When factoring in cost, both Iraq and Afghanistan are miserable failures. Not because they are “Bush’s evil wars,” but because the results obtained could have been achieved at so much less cost. The bank-robbing first decade of the millennium is far from solely the responsibility of the military. Wall Street is quickly stumbling like a coked out banker toward becoming an issue of national security, while the nation’s obsession with flipping houses and technical gadgets was the individual binging that indirectly enabled the military to feast. Yet these are excuses and not a tally of the defense establishment’s individual score.
Judged by the objectives, Afghanistan is nearly a failure without accounting for cost, and while Iraq was showing some light at the end of the tunnel, few would have said “go” in the beginning if they knew that the costs would sail past 5 Trillion dollars and 10 thousand American lives. In total, it is difficult to call the flimsy results of a decade at war a success when accounting for cost. Certainly ripping apart Al Qaeda was necessary, but the important question is could the current state have been obtained with less national treasure.
Special Forces and Airpower
Afghanistan never should have expanded beyond special forces and airpower. While this statement reeks of twenty-twenty hindsight, it is nonetheless accurate when accounting for cost and outcome. Could the current state of affairs in the country have been obtained without the infusion of “big military”? I certainly think so. Special Operators, with the enabler of airborne firepower, could certainly have stayed attached to local groups and tormented al-Qaida, just as in the beginning of the war. The mission to get Osama in Pakistan could have been executed under this scenario. Finally, without so much American involvement, the country may have evolved to a more natural political equilibrium that could have proven favorable to our interests both in the present and the future.
The applicability of a special forces and airpower solution in Iraq seems more specious, but beyond the first months of the war it would have likely been the best outcome: empower local military units with American training and an overwhelming airborne force enabler. Would this strategy have definitely worked better?
That answer will always be illusive to both civilians and military members alike, but we must only accept the possibility that a special forces and airpower solution would have achieved the current results or better at much less cost to justify an examination of how we as a country and the military as an organization could have followed this course of action and what factors lead instead to our present circumstances.
A Definition of War
To move further in the discussion it is necessary to examine the prickly subject of what exactly is war: an issue of national security – certainly – a necessary tragedy – for most people excepting General Patton. However, these definitions are tenuous and do little to reach our goal of helping the military achieve the same objectives at less cost. Forgoing a definitive, all-encompassing definition, I propose a loose line for a dual categorization of the entity: air superiority.
We all sense the difference between World War 2 and the war in Iraq, but beyond mere scale, a significant differentiator of current warfare is air supremacy. Beyond the egocentric musings of a fighter pilot, this marker helps define drastically different scenarios. In the first, without air superiority, our existence as a nation is at risk, for if we are losing in the air, we will likely be fighting for our lives on both the ground and at sea. This scenario encompasses both world wars and Korea with moments of Vietnam and Iraq. But the largest portion of the latter two wars encompass the second category, where air superiority is relatively assured: not necessarily that planes aren’t being shot down, but that our own ground forces are at little risk from being overwhelmed from enemy airborne firepower. As history has taught us, wars are won on the ground.
So what next? We have broken the thing called war into two categories, for the sake of definitions: conventional and limited, split apart by the loose line of air superiority. But how does this help reach the goal of a way forward for national security? This leap requires an understanding of military politics.
Service Politics
The Navy, my favorite service, has the goal of “keeping the carriers together”. This objective is maintained even at the expense of flying fighter jets, at ten thousand dollars a flight hour, on six hour missions into Afghanistan and Iraq, to cover only an hour and a half of operations. This task could be completed at much less cost by more effective platforms. In total these costs have added hundreds of billions of dollars to the budget when you account for operations, support, and equipment deterioration. Yet to accuse the Navy of being the only branch on a credit card spending spree is disingenuous. Do we need Artillery and Tanks in the current wars? Or B2 bombers? All of the services have their hands equally far into the cookie jar.
But why would the military not use the most appropriate assets? Simple. Because Iraq and Afghanistan are the main game and everyone wants to play. Entrenched interests fight to place square pegs into the round holes that present themselves. Using the earlier definition of war, the problem isn’t the carrier or the tank, but the attempt to force conventional war assets into a limited war scenario. A pilot with binoculars in a Cesna could do a better job watching for people planting IEDs at much less cost than an F/A-18. But the incentive for big military is to provide the tool best suited to the interests of the organization and not to the American taxpayer.
A Remedy
The key to this dilemma, as with all government, resides in the budget. Special forces and airpower was likely a better solution to our current conflicts then what was provided, and this helps to provide the solution. The funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should have gone through SOCOM. In fact, the geographic component commanders should be responsible only for conventional wars, while SOCOM should be responsible for limited wars, with the services continuing to play the role of asset supplier. Furthermore, Congress should be responsible for defining which type of war we are engaged in, as well as defining appropriate laws to guide the rules of engagement.
This allocation of funding enables the people most significantly involved in the execution and success of the endeavor to control the expenses and resources provided for its conduct. When operators on the ground would prefer a propeller driven aircraft with advanced targeting capabilities, substantial air-to-ground firepower, and the ability to stay over-head their position for extended periods of time, instead of a fighter jet, they should be the one’s to choose. Especially when they can have a dozen of the former at the same price as one of the latter.
When SOCOM needs B2’s, they can request the support from the other component commanders, which will be provided at the requisite cost from SOCOM’s budget. In this manner, SOCOM can be given a fixed budget and determine the most appropriate expenditures to achieve the stated objective. This delineation of responsibility would provide a better course of action than the current one of funneling trillions through conventional assets and using SOCOM as the NSC’s secret little strike force.
A way forward
A division of war into the two categories of conventional and limited, and a readjustment of funding for the distinct endeavors offers numerous benefits. One is the appropriate allocation of resources. Big military can focus on training and purchasing the weapons platforms that are necessary for all-out warfare, while SOCOM can focus on the training and weapons that are appropriate for limited warfare. Either component can pull from the other when needed, just as component commanders pull resources from the services as needed. This separation, though, offers a better accounting of costs by helping to make sure that solutions most appropriate for a given conflict are used in that conflict.
Two, by separating the resources, Congress can better adapt the law to the given circumstances prior to the engagement. It is all too easy for the executive to usurp powers in the name of “war”. The powers afforded the Commander in Chief in times of war are necessary, but it is important to distinguish between a war that could truly affect the nation’s survival and one that is more of a strategic maneuver. Congress should attach more stringent guidelines to the type of limited wars seen in the last decade. We all deserve the right to know where people are fighting, killing, and dying in our name. Secrecy is fast becoming a tool to avoid accountability and not one to serve the nations’ interests. By separating the two types of war, the civilian government can better guide military operations abroad and can better manage the expectations of the American public.
Finally, with a dual categorization of warfare, the public and government can be both better informed prior to undertaking the action, and more confident that an exit strategy exists. A declaration of limited war would still be a declaration of war, but would indicate to the nation a strategy with certain expectations. Additionally, when a larger-scale war is initiated, as in the opening weeks of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the civilian authority has a built in de-escalation strategy. Upon the obtainment of air supremacy and the suspension of large force ground maneuvers, funding could be redirected to SOCOM, which could then manage the extended operations that accompany limited warfare. More money could go to SF and SEAL units to build up the defense structures of the indigenous populations and conventional military units could supplement as necessary.
By examining the unseemly task of war, we can see that all wars are not the same. And despite the often-tragic nature of the subject, to naively ignore the topic inevitably leads to outcomes even more tragic. The costs of war are born whether we want them or not. It is in all our interests to examine the costs and to determine the steps we can take to minimize those costs while still achieving our objectives. The division of funding and responsibility outlined above will undoubtedly meet fierce resistance from entrenched interests within the defense establishment. Resistance, however, does not negate the need for change. When military leaders suggest that the services cannot suffer even modest reductions in spending without grave consequences, we have a problem. Since the beginnings of our country, the answer to a runaway military is for the civilian leadership to demand more accountability and to enforce that accountability through the control of funding.