Force Structure for Small Wars

By SWJ Editors


Force Structure for Small Wars

by Andrew C. Pavord, Small Wars Journal

Download interim version of article as PDF

Since 9/11 the armed forces of the United States have paid a steep price to acquire proficiency in counterinsurgency operations. After going through a painful learning process the Army and Marines published the now acclaimed counterinsurgency manual and implemented a new approach in Iraq that is delivering impressive results. It is now a logical time to consider how to redesign combat units to reflect these lessons and prepare for the small wars of the future.

This article will argue that counterinsurgency brigades should be added to the U.S. Army’s force structure. Lacking forces specially trained and equipped for counterinsurgency, the Army has fought the war on terror with conventional units adapted to counterinsurgency operations. For most units, the transition from conventional organization and tactics to the very different and challenging tasks of counterinsurgency was traumatic. The costs of poor organization for counterinsurgency, in terms of battlefield mistakes and the misallocation of resources, were substantial. To provide the optimal force for fighting insurgencies the Army should develop Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) that are specifically organized, equipped, and trained for the complex challenges of counterinsurgency operations.

Download interim version of article as PDF

By SWJ Editors on May 13, 2008 1:06 AM

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90U74D01&show_article=1

Report: Billions in defense spending unchecked

May 27 04:39 PM US/Eastern
By ANNE FLAHERTY
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Pentagon auditors say billions of dollars in military spending is going unchecked because they are having trouble keeping pace with the ever-expanding defense budget and combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a recent report, the Defense Department inspector general estimates that nearly half of the military's $316 billion weapons budget went unchecked last year because the IG's office lacked the manpower. Whereas 10 years ago when a single auditor would have reviewed some $642 million in defense contracts, individual investigators are now charged with auditing more than $2 billion in spending.

The IG also has been stretching its staff to investigate corruption and fraud cases overseas, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan where the military is hiring contractors to help run operations.

"The continual degradation of audit resources that is occurring at a time when the (Defense Department) budget is growing larger leaves the department more vulnerable to fraud, waste, and, abuse and undermines the department's mission," the report states.

"Our coverage of high-risk areas and defense priorities is weakened and will continue to be weakened by insufficient personnel to accomplish our statutory duties," it adds.

The March assessment was obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group based in Washington.

In this year's budget, Congress approved an additional $24 million for the IG office to improve contract oversight. According to the IG, it will need another major boost—$25 million more than President Bush requested—to meet its requirements in 2009.

The IG says it plans to hire some 481 new personnel in the next seven years, expanding to more than 1,900 full-time employees.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

from Thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog
Posted May 27.08

Urbanization yields globalization yields rising income yields more food demand yields bigger farms yields more migration to cities yields ...

ARTICLE: "In Ukraine, Mavericks Gamble On Scarce Land," by John W. Miller, Wall Street Journal, 12 May 2008, p. A1.

Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan have between them an untilled Idaho's worth of good farmland. Trick is unifying small plots, something China too works. All three expect higher future yields, thanks to global warming, so real opportunity.

But key to driving underemployed off land is to have better life (meaning jobs) waiting for them in cities.

That means joining globalization's rising "network trade" (intra-corporate buyer/producer chains).

So rising food needs only feed globalization's structural dynamics.

This is why, in my mind, Deng was Man of the 20th century, not Einstein, as Time claimed. (though I'd still say American G.I. is logical composite MOTC.

World acreage sits at 37b, of which 3.51b currently arable, up a smidge from 1991 total of 3.49b. Of that total, U.S. has 432m, China with 350m, Brazil with 146m, and Russia-Ukraine-Kazakhstan with 437m.

Assuming these are top nations, it's interesting that it's U.S. plus all New Core. By look of map, India's got to be close to Brazil total, making it America + BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India and China].

May 5, 2008
Arts, Briefly
Unusual Concert for Saudi Arabia
Compiled by LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

In a groundbreaking concert in Saudi Arabia, a German-based quartet played European classical music in a public setting for a mixed-gender audience, right, The Associated Press reported. Public concerts are virtually unheard of in this strict Muslim kingdom, and the sexes are segregated even in lines at fast-food outlets. The concert — with the Artis Piano Quartet performing works by Mozart, Brahms and Paul Juon — took place in a 500-seat government-run cultural center in Riyadh on Friday night and touched off speculation that Saudi Arabia was seeking greater openness. “The concert is a sign that things are changing rapidly here,” said the German ambassador, Jürgen Krieghoff, whose embassy sponsored the concert as part of the inaugural German Cultural Weeks in Saudi Arabia. “Evidently the government has decided that a minimum of openness in our new world economy and in our information-based world is necessary for us and also for good understanding among cultures.” The quartet’s Japanese pianist, Hiroko Atsumi, said there had been some discussion about whether she should perform in an abaya, the enveloping black cloak women must wear in public. She wore a long green top and black trousers.

Iraq Rising

By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | 5/27/2008

A FASCINATING SCENE played out in Basra, Iraq, last week. Troops from the Iraqi Army stood sentinel over the once restive city as followers of rogue cleric Muqtada al-Sadr muttered dispiritedly that they had been driven from power. In this Sadrist fiefdom, the erstwhile epicenter of a Shiite insurgency that many doubted could be contained, the Iraqi army was now law.

Credit this remarkable transformation to Operation Sawlat al-Fursan, also known as operation Charge of the Knights, which began with little fanfare and much skepticism in late March. A make-or-break test for the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Iraqi armed forces, the operation was largely led by the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Security Forces. Their success in routing militia elements in cities like Basra would reveal much about what could realistically be expected from Iraq.

Democrats were anything but optimistic. Presumptive nominee Barack Obama allowed that the operation had “resulted in some reduction in violence” but insisted, counterintuitively, that this only strengthened the case for rushed troop withdrawals. Hillary Clinton, never one to be pinned down on policy substance when grandstanding is an option, offered her standard refrain that the “surge has failed to accomplish its goals.” More candid was Joe Biden, who back in April was prepared to call a victory … for Sadr. Of Basra, he pronounced, it “looks to me like, at least on the surface, Sadr may have come out a winner here.” In the Democrats’ dismal exegesis, the surge had failed, Iraq was doomed, and withdrawal was the only viable option.

But despair, like hope, is not a policy. Two months on, the Democrats’ fatalism on Iraq looks woefully off base. By all significant indicators, Iraqi security forces have turned the tide against Shiite insurgents. Their improbable control of Basra is only the latest sign of the shifting balance of power. On the strength of the success in Basra, the military reports that violence in Iraq has plunged to its lowest level in over four years. Even the New York Times – no instinctive friend to the Bush administration – reports of Basra that with “Islamist militias evicted from their strongholds by the Iraqi Army, few doubt that this once-lawless port is in better shape than it was just two months ago.” Basra has indeed produced a winner. But contra Joe Biden, it’s not Muqtada al-Sadr.

Just as Shiite die-hards have suffered a devastating reversal, their Sunni counterparts in al-Qaeda are also in retreat. Witness the results in Mosul. Considered by the U.S. and Iraqi forces to be the terrorists’ last urban stronghold in Iraq, Mosul less than a month ago was a soulless Shari’a state. In keeping with Islamist mores, public expressions of joy were forbidden and local cultural traditions ruthlessly suppressed. Locals couldn’t even sell tomatoes and cucumbers side by side at the market, as the juxtaposition was deemed intolerably provocative by prudish jihadists. Since the beginning of a joint U.S. Iraqi operation earlier this month, however, attacks are down by 85 percent, at least 200 al-Qaeda terrorists have been netted in sweeps, and normalcy has been reestablished. Tomatoes and cucumbers, no longer sins against Islam, are just vegetables again.

It speaks to the misdirection of the party that what is good for Iraq and coalition forces is bad for Democrats. Thus, Democrats cannot applaud the recent rollback of al-Qaeda, since doing so would discredit their assurance that Iraq is wholly disconnected from the fight against bin Laden’s network. Neither can they celebrate the Iraqi forces’ success in Basra. That would contradict the narrative that Iraq is a lost cause best surrendered to its internal chaos. To acknowledge gains in security, meanwhile, would be to concede that the American troop presence – that is, the surge that Senator Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi were confidently declaring a “failure” last fall – is helping to pacify the country. Acknowledging that would, of course, nullify the logic of precipitous withdrawal. The only remaining option is to mouth the mantra that Iraq is a failure and hope that reality dovetails with defeatism.

Wiser and more principled is the position of John McCain. As an early proponent of the troop surge, McCain can lay claim to a prescience that not only eluded many of in his party but that continues to evade his expected Democratic opponent. Last week, for instance, Barack Obama cast a vote against the $165 billion funding bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That didn’t derail the funding bill, which passed the Senate anyway, but it did place Obama squarely on the side that has given up on the surge and, by extension, on the Iraq war. Buoyed by some polls, Obama is clearly betting that military defeat in Iraq will translate into political victory at home.

McCain may yet have the better of that argument. Against the increasingly tone-deaf attacks from Democrats, he can point out that Iraqi troops have defied expectations to perform competently and sometimes impressively, even without U.S. support; that the Shiite and Sunni terrorists have been substantially repelled; and that political reconciliation is for the first time visible on the horizon. He can add, too, that all this is dependent on the surge strategy that he championed and that Obama threatens to undo.

Seen in this light, the Democrats’ tactic of calling the surge the “Cheney-Bush-McCain” strategy may well boomerang to their disadvantage. Naturally, there will be those who scoff at the notion that Iraq could be an asset for McCain in the general election. But it’s worth bearing in mind that these same prognosticators just a month ago were instructing that Iraq’s future belonged to Sadr’s brigands and al-Qaeda’s killers. Of the presidential candidates, only John McCain can credibly pledge that he won’t let that happen.

Jacob Laksin is a senior editor for FrontPage Magazine. He is a 2007 Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellow. His e-mail is jlaksin@gmail.com