Tag Political Violence

What Would An Army Optimized For Multi-Domain Battle Look Like?

Raytheon’s new Long-Range Precision Fires missile is deployed from a mobile launcher in this artist’s rendering. The new missile will allow the Army to fire two munitions from a single weapons pod, making it cost-effective and doubling the existing capacity. [Raytheon]

As the U.S. Army develops its new Multi-Domain Battle (MDB) concept and seeks to modernize and upgrade its forces, some have called for optimizing its force structure for waging combined arms maneuver combat. What would such an Army force structure look like?

The active component of the Army currently consists of three corps, 10 divisions, 16 armored/Stryker brigade combat teams (BCTs), 15 light infantry BCTs, 12 combat aviation brigades, four fires brigades, three battlefield surveillance brigades, one engineer brigade, one Ranger brigade, five Special Forces groups, and a special operations aviation regiment.

U.S. Army Major Nathan A. Jennings and Lt. Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) have each proposed alternative force structure concepts designed to maximize the Army’s effectiveness for combined arms combat.

Jennings’s Realignment Model

Jennings’s concept flows directly from the precepts that MDB is being currently developed upon.

Designed to maximize diverse elements of joint, interorganizational and multinational power to create temporary windows of advantage against complex enemy systems, the Army’s incorporation of [MDB] should be accompanied by optimization of its order of battle to excel against integrated fire and maneuver networks.

To that end, he calls for organizing U.S. Army units into three types of divisions: penetration, exploitation and stabilization.

Empowering joint dynamism begins with creating highly mobile and survivable divisions designed to penetrate complex defenses that increasingly challenge aerial access. These “recon-strike” elements would combine armored and Stryker BCTs; special operations forces; engineers; and multifaceted air defense, indirect, joint, cyber, electromagnetic and informational fires to dislocate and disintegrate adversary defenses across theater depth. As argued by Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, then-director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, they could “fight their way through long-range weapons fire and gain physical contact with hard-to-find opponents” while striking “from unexpected directions with multiple forms of firepower.”

Exploitation divisions would employ more balanced capabilities to destroy enemy concentrations, clear contested zones and seize key terrain. Comprising a variety of light, airborne, motorized and mechanized infantry BCTs with modest armor and engineer support—all empowered by destructive kinetic, electronic and virtual fires—these commands would attack through windows of opportunity created by deep strikes to overmatch paralyzed defenders. While penetrating formations would rapidly bridge air and land component efforts, their more versatile and flexible exploitation counterparts would allow joint commands to decisively shatter adversary warfighting capabilities through intensive fire and maneuver.

The third type of division would be made up of elements trained to consolidate gains in order to set the conditions for a sustainable, stable environment, as required by Army doctrine. The command’s multifaceted brigades could include tailored civil affairs, informational, combat advisory, military police, light infantry, aviation and special operations elements in partnership with joint, interdepartmental, non-governmental and coalition personnel. These stabilization divisions would be equipped to independently follow penetration and exploitation forces to secure expanding frontages, manage population and resource disruptions, negotiate political turbulence, and support the re-establishment of legitimate security forces and governance.

Jennings did not specify how these divisions would be organized, how many of each type he would propose, or the mix of non-divisional elements. They are essentially a reorganization of current branch and unit types.

Proposing separate penetration and exploitation forces hearkens back to the earliest concepts of tank warfare in Germany and the Soviet Union, which envisioned infantry divisions creating breaches in enemy defenses, through which armored divisions would be sent to attack rear areas and maneuver at the operational level. Though in Jennings’s construction, the role of infantry and armor would be reversed.

Jennings’s envisioned force also preserves the capability for conducting wide area security operations in the stabilization divisions. However, since the stabilization divisions would likely constitute only a fraction of the overall force, this would be a net reduction in capability, as all of the current general purpose force units are (theoretically) capable of conducting wide area security. Jennings’s penetration and exploitation divisions would presumably possess more limited capability for this mission.

Macgregor’s Transformation Model

While Jenning’s proposed force structure can be seen as evolutionary, Macgregor’s is much more radically innovative. His transformation concept focuses almost exclusively on optimizing U.S. ground forces to wage combined arms maneuver warfare. Macgregor’s ideas stemmed from his experiences in the 1991 Gulf War and he has developed and expanded on them continuously since then. Although predating MDB, Macgregor’s concepts clearly influenced the thinking behind it and are easily compatible with it.

In a 2016 briefing for Senator Tom Cotton, Macgregor proposed the following structure for U.S. Army combat forces.

The heart of Macgregor’s proposal are modular, independent, all arms/all effects, brigade-sized combat groups that emphasize four primary capabilities: maneuver (mobile armored firepower for positional advantage), strike (stand-off attack systems), ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) and sustainment (logistics). These modular groups would be the Army’s contribution to cross-domain, corps-level joint task forces, which is how he—and increasingly the rest of the U.S. armed forces—sees the U.S. military waging combat in the future.

Macgregor’s envisioned force structure adds his Reconnaissance Strike Group (RSG) to armored, mechanized infantry, and airborne/air-assault light infantry units. These would total 26 brigade-sized groups, down from the current 31 BCTs, with a ratio of 16 RSG/armored groups to 10 mechanized/airborne infantry.

Macgregor would also downsize the number of manned rotary wing combat aviation elements from 12 to four mostly be replacing them with drones integrated into the independent strike groups and into the strike battalions in the maneuver groups.

He would add other new unit types as well, including theater missile defense groups, C41I groups, and chem-bio warfare groups.

Macgregor’s proposed force structure would also constitute a net savings in overall manpower, mainly by cutting out division-level headquarters and pushing sustainment elements down to the individual groups.

Evolution or Revolution?

While both propose significant changes from the current organization, Jennings’s model is more conservative than Macgregor’s. Jennings would keep the division and BCT as the primary operational units, while Macgregor would cut and replace them altogether. Jennings clearly was influenced by Macgregor’s “strike-reconnaissance” concept in his proposal for penetration divisions. His description of them is very close to the way Macgregor defines his RSGs.

The biggest difference is that Jennings’s force would still retain some capacity to conduct wide area security operations, whether it be in conventional or irregular warfare circumstances. Macgregor has been vocal about his belief that the U.S. should avoid large-scale counterinsurgency or stabilization commitments as a matter of policy. He has also called into question the survivability of light infantry on future combined arms battlefields.

Even should the U.S. commit itself to optimizing its force structure for MDB, it is unclear at this point whether it would look like what Jennings or Macgregor propose. Like most military organizations, the U.S. Army is not known for its willingness to adopt radical change. The future Army force structure is likely to resemble its current form for some time, unless the harsh teachings of future combat experience dictate otherwise.

Insurgency In The DPRK?


North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang, July 27, 2014. [KCNA/REUTERS]

As tensions have ratcheted up on the Korean peninsula following a new round of provocative actions by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea), the prospect of war has once more become prominent. Renewed hostilities between the DPRK and the Republic of Korea (ROK; South Korea) is an old and oft studied scenario for the U.S. military. Although potential combat is likely to be intense, there is consensus that ROK forces and their U.S. allies would eventually prevail.

There is a great deal less clarity about what might happen after a military defeat of the DPRK. Military analyst and Columbia University professor Austin Long has taken a very interesting look at the prospect of an insurgency arising from the ashes of the regime of Kim Jong Un. Long does not confine the prospect of an insurgency in the north to a post-war scenario; it would be possible following any abrupt or forcible collapse of authority.

Long begins by looking at some of the historical factors for insurgency in a post-regime change environment and then examines each in the North Korean context. These include 1) unsecured weapons stockpiles; 2) elite regime forces;3) disbanded mass armies; 4) social network ties; 5) mobilizing ideology; and 6) sanctuary. He concludes that “the potential for an insurgency beginning after the collapse of the DPRK appears contingent but significant.”

With so much focus on the balance of conventional conflict, the potential for insurgency in North Korea might be of secondary concern. Hopefully, recent U.S. experience with the consequences of regime change will lead political and military planners to take it seriously.

Insurgencies, Civil Conflicts, And Messy Endings

[© Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar]

The question of how insurgencies end is crucially important. There is no consensus on how to effectively wage counterinsurgency much less end one on favorable terms. Even successful counterinsurgencies may not end decisively. In the Dupuy Insurgency Spread Sheets (DISS) database of 83 post-World War II insurgencies, interventions, and stabilization operations, 42 are counterinsurgent successes and 11 had indeterminate conclusions. Of the counterinsurgent successes, about 1/3 failed to bring about stability or achieve long-term success.

George Frederick Willcoxon, an economist with the United Nations, recently looked into the question of why up to half of countries that suffer civil conflict relapse into violence between the same belligerents within a decade. He identified risk factors for reversion to war by examining the end of civil conflict and post-war recovery in 109 cases since 1970, drawing upon data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, the Peace Research Institute Oslo, the Polity IV project and the World Bank.

His conclusions were quite interesting:

Long-standing international conventional wisdom prioritizes economic reforms, transitional justice mechanisms or institutional continuity in post-war settings. However, my statistical analyses found that political institutions and military factors were actually the primary drivers of post-war risk. In particular, post-war states with more representative and competitive political systems as well as larger armed forces were better able to avoid war relapse.

These findings challenge a growing reluctance to consider early elections and political liberalization as critical steps for reestablishing authoritative, legitimate and sustainable political order after major armed conflict.

The non-results are perhaps as interesting as the results. With one exception discussed below, there is no evidence that the economic characteristics of post-war countries strongly influence the likelihood they will return to war. Income per capita, development assistance per capita, oil rents as a percent of GDP, overall unemployment rates and youth unemployment rates are not associated with civil war relapse.

Equally significant is there is no evidence that the culture, religion or geopolitics of the Middle East and North Africa will impede post-war recovery. I introduced into the statistical models measures for Islam, Arab culture and location in the region. None of these variables showed statistically significant correlations with the risk of war relapse since 1970, holding everything else constant, suggesting that such factors should not distinctively handicap post-war stabilization, recovery and transition in Iraq, Libya, Syria or Yemen.

Willcoxon’s research suggested a correlation between numbers of security forces and successfully preventing new violence.

Perhaps not surprisingly, larger security sectors reduce the risk of war relapse. For every additional soldier in the national armed forces per 1,000 people, the risk of relapse is about seven percent lower. Larger militaries are better able to deter renewed rebel activity, as well as prevent or reduce other forms of conflict such as terrorism, organized crime and communal violence.

He also found that the types of security forces had an influence as well.

The presence of outside troops also has significant influence on risk. The analysis lends support to a well-established finding in the political science literature that the presence of United Nations peacekeepers lowers the risk of conflict relapse. However, the presence of non-U.N. foreign troops almost triples the risk of relapsing back into civil war. There are at least two potential interpretations on this latter finding: Foreign troops may intervene in especially difficult circumstances, and therefore their presence indicates the post-war episodes most likely to fail; or foreign troops, particularly occupying armies, generate their own conflict risk.

These findings are strikingly similar to TDI’s research that suggests that higher force ratios of counterinsurgent troops to insurgents correlate with counterinsurgent success. You can check Willcoxon’s paper out here.

The U.S. Army’s Identity Crisis: Optimizing For Future Warfare

[GlobalSecurity.org]

As the U.S. national security establishment grapples with the implications of the changing character of warfare in the early 21st century, one of more difficult questions to be addressed will be how to properly structure its land combat forces. After nearly two decades of irregular warfare, advocates argue that U.S land forces are in need of recapitalization and modernization. Their major weapons systems are aging and the most recent initiative to replace them was cancelled in 2009. While some upgrades have been funded on the margins, U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps leaders have also committed to developing a new warfighting doctrine—Multi-Domain Battle (MDB)—to meet the potential challenges of 21st century warfare.

Because conflicts arising from Great Power rivalries and emerging regional challenges pose the greatest potential strategic danger to the U.S., some have called for optimizing the Army to execute combined arms maneuver warfare against peer or near-peer armies. Recent experience suggests however that the most likely future conflicts the U.S. will engage in will involve ongoing post-Cold War ethnic and nationalist-driven political violence, leading others to support a balanced force structure also capable of conducting wide-area security, or stabilization operations and counterinsurgency.

The Army attempted in 2011 to define wide-area security and combined arms maneuver as the two core competencies in its basic doctrine that would allow it to best prepare for these contingencies. By 2016, Army doctrine abandoned specific competencies in favor of the ability to execute “unified land operations,” broadly defined as “simultaneous offensive, defensive, and stability or defense support of civil authorities tasks to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative and consolidate gains to prevent conflict, shape the operational environment, and win our Nation’s wars as part of unified action.”

The failure to prioritize strategic missions or adequately fund modernization leaves the Army in the position of having to be ready to face all possible contingencies. Gates Brown claims this is inflicting an identity crisis on the Army that jeopardizes its combat effectiveness.

[B]y training forces for all types of wars it ends up lessening combat effectiveness across the entire spectrum. Instead of preparing inadequately for every war, the Army needs to focus on a specific skill set and hone it to a sharp edge… [A] well-defined Army can scramble to remedy known deficiencies in combat operations; however, consciously choosing not to set a deliberate course will not serve the Army well.

The Army’s Identity Crisis

To this point, the Army has relied on a balanced mix of land combat forces divided between armor (heavy tracked and medium wheeled) and light infantry formations. Although optimized for neither combined arms maneuver nor wide-area security, these general purpose forces have heretofore demonstrated the capability to execute both missions tolerably well. The Active Army currently fields 10 divisions comprising 31 Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) almost evenly split between armor/mechanized and infantry (16 armored/Stryker and 15 infantry).

Major Nathan Jennings contends that the Army force structure should be specifically reorganized for combined arms maneuver and MDB.

Designed to maximize diverse elements of joint, interorganizational and multinational power to create temporary windows of advantage against complex enemy systems, the Army’s incorporation of the idea should be accompanied by optimization of its order of battle to excel against integrated fire and maneuver networks. To that end, it should functionalize its tactical forces to fight as penetration, exploitation and stabilization divisions with corresponding expertise in enabling the vast panoply of American and allied coercive abilities.

This forcewide realignment would enable “flexible and resilient ground formations [to] project combat power from land into other domains to enable joint force freedom of action,” as required by Gen. David G. Perkins, commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. While tailored brigades and battalions would feature combined arms with the ability to maneuver in a dispersed manner, optimized divisions would allow functional expertise in rear, close, deep and non-linear contests while maintaining operational tempo throughout rapid deep attacks, decisive assaults, and consolidation of gains. The new order would also bridge tactical and operational divides to allow greater cross-domain integration across the full range of military operations.

On the other hand, Lieutenant Colonel Jason Nicholson advocates heeding the lessons of the last decade and a half of U.S. experience with irregular warfare and fielding an upgraded, yet balanced, force structure. He does not offer a prescription for a proper force mix, but sees the recent Army decision to stand up six Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs) as an encouraging development.

The last sixteen years of ongoing military operations have been conducted at the expense of future requirements of all types. The modernization problems presented by “small wars” challenge the Army as surely as those related to high-intensity conflicts. While SFABs are a step in the right direction, greater investment is required to maximize the lessons learned after sixteen years of counterinsurgency. Training for specific missions like combat advising and security force assistance should be institutionalized for tactical units beyond the designated SFABs. The need for additional capabilities for operating in austere environments will also drive equipment requirements such as lighter power generation and enhanced tactical mobility. Greater expeditionary logistics, armor, and fire support assets will also be critical in future operations. Hybrid warfare, from the Russian campaign in Ukraine to the French campaign in Mali, will continue to change the nature of “small wars.” Megacities, climate change, and other similar challenges will require the same attention to detail by the Army as near-peer conflict in order to ensure future operational success.

No Simple Answers To Strategic Insolvency

Decisions regarding the Army’s force structure will be in the hands of senior political and military decision-makers and will require hard choices and accepting risks. Proponents of optimizing for combined arms maneuver concede that future U.S. commitments to counterinsurgency or large-scale stabilization operations would likely have to be curtailed. Conversely, a balanced force structure is a gamble that either conventional war is unlikely to occur or that general purpose forces are still effective enough to prevail in an emergency.

Hal Brands and Eric Edelman argue that the U.S. currently faces a crisis of “strategic insolvency” due to the misalignment of military capabilities with geopolitical ends in foreign policy, caused by the growth in strategic and geopolitical challenges combined with a “disinvestment” in defense resources. They contend that Great Powers have traditionally restored strategic solvency in three ways:

  • “First, they can decrease commitments thereby restoring equilibrium with diminished resources.”
  • “Second, they can live with greater risk by gambling that their enemies will not test vulnerable commitments or by employing riskier approaches—such as nuclear escalation—to sustain commitments on the cheap.”
  • “Third, they can expand capabilities, thereby restoring strategic solvency.”

Brands and Edelman contend that most commentators favor decreasing foreign policy commitments. Thus far, the U.S. has seemingly adopted the second option–living with greater risk—by default, simply by avoiding choosing to reduce foreign policy commitments or to boost defense spending.

The administration of President Donald Trump is discovering, however, that simply choosing one course over another can be politically problematic. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump called for expanding U.S. military capability, including increasing U.S. Army end strength to 540,000, rebuilding the U.S. Navy to at least 350 vessels, adding 100 fighter and attack aircraft to boost the U.S. Air Force to 1,200 aircraft, and boosting the U.S. Marine Corps from 24 battalions to 36. He signed an executive order after assuming office mandating this expansion, stating that his administration will pursue an as-yet undefined policy of “peace through strength.”

Estimates for the cost of these additional capabilities range from $55-$95 billion in additional annual defense spending. Trump called for an additional $54 billion spending on defense in his FY 2018 budget proposal. Secretary of Defense James Mattis told members of Congress that while the additional spending will help remedy short-term readiness challenges, it is not enough to finance the armed services plans for expansion and modernization. As Congress wrangles over a funding bill, many remain skeptical of increased government spending and it is unclear whether even Trump’s proposed increase will be approved.

Trump also said during the campaign that as president, he would end U.S. efforts at nation-building, focusing instead on “foreign policy realism” dedicated to destroying extremist organizations in conjunction with temporary coalitions of willing allies regardless of ideological or strategic differences. However, Trump has expressed ambivalent positions on intervention in Syria. While he has stated that he would not deploy large numbers of U.S. troops there, he also suggested that the U.S. could establish “safe zones” His cabinet has reportedly debated plans to deploy up to tens of thousands of ground troops in Syria in order to clear the Islamic State out, protect local populations, and encourage the return of refugees.

It does not appear as if the Army’s identity crisis will be resolved any time soon. If the past is any indication, the U.S. will continue to “muddle through” on its foreign policy, despite the risks.

 

New U.S. Boots On The Ground In Syria

U.S. Stryker combat vehicle alleged to belong to the U.S. Army 3/75th Rangers spotted near Manbij, Syria [Photo via Qalaat Al Mudiq/Twitter]

Following recent reports on social media that combat vehicles associated with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment were spotted moving from Iraqi Kurdistan toward the Syrian village of Manbij last weekend, The Washington Post is saying that U.S. Marine forces have now been deployed to Syria. The Marines are reportedly establishing a firebase from which they can support U.S.-sponsored Syrian Kurdish forces poised to attack the Daesh-held city of Raqaa.

Bloomberg is reporting that the U.S. forces deployed to Manbij are part of a coordinated effort with Russia to thwart a possible offensive by Turkish forces to take the town, which is held by Syrian Kurds. The Russians brokered a deal with the Syrian forces to establish a buffer zone around Manbij, which U.S. Army Rangers will help man. Turkish forces launched an attack in conjunction with the Free Syrian Army on Daesh fighters in northern Syria last August. The U.S.-Russian move is perceived as an attempt to prevent the Turks from attacking the Syrian Kurds, who the Turks believe are aligned with Turkish Kurdish groups waging an insurgency against the Turkish government.

U.S. Special Operations Forces elements have been operating on the ground in support of Syrian rebels since October 2015; these have been quietly supplemented by conventional U.S. Army and Marine detachments, according to previous reports The new U.S. ground force deployments have come with no public debate or forewarning by the Trump administration.

Army Creates Security Force Assistance Brigades and Training Academy

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Brandon Blanton, center, a trainer with Company A, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, Task Force Strike, assists Iraqi army ranger students during a room-clearing drill at Camp Taji, Iraq, July 18, 2016. The new Security Force Assistance Brigades will assume these types of missions in the future. (Photo Credit: 1st Lt. Daniel Johnson)

With much of the focus of the defense and national security communities shifting to peer and near-peer challenges, the Department of the Army’s recent announcement that the first Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) will begin standing up in October 2017 comes as an interesting bit of news. The Army will also establish a new Military Advisor Training Academy at Ft. Benning, Georgia to train officers and non-commissioned officers to staff what are projected to a total of six SFABs with 500 personnel each.

The Strategic Role of Security Force Assistance

Security Force Assistance (SFA) is the umbrella term for U.S. whole-of-government support provided to develop the capability and capacity of foreign security forces and institutions. SFA is intended to help defend host nations from external and internal threats, and encompasses foreign internal defense (FID), counterterrorism (CT), counterinsurgency (COIN), and stability operations.

The use of military aid to bolster allies is a time-old strategic expedient; it was one of the primary weapons with which the U.S.waged the Cold War. SFA has assumed a similar role in U.S. policy for countering global terrorism, as a cost-effective alternative to direct involvement in destroying or deterring the development of terrorist sanctuaries. The efficacy of this approach is a hot topic for debate in foreign policy and national security circles these days.

Organizing, training, equipping, building, advising, and assisting foreign security forces is a time and resource-intensive task and the best way of doing it has been long debated. One of the Army’s justifications for creating the SFAB’s was the need to free line units from SFA taskings to focus on preparing for combat operations. The Army is also highlighting the SFABs dual capability as cadres upon which combat-ready U.S. Army Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) can be quickly created in a national emergency with the addition of junior personnel.

Advise and Assist: SOF vs. General Purpose Forces?

The Army believes that dedicated SFABs will be more effective at providing SFA than has been the case with recent efforts. This is an important consideration in light of the decidedly mixed combat performance of U.S.-trained and equipped Afghan and Iraqi security forces. The dramatic collapse of Iraqi Army units defending Mosul in 2014 that had been trained by conventional U.S. forces contrasts with the current dependence on U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF)-trained Iraqi Counterrorism Service (CTS) forces to lead the effort to retake the city.

This apparent disparity in success between the SOF advise and assist model and the more generic conventional force SFA template is causing some angst in the U.S. Army Special Forces (ARSOF) community, some of whom see training foreign security forces as its traditional institutional role. Part of the reason conventional forces are assigned SFA tasks is because there will never be enough ARSOF to meet the massive demand, and ARSOF units are needed for other specialized taskings as well. But the ultimate success of the SFABs will likely be gauged against the historical accomplishments of their SOF colleagues.

Iraq After Mosul

As Chris mentioned last week, Lieutenant General Stephen J. Townsend, the Commanding General of Combined Joint Task Force – Operation INHERENT RESOLVE, which is working with Iraqi, Kurdish, and Syrian forces to defeat Da’esh, expressed optimism that the campaigns to retake Mosul and Raqaa, the Da’esh stronghold in Syria, would conclude successfully within the next six months. The recapture of Mosul has been a standing objective for the Iraqi government since the city fell to Da’esh militants in 2014. While the liberation of Mosul may be a foregone conclusion at this point, it seems unlikely to mark the end of political turmoil and violence in that country.

A New Sunni Insurgency?

The Institute for the Study of War recently warned that there are signs that that a post-Da’esh insurgency is brewing in Iraq among neo-Bathist Sunni groups and the lingering al-Qaeda (AQ) presence in the country. Da’esh militants also continue to perpetrate attacks in liberated eastern Mosul, as well as outside the city, and will likely transition back to insurgent tactics.

The absence of a political settlement among Iraq’s Shi’a, Sunni, and Kurdish political factions continues to feed the ongoing sectarian conflict driving the insurgent violence. AQ and the Neo-Bathist groups are positioned to exploit Sunni fears of Iranian influence over the Shi’a majority government and the Iranian-supported Shi’a militias (Hash’d al Shaabi).

Trump Administration Policy In Flux

The administration of Donald Trump has had little official to say regarding U.S. policy toward Iraq. However, recent comments by the president that the U.S. should have “kept” Iraq’s oil and the inclusion of the country in his travel ban have roiled Iraqi politics and undercut embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Some Iraqi lawmakers have demanded that  al-Abadi reduce cooperation with the U.S., limit U.S. troop deployments there, and impose a reciprocal travel ban on U.S. citizens. Hashd members have threatened to retaliate against U.S. troops in Iraq should Iran be attacked.

In a conversation with al-Abadi last week, Trump promised greater U.S. assistance against terrorism. While Trump has expressed a clear intent to ramp up efforts to destroy Da’esh, accomplishing that goal would have little effect on the underlying political divisions afflicting Iraq. Given Iraq’s military dependence on Iranian assistance, increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran would place al-Abadi’s government in an even more difficult position.

CTS Reaches Tigris In Mosul

Mosul districts liberated by Iraqi Security Forces (in green), as of 7 January 2016 [Ninevah Media Center]

A spokesman for the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service (CTS) announced that CTS units reached the eastern bank of the Tigris River in central Mosul today, securing a damaged bridge over the river. The Tigris runs north-south through the center of the city. Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) have made steady progress against stiff Daesh opposition since renewing offensive operations on 27 December 2016.

Though the battle is far from over, recent gains suggest that ISF might be winning the battle of attrition with the vastly outnumbered defenders. However, it likely will still be some time before ISF fully occupies and secures the city.

Military Effectiveness and Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys

The International Security Studies Forum (ISSF) has posted a roundtable review on H-Diplo of Jasen J. Castillo’s Endurance and War: The National Sources of Military Cohesion (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). As the introduction by Alexander B. Downes of The George Washington University lays out, there is a considerable political science literature that addresses the question of military effectiveness, or why some militaries are more effective combatants than others. Castillo focused on why some armies fight hard, even when faced with heavy casualties and the prospect of defeat, and why some become ineffective or simply collapse. The example most often cited in this context – as Downes and Castillo do – is the French Army. Why were the French routed so quickly in 1940 when they had fought so much harder and incurred far higher casualties in 1914? (Is this characterization of the French entirely fair? I’ll take a look at that question below.)

According to Downes, for his analysis, Castillo defined military cohesion as staying power and battlefield performance. He identified two factors that were primary in determining military cohesion: the persuasiveness of a regime’s ideology and coercive powers and the military’s ability to train its troops free from political interference. From this, Castillo drew two conclusions, one counterintuitive, the other in line with prevailing professional military thought.

  • “First, regimes that exert high levels of control over society—through a combination of an ideology that demands ‘unconditional loyalty’ (such as nationalism, communism, or fascism) and the power to compel recalcitrant individuals to conform—will field militaries with greater staying power than states with low levels of societal control.”
  • “Second, states that provide their military establishments with the autonomy necessary to engage in rigorous and realistic training will generate armies that fight in a determined yet flexible fashion.”

Based on his analysis, Castillo defines four military archetypes:

  • “Messianic militaries are the most fearsome of the lot. Produced by countries with high levels of regime control that give their militaries the autonomy to train, such as Nazi Germany, messianic militaries possess great staying power and superior battlefield performance.”
  • “Authoritarian militaries are also generated by nations with strong regime control over society, but are a notch below their messianic cousins because the regime systematically interferes in the military’s affairs. These militaries have strong staying power but are less nimble on the battlefield. The Red Army under Joseph Stalin is a good example.”
  • “Countries with low regime control but high military autonomy produce professional militaries. These militaries—such as the U.S. military in Vietnam—perform well in battle but gradually lose the will to fight as victory recedes into the distance.”
  • “Apathetic militaries, finally, are characteristic of states with both low regime control and low military autonomy, like France in 1940. These militaries fall apart quickly when faced with adversity.”

The discussion panel – Brendan Rittenhouse Green, (University of Cincinnati); Phil Haun (Yale University); Austin Long (Columbia University); and Caitlin Talmadge (The George Washington University) – reviewed Castillo’s work favorably. Their discussion and Castillo’s response are well worth the time to read.

Now, to the matter of France’s alleged “apathetic military.” The performance of the French Army in 1940 has earned the country the infamous reputation of being “cheese eating surrender monkeys.” Is this really fair? Well, if measured in terms of France’s perseverance in post-World War II counterinsurgency conflicts, the answer is most definitely no.

As detailed in Chris Lawrence’s book America’s Modern Wars, TDI looked at the relationship between national cost of foreign interventions and the outcome of insurgencies. One method used to measure national burden was the willingness of intervening states to sustain casualties. TDI found a strong correlation between high levels of casualties to intervening states and the failure of counterinsurgency efforts.

Among the cases in TDI’s database of post-World War II insurgencies, interventions, and peace-keeping operations, the French were the most willing, by far, to sustain the burden of casualties waging counterinsurgencies. In all but one of 17 years of continuous post-World War II conflict in Indochina and Algeria, democratic France’s apathetic military lost from 1 to 8 soldiers killed per 100,000 of its population.

In comparison, the U.S. suffered a similar casualty burden in Vietnam for only five years, incurring losses of 1.99 to 7.07 killed per 100,000 population between 1966 and 1970, which led to “Vietnamization” and withdrawal by 1973. The United Kingdom was even more sensitive to casualties. It waged multiple post-World War II insurgencies. Two that it won, in Malaya and Northern Ireland, produced casualty burdens of 0.09 British killed per 100,000 during its 13 years; Northern Ireland (1968–1998) never got above 0.19 British soldiers killed per 100,000 during its 31 years and for 20 of those years was below 0.025 per 100,000. The British also lost several counterinsurgencies with far lower casualty burdens than those of the French. Of those, the bloodiest was Palestine, where British losses peaked at 0.28 killed per 100,000 in 1948, which is also the year they withdrew.

Of the allegedly fearsome “authoritarian militaries,” only Portugal rivaled the staying power of the French. Portugal’s dictatorial Estado Novo government waged three losing counterinsurgencies in Africa over 14 years, suffering from 1 to 3.5 soldiers killed per 100,000 for 14 years, and between 2.5 and 3.5 killed per 100,000 in nine of those years. The failure of these wars also contributed to the overthrow of Portugal’s dictatorship.

The Soviet Union’s authoritarian military had a casualty burden between 0.22 and 0.75 soldiers killed per 100,000 in Afghanistan from 1980 through 1988. It withdrew after losing 14,571 dead (the U.S. suffered 58,000 killed in Vietnam) and the conflict is often cited as a factor in the collapse of the Soviet government in 1989.

Castillo’s analysis and analytical framework, which I have not yet read, appears intriguing and has received critical praise. Like much analysis of military history, however, it seems to explain the exceptions — the brilliant victories and unexpected defeats — rather than the far more prevalent cases of indecisive or muddled outcomes.

Syria After Aleppo

Reports of the collapse of resistance by forces fighting the regime of Bashar Al Assad in Aleppo, Syria have overshadowed news of the recent recapture of Palmyra by Daesh fighters. While the conquest of Aleppo is a significant victory for Assad, the loss of Plamyra – which had been recaptured by the Syrian Army earlier in the year – clearly indicates that success will not be decisive in bringing the five-year old civil war to an end.

Despite major assistance from Russia and Iran, the Syrian Army lacks the combat power to defeat the various domestic and foreign rebel forces arrayed against it. The army, estimated to number over 300,000 before the conflict began, is now believed to total less than half of that as a result of casualties, desertions, and fatigue. It has become particularly weak in infantry. In an attempt to remedy this, the Syrians have raised religiously and politically indoctrinated National Defense Forces (NDF) militias with the help of Iranian advisors, although they are of uncertain quality. The Iranians Qods Force and Lebanese Hizbollah have contributed advisor and fighters, respectively, and the Russians have also contributed advisors and heavy artillery and air support.

Reliable estimates of force strengths for the various factions are hard to come by, and figures for the Syrian Army are particularly variable. The Syrian Kurds are currently aligned against Daesh and Jubhat Fateh al-Sham (the current name for al Qaeda fighters in Syria). They seek independence from the Assad regime but are not fighting against it at this time.

Even the most optimistic estimates based on back-of-the-envelope counts of the raw numbers do not credit the Assad regime and its patrons with enough of a force ratio advantage to overwhelm their opponents in the sort-term. If the pessimistic estimates are more accurate, despite local successes, the Syrian government may struggle simply to maintain the status quo.

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to intensify U.S. efforts effort to defeat Daesh and to work with Russia to that end. Analysts believe, however, that Russia supports Assad’s calculated strategy to defeat Syrian Sunni rebels first to eliminate the political threat they pose to his regime, before seeking to defeat Daesh and al Qaeda. Precisely what the incoming Trump administration will do differently than currently and the extent of actual military cooperation with Assad and Russia remains to be seen.