Iraq War: Early Lessons

Andrew Krepinevich

A new evaluation of the heavy-combat phase of the Iraq War that is well worth seeing is posted now on the Web site of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. At the link, you have to select "latest from CSBA" and then select "Operation Iraqi Freedom: A First Blush Assessment" and then select it again to get the PDF file.

The paper is by Andrew Krepinevich, who I mentioned in a previous post as an Iraq hawk who has long been critical of the Army's overwhelming focus on conventional warfare ("mid-level conflict"). He observes that the Army performed extremely well in the conventional war phase of the conflict. But, quoting General Peter Pace saying that Saddam Hussein was "the world's worst general," he also notes that the Iraqi Army performed very badly.

In that connection, he makes the interesting observation that the authoritarian governments in other Arab countries may have created similar "structural and cultural" problems to those Iraq's army experienced in the conflict this year:

Many Arab leaders, such as Saddam Hussein, have been more concerned with avoiding a coup than with military effectiveness. Consequently, commanders are chosen more for their political reliability than their military competence. Arab society is also relatively hierarchical. The effect has been to create a gap between the officer corps and their troops. With few notable exceptions, Arab militaries have lacked a strong noncommissioned officer corps, which in the US military forms an indispensable interface between officers and their troops. The American military culture encourages officers to lead from the front, where they can react quickly to changing circumstances on the dynamic modern battlefield. Arab officers typically lead from the rear. Whereas American culture values self-initiative and "Yankee ingenuity," authoritarian regimes such as Saddam Hussein's Iraq view with suspicion those who act independently of direction from the center. Given these factors and the growing compression of time on the modern battlefield, is it any wonder that the Americans, with their vastly superior technology, were able to rout the Iraqis not once, but twice?

There's a double meaning in this observation. On the one hand, Krepinevich is pointing to some systematic problems that the Iraqi army in particular experienced. But his analysis also suggests that lessons about the effectiveness of the US approach have to be drawn with those problems of the enemy army in mind.

His analysis also stresses the importance of international support. As Iraq showed, the US has an unrivaled ability to project its military power around the world. But, he says:

What America does desire, and need, is some measure of political sanction from members of the international community. Such support lends legitimacy to US actions. As the principal guarantor of the international order and a prime beneficiary of that order, the United States has a strong interest in promoting established international rules and norms. Such international sanction has also proven important in establishing and maintaining domestic political support for major military operations abroad.

In addition, the experiences of recent years, including Afghanistan and Iraq, have showed that the US also needs allies to assist in "stability operations and nation-building efforts." Which gets to the core of one of Krepinevich's major concerns. He calls on civilian and military policy-makers and planners to recognize that we are "in the regime-change business."

Krepinevich argues that because "regime-change" is becoming a normal kind of operation for the US (even apart from the particulars of the Bush Doctrine of preventive war), "the US military's preference to do what it does best - defeat enemy forces in the field and then quickly depart - must be overcome." He says that the approach "of crafting quick exit strategies" - which was central to the Weinberger/Powell Doctrine - "must yield to a willingness to develop a comprehensive strategy for winning both the war and the postconflict period that follows."

Providing stability in postwar environments and building new national institutions are more uncertain undertakings than conventional war, in which the US military can better determine the outcomes. And "success is hardly assured." Krepinevich observes:

As can be seen in the wake of the coalition's victory in Iraq, those who practice regime change incur consequences as well as certain moral and political responsibilities. While this has always been true, the stakes are particularly high in Iraq. Recent experience shows that when the United States pursues a quick exit strategy following a regime-change intervention, as in Haiti, there is a high risk that the situation will revert to its pre-intervention state.

He warns that putting in place a "legitimate, representative, pro-American" regime in Iraq will be a long, difficult effort:

While operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan impose a significant tax on the US military's forces and budgets, they are small potatoes compared to Iraq, even if other like-minded states, such as those that participated in the Second Gulf War coalition, provide support.

Ideology and politics aren't unknown even in academic papers targeted to military planners. But reading pieces like this is a welcome break from the non-stop spin of the daily commentaries on the war.

Tags: andrew krepinevich, iraq war