Military Unsure of How to Adapt to Changing Warfare

The Cold War has come and went. There has been no nuclear holocaust in the Tom Clancy vein; Jack Ryan was never needed to save us from the Evil Empire. The war for which the United States military prepared since the end of World War II never needed to be fought.

Just as strategies of war evolve, so must the military, and the question where and how the military develops is a question they have been trying — and failing — to solve for the past 15 years.

“During the Cold War, our principle orientation was toward the Soviet Union. For most of that period we focused on conventional warfare,” said Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, an offshoot of the Commonwealth Institute, which, according to its Web site, seeks to “adapt security policy to the challenges and opportunities of the post-Cold War era.”

The army, for example, is attempting to modernize by adapting the tools of traditional conflicts for use in guerilla warfare. Although tanks were designed for clashes between two large armies in Europe, they are now being used to draw out insurgents in cities in Iraq. Thanks to its heavy armor, a tank can be sent down a city street in Iraq to draw fire from terrorists hiding in the buildings, allowing soldiers to trace insurgents’ locations.

“Initially, the armed forces were trained to think more for conventional warfare against armies with tanks and artillery,” said Sgt. Rich Marotta, who served in Kirkuk, Iraq, in the Air Force security forces from August 2006 to March of this year.

But these modifications in strategy are only effective up to a point. Tanks can’t be sent into small villages and they are not much use against insurgents who are being protected by local civilian populations.

Given the drastically different nature between the conventional war the military prepared to fight in Europe and the one in which it is now embroiled, some believe that it’s time for the military — which has been shaped by World War II and the Cold War — to adapt to a changing world. And candidates are recognizing it. In his essay in the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) outlined a plan for revitalizing the military based on human intelligence and training.

“During the 1990s, there was a lot of talk about a revolution in military affairs,” Conetta said. Some people, inspired by the information revolution, were—and still are—proponents of capital-intensive warfare, which focuses on physically building up the army and using advanced technology as an integral part of combat. The other school of thought is influenced by the emergence of sub-national actors such as al-Qaida. Advocates of “4th generation” or “postmodern warfare” place a greater emphasis on human intelligence and winning the “hearts and minds” of local populations.

“We need a less capital-intensive military to focus on what concerns us today; we’re wasting our time training people in tanks when we need peacekeepers and police forces,” Conetta said. “We need people who know how to interact in social situations.”

The opposing view holds that the military must continue to prepare for the possibility that it will eventually be forced to face an enemy with large, technologically advanced, conventional forces, such as China or Russia.

“This nation has global interests and responsibilities and needs a military that can act across contingencies if Congress or the president requires it,” said Dr. Larry Wortzel, a commissioner on the Congressionally-appointed U.S.-China Economic Security and Review Commission. “We are still dealing in applications of force using available technology.”

The nature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has necessitated a change in how the army utilizes the equipment it already possesses.

“A lot of artillery units went over, but they can’t use heavy fire,” he said. “In the army, they train you to shoot to kill, but when you use heavy fire indiscriminately, you’ll end up killing a lot of civilians…Artillery guys have learned to adapt.”

He added, “The political situation is the worst of all. I learned that from my experience with the Kurds. When you realize that all the groups are fighting, it’s impossible to install a western-style democracy.”

Others are more optimistic, viewing the United State’s past failures at insurgency warfare as a reflection not of the state of the army, but of popular sentiment.

“The biggest problem is that we lack effective leadership,” said Peter Tamburro, a Republican who enlisted in the army in 1969 during the height of the Vietnam War. “That’s what bothers America — we want an enemy we can see and defeat.”

Whether or not that is true, it is evident that most voters are more concerned with the endgame: getting out of Iraq.

“This is the hotter issue right now,” Conetta said. “The average Joe and Jane just want to see the Iraq war end.”

The armed forces’ investment in expensive, mechanized warfare takes its toll. Defense spending is primarily allocated toward the expansion of traditional forces and technologies, approaches that were not intended to be used against insurgencies.

“The army grew during World War II and was designed to fight that war,” Conetta said. “No major candidate is willing to talk about these issues. They’re walking on eggshells."

“This is the way [the military has] always been, and people’s careers are invested in it. It’s an example of inertia.”