Some military realities

Some thoughtful analysis of the very real military considerations that influence our diplomatic options viz a viz Iraq.   Interestingly, this is from the UK Guardian’s Martin Woollacott.

...Ultimately, the armed forces do what they are told.  Yet the paradox here is that the requirements of a doubting military, which might prefer another solution to the crisis, are making such a solution less likely.  And, in the event of war, those requirements are also likely to narrow the room for political manoeuvre during the conflict, and to restrict choices after it.


This is most obvious in the way that the closing of the window for military action before the hot weather arrives in the Gulf in late March is affecting diplomacy.  The military timetable points to an early war, while the political and diplomatic timetable suggests a much longer process, which might conceivably avoid a conflict.

Military requirements impose a further restriction, in that the American general staff see it as highly undesirable that a large number of US troops wait on call in the Gulf for months on end.  That would be bad enough for regular troops, but the more difficult problem is that the American way of making war involves the call-up of many thousands of reservists.

Large-scale war is impossible, or at least would be severely hampered, without these men and women.  The reserves system eases the burden of maintaining a reservoir of specialists of many kinds for the armed forces, but it also means that the term all-professional is something of a misnomer for the American army.  In a big war, the US army is also a citizen army, and it is argued that reservists cannot be kept endlessly waiting - or, worse, deployed, brought back, and then redeployed - in the way that regulars can.

In its latest report on Iraq, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace* insists that, difficult and costly though extended deployment would be, it can and should be done. The authors, having concluded that a vigorous inspection regime would prevent any serious weapons development by Iraq, say: "For inspections to continue unimpeded for another year or more, two conditions are necessary: a continuing threat of the imminent use of force and preserving the unity of the major powers."

Yet the uniformed military, whatever its reservations about the decisions of its civilian masters, including the top civilians at the Pentagon, is drawn to the proposition that if it is to be done, it is best that it be done quickly.  Some in the past saw in the design of the US reserves system a political benefit, in addition to the technical and financial advantages.  The dependence on the reserves meant that a big war could not be undertaken unless the whole population was convinced of its necessity.  In this case, however, it may mean, rather, that a quick war is seen as the only possible policy, or at least as the best policy.

The American military does not have the same exalted view of its capacities as do many who observe it from afar.  Senior officers think it is badly stretched already.  They may well feel - in a year in which the two crises which have for a decade defined their role have come to a head - that an extended wait in the Gulf is not compatible with being ready for all possible contingencies in the Far East.  Thus the two-war dogma which hampered Wesley Clark in Kosovo may well now be squeezing the options on Iraq, reinforcing the worries about weather and the reservists.

The politics of the American military will continue to affect the choice of policy in a war in Iraq and afterwards.  In the war itself, it will essentially be a military decision whether to permit armed Iraqi auxiliaries to play the sort of symbolic role in combat which could bring them political credit afterwards.  It will be a military decision, almost certainly, whether to permit armed auxiliaries, including especially the forces of the two big Kurdish political parties, to operate freely after the war.  It will be a military decision as to how to deal with the Iraqi units, Revolutionary Guards and others, that may be left intact by a campaign - and perhaps not only intact, but holding chemical or biological weapons - and what there might be for surrender.

All these decisions would affect the political possibilities, as would the most substantial decision of all: to what extent and for what length of time American troops would be occupiers.  The American military is likely to resist an extended occupation role.

The political conditions the Americans, and especially the American military, would prefer in a post-Saddam Iraq - plenty of others to share the burdens and costs - would be far more attainable if a war was widely supported because all had been convinced it was necessary.  Yet the military timetable makes that harder - and harder still to go for the slender but real possibility that Iraqi disarmament, and even regime change, could be achieved by the threat of force alone.