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Secretary Gates Declares War on the Army BrassUnfortunately, he doesn't have time to fight that battle.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, Oct. 12, 2007, at 10:22 AM ET

(Continued from page 2)

Nagl, who had a hand in writing Petraeus' counterinsurgency field manual, commands a unit at Fort Riley, Kan., that trains American soldiers to be advisers to Iraqi security forces. He also wrote a paper last June for the Center for a New American Security, a private think tank, proposing the creation of a separate Advisory Corps within the Army. Most Army generals hate this idea; Chiarelli argues against it, as well. But it is significant that Gates' line about "the most important military component" is taken very nearly verbatim from the first sentence of Nagl's paper. (For a comparison, click here.)

The point is, Gates has surrounded himself with, or been influenced by, some of the Army's most creative warrior-intellectuals; and if he'd been given a chance to be the defense secretary for longer than two years and a month (Bush appointed him on Dec. 28, 2006), he might have been able to put some reforms in motion.

His speech is short on specifics. "How the Army should be organized and prepared for this advisory role," he said, "remains an open question, and will require innovative and forward thinking." There would have been no point laying out a new policy—on advisers, a new promotion system, or any other matter of long-term structure—because he doesn't have time to implement it.

But it may be significant—it's certainly intriguing—that he recently appointed John Hamre as chairman of his Defense Policy Board. Hamre was deputy secretary of defense and, before that, Pentagon comptroller in Bill Clinton's administration. If Hillary Clinton is the next president (or even if someone else is), it's no stretch to imagine that Hamre will convey the Gates-Chiarelli-Nagl proposals.

Hamre's presence may signify something else of immense importance in the short term. For the past few years, from his perch at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Hamre has been highly critical of Bush's national-security policies, including his policies on the Iraq war. No doubt this is one reason Gates hired him. As a member of the Baker-Hamilton commission, Gates too was critical about the war and skeptical about the surge. In his confirmation hearings, when he was asked if it was a mistake to invade Iraq, he replied, "That's a judgment the historians are going to have to make." When the committee's senior Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin, asked him if we were winning the war, he replied, "No, sir."

Finally, and most pertinently right now, when Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., asked if he favored attacking Iran (a question that most appointees would have ducked on the grounds that it was "hypothetical"), Gates forthrightly said that he did not, adding, "We have seen in Iraq that, once war is unleashed, it becomes unpredictable."

This will be the true test of Gates' legacy—not whether he can go up against the Army to institute reforms (there's no time for that fight), but whether he can stave off Dick Cheney's campaign to mount an attack on Iran.

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Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and the author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power. He can be reached at .
Photograph of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

Robert Gates appears to be talking about nothing less than shifting the focus of the American Army from mainly attack and defense directly to functions of administering an empire. Is the intent then to perfect a model of empire-building? Why does this make you happy, Mr. Kaplan? Is America to be the new Rome? Are there more Iraqs on the horizon?

Clearly this capacity is needed at this moment in time with the US mired in Iraq. But the wisdom of drastically and permanently altering the military this way is more than a little suspect, IMO.

--wayhey1

(To reply, click here.)

I beg to differ with the writer's conclusion that Gates does not have time to do anything about it. In hospitals (also very complex turf protecting organizations) I have observed that if a new CEO does not make necessary changes in the first two years, change will probably not happen. A new boss brings an expectation of change so Gates should pick his targets carefully and go for it. He will then be able to get out before the heat gets too high.

--Diomede

(To reply, click here.)

This conflict between the need to prepare for two different kindns of war at once -- the "conventional" and the "guerilla", has stymied other nations in the past. There is no simple answer to the problems posed. France, for example, had two different armies (though naturally with some overlap) for much of the 20th Century -- the 'Metropolitan' which focused on conventional warfare with major opponents (first Germany, then the USSR) and the 'Colonial', which focused on guerilla/peacekeeping overseas and in the territories.

Despite this the French were defeated in Vietnam and Algeria, and some of the 'specialist' forces became a threat to the nation itself.

--fozzy

(To reply, click here.)

As is often the case, US military planners seem intent on fighting their previous war - not their next one. Gates' emphasis on assymetric warfare is horribly wrong.

The world economy is now globalised. Rather than being segmented into mostly independent sections, it is a single organism. For America's opponents to damage America, they can now strike at the arteries and capillaries of this organism.

The most vulnerable are shipping lanes. The US is now massively reliant on Asia for economic prosperity, and Asia is massively dependent on raw materials delivered along these trade arteries. That is why countries like China and Japan are investing massively in their navies.

If Iran were to close shipping through the Gulf of Hormuz - as it has threatened to do in the event of conflict - the results, according to the Heritage Foundation, would be devastating. If Iran disrupted oil supplies for two quarters, in the US this "would result in roughly 1 million fewer jobs one year after the strait was blocked". If Iran were able to enforce the blockade with nuclear weapons, the situation would of course become far less recoverable.

But this would be only the tip of the iceberg. China's political stability relies on the government's ability to oversee constant job-creation. This relies on ever-greater exports to the US. In the above scenario, millions of Chinese would lose their jobs due to a contraction in US demand for Chinese imports, creating an unprecedented crisis, one that would probably involve state violence on a huge scale - Tiananmen many times over. It would create a credit crunch in the US, which is heavily dependent on borrowing from China, and begin a vicious circle of economic shrinkage even on top of the tight oil supplies.

This is why Dick Cheney is so hawkish towards Iran. Talking at the Iranians is not going to dissuade them from securing a stranglehold on the global economy and by extension, the US. Gates seems oblivious to this danger.

--GreenwichJ

(To reply, click here.)

(10/13)

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