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Why Great Powers Fight Small Wars Badly
"Historically, great powers have fought small wars and counterinsurgencies badly. They do not lose them so much as they fail to win them. Cassidy considers historical instances of this phenomenon and concludes that asymmetry in strategy, technology, or national will creates an Achilles heel for great powers. History offers many examples of big-power failures in the context of asymmetric conflict: the Romans in the Teutoburg Forest, the British in the American Revolution, the French in the Peninsular War, the French in Indochina and Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and the Americans in Somalia. This list is not entirely homogeneous, and it is important to clarify that the American Revolution, the Peninsular War, and the Vietnam war are examples of great powers failing to win against strategies that combined asymmetric approaches with symmetric approaches. However, two qualifications are necessary when generalizing great powers' failures in small wars. First, big powers do not necessarily lose small wars; they simply fail to win them. In fact, they often win many tactical victories on the battlefield. However, in the absence of a threat to survival, the big powers' failure to quickly and decisively attain their strategic aim causes them to lose domestic support. Second, weaker opponents must be strategically circumspect enough to avoid confronting the great powers symmetrically in conventional wars."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Cassidy, Robert M., Ph.D.
2002-09
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How Emotional Intelligence Can Make a Difference
"In October 2006, the Army's revised leadership doctrine became official with the publication of Field Manual (FM) 6-22. The new leadership framework introduced by FM 6-22 highlighted 12 leader attributes and 8 leader competencies: what the leader needs to 'Be, Know, and Do.' Listed within the leadership attributes is the leader behavior 'Resilience.' FM 6-22 says, 'Resilient leaders can recover quickly from setbacks, shock, injuries, adversity, and stress while maintaining their mission and organizational focus. Their resilience rests on will, the inner drive that compels them to keep going, even when exhausted, hungry, afraid, cold, and wet. Resilience helps leaders and their organizations to carry difficult missions to their conclusion.' This reference was the first recognition of the importance of resilience in Army leadership doctrine. Unfortunately, the four short paragraphs in FM 6-22 only look at one aspect of resilience, that of leaders in combat. Fortunately, the Army has recognized the need for resiliency beyond the battlefield--and not just for soldiers, but for all members of the Army family. The necessity for strengthening this vital behavior has become more significant because of the stress on the force of more than nine years of war. The Casey and Cardon quotations above illustrate the increased importance Army leadership has placed on soldier resiliency and the major steps taken towards helping not just leaders but all members of the Army family to attain greater levels of resiliency. The key element of this increased recognition and intent to build resiliency in the force is the introduction of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) initiative."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Sewell, Gerald F.
2011
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Disaster Response Staff Officer's Handbook: Observations, Insights, and Lessons
"Natural and man-made disasters in the United States cause pain and heartbreak to our fellow citizens. Picking up the pieces of shattered lives and homes is devastating, even to the stoutest among us. While the military cannot repair the emotional damage, it can mitigate the effects of tornados, earthquakes, floods, wildland fires, oil spills, and terrorist attacks. U.S. military response in the homeland provides overwhelmed first responders with the help they need after a major incident. Our ability to act quickly and effectively in response to fastmoving, deadly situations offers tremendous support to our fellow citizens. Civilian officials also know this assistance is short term; local and state leaders bear the responsibility of restoring their communities and cannot become dependent on the resources of the military. The support offered by the National Guard, followed by active duty units, provides a cushion for civilian leaders. You, the staff officer, will bear the responsibility of mobilizing a unit--on very short notice-- into an area struck by disaster. You will have to work through the reception, staging, onward movement, and integration of your unit into a larger command structure; link into an incident command system with marginal communications in an austere environment; and synchronize your operations with a plethora of nongovernmental and governmental organizations at the local, state, and federal levels. Then you will execute your missions according to the laws of our country while maintaining personnel and equipment accountability. Defense support to civil authorities is complex and impacted by myriad statutes, regulations, and presidential orders."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
2010-12
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Mitigation of Terrorist Effects on Victims' Motivation
This edition of Colloquium, published by the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, discusses the Maslow model of motivational theory as a mechanism for understanding the basis of this fear and instability. "Leaders at all levels can look to the basic theory of human motivational needs for a framework to understand the fear and despair among the general population as a consequence of terrorism that makes the general population the real victims. National level policy makers, in addition to local public leaders, can capitalize on the same theory to provide a framework for implementing a strategy to deal with and mitigate these fears which result from terrorism."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
DeMaggio, John M.
2010-08
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Military Interrogation of Terror Suspects: Imaginative Does Not Have to Mean Unlawful
"The United States is searching for ways to lawfully glean information from persons detained during the War on Terrorism. The issue is thorny and politically sensitive. While much of the debate has been about the interrogation tactics of the Central Intelligence Agency and other government agencies, there has been a strong move toward restricting the military interrogators. Some recent changes to Army and Department of Defense (DOD) interrogation policies reflect a less than intellectually rigorous approach that is neither effective nor legally sound. This article examines the Army's interrogation policy as set forth in Field Manual (FM) 2-22.3, Human Intelligence Collector Operations, from both a legal and 'effects-based' perspective and offers some recommendations for change."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Bolgiano, David G.; Banks, Morgan
2010
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Saving Military Families
The main focus of this article is that the military must do more about the high divorce and suicide rates among active duty personnel and veterans. From the text, " Military Commanders who recognize the critical relationship between family readiness and mission readiness are deeply concerned about the high divorce rate of military couples, as well as increasing suicide rates among military active duty personnel and veterans. Evidence in 2008 indicates that the Department of Veterans Affairs downplayed both the number of successful suicides and attempted suicides by veterans. A number of military spouse and veterans groups believe that the divorce rate, as calculated by the Department of Defense, seriously underestimates the extent of marital problems in the armed services, particularly ongoing problems among those who have made multiple combat deployments."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Gomulka, Gene Thomas
2010-01
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Warfare by Internet, the Logic of Strategic Deterrence, Defense and Attack
"Adversaries threatening our national security in the modern era will be hostile states, violent extremists, and even criminal syn¬dicates. What fundamental principles should guide our security policies in meeting these threats in the cyberelectromagnetic dimension of global con¬flict? What strategic logic of deterrence, defense, and attack should guide the military doctrines of advanced industrialized nations like the United States and its allies? Would such logic be similar to that of warfare in general, or is it counterintuitive in some important ways? The purpose of this article is to explore possible answers to these kinds of questions by engaging in an excavation of the conditions in which vital information infrastructures of modern industrial states are at stake."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Czege, Huba Wass de
2010-07
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Army Support during the Hurricane Katrina Disaster
"The Combat Studies Institute (CSI) is pleased to announce its latest publication in the Long War Series, Occasional Paper 29, Army Support During the Hurricane Katrina Disaster, by Mr. James A. Wombwell. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 storm and was the costliest hurricane as well as one of the five deadliest storms in the history of the United States. It caused extensive destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas. The most severe loss of life and property damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, where the levee system catastrophically failed, flooding the city and large tracts of neighboring parishes. In preparation for and reaction to the hurricane, the United States Northern Command established Joint Task Force Katrina at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, to act as the Active component's on-scene commander. Some 22,000 Active-Duty personnel eventually assisted with relief-and-recovery operations in Mississippi and Louisiana. At the same time, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 3 territories sent approximately 50,000 National Guard personnel to deal with the storm's aftermath. These men and women were instrumental in the rescue-and-relief mission, often using their own initiative and resources in the chaotic aftermath of the storm. Because the media coverage of this great national disaster tended toward the sensational more than the analytical, many important stories remain to be told in a dispassionate manner. One such story is the response by US Army personnel, both the Active and Reserve components, within the broader governmental effort to mitigate the horrific effects of the storm. James Wombwell's study offers just such a dispassionate analysis of the Army's response to the natural disaster by providing a detailed account of the operations in Louisiana and Mississippi."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Wombwell, James A., 1956-
2009
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National Security Strategy for the Next Administration
Amitai Etzioni discusses and expands upon a July 2008 report entitled, "Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy," which recommended broad principles to guide American military and diplomatic policy. Three principles emerged in that report that serve as the basis for Etzioni's article: the U.S. global supremacy is coming to an end; states have neither unlimited resources nor leverage and must set clear priorities; and that security can be promoted in failing and rogue states without democratizing the regimes involved. Etzioni analyzes each point made in the report, concluding that the report has lifted dialogue about security policies for the next administration to a much-needed higher level while leaving room to sharpen and modify the priorities in the agenda.
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Etzioni, Amitai
2008-09
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Developing a National Counterinsurgency Capability for the War on Terror
John Hillen calls for the incorporation of all instruments of national power in a national COIN strategic framework to facilitate working together on an operational basis in national, regional, and local contexts. "There is growing awareness in the national security community that civilian capacity to plan and conduct interagency operations does not exist in the U.S. Government and must be created. This is easier said than done; it will require each agency to look beyond its own domain to a shared understanding of problems and then agree on shared approaches to solving them. The lack of a strategic COIN framework inhibits interagency coordination of responsibilities for COIN operations, undermines our ability to build partner capacities, and detracts from our ability to build international coalitions dedicated to defeating enemy insurgents. Until we create such a framework, we will have no basis for organizational or curricula design that would institutionalize lessons learned and support the development of the skill sets, tools, and policies that would make us successful COIN operators."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Hillen, John
2007-01
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Popular Support as the Objective in Counterinsurgency: What Are We Really After?
"Counterinsurgency(COIN) is a complex and bedeviling form of warfare, so much so that U.S. doctrine actually contains a list of apparent paradoxes Joint Force commanders are likely to face as they design operations and campaigns. The COIN operation's main objective is among the many ambiguities involved. Unlike conventional war where key terrain or enemy forces present clear, tangible objectives, in COIN the objective is often intangible: the people or their support. This article offers a critique of COIN doctrine. It argues two points: [1] U.S. doctrine vastly oversimplifies the operational environment in COIN in the way it defines the people or the population. It does not recognize the population's true complexity. Recognizing complexity will help commanders design more effective operations. [2] U.S. COIN doctrine provides no model for operationalizing popular support for the counterinsurgent. Commanders would benefit from a clearer picture of what kinds of support the counterinsurgent needs to isolate insurgents. This article draws on current research on political violence to propose a four-level framework for popular support to clarify its nature for commanders. The counterinsurgent obviously needs support to fill certain governance and security functions, but history shows this is not enough. The counterinsurgent also needs support from key individuals in the host nation's social, political, and cultural networks to isolate insurgents and tip mass opinion in his favor. Today's networked society makes these key opinion leaders high-value targets in a modern COIN campaign. This criticality has important implications for intelligence, information operations (IO), special operation forces (SOF), and operational fires."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Packwood, Lane V.
2009-05
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Learning from Moderate Governments' Approaches to Islamist Extremism
"According to Field Manual (FM) 3.0, Operations, 'Landpower is the ability--by threat, force, or occupation--to gain, sustain, and exploit control over land, resources, and people.' When, in the aftermath of a conventional victory, the need arises for Army forces to control people during an occupation, it is useful to consider how and why the ousted enemy regime controlled the population in the first place. This question is especially important in Muslim countries, where Islamist militant organizations often are the predominant challenge to the government. Recent conflicts have increased the awareness that democracy is not 'a kind of default condition to which societies revert' after a military victory over a repressive regime. On the contrary, the party that won the conventional fight seems to inherit the overthrown government's problem of controlling Islamist militant organizations. Several Muslim governments have over 50 years of experience in dealing with this threat, and their methods are worth studying. Westerners can learn a lot from moderate Arab government approaches to this problem. This article briefly addresses the following: The two predominant Islamic schools of thought concerning the attitude of an individual towards his ruler; How Islamist militant organizations apply teachings of the more extremist schools of thought to challenge Muslim governments or foreign occupiers; How Muslim governments cope with this challenge; What happens when a conventional military victory disables these coping mechanisms; [and] What important implications matter for stabilization operations aimed at controlling extremists."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Claessen, Erik A.
2009-03
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Illusive Victory: From Blast Furnace to Green Sweep
"Since Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney's staunch Department of Defense (DOD) letter of September 1989, the military has been actively supporting drug law enforcement agencies at home and abroad. In the US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) area, Operation Support Justice has provided continued military support to US ambassadors' counterdrug efforts and to the host nations' counterdrug infrastructures in order to attack drugs at the source. US Army Forces Command, by way of its continental armies and Joint Task Force 6, has been supporting major marijuana eradication operations, while the state governors' National Guard has been especially active in countering drugs at the growing source. Many of these operations are large-scale efforts involving interagency planning and civil-military cooperation in the execution of complex concepts for operations. Operations such as Green Sweep, Green Merchant, Ghost Dancer, Ghost Zone, Grizzly, Wipeout, Badge and Blast Furnace have become highly visible to citizens of the United States and South America, creating some curiosity as well as outright anger at military involvement. With another season for 'whack and stack' operations fast upon us, it would be useful to look at example interagency operations, one abroad and one at home, to explore just where these types of operations fit into our counterdrug strategies. Have they had any real impact on the drug threat? What is the significance of these large counterdrug operations? Do they fit our objectives? Are they backed with the requisite resources and long-term commitments needed to make their concepts work?"
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Mendel, William W.
1992-12
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Business of War: How Criminal Organizations Perpetuate Conflict and What to Do about It
"It is now a mantra that building local institutions is essential to winning the counterinsurgency (COIN) fight. The host nation must exercise sovereignty and provide necessary security and services to its citizens. However, institution building requires more than a focus on governance and capacity development programs. The criminal structures that commonly arise during war economies inhibit the proper growth of state institutions, limiting the state's ability to defeat insurgencies. The military should provide support for law enforcement activities that attack such organizations and tip the balance in favor of honest officials and more productive institutional development."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Dahl, Brock
2009-03
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Century Twenty-One: An Age of Terror and Violence
This study presents the view that violence both within and between societies, as demonstrated by events over 5000 years of human history, will continue well into the twenty-first century. It argues that terrorism (which it defines) is efficacious, inexpensive, and appealing enough to various alienated, estranged groups to make it an even more widespread phenomenon than it has been since 1945. It may even assume more ghastly forms, and the U.S. (and other nations) should prepare to cope with it.
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Vought, Donald B.
1992-05-03
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18th Airborne Corps OPORD Hurricane Andrew Relief
This document outlines the response plan of the 18th Airborne Corps (Fort Bragg, NC) during Hurricane Andrew relief efforts.
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
1992
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Army Lessons Learned and Successful TTPs for Hurricane Mitch Humanitarian Assistance: JTF Commander's Initial Impressions
"The JTF Commander provided the following guiding principles for his O-6 commanders during humanitarian assistance operations in Central America after Hurricane Mitch."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Nascimento, Leonel
1999
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Domestic Support Operations: Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief
"During recent domestic support operations, including hurricane relief and civil disturbance operations, CALL identified the following key lessons which commanders should consider when tasked to support domestic support missions."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Cooper, Clay.
1997
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Operations Other Than War, Volume III: Civil Disturbance - L.A. Riots
"Civil Disturbance Operations is one facet of the U.S. Army's vital mission to conduct 'operations other than war'. The Los Angeles civil disturbance presented a unique opportunity for the U.S. Army to provide needed support and assistance to victims, and civilian and governmental agencies at the local, state and federal levels. The Los Angeles civil disturbance operation is a success story that demonstrated the readiness, training and deployability of our forces in time of need. This newsletter contains lessons and information on what began as a relatively small scale disturbance in south central Los Angeles. The disturbance spread rapidly, however, overwhelming local authorities. Emerging doctrine must pay particular attention to unique threat and closer relationships the military must have with civilian law enforcement agencies. It must detail the type of support necessary to deal with today's complex civil disturbance dilemmas, as well as provide guidance for the army to execute selective mobilization, which could include calling the National Guard into federal service."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
1993-11
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Operations Other Than War, Volume II: Disaster Assistance
This document suggests that "a formalized joint military-civil doctrine approach will greatly enhance the military's ability to execute disaster assistance operations. Developing doctrine should include manning levels for the various agencies, appropriate administrative staffing and equipment, and suggested task organization structures for the JTF (engineer, logistics, security, communications, medical and liaison). The doctrine should also include reference to policy publications and technical manuals related to the specific types of disaster. Army and joint interoperability with civil, state, and federal agencies needs refinement so the Army can be a knowledgeable participant in disaster assistance. Specific guidance is needed in deployment operations, assessment teams, task organization, and required materiel and staff manning levels."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
1993-10
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Nothing is Simple in Afghanistan: The Principles of Sustainment and Logistics in Alexander's Shadow
"In 329 B.C., Alexander the Great led his Macedonian army east from Persia, along the Helmand River, through Herat, Kandahar, and Kabul before crossing the Hindu Kush mountain range with approximately 100,000 troops and followers. After more than 2,300 years, the most modern militaries on earth struggle to sustain their forces in the same lands. Alexander's execution of his Bactrian Campaign in what is now Afghanistan exemplifies why modern military historians consider the Macedonian king both a great tactician and a genius in military logistics. This article examines why supply distribution in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan is so difficult. U.S. Army Field Manual 4-0, Sustainment, contains the U.S. Army's sustainment principles for maintaining combat power, enabling strategic and operational reach, and providing Army forces with endurance. The principles are integration, anticipation, responsiveness, simplicity, economy, survivability, continuity, and improvisation. This article will consider the logistics distribution challenges posed to the International Security and Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan through the lens of these principles. It will be beneficial to first consider how a distribution framework should look in a frictionless theater. The U.S. Army's doctrine for sustainment and its sustainment brigade will best serve this task."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Betson, Andrew P.
2012-09
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Guiding Principles for Stability and Reconstruction: Introducing a Roadmap for Peace
From the article, "If history is any indication, we can be certain that the decade ahead will bring with it many new challenges in peace and security, not just in Afghanistan, but also in new crises around the world. These challenges will force us, as they have time and again, to revisit the crippling gap in U.S. civilian capacity to respond to and operate effectively in stabilization and reconstruction missions. The U.S. military has long called attention to this gap, which has left it without an effective and badly needed partner in these complex missions. Among the newest efforts to reverse this trend is a landmark strategic doctrinal manual that sets out a roadmap for helping countries move from violent conflict to peace. Developed by the U.S. Institute of Peace and the U.S. Army's Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction provides comprehensive, shared knowledge validated by the decades of civilian experience in these missions. It is a companion to the U.S. Army's revolutionary Field Manual 3-07, Stability Operations. The following article offers a detailed look into the contributions of the unprecedented civilian doctrine, the unique methodology by which it was developed, and its application in what may very well be the most important fight of this new decade--Afghanistan."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Cole, Beth; Hsu, Emily
2010-01
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Death from Above: UAVs and Losing Hearts and Minds
"Today, UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicle] use is being hyped as 'the future of war,' the 'only good thing to come out of the war on terrorism,' and an effective and highly discriminate counterterrorism and counterinsurgency weapon. No one doubts that robots will eventually occupy a central role in the U.S. military. Surviving aspects of the Army's now-defunct Future Combat Systems modernization effort (now the Army Brigade Combat Team Modernization Program) call for a host of unmanned vehicles and combat drones. As P.W. Singer has shown in Wired for War, such modernization entails unprecedented changes in perspective. However, that UAVs are more cost effective in lives and money and the sunny view that they will someday take our soldiers entirely out of harm's way are now appearing to be questionable propositions. The extraordinary hype these weapons still garner as the 'greatest, weirdest, coolest, hardware in the American arsenal' is beginning to look like unexamined haste."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Sluka, Jeffrey A.
2011-05
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Case Study: Operation Enduring Freedom Philippines
"In 2001, Special Operations Command Pacific formed Joint Special Operations Task Force-510 to lead operations in the southern Philippines Islands of Mindanao and Basilan. The broad purpose was to assist the government of the Philippines by increasing the capacity of the Philippine armed forces in the south to deal with an outlaw Islamic terrorist group, Al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, or the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), thereby to increase the stability of an important regional ally, as well as contribute to what became the global war on terrorism. The problem posed was one requiring the conceptual apparatus of design thinking, even though it anticipated formalization of design doctrine (FM 5-0) by a number of years. The experience also illustrates application of the historical principles of counterinsurgency listed in FM 3-24."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Swain, Richard M.
2010-10
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Taliban: An Organizational Analysis
"One of the most widely recognized images of the present day is that of airplanes hitting the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. The terrorist organization Al-Qaeda and its host, the Taliban in Afghanistan, became household names all over the world on that fateful day. The media started churning out stories about the brutalities of the Taliban, and the world discovered a new monster. The Taliban did not grow out of the dark overnight, nor was it unknown in the Middle East, the region of the world most severely affected after 9/11. Following its emergence in 1994 from madrassas, the Taliban achieved surprising victories over its enemies and assumed rule over much of Afghanistan. Simultaneously hailed as saviors and feared as oppressors, the Taliban were an almost mythical phenomenon that seemed to embody the very essence of Afghan cultural beliefs, especially revenge for transgression, hospitality for enemies, and readiness to die for honor. […]. Despite their quick overthrow in 2002 by a small coalition of U.S. forces and anti-Taliban groups, the Taliban has not gone away. In fact, today, in the face of thousands of NATO and U.S. troops, a growing Afghan National Army (ANA), and a popularly elected government, the movement's influence in Afghanistan is increasing. It continues to wage an insurgency that has prevented the new government from establishing legitimacy, and it has created massive unrest in Pakistan. Clearly, it behooves us to know something more about this archaic but formidable enemy."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Afsar, Shahid; Samples, Chris; Wood, Thomas
2008-05
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Operations Targeting and Effects Synchronization Process in Northern Iraq
"In the early 4th century BCE [Before the Common Era] […] Gallic tribes sacked Rome. Faced with the first real threat to its existence, the young Roman state recognized the need to rethink how it organized for combat. Of the various changes adopted, the most important and extreme transformation was the abandonment of the Greek-style phalanx. This military organizational structure had been long-established as the most effective way to achieve success against opponents with a similar operational paradigm. […] Faced with a newly complex operating environment, the Romans took the transformative step of adopting the more flexible infantry formations of their most tenacious enemies, the Samnites. Today, America is experiencing an analogous military epiphany as its military adapts to complex, adaptive, and asymmetric operating environments that defy accepted military conventions. In January 2008, in the wake of its final after action review from its 2006-2007 deployment to northern Iraq, the U.S. Army 25th Infantry Division Headquarters found itself revising longstanding organizational thinking to adapt its structure to the new demands it would face in northern Iraq later that year. The division's new operational milieu presented an increasingly complex operating environment, an adaptive asymmetric threat, and a traditional staff organization ill-suited to deal adequately and effectively with either. The division recognized a vital requirement to rethink how to organize its staff to best meet the commander's vision and intent (as embodied in our campaign plan). We felt this reorganization should fulfill three critical roles: inform and enhance the commander's decision making cycle, create a logical nesting of our staff processes with the Joint architecture used by our higher headquarters, and make our subordinate units more effective in their counterinsurgency roles across northern Iraq."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Boylan, Gregory L.; Guthrie, Thomas P.; Caslen, Robert L.
2010
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Revisiting CORDS: The Need for Unity of Effort to Secure Victory in Iraq
"According to the National Strategy, weekly strategy sessions at the highest levels of the U.S. Government ensure that Iraq remains a top priority. […]. The multitracked approach (political, security, and economic) to counterinsurgency in Iraq has historical parallels with the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) program of the Vietnam War era. Established in 1967, CORDS partnered civilian and military entities engaged in pacification of Vietnamese rural areas. The program enhanced rural security and local political and economic development and helped defeat the Viet Cong (VC) insurgency. Significantly, CORDS unified the efforts of the pacification entities by establishing unity of command throughout the combined civil-military organization. Lack of unity of effort is perhaps the most significant impediment to operational-level interagency action today. The victorious conditions the National Strategy describes might be unachievable if the interagency entities present in Iraq do not achieve unity of effort. To help achieve unity of effort, Multi-National Force--Iraq (MNF-I) and the Nation should consider adopting a CORDS-like approach to ensure integrated action and victory."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Coffey, Ross M.
2006-03
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We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War
"The Combat Studies Institute (CSI) is pleased to present Long War Series Occasional Paper 26, 'We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War' by CSI historian Mr. Matt M. Matthews. The outcome of the war that was, at best, a stalemate for Israel has confounded military analysts throughout the world. Long considered the most professional and powerful army in the Middle East, with a history of impressive military victories against its enemies, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) emerged from the campaign with its enemies undefeated and its prestige severely tarnished. Matthews's historical analysis of the war includes an examination of IDF and Hezbollah doctrine prior to the war, as well as an overview of the operational and tactical problems encountered by the IDF during the war. His research convincingly argues that the Israeli reliance on poorly understood and controversial Effects-Based Operations (EBO) and Systemic Operational Design (SOD) warfighting theories, and a nearly singular dependence on air power, were root causes of Israeli problems. Additionally, after years of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in the Gaza Strip and West Bank territories, IDF ground forces were tactically unprepared and untrained to fight against a determined Hezbollah force that conducted what was, in many ways, a conventional, fixed-position defense. In researching this study, Mr. Matthews interviewed several prominent IDF officers and other experts in the field, many of whom had not previously been interviewed. The result is an insightful, comprehensive examination of the war. In 2006, Hezbollah demonstrated that terrorist groups around the world are capable of learning from, adapting to, and exploiting weaknesses in conventional military forces. Inasmuch as the US Army has focused almost exclusively on irregular warfare since 2001, the lessons offered in this analysis are particularly relevant."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Matthews, Matt , 1959-
2008
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Mathematical Literacy as a Fundamental Component of Training Cyber Warriors: Moving Beyond the Tools and Towards Fishing
This paper was a submission to the 2008 Fall Information & Cyberspace Symposium. "Our proposal is not to develop another tool that will solve one technological problem. Rather, our proposal is to develop within our operators the ability to think critically and creatively and to exploit technology as an enabler. While the buzzwords of "critically and creatively" are used often in the Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIIM) communities, we offer a unique solution for aiding the development of these skills for our officer, enlisted, and civilian cyber professionals. We recommend the study of the language of mathematics. For the average cyber warrior, learning the language of mathematics allows one to extend their natural thought process into a structured method for solving problems. Mathematics is a way to organize and analyze what is happening around us. Mathematics is a way to quantify both the randomness and trends of events or data collected. Mathematics is a way to see and understand. Without understanding the underlying processes that generate results from technology and software systems, and especially the assumptions made by the mathematical models applied, it is not possible to interpret the results accurately or apply a tool effectively."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Huddleston, Samuel; Fox, Jonathan
2008-09-08
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State Defense Forces: The Missing Link in National Security
"The citizen militia system of the United States has been plagued historically by a confused and often contradictory basic philosophy. On the one hand, the militias were, and are, seen as crucial military resources available to the individual states to be used as local constabularies to assist the civil authorities in situations calling for skills, organization and capabilities beyond the level of local police, fire and disaster relief agencies. On the other hand, the citizen militias have been seen, increasingly in the 20th century, as an essential reserve of trained personnel available for mobilization to active service with the regular Armed Forces of the nation."
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
Stein, George J.
1984-09
