John Wilkens points out something I hadn't realized: "It's the first time in 80 years that there are no veterans on either major-party ticket for the White House. The last time it happened, in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover."

And even then, FDR had served as assistant Navy secretary, leading him to identify with that service even years later. I recall reading somewhere that he used to tease George Marshall by referring to the Navy as "us" and the Army as "them." 

By "Tyrtaios" and "Jpwrel"

Best Defense royal office of Royal Navy affairs

Both of us are interested in naval history and have visited HMS Victory in Portsmouth, England, albeit in different ways. As a young Marine officer aboard the USS Trenton, one of us has lunched and drank toasts to Admiral Lord Nelson at CINC NAV Home, Nelson's old headquarters in Portsmouth, England. At this Navy function where a leathery captain of Royal Marines recognized the young Marine as surely as a mustang and made sure he was adequately supplied with jiggers of British Navy rum.

The other one of us culminated a long interest in the Royal Navy's history and its naval architecture by also visiting and intimately inspecting HMS Victory, but in much less rousing form. From the depths of its rarely seen original keelson to its quarterdeck and Nelson's private quarters, he has studied this ship in detail accompanied by the assistant curator of the National Maritime Museum.

The question we want to pose is this: Do we still have commanders that embrace the spirit of "No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy," or have we become so reliant on technology and information flow that we allow opportunity to slip away?

"No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy." And so it was on October 21, 1805, off Cape Trafalgar, near Cadiz, Spain, two fleets engaged each other to decide who would be master of the seas, the British or Bonaparte and his Spanish allies.

Shortly before engaging the enemy, as the British fleet slowly approached the combined French and Spanish line, Admiral Nelson hoisted a flag signal to his fleet that said: "ENGLAND EXPECTS THAT EVERY MAN WILL DO HIS DUTY." From the quarterdeck on his flagship HMS Victory, the Royal Navy's most gifted admiral commanded a fleet of twenty-seven ships of the line.

Although outnumbered, by executing some unorthodox tactics that would divide his enemy into three segments, Nelson smashed through the line of battle of the thirty-three French and Spanish vessels. A French officer remarked later, "This manner of engaging was contrary to the most simple prudence . . ." And as John Terraine wrote, "That it did not produce a disaster was due entirely to the immense superiority in seamanship, gunnery and morale of the British fleet . . . All factors Nelson was of course fully aware of."

The three-decker Victory that Nelson commanded from, alongside his friend and Flag Captain Thomas Hardy, displayed more than 100 guns, a few of them the new and devastating 68-pound cannons mounted on the forecastle. With its crew of eight hundred, Victory bore down on the French in light air at 3 knots. Engaging first the French flagship Bucentar to port with a raking broadside through her stern galleries and then the French Redoubtable to starboard, Nelson ordered another signal to his fleet, "ENGAGE THE ENEMY MORE CLOSELY."

Cannon fire, grapeshot, musket balls, and deadly splinters of ship's wood destroyed and maimed all in their path. Victory's steering wheel was smashed to bits. All the while, and against the wishes of Hardy, and wearing his finest uniform making himself a more conspicuous target, Nelson calmly paced up and down in clear view of the enemy.

Shortly into the battle, Nelson's personal secretary John Scott was sliced in two by a cannon ball that blew his body parts over the side leaving just scraps of him on deck. Nelson observed one scrap included a silver buckle torn from Scott's shoe, and the Admiral was heard to exclaim, "This is too warm work Hardy to last long!"

The British pressed further to breach their enemies line of battle engaging them with both port and starboard batteries. Both sides were raked with gunfire at close quarters. Masts and rigging fell. Victory and Redoubtable were so close that their rigging entangled side by side as they exchanged point-blank gunfire.

It would be Nelson's friend Hardy that would turn to see Nelson fall to the deck on the exact spot where Scott was killed earlier. The gold braiding was torn from Nelson's epaulet the Admiral having been shot through his left shoulder. The Admiral's spine was also broken and surely he must have known he would not survive the fight.

During a hot sea battle in those days, it was customary to throw the mortally wounded and the dead over the side. However, Captain Hardy ordered that Nelson be carried below. There he died three hours later, perhaps knowing, but not seeing, he had won a great victory at Trafalgar. Nineteen enemy ships had been sunk or captured versus not a single British ship lost and four more of the escaping French ships would be captured two weeks later by Adm. Collingwood, Nelson's able successor.

After the battle, HMS Victory put into Gibraltar for repairs where legend has it that Nelson's body was placed in a large cask of brandy, although some say rum, to preserve it for the long voyage back to England, whereupon arrival back in England, the cask was opened and Nelson's preserved body removed. And it is here that the legend is further embellished in that the brandy was seen to be almost gone. Had the jack tar sailors, probably under the winking watchful eyes of enlisted Royal Marines drilled a small hole at the base of the cask through which they drained the brandy, and with that drank the blood of their Admiral?

After reading the World War I memoir by Robert Graves for the fourth (and, I expect, final) time, I began to wonder why I had never looked at the autobiographical novel about the war by his friend Siegfried Sassoon. So I did.

I am glad I did -- sort of. I had feared he would be a whiner, but he wasn't. He is a terrific writer, with an unusual feel for turning a great phrase. Almost at random, there is this: "for an infantry subaltern, the huge unhappy mechanism of the Western Front always narrowed down to the company he was in."

Three pages later: "The sky seemed to sag heavily over Flanders; it was an oppressive, soul-clogging country." (I thought the same of Iraq in the late spring, when rain storms mixed with dust storms resulting in pelting mud.)

And then night just behind the front: "the whole region became a dusk of looming slopes with lights of village and bivouac picked out here and there, little sparks in the loneliness of time." On the next page: "the rockets soared beyond the ridge and the machine-guns rattled out their mirthless laughter." There is not just precision of observation here, but also of expression.

"One wet days the trees a mile away were like ash-grey smoke rising from the naked ridges, and it felt very much as if we were at the end of the world." I've had that feeling, both in northern Bosnia and northwestern Ira, but have never been able to capture in it words.

Watching soldiers in the trenches: "It was queer how the men seemed to take their victimization for granted." And, "What in earlier days had been drafts of volunteers were now droves of victims."

And finally: "Last summer the First Battalion had been part of my life; by the middle of September it had been almost obliterated."

I suspect at this point he is descending into a kind of madness, but he keeps a British attitude, deciding that, "getting killed on purpose [would be] an irrelevant gesture for a platoon commander."  In its last section the book peters out into diary entries, and then, because he lost part of his diary, into remembered moments. But he still throws out some good aphoristic observations. "The better the soldier, the more limited in his outlook." That's not just for the enlisted ranks: "One cannot be a useful officer and a reader of imaginative literature at the same time." (He is being cute there-a few pages later he actually cites his company executive officer as a terrific help and also a big reader. In fact they are both reading poetry during a bombardment when their dugout suffers a direct hit from a shell that turns out to be a dud-the nose of the shell protrudes into their shelter."

What he liked about patrolling in no-man's-land: "We were beyond all interference by Brigadiers."

One of his final lines is about his sense that he died, or part of him did, during the war: "I seem to write these words of someone who never returned from France."

It is an interesting book. But at the end, it was less than the sum of it parts. I guess that the best way to say it is that it doesn't add up to much. He is a better observer and writer than thinker. Despite the fine turns of phrase, at the end I didn't take away much. As much I as admire his eye, and his hand at turning phrases, I don't feel I took away anything larger. I doubt I will read it again, or even recall it much. The odd thing about his pose as a lightweight is that, ultimately, he really is.

Were the radical left views of General Smedley "War is a Racket" Butler more widespread in the Marine Corps than we remember?

I ask because I was reading a history of the 1932 Bonus March on Washington by disgruntled World War I vets, and was surprised to see that the Army didn't want the Marines at the barracks and 8^th and I SW in D.C. called out to help, supposedly out of fear that some of them "would side with the revolutionaries." (p. 143)

You know, typical left-wing jarheads.

I'm not a fan of diplomatic history, but still found parts of Hanoi's War fascinating. It changed the way I think about the Vietnam War. For example: "Ho and Giap were sidelined by Le Duan and Le Duc Tho at nearly all key decision-making junctures . . . . It is worth contemplating how Hanoi's war would have been different had Ho and Giap been in charge."

The basic argument of the book is that Ho Chi Minh was a figurehead and that the war was run by "the Comrades Le." In 1967, opposition inside the Communist Party to the planned Tet Offensive was so pronounced that there was a series of purges and arrests, including generals allied with General Giap. "The alleged traitors were imprisoned in central Hanoi at Hoa Lo, known to Americans as the ‘Hanoi Hilton.'" Giap himself was pushed in a kind of temporary self-exile. 

The focus of participants to post-American Vietnam began to shift surprisingly early. In 1970, Hanoi already was beginning to fear that China would dominate postwar Indochina. Meanwhile, in Cambodia, not long afterward, Pol Pot began killing off his Hanoi-trained cadres.

Nor did I know that Hanoi was very upset and worried by Nixon's 1972 visit to Beijing. And with good reason: That year, both Beijing and Moscow began cutting their military aid to the North Vietnamese. 

All in all, it reminded me of Piers Mackesy's classic The War for America, which shows us the American revolution through the eyes of the British government.

By "Tyrtaios"

Best Defense book reviewer

Fighting for MacArthur: The Navy and Marine Corps' Desperate Defense of the Philippines by John Gordon arrived mysteriously at my post office box in town yesterday

My quick perusal of the book (which I will begin to read next week in more detail), would be disturbing to anyone had the information it contains been researched and made available while General Douglas MacArthur was still alive, to say nothing of the embarrassment to those that allowed MacArthur to continue to command after such a startling defeat, a road early-on toward that defeat which essentially followed the General's flawed plans for the defense of the Philippines, in view of the changing situation confronting him.

I should note that the author in his zeal, delves into a lot of minute details that seem to clutter the story he wants to tell, which is primarily about the Navy and Marines role in support of the Army commanded by MacArthur. However, the Army is not overlooked, and the over use of details aside, for anyone interested in historical backdrop surrounding MacArthur, as well as his performance in the Philippines, I would say the book is an important contribution toward such.

Although most know that MacArthur along with his chief of staff Sutherland should have shouldered much of the blame for losing the. What I found intriguing was MacArthur's early on rosy picture he was painting to Washington, and then later outright lies in message traffic to Marshall who seems to have somewhat taken it all in stride, knowing MacArthur as he did, instead of weighing the evidence provided by a very competent Admiral Thomas Hart who was also sending his candid assessment of the situation to Washington.

Moving along quickly, the author's research notes that as MacArthur finally, too late in the game began to accept the situation, MacArthur started to scapegoat Hart (whom he pretty much forced into retirement), when in actuality, it was MacArthur that should have "faded away." I had heard about Admiral Hart only peripherally and that he had been fired, only accepting the Admiral's firing as the way of things in the naval service for those in command that lose. Perhaps it is about time I find out more about this man who seems to have had his finger on the pulse as events were unfolding in the Asian-South Pacific theater even before being attacked in the Philippines, and the measures the Admiral was wisely taking, while the Army was to some degree under MacArthur, not coming to grips with reality that would contribute to disaster later.

Also of interest to me, as Hart early-on understood the desperate time line all forces in the Philippines were facing, the Admiral directed that tunnel construction be sped-up on Corregidor, and began transferring food stocks there 10-days prior to the Army who only then seem to have began facing the reality the Japanese were tightening their hold around the island of Luzon. This action, and other decisions by Hart, along with quick thinking Navy and Marine leaders, would later see the Navy and Marines better fed than the Army as a result. But, would lead to resentment by Army personnel pointing a finger at the Navy as not supporting the effort, not realizing their command had let them down and the Navy had in fact shared much with them early-on prior to the evacuation to Corregidor, to include salvaged weapons and ammunition.

Additionally, the 4th Marine Regiment which had been evacuated from China a few months earlier, started their men on 2-meals a day early-on, and Hart followed with direction for all naval forces to do so also several days later, while the Army continued to chowed-down, which would also contribute to outright starvation during the siege on Corregidor later . . . All the while, MacArthur stunningly only visited up front with his troops once!

To be fair, the book does point-out there was a lot of bad luck, poor equipment in inventory, along with skill training against a war tested Japanese invading force, as well as that fog of war that contributed to the fall of the Philippines. However, my quick thumb through of the book revealed some very facinating messages back to Washington by MacArthur that hindsight aside, would seem to go to the question of the MacArthur's mental state and his competence as a senior general officer that history really shouldn't overlook because I believe it goes to MacArthur's eventual same early attitude toward the unfolding of the situation in Korea that seems to parallel his understanding of the situation around him in the Philippines earlier.

"Tyrtaios" was a professional private who retired from the Corps at the pleasure of the Commandant as a lieutenant colonel.

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on July 15, 2011.

As I studied the Vietnam war over the last 14 months, I began to think that John F. Kennedy probably was the worst American president of the previous century.

In retrospect, he spent his 35 months in the White House stumbling from crisis to fiasco. He came into office and okayed the Bay of Pigs invasion. Then he went to a Vienna summit conference and got his clock cleaned by Khrushchev. That led to, among other things, the Cuban missile crisis and a whiff of nuclear apocalypse.

Looming over it all is the American descent into Vietnam. The assassination of Vietnam's President Diem on Kennedy's watch may have been one of the two biggest mistakes of the war there. (The other was the decision to wage a war of attrition on the unexamined assumption that Hanoi would buckle under the pain.) I don't buy the theory promulgated by Robert McNamara and others that Kennedy would have kept U.S. troops out. Sure, Kennedy wanted out of Vietnam -- just like Lyndon Johnson wanted out a few years later: We'll scale down our presence after victory is secure. And much more than Johnson, Kennedy was influenced by General Maxwell Taylor, who I suspect had been looking for a "small war" mission for the Army for several years. Indochina looked like a peachy place for that -- warmer than Korea, and farther from Russia.

(As a side note, there's another coup that JFK supported earlier in 1963: the Baathist one in Iraq that chucked out a pro-Soviet general. Events in subsequent decades obviously are not Kennedy's fault, but it still is interesting to look at the documents. Here's a State Department sitrep from, of all dates, Nov. 21, 1963: "Initial appraisal cabinet named November 20 is that it contains some moderate Baathis. Of twenty-one ministers, seven are holdovers from previous cabinet, thirteen are civilians, four are from moderate Shabib-Jawad faction of Baath (Defense -- Tikriti; Communications -- Abd al-Latif; Education -- Jawari; Health -- Mustafa) and a number of technician-type civil servants." Did you notice the name of that defense minister? I think this might have been Saddam Hussein's uncle.)

Anyway, I think his track record kind of makes even old Herbert Hoover look good.

Tom Ricks, was born in Massachusetts and is the grandson and great-grandson of Democratic politicians there.

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on January 12, 2011.

Hey, how come no one ever mentioned to me Thomas Thayer's War Without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam? What do I pay the frequent friers for, anyway? (You know who you are.) I finished reading it over the weekend, while it snowed in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and I think it is one of the best books I've ever read on the war, with page after page of good, usable, dispassionate data, much of it counterintuitive.

Here are just some of the things that surprised me:

• The enemy was simply not going to give the Americans the war they wanted. Out of 37,990 enemy attacks in 1968, just 126 were of battalion size or larger. And that was the peak year for large attacks, which declined to 34 in 1969, 13 in 1970, and 2 in 1971 -- before rebounding in the 1972 offensive. (P. 44)
• In terms of spending, it was more of an air war than a ground war. In fiscal 1969, for example, U.S. land force operations cost $4.6 billion, while air operations cost more than twice that, some $9.3 billion. (P. 25)
• American bombers hit Laos hard, with 8,500 B-52 sorties in 1970 (more than twice the 3,697 sorties over South Vietnam that year) and even more the following year. (P. 84) Yet all that bombing, with virtually no political constraints, was unable to interdict the flow of supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which raises the question of whether more firepower applied against North Vietnam would have made any difference. (P. 86)
• The cost of bringing in a Communist defector under the "Chieu Hoi" program averaged out to $14. The cost of killing the same enemy combatant with firepower was $60,000. (P. 202) Which method do you think American commanders focused their attention on?
• In terms of productivity per dollar expended, "the most effective" allied military force was the much maligned militias, the "Regional Forces and Provincial Forces," aka "Ruff Puffs." (P. 165)
• Two-thirds of Army soldiers killed ranked E-3 or E-4. (P. 111)
• More soldiers and Marines were killed by indirect fire (artillery, mortar, rocket, land mines, etc.) than by small arms fire. (P. 117)
• Some 613 of the Marines who died in Vietnam were draftees. (P. 115)

The book poses a mighty hurdle to those who say that, despite much proof to the contrary, the Army was a learning organization in Vietnam. Here is much evidence that there was good, solid information about how the Army's approach was profoundly counterproductive -- and also that this information largely was available internally at the time. Indeed, the author notes in an afterword that the Joint Chiefs of Staff twice tried to stop dissemination of the internal reports on which the book is based. (P. 259) He suggests that Westmoreland was particularly peeved by these analyses.

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on September 27, 2010.

The most underappreciated general in U.S. history, according to readers who responded by e-mail or in the comments section, is Nathanael Greene, a hero of the Revolutionary War, who got more than twice as many votes as any other candidate.

I like "RPM'"s reasoning in explaining in the comments why he went with Greene: "If you combine the 'unknown/under rated' label with 'most critical to victory in a really important war' then the easy answer is Nathanael Greene. The British had conquered the South and were aggressively moving north. Without Greene's victories in NC the Revolution might have been a bust."

Here are the top 10 most underappreciated generals in American history, according to you all:

1. Nathanael Greene
2. O.P. Smith
3. George Thomas
4. John Buford
5. Winfield Scott
6. Lucian Truscott
7. George Crook
8. George Kenney
9. George Marshall
10. John Reynolds

That's a good spread, with a lot of interesting choices. Clearly Greene had a good strategy here -- as the only candidate from the Revolutionary War, he was able to be the standard bearer for that party, while the more popular wars dissipated their votes, with the Civil War and World War II each posting three finishers. (I hereby dub this "the Ken Burns effect.") Given the competition, I was impressed that Truscott finished so high. I thought Crook and Pete Quesada would have done better, but the Indian Wars are obscure and have a taint to them. And I suspect that in Quesada's case, the readers of this blog tend to be ground-centric, as I am. Also, it apparently helped to be a general named "George," who account for 40 percent of the list.  

Thanks to all who voted and discussed. I was impressed by the e-mailers who wrote in to say that they had nominated one general, but on reflection had decided to vote for another. I think we've demonstrated that there are a whole lot of underappreciated generals out there. It makes me think I need to read a good book on the American wars against the Indians/First Peoples. Any recommendations? 

Among the most interesting write-ins were Raymond Odierno, Sir John Dill, and Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Rolling Thunder) AKA Chief Joseph, who got two votes despite some questions about his citizenship. And, of course, good old Galusha Pennypacker.

By Janine Davidson

Best Defense officer of strategic corrections

Much has been made about the Defense department's January 2012 Strategic Guidance documents, (Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21^st Century Defense and Defense Budget Priorities and Choices) and what they do and do not say about stability operations and counterinsurgency (COIN). Critics have misinterpreted DoD's decision not to size the future force for large-scale Iraq or Afghanistan-like stability operations as a rejection of COIN and stability operations as a key mission-type the military must be ready to conduct. Given America's preponderance of power, it is understandable that some may wish to plan for a world in which conventional war is the only type on offer. But military leaders who misinterpret the document's language as some sort of permission to throw out the lessons of the last ten years in order to organize, train, and equip for the types of conventional conflicts everyone would prefer to fight would be abrogating their responsibility to prepare the next generation of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines for the types of fights they will surely face.

The fact is, whether we call it "COIN," "stability operations," "peacekeeping," or "irregular warfare," such frustrating, complex, population-centric, and increasingly urban operations against and among savvy and networked non-state actors are simply a modern version of an age-old phenomenon. And they are here to stay. Contrary to what some might wish to believe, DoD's new guidance document recognizes this reality and directs the military to sustain competence and learning in this priority mission area.

Understanding the Guidance

To be fair to the critics, the language on COIN and stability operations in the guidance is a bit tortured, reflecting both the very strong sentiment among military leaders that such messy missions are something to be avoided or prevented if at all possible, as well as the cold hard reality that the military does not get to choose the types of wars it will fight or the enemies it will face.

The language that has people so worried is this:

Conduct Stability and Counterinsurgency Operations: In the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States will emphasize non-military means and military-to-military cooperation to address instability and reduce the demand for significant U.S. force commitments to stability operations. U.S. forces will nevertheless be ready to conduct limited counterinsurgency and other stability operations if required, operating alongside coalition forces wherever possible. Accordingly, U.S. forces will retain and continue to refine the lessons learned, expertise, and specialized capabilities that have been developed over the past ten years of counterinsurgency and stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations. [Italics original to document]

Critics zero in on the italicized line at the end of the paragraph referring to sizing the forces and infer the military will be "scaling back" or "shunning" stability operations. Such misinterpretation reads the line out of context, equates size with competence, and fails to appreciate how America raises its army and otherwise organizes, trains, and equips the force.

First of all, this paragraph is in the key section of the document, entitled "Primary Missions of the U.S. Armed Forces." So obviously the president and the secretary of Defense view these as key missions for which the force must be prepared.

Second, not sizing the force for large-scale operations like Iraq and Afghanistan is a responsible and prudent strategic approach. As these two huge wars wind down, of course the force will be down-sized. This is what we do after every war, no matter the type. It would irresponsible, and in fact unconstitutional, to do otherwise. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States clearly indicates the power of the Congress to "raise and support Armies..." but to "provide and maintain a Navy." This language is deliberate, as the founders did not want to maintain large expensive standing ground forces in peacetime. The Congress is empowered to appropriate money to expand the force as needed to fight wars. And that is exactly what happened during the past decade. Our force planning can and should account for our ability to do this again when needed.

For operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the army grew from just over 480,000 soldiers in 2001 to a peak of 570,000 just a couple of years ago. Likewise, the marine corp grew from approximately 170,000 to 210,000. Following redeployment from these wars, the new strategy calls for downsizing back to about 490,000 soldiers and 182,000 marines by 2017, (assuming we manage to disengage in Afghanistan) which is slightly larger than the what President George W. Bush inherited eleven years ago. And still, it is nearly four to five times the size of the ground forces of any of our NATO allies.

Third, let's not confuse size with competency. Not sizing for Iraqs or Afghanistans does not, and should not, mean forgetting how to conduct such missions -- no matter the size. Learning from this experience and sustaining competency is exactly what the guidance calls for the military to do: "U.S. forces will retain and continue to refine the lessons learned, expertise, and specialized capabilities that have been developed over the past ten years of counterinsurgency and stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan."

But aside from clear strategic guidance to the military to organize, train, and equip itself with these missions in mind, there is clear historical precedent and emerging trends to suggest that failing to plan accordingly for these missions would be folly.

Avoiding mistakes of the past

Throughout its entire 250-year history, coin, stability operations, and nation building have been far from an "irregular" occurrence. The U.S. has conducted such missions -- on a large scale -- about every 25 years since the Mexican War in the 1840's. U.S. ground troops conducted nation-building, peace-keeping, and a series of counter-guerilla wars against American Indians on the western frontier throughout the 1800's. They conducted a bloody counterinsurgency in the Philippines (1898-1902), a number of "small wars" in the Caribbean (1930's), and occupation duty after the American Civil War and the two World Wars. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has deployed every 18-24 months in response to complex crises of various size, with the average duration of these endeavors becoming increasingly protracted.

From the beginning, these missions have been frustrating and ill-defined, and they have always been controversial. Repeatedly, after each painful episode, the military has sought to avoid having to do them again by forgetting its doctrine and failing to plan, leaving the next generation to re-learn on the fly.

The U.S. army was so fed up with counterinsurgency after its bloody and protracted experience in the Philippines that it eagerly -- with the support of the secretary of War -- managed to turn the whole mission set over to the marines in the early 20^th century. While the army focused on "real" war, the marines were sent to the Caribbean for the "Banana Wars," where they had to re-learn all the hard-learned lessons from old U.S. army manuals that were being discarded. The marine corps did allow a small team of officers to capture this Caribbean experience in the 1940 Small Wars Manual; but the mainstream corps had little appetite for these missions and was already trying to reinvent itself as specialists in amphibious operations. Once WW II began, the marines discarded its doctrine, training, and education for small wars in order to focus intensely on amphibious operations. This left the Vietnam generation to re-invent relevant doctrine once again.

Although the U.S. military was just as ill-prepared for its experience in Iraq and Afghanistan as it was for Vietnam, the current generation was arguably better able to adapt due to the lessons-learned processes and organizational culture that had evolved in the decades since Vietnam. Still, adaptation is not the same as organizational learning, and the aversion to these missions is a powerful force. Military leaders might be tempted to assume (or hope) that the past will not be prologue this time around; but that would be a mistake, again.

The Future Fight and the Force We Need

Today we face a global environment characterized by transnational criminals, terrorists, insurgents, and myriad illicit and violent bandits and traffickers. Some of these "bad guys" are aligned with nation states, but most operate in the gray space between what we consider crime and war. Importantly, our future enemies have been paying attention to our struggles against low-tech, high-impact fighters in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere and have been sharing their own "lessons learned" across global social networks. One lesson is clear: Go asymmetric and "irregular" against the U.S. military, because taking it on head to head conventionally would be just plain stupid. Tactics such as remotely detonated road-side bombs and suicide bombers are only the beginning, given the potential proliferation of new and increasingly less expensive unmanned vehicles, cyber technology, nuclear materials, and the enhanced ability to mobilize populations via social media. Demographic trends such as urbanization, the youth bulge, resource scarcity, and radicalization ensure that future conflicts requiring ground forces will occur in cities and slums and among populations, where differentiating friend from foe, and victim from "combatant," much less just trying to navigate through the crowded urban "battle space" will continue to plague traditionally-minded and conventionally trained ground forces.

Fortunately, preparing for these likely future missions is more about thinking, learning and organizing than about major high-dollar weapons systems. Yes, we should continue to invest in unmanned vehicles, Strykers, MRAPs, and other types of hardware that have proven valuable in these environments. But, just as important is the need to sustain education and training to ensure future military leaders are well versed in the latest doctrine on COIN, stability operations, peacekeeping, and mass atrocity response. Military institutions must continue to study and revise their doctrine in order to ensure that capabilities and innovations that enable ground forces to operate in urban environments among civilian populations and against "irregular" forces are retained. The Marine Corps' Lioness program, which places small, specially trained units of women marines among the population reflects the need to work among diverse populations, while respecting cultural customs regarding women. Likewise, the army's regional alignment of its force structure will enhance its ability to engage with real people on the ground when the time comes. The military should continue to develop special operations and civil affairs capabilities as key components for security force assistance, conflict prevention, and crisis response. Army modularity, which allows ground units to be scaled and tailored for various operations should continue to be developed, and competencies in foreign languages, interagency coordination, and human intelligence collection and analysis should be sustained and enhanced. Nothing in the recent guidance instructs or encourages the services to stop developing these key capabilities or otherwise abandon them. In fact it instructs the military to institutionalize these innovations.

Back to the Question of Size

So how then, do we size this new more enlightened and capable force to ensure success in future coin or stability operations missions? With 490,000 soldiers and 182,000 marines on active duty, plus the forces in the selected ready reserve (560,000 in the army and 39,000 in the marine corps), America's ground forces will arguably be large enough for stability operations of significant size even without needing to add to the force once a crisis hits. Still, there is no crystal ball to predict the exact scenario our military might face. Moreover, despite much debate, there is still no consensus over the question of how many ground troops are required to bring stability to a country of a given population. Clearly neither sizing the peacetime force for the largest imaginable stability operation, nor down-sizing and hoping we won't face another large-scale mission of this sort, is no way to plan. Because we have the demonstrated ability to grow the force and adapt once a war begins, the trick is to find the right size that allows us to conduct smaller and medium scale operations and to initiate an operation while scaling up for something larger if and when needed.

The Budget Priorities document makes this approach pretty clear:

While the U.S. does not anticipate engaging in prolonged, large-scale stability operations requiring a large rotation force in the near-to mid-term, we cannot rule out the possibility. If such a campaign were to occur, we would respond by mobilizing the Reserve Component and, overtime, regenerating Active Component end strength. Additionally, even as troop strength draws down, the Army, Marine Corps, and U.S. Special Operations Command will preserve expertise in security force assistance and counterinsurgency training.

But to do this, we need to be confident that we can access the capable and ready forces we need, when we need them. Being able to grow the force for large-scale missions if required means having a reserve component that is ready for mobilization and an active duty-training cadre that can deliver the expertise on demand. The DoD's plan to, "... leverage the operational experience and institute a progressive readiness model in the National Guard and Reserves in order to sustain increased readiness prior to mobilization," is aiming in the right direction. On the active duty side, the army and marine corps are both planning to retain a greater percentage of mid-grade NCO's and officers even as they downsize, reflecting their understanding that a slightly more senior force is not only required in the conduct of these complex missions, but is also the seed corn needed to train and grow a force if required.

Far from rejecting stab ops and coin or throwing out the lessons of the past ten years, the secretary's new strategic guidance and budget priorities clearly reflect the understanding that these missions are not likely to be avoided. Together, the documents present clear direction to the uniformed military not to repeat the mistakes of the past by planning for only the fights some might prefer to face. Such willful misinterpretation of the secretary's guidance would only be planning to fail.

Janine Davidson is assistant professor at George Mason University's Graduate School of Pubic Policy. From 2009-2012, she served as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Plans, where she oversaw the development of guidance for military campaign and contingency plans and the review and assessment of plans. Before all that she was a pilot in the air force.

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on July 2, 2010.

I was reading George Wilson's Mud Soldiers the other day, and this exchange, at the end of a hard fight in Vietnam in March 1966, struck me.

Kroah heard a shout from First Lieutenant Steinberg, commander of the 4th Platoon. 'I need some help over here!'

'George, I can't help you,' Kroah shouted back. ‘I've been hit five times.'

I've been hit seven,' Steinberg replied.

'Always the bullshitter, huh, George?'

'No bullshit, man.'

And it wasn't. Steinberg died with those words."

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on April 1, 2010.

If Warren Buffett were the chief of staff of the Army, we likely would be better off, with a military that is more effective in combat, and also with a better selection of leaders. That's the thought that occurred to me while reading his latest annual report. You can learn a lot about how to run a large organization from a guy like Buffett.

First of all, Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., didn't follow a "zero defects" philosophy during the course of investing his way to becoming one of the richest people in the country. Unlike some Army leaders, he knows that if you aren't making some mistakes, then you aren't trying hard enough. Punishing all errors simply will deter subordinate leaders from taking necessary risks, or even making timely decisions. You want prudent risk taking and you want it done as fast as possible. Time is the great variable in both investing and war, but that isn't acknowledged often enough in the military strategic discussions. Buffett writes that,

We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly -- or not at all -- because of a stifling bureaucracy."

That said, he is quick to go on to describe what he sees as his role in risk taking and other leadership tasks: He and his deputy, he writes, "limit ourselves to allocating capital, controlling enterprise risk, choosing managers, and setting their compensation." In military terms, I think that would mean allocating resources and people, deciding where to take strategic risks, and selecting subordinate commanders. Everything else? That stuff "we delegate almost to the point of abdication," he states in his management principles, printed later in the same annual report. Buffett is so serious about limiting himself that in a company with 257,000 employees, his headquarters office numbers just 21. (This is an approach that reminds me of William Slim, the greatest British general of World War II, who insisted that his corps headquarters be able to travel in just a few trucks and jeeps.) Of course, as Buffett notes, he has to be more careful than most to keep his subordinates happy, because they tend to be wealthy people who can walk if they feel micro-managed or mistreated.

A significant part of discouraging a "zero defects" mentality is leading the way in confessing your own mistakes, which Buffett is quick to do. He notes that the chiefs of  GEICO (yeah, he owns that too) opposed his idea of issuing credit cards to the insurance company's customers, a project that ultimately lost about $50 million.

GEICO's managers ... were never enthusiastic about my idea. They warned me that instead of getting the cream of GEICO's customers we would get the -- well, let's call it the non-cream. I subtly indicated that I was older and wiser.

I was just older."

Despite his willingness to see mistakes made, Buffett, whose company is bigger than the Marine Corps, is a big believer in accountability. I believe we need more of this in our military, which used to relieve senior commanders quickly (such as 17 division commanders in World War II), but no longer does. In all walks of life, if you screw up big time, you should suffer the consequences. For what it is worth, I agree with him -- too often we have privatized profit and socialized risk, letting the taxpayer pick up the tab when Wall Street's bets go wrong.

This is how he puts it:

If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of misjudgments made by a Risk Committee or a Chief Risk Officer.

In my view a board of directors of a huge financial institution is derelict if it does not insist that its CEO bear full responsibility for risk control. If he's incapable of handling that job, he should look for other employment. And if he fails at it -- with the government thereupon required to step in with funds or guarantees -- the financial consequences for him and his board should be severe. ...

The CEOs and directors of the failed companies, however, have largely gone unscathed. Their fortunes may have been diminished by the disasters they oversaw, but they still live in grand style."

Unlike many in the military, Buffett also writes clearly and simply, and as George Orwell teaches us, clear writing reflects clear thinking.

Finally, lots of people talk nowadays about how military officers need to thrive on chaos or be comfortable with ambiguity. If you can do that, you can seize on opportunities when they arise. Buffett thrives on turmoil. Listen to the master discuss how he did that during the financial crisis of a couple of years ago, when many people ran for the hills:

We've put a lot of money to work during the chaos of the last two years. It's been an ideal period for investors: A climate of fear is their best friend."

He isn't kidding. He explains that:

When the financial system went into cardiac arrest in September 2008, Berkshire was a supplier of liquidity and capital to the system, not a supplicant. At the very peak of the crisis, we poured $15.5 billion into a business world that could otherwise look only to the federal government for help."

In other words, he spent billions on his belief that it was a good time to buy, and so picked up big parts of major companies for a relative pittance. Or, as he summarizes his thinking about that crisis, "When it's raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble."

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on December 4, 2009.

Last weekend my wife and I watched Katyn, by the great Polish filmmaker Andrezj Wajda. It is about the 1940 massacre of about 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviets, and also about how the subsequent Communist cover-up corrupted postwar Polish society. It isn't Saving Private Ryan, but this should be on anyone's list of must-see World War II movies. 

Vietnam? What's that? Obama administration officials ask the estimable James Mann.

"What does that have to do with me and the world we're living in today?" inquires Susan Rice, American ambassador to the United Nations.

Remarks like that worry me. Just because you weren't alive during the Vietnam War doesn't mean you won't go down that road. I generally am a fan of the Obama administration, on both domestic and foreign policy. But the one thing that gives me the creeps is their awkward relationship with senior military officials. Mistrusting the Joint Chiefs, suspecting their motives, treating them as adversaries or outsiders, not examining differences -- that was LBJ's recipe. It didn't work. He looked upon the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a political entity to be manipulated or, failing that, sidelined. That's a recipe for disaster, especially for an administration conspicuously lacking interest in the views of former military officers or even former civilian Pentagon officials.

In our system, White House officials have the upper hand in the civilian-military relationship, so it is their responsibility to be steward of it. That's the price of "the unequal dialogue." If the relationship is persistently poor, it is the fault of the civilians, because they are in the best position to fix it. The first step is to demand candor from the generals, and to protect those who provide it. Remove those who don't.

Anytime anyone tells me that the lessons of Vietnam are irrelevant, that's when I begin looking for a hole to hide in.