Over the course of more than six years of conflict, we have learned the hard way that the tactics of “shock and awe” are not going to win what many are calling the long war against terrorists and extremists. The same military that quickly toppled the Taliban and Saddam Hussein is now in the midst of protracted struggles against determined adversaries that are stretching the army, some fear, to the breaking point.

Our next president will face the daunting task of ensuring we don’t, in fact, break the army - and that we have a military capable of winning not only conventional conflicts, but the variety of threats facing the U.S. around the world. This will require that we properly resource the parts of our military that possess the unique skill sets to navigate the underlying security, economic, political, and security challenges in an unconventional environments like Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

One idea whose time may have finally come - and that is the subject of a recent book by National Defense University instructors, David Tucker and Christopher J. Lamb - is the creation of a unconventional warfare command that would oversee the Army’s Special Forces, whose primary mission is to work with local groups against terrorists or against nations-states supporting terrorism. In contrast to our conventional forces, who must maintain the ability to defeat conventional enemies and direct action elements, which are adept at the targeting and elimination of adversaries, it is their job to specialize in working “by, with and through” local forces.

Although the Army’s Special Forces possess the right skill sets to meet the challenges of this type of security environment, when it comes to organization and funding, they have often taken a back seat to those that specialize in capturing or killing the enemy. The purpose of creating a separate unconventional warfare command (or some variation of that idea) would be to ensure that our next commander-in-chief has the tools to deal with the full spectrum of threats we face.

Understanding that a determined group of insurgents can tie down numerically superior forces, that war is more than simply a matter of killing the bad guys, and that sometimes less is actually more when it comes to the use of force, we must dedicate more to developing the skill sets to conduct counter-insurgency operations. Like it or not, the future is going to have more of the messy fighting we’re experiencing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Certainly, more conventional threats will remain, but the new face of war will increasingly be characterized by unconventional, low-intensity conflicts. To face this broad spectrum of threats, there will be continued calls to grow the size of the military, and the leading Democratic presidential candidates are rightly supporting increases in the size of the military. But national security in the 21^st century has to be more than just numbers.

In light of the nature of the security threats facing our nation, it is equally important that we have the right type of military. In the long struggles to defeat extremists, greater emphasis must be placed on the abilities of our Special Forces. Our conventional forces will never be able to go back to a time where they don’t have to worry about unconventional tactics, but to the extent possible, wouldn’t it be better to save our regular Army for the conventional threats we will certainly face?

This entry was posted on 11.08.2007 at 4:23 pm and is filed under National Security, Government Reform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.