Dear President Obama:
I've been reading Bob Woodward's book "Obama's Wars" in conjunction with Robert S. McNamara's 1995 memoir, In Retrospect. As a retired military officer, I can say with
certainty that the military hasn't learned the lessons of Vietnam..."More troops" and "More troops" is not the answer to every problem; and our diplomatic initiatives are tepid and ineffective at best.
I believe that the end state in Afghanistan requires a bit of Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy to wake the Pakistanis up. We cannot solve the problems there if Pakistan is both our ally and enemy. Consequently, it is time to give the Pakistanis electro-shock therapy and scare the hell out of them by invoking their worst nightmare.
Since Pakistan appears unable and/or unwilling to curtail Al Qaeda/Taliban military activities within its territory which are directed at American/NATO troops in Aghanistan, I urge you to request for the introduction of Indian troops into Afghanistan to ensure that no more attacks are carried from Pakistan into Afghanistan. An Indian Western Theater of Operations ought to be created composed of at least 240,000 Indian troops (the number of troops that US Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told the US Senate in 2002 that would be required to stabilize Iraq and the number of troops Admiral Mullen would love to have there) whose mission is to stabilize Afghanistan through a two-front strategy against Pakistan. I believe that India would be open to provide this kind of military assistance to the United States and NATO forces if India was asked.
India is the only regional power with the military forces capable of doing this. The anvil of India & Kashmir to the east of Pakistan against the hammer of an Indian Western Theater Army presents Pakistan with a two-front strategic problem--which Pakistan is wholly incapable of dealing with with. In a nutshell, Pakistan's worst nightmare.
The United States clearly has the capacity to provide the Indians with the logistics support necessary to move and sustain such a force. Consequently, it must do so. India is poised politically and militarily to bring stability into this region which Pakistan has been unable and/or unwilling to do so.
If Pakistan is unable to curtail outside activities within its borders, then India can ensure that there will be no interference from these forces in Afghanistan. As the world’s largest democracy and an economy that is of increasing importance to the United States, India’s power is central to the calculus of stability in the region.
India has supported President Karzai in the past, and will bear the brunt of a resurgent Islam if the Taliban triumphs in Afghanistan. Such result will lead to serious instability in the region particularly given Pakistan’s own instability in the face of Islamic fundamentalism.
Moreover, unlike the United States, the Pakistanis know that India will not leave the region. Consequently, for Pakistan, the die is cast: Either get your house in order or India with the support of the United States will do it for you.
In 1971, Nixon and Kissinger used China against the Soviet Union and China used the United States against the Soviet Union. Likewise, in 2011 the United States should use India against Pakistan and India will use the US against Pakistan.
It is time to ante up the stakes in the region and a robust diplomatic effort combined with ongoing military operations inside Afghanistan will make the Pakistanis realize that a stable Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai under American tutalege is better that an Afghanistan that is home of 300,000 Indian troops--who do not like the Pakistanis and their extremist allies.
President Obama: Give 'em hell!
Gonzalo I. Vergara, Lt. Col., USAF (Ret.)
Lincoln Hills, California
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Hammer and Anvil -- Indian Force Projections in AFPAK
As the world’s largest democracy and an economy that is of increasing importance to the United States, India’s power is central to the calculus of stability in the region.
An Indian deployment in Afghanistan projects a two-front threat to Pakistan... the eastern anvil of Kashmir and India itself and a western hammer of Indian forces in Afghanistan that can project Indian power against Pakistan in an easterly direction.
India has supported President Karzai in the past, and will bear the brunt of a resurgent Islam if the Taliban triumphs in Afghanistan. Such result will lead to serious instability in the region particularly given Pakistan’s own instability in the face of Islamic fundamentalism.
Moreover, unlike the United States, the Pakistanis know that India will not leave the region. Consequently, for Pakistan, the die is cast: Either get your house in order or India with the support of the United States will do it for you.
An Indian deployment in Afghanistan projects a two-front threat to Pakistan... the eastern anvil of Kashmir and India itself and a western hammer of Indian forces in Afghanistan that can project Indian power against Pakistan in an easterly direction.
India has supported President Karzai in the past, and will bear the brunt of a resurgent Islam if the Taliban triumphs in Afghanistan. Such result will lead to serious instability in the region particularly given Pakistan’s own instability in the face of Islamic fundamentalism.
Moreover, unlike the United States, the Pakistanis know that India will not leave the region. Consequently, for Pakistan, the die is cast: Either get your house in order or India with the support of the United States will do it for you.
Monday, October 11, 2010
India's Western Theater of Operations
Since Pakistan appears unable and/or unwilling to curtail Al Qaeda/Taliban military activities within its territory which are directed at American/NATO troops in Afghanistan, I advocate the introduction of Indian troops into Afghanistan to ensure that no more attacks are carried from Pakistan into Afghanistan. An Indian Western Theater of Operations ought to be created composed of at least 240,000 Indian troops (the number of troops that US Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told the US Senate in 2002 that would be required to stabilize Iraq) whose mission is to stabilize Afghanistan through a two front strategy against Pakistan. I believe that India would be open to provide this kind of military assistance to the United States and NATO forces if India was asked.
India is the only regional power with the military forces capable of doing this. The anvil of India & Kashmir to the east of Pakistan and the hammer of India's Western Theater Army presents Pakistan with a two front strategic problem--which Pakistan is wholly incapable of dealing with with.
The United States clearly has the capacity to provide the Indians with the logistics support necessary to move and sustain such a force. Consequently, it must do so. India is poised politically and militarily to bring stability into this region which Pakistan has been unable and/or unwilling to do so.
If Pakistan is unable to curtail outside activities within its borders, then India can ensure that there will be no interference from these forces in Afghanistan.
India is the only regional power with the military forces capable of doing this. The anvil of India & Kashmir to the east of Pakistan and the hammer of India's Western Theater Army presents Pakistan with a two front strategic problem--which Pakistan is wholly incapable of dealing with with.
The United States clearly has the capacity to provide the Indians with the logistics support necessary to move and sustain such a force. Consequently, it must do so. India is poised politically and militarily to bring stability into this region which Pakistan has been unable and/or unwilling to do so.
If Pakistan is unable to curtail outside activities within its borders, then India can ensure that there will be no interference from these forces in Afghanistan.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
General McChrystal
Your Comments On...
Is Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal someone the president can afford to fire?
- By Greg Jaffe and Ernesto Londoño
Commentsgvergara54 wrote:
People say things about bosses and leaders. Military people are no exception. I was in active duty during the Clinton Administration... In any case, as long as such views do not affect policy implementation... stuff happens.
However, in my mind, this is evidence of a larger problem: We are not achieving our objectives in our Afghanistan. Any strategy that presupposes a viable working government in Afghanistan is not going to work. Even ignoring a political culture that favors localism, 30 years of war have decimated Afghanistan... We cannot hope to establish an effective central government there that can deal with an insurgency in the span of one US Presidential election cycle.
Consequently, two points must be kept in mind. First, regardless of the nobility of our motives, or of ghastly pictures shown each night on television, we must be extremely wary of becoming involved militarily in conflicts where the hatreds run deep, in societies where, traditionally, political accommodation is non-existent. This is not to say that we should ignore conflict, but we must be prepared to use the other instruments of national power, i.e., the political, economic, and diplomatic to help to terminate it. However we should keep in mind what the eminent political philosopher, Hans Morgenthau, observed: "Good motives give assurance against deliberately bad policies; they do not guarantee the moral goodness and political success of the policies they inspire. What is important to know, is not
the motives of the statesman, but his intellectual ability to comprehend the essentials of foreign policy, as well as his political ability to translate what he has comprehended into successful political action." (Politics Among Nations)
Second, given our aversion to casualties and protracted operations, an enemy commander does not need to defeat us but rather must not lose against us in order to defeat us; as long as he is not losing, he is winning. Therefore the greatest threat that we face is the one of getting ourselves in a protracted war. The Chinese philosopher of war, Sun Tzu, warned against protracted war because they will ruin a country "Victory is the main object in war. If it is long delayed, troops become demoralized and their strength exhausted. When this happens your enemy will take advantage of your state. So though there may be blundering swiftness in war, there is no clever operation that was protracted, and no country has benefited from protracted war. Thus those ignorant in the employment of troops will also not know how to use them. Because of this the country squanders its wealth by engaging in ineffective wars."
So the policy question becomes: Can we translate our objectives in the protracted war in Afghanistan into successful political action without squandering our national wealth in an ineffective war?
In answering this question, we must keep in mind that the nature of war involves the use of force. This works both ways, against the enemy and against us. President Obama's administration must ensure, and we must demand, that we do not become involved in a protracted war in Afghanistan to a point of not return. Democracies, in particular, are ill-suited for this kind of warfare, which as Sun Tzu said can only lead to our exhaustion. We must also keep in mind that an enemy commander does not have to win against us, he just must not lose. This does not mean that we are indifferent to the suffering involved, it just means that the military instrument of national power may not be the most adequate one to deal with the problem. We must be creative in integrating the other instruments of national power with the military one in order to resolve conflicts and to help to achieve stability in troubled areas.
Bottom line: We are relying too much on the military instrument of national power to resolve essentially political questions: How much national treasure are we willing to spend in exchange for what?
6/22/2010 1:36:58 PM
Is Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal someone the president can afford to fire?
- By Greg Jaffe and Ernesto Londoño
Commentsgvergara54 wrote:
People say things about bosses and leaders. Military people are no exception. I was in active duty during the Clinton Administration... In any case, as long as such views do not affect policy implementation... stuff happens.
However, in my mind, this is evidence of a larger problem: We are not achieving our objectives in our Afghanistan. Any strategy that presupposes a viable working government in Afghanistan is not going to work. Even ignoring a political culture that favors localism, 30 years of war have decimated Afghanistan... We cannot hope to establish an effective central government there that can deal with an insurgency in the span of one US Presidential election cycle.
Consequently, two points must be kept in mind. First, regardless of the nobility of our motives, or of ghastly pictures shown each night on television, we must be extremely wary of becoming involved militarily in conflicts where the hatreds run deep, in societies where, traditionally, political accommodation is non-existent. This is not to say that we should ignore conflict, but we must be prepared to use the other instruments of national power, i.e., the political, economic, and diplomatic to help to terminate it. However we should keep in mind what the eminent political philosopher, Hans Morgenthau, observed: "Good motives give assurance against deliberately bad policies; they do not guarantee the moral goodness and political success of the policies they inspire. What is important to know, is not
the motives of the statesman, but his intellectual ability to comprehend the essentials of foreign policy, as well as his political ability to translate what he has comprehended into successful political action." (Politics Among Nations)
Second, given our aversion to casualties and protracted operations, an enemy commander does not need to defeat us but rather must not lose against us in order to defeat us; as long as he is not losing, he is winning. Therefore the greatest threat that we face is the one of getting ourselves in a protracted war. The Chinese philosopher of war, Sun Tzu, warned against protracted war because they will ruin a country "Victory is the main object in war. If it is long delayed, troops become demoralized and their strength exhausted. When this happens your enemy will take advantage of your state. So though there may be blundering swiftness in war, there is no clever operation that was protracted, and no country has benefited from protracted war. Thus those ignorant in the employment of troops will also not know how to use them. Because of this the country squanders its wealth by engaging in ineffective wars."
So the policy question becomes: Can we translate our objectives in the protracted war in Afghanistan into successful political action without squandering our national wealth in an ineffective war?
In answering this question, we must keep in mind that the nature of war involves the use of force. This works both ways, against the enemy and against us. President Obama's administration must ensure, and we must demand, that we do not become involved in a protracted war in Afghanistan to a point of not return. Democracies, in particular, are ill-suited for this kind of warfare, which as Sun Tzu said can only lead to our exhaustion. We must also keep in mind that an enemy commander does not have to win against us, he just must not lose. This does not mean that we are indifferent to the suffering involved, it just means that the military instrument of national power may not be the most adequate one to deal with the problem. We must be creative in integrating the other instruments of national power with the military one in order to resolve conflicts and to help to achieve stability in troubled areas.
Bottom line: We are relying too much on the military instrument of national power to resolve essentially political questions: How much national treasure are we willing to spend in exchange for what?
6/22/2010 1:36:58 PM
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THE REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS
The revolution in military affairs brought about by nuclear weapons has largely been viewed by the American military through a technical lens as a technological revolution and not as a conceptual revolution in terms of war and its political aims. However, nuclear weapons revolutionized our conception of war, derived from Clausewitz, as a continuation of politics by other means because of their tremendous power and destructiveness which are a quantum order of magnitude above those of conventional arms. However, the realization by policymakers of their ability to potentially reach Clausewitz' level of absolute war through the use of nuclear weapons led to the limitation of their use as instruments of policy. This essay addresses Clausewitz's conception of war as an act of opposing forces and the use of nuclear weapons in this context as an irrational act. This results in the aversion to use nuclear weapons as a rational instrument of political power because of their very potential to reach absolute war.
Clausewitz stated that "War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will." Force was defined as physical force whose is objective is to impose one's will on the enemy, and "there is no logical limit to the application of that force." Because force is interactive, each side forces the other to follow suit leading to extremes. This is the first case of interaction and the first extreme.
The aim of war is to disarm the enemy and the worst condition that you may impose is to leave him defenseless or likely so. Likewise, the enemy will be trying to disarm you as waging war applies to both sides. Again, there is interaction leading to a second extreme.
The interaction of opposing forces are in relation to one another, that is, to overcome the enemy you must use greater force than he has the power to resist. In response, the enemy in turn will increase his own power. This is another case of interaction that will lead to a third extreme.
Clausewitz then observes that in practice modifications exist that will prevent these extremes from being reached. These modifications include (1) war is not an isolated act and arises out of the context of relations among the warring parties; (2) war does not consist of a single blow or a set of simultaneous blows; (3) in war the result is never final. These practical restraints limit the efforts expended giving rise to the political element of the war.
The advent of nuclear weapons clearly changed this calculus of force between opposing sides. Ever since August 1945, when the only two nuclear devices ever used in warfare destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people have been awed and confounded by the power their weapons unleashed. As the technology of both weapons and delivery systems progressed and improved, in particular thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, people became increasingly alienated from their own products and armed forces. Outside of the halls of governments, and in some respects within them as well, nuclear weapons by the citizenry at large were seen as a necessary evil at best. For example, during the 1950s and 1960s, American movies portrayed the popularly believed consequences of nuclear radiation, whether it being a deranged 50-foot man, giant ants, or the world shifting on its axis. The 1970s and 1980s were marked by the rise of a vast and vocal anti-nuclear movement, parti-cularly in the West, which viewed nuclear weapons as totally irrational and the consequences of their use as catastrophic to mankind.
Within the political and military realm, the advent of nuclear weapons led to profound conceptual changes as well. Due to their destructiveness, politico-military terms such as 'victory' became in a sense 'non-words' and became circumscribed by war-avoidance theories such as deterrence and mutual assured destruction (MAD). MAD in a Clausewitzian sense is irrational because governments do not pursue policies or prevent the enemy from going to war by assuring their own destruction but, rather, to impose their will upon the enemy by force. Throughout history, nations and their military establishments have recognized victory as the object of war. This was expressed in their military doctrines: if we wage war, it is for the policy objective of imposing our will on the enemy and when we do so, we call it a victory. In a nuclear war context, victory is now seen as militarily unattainable and hence as a politically irrational goal. It is unattainable because in trying to overcome the enemy's resistance to our force, we are destroyed by the enemy's opposing effort. In such a nuclear war we arrive at Clausewitz's extremes without modifying effects because the military means we have available, nuclear weapons, to achieve political objectives such as the destruction of the armed forces of the enemy, the physical occupation of his territory and the subjugation of his people, are incompatible with one another. These ends-means are incompatible because the use of nuclear weapons in a large-scale war (1) do not leave anything of use other than a nuclear wasteland, and (2) using the US-Soviet experience as an example, after the Soviet Union acquired a second-strike capability, its physical destruction by the United States was no longer possible because a US nuclear strike would entail a Soviet counterblow leading to the destruction of the US as well. If on the other hand we seek to moderate our war aims to limit the degree of military effort expended we are incurring greater political risk of escalation for less and less returns, for as Raymond Aron noted by limiting the violence in war we also limit the extent of our victory. Thus if we seek to maximize our victory which is our political goal, we must maximize our military effort against the enemy, who in turn will seek to maximize his efforts against ours. This interaction will escalate ultimately leading to our mutual destruction. In this context nuclear war is clearly not the continuation of politics by other means but rather the end of politics by absolute means. In Clause-witzian terms, once extremes are reached we are no longer in the realm of rational politics but in a war of extreme effort without the modifying effects of political reason and choice.
Traditional military terms such as victory, then, have become irrelevant in light of the awesome destructive potential of nuclear weapons. The reali-zation by policymakers of both military superpowers that their basic political and physical survival were threatened by nuclear war, led both of them to engage in a series of negotiations to limit the scope and boundary of the political and military operational environment in which the use of nuclear weapons is considered appropriate, if any. Ideally, their use is altogether eliminated. The various nuclear arms reduction treaties, test-ban treaties, and non-proliferation treaties, were products of this effort. It must be stated that this is not to say that nuclear weapons have no use per say. Lt. Col. Robert Chandler, in a thoughtful article, noted that "In both peace and war, nuclear weapons generate political effects."
Nuclear weapons by making the threat of absolute war real led policy makers to limit political goals and objectives sought through military operations. By nearly reaching a theoretical extreme policymakers recognized that there are limits to war as a continuation of politics by other means. There are some political ends that are not worth the means available to reach them. The use of nuclear weapons are an example of military means with little useful political ends.
NOTES
. As a member of the former Strategic Air Command (SAC), and a B-52 crew- member having sat on nuclear alert, I often pondered the effect of nuclear weapons and nuclear war on our society and military.
. Carl von Clausewitz. On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 75. Italics in the original.
. Ibid., p. 77
. Ibid
. Ibid.
. Ibid., pp. 78-80.
. Kruglov, V. V., Lt. Col. "Is There a Law of Victory." Voennaya Mysl (Military Thought), January 1994, No.1, p. 34. (In Russian).
. Raymond Aron. On War: Atomic Weapons and Global Diplomacy, trans. Terence Kilmartin (London: Secker & Warburg, 1958), p. 106.
. Robert W. Chandler, Lt. Col. "Political Sufficiency of Nuclear Forces." Air University Review. Sep-Oct 1980, p. 62.
Clausewitz stated that "War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will." Force was defined as physical force whose is objective is to impose one's will on the enemy, and "there is no logical limit to the application of that force." Because force is interactive, each side forces the other to follow suit leading to extremes. This is the first case of interaction and the first extreme.
The aim of war is to disarm the enemy and the worst condition that you may impose is to leave him defenseless or likely so. Likewise, the enemy will be trying to disarm you as waging war applies to both sides. Again, there is interaction leading to a second extreme.
The interaction of opposing forces are in relation to one another, that is, to overcome the enemy you must use greater force than he has the power to resist. In response, the enemy in turn will increase his own power. This is another case of interaction that will lead to a third extreme.
Clausewitz then observes that in practice modifications exist that will prevent these extremes from being reached. These modifications include (1) war is not an isolated act and arises out of the context of relations among the warring parties; (2) war does not consist of a single blow or a set of simultaneous blows; (3) in war the result is never final. These practical restraints limit the efforts expended giving rise to the political element of the war.
The advent of nuclear weapons clearly changed this calculus of force between opposing sides. Ever since August 1945, when the only two nuclear devices ever used in warfare destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people have been awed and confounded by the power their weapons unleashed. As the technology of both weapons and delivery systems progressed and improved, in particular thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, people became increasingly alienated from their own products and armed forces. Outside of the halls of governments, and in some respects within them as well, nuclear weapons by the citizenry at large were seen as a necessary evil at best. For example, during the 1950s and 1960s, American movies portrayed the popularly believed consequences of nuclear radiation, whether it being a deranged 50-foot man, giant ants, or the world shifting on its axis. The 1970s and 1980s were marked by the rise of a vast and vocal anti-nuclear movement, parti-cularly in the West, which viewed nuclear weapons as totally irrational and the consequences of their use as catastrophic to mankind.
Within the political and military realm, the advent of nuclear weapons led to profound conceptual changes as well. Due to their destructiveness, politico-military terms such as 'victory' became in a sense 'non-words' and became circumscribed by war-avoidance theories such as deterrence and mutual assured destruction (MAD). MAD in a Clausewitzian sense is irrational because governments do not pursue policies or prevent the enemy from going to war by assuring their own destruction but, rather, to impose their will upon the enemy by force. Throughout history, nations and their military establishments have recognized victory as the object of war. This was expressed in their military doctrines: if we wage war, it is for the policy objective of imposing our will on the enemy and when we do so, we call it a victory. In a nuclear war context, victory is now seen as militarily unattainable and hence as a politically irrational goal. It is unattainable because in trying to overcome the enemy's resistance to our force, we are destroyed by the enemy's opposing effort. In such a nuclear war we arrive at Clausewitz's extremes without modifying effects because the military means we have available, nuclear weapons, to achieve political objectives such as the destruction of the armed forces of the enemy, the physical occupation of his territory and the subjugation of his people, are incompatible with one another. These ends-means are incompatible because the use of nuclear weapons in a large-scale war (1) do not leave anything of use other than a nuclear wasteland, and (2) using the US-Soviet experience as an example, after the Soviet Union acquired a second-strike capability, its physical destruction by the United States was no longer possible because a US nuclear strike would entail a Soviet counterblow leading to the destruction of the US as well. If on the other hand we seek to moderate our war aims to limit the degree of military effort expended we are incurring greater political risk of escalation for less and less returns, for as Raymond Aron noted by limiting the violence in war we also limit the extent of our victory. Thus if we seek to maximize our victory which is our political goal, we must maximize our military effort against the enemy, who in turn will seek to maximize his efforts against ours. This interaction will escalate ultimately leading to our mutual destruction. In this context nuclear war is clearly not the continuation of politics by other means but rather the end of politics by absolute means. In Clause-witzian terms, once extremes are reached we are no longer in the realm of rational politics but in a war of extreme effort without the modifying effects of political reason and choice.
Traditional military terms such as victory, then, have become irrelevant in light of the awesome destructive potential of nuclear weapons. The reali-zation by policymakers of both military superpowers that their basic political and physical survival were threatened by nuclear war, led both of them to engage in a series of negotiations to limit the scope and boundary of the political and military operational environment in which the use of nuclear weapons is considered appropriate, if any. Ideally, their use is altogether eliminated. The various nuclear arms reduction treaties, test-ban treaties, and non-proliferation treaties, were products of this effort. It must be stated that this is not to say that nuclear weapons have no use per say. Lt. Col. Robert Chandler, in a thoughtful article, noted that "In both peace and war, nuclear weapons generate political effects."
Nuclear weapons by making the threat of absolute war real led policy makers to limit political goals and objectives sought through military operations. By nearly reaching a theoretical extreme policymakers recognized that there are limits to war as a continuation of politics by other means. There are some political ends that are not worth the means available to reach them. The use of nuclear weapons are an example of military means with little useful political ends.
NOTES
. As a member of the former Strategic Air Command (SAC), and a B-52 crew- member having sat on nuclear alert, I often pondered the effect of nuclear weapons and nuclear war on our society and military.
. Carl von Clausewitz. On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 75. Italics in the original.
. Ibid., p. 77
. Ibid
. Ibid.
. Ibid., pp. 78-80.
. Kruglov, V. V., Lt. Col. "Is There a Law of Victory." Voennaya Mysl (Military Thought), January 1994, No.1, p. 34. (In Russian).
. Raymond Aron. On War: Atomic Weapons and Global Diplomacy, trans. Terence Kilmartin (London: Secker & Warburg, 1958), p. 106.
. Robert W. Chandler, Lt. Col. "Political Sufficiency of Nuclear Forces." Air University Review. Sep-Oct 1980, p. 62.
Monday, May 10, 2010
No to Elena Kagan
Dear President Obama:
I do not agree with your nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Whatever her qualifications may be, her stand against military recruiters and her vilification of the military in general, are ultimately major detriments to her nomination. I, as a retired military officer, cannot and will not support her based on her anti-military stances. The military only does what is allowed under the law. If someone does not like military policies, they should contact their representative--not spit on our soldiers.
Ms. Kagan has metaphorically spit on the military, especially in a time of war, and for this reason she should not sit on the US Supreme Court.
Respectfully yours,
Gonzalo I. Vergara, Lt. Col., USAF (Ret.)
I do not agree with your nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Whatever her qualifications may be, her stand against military recruiters and her vilification of the military in general, are ultimately major detriments to her nomination. I, as a retired military officer, cannot and will not support her based on her anti-military stances. The military only does what is allowed under the law. If someone does not like military policies, they should contact their representative--not spit on our soldiers.
Ms. Kagan has metaphorically spit on the military, especially in a time of war, and for this reason she should not sit on the US Supreme Court.
Respectfully yours,
Gonzalo I. Vergara, Lt. Col., USAF (Ret.)
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Why I Want to be a Strategist
In response to NDU Press tweet: The article “Developing Air Force Strategists,” will be in JFQ 58, read it here in advance of its publication: http://bit.ly/9QMSlf posted May 6, 12:24PM P.S.T., I am posting an essay which I wrote as a student at the US Army's Command and General Staff College a few years ago on the subject.
Now nothing can be more important than the work of
a soldier should be well done. But is war an art so
easily acquired that a man may be a warrior who is
also a husbandman, or shoemaker, or other artisan ...
No tools will make a man a skilled workman or master
of defense, nor be of any use to him who has not
learned how to handle them, and has never bestowed
any attention upon them.
Plato
Nothing is more important than the work of a soldier should be well done, and nothing is more important than strategy which outlines the work needed to be done in the first place: to win the nation's wars. How to win the nation's wars is the purview of the strategist. Commanders without strategists are like bodies without brains, or as we say in Air Force slang 'all mach and no heading.' The role of the strategist is to provide the heading to the commander who will have control of the throttles.
I want to be a military strategist because, first I love my profession, the profession of arms, and I believe that I can best serve it in this capacity. I am of an intellectual nature and a seeker of truth: I want to understand war, to know war, to explore its every facet, so that if I am ever called to give advice or state my opinion on an given course of action, it will be based on fact and not mere supposition. Second, I truly enjoy pondering the problems of political statecraft and of the uses of the national instruments of power to achieve national aims. Military strategy is always subordinate to the political instrument because as Aristotle said that the science of strategy is subordinate to the greatest of sciences, political science. Strategists must be able to properly translate political guidance into military strategy so that our means equal our ends. This has been a problem for the United States in particular, for example in Vietnam, where we used a firepower strategy which alienated the people who we were there to support; it is hard to convince someone of the justice of your cause when you have just burned his house down.
The only way to become a strategist is to study strategy, both theory and practice. An officer wishing to become a strategist must study politics, history, economics, and diplomacy in order to fully understand what in the words of Marshal Foch "De quoi s'agit il?" [What is the agitation all about?] The method of study is primarily one of self-study because what is taught formally at institutions is but a mere starting point. All strategists of renown, whether Napoleon, Moltke, Mahan to name a few have all been voracious readers of history for history is the laboratory of strategy and war.
The negative aspect of formally being a strategist, at least in the Air Force, is that you are limiting yourself professionally to rank no higher than of colonel and to be shuffled off to Air University into an academic setting. Indeed, the Air Force does not have a strategist identifier; it is not a formally recognized skill. While I agree that an academic setting is of value to a strategist and every strategist should have a tour in one, it is not where the action is. This means that you are going to be outside the planning organizations where your skills are most needed.
This is a major reason why at various times the United States has not been able to achieve the political goals that it set out to accomplish through military operations, for example in Bosnia, where we planned to control the fighting through the use of air-strikes; in a mountainous area and with the nature of the conflict, this was unrealistic and futile.
Without strategists, alas, we are bound to reap the harvest of the Quran's saying that "if you do not know where you are going, any road will get you there."
Now nothing can be more important than the work of
a soldier should be well done. But is war an art so
easily acquired that a man may be a warrior who is
also a husbandman, or shoemaker, or other artisan ...
No tools will make a man a skilled workman or master
of defense, nor be of any use to him who has not
learned how to handle them, and has never bestowed
any attention upon them.
Plato
Nothing is more important than the work of a soldier should be well done, and nothing is more important than strategy which outlines the work needed to be done in the first place: to win the nation's wars. How to win the nation's wars is the purview of the strategist. Commanders without strategists are like bodies without brains, or as we say in Air Force slang 'all mach and no heading.' The role of the strategist is to provide the heading to the commander who will have control of the throttles.
I want to be a military strategist because, first I love my profession, the profession of arms, and I believe that I can best serve it in this capacity. I am of an intellectual nature and a seeker of truth: I want to understand war, to know war, to explore its every facet, so that if I am ever called to give advice or state my opinion on an given course of action, it will be based on fact and not mere supposition. Second, I truly enjoy pondering the problems of political statecraft and of the uses of the national instruments of power to achieve national aims. Military strategy is always subordinate to the political instrument because as Aristotle said that the science of strategy is subordinate to the greatest of sciences, political science. Strategists must be able to properly translate political guidance into military strategy so that our means equal our ends. This has been a problem for the United States in particular, for example in Vietnam, where we used a firepower strategy which alienated the people who we were there to support; it is hard to convince someone of the justice of your cause when you have just burned his house down.
The only way to become a strategist is to study strategy, both theory and practice. An officer wishing to become a strategist must study politics, history, economics, and diplomacy in order to fully understand what in the words of Marshal Foch "De quoi s'agit il?" [What is the agitation all about?] The method of study is primarily one of self-study because what is taught formally at institutions is but a mere starting point. All strategists of renown, whether Napoleon, Moltke, Mahan to name a few have all been voracious readers of history for history is the laboratory of strategy and war.
The negative aspect of formally being a strategist, at least in the Air Force, is that you are limiting yourself professionally to rank no higher than of colonel and to be shuffled off to Air University into an academic setting. Indeed, the Air Force does not have a strategist identifier; it is not a formally recognized skill. While I agree that an academic setting is of value to a strategist and every strategist should have a tour in one, it is not where the action is. This means that you are going to be outside the planning organizations where your skills are most needed.
This is a major reason why at various times the United States has not been able to achieve the political goals that it set out to accomplish through military operations, for example in Bosnia, where we planned to control the fighting through the use of air-strikes; in a mountainous area and with the nature of the conflict, this was unrealistic and futile.
Without strategists, alas, we are bound to reap the harvest of the Quran's saying that "if you do not know where you are going, any road will get you there."
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