STRATEGIC CHALLENGES FOR COUNTERINSURGENCY

AND THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM

Edited by

Williamson Murray

September 2006

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ISBN 1-58487-247-0
iii

CONTENTS

Foreword .

1. Introduction: Professional Military Education 

and the 21st Century

Dr. Williamson Murray  

2. From the Ashes of the Phoenix: Lessons for 

Contemporary Countersurgency Operations

Lieutenant Colonel Ken Tovo  .

3. Moral Power and a Hearts-and-Minds 

Strategy in Post-Conflict Operations

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew J. Cernicky .

4. Operation IRAQI FREEDOM: 

The Long Road toward Successful U.S. Strategy in Iraq

Lieutenant Colonel Bjarne M. Iverson .

5. Chinese Oil Dependence: Opportunities and Challenges

Commander Jim Cooney  . 

6. Preemption and Nuclear Nonproliferation: 

Conflicting Means to an End

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Mills . 

7. NATO: Still Relevant after All These Years?

Colonel Gregory C. Kraak . 

8. Economic and Military Impact of China’s Growth 

in the Asia-Pacific Region

Lieutenant Colonel Pierre E. Massar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161

9. Transformation of the 36th Infantry Division, 

Texas Army National Guard

Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Lee Henry . . 

10. In the Aftermath of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM: 

European Support for the Global War on Terrorism

Lieutenant Colonel John J. Hickey, Jr.  . 
iv

11. The Dark Fruit of Globalization: 

Hostile Use of the Internet

Lieutenant Colonel Todd A. Megill  . 

12. A Strategic Analysis of the 

Maneuver Enhancement Brigade

Colonel James D. Shumway . 

13. Strategic Recommendations 

for Democratic Afghanistan

Lieutenant Colonel Dave Gerard  . 

14. Al-Qa’ida as Insurgency: 

The Quest for Islamic Revolution

Lieutenant Colonel Michael F. Morris . 

About the Authors . 
FOREWORD

In March 2006, President George W. Bush signed a new 

National Security Strategy that he refers to as a “wartime national 

security strategy.” He also states in the introduction that to follow the 

path the United States has chosen, we must “maintain and expand 

our national strength.” One way to do this is to study and propose 

solutions to the complex challenges the United States faces in the 21st 

century. At the U.S. Army War College, the students have embraced 

this challenge and spend a year developing their intellectual strength 

in areas that extend well beyond the familiar operational and tactical 

realm to which they are accustomed.

This collection of essays written by students enrolled in the 

U.S. Army War College Advanced Strategic Art Program (ASAP) 

reflects the development of their strategic thought applied to a wide 

range of contemporary issues. The ASAP is a unique program that 

offers selected students a rigorous course of instruction in theater 

strategy. Solidly based in theory, doctrine, and history, the program 

provides these students a wide range of experts both in and out of the 

military, staff rides, and exercises to develop them as superb theater 

strategists. ASAP graduates continue to make their mark throughout 

the military to include in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the 

Joint Staff, and the Combatant Commands.

DAVID H. HUNTOON, JR.

Major General, U.S. Army

Commandant



CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION:

PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION 

AND THE 21ST CENTURY

Dr. Williamson Murray

It is a distinct honor once again to have the opportunity to 

introduce the chapters by the students from the Army War College’s 

Advanced Strategic Art Program. The course, founded by Major 

General Robert Scales, commandant at the end of the last century, 

has consistently proven that there are extraordinary minds within 

the American military officer corps, who are more than eager to 

grasp the challenges and difficulties to be gained in pursuing a firstclass, graduate-level education on the nature of war and strategy. 

Considering what Americans are beginning to understand about 

the strategic environment they confront at present and are likely to 

confront for much of the rest of this century, professional military 

education—at least in the opinion of this author—will represent a 

crucial player in the adaptation of U.S. military leaders to the strategic 

challenges that will confront this nation. 

This author finds himself writing this introduction with some 

considerable poignancy because he is leaving the program after 6 

extraordinary years of comradeship, learning and teaching with 

his fellow instructors as well as each year’s group of exceptional 

students, who have participated in the challenges of the program 

both in the classroom and on the battlefield tours led by Professor Len 

Fullenkamp, one of the great teachers of military history in America. 

As with previous classes, this group of students in the Advanced 

Strategic Art Program for Academic Year 2004-05 garnered its 

share of honors and prizes at the June graduation. The chapter by 

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Morris, U.S. Marine Corps, won the 

Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff award for the best essay by an officer 

attending a senior service college. It is the concluding chapter in this 

volume. The second chapter by Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Tovo, 

U.S. Army, won the Army War College’s military history award. 

Both reflect the contributions made by this group of students. 


The events of the past 5 years have underlined that the United 

States and its Allies in the First World confront a very different 

strategic environment from the relatively peaceful and calm 

environment that so many predicted in the aftermath of the Cold 

War.1 It appears now more likely that Samuel Huntington’s darker 

view of where the world was going that he postulated in his article 

in Foreign Affairs—“The Clash of Civilizations”—captured the 

possibilities that already were emerging in the early 1990s.2 This 

author would and has argued that the future and its implications 

are even darker than what Professor Huntington suggested. The 

confluence between the world’s greatest reserves of petroleum and 

the extraordinary difficulties that the Islamic World is having, and 

will continue to have, in confronting a civilization that it has taken 

the West 900 years to develop will create challenges that strategists 

are only now beginning to grasp. Those challenges will require more 

than military expertise at the tactical and operational levels. It will 

require a grasp of culture and history—not just by generals, but by 

junior officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) at the sharp 

end of the spear. The experiences of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and 

Iraq already have underlined this in spades.

It is likely that the United States confronts troubles in the Middle 

East that could last into the next century and beyond—troubles which 

will inevitably draw its military forces into what Major General Robert 

Scales has accurately described as cultural wars.3 Such wars are going 

to require quite considerable changes in how the American military 

prepares itself for war. Inevitably technology will play its part, but 

it will only serve as an enabler of U.S. forces on the ground. War 

will remain a political act—whatever British and Israeli academics 

may believe.4 The wars of the future, however, will necessitate an 

understanding of the political and strategic implications at lower 

levels than has been the case in the past. Even now General Chuck 

Krulak’s strategic, “three-block” corporal is coming into his or her 

own.

Above all, the silver bullet hopes and dreams of those like Admiral 

Bill Owens, that technology could remove the uncertainty and 

ambiguity from the battlefield and make war, at least for U.S. military 

forces, a relatively clean, surgical endeavor have disappeared in the 


continuing difficulties that Coalition forces have encountered in the 

Middle East and Central Asia.5 In almost every situation envisioned, 

boots on the ground will determine the outcome of the wars that 

America fights, because for most of the world’s peoples, it is control 

of the ground that matters.6 Only control of the ground, not air 

superiority, will translate into political success—the only reason to 

embark on war. 

This chapter will begin with an examination of the potential 

strategic environment that the United States confronts at present. 

This, in turn, will lead to a discussion of the implications that the 

future has for professional military education. It is the belief of 

this author that whatever the focus of past professional military 

education, the 21st century and its challenges are going to demand 

changes not only in how officers are educated in the formal military 

education system, but more importantly in how they think about 

education throughout their careers. Moreover, it also will require 

changes in how the Services themselves think about and support 

professional military education through their personnel policies and 

in the opportunities they provide their officers to broaden themselves 

and their perspectives throughout what will undoubtedly continue 

to be busy careers. It is this tension between the military needs of the 

present in an officer’s career and his or her intellectual preparation 

for the future that will present the greatest difficulty in developing 

future personnel systems that address the 21st century. 

If Michael Howard could describe the military profession as not 

only the most demanding physically, but also the most demanding 

intellectually of all the professions in the 20th century, this is going 

to be even more true in the 21st century, because of the nature of 

the challenges that the United States will confront. To a considerable 

extent, the enemies that the nation faced in the 20th century provided 

caricatures of serious strategic threats in their general inability to 

frame a coherent and effective strategic framework to address the 

operational, economic, and political problems raised by the United 

States. The Germans and Japanese threw themselves into war with 

America in December 1941 with little consideration of America’s 

strengths and weaknesses, and thus lost the war strategically before 

it had hardly begun.7 During the Cold War, the Soviets presented an 


obvious and consistent threat over the course of the Cold War, but 

in their approach to the issues raised by that long-term competition, 

they displayed little ability to adapt to changing conditions.8

The problem for the United States in the coming century is that 

its opponents may not prove so unimaginative and incapable of 

adapting to an ambiguous and uncertain world as did America’s 

opponents in the last century. The importance of strategic wisdom 

in guiding national policy over the first half of the 20th century has 

been suggested by this author and his colleague at Ohio State, Allan 

Millett: 

[In reference to World War II] No amount of operational virtuosity . . . 

redeemed fundamental flaws in political judgment. Whether policy 

shaped strategy or strategic imperatives drove policy was irrelevant. 

Miscalculations in both led to defeat, and any combination of politicostrategic error had disastrous results, even for some nations that ended 

the war as members of the victorious coalition. Even the effective 

mobilization of national will, manpower, industrial might, national 

wealth, and technological know-how did not save the belligerents from 

reaping the bitter fruits of severe mistakes [at this level]. This is because it 

is more important to make correct decisions at the political and strategic 

level than it is at the operational and tactical level. Mistakes in operations 

and tactics can be corrected, but political and strategic mistakes live 

forever.9

Thus, if the United States is to prosper in this new century, its 

civilian and military leaders must display strategic wisdom. And if 

America’s educational system, particularly its universities, have not 

provided its civilian leaders with the background to understand the 

strategic choices they will confront, then senior military leaders must 

have the intellectual background to elucidate the complexities of all 

strategic choices.10 It is the problem of how that strategic framework 

is to be provided that this chapter will discuss in its last section on 

professional military education. 

The Future Strategic Environment.

It is unlikely that the most important challenge to American 

security over the coming century will be the rise of a peer competitor.11

On the other side of the Atlantic, the culture and perspectives of the 


Europeans, reinforced by the inclinations of an aging population, 

may present annoyances to American policymakers, but as the 

defeat of the European Union’s constitution by French voters 

suggests, Europeans will, at worst, represent critics, not opponents, 

of American policies—particularly in regards to the Middle East, 

but undoubtedly elsewhere as well. In other words, unlike the 20th 

century, this century’s strategic threats to the security of the United 

States will not come from Europe.

In Asia, the combination of demographics and the rise of China 

make it likely that Japan will remain a firm friend, if not a willing 

participant in military interventions even beyond East Asia. The 

continued existence of North Korea in its current bizarre form will 

push the Japanese further towards cooperation and alliance with 

the United States. And it is even possible that some considerable 

buildup of Japan’s military forces will occur, which will ease some 

of the pressure on America’s overstretched military forces.

In South Asia, India clearly is emerging as a great power with 

considerable clout. Its military, moreover, will dominate its regional 

neighbors in the area of the Indian Ocean. Connections based on the 

culture of democracy and the English language, as well as the absence 

of any major areas of competition, suggests that India will become an 

increasingly strong friend of the United States.12 Just as with the case 

of Japan, India would move toward an even closer relationship with 

the United States if China were to become a threat to the balance in 

South Asia, India’s position in the area, or the Middle East.

In terms of a possible peer competitor, the one great question on 

the horizon is China. What kind of China emerges from the economic 

explosion occurring at present on the Asian mainland will depend 

on how effective the diplomatic, economic, and social policies of the 

United States and its Asian allies are in persuading China’s leaders 

that they have more to gain from cooperation than confrontation. 

The difficulty that confronts American policymakers is that it is 

impossible to predict the eventual impact of China’s continuing 

economic expansion on that nation’s leaders or how the growing 

tensions within China over the mal-distribution of wealth between 

the various regions will impact on that nation’s political and strategic 

stability in coming decades. Despite the continuing rhetoric about 


Taiwan, China’s expenditures on its military forces have remained 

relatively limited. They certainly have not suggested a major buildup 

aimed at directly challenging the United States outside of China’s 

immediate geographical interests. 

Undoubtedly, American strategists, political leaders, and the 

military need to pay close attention to developments in China. The 

fact that the People’s Liberation Army has more officers in American 

graduate schools than does the U.S. military suggests the extent to 

which the Chinese are paying attention to the United States. The 

number of American officers engaged in studying China or Chinese 

in graduate schools in the United States, on the other hand, is 

relatively small, while the number engaged in study on the Chinese 

mainland is almost nonexistent.13 This would appear to be a glaring 

intellectual weakness in preparing America’s future military leaders 

to understand what may well be the most powerful nation in the 

world in economic and political terms by the end of the 21st century. 

Moreover, this state of affairs is, of course, reflective of the failure of 

education at all levels to push students to learn foreign languages, 

particularly the difficult ones.

Nevertheless, at worst even a hostile China would represent 

a return to the Cold War standoff between two great nuclear 

superpowers—a contest that would, for the most part, resemble the 

operational and strategic issues with which the American military 

has had long familiarity. In the largest sense, American strategy 

should aim at discouraging China from following the disastrous 

path that Imperial Germany pursued at the beginning of the 20th 

century. The United States can accomplish such an aim largely by 

political, economic, and diplomatic engagement, although there will 

be times where deterrence may be necessary.

The greatest challenge for both the First World and the United 

States—and for that matter China as well—in the 21st century will be 

that of an unstable and tumultuous Middle East, where the political 

ramifications of U.S. actions in Afghanistan and Iraq are just being 

felt. Because oil will continue as the major engine of the First World, 

the Middle East will maintain its economic and political significance 

throughout the remainder of the century.14 Moreover, and perhaps 

more importantly, history has demanded that the Islamic World, 


particularly its Arab lands, adapt to a world of globalization based 

on political and scientific developments that took the west over nine 

centuries to create—and that adaptation only began in the 1920s. 

It is likely that those difficult processes of economic and political 

adaptation will continue well into the next century. The United 

Nations (UN) report of Summer 2004 suggested how little progress 

has been made over the course of the last century in tying the Arab 

polities to the dizzying pace of change in the rest of the world. For 

example, on average only 300 books are translated into Arabic each 

year; yet by comparison, the number translated into Spanish each 

year approaches 30,000. Part of the problem is that Americans have 

little understanding of how great a challenge their approach presents 

to an Islamic world. Without an understanding of the elements and 

history that have contributed to the making of their own polity, 

Americans have little hope of understanding the nature of other 

cultures and civilization.15

If that were not difficult enough, the Islamic World possesses 

deep tribal, religious, and political divisions. Imans, ideological 

modernizers such as the Ba’ath, tribes—with conflicts reaching 

back centuries—Sunni fanatics, Shi’a revolutionaries, and the Druze 

all contest for significant roles in the Arab world. None possess 

a coherent or consistent understanding of the factors that have 

influenced the decline of Islam’s position in the world and the rise of 

the West. And without any real understanding of their own societies’ 

ills, none possess the vision or knowledge required to execute the 

radical social, political, and intellectual changes required for their 

societies to adapt to the 21st century. 

In the largest sense, the whole Middle East already is confronting 

burgeoning populations of young males, a dangerous recipe for both 

revolution and war.16 This unstable brew of contesting groups with 

rootless young males, many of even the best educated influenced by 

a ferocious and fanatic religion that reinforces their misreading of 

history and the nature of the world they live in, will not only impact 

on the Middle East in unpredictable ways, but will spill over into the 

external worlds that surround them. Again, the consequences are 

difficult to predict, but the auguries suggest extensive revolution, 

turmoil, and war throughout much of the Middle East. 


The implications for the American military are clear: Military 

leaders in coming decades will require a far deeper understanding 

of the Islamic World and the Middle East than has been the case 

so far in Afghanistan and Iraq. This demand for understanding is 

complicated, given what has been happening in American schools 

and universities where politically correct courses, particularly in 

history, have replaced the serious examination of war, strategy, 

diplomacy, and politics. Thus, it is likely that America’s political 

leaders increasingly may lack knowledge of the external world—a 

gap in their knowledge that military leaders must at least be in a 

position to fill in providing advice to the nation’s leaders.17

These internal conflicts and the challenges of adapting will all 

help continue the political turmoil within the Middle East—most of 

which will be unpredictable and difficult to assess as to its possible 

impact on American interests. As Michael Vlahos has suggested, 

the First World will be able to exercise only partial and incomplete 

influence over the endemic civil wars within the Arab and Islamic 

worlds. Nevertheless, there will be times when intervention—

military and otherwise—will be required, particularly where and 

when the world’s greatest reserves of oil are threaten. Americans 

should have no illusions about how much influence they will be able 

to exercise over the radical changes which will inevitably take place 

in this part of the world. But not to include an understanding of the 

culture, language, and history of the Middle East in molding future 

military leaders is not only irresponsible—it represents a recipe for 

difficulties on a far greater scale than has presently proven to be the 

case in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

The unfortunate reality is that turmoil within the Middle East 

will not only have considerable impact on the world’s supply of oil, 

but it will continue to spill out into the First World. The attacks on 

the World Trade Center and the Pentagon represent only the first 

installment of future troubles that will spill outside the Middle East. 

Like the period after September 11, 2001 (9/11), such spillovers will 

require, in most cases, a military response. As American experiences 

with the Taliban in Afghanistan underlined, there is no place in 

the world where the intervention of U.S. military power may not 

be necessary. Thus, the reasons for future American interventions 

in the region will be considerable, both because of the importance 


of petroleum and because what happens in places like Somalia and 

Afghanistan could have impact on the world of the United States and 

its Allies, should regimes like the Taliban arise in the future. Failure 

to respond, as the United States did in the late 1990s, will have the 

most dangerous consequences, as the events of 9/11 underlined. In 

effect, the wars and operations in which the U.S. military will find 

itself involved will be “the cultural wars,” which Major General 

Robert Scales, U.S. Army (ret.) has aptly characterized.18

What the U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq has underlined 

is that simple military intervention—pure military operations—will 

represent only the first step. Because for the past 350 years the west 

has fought wars only for political purposes, future conflicts inevitably 

will demand a closer tie to long-term political goals than has been 

the case in military thinking and preparation over the past several 

decades.19 It is well to remember that during World War II, the 

Anglo-American powers prepared extensively for the post-conflict 

phases in both Europe and the Pacific. In effect, the success of longterm post-conflict policies developed during the war and put in place 

over the period from the end of the war to the mid-1950s sealed the 

victory that their military forces had achieved from 1939 to 1945. 

As the 2004 Defense Science Board Summer Study underlined, 

future interventions, particularly in the Middle East, will require 

careful articulation and planning for long-term efforts to establish 

more effective governance. Not to do so will be to throw the 

achievements of conventional victory away. Moreover, flawed 

stabilization operations similar to what has occurred in Iraq risk trying 

the patience of the American people to the point that they become 

unwilling to support any interventions, no matter how important 

and strategically worthwhile they may appear to policymakers. In 

this regard, the post-Vietnam trauma suffered by U.S. foreign and 

strategic policies throughout the 1970s is well worth remembering. 

Thus, most of the wars and military interventions of the 21st 

century will be cultural conflicts, in which knowledge of the other 

and his cultural and religious drives will represent the essential 

element in the success or failure of American efforts. The kinds of 

conflicts and interventions that American armed forces will confront, 

will require even better trained and educated leaders at the junior 

officer and NCO levels. 
1

The military leaders of U.S. forces will have to understand not 

only their own cultural framework, but that of others. They will 

have to be familiar and at ease with people who have very different 

attitudes and come from very different cultures. Above all, they will 

have to have the ability to develop a sixth sense—what the Germans 

call Fingerspitzengefuhl—as to when things are right on the street 

and when they are wrong. They will have to entrust and empower 

their subordinates to make decisions in a world of uncertainty and 

ambiguity. Technology will be a major enabler, but it cannot, and 

will not, replace the crucial importance of the ability of Soldiers 

and Marines to make decisions based on a deep understanding and 

knowledge of local conditions. How, then, might the U.S. military 

think about professional military education in what is the most 

likely environment to confront military leaders over the course of 

the coming century?

The Implications for Professional Military Education.

In the early 1970s, then Rear Admiral Stansfield Turner carried 

out a radical restructuring of the Naval War College—a restructuring 

which placed serious, graduate level education at the forefront of 

that institution’s approach to professional military education. A 

quote that he provided this author in the mid-1980s encapsulates 

what Turner thought serious professional military education should 

involve in addressing the challenges of the Cold War:

War colleges are places to educate the senior officer corps in the larger 

military and strategic issues that confront America in the late 20th 

century. They should educate these officers by a demanding intellectual 

curriculum to think in wider terms than their busy operational careers 

have thus far demanded. Above all the war colleges should broaden 

the intellectual and military horizons of the officers who attend, so that 

they have a conception of the larger strategic and operational issues that 

confront our military and our nation.20

Admiral Turner’s vision captures the fundamental issue involved 

in professional military education, except that now his premise 

about widening the vision and understanding of officers must 

extend to junior officers and NCOs as well. In the 21st century, it 

will not be enough for military leaders to remain superbly proficient 
in their military skills. Admittedly, the latter must remain a critical 

determinant of promotion and selection for command positions. But 

future generals and admirals also must demonstrate knowledge and 

proficiency in areas beyond their warfighting specialties. In many 

ways, America’s future military leaders are going to have to resemble 

the proconsuls of the Roman Empire, who were extraordinary in 

their ability to conduct campaigns, but who were also highly skilled 

diplomats and representatives of the Empire. Already America’s 

combatant commanders are finding that, in some circumstances, 

they have to act not only as diplomats, but as governors as well.

How, then, will they be able to gain the political skills and savvy 

that they will require? In the end, only education in the widest 

sense can provide such skills. And here a fundamental rethinking 

and reform of the professional military educational system is 

necessary. Perhaps the crucial enabler to a reform of professional 

military education must be a larger reform of the personnel systems 

that govern so much of the current approach to the wider aspects 

of professional military education. It is significant that the officers 

before World War II enjoyed considerable latitude to pursue wider 

aspects of their careers. George Patton spent a substantial part of 

1913 visiting the battlefields of Europe, including Normandy. 

The current legal framework that emphasizes up-or-out was 

set in place in the late 1940s to address a particular set of problems 

applicable to that time and not ours. First, the 1947 reform of the 

personnel system aimed at preventing the stagnation of promotion 

that had characterized the interwar period, where seniority was the 

determining factor. Second, the health profiles of the majority of the 

officers in 1947—most of whom smoked and drank heavily—was 

such that a system that encouraged retirement between the ages of 

40 and 45 made enormous sense. Finally, confronted with the Soviet 

threat, the system aimed at keeping the maximum number of officers 

on active duty, so that the United States could mobilize its military 

and economic potential as rapidly as possible.

The most obvious impact on the American military today is that 

each year the Services retire a number of exceptionally qualified 

officers at the O-5 and O-6 level. No business in the current era 

would possess a retirement system that actively encouraged many 

of its best people to retire well before they reached 50. The results 
in terms of thinking about professional education are profound. 

Considering the complex requirements that any officer must master 

in his or her career, a 20-year career provides little flexibility or give. 

The present career paths rarely allow young officers the opportunity 

to gain wider perspectives beyond the immediate demands of their 

jobs. If the U.S. military is to develop a more flexible and adaptable 

officer corps,21 it is going to have to figure how to provide more 

time for serious study of languages, foreign cultures, and, above all, 

history. That can only come by stretching out the careers of officers 

well beyond the present pattern of 20 to 25-years. 

In terms of thinking about wider education, one must understand 

that professional military education has been the step child of Service 

and Joint efforts to prepare senior military leaders for the positions 

of commanders and senior staff positions since World War II. There 

is some irony in this state of affairs, because professional military 

education played a major role the success of American military 

efforts in that conflict. Admittedly, there are some bright spots—such 

as the second-year programs at the Army, Marine, and Air Force 

staff colleges, the Naval War College, and the Advanced Strategic 

Art Program at the Army War College—where serious intellectual 

preparation of officers to address the operational and strategic issues 

confronting the United States and its military is occurring. 

The problem today is even more direct and challenging than 

that which confronted the United States in the 1980s when Admiral 

Turner penned the above quotation to this author. Today, the United 

States confronts the cultural wars of coming decades, rather than the 

monolithic and inflexible Soviet Union. The nature of that security 

challenge demands a more intellectually demanding education of 

officers—a system of professional military education that should 

start at the beginning of an officer’s career. 

In the 1970s, the Army made a considerable effort to provide 

graduate educational opportunities as an incentive for its brightest 

officers to remain in the military. Such opportunities have slowly, but 

steadily decreased over the intervening decade. Greater flexibility 

in officer careers in terms of a reform of the personnel systems 

would allow the Services to broaden the horizons of their officers by 

providing them the educational background on which to build an 

historical and cultural perspective on other nations and people.
What the challenges of the 21st century demand are more 

thoroughly educated, culturally attuned officers in command 

positions. In some areas, the Department of Defense is making a start 

in the right direction with its demand the graduates of the military 

academies and those on ROTC scholarship attain higher levels of 

proficiency in foreign languages. Nevertheless, this represents only 

a first step. DoD and the Services need to reform the personnel 

systems so that fast track officers have the opportunity—like the 

current combatant commander of Central Command—to attend the 

most prestigious graduate schools in the world to obtain masters 

degrees and doctorates in subjects like military history, area studies, 

languages, and cultural studies.

Perhaps the most important step in improving the ability of 

future leaders to understand the broader issues lies in the provision 

of greater exposure to other cultures and other nations early in their 

careers. Additional opportunities for advisory tours, exchange tours, 

and foreign study, all would serve to provide future leaders with 

the skills to recognize the cultural gulfs and historical frameworks 

that they and their subordinates are confronting. None of this will be 

easy, and it will most probably demand a rethinking of the military 

career with an emphasis on more officers serving 30 years than is 

currently the case. 

The DoD and Services also are going to have to think of 

professional military education as an integral part of an officer’s 

career, as an enabler which begins when future officers are still in 

college and continues throughout every year of their career until they 

leave the military. There must be a distinct break with the traditional 

belief that professional military education only occurs at the staff 

and war colleges. If this is to occur, there needs to be a real emphasis 

on distance learning, on mentoring at all levels, and on reading lists 

dealing with military and cultural history that all officers are expected 

to master. Most revolutionary of all is the need for serious testing 

and evaluation for entrance to staff and war colleges to identify 

those officers who have seriously prepared themselves to meet the 

intellectual challenges warfare in the 21st century will demand of 

them. 
ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 1

1. In this regard, see particularly Francis Fukiyama’s book, The End of History 

and the Last Man, New York, 1993.

2. For the book length form of Professor Huntington’s arguments, see Samuel 

Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, 

1992.

3. See Williamson Murray and Robert H. Scales, Jr., The Iraq War, A Military 

History, Cambridge, 2003. 

4. In this regard, see John Keegan, A History of Warfare, New York, 1994; and 

Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York, 1991. For a reply to 

Keegan’s astonishingly ahistorical attack on Clausewitz, see, among others, Colin 

Gray, “Clausewitz,” in Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich, The 

Importance of History for the Military Profession, Cambridge, 2006. See also Barry D. 

Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, Washington, DC, 2002.

5. Admiral Bill Owens with Ed Offley, Lifting the Fog of War, New York, 2001.

6. The Iraqi Perspectives Project, in which this author has been identified, 

indicates that Coalition air attacks had virtually no impact on the thinking and 

policies of Saddam and his henchman, except to convince them that the United 

States and its Allies were not serious.

7. For a discussion of German strategy in the Second World War, see Williamson 

Murray, German Military Effectiveness, Baltimore, MD, 1992, chap. 1.

8. For the Cold War, see especially John Lewis Gaddis, Now We Know, Rethinking 

Cold War History, Oxford, 1998.

9. Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, “Lessons of War,” The National 

Interest, Winter 1988.

10. The collapse of serious education in the humanities in major universities 

has made the situation with regards to diplomatic, military, and strategic history 

even worse. Virtually none of America’s major universities, from which America’s 

future political leaders will emerge, teach any courses in this area. And with the 

retirement of the major figures in this field, like James McPherson of Princeton, the 

situation will only get worse.

11. For another historian’s view on the nature of the future strategic environment, 

see particularly MacGregor Knox.

12. India has more English language speakers than any other country in the 

world—including the United States.

13. I am indebted to Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr., U.S. Army (retired), 

for this point. 

14. The Chinese may well look to Central Asia in the long term rather than 

the Middle East for their supplies of petroleum, but there, too, as well as in their 
Western provinces, they will run into the specter of Islamic terrorism and guerrilla 

movements. 

15. How little even the brightest American students know of themselves and 

their history has been brought home graphically to this author by an honors 

course he teaches to junior and senior students of John Hopkins University. Of all 

12 students, all selected with at least a 3.5 average, not a single one could name a 

battle in the Civil War other than Gettysburg or Antietam. Five years ago, 23 out 

of 23 students in a graduate course at George Washington had never read a Greek 

tragedy.

16. One of the clear drivers in revolution and war throughout history has been 

the existence of a young population of males.

17. As General Eric Shinseki discovered in 2003, sage strategic advice will not 

necessarily be taken by politicians with ideological blinders on, but at least the 

advice was tendered.

18. The author is indebted to Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr., U.S. Army 

(retired), for this insight.

19. For a clear general examination of the history of war, particularly in the 

West, see Geoffrey Parker, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare, Cambridge 

University Press, 2000.

20. Admiral Stansfield Turner, quoted in Williamson Murray, “Grading the 

War Colleges,” The National Interest, Winter 1986/1987.

21. A number of blue-ribbon panels in Washington, especially the National 

Defense Panel in the late 1990s, have underlined that the Department will need 

more flexible and adaptable officers in the coming century.

CHAPTER 2

FROM THE ASHES OF THE PHOENIX:

LESSONS FOR CONTEMPORARY 

COUNTERINSURGENCY OPERATIONS

Lieutenant Colonel Ken Tovo

The Vietnam War was the most controversial conflict in America’s 

history; it wreaked havoc on civil society, colored a generation’s 

perception of its government, and devastated the American military, 

particularly the Army. Its specter continues to cast a shadow over 

every American political debate about the use of force abroad. As 

the first defeat in the military history of the United States, most 

soldiers would prefer to forget it completely; when studied at all, 

they usually do so in a negative sense—what to avoid, how not to 

operate. After the war, disgusted with the inherently messy nature 

of counterinsurgency, the Army turned its attention to the kind of 

wars it prefers to fight—conventional, symmetric conflict.1

While a number of civilian scholars examined the war, the Army 

focused on how to defeat the Soviets on the plains of Europe.2 While 

academic historians often deride the military for trying to refight the 

last war, in this instance no one can accuse the Army of that sin. 

Through its doctrine, scenarios at its officer education system and 

national training centers, and almost every other aspect of force 

development, the Army has remained singularly focused on fighting 

a conventional conflict. The result has been spectacular performance 

in both conventional wars with Iraq. Today, however, the Army finds 

itself once again in the middle of a major counterinsurgency effort—

this time on a global scale against the insurgent threat of militant 

Islamic fundamentalism. The current counterinsurgency involves 

major combat operations, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq, major 

advisory and training missions such as the Philippines, Georgia, the 

Horn of Africa, and North Africa, and numerous smaller missions 

around the world. 

Unfortunately, such is the baggage still attending the Vietnam 

War nearly 3 decades after Saigon’s fall, that senior military and 
political leaders only speak the word “Vietnam” in sentences along 

the lines of “Iraq is not another Vietnam . . .” Yet the Vietnam conflict 

constitutes the longest and most intensive counterinsurgency effort in 

American history. For nearly 2 decades, the United States provided a 

spectrum of security assistance to South Vietnam in its battle against 

the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese sponsors. The best and brightest 

civilian and military minds in the government developed strategies 

and concepts to defeat the communist insurgency in Southeast Asia 

as part of an overall strategy of containment. Today, the United 

States contends with a similar challenge. It faces active insurgencies 

in Iraq and Afghanistan, both being fought within the context of a 

world-wide insurgency led by militant Islamic fundamentalists. 

As the United States seeks ways to defeat these new insurgencies, 

it is extraordinarily imprudent to ignore the lessons from the 

counterinsurgency efforts of the Vietnam War. 

This chapter examines one major aspect of that conflict, the 

attack on the Viet Cong infrastructure, the Phoenix Program. It 

will provide the historical context and an overview of the Phoenix 

Program, describe the contemporary insurgency threat, and analyze 

strategic lessons for application in contemporary counterinsurgency 

operations. 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT 

The strategic rationale for America’s involvement in Vietnam 

remains the subject of significant debate. However, even those who 

argue the war represented a necessary element of national strategy 

agree that South Vietnam was not a vital American interest in and of 

itself; its importance lay as a symbol of American commitment and 

will.3

U.S. involvement in Vietnam spanned more than 2 decades, from 

support for France’s attempts to reinstate its colonial government in 

the aftermath of World War II, through an advisory period that began 

in the late 1950s, to the introduction of conventional forces in 1965, 

“Vietnamization” beginning in 1968, withdrawal of conventional 

U.S. military forces in 1973, and the collapse of South Vietnam in 

1975.4 When the U.S. military implemented the Phoenix Program in 

1967, 12 years already had passed from the first official American 
military death in the war.5

 After years of providing military advisors 

and equipment to the South Vietnamese government, the United 

States introduced major American ground forces in early 1965 to 

prevent the imminent collapse of South Vietnam.6 By 1967, 2 years of 

conventional force operations and the commitment of nearly 450,000 

U.S. troops had prevented a collapse, but had failed to defeat the 

insurgency.7

As early as 1966, President Lyndon Johnson met with senior U.S. 

and South Vietnamese civilian and military officials in Honolulu to 

discuss placing an increased emphasis on winning the political war 

in South Vietnam, since it seemed unlikely that conventional military 

operations alone could produce victory.8 In the President’s view, 

“the other war,” the war for the support of the South Vietnamese 

population, was as important as the military struggle with North 

Vietnamese and Viet Cong main force units.9 While the civilian 

agencies and some military units had put considerable effort into 

pacification and development programs, such efforts remained 

largely uncoordinated and ineffective. 

An initial attempt to unify the civilian effort in Vietnam under 

the Office of Civil Operations began in November 1966. Headed by 

a deputy ambassador, it was a short-lived failure. Consequently, in 

May 1967, President Johnson decided to unify all military and civilian 

pacification operations under an organization called Civil Operations 

and Rural Development Support, a component of Military Assistance 

Command Vietnam (MACV).10

OVERVIEW OF THE PHOENIX PROGRAM 

MACV Directive 381-41, July 9, 1967, officially inaugurated the 

“Phoenix Program” as the Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation 

for Attack on Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI), with the short title of 

“ICEX.” 11 By late 1967, MACV had replaced the innocuous name ICEX 

with the codeword “Phoenix,” a translation of the South Vietnamese, 

“Phung Hoang.”12 Phoenix did not initiate the attack on the Viet 

Cong infrastructure; instead, it centralized existing efforts and raised 

the level of attacks on the Viet Cong infrastructure to the mission 

of destroying the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong guerrilla 

forces. Phoenix embodied an understanding that an insurgency 
2

principally represents a political struggle for primacy between 

competing political ideas. The insurgency first seeks legitimacy, 

and then supremacy for its political agenda in both the eyes of the 

populace and the outside world, while the counterinsurgency effort 

struggles to deny such legitimacy. 

An assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) published 

in early 1969 aptly summarized the dynamic:

The struggle in Vietnam is in essence a struggle for political domination 

. . . The primary issue is control over people, not territory. Armed force 

. . . has long played a key role in the prosecution of this struggle; but 

our adversaries have seldom employed armed force, of any kind, for the 

classical military purpose of seizing and holding demarcatable plots of 

terrain . . . [O]ur adversaries have generally employed armed force . . . 

primarily as a political abrasive intended to cow the population into 

submission, collapse all political structures (from the local to the national 

level) they do not control, and erode the appetite for struggle of all who 

oppose [their] drive for political control . . . . [T]he ultimate measure of 

success or failure will not be relative casualties inflicted, battles won 

or lost or even territory enterable with impunity but—instead—whose 

political writ runs (for whatever reason) over the population of South 

Vietnam.13

To pursue their struggle for political supremacy, the North 

Vietnamese had established a unconventional warfare force within 

South Vietnam. The nucleus of this force was a clandestine element 

of 3,000 political and 5,000 armed military cadre, who had remained 

in the south after the July 1954 Geneva settlement.14 The intent of 

these agents was to mobilize support for Ho Chi Minh and the 

Communists in the elections that were to occur in accordance with 

the Geneva Accords. Once it was clear that the South Vietnamese 

would not hold such elections, the North Vietnamese communists 

used this infrastructure to conduct an unconventional war against 

the Diem government.15

The Viet Cong insurgency, instituted, directed, and supported 

by the North Vietnamese, had two major components. The first 

consisted of armed Viet Cong guerrillas, augmented by soldiers 

of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), who had infiltrated into 

South Vietnam. The guerrillas and NVA units were the main focus 

of American counterinsurgency efforts, initially conducted by the 
South Vietnamese and their U.S. advisors, and later by American 

military forces after the introduction of conventional units in 1965. 

The second component included Viet Cong personnel and 

organizations which performed support roles, such as recruiting, 

political indoctrination, propaganda and psychological operations, 

intelligence collection, and logistical support. American intelligence 

labeled the latter component as the Viet Cong infrastructure. The 

CIA assumed initial responsibility for attacking this component 

of the insurgency for a variety of reasons. First, anti-infrastructure 

operations were a logical adjunct to the State Department’s 

pacification and civil support programs. As a CIA report noted:

In addition to the “positive” task of providing the rural population with 

security and tangible benefits sufficient to induce it to identify its fortunes 

with those of the GVN [Government of Viet Nam], the pacification 

program also involves the “negative” task of identifying and eradicating 

the Communist politico-military control apparatus known as the Viet 

Cong Infrastructure (or VCI).16

Second, the targeted personnel in the infrastructure were primarily 

civilians; consequently, as noted in MACV Directive 381-41, “[t]he 

elimination of the VCI is fundamentally a Vietnamese responsibility 

employing essentially police type techniques and special 

resources.”17

Consequently, the primary South Vietnamese organizations to 

prosecute operations against the infrastructure were intelligence 

organizations, the police, and paramilitary organizations such as 

the Vietnamese Bureau of Investigation, the District and Provincial 

Intelligence and Operations Coordination Centers, the Special 

Police, the Field Police, and the Provincial Reconnaissance Units. 

The CIA largely was responsible for the creation of such units 

and organizations.18 To some extent, the task fell to the CIA by 

default. Key CIA leaders recognized the importance of fighting the 

political component of the enemy’s organization. Unfortunately, 

senior military leaders, particularly during General William 

Westmoreland’s tenure as MACV Commander, considered the Viet 

Cong infrastructure a peripheral issue.19

First initiated in July 1967, Phoenix aimed at providing U.S. 

advisory assistance to ongoing operations that targeted the enemy’s 
infrastructure at the corps, province, and district levels.20 It became 

a more coordinated effort when the South Vietnamese created the 

Phung Hoang program in December, 1967. But it took the Tet and May 

Offensives in 1968 to highlight the critical role of the infrastructure 

in facilitating the enemy’s main force operations.21 As a result, South 

Vietnam’s president issued a decree in July 1968 which committed 

the South Vietnamese to establishment of structures at every level 

of government to coordinate operations against the enemy’s civil 

infrastructure.22

The Phoenix Program established committees and coordination 

centers at the national, corps, province, and district levels. In 

addition, it directed the participation of key representatives from 

civil government, police, security services, and military organizations 

operating in the area.23 At province level and above, these committees 

served largely to provide guidance and policy direction.24 They also 

established quotas at the province and district levels for efforts to 

destroy the enemy’s infrastructure.25 The national level Phoenix 

committee established evidentiary rules and judicial procedures, 

specified categories and priorities of a variety of targets, and defined 

incarceration periods tied to target category.26

At province and district level, Intelligence and Operations 

Coordinating Centers (PIOCC/DIOCC) served as the foci of 

intelligence fusion on reports and operational planning to execute 

operations against the Viet Cong infrastructure.27 The centers 

provided a mechanism to consolidate information from the numerous 

organizations operating on the battlefield, deconflict intelligence 

collection activities, and plan and coordinate anti-infrastructure 

operations. The United States primarily provided military advisors in 

the Intelligence and Operations Coordinating Centers. Advisory staffs 

at higher levels tended to have greater interagency representation. 

At the province level, the U.S. advisor received the tasking to: 

. . . form and chair a Province PHOENIX Committee composed of all 

principal members of the U.S. official community capable of contributing 

effectively to the attack on the VCI [Viet Cong infrastructure] . . . [and] 

work in close conjunction with the counterpart GVN coordinating 

committee to bring together an effective GVN/U.S. team to optimize 

intelligence support and coordination of the dual effort against VC armed 

units and the VCI.28
At the District level, which was the primary operational planning 

and execution element, the U.S. advisor was responsible for:

• providing timely military intelligence support to tactical units 

and security forces.

• achieving rapid, first-level collation, evaluation, and 

dissemination of VCI intelligence.

• generating police, military, or special exploitation operations 

to disrupt, harass, capture, eliminate, or neutralize [the] local 

VCI.29

The understanding that the principal objective was to achieve 

legitimacy in the eyes of the population led inevitably to the realization 

that large-scale combat operations were counterproductive to 

pacification goals.30 According to MACV Directive 381-41, the intent 

of Phoenix was to attack the enemy’s infrastructure with a “‘rifle shot’ 

rather than a shotgun approach to the central target—key political 

leaders, command/control elements and activists in the VCI.”31

Heavy-handed operations, such as random cordon and searches, 

large-scale and lengthy detentions of innocent civilians, and excessive 

use of firepower had a negative effect on the civilian population. 

Government forces often appeared inept and unable to meet the 

security and stability needs of the people—in other words, they 

were, on occasion, the main threat to these goals. Unfocused, largescale operations usually failed to kill or destroy the infrastructure, 

which controlled large sections of the population or critical support 

functions; rather, they were more likely to net easily replaceable 

guerrilla fighters. The Phoenix approach also acknowledged that 

capturing the enemy’s political operatives was more important 

than killing them.32 The prime source of information to identify and 

locate future targets was the capture of current enemy operatives 

and leaders. Focused, police-like operations were much more likely 

to achieve this end than large-scale military ones. 

Over time, the Phoenix program generated negative press 

coverage, accusations that it was a U.S. Government sponsored 

assassination program, and eventually a series of Congressional 

hearings. Consequently, MACV issued a directive that reiterated that 

it had based the anti-infrastructure campaign on South Vietnamese 
law, that the program was in compliance with the laws of land 

warfare, and that U.S. personnel had the responsibility to report 

breaches of the law.33 That directive described Phoenix operational 

activities as:

Operations to be conducted against the VCI [Viet Cong infrastructure] by 

the National Police and other assigned agencies of the GVN [Government 

of Viet Nam] include: the collection of intelligence identifying these 

members; inducing them to abandon their allegiance to the VC and 

rally to the government; capturing or arresting them in order to bring 

them before province security committees or military courts for lawful 

sentencing; and as a final resort, the use of reasonable force should they 

resist capture or arrest where failure to use such force would result in the 

escape of the suspected VCI member or would result in threat of serious 

bodily harm to a member or members of the capturing or arresting 

party.34

Clearly, the intent of these operations was not indiscriminate killing 

and assassination; unfortunately, decentralized operations in an 

uncertain, ambiguous environment did lead to abuses.35

Officially, Phoenix operations continued until December 1972, 

although certain aspects continued until the fall of South Vietnam in 

1975.36 Like the Vietnam War that spawned it, the Phoenix Program 

was, and continues to be, a subject of controversy. To some, it was a U.S. 

Government-sponsored assassination program, carried out against 

innocents, and symbolic of the moral bankruptcy of the entire war.37

For others, it was a benign coordination mechanism that offered “the 

best hope for victory” in the Vietnam War.38 Like any controversial 

issue, the truth probably lies in between. Regardless, Phoenix was 

the largest and most systematic effort by the U.S. Government to 

destroy the insurgency’s political and support infrastructure—a 

critical element in a counterinsurgency campaign. Ultimately, the 

entire counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam was a failure for a variety 

of reasons; one critical factor was that the Viet Cong had established 

a large and effective support cadre throughout South Vietnam before 

the South Vietnamese and the Americans undertook a serious, 

coordinated effort to eradicate it.39 While indications are that Phoenix 

achieved considerable success in damaging that infrastructure, it 

was too little and too late to change the war’s overall course.40
TODAY’S INSURGENT THREAT 

Vietnam was a classic example of a mass-oriented insurgency as 

defined in U.S. Army doctrine.41 The Viet Cong sought to discredit 

the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese government in the eyes of 

the population through a protracted campaign of violence, while 

developing and offering its own parallel political structure as a viable 

alternative to the “illegitimate” government.42 The “battlefield” in a 

mass-oriented insurgency is the population—both the government 

and the insurgents fight for the support of the people. 

As one author has suggested, both sides in this type of conflict have 

two tools in the struggle for control and support of the populace: “. . . 

popular perceptions of legitimacy and a credible power to coerce.”43

He goes on the note that the target of coercion, the populace, defines 

the threat’s credibility, not the employer of the threat.44 Consequently, 

conventional military power does not equate necessarily to credible 

coercive power. The conventional force may possess state of the art 

weaponry and overwhelming destructive power. Nevertheless, if 

the populace believes this conventional power will not, or cannot, 

be used against them, it has limited coercive value—particularly 

if the insurgent has demonstrated the ability to locate and punish 

noncompliant members of the populace and reward supporters.

Field Manual (FM) 3-05.201 states that mass-oriented “[i]nsurgents 

have a well-developed ideology and choose their objectives only after 

careful analysis. Highly organized, they mobilize forces for a direct 

military and political challenge to the government using propaganda 

and guerrilla action.”45 The militant Islamic movement, present 

throughout the Middle East and in many parts of Africa and Asia, is 

a mass-oriented insurgency that seeks to supplant existing regimes 

with its own religious-based political ideology. As espoused by alQa’ida, its ideology seeks reestablishment of an Islamic caliphate, 

removal of secular or “apostate” regimes, and removal of Western 

influence from the region.46

The militant Islamic insurgency is inchoate; while nearly global in 

nature, it does not yet appear to be truly unified in a single insurgent 

movement, despite al-Qa’ida’s attempts to serve as a coalescing force. 

Rather, the current insurgency appears to be a loosely coordinated 

effort of multiple groups with nearly coincident goals and objectives, 
who have not yet joined into a single unified front. Consequently, 

jihadist groups like Zarqawi’s in Iraq may not respond directly to 

instructions from the al-Qa’ida leadership, but they share similar 

anti-Western, fundamentalist Islamic goals, and are likely receiving 

support from the same population base. Additionally, the level of 

development of the various Islamic insurgent movements varies 

from group to group, region to region.

Army doctrine establishes three general phases of development for 

an insurgent movement. It acknowledges that not every insurgency 

passes through each phase, and that success is not contingent upon 

linear progression through the three phases. In Phase I, the latent 

or incipient phase, the insurgent movement focuses on recruiting, 

organizing, and training key membership, as well as establishing 

inroads into legitimate organizations to facilitate support of its 

objectives. It establishes the clandestine cellular support structure 

that facilitates intelligence collection and operational actions, and 

infiltrates its supporters into critical positions within governmental 

and civilian organizations.47 The insurgency normally avoids all but 

selected and limited violence during this phase in order to avoid 

provoking effective regime counterinsurgent operations before the 

insurgency can respond.48

Once the insurgency has established its support infrastructure, it 

violently challenges the government. In Phase II, guerrilla warfare, 

the insurgent movement takes active measures to challenge the 

regime’s legitimacy. This can include attacks, assassinations, 

sabotage, or subversive activities (such as information operations) 

to challenge governmental legitimacy.49 In a rural-based insurgency, 

the insurgents often are able to establish relatively secure base 

camps to operate from, such as the Viet Cong did. In an urban-based 

insurgency, the members rely on the anonymity of urban areas to 

conceal their presence within the population. 

In Phase III, mobile warfare or the war of movement, guerrilla 

forces transition to conventional warfare and directly confront 

government security forces. If properly timed, the government 

has been weakened sufficiently to succumb to assault by insurgent 

forces. This phase takes on the character of a civil war, in which the 

insurgents may control and administer significant portions of terrain 

by force of arms.50
Due to its widespread nature, assessment of the developmental 

progress of the Islamic insurgency is dynamic and regionally 

dependent. For example, in Iraq, the Islamic insurgency (in loose 

coordination with other nationalist-based insurgent elements) is 

largely in Phase II, the conduct of active guerrilla warfare. In Saudi 

Arabia, recent attacks suggest the insurgency is transitioning from 

Phase I to Phase II. In Egypt, government control has kept the 

insurgency in Phase I, with Islamic dissident groups conducting 

propaganda operations, but rarely able to use violence. Based on the 

global nature of attacks initiated by militant Islamic organizations, 

the insurgency has already spent significant time and effort in Phase 

I; as a result it has developed insurgent infrastructure capable of 

supporting operations in selected locations throughout the world. 

As in the early years of the Viet Cong insurgency, the violent 

component of the Islamic insurgency captures the majority of current 

attention, and has been the focus of regime counterinsurgency 

operations.51 Spectacular attacks such as September 11, 2001 (9/11), 

the embassy bombings in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, and 

the Madrid subway bombings, or the now-routine daily guerrilla 

warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan focus attention on the paramilitary 

element of the insurgency. Yet, as with the Viet Cong, the armed 

Islamic elements cannot survive without a support infrastructure. 

In fact, many of the attacks are suicide operations. The perpetrators 

are expendable foot soldiers. Investigation of the high profile 

attacks indicates the presence of a widespread support network for 

intelligence collection, material support, finance, and movement of 

insurgents.52 However, these “direct support” cells represent only 

one component of the overall militant Islamic infrastructure.

The militant Islamic infrastructure also has a “general support” 

component. It includes religious/political infrastructure consisting 

of Islamic scholars and mullahs who “justify” violent actions by 

their interpretation of the Koran and Islamic law, and use the pulpit 

to recruit, solicit funds, and propagate the insurgency’s information 

campaign themes.53 This component is critical to providing the 

insurgents with the stamp of religious legitimacy. Recently, the 

lead Islamic insurgent in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, issued an 

audiotape, castigating religious leaders for flagging allegiance to the 
insurgents, thus underlining how seriously the insurgents view the 

importance of such support.54

The general support component of the militant Islamic 

infrastructure also includes Islamic nongovernmental organizations 

that solicit money on behalf of al-Qa’ida and other terrorist 

organizations, as well as funding fundamentalist madrassas and 

mosques throughout the world. Such religious institutions serve as 

recruiting centers and platforms to spread their propaganda messages. 

This component also includes media organizations and web sites 

that provide fora for the insurgents’ psychological operations and 

assist in the furtherance of their information campaign objectives.55

The infrastructure directs, supports, and sustains the execution of 

violence against the regime and Western enemies; it constitutes the 

insurgency’s center of gravity. 

There are several disincentives to attacking this source of power; 

however, it must be neutralized to defeat the insurgency. The 

infrastructure component frequently is harder to find than the armed 

elements and is less susceptible to normal U.S. technology-focused 

intelligence collection methods. Rules of engagement are less clearcut, as the targets frequently are noncombatants in the sense that 

they do not personally wield the tools of violence. Consequently, the 

risk of negative media attention and adverse public reaction is high. 

Moreover, infrastructure targets are likely to fall into interagency 

“seams.” While armed elements in Iraq or Afghanistan clearly are 

a military responsibility, responsibility for infrastructure targets, 

particularly those outside a designated combat zone, can cut across 

multiple agency or departmental boundaries. Despite these obstacles, 

attacking the infrastructure represents a critical component of overall 

counterinsurgency efforts to defeat the militant Islamic insurgency. 

Consequently, lessons drawn from the Phoenix Program can offer 

important guidelines. 

CONTEMPORARY INFRASTRUCTURE ATTACK

Five years of operational experience against the Viet Cong 

infrastructure yielded significant lessons at the tactical, operational, 

and strategic levels. The focus of the remainder of this chapter is on 

those strategic lessons most relevant to an attack against the militant 
Islamic infrastructure. One can classify those lessons into three major 

categories: command and control, operations, and legal/ethical 

issues. 

Command and Control.

Identification of Objectives. The most basic function of command is 

to define objectives for the organization. During the Vietnam War, 

the belated identification of the infrastructure as a center of gravity 

allowed the Viet Cong an insurmountable time advantage. For the 

current struggle, this has two implications. First, and foremost, U.S. 

strategic leadership must acknowledge the nature of the war which 

it confronts. A militant Islamic insurgency, not “terrorism,” is the 

enemy.56 Second, the United States must wage a comprehensive 

counterinsurgency campaign that includes neutralization of the 

insurgency’s infrastructure as a critical component of a holistic 

campaign. By focusing solely on the operational element of the 

insurgency (the terrorist or insurgent “operator”), the United States 

risks paying too little attention to the “other war” and thus, repeating 

the mistakes of Vietnam.

Unity of Command. One of the most significant successes of the 

Phoenix program lay in the establishment of unity of command among 

disparate civilian agencies and military organizations previously 

uncoordinated and often working at cross-purposes.57 The Phoenix 

Program, led by a civilian deputy in the Civil Operations and Rural 

Development Support department under the Commander, MACV, 

essentially created an interagency command element to unite civilian 

and military lines of command. 58 The intelligence and operations 

coordinating centers provided a mechanism to enable interagency 

cooperation and coordination in anti-infrastructure operations 

at the operational and tactical level. Unfortunately, there was no 

mechanism to enforce cooperation. Consequently, while senior 

leaders synchronized civilian and military policies and objectives 

at the highest level, organizations might still be working at crosspurposes at lower levels. This was particularly true in the intelligence 

arena, where organizational rivalries often resulted in a failure to 

share intelligence, as agencies treated their best sources and critical 

pieces of intelligence in a propriety manner.59 Timely and accurate 
3

intelligence is essential for counterinsurgency forces to execute 

focused operations that neutralize the insurgent and avoid negative 

consequences on the population. Compartmented or stove-piped 

intelligence processes impede development of a comprehensive 

picture of the insurgent’s infrastructure—a picture that one only can 

“assemble” by compiling the various “pieces’ collected by all the 

various participants in the regime’s counterinsurgency effort. 

The U.S. Government must unify today’s counterinsurgency 

effort at every level. The United States should establish a single 

interagency organization or task force, empowered to promulgate 

policy, establish objectives, set priorities, and direct operations for 

the global counterinsurgency effort. The current decision to unify 

the nation’s various intelligence agencies under a single director 

represents a useful first step in establishing unity of the intelligence 

effort; however, the United States must wield all the elements of 

national power in a coordinated fashion. Currently, the National 

Security Council is the only integrating point for the various 

departments; it does not possess the design or staff to plan and 

execute the detailed application of national power required to defeat 

a global insurgency. 

Unity of command should extend down to the tactical level. 

Fora based on cooperation, such as the intelligence and operations 

coordinating centers in Vietnam, are largely personality dependent—

they only work well when the participants “mesh;” they fail when 

personalities clash. Organizational structures, empowered to direct 

interagency counterinsurgency tasks, must exist at every level. While 

this might seem an usurpation of departmental responsibilities, 

the global counterinsurgency campaign needs singularly focused 

direction and supervision, by an organization empowered by the 

president to direct departmental cooperation at all levels. 

Metrics. Evaluating operational effectiveness is another basic 

function of command. Commanders can use two types of metrics, 

measures of effectiveness and measures of performance, to assess 

their organization’s effectiveness. Measures of performance evaluate 

how well an organization executes an action—it does not judge 

whether the action contributes to long term objectives; measures of 

effectiveness evaluate whether an organization’s planned actions 

yield progress towards the objectives. For example, the Phoenix 
Program levied infrastructure neutralization (killed, captured, or 

rallied) quotas on the intelligence and operations coordinating centers 

and used the total numbers of infrastructure personnel neutralized 

to determine if the campaign were successful. 

There were two problems with such an approach; first, it confused 

measures of performance with measures of effectiveness. Numbers 

of neutralizations that a subordinate element executed might be a 

valid measure of performance; i.e., it demonstrated whether or not 

the organization actively was pursuing infrastructure personnel. 

However, neutralization numbers also confused actions with 

effectiveness. The objective of the Phoenix Program was to limit the 

infrastructure’s ability to support operations and exercise control 

over the population. Neutralization numbers did not measure 

whether the overall campaign was making progress towards these 

objectives.60

The second problem with the Phoenix quotas was that they 

caused dysfunctional organizational behavior. Driven to achieve 

neutralization quotas, police and military units often detained 

innocent civilians in imprecise cordon and sweep operations.61 The 

overburdened legal system then took weeks or months to process 

detainees; the jails and holding areas provided the Viet Cong with an 

excellent environment for recruiting and indoctrinating previously 

apolitical civilians.62 The quota system bred corruption, as families 

paid bribes to secure the release of their relatives while others settled 

personal scores by identifying their personal enemies as members of 

the Viet Cong infrastructure.63

While reforms eventually corrected many of the deficiencies 

in the Phoenix Program, the lesson for current counterinsurgency 

operations is clear. Metrics designed to measure organizational 

effectiveness and performance can significantly influence the conduct 

of operations, both positively and negatively. It is critical to establish 

measures of effectiveness tied to operational objectives. Simple 

attritional numbers, while easily produced, more often than not are 

meaningless. For example, neutralizing 75 percent of al-Qa’ida’s 

leadership might seem to indicate effective operations. However, 

without considering issues such as replacements, criticality of 

losses, or minimum required personnel levels to direct operations, 
one cannot truly assess the effect of operations. Useful measures of 

effectiveness require a significant understanding of the enemy, the 

ability to collect detailed feedback on effects, and a major analytical 

effort. Consequently, the tendency may be to fall back on more easily 

collected, attrition-focused statistics. The experience of the Phoenix 

Program suggests that it may be better not to use metrics at all, rather 

than to use inappropriate ones.

Operations.

Combined Operations. Analysis of the Phoenix Program suggests 

that operations against the insurgent infrastructure are best done in 

a combined manner, with U.S. military and civilian organizations 

in a support or advisory role to host nation counterparts. In order 

to achieve its aim of a “rifle shot,” Phoenix operations more closely 

resembled police operations than military ones. 64 Such focused 

operations require a level of cultural understanding and local 

knowledge that only a native can achieve. Attempts to operate 

unilaterally without such expertise can result in indiscriminate use 

of force and firepower, lost opportunities, and a disenchanted, antiAmerican civil population. 

Combined operations, but with clear American primacy, tend 

to send the message that indigenous organizations are inept or 

incapable. In the battle for legitimacy, it is critical that the regime not 

only is effective, but that the populace believes it to be effective. Overt 

U.S. presence often provides the insurgent with ammunition for his 

information campaign; insurgent groups in Iraq have leveraged 

charges of neo-colonialism against the United States to good effect 

in order to rally nationalists to their cause. The less a regime appears 

to have surrendered control of basic governmental functions to the 

United States, the better it can deflect the insurgent’s propaganda 

messages and gain or retain the allegiance of the populace.

The experience in Vietnam demonstrates that there is significant 

incentive to avoid or minimize combined operations with indigenous 

forces. The Viet Cong infiltrated the South Vietnamese government 

and security apparatus at every level, which decreased operational 

effectiveness.65 This, coupled with the belief that U.S. forces were 
more capable than the host nation forces, resulted in an American 

tendency to marginalize South Vietnamese operational participation, 

and inhibited a wider dissemination of intelligence, even between 

U.S. organizations.66

Americans must avoid the temptation to do everything 

themselves; unilateralism or operational primacy hinders overall 

operational effectiveness by inhibiting the development of indigenous 

counterinsurgency expertise and undermining the legitimacy of the 

host nation regime. It also requires a greater commitment of limited 

U.S. resources, particularly personnel. U.S. military and civilian 

security organizations must establish and use common procedural 

safeguards, such as standards for vetting of indigenous personnel, 

to ensure operational security, while not incentivizing unilateral 

operations.67

Advisors. One of the most significant limiting factors in the 

Phoenix Program was the competence of the U.S. advisors detailed 

to serve with the South Vietnamese military and civilian security 

organizations tasked with executing anti-infrastructure operations. 

For a wide variety of bureaucratic reasons, the Phoenix advisors 

were often young, inexperienced, and lacking in appropriate skills to 

advise their South Vietnamese counterparts properly.68 This problem 

severely limited the Phoenix Program from reaching its full potential. 

As the program matured, efforts occurred to increase the quality 

and experience level of U.S. advisors through training programs 

and improved personnel selection policies. 69 Unfortunately, the U.S. 

effort lost valuable time before the implementation of changes, and 

the problem remained largely unresolved; however, the Phoenix 

advisory effort provides some key lessons for advisory efforts in 

support of an attack against the militant Islamic infrastructure. 

Advisors must possess a basic level of regional expertise and 

language capability that they further develop once deployed. 

Advisors who understand their operating environment can assess the 

impact of operational techniques, avoid pitfalls that might alienate 

the population or provide the insurgent with ammunition for his 

propaganda campaign, and design operations that will target the 

insurgent infrastructure effectively, while enhancing the regime’s 

reputation. A language capability often allows the advisor to verify 
the accuracy of translators and host nation intelligence products, as 

well as judge the effectiveness and trustworthiness of host nation 

counterparts. In an environment where the population fears contact 

with host nation security forces due to corruption or insurgent 

infiltration, civilians may provide information directly to an advisor 

who speaks their language.70

Advisors must be ready to operate under vague and uncertain 

circumstances and within broad procedural guidance. Advisors must 

be intellectually and professionally comfortable with the concept of 

applying police-like methods instead of normal military means to 

attack the militant Islamic infrastructure. Towards the end of the 

Phoenix Program, senior leaders recognized that not all military 

personnel met these requirements; MACV Directive 525-36 allowed 

personnel assigned as Phoenix advisors to opt out of the assignment 

without prejudice if they found the nature of the “. . . operations 

repugnant to them personally. . . .”71

The qualities necessary to be a counterinsurgency advisor 

are resident in the special operations community and the CIA’s 

paramilitary organizations. While CIA operatives are generally more 

familiar with the interagency environment, their organization lacks 

sufficient personnel strength to operate on a global scale without 

significant augmentation. Additionally, advisory teams should 

include expertise from the law enforcement investigatory agencies, 

such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Regardless of the source 

of advisors, the Department of Defense should establish a specific 

training program to prepare advisors for the task of identifying, 

tracking, and attacking infrastructure targets. 

Legal/Moral Considerations.

Legal and moral issues are of paramount concern in an attack on 

the militant Islamic infrastructure. These issues have the potential 

to wield considerable influence on the population’s perception of 

legitimacy. Operations must stand the long-term scrutiny of world 

and U.S. popular opinion. Perceptions of the Phoenix Program as 

an immoral assassination operation drew intensive scrutiny from 

Congress and the media, and weakened the legitimacy of the 

governments of South Vietnam and the United States. The inability of 
the South Vietnamese legal system to house, process, and adjudicate 

the large numbers of detainees generated by the Phoenix Program 

dramatically hampered its overall effectiveness.72 In many cases, the 

system became a revolving door, with hard-core members of the 

infrastructure being released prematurely. In other cases, lengthy 

detainment of innocents abetted the enemy’s recruitment effort.73

Interrogation of detainees provided the best source of information 

for future attacks; however, accusations of torture and inhumane 

treatment resulted in a considerable loss of legitimacy for the 

regime. 

A fair, responsive, and firm judicial system must be available 

to deal with insurgents captured in a campaign against the 

infrastructure. The United States can influence this issue directly 

with those insurgents captured under its jurisdiction; it can influence 

indirectly the issue with those governments to which it provides aid 

and advice. To retain legitimacy, the United States must maintain the 

moral high ground. For example, while the unilateral and indefinite 

incarceration of al-Qa’ida detainees in Guantanamo may be legal, it 

may not be in the long-term best interest of the counterinsurgency 

effort. It has negatively impacted relations with coalition partners 

and contributed to a negative image of the United States in the 

world.74 Agreements that return captives to their nation of origin for 

disposition, while still allowing U.S. intelligence agencies access for 

interrogation purposes (“rendition”), has been one method currently 

used to minimize U.S. exposure to continuing criticism.75 However, 

this procedure invites accusations that the United States merely is 

using a surrogate to do its “dirty” work. In the long term, the United 

States must establish a process in cooperation with its coalition 

partners which yields intelligence for future operations and prevents 

detainees from rejoining the insurgency, while meeting basic legal 

and ethical standards that do not jeopardize popular perceptions of 

legitimacy of the counterinsurgency effort. 

CONCLUSION 

Twenty-six years after the fall of Saigon signaled the ultimate 

failure of U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in South Vietnam, the United 

States found itself thrust into another major counterinsurgency 
effort by the attacks of 9/11. The counterinsurgency against militant 

Islamic fundamentalism requires operations on a much broader scale 

than the U.S. effort in Southeast Asia, and the stakes are significantly 

higher. The communist insurgency in South Vietnam attacked a 

government of only symbolic importance to the United States. The 

current militant Islamic insurgency directly threatens vital U.S. 

national interests—potentially the most vital of its interests, national 

survival. The United States must recognize and identify this threat 

in order to engage and defeat it. Words matter; when the National 

Security Strategy for Combating Terrorism identifies a technique, 

terrorism, as the enemy, it only can lead to strategic and operational 

confusion.76

Once the United States acknowledges the threat posed by the 

militant Islamic insurgency, it must plan and conduct a holistic 

counterinsurgency campaign. This chapter has focused on only one 

component of such a campaign, the neutralization of the insurgency’s 

infrastructure. This component is critical—the longer the United 

States delays effective infrastructure neutralization operations, the 

more difficult they will become, as militant Islamic movements 

further develop clandestine infrastructure throughout the world. 

Neutralization of insurgents and their supporting infrastructure 

is only one line of operation in a counterinsurgency strategy. The 

United States and its coalition partners also must protect populations 

from the insurgent’s coercive methods, pursue social and economic 

development to eliminate root causes, and mobilize populations to 

support counterinsurgency efforts. Each of these lines of operation 

can succeed. Yet the overall counterinsurgency effort can fail without 

an information campaign that both supports them and capitalizes on 

their success. The battleground of an insurgency lies in the minds of 

the populace. The United States and its coalition partners only can 

defeat the militant Islamic insurgency when they can convince the 

overwhelming majority of the people in the Muslim world that free, 

representative, and open societies that export goods and services 

instead of violence and terror best serve their interests—and that the 

United States stands ready to help them develop such societies. As 

it executes its counterinsurgency campaign, America must maintain 

moral ascendancy over its opponents and never lose sight of its 

democratic principles. 
ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 2

1. William Colby and James McCargar, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of 

America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam, Chicago, 1989, p. 9.

2. Dale Andrade, Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War, 

Lexington, MA, 1990, p. xiii, asserts that the Viet Nam War is the best documented 

conflict in history, if one judges by sheer volume.

3. Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: The CIA’s Secret Campaign to Destroy 

the Viet Cong, Annapolis, 1997, p. 6. Moyar provides a succinct discussion of the 

U.S. interests weighed by the Johnson administration in its decision to intercede 

in the Vietnam conflict.

4. Arlington National Cemetery Website, “A. Peter Dewey, Lieutenant Colonel, 

United States Army,” available from www.arlingtoncemetery.net/apdewey.htm; 

internet; accessed November 17, 2004. The author indicates that an approximately 

128-man MAAG began supervising equipment transfer to the French in Vietnam 

on September 17, 1950. Two U.S. airmen on contract to the CIA were KIA over Dien 

Bien Phu in 1954. The first U.S. advisors arrived in South Vietnam on February 12, 

1955. 

5. Ibid., identifies Lieutenant Colonel A. Peter Dewey, U.S. Army, Office of 

Strategic Services, as the first American killed in Vietnam. Lieutenant Colonel 

Dewey was killed in action by the Communist Vietminh forces on September 26, 

1945, near Hanoi. The Defense Department has set November 1, 1955, the date the 

MAAG was officially established, as the earliest qualifying date for the Vietnam 

Veterans Memorial. Air Force Tech Sergeant Richard B. Fitzgibbon, Jr., who was 

murdered in Vietnam by a fellow airman on June 8, 1956, is considered the first 

American officially to die in the Vietnam War under these criteria. 

6. Colby and McCargar, p. 180; Moyar, p. 6; and “Named Campaigns—

Vietnam,” U.S. Army Center for Military History, available from www.army.mil/

cmh-pg/reference/vncmp.htm; Internet; accessed November 17, 2004; hereafter cited 

as “Named Campaigns.”

7. “Named Campaigns.” By June 30, 1967, total U.S. forces in SVN had risen to 

448,800.

8. Andrade, p. 53.

9. Colby and McCargar, p. 205.

10. Moyar, p. 48, discusses the brief-lived Office of Civil Operations and 

subsequent decision to establish the Civil Operations and Rural Development 

Support (CORDS).

11. U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, “Phung Hoang (Phoenix) 

Program, 1969 End of Year Report,” February 28, 1970, Military History Institute, 

Carlisle Barracks, PA, p. 1. Hereafter referred to as “Phoenix Program 1969 End of 

Year Report.”
12. U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, “Intelligence Coordination 

and Exploitation for Attack on VC Infrastructure. Directive 381-41,” July 9, 1968, 

w/Change 1 Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA, p. 2. The document 

identifies “PHOENIX” as the short title for ICEX. Hereafter cited as “MACV 

Directive 381-41.” Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program, New York, 1990, p. 

122. Valentine provides a detailed discussion of the program names. He states that, 

according to a Vietnamese myth, Phung Hoang was a legendary bird of conjugal love 

that only appeared in peacetime. He goes on to state that the Americans translated 

this “peaceful” program into the Phoenix, “. . . an omnipotent, predatory bird that 

selectively snatches its prey—a symbol of discord rather than harmony.” 

13. Central Intelligence Agency, “The Situation in Vietnam: Overview and 

Outlook,” January 24, 1969, No. 0550/69, p. A-1. Hereafter cited as “The Situation 

in Vietnam.”

14. Andrade, p. 5. Under the terms of the peace agreement, all Viet Minh forces 

were to withdraw to the northern half of a divided Vietnam. 

15. Ibid., p. 6.

16. CIA, “The Situation in Vietnam,” p. 7.

17. MACV Directive 381-41, p. 2.

18. See “Phoenix Program 1969 End of Year Report,” p. A-4, for the official 

description of each of these organizations. See Valentine, for an in-depth analysis 

of each organization. 

19. Andrade, pp. 12-13, 57.

20. William L. Knapp, “Phoenix/Phung Hoang and the Future: A Critical 

Analysis of the U.S./GVN Program to Neutralize the Viet Cong Infrastructure,” 

Student paper, Carlisle Barracks: U.S. Army War College, March 1971, p. 45. 

Hereafter cited as “Phoenix/Phung Hoang and the Future.”

21. Valentine, p. 177. Valentine notes that: 

. . . Tet proved to the world that the VCI shadow government not only 

existed, but was capable of mobilizing masses of people. . . . Tet revealed 

. . . the intrinsically political nature of the Vietnam War. Even if the U.S. 

and South Vietnamese governments found it impossible to admit that the 

outlawed VCI was a legitimate political entity, they could not deny that 

it had, during Tet, dictacted the course of events in South Vietnam. And 

that fact pushed Phoenix into the limelight. 

See also Ibid., pp. 180-181.

22. “Phoenix Program 1969 End of Year Report,” p. 1. 

23. Knapp, pp. 51-52. Knapp identifies the 15 different organizations required 

to participate in the PIOCCs and DIOCCs.

24. “Phoenix Program 1969 End of Year Report,” p. A-5.
25. “Phoenix Program 1969 End of Year Report,” p. A-8, discusses GVN 

establishment of operational goals. It defines “neutralization” of Viet Cong 

infrastructure as “VCI who rally or are induced to rally, those who are captured 

and sentenced and those who are killed in the course of security operations. The 

desirability of capturing VCI is stressed, for the intelligence and other values 

they can offer.” Note that detainees could not be counted until they were found 

guilty. 

26. Knapp, pp. 55-56; and “Phoenix Program 1969 End of Year Report,” 

p. A-4.

27. “Phoenix Program 1969 End of Year Report,” p. A-7.

28. “MACV Directive 381-41,” p. 7.

29. Ibid.

30. Andrade, pp. 100-101, provides an example of a typical firepower intensive 

sweep. John Shy and Thomas W. Collier, “Revolutionary War,” Makers of Modern 

Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Peter Paret, ed., Princeton, NJ, 1986, 

p. 856. Shy and Collier argue that the U.S. military never really came to this 

realization.

31. “MACV Directive 381-41,” p. 3.

32. Andrade, p. 153; and Phoenix Program 1969 End of Year Report,” p. A-8.

33. U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, “Military Operations, Phung 

Hoang Operations. Directive 525-36,” November 5, 1971, Military History Institute, 

Carlisle Barracks, PA, pp. 1-2. Hereafter cited as “MACV Directive 525-36.”

34. Ibid., p. 1. 

35. Valentine threads accusations of an assassination program throughout his 

book. See pp. 311-314 as an example. Many of the accusations of “assassination” 

were based on the idea that a “targeted kill” equaled assassination. Valentine,

p. 319. As Andrade, p. x, notes, infrastructure attack involved “. . . shades of 

warfare that Americans would prefer not to think about. Most of the Viet Cong 

Infrastructure (VCI) were, strictly speaking, civilians.” Moyar, pp. 224-232, 

addresses the issue of Phoenix as an assassination program in great detail and 

counters many of Valentine’s primary sources. See Andrade, p. 123, in regards to 

charges of brutality and torture.

36. Moyar, p. 55.

37. See note 35.

38. Valentine, p. 126. Moyar, pp. 245-246, has some excellent reports from 

former Viet Cong on Phoenix effectiveness. Also see Andrade, p. 278.

39. Moyar, p. 11, highlights a 1967 CIA estimate of the VCI at 80,000 to 150,000 

personnel. “Phoenix Program 1969 End of Year Report,” p. 9, estimates the total 

of VCI at 74,000 personnel. Despite Phoenix’s increasing effectiveness over time, 

the VC had been given too long to establish themselves nearly unmolested within 

South Vietnamese society.
4

40. See Valentine, p. 414. See also Andrade, pp. 263-4, 268-270, 278; and Moyar, 

p. 245, on the overall effectiveness of the Phoenix program.

41. Department of the Army, “Special Forces Unconventional Forces Operations”, 

Initial Draft, Field Manual 3-05.201, Vol 1, Washington, DC, November 2001, p. 1-

9. Hereafter referred to as Field Manual 3-05.201.

42. Ibid. 

43. Dr. Larry Cable, “Reinventing The Round Wheel: Insurgency, 

Counterinsurgency, and Peacekeeping Post Cold War,” Journal of Small Wars and 

Insurgency, Vol. 4, Autumn 1993, p. 229. Hereafter cited as “Reinventing the Round 

Wheel.”

44. Ibid., p. 230. 

45. Field Manual 3-05.201, p. 1-9. 

46. Michael Vlahos, “Terror’s Mask: Insurgency Within Islam,” Laurel, MD: 

Johns Hopkins University, 2002, p. 1. See also “Al Qaida Threat Brief: Executive 

Summary,” Decision Support Systems, Inc. Reno, NV, 2001. Available from the 

internet at www.metatempo.com/AlQaidaThreatBrief.PDF, p. 2.

47. FM 3-05.201, pp. 1-7.

48. Shy and Collier, “Revolutionary War,” p. 850.

49. FM 3-05.201, p 1-7.

50. Ibid., p 1-8.

51. For the purposes of this chapter, the regime is defined as the coalition of 

governments working against the militant Islamic insurgency.

52. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 

Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon 

the United States, Washington, DC, 2004, pp. 365-366.

53. For example, prior to the attack on Fallujah, the Sunni clerical Association 

of Muslim Scholars declared that resisting the American and Iraqi government 

forces was a duty and issued a fatwa prohibiting followers from supporting the 

regime forces in any war. Fadel Al-Badrani, “Insurgents in Iraq Launch Deadly 

Attacks: Attacks Carried Out Across Central Iraq, Killing Over 30.” Reuters, from 

AOL ar.atwola.com/link/93197704/1096675187, accessed November 6, 2004.

54. “Al-Zarqawi Tape Criticizes Muslim Scholars,” AP, Baghdad, Internet, 

available at www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-11-24-zarqawi-tape_x.htm?csp=34, 

accessed December 10, 2004.

55. Nick Wadhams, “Insurgents Step Up Violence,” Harrisburg Patriot, January 

4, 2005, sec A, p. 3, reported that a videotape found in Baghdad shows a former 

Al-Jazeera manager telling one of Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday, that “Al-Jazeera 

is your channel.” The Qatar-based television station has been the recipient of 

al-Qa’ida’s videotaped messages and consistently has served as an outlet for 

insurgent propaganda. 
56. George W. Bush, “National Security Strategy for Combating Terrorism,” 

Washington, DC, February 2003, p. 1. The NSS states that “The enemy is not one 

person. It is not a single political regime. Certainly it is not a religion. The enemy 

is terrorism—premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against 

noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.”

57. Moyar, p. 48; Andrade, p. 57.

58. Moyar, pp. 48-49.

59. Valentine, pp. 183, 204, 225, 325, 369-371; Moyar, p. 340.

60. Valentine, p. 274. See also Moyar, pp. 189-193, on the use of neutralization 

quotas.

61. Andrade, pp. 96-97. 

62. Ibid., p. 206.

63. Valentine, p. 108. Valentine provides examples of U.S. advisors who stated 

that informants were manipulating the Phoenix Program for personal motives. 

Ibid., p. 154, discusses how the judicial backlog caused corruption. Andrade, p. 

123, discusses the downside of quotas; pp. 218-222 summarizes the problems and 

their effects of corruption and an inadequate legal system. 

64. Valentine, pp. 206-207, provides an example of a typical “rifle-shot” 

operation.

65. Ibid., pp. 213 and 363. Valentine provides estimates of the extent of this 

infiltration.

66. Ibid, The Phoenix Program, pp. 182-183, 213, 225, 300-301, 354. See also 

Andrade, p. 50. 

67. See Moyar, pp. 154-155, reference operational security procedures. See Ibid., 

p. 340, for his ideas on how to force intelligence sharing.

68. Valentine, pp. 225, 353, 364, on advisor problems and solutions. See also 

Andrade, pp. 138-140; and Knapp, p. 51.

69. Lieutenant Colonel Leo Kennedy and Lieutenant Colonel Marty Anderson, 

“An Examination of Vietnam War Senior Officer Debriefing Reports,” Military 

Studies Paper, Carlisle Barracks: U.S. Army War College, May 1986, pp. 26-27.

70. See Valentine, p. 229, for the difficulties that can arise when the advisor 

cannot speak the language. See also Ibid., p. 108, for the idea that all counterinsurgent 

personnel must be intelligence collectors.

71. “MACV Directive 525-36,” p. 2.

72. Andrade, pp. 219-222, argues that the inadequacy of the judicial system to 

meet the workload, lenient sentencing, and a generally inept legal system was the 

critical weakness of the Phoenix Program. See also Knapp, p. 56.

73. Andrade, pp. 206, 221. 
74. Neil A. Lewis, “U.S. Sets Stricter Ban on Torture,” Harrisburg Patriot, January 

1, 2005, sec A, p. 9.

75. Dana Priest, “U.S. Seeks Long-Term Solution for Detainees,” Harrisburg 

Patriot, January 3, 2005, sec A, p. 3.

76. Bush, “National Security Strategy for Combating Terrorism,” p. 1. See note 

56.
CHAPTER 3

MORAL POWER AND A HEARTS-AND-MINDS STRATEGY

IN POST-CONFLICT OPERATIONS

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew J. Cernicky

Human skills may change as technology and warfare demand greater 

versatility. No matter how much the tools of warfare improve, it is the 

Soldier who must exploit these tools to accomplish his mission. The 

Soldier will remain the ultimate combination of sensor and shooter.1

U.S. Army Posture Statement, February 6, 2005

Boots on the ground matter during post-conflict operations.2

However, the conduct of the individuals wearing those boots 

matters the most. Post-conflict operations in Japan, West Germany, 

South Korea, and elsewhere reveal a pattern: soldiers’ thoughts and 

conduct directly relate to the positive progress (or deterioration) of 

the operation. The sources of thoughts and conduct of soldiers come 

predominantly from the values inculcated from and by society, 

culture, education, and training. Another important factor of positive 

progress lies in the degree of mutual social and cultural respect 

and rapport between soldiers and the local populace. There may 

be other socio-cultural dimensions that remain, but winning hearts 

and minds not only matters, but is the most critical factor for the 

successful outcome of post-conflict operations. The social-cultural 

dimension in post-conflict military operations represents a crucial 

element of national power, moral power, which the U.S. military 

should incorporate into its formulation of policy and strategy.

Moral Power.

Various scholars have viewed moral power as a significant 

contributor in military and political endeavors throughout history. 

Clausewitz expounded on the virtues of moral factors in On War. 

He noted that moral qualities of an army can influence the situation 

and objective in myriad ways.3 One must not underestimate the 
potential of moral elements, including “the skill of the commander, 

the experience and courage of the troops, and their patriotic spirit.”4

Nonphysical in nature, moral elements possess no numerical value, 

but they are crucial in any consideration of an army’s real strength.5

One recent commentator has underlined the importance of moral 

power in Foreign Policy. He argues that vital dimensions of power 

include not only material resources, but also faith and psychological 

factors.6 As material resources become more dispersed, they become 

less of a determinant of power.7 Highlighting the Pope’s influence 

to speed communism’s downfall, he argues that one should not 

underestimate the enduring power of ideology and religion. A 

political entity’s legitimacy, judged by its own individual members, 

and its credibility, determined by others, represent the most crucial 

elements of power.8 These elements determine the ability to project 

power.9

Moral factors give organizations stamina and influence morale.10

Believing in themselves, occupying forces can build their credibility 

with the occupied populace. By their behavior, forces to a large 

extent control and influence the degree that hearts and minds are 

won. Winning hearts and minds gives the occupiers credibility, even 

more strength, and eventually the achievement of their objectives.11

“Winning hearts and minds has always been important, but it is even 

more so in a global information age.”12

Moral power differs from soft power. Moral power is an active, 

or at least, a semi-active form of power. Moral power has more of 

an edge than soft power. An entity can choose the degree of moral 

power it wishes to apply in various situations. It can adjust this degree 

depending on current assessments. For instance, an occupation force, 

a strategizing entity, determines its power application processes. 

Soldiers, components of this force, actively pursue some end state. 

Contrasting with soft power, the entity does not maintain the same 

level of control. Soft power is a passive form of power, and its 

influence cannot be controlled easily. The United States cannot control 

the amount of goodwill generated overseas through proliferation of 

its commercial products, such as popular sodas, fast foods, clothing, 

and miniaturized entertainment accessories.13 Soft power co-opts 

rather than coerces people.14 Soft power finds its sources of strength 
in institutions, values, cultures, and policies.15 An occupying force 

finds its sources in the conduct, behavior, and actions of its people. 

They coordinate efforts to harness good moral power. Otherwise, 

they fail to coordinate and lose the capability to apply moral power 

in a positive manner.

National power, strong or weak, derives its existence through 

many, if not limitless sources. Many commonly define the elements 

of national power through the use of the DIME model, representing 

diplomatic, informational, military and economic elements. Others 

have utilized the MIDLIFE model, delineating the elements as military, 

information, diplomatic, legal, intelligence, finance and economic. 

Although these elements encompass many facets of national power, 

they still limit the scope encompassing national power. One major 

element missing in both models is the moral element.

Soldiers Make the Difference.

In general, it is believed that the reasons for the change in the feeling of 

the inhabitants are to be found in the actions of the American troops of 

occupation. Many of the matters complained of are inseparable from an 

occupation, but many are entirely separable therefrom. It is the latter that 

must be corrected, not because of what the Germans may think of us but 

because of our own self respect and of the good name of our country.16

G-2 Conclusion on American Representation 

for Occupied Germany, 1920-21

Soldiers’ behavior, constantly scrutinized by an occupied 

populace, can influence either the success or failure of post-conflict 

operations. Representing the occupying power, troops comply with 

directives governing their mission and perform actions in accordance 

with civil-military leadership. The conduct of troops is important 

because, even though major operations are over, victory remains 

illusive without follow-up; tending to the defeated populace’s state 

of being is vital.17 The occupiers must factor in the “fears, interests, 

and, not least, the honor of the defeated peoples.”18 They must treat 

the defeated with respect.19 Although “decisive” combat power may 

win the fighting phase, it is usually not enough to secure the strategic 

objectives and win the peace.20 Success depends on the transformation 
from combat to peace and stability. To achieve this result, “. . . an 

occupying power must win the hearts and minds of the occupied 

population. It can win hearts and minds with coercive strategies, such 

as arresting citizens loyal to the preoccupied regime or cooperative 

strategies, such as promises of aid.”21 Troops are usually the first on 

the scene to carry out efforts related to economic and psychological 

recovery. Troops reassure, comfort, and persuade. They develop 

confidence, trust, deterrence, and overall regional stability.22 They 

are the military instrument that generates lasting change.23

The people wearing the occupation forces’ boots make up a vital 

part of the army. “The army is people.”24 Similar values, selfless 

service, sacrifices, and experiences bond the army and create a 

unique culture.25 In this culture, soldiers are rigorously trained, 

disciplined, and empowered with vital responsibilities for lives.26

Properly trained, soldiers develop strong loyalties, pride, and selfconfidence.27 They also gain a “sense of superiority” over civilians.28

Fulfilling one of its core competencies, the army shapes the security 

environment through its presence.29 Pertaining to occupation duty 

in Okinawa, Lieutenant General Ferdinand Unger praised American 

ambassador to Japan Alex Johnson, saying “He understood the 

important role that the military played in the conduct of our country’s 

international relations around the world. He understood power and 

the feelings of foreign peoples toward power.”30 With other services, 

soldiers conducting post-conflict operations influence events both in 

theater and at the international level.31

One can define post-conflict operations best as actions derived 

from all elements of national power that resolve issues, support civil 

authorities, strengthen infrastructures, rebuild institutions, promote 

peace, and deter war.32 The range of military activities in these 

operations include peace enforcement, counterterrorism, shows 

of force, raids, strikes, peacekeeping, noncombatant evacuation 

operations, nation assistance, counterinsurgency, freedom of 

navigation, counterdrug, humanitarian assistance, protection of 

shipping, and civil support.33 Post-conflict activities transition 

dominant control back to civilians.34 When post-conflict operations 

take the form of an occupation, they have several objectives. These 

objectives include stabilizing the occupied land.35
An historical study of post-conflict operations can provide insight 

into factors fundamentally related to their success or failure. This 

chapter will review various historical post-conflict operations to 

discern the role moral power, as expressed through the thoughts and 

conduct of soldiers and the mutual respect and rapport that existed 

with the local populace, played in the success or failure of that 

operation. Identifying moral power’s role, this chapter will suggest 

ways which ultimately could influence the course of events either 

positively or negatively. Elucidating the existence, the employment, 

and the role of moral power in the outcome of post-conflict operations 

also will suggest specific ways to mobilize moral power for current 

and future post-conflict operations.

Cases of Post-Conflict Operations.

Our policy here must for every reason of justice and righteousness be 

founded on scrupulously correct conduct towards all inhabitants of the 

Occupied Territory.36

 

Commanding General’s Policy 

for Occupied Germany, 1920-21

Having studied 24 separate occupations, David M. Edelstein 

determined that the longer military occupations last, the less likely 

that they will be successful.37 The longer an occupation lasts, the more 

probable “impatience” will set in and risk its success.38 Reducing risk 

and elevating the likelihood of success is done by breaking down 

the resistance of the occupied people in three ways: ensure they 

understand the need for the occupation, ensure they realize that 

threats exist from which the occupying force can protect them, and 

offer credible assurances that the occupier will ultimately withdraw 

and hand back sovereignty.39 Troops leverage a nation’s strength in 

a powerful manner. Troop presence in an occupying role facilitates 

active control over the population’s social, political, and economic 

structures more so than any other instrument of national power.40

Positive first steps for troops are to behave in ways that establish law 

and order, supply basic requirements, and avoid abuses against the 

populace.41
The behavior of Americans occupying Germany in 1918 created 

both positive and negative impressions. American troops were 

disciplined in their behavior and dressed sharply to win curious 

Germans over to them.42 The Germans also liked the respectful way 

that American officers treated their enlisted troops.43 Simply marching 

in formation, “clean-cut” troops impressed the occupied residents.44

Germans appreciated newly arriving soldiers that extended a 

sign of friendship by distributing chocolate to children. Germans 

also admired the troops’ firm but fair policies.45 Strictly enforcing 

regulations, Americans provided a secure environment which 

comforted the occupied people.46 This civil stabilization improved 

relations by enhancing German feelings of friendship and respect.47

Alternatively, American troops received adverse reactions when 

they acted immorally or drunkenly, requisitioned excessive billets, 

and failed to provide needed food in a timely manner.48 Perceived to 

have been afforded overly comfortable billeting and entertainment 

arrangements, soldiers unintentionally drew resentment from the 

defeated and deprived Germans.49 Many Germans felt overcrowded 

in the Rhineland and distressed in their daily affairs during the 

occupation.50 Overall, American soldiers created more trust and 

cooperation when they behaved and meant well.

World War II-era occupations also indicate ways in which building 

rapport with the occupied people hinders or facilitates the soldiers’ 

mission. This rapport, coupled with soldiers’ conduct, relates to the 

success or failure of the post-conflict operation.

Occupation of Japan (August 28, 1945–April 28, 1952).

Post-conflict operations by American troops in Japan have been 

hailed as successful.51 The United States gained credibility and 

legitimacy during the occupation. Its troops and other agencies 

eliminated a resurgence of Japanese militarism and reconstructed 

political, economic and social structures.52 A “bitterly hostile foe” 

became a “polite and amazingly cooperative friend.”53 Fear of the 

Americans turned into dependency, and dependency turned into 

admiration.54 As a result, the United States secured Japan as an ally 

in the Cold War.55 Troop behavior played an instrumental role in 
these positive outcomes. Capably, willingly, and sincerely, troops 

built respect, mutual understanding, and cooperation among the 

Japanese.56 Other factors also caused the success of the operations, 

including the nature of the Japanese people and the prior planning 

of the Americans.

Troop behavior influenced the respect that the Japanese had for 

the United States. Japanese citizens formed their opinion of their 

occupier based on their contact with American troops.57 The behavior 

of American troops was the single most influential factor in building 

a pro-American sentiment.58 Recognizing the strategic implications 

of troop behavior, the United States educated its soldiers on the 

importance of conduct. It supplied occupation forces with a pocket 

guide which specified “your actions, your conduct, both as a member 

of the Armed Forces, and as an individual, will be the yardstick 

by which they judge the U.S.”59 It further noted “your individual 

contacts will mean more in shaping their ideas about America and 

democracy than all the speeches of our statesmen or all the directives 

put out by the HQ. You are the salesman of democracy.”60 Troops 

acted with confidence, inculcated with a military culture devoid of 

defeat.61

Chivalrous, generous, and naturally friendly, American troops 

created favorable impressions62 and immediately dispelled the myth 

bred by Japanese leaders that Americans were “monsters”63 and 

“savages.”64 Soldiers treated the “exhausted,” “bewildered,” and 

“suspicious” Japanese65 more leniently than they had envisioned.66

They facilitated communications between the occupied and occupiers, 

which mitigated “distrust, ignorance, and noncooperation.”67

Soldiers’ friendliness brought the Japanese out from hiding.68

Handing out candy and gum, they turned many youngsters into 

enthusiastic supporters.69 Offering cigarettes to Japanese citizens, 

soldiers pleased their recipients.70 Cheerful American soldiers 

comforted Japanese adults and children alike71 and gave them 

“warm feelings of affection and gratitude.”72 Strikingly different 

than typical Japanese whose etiquette demanded courtesy to those 

of higher status, soldiers assisted citizens without prejudice. For 

example, soldiers helped them get on and off streetcars and gave up 

seats to women or elders.73 These acts broke language, cultural, and 

social barriers. When bad conduct or invasion behavior occurred, 
5

commanding officers brought troops under control by administering 

penalties to guilty soldiers.74 Soldiers, providing security and food, 

helped create an uncharacteristic friendliness that the Japanese 

appreciated.75 Women soldiers served as secretaries, drivers, wireless 

operators, intelligence operatives, engineers, nurses, doctors, hospital 

administrators, and logistics specialists.76 Other women served in the 

civil education branch of local military government teams, teaching 

Japanese women about their rights under the new societal construct 

and encouraging them to use their democratic freedoms.77

American occupation forces relieved internal aggression built 

up amongst the Japanese; their mere presence equated to essential 

security, stability, and authority.78 Such aggression formed because 

the Japanese leadership could not provide sufficient food, and it failed 

to protect its people from either the constant threat of bombardment 

or actual aerial bombardment.79 Vital rice imports had fallen by 50 

percent in 1943, 70 percent in 1944, and 100 percent by 1945.80 A black 

market provided food opportunities only a few rich could afford.81

A population increase of over 5,000,000; loss of former food source 

providers, including Korea, Formosa, and Manchuria; the loss of 

storage facilities; a lack of fertilizer; and transportation breakdowns 

compounded food shortages.82 Troops closed the sustenance gap 

between starvation and survival.83 As America’s relative strength 

during the war became apparent, the Japanese questioned their 

national leadership’s “sincerity and sanity” for having gotten them 

involved in a war with such a powerful foe.84 Failing to prepare their 

people for the possibility of defeat, Japan’s military leaders caused 

widespread resentment among the population.85 Once the occupiers 

took over, fear from bombardment vanished along with corresponding 

hatred.86 Without troops to build a viable economy, violence and 

political collapse was imminent.87 U.S. troops provided necessary 

political stability during the period when the Japanese underwent 

“complete mental reconstruction,” “psychological demilitarization,” 

and “psychological rehabilitation.”88 With substantial strength, the 

presence of troops negated coordinated drives by Japanese radicals 

or eminent revolutionaries.89 Uniformly, the Japanese accepted the 

Americans.90 In fact, 75 percent of the Japanese residents surveyed 

from November 1945 to December 1945 by the U.S. Strategic Bombing 

Survey felt satisfied with the American occupation.91
Leading the occupation, General Douglas MacArthur desired 

and usually received cooperation from Japanese officials. The 

Japanese respected him almost as much as they did the emperor, 

partly due to his tactful methods and humane treatment.92 Reformminded Japanese welcomed new projects the military government 

began.93 “Orderly” and “compliant” dispositions characterized the 

majority of Japanese.94 Although the Japanese found rapid issuances 

of military government directives confusing and misaligned, they 

generally carried them out with a cooperative effort.95 “Collaboration” 

became the norm during the occupation.96 Military soldiers refrained 

from corrective action on their own accord if they discovered 

Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) policies being 

circumvented by the Japanese.97

Nevertheless, Japanese officials did not appreciate the way 

reformers used mass media to broadcast important directives. They 

felt that occupation officials “were prone to ignore the feelings, 

history, and tradition that influenced equally well-intentioned 

Japanese officials.”98 Regardless, the Japanese enthusiastically 

received the democratization processes, such as demilitarization, 

freedom for women, land ownership reform, freedom of the press, 

liberalization of education, and encouragement of trade unions 

well.99 Less well-received actions which the Japanese accepted with 

skepticism included “decentralization of political and economic 

controls” and elimination of ethics from school texts.100 Americans 

aimed to defeat nationalist movements with these efforts.101

MacArthur kept the military instrument or “Yankee bayonets” 

always ready to enforce his demands.102 Military presence ensured 

progress even though “military government personnel in the field 

frequently exceeded their mandate, intervening directly in local 

affairs.”103 For instance, in October 1946 soldiers forcibly ensured 

that union workers and management at Toshiba Electric Corporation 

quickly resolved their differences. They “locked out all but a handful 

of negotiators until a settlement was reached.”104 In January 1947, 

U.S. soldiers displayed their machine guns at a labor rally to 

“dissuade local miners from striking” and preempt continuance of 

their grievances against management.105 Issuance of the “MacArthur 

Letter,” depriving Japanese government servants the right to 

strike, caused sympathetic university students to revolt against 
“Americanization and colonization of Japanese education.”106 The 

military government guarded against lengthy occupations, which 

by their nature “elicit nationalist reactions that impede success.”107

The Japanese people reacted differently to others depending 

on the race, nationality, gender, and amount of money one had to 

spend. African-American soldiers experienced extreme morale 

problems and related better to the defeated Japanese than their white 

counterparts. Until General Matthew B. Ridgeway took over the 

occupation and implemented Presidential Directive Executive Order 

998, which established equality for all troops without regards to race, 

color, religion, or national origin, commanders segregated them.108

The Japanese even found the Indians, part of the British occupation 

force, more congenial than the Caucasians. The Indians exhibited 

more sympathetic behavior towards the Japanese, and friendships 

developed more readily.109 “The Gurkhas proved popular with 

Japanese women.”110 The greater the custom or racial difference, 

the less enticing the relationship to the Japanese.111 Japanese openly 

solicited soldiers who had money to spend.112 Moreover, considerable 

attitude differences existed among four Japanese groups, namely 

peasant farmers and fishermen, organized labor, industrialists, and 

intellectuals.113 For instance, the intellectuals negatively reacted when 

“punishment of acts prejudicial to the objectives of the occupation” 

was not enforced by the Americans or when SCAP policy, perceived 

to be inconsistent or high-handed, was put into effect.114 Superior 

American troops created a “sense of oppression in minds of 

Japanese.”115 This sense was felt strongest in the intellectuals, scholars, 

and students and weakest among the farmers and small business 

owners.116 Interfering with Japanese traditions agitated the populace. 

Taking away land to expand the Tachikawa airfield for the military 

occupiers destroyed the ability for farmers to grow crops and hand 

down this land to future generations.117 However, expansion also 

made some Japanese happy, as it created new jobs.118

Other factors made post-conflict operations successful, including 

the nature of the Japanese. The Potsdam terms required the 

Japanese government to comply with the occupiers.119 Qualities 

such as “intelligent,” “industrious,” 120 “literate,” and “resilient” 

characterized the Japanese.121 They worked well in teams and lived 

in closely-knit families.122 They revered the Emperor, their spiritual 
leader. Still in “power” under post-conflict rules, he ordered his 

people to cooperate.123 He told them to “work to regain the trust and 

faith of the world; to contribute to world civilization through the 

establishment of a peaceful Japan.”124

Another factor related to the success of post-conflict operations 

included advance planning conducted by the United States. The 

Territorial Subcommittee operated from 1942 to 1943 and an InterDivisional Area Committee on the Far East functioned from 1943 

to 1944.125 The War Department and Navy Department established 

military government schools in May 1942 and January 1943, 

respectively. The Navy also organized the Office of Occupied Areas 

during this time.126 In March 1943, the Civil Affairs Division (CAD) 

began planning for a military administration of occupied areas. By 

the summer of 1944, CAD had established Civil Affairs Training 

Schools for young officers at Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Stanford, 

Michigan, and Northwestern Universities. Leading authorities on 

Japan, like Harvard’s Serge Elisseff and Sir George Sansam, taught 

officers.127 With the aim of benevolent occupation, other specialists 

on Japan assisted, such as Hugh Borton and Joseph C. Grew. They 

formed an “enlightened moderate approach” by the State, War 

and Navy Coordinating Committee for the occupation of Japan.128

Planning efforts made possible formulations of on-target guidance for 

soldiers’ conduct by way of subsequently written rules, regulations, 

and guides. Planning efforts resulted in a “detailed master plan for 

occupation tailored to Japanese precise conditions and requirements” 

which MacArthur just had to carry out.129 Planning payoffs occurred 

throughout the occupation. One became evident in the first months of 

1948 when the Japanese displayed more fortitude and a “take charge 

of their future” attitude concerning the reconstruction.130 Amidst 

continuing food shortages and overpopulation, they sought loans to 

help themselves economically rather than relying on handouts.131 By 

April 28, 1952, Japan had matured into the role of a stable ally of the 

United States, and the occupation ended.

Occupation of Okinawa (September 7, 1945–May 15, 1972).

Passive popular resistance and large costs characterized the 

lengthy but overall successful post-conflict operations in Okinawa.132
While controlling this territory for its geostrategic advantages and 

instituting a democracy, the United States developed a fragile 

relationship with the populace.133 Favorable troop behavior led to 

mission accomplishment. However, some negative behavior created 

tension between Okinawans and the occupiers. Other factors such as 

the occupation forces’ land acquisition program and slow progress 

to rebuild the infrastructure wrecked by the invasion affected 

Okinawan receptivity. Overall, trepid Okinawans appreciated their 

new freedoms secured by the Americans.

Troop conduct varied throughout post-conflict operations. 

Brigadier General William E. Crist, appointed Deputy Commander 

for the Military Government after the island’s capture, set an 

unpopular tone, stating “we have no intention of playing Santa 

Claus for the residents of occupied territory.”134 To achieve military 

objectives at the least possible cost, he employed a harsh, but mission 

oriented attitude.135 Using racially charged language degrading 

Japanese intelligence and dependability, he won no admiration 

from his Japanese translators.136 As a selfish leader, micromanager, 

and souvenir hunter, he won little praise from his subordinates, 

either.137 Regardless, troops initially had “good spirits” and 

importantly a “clear mission,” which included securing rear areas, 

ensuring against Japanese uprising, and developing staging areas 

for operations against the Japanese mainland.138 They disdained 

Okinawans, having just completed months of intense fighting,139 but 

showed empathy toward noncombatant women and children killed 

in combat.140 To minimize civilian interference and maximize their 

own safety, troops put civilians in crowded detention centers. On 

occasion, muddy roads choked the troops’ movement of supplies 

and food, and strained relations.141 Troops, viewed as “overbearing,” 

used brute force to prevent or terminate strikes.142 They acted with 

dignity, kindness, and rationality.143 Atrocities occurred in Okinawa 

but some overstated soldier involvement.144

With the passing of time, morale amongst American troops 

waned which affected their relationship with the Okinawans.145

Americans delayed construction of permanent buildings, resulting 

in soldiers living in tents and huts unsuited to the typhoon prone 

climate.146 Firm segregation policies between white and African-
American troops raised tensions; these tensions had a tendency to 

spill over onto the Okinawans.147 Although American troops had an 

“amicable and generous nature,” some troops acted against the law, 

drastically undermining friendships.148 The Okinawans wanted fair 

treatment and punishments to fit the crime. “Veneer thin” friendships 

developed not only because of criminal behavior, but because of the 

perception that subsequent punishments were light, considering 

the crimes.149 In one case, a soldier found guilty for rape received 

such an insubstantial sentence that it enraged Okinawans. The judge 

in the case reasoned, ironically, that to give the American soldier 

a heavier sentence would strain or break the American-Okinawan 

friendship.150 Four years after combat operations had ended in 

Okinawa, the populace lived in absolute poverty and burdened 

the American taxpayer.151 The conditions for the troops did not 

improve much, either. Occupation assignment became the worst 

of all duties for American soldiers. Okinawa became a “dumping 

ground for incompetents.”152 Lowered pride and professionalism 

degraded soldiers’ influence with the Okinawans and made mission 

accomplishment that much tougher.

Okinawans initially applauded American’s efforts to free them 

from oppression, but this optimism wore down over time “due to 

U.S. Military Government style of neocolonial rule.”153 Okinawans 

used their new freedoms guardedly.154 Poor and confined, Okinawans 

watched their society evaporate with the destruction of 90 percent 

of the island’s buildings.155 Okinawans relied on Americans for 

everything from food to clothing.156 Many blamed, not the Americans 

for their predicament, but the Japanese leadership for “allowing” 

foreign rule.157 Americans strained their relationship with Okinawans 

because they took over a large percentage of prime land, while 

restricting actions on land they allowed Okinawans to keep. In the 

summer of 1945, the American military identified 85 percent of the 

island for base and airstrip development.158 Land ownership, a primary 

Okinawan livelihood, comprised its identity and encompassed its 

ancestral values.159 A deep hatred of the Americans evolved as they 

expanded their airfields and land possessions, and further restricted 

Okinawins from constructing buildings within a one-mile radius of 

military billeting or dependent housing projects with greater than 
100 people.160 The greatest threat to the Okinawans was when they 

tried to rid themselves of American rule by demanding reversion to 

Japan in 1948.161 Military professionalism persevered through this 

troubled time and others to stabilize operations until the occupation 

ended on May 15, 1972.

Occupation of West Germany (May 8, 1945–May 1952).

Success earmarked America’s occupation of West Germany. The 

United States secured the Federal Republic of Germany as an ally 

against the Soviets. Troops helped reconstruct political, economic, 

and social institutions. Certain barriers to social reform and the 

abandonment of denazification constituted some failures of the 

occupation.162 In post-conflict activities, American troops found 

success acting professionally and diplomatically. Projecting a good 

image also mattered. Good relations became stressed under the 

pressures of economic and social issues as time progressed.

American troops showed their mettle from the start of post-conflict 

operations. As often as they patrolled towns with bayonets fixed,163

they jogged through the same neighborhoods to get exercise.164

Although many troops passionately loathed the Germans,165 they 

behaved in a professional and reassuring manner. They judged 

Germans to be “thrifty”, “workmanlike,” “cooperative,” “friendly,” 

and “steady.”166 To uproot the enemy’s government, troops engaged 

themselves with the public, especially with the youth.167 Soldiers 

treated enemy prisoners with dignity. With guarded trust, they 

treated the populace fairly.168 The typical American soldier acted in 

a “civil way.”169 Diplomatic soldiers generated goodwill. A soldier 

confidently responded to an accusation made by a young German 

girl that American bombs ruined her beautiful country. His remark 

that American planes attacked only military targets of importance 

enlightened the civilian and mitigated animosity.170

Recognizing that soldiers’ images played an important part 

in the potential success of post-conflict operations, the U.S. Army 

solicited individuals of the highest caliber for their newly established 

Constabulary, known as the Lightning Bolt.171 It sought 38,000 men 

functioning as soldiers and policemen to provide general military-
civil security.172 The unit’s task was to serve a mission described as 

the “most delicately difficult any command has had since the war’s 

end.”173 Furthermore, the task demanded “definite standards of 

physique, education, and background,” and troopers trained “in a 

way that surpasses any previous military conditioning program.”174

Appearance became a major element of the Constabulary. Outfitted 

in a “Sam Browne Leather belt,” “smooth surfaced combat boots,” 

“olive drab blouse with matching trousers,” and “golden scarf,” 

the Constabulary force promised to be the “sharpest dressed” GIs 

in the Army.175 Projecting such a positive image boosted the army’s 

prestige and generated “an obedient or cooperative attitude” from 

the German populace.176

During post-conflict operations, Germans had mixed thoughts. 

They guarded them carefully.177 At times, they trusted the troops, 

as highlighted by the following story. An American company 

reoccupied the same town it had occupied a month earlier. Preparing 

for another displacement, a civilian family loaded wagons with their 

household goods. Upon recognizing the troops who were again 

going to inhabit their home, these family members “unloaded their 

possessions and returned them to the house. They were confident 

these guys would leave their house in decent condition as they had 

before.”178 Germans did not like Americans fraternizing with their 

population. When American troops’ conduct deteriorated, German 

complaints and crime against troops escalated.179

As the occupation lengthened, economic and social pressures 

coalesced into stressed relations. Failing to reduce food shortages 

and to raise the standard of living soon enough, troops faced constant 

resentment.180 Likewise, when the military government segregated 

waiting rooms, hotels, shops, transportation, theaters and stages, 

resentment increased.181 Disrespect for American authority took 

the form of contemptuous sneering and open defiance to soldiers. 

The youth of the occupied population became the most arrogant 

and rebellious.182 Former good relations with indigenous persons 

employed with the military government began to fade.183 Amidst a 

resentful populace, troop discipline and morale waned.184 A soldier 

felt unsuited to his mission, writing “it’s one big rat race,” and “when 

they clear out the soldiers and start responsible civilians running 
things (American civilians), things will shape up to pattern.”185 He 

also wrote “the Army can fight a war but after that they just fool 

around and wait for another war.”186 Occupation soldiers each had 

their own stories to tell. Many promoted the success of post-conflict 

operations with their good conduct and rapport with the Germans.

Occupation of South Korea (September 8, 1945-August 15, 1948).

American troops achieved a mixed outcome of both success 

and failure during their post-conflict operations in South Korea.187

Many problems confronted the troops, including demobilizing 

Japanese military forces and establishing a civil government.188

Massive migrations of people to and from Korea compounded these 

problems.189 Unfavorable factors outweighed favorable factors.190

After operations ended, the United States finally earned a reliable 

friendship with South Korea.191 The Korean War solidified this 

alliance.192 Failures included having to fight this war and having to 

counter the population’s strong resistance to post-conflict operations 

in the first place.193

Due to the “primitive nature” of South Korea, troop behavior 

required toughness, ingenuity, and patience to succeed.194 Lieutenant 

General John R. Hodge, commander of the Headquarters U.S. Army 

Military Government in Korea, provided sympathetic leadership to 

oversee the challenging occupation.195 The attitudes and actions of 

the Koreans and their leaders reflected an educationally deficient 

and organizationally unprepared society.196 Although untrained 

in technology, Koreans had an “industrious,” “intelligent,” and 

“adaptable” character.197 Many were “capable” and “energetic,” but 

most lacked experience caused by decades of Japanese occupation.198

The language barrier and lack of interpreters caused intense strain 

between the Americans and Koreans.199 Koreans considered the use 

of Japanese interpreters “extremely distasteful,” further increasing 

tensions.200 Morale issues resulted in an investigation into troop 

conditions in South Korea in early 1947.201 A survey team conducted 

169 visits to 84 different locations and attributed low morale to 

high turnover rates, inexperienced soldiers, flawed basic training, 

leadership failures, land conditions, and poor climate.202 By March 
1948, lengthy tours of duty caused some soldiers to consider the 

occupation as hopeless.203 These soldiers held the Koreans in contempt 

and stereotyped them as “stupid, lazy, dishonest, or completely 

disinterested.”204 By contrast, follow-on troops brought optimism 

to the occupation and felt that Koreans possessed helpful skills and 

were honest.205

Political, economic, social, and cultural factors strained behaviors 

of both the occupied people and the occupiers. Newly acquired 

freedoms of civil rights gave rise to political activism amongst the 

South Koreans. Their political directions diverged when “union 

of the mind and spirit were most needed.”206 By March 1948 the 

number of political parties totaled approximately 450.207 In contrast, 

Koreans neglected to prioritize economic programs to assist in their 

recovery.208 Persistent inflation and unemployment escalated the 

economic problems.209 The National Economic Board, an agency 

of the military government, stepped in and planned the national 

distribution of controlled commodities.210 It provided fair allocations 

to the provinces and a centralized policy of distribution.211 Its actions 

prevented starvation. Social problems included continuous crime 

and homelessness.212 Soldiers executed “sincere” and “sound” efforts 

to keep law and order.213 Sensitive to building goodwill with the 

Koreans, troops refrained from obtaining billets at their expense.214

Also, they acted humanely, attending to the health and clothing needs 

of millions of displaced people.215 Troops’ fair and equal treatment of 

Koreans elicited some cooperation and good relations. Regardless, 

some Koreans chose to take opportunistic directions for themselves, 

which opposed operational success.216 After 40 years of Japanese 

repression, the Koreans suspiciously viewed American occupiers 

as tyrants.217 Troops overcame this cultural barrier by establishing 

freedoms of speech and writing, as well as improving public health, 

sanitation, road, railroad, and educational infrastructures.218

Other negative and positive factors affected troop success. An 

undefined American policy confused the occupiers and Koreans 

alike.219 Under an uncertain American government, economic reform 

stagnated.220 The Russians, occupiers of Korea north of the 38th 

parallel, severed the flow of important goods to the south, including 

lumber, fertilizer, coal, and minerals.221 Positive factors included 

having a large labor pool and a slightly modernized economy.222
6

Amidst austere conditions, American’s “generosity and humanity” 

prevented the population from starving to death and enabled the 

creation of the Government of the Korean Republic on August 15, 

1948.223

Recommendations.

Soldiers conducting post-conflict operations must not only possess 

suitable hardware, but they must also possess knowledge, excellent 

training, and outstanding leadership.224 Utilizing the most advanced 

weaponry, materials or supplies does not guarantee ultimate mission 

success. Technical proficiency with their equipment enables soldiers 

to wage war and get to post-conflict situations soonest. Proficiency, 

combined with knowledge of situational subtleties, provide the 

populace feelings that a secure climate exists. The security created 

protects both soldiers and the populace, limits radicals’ ambitions, 

and stymies insurrection opportunities. Preparing soldiers with 

knowledge includes giving them training grounded in moral values. 

Soldiers must have the conviction to act with equity and humanity. 

Training regimens must not only focus on combat, but must 

concentrate on a curriculum entailing military operations other than 

war (MOOTW). In MOOTW, soldiers have the capability to deter 

adversary’s action based on their physical presence or their potential 

employment. They “facilitate achieving strategic goals.”225

Soldiers’ training must include noncombat and nonlethal aspects. 

This complementary training enables soldiers to conduct themselves 

in line with national objectives. Author Max Boot says the United 

States has been slow to field nonlethal weapons. He says this may 

have the overall effect of costing lives.226 Prepared soldiers can prevent 

compromising situations. They can answer populations’ questions 

responsively or explain snafus, thereby promoting goodwill. Training 

should equip soldiers with the capacity to perceive situational 

changes and to make logical decisions regarding the necessity to 

apply or not apply force. Based on current events, Boot suggests 

that the U.S. Government should institute the production of “highquality general purpose forces that can shoot terrorists one minute 

and hand out candy to children the next.”227 Providing protection in 

this fashion, soldiers begin to win the occupied people’s favor.
Moreover, soldiers need a full appreciation of the cultural, 

economic, political, and societal scenery if they want to attain 

beneficial strategic results. Applying Sun Tzu, soldiers that know 

their former enemy and know themselves will never be in danger.228

Not knowing the enemy heightened the danger for British officers 

trying to keep order in Malaya. Unable to differentiate between 

Indian, Chinese or Malayan, they afforded the insurgents great 

advantage.229 Directives need to protect the occupying forces; 

however, they must not place at risk safe access for the soldiers to 

interact with the occupied populace. Understanding socio-culturalmoral forbearances230 can lead to successes, such as those found by 

the pathfinders of the U.S. Army. They succeeded against the Indians 

in the last part of the 19th century.231 In addition, soldiers become 

more effective when armed with intimate knowledge of the occupied 

people. For example, American soldiers in Iraq feel empowered as 

difference makers, and they are determined to win the peace, shown 

in “their compassion for each other and for the Iraqi people.”232 With 

proper equipment, knowledge, and training, soldiers can win hearts, 

minds, and souls.233

Soldiers must demonstrate their capacity and willingness to assist 

occupied populaces in order to facilitate post-conflict operations 

success. Although “reluctance to put boots on the ground looks weak 

to friends and foe alike,”234 failing to put well-behaved people in boots 

on the ground is even more detrimental. Suspicious of occupying 

soldiers, an occupied populace first requires that the occupying force 

meets their needs. They guardedly watch the occupier’s methods 

and behavior. Soldiers must employ sound human relations 

techniques.235 They must act considerately and put forth maximum 

effort. They must plan their actions carefully so as not to offend, and 

maintain constant contact with the people.236 This behavior facilitates 

communication, while eliminating distrust and ignorance.237 Hatred 

toward soldiers disintegrates as soldiers demonstrate their aims to 

be fair and beneficent for the good of the occupied people. Until 

the occupied populace has the capacity to protect, feed, and govern 

itself, the soldiers, along with any subsequent agencies assigned, 

must provide these services. In this way, soldiers rid themselves 

of the populace’s negative preconceptions, build confidence, and 
encourage cooperation. Soldiers’ actions and presence disarm 

occupied populations of their hatreds. Once protected and nourished, 

occupied populaces start to become a positive force for the rebuilding 

of the occupied society and its institutions. Good rapport with 

populaces of varying abilities can overcome many barriers, such as 

rebellion, which may prevent progress.

The behavior of occupation soldiers can diminish the potential 

of occupied people to rebel. Soldiers, enchanting the Japanese 

by their generous, friendly, and humane nature, made friends 

out of disbelievers, not enemies. Entrenched for the long run, 

soldiers warded off deleterious uprisings of domestic, radical, and 

revolutionary nature in Japan. In Germany, soldiers appeased the 

populace through professional behavior, interaction, and dialog early 

on. Later, when Germans perceived soldiers getting unfair, special 

privileges, they became openly defiant and rebellious. Generous 

soldiers providing food, health, and clothing gradually helped 

create conditions for a strategic alliance between South Korean and 

the United States. Enforcing new rules and directives in association 

with the development of new institutions during any post-conflict 

operation inevitably will create tension. Giving the populace more 

freedoms, as in South Korea where political parties multiplied, also 

may tend to give rise to rebellion. However, soldiers’ behavior can 

help keep a lid on potential unrest.

Soldiers must act with extreme professionalism or risk creating 

barriers for operational or strategic success. In Okinawa, the failure to 

project professionalism made the difficult task of taking over private 

land for military uses even tougher. Recently in Iraq, U.S. Marines, 

attempting to take Fallujah with a minimum of civilian casualties, 

took street by street, block by block, consciously choosing the right 

shot every step of the way.238 This tactic eased political pressures. 

Utmost professional conduct helps thwart insurgents. Unpredictable 

insurgents complicate the occupier’s mission. They may realize 

the strength of the occupiers and lie dormant. They may realize 

the futility of creating any skirmishes or execute suicidal efforts to 

weaken the occupation. Regardless, soldiers need to build positive 

relationships, trust and respect with the occupied population who 

may know insurgents best. Goodwill between the forces and various 
agencies or representatives of the population will generate crucial 

information about insurgents. Soldiers also should aim to team 

up with the local populace. An occupied-occupier alliance formed 

against the insurgents will mitigate their effect or eliminate them 

altogether. Acting professionally means soldiers carry through on 

projects promised. Otherwise they fracture the relationships and 

generate frustration detrimental to the post-conflict operations.239 The 

military’s behavior becomes more restricted as societies become more 

liberated, such as those in the Middle East.240 The media of occupied 

territories send out to the world their own interpretations of troop 

action and conduct. These interpretations are formed by their own 

“prejudices, passions, and insecurities which emerge out of their own 

historical and geographical experience” and are transformed by the 

“hopes, dreams, and exaggerations of their respective societies.”241

Soldiers must educate occupied populaces to take over 

responsibilities associated with newly established security and 

governmental infrastructure. The occupied may lack experience, as 

in South Korea, but they desire employment, have the intellect and 

adaptability to assist security efforts, and eventually must take over to 

terminate the occupation. Effective ways soldiers can “embrace” the 

population include “train with them all day, watch videos with them 

at night, go out with them,” and quarter with them.242 Soldiers and 

populace must bond.243 Specialized forces can go into the villages to 

explore and discover the needs, desires and fears of the population. 

Offering humanitarian assistance and collecting intelligence all the 

while, they quickly dispel myths and appear to the population as 

caring individuals.244 Indigenous people providing security has 

advantages. Recently, a U.S. Marine-trained Iraqi soldier shot and 

killed an incognito insurgent attempting to enter a mosque for 

afternoon prayers. The Iraqi soldier recognized that the “worshipper” 

used an improper accent and intuitively shot the grenade-laden 

terrorist without asking further questions.245 The British and French 

prefer to operate indirectly, letting the indigenous people do the 

shooting for them.246 The British indirectly controlled the military 

government set up in their occupation zone in Germany at the end 

of World War II. German administrators put in place followed the 

British letter of the law. This “creatively functioning indigenous” 

organization demonstrated the British liberal approach.247 The 
British did not shrink from public criticism and were guided firmly 

by their belief that democratic principles practiced over time would 

become second nature. The skeptical Germans could be conditioned 

and “educated” to adopt democracy.248 Also, the British military 

relies on thorough training instead of fear or coercion to affect good 

discipline and morale. They believe that “production of good morale 

is the most important object in military training.”249

A nation must not complicate its ability to utilize moral power 

in achieving its objectives by going it alone. To win hearts and 

minds, a nation must not be insensitive to building the strongest 

consensus and coalition possible to preserve its influence.250 For 

instance, the United States presently emphasizes a preemptive war 

strategy codified in the Bush doctrine. The administration’s decision 

to proceed into a war with Iraq, without United Nations support, 

has solidified a negative perspective. Some believe that the United 

States is an “arrogant superpower that is insensitive to the concerns 

of other countries in the world.”251 Subsequently, the United States 

has diminished its capability to project influence, regardless of boots 

on the ground.252 If viewed by others as a mistake to go it alone in 

this fashion, the United States has done much in its post-conflict 

operations to change the world’s attitude. The end state sought 

by the United States, a constituted democracy operating in Iraq, 

“brings moral clarity and cures deluded populaces of their false 

grievances and exaggerated hurts.”253 Democracies promote stability, 

demonstrated by Germany’s peaceful, nonexpansive nature and 

Japan’s contentment securing resources in the marketplace today.254

The value of moral power increases significantly with advance 

planning for post-conflict. Years of planning in preparation for the 

occupation of Japan gave the United States tremendous leverage. 

Reputable authorities participating on committees, in military 

government schools, and in civil affairs schools engineered an 

excellent plan to rebuild Japan. Their visions became reality. 

Planning maximized the probability of soldiers’ success in Japan and 

practically guaranteed for the United States a long-lasting strategic 

partnership. Inadequate planning will weaken any post-conflict 

security situation, as the recent Iraq example shows. Following the 

combat phase, the occupying power continues to lose many lives, 

time, and credibility.255
Occupying soldiers need a clear mission, and campaign plans 

need to have strategies that “[make] it easier for an occupying power 

to install a stable and sustainable government.”256 Policy must be 

known and understood by all soldiers. They then can represent 

their countries properly and discipline themselves accordingly. 

Performing tasks in coherence with policy, soldiers build and 

sustain good character. An unclear policy in Okinawa fostered the 

degradation of moral values which spilled over onto the Okinawan 

populace. Soldiers suffering from subsequent morale problems feel 

less inclined to be merciful, compassionate, sincere, or rational. This 

tends to delay the attainment of operational and strategic goals as it 

widens cultural, societal, political, and economic gaps.

Moral power, an element of national power, should be incorporated 

into United States military policy and strategy formulation. The 

education process should begin by including moral power as a distinct 

element in the DIME and MIDLIFE models. Introducing DIME-M and 

MIDLIFE-M type models into developmental education curriculums 

will stimulate thinking among future leaders and highlight the vital 

importance of this national element. Future military operations must 

be conducted only after thorough analysis of the ways moral power, 

as expressed through the thoughts and conduct of soldiers and their 

mutual respect and rapport with the populace, affects the success 

of the operations. Proper application of moral power could gain 

leaders efficiency, advantage, and ultimate victory. Consideration 

of the strategic effects that moral power application produces must 

become second nature to all military leaders.

Conclusion.

The most critical factor for the successful outcome of post-conflict 

operations consists of moral power, expressed through the thoughts 

and conduct of soldiers and a mutual respect and rapport with 

the populace. In Japan, the conduct of the soldiers transformed a 

formidable enemy into an accommodating ally. Soldiers’ behavior 

bridged the significant cultural gap leading to a strong strategic 

partnership. Okinawans’ receptivity of occupation soldiers varied 

in conjunction with the behavior of soldiers. Soldiers overcame 
difficulties, their conduct facilitating success. The soldiers secured 

Okinawans’ freedoms and established a democracy. Soldiers’ 

conduct created a lasting friendship between the United States and 

Germany, valued to this day, and set in motion the reconstruction of 

political, economic, and social institutions. Troop conduct in South 

Korea overcame formidable conditions, including food shortages, 

language barriers, and massive migrations of people. Soldiers’ 

humane conduct led to successful demobilization of the Japanese 

and establishment of a civil government.

Battles for occupied peoples’ hearts and minds are the battles 

that Americans need to win during post-conflict operations. Within 

the constraints of dictated policy during post-conflict operations, 

soldiers should conduct themselves in ways endearing to the 

occupied populace. In direct contact with occupied populaces, they 

wield substantial strength through their conduct and rapport. 

Providing basic needs, showing respect, and instituting fairness into 

their activities, soldiers dispel suspicions, earn credibility, and attain 

their goals more readily. This leads to favorable strategic results. 

Limitless success awaits military leaders and nations who reassure 

and comfort occupied people in present and future post-conflict 

operations.

ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 3

1. Peter J. Schoomaker and Francis J. Harvey, “United States Army Posture 

Statement 2005,” February 6, 2005, available from www.army.mil/aps/05/training.

html; Internet, accessed March 9, 2005.

2. David T. Zabecki, “Landpower in History,” Armed Forces Journal International, 

Vol. 140, No. 1, August 2002, p. 40.

3. Carl Von Clausewitz; On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, trans. and 

eds., Princeton, NJ, 1989, p. 184.

4. Ibid., p. 186.

5. Ibid.

6. Niall Ferguson, “Power,” Foreign Policy, January/February 2003, p. 22.

7. Ibid., p. 24.

8. Ibid., p. 22.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., p. 24.
11. David M. Edelstein, “Occupational Hazards: Why Military Occupations 

Succeed or Fail,” International Security, Vol. 29, No. 1, Summer 2004, p. 58.

12. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, New 

York: Public Affairs, 2004, p. 1.

13. Ferguson, p. 21.

14. Nye, p. 6.

15. Ibid., p. 8.

16. Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, American Forces in Germany, 

American Representation in Occupied Germany, 1920-1921, Coblenz, 1922, Vol. 2, p. 

63.

17. Michael Howard, “When Are Wars Decisive?,” Survival, Vol. 41, No. 1, 

Spring 1999, p. 128.

18. Ibid., p. 135.

19. Ibid., p. 132.

20. Clark A. Murdock, Michele A. Flournoy, Christopher A. Williams, and Kurt 

M. Campbell, “Beyond Goldwater-Nichols, Defense Reform for a New Strategic 

Era, Phase 1 Report,” March 2004, p. 67, available from www.csis.org/isp/gn/phase1.

pdf; Internet, accessed February 21, 2005.

21. Edelstein, p. 58.

22. Department of the Army, “The Army, Army FM-1,” Washington, DC: U.S. 

Department of the Army, June 14, 2001, p. 22.

23. Zabecki, p. 40.

24. Department of the Army, “The Army,” p. 22.

25. Ibid., p. 25.

26. Charles H. Donnelly, “Autobiography by Charles Howard Donnelly, 

Colonel U.S.A.R., retired,” U.S. Army Military History Institute, U.S. copyright 

TXU 24-752, July 11, 1979, Washington DC, May 10, 1979, p. 911.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Department of the Army, “The Army,” p. 22.

30. Nicholas E. Sarantakes, Keystone: The American Occupation of Okinawa and 

U.S.-Japanese Relations, College Station, TX, 2000, p. 147.

31. Zabecki, pp. 40-42.

32. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Doctrine for Military Operations Other Than 

War,” Joint Pub 3-07, Washington, DC: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, June 16, 1995, pp. 

I-2, GL-4.

33. Ibid., p. I-2.

34. Ibid., p. IV-12.
35. Edelstein, p. 50.

36. Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, American Representation in Occupied 

Germany, Vol. 2, p. 64.

37. Edelstein, pp. 50-51.

38. Ibid., p. 58.

39. Ibid., pp. 51, 59.

40. Zabecki, pp. 40-42.

41. Edelstein, p. 59.

42. General Headquarters American Expeditionary Forces, “Candid Comment 

on the American Soldier of 1917-1918,” personal interviews of Germans prepared 

by the Enemy Order of Battle Subsection of the Intelligence Section, Chaumont, 

France, 1919, p. 22.

43. Ibid., p. 14.

44. Ibid., pp. 14, 22.

45. Ibid., p. 31.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid., p. 36.

49. Ibid., p. 46.

50. Ibid., p. 59.

51. Edelstein, p. 87.

52. Ibid.

53. T. T. Brumbaugh, “Japan Believes in Us Now,” The Christian Century, Vol. 

63, November 27, 1946, p. 1434.

54. Earnest R. Hilgard, “The Enigma of Japanese Friendliness,” The Public 

Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 3, Autumn 1946, p. 346.

55. Edelstein, p. 87.

56. Wilford L. Harrelson, The Occupation of Japan: A Case Study in Military Public 

Relations, Thesis to Partially Fulfill Requirement of MA, University of Wisconsin, 

1949, p. 177.

57. Jules Henry, “Initial Reactions to the Americans in Japan,” Journal of Social 

Issues, Vol. 2, August 1946, p. 24.

58. Ibid.

59. Armed Forces Information and Education Division Office of the Secretary 

of Defense, Armed Forces Pocket Guide-Japan, Vol. 25, Washington, DC: U.S. Armed 

Forces Information and Education Division Office of the Secretary of Defense, n.d., 

p. 1.
60. Ibid.

61. Henry, p. 19.

62. Hilgard, p. 347.

63. Henry, p. 22.

64. Brumbaugh, p. 1434.

65. Gordon T. Bowles, “Postwar Trends in Japanese Attitudes toward America,” 

Japan Quarterly, Vol. 3, July/September 1956, pp. 278, 283.

66. Donnelly, p. 833.

67. Harrelson, p. 157.

68. Henry, p. 21.

69. Donnelly, p. 824.

70. Henry, p. 22.

71. Brumbaugh, p. 1434.

72. Kitani Tadashi, “Attitudes Towards America,” Japan Quarterly, Vol. 3, 

January/March 1956, pp. 27, 32, 35.

73. Hilgard, p. 347.

74. Henry, p. 22.

75. Ibid., p. 24.

76. Takemae Eiji, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and its Legacy, Robert 

Ricketts and Sebastian Swann, trans., New York: Continuum, 2002, p. 127.

77. Ibid., p. 128.

78. “Japan’s Stability Depends on Military Occupation,” Intelligence Review, No. 

84, September 25, 1947, p. 57.

79. Henry, p. 20.

80. Ibid.

81. Ibid.

82. U.S. War Department General Staff, G-2, “Food-The Major Problem in 

Japan’s Occupation,” Intelligence Review, No. 95, December 11, 1947, pp. 49-57.

83. “Japan’s Stability Depends on Military Occupation,” p. 57.

84. Brumbaugh, p. 1434.

85. Hilgard, p. 344.

86. Ibid., p. 343.

87. “Japan’s Stability Depends on Military Occupation,” p. 57.

88. Ibid., p. 51.

89. Brumbaugh, p. 1434.
7

90. Hilgard, p. 344.

91. Henry, p. 19.

92. Donnelly, p. 896.

93. Eiji, p. 116.

94. Robert E. Ward and Frank J. Shulman, comps. and eds., The Allied Occupation 

of Japan, 1945-1952, Chicago: American Library Association, 1974, p. 716.

95. Bowles, p. 279.

96. Eiji, p. 115.

97. Ibid., p. 117.

98. Ibid., p. 114.

99. Bowles, p. 278.

100. Ibid.

101. Ibid.

102. Eiji, p. 116.

103. Ibid., pp. 116, 119.

104. Ibid., pp. 119-129.

105. Ibid.

106. Bowles, p. 279.

107. Edelstein, pp. 50-51.

108. Eiji, pp. 129-130.

109. Ibid., pp. 135-136.

110. Ibid.

111. Tadashi, p. 30.

112. Ibid.

113. Bowles, p. 278.

114. Ibid., p. 279.

115. Tadashi, p. 35.

116. Ibid.

117. Ibid., p. 28.

118. Ibid., p. 30.

119. Eiji, p. 116.

120. Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Select Committee on Foreign Aid, 

Economic and Political Conditions in the Far East: Japan, China, Korea; Report of William 

Montgomery McGovern, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1948, p. 8.

121. Donnelly, p. 837.
122. Ibid.

123. Henry, p. 23.

124. Charles A. Willoughby, “Occupation of Japan and Japanese Reaction,” 

Military Review, Vol. 26, No. 3, June 1946, p. 4.

125. Eiji, p. 202.

126. Ibid., p. 206.

127. Ibid.

128. D. Clayton James, “American and Japanese Strategies in the Pacific War,” 

Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Peter Paret, ed., 

Princeton, NJ, 1986, p. 725.

129. Eiji, p. 210.

130. Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Select Committee on Foreign Aid, 

pp. 2, 8.

131. Ibid.

132. Edelstein, p. 87.

133. Ibid.

134. Eiji, p. 443.

135. Ibid.

136. Sarantakes, p. 29.

137. Ibid.

138. Ibid.

139. Eiji, p. 441.

140. Sarantakes, p. 30.

141. Ibid., p. 29.

142. Eiji, p. 442.

143. Sarantakes, p. 30.

144. Ibid.

145. Ibid., p. 32.

146. Ibid.

147. Eiji, p. 442.

148. Sarantakes, p. 148.

149. Ibid., p. 149.

150. Ibid.

151. Ibid., p. 47.

152. Ibid., pp. 28-29.
153. Eiji, p. 442.

154. Sarantakes, p. 149.

155. Ibid., pp. 31, 148.

156. Ibid., p. 31.

157. Ibid., p. 149.

158. Ibid., p. 31.

159. Eiji, p. 445.

160. Ibid.

161. Ibid., p. 443.

162. Edelstein, p. 87.

163. Franklin L. Gurley, historian for the 100th ID Association, “Franklin L. 

Gurley Papers,”, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA, 1992, July 9, 

1945.

164. Ibid., July 2, 1945.

165. Keith Winston, private first class, Medical Detachment, 2nd Battalion, 

398th Infantry Regiment, 100th ID, “A Soldier Named Keith,” typescript and 

wartime letters, box titled: The 100th ID papers, Box 6, U.S. Army Military History 

Institute, Carlisle, PA, May 19, 1945, p. 277.

166. Gurley, March 20, 1946.

167. Joseph H. Hyde, Jr., “Army Services Experiences Questionnaire,” 

Department of the Army, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA, n.d., 

p. 14.

168. Ibid., pp. 13-14.

169. Winston, p. 262.

170. Ibid., p. 263.

171. “Constabulary Forming,” Army and Navy Journal, April 6, 1946, p. 970.

172. Ibid.

173. Ibid.

174. Ibid.

175. Ibid., p. 971.

176 . “German Attitudes Toward the Occupation,” Intelligence Review, No. 74, 

July 17, 1947, p. 33.

177. Ibid., p. 31.

178. Winston, pp. 261-262.

179. “German Attitudes Toward the Occupation,” pp. 30-31.

180. Ibid., p. 33.
181. Ibid., p. 29.

182. Ibid., p. 30.

183. Ibid., p. 32.

184. Hyde, “Army Services Experiences Questionnaire,” p. 15.

185. Gurley, December 10, 1945.

186. Ibid.

187. Edelstein, p. 88.

188. Duncan Sinclair, “The Occupation of Korea—Operations and 

Accomplishments,” Military Review, Vol. 27, No. 5, August 1947, p. 54.

189. Robert T. Oliver, “The Rebirth of Korea,” Essay found in the Charles 

Donnelly papers, U.S. Army Military History Institute, box titled Japan and Korea, 

1946-1948, folder marked Korea, 2, 1947-1948, chapter IV, pp. 2-3.

190. Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Select Committee on Foreign Aid, 

p. 20.

191. Edelstein, p. 88.

192. Ibid.

193. Ibid.

194. Donnelly, p. 866.

195. “Long Live the Republic of Korea,” The Union Democrat, August 15, 1948, 

p. 1.

196. William F. Centner, address, Columbus, OH, Junior Chamber of Commerce, 

July 7, 1949, U.S. Army Military History Institute, document, p. 4.

197. Oliver, p. 3.

198. Sinclair, pp. 55-56.

199. Ibid., p. 56.

200. Ibid.

201. Donnelly, p. 869.

202. Ibid., pp. 869-871.

203. Charles H. Donnelly, “Report of South Korean Occupation,” Memorandum 

for Mr. Arthur A. Kimball of the State Department, Washington DC, March 10, 

1948, U.S. Army Military History Institute, U.S. copyright TXU 24-752, July 11, 

1979, Washington DC, May 10, 1979, p. 1.

204. Ibid.

205. Ibid.

206. Oliver, p. 3.

207. Ibid.
208. Ibid.

209. Ibid., p. 4; and chapter III, p. 1.

210. Headquarters U.S. Army Military Government in Korea, National 

Economic Board, Regulation No. 1, Seoul, Korea: Headquarters U.S. Army Military 

Government in Korea, September 14, 1946, p. 1.

211. Ibid.

212. Oliver, p. 4, chapter III, p. 1.

213. Sinclair, p. 60.

214. Ibid., p. 35.

215. Centner, p. 5.

216. Oliver, p. 3.

217. Centner, pp. 3, 5.

218. Sinclair, p. 60.

219. Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Select Committee on Foreign Aid, 

p. 25.

220. Ibid.

221. Ibid., p. 22.

222. Ibid., p. 25.

223. “Long Live the Republic of Korea,” p. 1.

224. Zabecki, pp. 40-42.

225. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Doctrine for Joint Operations, Joint Pub 3-0, Washington, 

DC: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 10 September 2001, p. I-3.

226. Max Boot, “The Struggle to Transform the Military,“ March/April 2005, 

available from www.foreignaffairs.org/20050301faessay84210/max-boot/the-struggleto-transform-the-military.html; internet, accessed February 14, 2005.

227. Ibid.

228. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Samuel B. Griffith, trans., London: Oxford 

University Press, 1971, p. 84.

229. Sir George Maxwell and committee comps., The Civil Defence of Malaya, 

London: Hutchinson and Company, 1944, p. 88.

230. Jiyul Kim, jiyul.kim@carlisle.army.mil, “FW: Robert Kaplan on The New 

Middle East,” electronic mail message to Andrew Cernicky, andrew.cernicky@

carlisle.army.mil, December 20, 2004.

231. Trudy Kuehner, “Robert Kaplan on the New Middle East,” December 17, 

2004, available from www.fpri.org/enotes/20041217.middleeast.kaplanr.newmiddleeast.

html; internet, accessed December 20, 2004.
232. Gregory Fontenot, E. J. Degen, and David Tohn, On Point: The United States 

Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute 

Press, 2004, p. 430.

233. Ling W. Lee, “War Against Global Terrorism: Winning the Hearts, Minds, 

and Souls of the Muslim World,” in Essays 2004, Washington, DC: National Defense 

University Press, 2004, p. 57.

234. Zabecki, pp. 40-42.

235. Harrelson, p. iv.

236. Ibid., p. 157.

237. Ibid., p. 177.

238. Kuehner.

239. Henry, p. 25.

240. Kuehner.

241. Ibid.

242. Ibid.

243. Ibid.

244. Ibid.

245. Greg Jaffe, “A Marine Captain Trains Iraqi Colonel To Take Over Fight,” 

February 24, 2005, available from www.pwcweb.com/vfwpost1503/hot_topics.html; 

Internet, accessed February 27, 2005.

246. Kuehner.

247. “The British Occupation Zone in Germany,” Intelligence Review, No. 78, 

August 14, 1947, p. 48.

248. Ibid.

249. Anthony Kellett, Combat Motivation: The Behavior of Soldiers in Battle, Boston: 

Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing, 1982, p. 79.

250. Lee, p. 72.

251. Ibid.

252. Ibid.

253. Victor D. Hanson, “Why Democracy? Ten Reasons to Support Democracy 

in the Middle East,” February 11, 2005, available from www.victorhanson.com/

articles/hanson021105.html; Internet, accessed February 11, 2005.

254. Ibid.

255. Murdock, p. 67.

256. Edelstein, p. 58.

CHAPTER 4

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM:

THE LONG ROAD TOWARD SUCCESSFUL 

U.S. STRATEGY IN IRAQ

Lieutenant Colonel Bjarne M. Iverson

Like an earlier generation, America is answering new dangers with firm 

resolve. No matter how long it takes, no matter how difficult the task, we 

will fight the enemy, and lift the shadow of fear, and lead free nations to 

victory.

U.S. President George W. Bush

March 8, 2005

INTRODUCTION

The United States finds itself deeply engaged in Iraq and 

Afghanistan, as it was until only recently in Bosnia-Herzegovina and 

Kosovo. As a nation, Americans have accepted and for the most part 

supported more than 50 years of engagement in Germany, Japan, 

and Korea, as well as more than 10 years in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 

It should not be surprising, therefore, that any effort on the scale of 

that which the nation undertook then, now, or in the future takes 

time, commitment, and resources to succeed. When the nation’s 

goals include growing an enduring democratic form of government, 

progress can only be measured in decades. Bosnia-Herzegovina 

serves to emphasize the point. At this time, no one should harbor 

illusions that international disengagement would lead to anything 

other than a complete collapse of the fragile institutions established 

at considerable cost. For many reasons, present undertakings will be 

much more difficult in the Middle East.1

The United States is at the start of its third year in Iraq. To be 

sure, arguments as to the wisdom of the decision to attack Saddam 

Hussein persist. Some argue that the United States already finds itself 

mired in a quagmire. Arguments persist that the Bush administration 
committed serious errors by not adequately analyzing and planning 

for post-combat, or Phase IV, operations. This indictment has 

resonated across a broad spectrum of spectators and actors, national 

and international. In the recent election year it became difficult for 

the average American to separate fact from fiction, political rhetoric, 

or posturing. Some still wonder what the United States is doing, what 

are its policies and strategy, and what should it be doing, if anything, 

both in Iraq and in the global war on terror. In the meantime, the 

American military confronts the prospect of mounting casualties, 

American and Iraqi, and a less willing coalition. Hopefully, success 

of the recent Iraqi elections may reverse these prospects, at least 

temporarily.

There were, of course, compelling reasons for going into 

Iraq. There was evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed the 

infrastructure and raw materials with which to revive his programs 

to develop weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass 

effects. Intelligence estimates from allies and friends, regionally and 

extra-regionally, confirmed American estimates and beliefs in late 

2002 and early 2003.2 In the meantime, Saddam made progress in his 

subversion of the international community, sought new means by 

which to destabilize the region, and further tightened his death grip 

on the Iraqi people, especially the Shi’a, Kurds, and Christians. For 

example, he created new forces, such as the Fedayeen Saddam, which 

looked and acted more like radical Islamic terrorists than conventional 

law enforcement forces. Moreover, as the United Nations (UN) Oil 

for Food program investigators are learning everyday, Saddam 

was manipulating that organization, while stealing millions at 

the expense of the Iraqi people. Concurrently, he was successfully 

courting the French, Germans, Russians, and others in an attempt 

to garner their support to end sanctions or at least render them less 

effective. Potentially worse, while filling his pockets and building 

extravagant monuments to himself, the dictator was setting up for 

the next generation of his dynasty, his sons Uday and Qusay, to 

assume power. From all reports, the two were the epitome of evil.3

One cannot understate the threat posed by their ascendancy. 

There appeared to be no possibility of moderation on the part of 

Saddam. By all measures the opposite was occurring. Twelve years 

of sanctions had achieved little to mitigate the threats he posed, 
while the international commitment to stay the course was waning. 

The expense to those who supported the no-fly zones in northern 

and southern Iraq, the maintenance of armed forces in the region, 

and the enforcing of economic sanctions was growing. For example, 

Saudi Arabia, a supporter of UN sanctions against Iraq, had allowed 

the presence of Joint Task Force-Southwest Asia in the Kingdom 

since 1992, and provided financial aid to that end. Yet, the Saudis 

were buckling under internal and external pressures to evict foreign 

forces from the birthplace of Islam. 

At the same time, Saddam was playing a shell game with UN 

weapons inspectors. They achieved little success in the hunt for 

illegal weapons and programs except under the constant threat of 

U.S. military action. French, German, and Russian economic interests 

in Iraq were suffering, and their prospects of post-sanctions relations 

with Iraq, which they saw as close at hand, depended on their ability 

to chip away at sanctions. Mass media such as al-Jazeerah television, 

based in Qatar, generated growing international sympathies for Iraq, 

as if Saddam were a victim. Finally, Saddam was communicating 

with terrorists, including al-Qaeda and Palestinian operatives, who 

were plotting against the United States. These and other factors 

played into Saddam’s hands. Ironically, they also played into U.S. 

hands and opened the door for a second war in Iraq and the toppling 

of the Ba’ath regime. 

On paper, the current strategy for Iraq is similar to that for 

Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, or Kosovo.4 A reformed Iraq has 

great potential to enhance Middle East stability and U.S. security. Yet 

many fail to understand the nature of this undertaking. Unexplained 

is a vision, growing or preconceived, that sees Iraq emerging as a 

key element in a framework for democratic reform in the broader 

Middle East, the long term implications of which fit into President 

Bush’s world vision.5 Iraq, as the “cradle of reform” in the Middle 

East supported by the West, would, by its success, pressure existing 

regimes to change, check Syrian subversion and Iranian threats, 

enhance regional security, give greater voice and opportunity to 

indigenous peoples, and set the conditions to eliminate the nuclei 

of global terrorism. Ironically, Saddam Hussein, for all his torment 

of the Iraqi people, established some of the foundation blocks that 
8

actually support U.S. efforts. He established a secular government 

and gave significant rights to women in terms of education, suffrage, 

and inclusion in the work force (although these gains declined 

considerably after the first Gulf War). Moreover, he allowed a 

modicum of religious freedom (again, however, subject to his 

whims).

Nor is the nature of the threat fully understood, although the 

American people, due to September 11, 2001 (9/11), appear to have 

a better grasp of the threat than do many among America’s allies. 

The threat the United States confronts from radical elements and 

rogue states in the Middle East is grave. Of this there can be no 

doubt. America and the West must not be naïve about the religious 

radicalism and intent among their enemies, or the extent of their 

potential reach in their global war on Western ideologies and cultures. 

Radical Islamic terrorism consists of dimensions, some of which are 

evolving, which Americans have not even considered.6 And this is 

but one of many complexities in this emerging war.

Even more telling of the complexities the United States faces in 

Iraq are the diatribes of the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. 

In his 90-minute audio tape, released in mid-January 2005, Zarqawi 

openly condemned, insulted, and taunted the Shi’a. Americans 

would do well to understand that he is not alone in his belief that 

the Shi’a are a sub-class and that Shi’ism is not true Islam. There 

are deep prejudices in the Middle East. While the Sunni fighters in 

Iraq may appear small in number, they have the moral support of 

some regional Arab states and their populations, most of which are 

overwhelmingly Sunni.7 Regional Arab governments will find it hard 

to welcome any form of government in Iraq in which the leadership 

is Shi’a, no matter if it is a theocracy or a successful democracy. 

Both would be threatening. Success in a pluralistic system would 

pressure the old regimes openly to address democratic reform 

seriously. Moreover, an Iraqi government dominated in any way by 

Shi’a religious leaders would find open hostility among neighboring 

countries, especially Saudi Arabia.8

If America’s intent is to accelerate the democratization of the 

Middle East, beginning with Iraq, the challenge is for these and 

other reasons formidable, though not insurmountable. The same is 

true, even if American intent remains limited to regional stability 
and ending the international terrorist threat to the United States. No 

matter what the vision and intent of the United States, change on 

this scale will take a long time. In Iraq alone such efforts will take 

years. And they will be vulnerable to failure, if not attended by a 

broad engagement to address and correct Arab and Iraqi perceptions 

and grievances, and a major commitment on the part of the United 

States, the international community, and regional Arab leaders to 

stamp out terrorists wherever and whenever identified, as well as 

their acquiescence and support for democratic reform. The larger 

issues, however, revolve around hope for stability and reform in 

the Middle East that appeals to and obliges significant numbers 

of the disillusioned, who see their governments as failed, corrupt 

dictatorships and the United States as an oppressor and guarantor 

of an Israeli version of “Manifest Destiny.”

In Iraq, that vision already appeals to the majority, even though 

a significant Sunni minority either sympathizes with or provides 

material support to the insurgents. However, the United States has 

not made much headway in the broader Arab Middle East, where 

hatred of Israel eclipses only that of America. The loud and profuse 

cheering in the streets of major Arab cities and towns in reaction to 

the attacks of 9/11 made this abundantly clear. Indeed, emotions 

represented a mixture of joy, sorrow, and anger, but the joy of some 

at the American catastrophe remains vivid. Americans rightly can 

curse the women, children, and men for their inhumane celebrations, 

but they would be wiser to understand why Arabs reacted in 

such a manner, and what this says about the state of affairs in the 

contemporary Middle East. Americans also should remember that 

this was not always the case. In fact, such a reaction among Arabs 

would have been the exception once upon a time. What went wrong, 

and how can Americans redress this situation? Do they and should 

they care?

BACKGROUND

Regardless of the view of how or why the United States invaded 

Iraq, the United States is there and will remain there for the foreseeable 

future. In the big picture, there is much to gain. Though imperative, 

success will not be easy in this complex environment.9 What is 
required to execute U.S. strategy in Iraq successfully? No matter 

what the success in Iraq, can any strategy there be successful without 

a comprehensive strategy for the region, a strategy that realistically 

addresses Israel-Palestine and other monumental challenges? Is the 

United States willing to commit to an unsure prospect, the success of 

which one can only measure in decades?

America’s long-term strategy for Iraq appears, unfortunately, to 

be evolving out of preconceived notions and poor advice on what a 

post-combat Iraq would look like. Some advice was discarded. Army 

Chief of Staff General Erik K. Shinseki, in answer to congressional 

inquiry, stated that the United States would require a troop strength 

of several hundred thousand to subdue Iraq for years in the 

aftermath of an invasion. Others, including Coalition Provisional 

Authority Administrator Paul Bremer, belatedly would draw similar 

conclusions after departing Iraq.10

The American military also made matters worse. Initially seen as 

liberators by all but the core of Saddam’s followers and a small number 

of terrorists, many Iraqis now see Americans as occupiers. Many sit 

on the fence while U.S. forces confront a growing and increasingly 

sophisticated insurgency. Moreover, many Iraqis and others in the 

Middle East and beyond call into question U.S. intentions. If one 

believes the media and pundits, the United States finds itself mired 

in Iraq without a strategy to stabilize the country or to exit. In the 

meantime, the insurgency is evolving in much the same way that 

Colonel Roger Trinquier, a French expert on terrorism, described 

insurgencies and terrorism, or what he termed as modern war, some 

40 years ago.11

What could U.S. forces have done differently once the regime fell? 

Did the U.S. Government fail to plan for Phase IV operations? What are 

U.S. options at this stage? Without replaying the entire story, suffice 

to say that the U.S. military and the Office of Reconstruction and 

Humanitarian Assistance (later the Coalition Provisional Authority) 

made serious mistakes and miscalculations both in planning and then 

on the ground in the early days following the astounding success of 

major combat operations.12 This was in large measure the result of 

misunderstandings of Iraqi culture and contemporary Iraq. 

There are numerous examples. The United States could have 

ordered soldiers of the Iraqi armed forces to report to their bases, 
with certain guarantees, under command of their officers. From 

that point, the United States could have identified and removed the 

officers in the highest tiers of the Ba’ath Party and those charged 

with crimes. U.S. and coalition forces could then have vetted each 

level of the armed forces, all the while paying salaries. Those found 

acceptable, the new Iraqi armed forces would have retrained. Others 

could have secured pensions. The occupying force could have 

done the same with other security forces, including the police and 

border control, as well as civilian bureaucracies. There were certain 

organizations such as the Ba’ath Party and the Iraqi Intelligence 

Service that U.S. authorities would have excluded altogether, but the 

risks of their exclusion would have been small. The occupying forces 

could have declared martial law and implemented shoot-to-kill rules 

against looters; it could have utilized the existing communications 

infrastructure to communicate with the people to assure them of U.S. 

intentions and expectations and inform them of their responsibilities; 

it could have implemented (a better word is imposed) Phase IV 

rules of engagement; and it could have done more to understand 

the complexities of Iraqi life including the practical “necessity” of 

being a Ba’athist in Iraq under Saddam.13 Finally, Americans could 

have encouraged Iraqi reconciliation. Two years later, deep traumas 

suffered by a number of groups have gone unpunished.

That the occupation force did none of the above exacerbated 

an already tense and volatile situation. Because the United States 

depended on the advice of Iraqi expatriates, some with suspect 

agendas, to develop and implement occupation plans and policies, it 

alienated large segments of the population who had suffered directly 

at Saddam’s hands. Because Americans did not stop the looting 

they appeared soft on crime; Arab society demands order and deals 

harshly with civil crimes. 

Disbanding the Iraqi armed forces represented a humiliation for 

many Iraqis. Ambassador Bremer, on poor advice, “dumped the 

baby out with the bathwater.”14 He failed to account for the large 

numbers of soldiers who had served honorably. Because American 

policy disbanded the Iraqi armed forces and never made any attempt 

to recognize a significant Iraqi institution, it created a large number 

of unemployed armed young men who confronted a bleak future, 

a cadre of disaffected military leaders, and a population, which 
reflected favorably on the pre-Saddam era armed forces. Moreover, 

failure to obtain surrender convinced many Sunnis that Iraq was as 

yet undefeated. 

When the national police force literally collapsed, the Americans 

did little to bring it back. The solution to the lawlessness that reigned 

from April to June 2003 was to authorize an AK-47 assault rifle in 

every home. In effect, the United States disarmed Iraq’s security 

forces and law enforcement apparatus, and at the same time armed 

everyone. The tragedies that accrued to coalition and Iraqi forces 

and civilians as a result of this decision are too numerous to recount. 

Because the occupation leaders failed to communicate expectations 

and intent to the population, the Iraqis remained in a state of fear 

and uncertainty, one that persists today. 

U.S. forces continued to operate under Phase III rules of 

engagement, which often led soldiers to resort to the hammer as the 

tool of first choice, precisely the same option employed by Saddam’s 

thugs. In some instances, U.S. forces harassed and attacked the 

innocent and humiliated them in various ways that called for 

revenge.15 And because coalition policymakers did not understand 

that not all Ba’athists had participated in the regime’s crimes, the 

occupiers alienated entire professional classes of Iraqi society: the 

military, the bureaucrats and technocrats, teachers, and others. 

In fairness, there have been American and coalition successes as 

well. Deposing Saddam’s Ba’athist regime was morally and legally 

the right course of action, both from the standpoint of stabilizing the 

Middle East and enhancing U.S. security. While some have criticized 

U.S. authorities for not punishing the criminals of Saddam’s regime 

in the immediate aftermath of the war, Saddam and many of his 

fellow criminals are in custody and will face Iraqi justice. Saddam’s 

evil sons are dead, and their threat to future generations is no more. 

Much of the Iraqi population lives in relative security, although 

television often depicts a different picture. A greater percentage of the 

population enjoys acceptable and improving basic services, although 

Baghdadis, who are underwriting improvements countrywide, 

would not agree. U.S. efforts in the field of infrastructure, including 

electricity, water, irrigation, transportation, communications, and 

distribution systems will result in modern systems available to all 

segments of society within the next 5 to 10 years. 
The United States has drawn terrorists to the battlefield of 

its choosing and is dealing continued heavy blows to known 

organizations. Moreover, the United States is discovering heretofore 

unknown linkages in terror networks that will allow interdiction on 

its terms. America is in a strong position in the heart of the Arab 

Middle East to influence the future direction of that region, while 

at the same time protecting its homeland. It can help maintain 

that position by staying the course in Iraq while encouraging and 

supporting moderation and reform in the region. Finally, no one can 

argue the success of recent elections or the hope they portend.

THE WAY FORWARD

What can America do now that it finds itself engaged in Iraq 

and recognizes some of the serious errors it has made over the past 

2 years? Should it press on with the same strategy? What are the 

chances for long-term success? Have American leaders recognized 

their errors and are they addressing them? Or are they creating an 

environment that will breed new generations of recruits to fight 

America?

There are only two serious options. The United States can 

accelerate or eliminate major programs in order to extract itself 

sooner in hopes that things will turn out as it envisioned at the 

beginning. Or it can stay the course with minor and perhaps even 

major adjustments. Ironically, in either case, America runs the risk 

of watering down its goals. Staying the course represents a long and 

expensive proposition. A significant alteration in U.S. goals runs the 

risk that embryonic institutions will not mature. A premature exit 

leaves open the prospect that future generations of Americans will 

fight again in the Middle East.

America has embarked on a campaign, which will only succeed 

by convincing Iraqis to remain patient (currently succeeding); by 

understanding and helping Iraqis achieve security, stability, and 

representative government; by demonstrating tangible progress, 

in terms of security and quality of life; and by minimizing or 

eliminating the momentum its opponents now enjoy. Although 

America represents a “lightning rod” in the Middle East, ironically, 
it also is the greatest hope for millions in the region. Despite oftstated outrage against the United States, teahouse and academic 

discussions and even Arab journalists spoke of reform in the Middle 

East in the muted euphoria of Saddam’s ouster and subsequent 

capture.16 The same is true in the aftermath of successful national 

elections in January 2005. There is a foundation on which to build.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Success in Iraq demands American presence. The stakes are 

too high for anything but complete success. Yet the United States 

may have to alter the ways and means of executing its strategy or 

even the ideal end state it envisions. Nonetheless, the United States 

must remain focused on the goal: a functional and growing form of 

representative government in the heart of the Arab Middle East. To 

do otherwise would be to hand radical Islamic terrorists a victory, 

add momentum to their drive for power and their goals in the region, 

and create greater threats to U.S. national security. 

American presence cannot be one of overbearing arrogance. 

Nor can it be one of token presence. Rather, U.S. presence must be 

ubiquitous and at the same time inconspicuous. Its best and brightest 

must execute the strategy. Some believe that fewer troops on the 

ground would help, but any such reductions before the next elections 

could well create untenable vulnerabilities. Iraqi security forces at 

present are not prepared to assume their full security responsibilities. 

They would inevitably revert to the methods of Saddam’s regime, 

with which they are all too familiar. 

Because of the complexity of the Iraq environment, the United 

States cannot accelerate or eliminate major programs.17 The United 

States will have to weigh its decisions carefully to accelerate 

Iraqi security forces development and training programs. Where 

unavoidable, the United States must employ its leverage to mitigate 

risk. Though the Iraqi workforce is relatively well-educated, the 

government sectors require sustained U.S. support over the long 

term. The basic training and modernization of the armed forces 

and bureaucracies represents a fairly easy task, but that is only a 

first step. Subsequent steps provide the greatest challenge and will 
take the longest time to implement. Such steps include inspiring 

professional cultures and ethics of service for the greater public 

good in the bureaucracy, while adhering to the primacy of the rule of 

law. The broad acceptance of such attitudes will take time, patience, 

commitment, and example. 

Whether by design or coincidence the United States is making 

progress in developing the governmental structures at a faster pace 

than the armed and security forces. While the government stands 

up, builds infrastructures, gains confidence, and begins to make 

decisions that affect Iraqis on a daily basis, the security apparatus 

is growing more slowly. The security forces must mature over time 

into professional, ethical, and responsive entities, answerable to the 

people and subservient to civilian leaders. This appears simplistic, 

but is the foundation on which all else depends.

Iraqis want certain guarantees from a government. Their demands 

are neither excessive nor unreasonable. They desire a sense of security. 

They want security forces that are fair, responsive, and not abusive 

of powers. They demand guarantees of their civil rights. Since most 

Iraqis have lived in a cradle-to-grave welfare system, they demand 

social safety nets that provide for their needs during a period of 

unprecedented change. They want to know that basic services and 

support are available and equitable: electricity, consumable fuels, 

communications, food, and water. They demand a guarantee of access 

to education, quality health care, and opportunity. Their families 

should not have to resort to bailing putrid water from polluted canals 

for cooking and bathing. They demand an assurance that other Iraqis 

will not squander or pocket the nation’s natural resources, and that 

the West will not manipulate them. In this respect, the United States 

is enjoying some success in its policies. Yet, most Iraqis would give 

up their basic rights, at least temporarily, to achieve genuine security 

and stability.

In the process, American policymakers cannot lose sight of the fact 

that Iraqis, those who have taken a public stand to lead or support 

change, are in grave danger. Many believe they and their families 

are marked for death, now or in an indeterminate future. Yet they 

have stepped forward. Unlike most of their coalition partners, their 

decisions to support U.S. designs are literally a matter of life and 

death. And memories are long in the Middle East. 
Institutionalizing Security Structures.

Security, above all else, preys on the minds of the average Iraqi. 

If the United States cannot provide security, it will fail. If the United 

States does not develop professional Iraqi security forces trusted by 

the people, it will fail. The Anglo-American coalition is responsible 

for security and progress and therefore Iraq’s success. One of the 

cornerstones of successful democratic reform is a security apparatus 

that is not threatening to the public, but which is able to protect it. 

There is no such foundation in Iraq at present. The security forces 

familiar to most Iraqis largely remain associated with violence against 

the people they were to protect, as well as rampant corruption.

Pressure is mounting to accelerate the formation and training of 

security forces. Any such acceleration will undoubtedly create tradeoffs. One major trade-off will be the diminished quality of entry level 

training to meet the accelerated timeliness. To mitigate such a risk 

posed, the United States must take prudent measures. Yet there is no 

guarantee of success.

First, the United States must develop robust and focused 

intermediate, periodic, and remedial training programs. This is 

essential to make up for accelerated entry. 

Second, it must develop programs by which mobile training 

teams live and train with Iraqi security forces.18

Third, to add rigor and ensure discipline, the United States must, 

with the cooperation of Iraqi military leaders, develop and implement 

a uniform code of military justice, a code of ethics, and set of values. 

For discipline problems, remedial and corrective training should be 

the focus rather than eliminating offenders (after all, this is a part of 

institution building). 

Fourth, the United States needs to establish exchange programs 

for education and training in the United States and other coalition 

countries. 

Fifth, the United States must equip the security forces with 

quality tools to enhance their confidence, capabilities, morale, and 

pride. The one major complaint of Iraqi soldiers and law enforcement 

organizations is that they possess substandard equipment, much of 

which the Coalition Provisional Authority and interim government 
procured from other Middle Eastern states. They feel such equipment 

under-performs materiel previously produced by Iraq’s stateowned military-industrial complex as well as that of their enemies. 

Iraqi security forces want American equipment, but will settle for 

European arms with which they are familiar and which are less 

costly. 

Sixth, the United States and the Iraqi government must execute 

an information campaign, which publicizes the benefits, progress, 

and sacrifices of the Iraqi security forces and which emphasizes their 

commitment to serve and protect all Iraqis. 

Obviously, each Iraqi security service will require programs 

tailored to its missions and relationship to the public. Progress will 

be directly proportional to Western commitments. Nevertheless, in 

dealing with Iraqi security forces Americans will inevitably try to 

instill their ideals and discipline. In a society that knows only the 

stick as the first choice for problem solving, Americans consistently 

must show by example that their way works better. If they fail to act 

in such a fashion, they will fail. As Americans become familiar with 

the new security forces, they may find they do not trust the Iraqis, 

do not approve of their work ethic, or remain segregated and grow 

distant from them. Commanders at all levels whose soldiers associate 

with Iraqi security forces must reinforce professional interactions 

that recognize Iraqis as the second largest and the most important 

coalition partner. Only the Iraqis can win this war; Americans 

cannot.

Basic Services.

Progress in building, renovating, and modernizing Iraq’s 

infrastructure is slow but gaining momentum. In a state where the 

people depended on the government for everything from cradle-tograve, the challenges are daunting. In the first year-and-a-half in Iraq, 

the United States scarcely achieved the levels of service provided 

by Saddam’s regime. The average Iraqi could not understand or 

believe that the mighty United States was incapable of providing the 

same level of service that Americans enjoyed at home. They often 

concluded that the coalition was manipulating them to steal their 

resources, or punishing them for Saddam’s crimes.
9

Not understanding the dilapidated state of Iraq’s infrastructure, 

the Coalition Provisional Authority awarded mega-contracts for 

rebuilding the national level infrastructure to capable international 

firms such as Bechtel. Thousands of contractors then invaded the 

country. Most Iraqis believed that oil revenues were paying the 

foreigners. Concurrently, contractors and military engineers began 

countrywide infrastructure assessments, which quickly exposed 

the enormity of problems, local to national. The breadth and depth 

of the challenge overwhelmed an uninformed, unprepared, and 

undermanned Coalition Provisional Authority. To make matters 

worse, the deteriorating security situation slowed infrastructure 

efforts to a standstill. Iraqi businessmen and tribal leaders saw few 

benefits from the promised employment boom, save that which 

division commanders provided through their emergency relief funds 

that helped fix schools, water distribution systems, electrical grids, 

and communications. 

If nothing else, Iraqis knew their rights and their benefits. The lack 

of services and jobs, exacerbated by increasing violence, sabotage, 

and summer heat, created unstable conditions. To their credit, most 

waited patiently. The coalition struggled through the summer of 

2003 and provided the minimum needs in major cities. However, few 

areas outside the major cities saw any improvement at all. Almost 2 

years later, Iraqis are finally seeing gradual improvement in most 

categories. Nevertheless, Baghdadis are quick to point out that they 

still are not receiving the same levels of services as before the war. 

Though the coalition is making progress across a spectrum 

of services, much remains. American and international agencies 

and contractors are pressing forward with national level projects, 

including transportation and distribution systems; oil and 

agricultural production; and water, electrical, and communications 

infrastructures. The tangible benefits of these undertakings are not 

and will not be evident for some time. And the overhead costs for 

security remain unacceptably high.19

The planning and execution of projects to modernize Iraq’s 

infrastructure continue. Unfortunately, American authorities all too 

often fail to get the good news of their plans and progress out and 

therefore fail to receive credit. Americans still are learning difficult 

lessons at the sub-national level. They continue to undermine their 
efforts by not explaining clearly the benefits of long-term plans and 

programs. Unemployed Iraqi craftsmen and professionals sit idly 

by and watch as foreign labor, contractors, and militaries build 

everything from two-room schools to national power grids. When 

hired, Iraqis only receive mundane jobs and low pay. Moreover, 

Americans complicate their efforts by not understanding the 

hierarchies of Iraqi society, which include religious, tribal, familial, 

and municipal aspects, all intertwined. In the rush to provide basic 

services in the early days, they often undermined traditional and 

municipal leaders’ authority. And, as was often the case, Americans 

believed they had the correct answers, and the Iraqis did not. On 

the personal level, always essential to success, Iraqis are willing to 

partner, but this fundamental often is neglected.

To be successful, Americans must address these and other cultural 

issues. Local through national level leaders increasingly will assume 

the decisionmaking role in a sovereign Iraq. In effect, the United 

States must assume the role of junior partner and follow through 

on decisions in support of the Iraqi government. These steps may 

often not fit American goals and objectives, but they are crucial to 

establishing a sense of participation, ownership, and commitment. 

U.S. authorities must constantly advertise international 

contributions, now in the tens of billions of dollars, at every 

opportunity. They also must highlight the Iraqi partnership. But 

they cannot just say that they have allocated fifty or a hundred 

billion dollars to Iraq. They also must explain that such funds 

are contributions and not loans. Further, they must categorize 

expenditures already planned by province and lay out start dates 

for major projects and the types of contractors and labor required. 

Iraqis are entrepreneurs, and if they believe they can do business 

supplying or otherwise participating in these projects and programs, 

they will.

Insurgents and Terrorists.

The coalition was slow to realize the emergence of a number of 

distinct insurgencies in fall 2003. At times American military and 

political leaders denied the obvious, preferring to believe that the 
violence was the work of small, independent cells and criminals. Yet 

the evidence to the contrary was undeniable.

One significant insurgency grew from decisions the Coalition 

Provisional Authority made with regard to the Iraqi armed forces 

in summer 2003. Faced with humiliation, unemployment, and 

bleak futures, former officers established cells that grew slowly, but 

steadily. Not only this but tacit, if not material, support among Iraqi 

civilians grew as well because of Coalition abuses, popular belief that 

America was subjugating the Iraqi nation, and the absence of security 

and jobs. U.S. blunders in the form of Phase III rules of engagement 

also served to disillusion much of the Sunni population. 

A second major insurgency, consisting of radical Islamists, grew, 

as well. In addition to homegrown groups, jihadists infiltrated into 

Iraq in small numbers. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi became the headliner 

and inspirational leader of many of the radicals.20 While he and his 

followers operated independently, they found refuge and support 

from homegrown groups such as Ansar al-Islam and Ba’athists, who 

were mostly Sunni. Their collusion with Iraqi insurgents, however, 

was a matter of convenience and common objectives, and not loyalty 

or brotherhood. Though analysts attribute the most horrific acts to 

foreign terrorists, criminal gangs and Sunni insurgents were all 

capable of the same atrocities.

 How does the United States fight an enemy that it continuously 

misunderstands and misidentifies? That is a tough question. 

U.S. forces now carry a burden they partially created, or at least 

exacerbated. Yet, the United States does not have the option of 

inaction against insurgent targets and hot spots. Coalition forces 

must take down identified targets, but at the same time shift the 

focus of their presence increasingly toward training and equipping 

Iraqi security forces, including the police. 

Iraqi culture respects strength. While the United States trains 

and mentors Iraqi security forces, it will have to allow operational 

Iraqi forces the latitude of dealing in their way with those who are 

terrorizing the country. The family whose immediate priority is 

security demands as much. This will be brutal in the short term, but 

given the tools and freedom of action to seek and destroy those who 

are committing terrorist acts, Iraqi methods will succeed in the long 

term. The ability to balance the necessity of extreme measures with 
long-term development of professional security forces is crucial to 

the growth of democracy. 

Many Iraqis have seen atrocities that Westerners hardly can 

imagine. They will only gain confidence in their government and 

security forces, if those forces provide security and stability. In 

Mosul in February 2005, the Iraqi police captured an Iraqi insurgent 

who they confirmed had beheaded a hostage. The police then filmed 

him begging for his life, and the Iraqi interim government televised 

the film throughout Iraq. The message was clear: not only will the 

terrorists be hunted down and brought to justice, but they are not as 

tough as they appear.

Focus on Youth.

One of the clearest opportunities to influence Iraq’s future lies 

in influencing its young people. By and large, the youth of Iraq 

are malleable. Despite the U.S. occupation and some unfortunate 

situations, such as Abu Ghraib, they remain infatuated with U.S. 

soldiers and marines, perhaps through a prism of both fear and 

hope. America’s continuing efforts to influence the young will pay 

dividends in the future. 

American efforts should go a number of steps further, however. 

As U.S. and international organizations build schools and assist 

in the modernization of educational institutions, they can implant 

programs such as the study of the English language from elementary 

school through post-secondary levels. Every Iraqi understands that 

fluency in the English language is an important rung in the ladder of 

upward mobility. Today, satellite dishes are on the rooftops of Iraq 

and are capable of not only receiving al-Jazeerah, but CNN and the 

BBC. The same tools should become standard in Iraqi schools, as 

well, to educate and inform this younger generation. 

The education of the young is paramount to the success of 

a democratic Iraq. While programs of this nature formally lie 

outside the purview of the military, for all intents and purposes, 

it is the military that is influencing education at this time. Soldiers 

are building and renovating schools, donating school supplies, 

interacting with teachers and students daily, and providing medical 

services and other support. This aspect of the U.S. contribution to 
Iraq is too critical to leave unattended, while experts and agencies 

await a secure and stable environment.

The Region.

The United States must approach the regional aspects of its Iraq 

endeavors with extreme care. In addition to kinetic options, the 

United States must revisit some initiatives and create movement that 

contributes to regional security. The United States must reengage 

in the Israel-Palestine crisis, seek to moderate Iran and eliminate its 

programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction or effects, influence 

Syria, and reassess the positioning of U.S. forces in the region.

Israel and Palestine. The Israel-Palestine question will not go 

away. Though recent developments are encouraging, all the parties 

have seen them before. It is all too easy, at the slightest provocation, 

for both sides to resort to intractable positions, which serve only 

the radical factions on both sides and promise a continued spiral of 

violence and hatred. Yasser Arafat failed to grasp the opportunity 

for Palestine that he helped create.21 His timely demise was a 

blessing that the international community must take advantage 

of.22 Successful Palestinian elections in January 2005 and Palestinian 

Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ emergence as the legitimate 

leader of the Palestinians offers opportunity. Though Israel 

wants immediate guarantees and action, Abbas must be given an 

opportunity to develop and present his agenda and vision, and take 

steps to reduce the violence emanating from Palestinian territory. His 

initial steps are strong indicators that he is serious about reducing the 

violence. America must welcome, if not embrace, Abbas. The Bush 

administration’s recent movement in this direction is promising. 

Neighboring states and the Arab League must become involved 

equally in the Palestine-Israel issue. Otherwise, it will fail. The Arabs 

and Israelis alike have used the Palestinians for their own purposes 

since 1949. Arab leaders have used Palestine as an excuse and a 

rallying point to draw the attention of their subjects away from their 

own failures and abuses. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah’s proposal 

deserves consideration not only because it provides a thoughtful 

way forward, but more importantly, because it pushes other Arab 

leaders to the table and commits them to the peace process.23
Iran. The United States has labeled Iran a member of the Axis of 

Evil, which is perhaps appropriate, considering its current leadership 

and record over the past 25 years. But the label misses the point on 

Iran. Though Iran’s leadership supports terrorism and proceeds with 

plans to develop nuclear weapons, the regime is essentially weak 

and declining in power, based in part on the weight of its internal 

policies.24 Dissention, though muted, is ever-present. Most Iranians 

do not support the repressive theocratic government. The theocracy 

has silenced the once influential and West-leaning Iranian middle 

class since 1979. Given a real opportunity to participate in the political 

process the middle class and other dissenters would present a viable 

challenge to the clerics. The United States must take steps to harness 

that discontent and compel the Iranian mullahs to moderate. Though 

the United States is making progress through allies such as Britain, 

it may achieve greater moderation in the regime in the long term 

through direct engagement. At a minimum, direct U.S. involvement 

would serve to buoy and perhaps encourage the muzzled majority.

From their perspective, the Iranian leadership understands that 

U.S. success in Iraq will lead to direct pressures. Moreover, they fear 

that America will conduct military operations against them at a time 

of its choosing. Their meddling in Iraqi Shi’a affairs and their tacit 

support of al-Qaeda operatives transiting or temporarily residing in 

Iran attest to their fears and reactions against the West, and the United 

States in particular. They have no assurances by which to draw any 

other conclusions. The Bush administration’s stern public statements 

against them in the wake of Iraq’s elections can only reinforce that 

perception. Currently, Iran has no incentive to moderate its policies 

or programs. In fact, the current situation elicits the opposite reaction. 

Tehran’s rhetoric since the Iraqi elections indicates a clear intent to 

accelerate its nuclear programs.

Conclusion

The United States is in a race against time. Its “permit” to occupy 

Iraq will expire sooner rather than later. In order to extend that permit 

and enhance chances of long-term stability in Iraq and the Middle 

East, sustained diplomatic initiatives across a broad spectrum are 

necessary now and for the foreseeable future. If America arrives at 
the point where it significantly reduces its presence in Iraq without 

having achieved tangible successes, it will have squandered a unique 

opportunity. 

Recent U.S. progress in Iraq is welcome and long overdue. The 

United States is organizing, training, and equipping Iraq’s future 

security forces; it is executing infrastructure construction projects 

utilizing Iraqi and international expertise and more importantly, 

employing a willing Iraqi labor force; it is setting the conditions for 

the development of an Iraqi Constitution and January 2006 elections, 

a daunting task; it is conducting a rolling offensive against insurgent 

and terrorist havens, a campaign in which Iraqis increasingly 

are taking the lead; and it is setting conditions for a successful 

economy. 

This success is not an end; it is a beginning. As security and 

stability improve, the international community and Iraqis must roll 

up their sleeves and continue the hard work of creating a stabilized 

entity that acts as a catalyst for reform in the region. The coalition, 

which now includes a vested Iraqi leadership, is succeeding in Iraq. 

The list of successes is impressive: deposing and capturing Saddam 

Hussein, rebuilding the infrastructure he left in shambles, providing 

Iraqis with hope, and standing up systems that hopefully will lead 

to representative government that does not threaten its population 

or the region. 

As the United States edges toward a new phase of its presence in 

Iraq, it must prepare to alter course. A nascent Iraqi government is 

assuming control. There will be setbacks, but as confidence among 

Iraqis improves, the elected government of Iraq will set its own 

course and return as a contributing member of the international 

community. However, the United States must accept that it cannot 

achieve instant change. Success will require presence, commitment, 

engagement, even idealism, and a willingness of the Iraqis to take 

the lead. As the United States helps to establish governmental 

structures, especially in the security line, it must remain thoroughly 

engaged for the foreseeable future in order to nurture representative 

government.

As the recent elections showed, most Iraqis are willing to take 

a chance with democracy. The United States is pushing against a 

partially open door. How it opens the door, and what it does once 
the door is open, will influence Iraqis either to close it on America 

or to emulate and modify U.S. systems and institutions to fit their 

cultural and religious norms and traditions.

In the rush to turn over responsibility and authority to the 

Iraqis, Americans must take a hard look at how they define 

success. What conditions besides infrastructure, vetted leaders 

and government workforce, governmental systems in place, and 

sound economic practices must they set in order to give the new 

government a reasonable chance to survive? In such a context, 

how will Iraqis remember the United States once it has turned over 

responsibilities?

No doubt the United States will leave a legacy. The legacy it 

leaves will be governed by its attitude, commitment, ideals, and 

the end state it strives to achieve: a stable, peaceful government, 

mindful of civil rights, that represents the people. America must, 

therefore, remain engaged in Iraq for the foreseeable future. A host 

of reasons, not the least of which are economic benefits and stability 

in the greater Middle East, requires it. If Americans stay the course, 

Iraqis will not forget. And, yes, Americans must learn from Iraqis, 

too. Developing personal, professional, and official relationships 

based on mutual respect and a vision of a better future for Iraq will 

provide an opportunity to achieve broader change in the Middle 

East. However, if the United States proceeds too fast, opting for 

quick fixes, and fails to look beyond the short term, it will fail in the 

long term. In the end, Americans will have created a system that is 

as fragile to normal use as the Iraqi infrastructure it is struggling to 

rebuild. American impatience cannot work here. The United States 

and Iraq must remain wed until they achieve mutual goals. 

Iraq and the coalition must envision the future together. This 

vision is especially important in the security structures. No other 

governmental structure touches the people so intimately. Therefore, 

the level of effort and the quality of commitment must reflect that 

importance. Most Iraqis are willing to learn and give U.S. institutions a 

chance, especially if they perceive Americans as committed partners. 

Americans must balance their approach to focus on solving problems 

and learning what works best in Iraqi culture. But again, setting the 

conditions for success requires presence, commitment, engagement, 

and idealism as well as the willingness of the Iraqi people.
ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 4

1. Historically defined, the Middle East includes the entire United States 

Central Command (USCENTCOM) area of responsibility (AOR), less East Africa 

and a portion of the United States European Command (USEUCOM) AOR. In the 

context of this paper the Middle East narrowly is defined as the modern Middle 

East and North Africa, which consists of the members of the Arab League. 

2. Consultations with European, Asian, and Middle Eastern governments 

including Britain, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, and Egypt, as well as Iraqi defectors, 

all supported the U.S. contention that Saddam possessed WMD and WME. The 

weapons inspectors working in Iraq under the auspices of the UN failed to find 

such weapons, but neither could they unequivocally deny their existence, though 

they did find WME missiles that exceeded the ranges allowed by the UN. After 

the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) uncovered numerous 

violations of UN sanctions during investigations from 2003 – 2004, but no WMD. 

3. Con Coughlin, Saddam: King of Terror, New York, 2002, pp. 283-85, 299-304. 

Coughlin’s work provides a glimpse of Saddam Hussein’s development and 

control of his sons, Uday and Qusay, as well as their brutality and greed.

4. Elizabeth Cousens and Charles Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia: Implementing 

the Dayton Peace Accords, Boulder, CO, 2001, pp. 33-49, 151-153. 

5. B. Loveman, Strategy for Empire: U.S. Regional Security Policy in the Post-Cold 

War Era, Lanham, MD, 2003, p. 118.

6. Many of the radical Islamists that we conveniently, and perhaps incorrectly, 

lump under the umbrella of al-Qaeda see their jihad against the United States 

and the West as a holy war in which their eventual victory is assured. Not only 

this but theirs is a total war that does not recognize physical, political, or any 

other boundaries; does not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants; 

and seeks to achieve its ends by any and all ways and means available, including 

the widespread use of WMD and WME. They believe that their cause will gain 

traction among the world’s more than one billion Muslims and that their sheer 

numbers and fanatical faith will carry them to victory over corrupt and decadent 

non-Muslims over a period measured in generations. 

7. Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook 2004, Washington, DC, 2004. 

There are two exceptions in the Gulf region where Shi’a populations are large: 

Bahrain in which the Shi’a are 70 percent of the population; and Iran, which is not 

Arab, but whose population is 89 percent Shi’a. 

8. Nadav Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security, Ithaca, NY, 1988, 

pp. 10, 50, 354-357. Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud established the modern Kingdom of Saudi 

Arabia in 1902 with the help his traditional fundamentalist allies, the Wahhabis. 

The Wahhabis, in alliance with the al-Saud, have targeted the Shi’a in the Arabian 

Peninsula since the 8th century. The modern Saudi government has looked with 

suspicion at the Saudi Shi’a and, in times of crisis such as the 1979 takeover of the 
Grand Mosque in Mecca, has been quick to isolate the Shi’a, who are concentrated 

in al-Hasa and Qatif provinces.

9. L. Carl. Brown, International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous 

Game, Princeton, NJ, 1984, pp. 78, 140. Complexities run the gamut in the Middle 

East, including the common perceptions that the Middle East has been victimized 

by the West to exploit its resources; the United States practices double standards 

to prop up its client state, Israel; the European colonial powers divided up the 

Middle East to ensure constant strife among the Arabs; and the West is attempting 

to corrupt the purity of Islam. Since before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, wouldbe leaders of the Arab world have tried to spark an Arab revival. However, panArabism, Socialism, Palestine, and economic blocks have not had that effect. Over 

the past 20-plus years, Islam has had a unifying effect on many Muslims, and 

some see it as the one way to fend off the Western threat. 

10. In a speech at Michigan State University on October 4, 2004, former U.S. 

Coalition Provisional Authority Ambassador Paul Bremer noted that from the 

beginning the United States did not have the number of forces necessary to execute 

the post-major combat operations mission in Iraq. In an Op-Ed piece in the New 

York Times on October 8, 2004, Ambassador Bremer tried to undo the damage to 

President Bush by defending the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq.

11. Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency, New 

York, 1964. Trinquier described the phases of insurgency and terrorism, or modern 

warfare as he termed it, based on his experiences against the Viet Minh in Viet 

Nam and Algerian terrorists (FLN) in the 1950s. 

12. Though the U.S. Department of Defense carried most of the blame, all the 

major departments of the U.S. Government participated in planning Operation 

IRAQI FREEDOM, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of 

State, the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other 

entities, American and international. 

13. Ba’ath Party membership in Iraq was similar to Communist Party 

membership in the Soviet Union. Membership was a prerequisite for upward 

mobility in any number of bureaucracies and professions. Membership alone was 

not the sole criteria for judging individuals or groups in post-Communist Russia, 

nor should it have been in post-Saddam Iraq. 

14. There is debate on who actually gave the order to formally disband the Iraqi 

armed forces. Ambassador Bremer was given broad authorities upon his arrival in 

Iraq, and he made the decision based on the advice of his coalition and American 

staff and Iraqi expatriates and his current understanding of the status of those 

forces. The Ambassador has not commented officially except to say that he was left 

with no other choice when the Iraqi armed forces disintegrated. 

15. Abu Ghraib stands out as the most grievous of humiliations, but, in other 

cases, the coalition was duped by individuals or groups who used their access to 

coalition forces, especially Americans, to torment their own enemies. 
10

16. Ralph Peters, Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace, Mechanicsburg, 

PA, 2003, p. 326. 

17. The slogans calling for withdrawal timelines that aired during the 2004 

presidential campaign and since are dangerous to Iraqis who are in the trenches 

with America, U.S. and coalition soldiers, and to overall success. These slogans 

can become the self-inflicted wound from which there is no recovery. However, 

they resonate with elements of U.S. society, and, once stated, the expectation is 

that the promise will be kept. Finally, rather than steeling the determination of 

Iraqis to assume the fight against the insurgents, such pronouncements have the 

opposite affect in which the insurgents wait us out and surge as we depart. The 

Sunni insurgents believe that, once the coalition departs, they will win any fights 

with Kurds or Shi’as, whom they view as inferior. They would drag the country 

into civil war in the belief that they will resume their rule in the end. 

18. The model of Oman is instructive. There, the British seconded NCOs and 

officers at the company level, and the result was probably the best-trained “leg” 

infantrymen in the Gulf. Though the British program ended in the early 1970s, 

they had founded a professional institution that proved itself in the mid-1970s 

when the Omani government successfully defeated an armed insurrection. The 

British model is worthy of emulation in Iraq.

19. The costs to the reconstruction efforts in terms of danger zone bonuses, 

insurance, transportation, and physical security variously are reported in the 

range of 30 to 50 percent of each contract. Such costs are prohibitive and cannot 

be sustained without unacceptable reductions in the scope of reconstruction or the 

infusion of additional billions of dollars. 

20. Anthony Cordesman, The Developing Iraqi Insurgency: Status at End-2004, 

Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2004, pp. 11, 15. 

21. Fouad Ajami, The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey, New 

York, 1999, pp. 272, 284. Arafat’s great success was that he had carried Palestinians 

from that “country of words” to some real political gains. When he landed in 

Palestine in 1994, Arafat returned to his homeland as a conquering hero, but he 

was unprepared for the task at hand.

22. Yasser Arafat was not a visionary leader. His great failure was in not 

handing over the reins to the cadre of educated and savvy Palestinians who were 

ready to take Arafat’s success to its logical conclusion, a state. Instead, Arafat 

created an unwieldy, unimaginative, and corrupt autocracy that curbed rights and 

muzzled dissent. Had he knelt down and kissed the ground of his homeland upon 

his return, convened a national convention to achieve a consensus and vision for 

Palestine, and then bowed out to assume a position of prominence as an elder 

statesman, his legacy would have been one of truly great accomplishment and the 

Palestinian people would have been the beneficiaries. 

23. At the League of Arab States summit in Beirut, Lebanon, in March 2002, 

Crown Prince Abdullah announced a wide ranging plan for Arab peace with 

Israel. In it, he proposed an Israeli withdrawal to the June 4, 1967, borders, in 
1

accordance with UN Resolution 242 and the establishment of a Palestinian state, 

in exchange for full Arab recognition of Israel and normalization of relations, 

including diplomatic, economic, and security. As the Crown Prince made his 

speech, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched an all out military assault on 

Palestinian refugee camps, which, in effect, killed the proposal.

24. Shahram Chubin, Iran’s National Security Policy: Capabilities, Intentions, and 

Impact, Washington, DC, 1994, p. 87. 

1

CHAPTER 5

CHINESE OIL DEPENDENCE:

OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

Commander Jim Cooney

China’s dependence on foreign energy sources to fuel its economic 

growth represents a new influence on its national strategy. Prior 

to 1993, China was self-sufficient in oil production. By 2000 it was 

importing one million barrels of oil per day, which represented onequarter of its petroleum needs. Economic experts project China to 

import eight million barrels per day by 2020; this will represent 75 

percent of its oil requirement. Like Japan in the 1930s, China would 

view a disruption in its supply of oil, either through events unrelated 

to Chinese growth or contrived to slow the spread of its power in 

East Asia, as a threat to its national security. Such a disruption could 

precipitate a massive response, potentially involving armed conflict. 

Understanding why oil is so critical to China’s national security and 

what China may do to secure sources of oil in the future is essential 

to any American strategy in the Western Pacific. The purpose of this 

chapter is twofold. First, the chapter will summarize China’s current 

and future dependence on foreign oil, how oil relates to its economic 

development, and why prosperity is such an important national 

objective for the Chinese. It will then identify how oil dependence 

has led to recent changes in China’s national security strategy, and 

recommend actions the United States should take in response to 

those changes. 

China’s consumption of oil has increased rapidly since 1990, far 

outpacing development of domestic sources.1 Economic growth and 

increasing oil consumption generally follow parallel paths. China’s 

gross domestic product grew by an average of 8 percent from 1999 to 

2003,2 while oil consumption grew an average of 7.5 percent during 

the same period.3 Projections suggest that China’s oil consumption 

will grow to 11 million barrels per day by 2020, largely due to growth 

in the transportation sector.4 Proof of continued growth in this area
1

China’s Oil Production and Consumption

1980-2003

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

6,000.0

5,000.0

4,000.0

3,000.0

2,000.0

1,000.0

0.0

Thousand barrels per day

source: EIA

Consumption Net Imports

Production

Figure 1. China’s Oil Dependence.

manifests itself in the level of current and future road and auto 

construction. China ranks second in the world in auto expressway 

mileage and third in the world in total road mileage. They have laid 

down 1,800,000 kilometers of pavement. This trend is accelerating. 

The Chinese have accomplished 44 percent of this road and highway 

construction since 1990.5 Growth of the Chinese highway system will 

continue at a rapid pace for at least the next 3 years. The industrial and 

commercial bank of China announced in the summer of 2001 that it 

would finance 100 billion yuan ($12 million U.S.) in road construction 

projects over the next 5 years. This, according to the bank, will make 

“a great contribution to the state’s economic development.”6

China is filling these new roads and highways quickly with cars 

and trucks. Chinese citizens bought 4,400,000 automobiles in 2003. 

The Chinese Auto Association estimates sales will top five million 

this year, and growth could take off next year as China meets its 

world trade organization obligation to lift import quotas and cuts 

tariffs on automobile imports from 35 to 30 percent.7

There is no indication that domestic supplies can ever satisfy 

China’s oil needs. China’s proven reserves have declined over the 

past 10 years to the point where current Chinese production levels, 

which only cover two-thirds of its needs today, would exhaust its 
1

domestic supply in 30 years.8 China’s domestic production remains 

limited by oil field recovery capacity, not refinery capacity. China has 

shut down many of its smaller refineries due to over capacity in that 

sector.9 As a result, it is not possible for China physically to satisfy 

its oil needs domestically. Over one-third of China’s oil imports 

come from the Middle East, another quarter come from South Asia 

(Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, etc.). The remaining imports largely 

come from Africa and the former Soviet Republics.10

Oil and China’s National Security. 

“The massacre in Tiananmen Square was an event full of great 

ironies. Deng Xiaoping, the chief target of the demonstrators’ anger, 

had once been hailed as a pioneering reformer whose bold economic 

programs . . . improved the living standards of ordinary Chinese, 

and sparked a growing prosperity in the economy.”11 China’s new 

found economic prosperity, and its resultant thirst for oil to fuel this 

economic engine, places the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 

in a situation that Thomas Jefferson articulated 200 years ago: “We 

have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let 

him go.”12 The population, particularly in the urban centers of China, 

has come to expect prosperity and will not tolerate a government 

viewed as responsible for an economic recession. As one popular 

Chinese magazine publisher put it: “These days, no one can persuade 

the Chinese people to trade their search for a better life with a political 

cause.”13 Moreover, the regime did not find the crackdown on the 

Tiananmen Square protesters an easy task. The commander of the 

Thirty-Eighth Army Group initially received the order to put down 

the demonstration. He refused to lead his unit against the protesters 

despite threats of court martial.14 The CCP then went to great lengths 

to bring in People’s Liberation Army (PLA) units from across the 

country to prevent any one unit receiving the responsibility and 

potentially refusing to act.15 Clearly the CCP does not wish to go 

through another wave of instability and has worked hard to prevent 

widespread discontent among its citizens. The issues that led to 

the unrest in 1989 largely were domestic problems involving poor 

monetary policy and government corruption.16 What has changed 
1

from the issues that led to the Tiananmen Square demonstrations is 

that now there are external factors that could lead to an economic 

slowdown and, potentially, civil unrest. One of the most critical 

economic factors that could lead to civil unrest is the supply of oil. 

Another issue that makes the CCP even more attuned to 

maintaining the current level of economic growth is the growing 

popular opinion throughout China that the government has an 

impact on citizens’ daily lives. A Chinese government survey taken 

in 1990 and again in 2000 indicated that the number of people who 

felt the national government had an impact on their lives grew from 

21 percent to 68 percent, and in urban centers that percentage has 

climbed to 75 percent.17 Given that the CCP emphasizes economic 

prosperity as a pillar of party policy, that the people recognize the 

government plays a significant role in their lives, and that the people 

have no institutional means of changing unpopular government 

actions, the CCP must be sensitive to any issue that could negatively 

affect economic growth. 

Chinese Sources of Oil.

China’s sources of foreign oil have evolved over time. Initially 

regional sources of oil from countries such as Indonesia and Brunei 

satisfied China’s oil needs. However, China’s percentage of the 

world oil demand has increased steadily. It grew from 2 to 6 percent 

from 1971 to 1997 and could reach 10 percent by 2020.18 To meet this 

growing demand, Chinese imports increasingly have come from the 

Middle East, and future growth in Chinese oil imports most probably 

will come from Middle Eastern sources.19 In addition to Middle 

Eastern oil, China remains interested in the largely undeveloped oil 

field beneath an island chain in the South China Sea known as the 

Spratly Islands.

Middle Eastern Oil.

There are no pipelines connecting China with Middle East oil 

sources. In order to reach China from the Middle East, tankers must 

transport oil, and the most direct route to China is through the Strait 

of Malacca. 
1

This geographic chokepoint is the gateway between the Indian 

Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. It roughly extends between the 

southern tip of Malaysia, where the city-state of Singapore is located, 

and the north coast of Australia, where there is a great archipelago, 

mostly controlled by Indonesia. South of Indonesia, the Torres Strait 

separates Australia from the Indonesian archipelago. The Torres 

Strait is an ecologically sensitive area that is too shallow and difficult 

to navigate for large ships such as super tankers. Therefore, the only 

practical route from the Indian Ocean to East Asia and the Pacific 

is the Strait of Malacca. A closure of the Strait would force any ship 

cruising at the standard speed of 15 knots to make a 2-week detour 

around Australia to get from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. 

The cost in fuel alone for a super tanker to make this detour is over 

$1 million. The Strait of Malacca has been critical to global trade since 

Arab traders established routes with East Asia in the 8th century 

AD. 

The building of the Suez Canal in the 19th century accentuated 

the importance of the Strait of Malacca because it allowed easy sea 

transport from markets in Asia directly to Europe. The Strait became 

indispensable in the 20th century with the establishment of oil as 

the energy source of choice by all industrialized societies around 

the globe. This was due initially to the large sources of oil in what 

was then the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia) and later 

as a route between the Middle East and Asia and the Middle East 

and the western United States. By 1993, the Strait was handling over 

8,800 vessels per year, a total which represented over one-third of 

the world’s entire ocean going cargo ship fleet.

20 Included in that 

number were over 2,200 super tanker transits going to or from the 

Middle East.21

Strait of Malacca Security Environment.

The Strait of Malacca presents both challenges and opportunities 

for Sino/U.S. relations. This commerce route is unique in that it is 

a security concern for both China and the United States. Thus, any 

threat against the United States in this area necessarily will affect 

China. Similarly, any threat against Chinese interests in the region 

could impact the United States as well.
1

There are two major players in the area. Singapore is a welldeveloped nation in all respects, with a high regard for the rule of 

law and a government largely free of corruption. Moreover, it is the 

most stable power in the region. Due to its geographic location at the 

heart of the busiest waterway in the world, the security of the Strait 

of Malacca is of vital importance to Singapore. Indonesia, in contrast, 

has all the qualities that would allow extremist groups to flourish. It 

possesses a weak central government that does not administer the 

rule of law effectively and has a loosely regulated financial system 

that can covertly fund the activity of extremist groups.22 Indonesia 

also has ongoing ethnic tension that recently manifested itself 

during the East Timor crisis. The physical security of Indonesia is 

extremely challenging as well. According to the Central Intelligence 

Agency (CIA) fact book, Indonesia consists of 17,000 islands, only 

6,000 of which are inhabited. These islands collectively present a 

54,000 kilometer coastline. All of these factors represent underlying 

conditions that make Indonesia a fertile environment where terrorist 

groups can hide, train, and gain easy access to economic targets, 

especially one of the flagship issues for Middle East terrorism, the 

industrialized world’s exploitation of oil. Current political and 

economic trends in Indonesia have resulted in an explosion of 

terrorist violence against Western targets. There have been nine 

terrorist bombings in Indonesia since 1999—most famously the 

October 2002 bombing in Bali that left 202 people dead (mostly 

Australian tourists).

23 Malaysia is similar to Indonesia in that it has a 

less centralized government and the rule of law is not as well defined 

as in Singapore. Like Indonesia, Malaysia has had to contend with 

various terrorist groups such as the Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia 

(KMM). 

While there is no apparent conscious effort by terrorist groups to 

attack Chinese interests in the Strait of Malacca, actions by terrorists 

would cause serious economic problems for China. The unintended 

consequence of attacking U.S. and Western interests could have two 

differing effects. A threat could draw China into a closer relationship 

with the United States, if China were to recognize a common interest 

in regional security. On the other hand, it could create a conflict 

between the two countries, as each attempted to assert positive 
1

control over the area’s security environment. In particular, China 

could interpret increased security initiatives by the United States 

as an attempt to dominate the region. Additionally, given the 

long-standing animosity between China and the Southeast Asian 

countries, China could interpret an attack in the region as an attempt 

by one of the states in the Strait of Malacca to check China’s growth 

as a regional hegemon. China could then carry out punitive actions 

against the alleged offending state that could only serve to worsen 

the security situation. 

Recent activity by the United States in Southeast Asia has fueled 

China’s suspicion that America aims to dominate the region’s 

security environment. Specifically, there has been an increase in 

presence by the U.S. military in the region over recent years. The U.S. 

Department of Defense has increased its ties significantly with the 

defense organizations surrounding the Strait of Malacca, with U.S. 

Pacific Command now sponsoring and participating in two recurring 

naval exercises that involve Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The 

most significant, the mine countermeasures and diving exercise, held 

its inaugural event in June 2001. It focused on countering mine and 

undersea explosive threats to the Strait of Malacca. 

One other exercise, Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training, is 

a semi-annual exercise held for decades. In the past, the Cooperation 

Afloat Readiness and Training exercise remained limited to one or 

two U.S. ships, and the exercise focused on humanitarian assistance 

and amphibious operations. This exercise has grown significantly in 

scope and security relevance over the past several years. American 

participation in the recently completed Cooperation Afloat 

Readiness and Training 2004 included an amphibious ship, a coast 

guard cutter, and two destroyers. The other participants (including 

Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore) conducted exercises relating to 

anti-terrorism, visit, board and search ship (VBSS) procedures, and 

small target gunnery practice. 

Another structured military-to-military interaction in the region 

is the bi-annual Western Pacific Naval Symposium, last held in 

October 2002, and involving 17 other nations, including Indonesia 

and Malaysia. Although the security of the Strait of Malacca is 

not the specific reason for the conference, this issue mostly likely 

figured as a prominent topic. Finally, Singapore recently completed 
1

its new Changi Naval Base with a deep draft pier, large enough to 

berth an American aircraft carrier. Significantly, Singapore publicly 

announced the pier would be available for use by the U.S. Navy.24 In 

March of 2001 the USS Kitty Hawk was the first American carrier to 

visit the base.

China has attempted to counter perceived U.S. influence in the 

region since the late 1990s. A 1998 PLA whitepaper, China’s National 

Defense, introduced a new policy known as the “New Concept of 

Security,” which aimed at increasing Chinese influence in Southeast 

Asia and at countering American military alliances around the 

globe.25 The policy largely has been a failure for a number of reasons. 

Not surprisingly, China has not looked favorably on recent U.S. 

initiatives. A recent China News Service article noted that “the focus 

and emphasis of America’s forces have shifted to East Asia.”26 China’s 

current President Hu Jintao commented in 2004 that “the ‘Malacca 

dilemma’ is a key element to China’s energy security” and “certain 

powers [the United States] have all along encroached on and tried to 

control the navigation through the Strait.”27

China’s Middle East Security Strategy.

China is a relatively new arrival in the Middle East’s diplomatic 

and security arena. Its recent dependence on foreign oil has forced 

the Chinese to reinterpret their political doctrine of self reliance. 

The reinterpretation argues that self reliance does not necessarily 

mean dependence on domestic production. Self reliance, as 

expressed by Mao Zedong, is the ability to “keep the initiative in 

one’s own hands.”28 Despite that, China does not consider its current 

dependence on Middle East oil as fulfilling its rather loose definition 

of self reliance. 

The Chinese see the Middle East as an environment dominated 

by the United States. There are large U.S. military commitments in 

Afghanistan and Iraq, a strong naval presence in the Persian Gulf, 

and U.S. military bases in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar, 

along with substantial U.S. oil company investments throughout 

the region. China’s view of the current Middle Eastern political and 

military environment has shaped its policy—one of opposition to 

U.S. policy in the region.29 China is at a disadvantage in that it has 
“neither strong historical ties nor long-standing strategic interests in 

the Middle East.”30 This represents a difficulty when competing for 

influence in the region. 

China’s present diplomatic strategy to gain influence in the 

region has aimed at nullifying American influence. The mechanism 

it has used is through support for regimes opposed to an American 

presence in the Middle East. The most visible example is Chinese 

support for Iran, specifically in the area of weapons technology sales. 

In the mid 1990s, China became the leading supplier of conventional 

arms to Iran.31 Additionally, China has provided assistance to Iran on 

developing dual use technology, easily converted to the development 

of nuclear weapons and systems designed to deliver such weapons.32

Issues about China providing nuclear weapons technology to Iran 

have been brewing for 15 years or more. In 1995 China succumbed 

to U.S. pressure and stopped the sale of nuclear reactors to Iran. 

Iran claims these reactors were exclusively for power generation. 

However, they are open to easy conversion to support a nuclear 

weapons program.33 Since 2001, the Director of Central Intelligence 

has consistently reported that China has resumed nuclear weapons 

technology sales to Iran.34

Moreover, China is helping Iran develop weapons delivery 

systems technology. Numerous reports from 1995 to 2002 have 

surfaced about China’s help with Iran’s Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 

medium range ballistic missiles. These missiles have a range of 800 

and 1,250 miles, respectively. Both are capable of hitting any state 

in the Middle East, while the Shahab-4 could hit significant portions 

of Europe.35 China’s delivery system support to Iran appears to be 

continuing. In January 2005, the United States imposed penalties on 

eight Chinese companies for exporting material that could improve 

Iran’s ballistic missile capability.36

China’s Iranian strategy has precedent. It exported nuclear 

weapon’s technology to Pakistan for similar reasons. China wanted 

to prevent the United States and the Soviet Union from dominating 

the subcontinent located along China’s southern border.37 Now 

Pakistan is a nuclear power, facing the nuclear-armed nation of India. 

Relations between India and Pakistan are relatively stable at present. 

This is due, in no small part, to the considerable interest of the United 

States in Pakistan and its assistance in fighting al-Qa’ida. 
China’s Middle East policy to oppose America’s dominance in 

the region has had the effect of destabilizing the region; China will 

disrupt the relative balance of power among Middle East states if it 

provides Iran with nuclear weapon’s technology. The potential for 

ethnic or religious conflict becomes more likely if Iran has strategic 

weapons that could support Islamic fundamentalism. Old hatreds 

between Iranian and Iraqi religious groups could flare up in the 

future. A nuclear armed Iran could allow it to act more aggressively 

towards a democratic Iraq or Afghanistan that do not share its 

fundamentalist beliefs. Another danger is that Israel could become an 

active participant in the situation. It appropriately could believe that 

a nuclear weapon in the hands of an Islamic state would be aimed 

at its territory. Selling weapons to Iran does not help China secure a 

reliable source of cheap oil. The policy inserts a destabilizing element 

into Middle East domestic affairs and encourages the United States 

to continue its extensive military presence there.

China and the Spratly Islands.

In addition to developing relationships in the Middle East, China 

also covets what potentially could be the largest oil reservoir in Asia, 

the Spratly Island oil field. Apart from the tension over the status of 

Taiwan, issues surrounding these islands present one of the greatest 

potential sources of conflict in the Western Pacific region. 

The Spratly Islands are a group of small islands and reefs in 

the South China Sea. The islands are claimed by both China and 

Vietnam. The Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan also claim 

portions of the island chain.38 There are 73 billion barrels of proven 

oil reserves under the islands. Most exploration companies expect 

the amount of proven reserves to continue to grow as exploration 

continues. The amount of proven reserves found to date under the 

islands is 10 times more than China’s on-shore assets.39

China recognizes the uniqueness of the Spratlys to its national 

interests. Its general foreign policy concerning countries along its 

borders has been that stability will promote security and economic 

growth. The one exception to that rule has been China’s aggressive 

policy concerning the Spratlys.40 In fact, China became more 
confrontational in the region, especially with respect to Filipino 

claims to the islands, after the United States closed its last base in the 

Philippines.41 Without a U.S. military presence there, China openly 

has challenged the Filipino claim to the islands.

Chinese Military Doctrine Initiatives.

China’s military is modernizing to support its foreign policy aims 

towards the Spratlys. Specifically, its military is modernizing in ways 

that support the securing of this source of oil. PLA doctrine rests on 

the writings of Mao Tse-Tung. Mao developed this doctrine during 

the 1927-49 Chinese civil war. Mao’s principles and vernacular are 

still used by the PLA to develop doctrine.42 The PLA organizes its 

doctrine into two phases. They are the strategic defensive, followed 

by the strategic offensive. The strategic defensive breaks down into 

two smaller phases, the strategic retreat followed by the strategic 

counteroffensive.43 Mao coined the terms “active defense” and 

“defense for the purpose of taking the offensive and counterattacking” 

to describe the strategic defensive.44 Mao’s doctrine made it difficult 

for the PLA to conduct military planning that fundamentally could 

be offensive and preemptive. As a result, all army operational plans 

were either defensive in nature, such as defending against an attack 

from the USSR or the United States, or focused on the retaking of 

Taiwan. The PLA argues that retaking Taiwan would be the final 

phase of the active defense strategy since Taiwan is a rebellious part 

of China proper. In all cases, PLA operational planning rested on 

two superpowers fighting each other.

The PLA began studying modern wars that were limited in scope, 

both in the force used and the geographic area, during the mid 1980s. 

It determined that limited wars have occured routinely over things 

other than national survival. Nations have fought limited wars over 

ethnic, cultural, or religious issues, as well as borders and natural 

resources.45 The case studies project caused the PLA to modify 

Mao’s basic military doctrine. The new doctrine generally discounts 

an inevitable nuclear conflict between superpowers. A debate then 

began within the PLA over what other wars would look like and 

how they would be prosecuted. Chinese publications have referred 
to these other types of conflict as a “local wars.” The study of local 

wars receives much more attention in current Chinese military 

journals than the traditional war between superpowers.46 The local 

war concept gave PLA doctrine, military strategy, and operational 

concepts an offensive component, to include taking the initiative 

and striking first.47

The PLA’s assessment of the future security environment speaks 

directly to the Spratly Island situation. It recognizes the shift from a 

bipolar Cold War division of the world to a new, multipolar world. 

One of the areas that Chinese military academics consider prime 

for conflict is the East Asian littoral.48 PLA authors also see the fight 

for resources as being one of the most likely motivators for future 

conlict.49

 Along with the PLA’s new security assessment predictions, China 

has changed its definition of “strategic frontier.” In the past, the land 

boundaries and coastline have been China’s working definition of 

its frontiers, which supported the active defense strategy. Textbooks 

in Chinese schools now refer to three million square kilometers of 

ocean as sovereign territory.50 PLA and civilian strategic thinkers also 

characterize the South China Sea, coincidentally the location of the 

Spratly Islands, as a “strategic frontier.”51 The PLA has taken these 

policy statements to mean that any issue in the South China Sea is 

an issue of sovereignty and a dispute over resources that necessarily 

must be Chinese.52 In China’s opinion, it has been restrained about 

asserting its authority over the area.53

There is a direct link from policy to strategy in this case. China 

has established the South China Sea as an important interest. The 

Chinese military institution has changed its doctrine and military 

strategy to meet the stated national policy. Doctrinally, China has 

made the case to itself that control of the Spratly Islands is a viable 

national objective. 

Chinese Military Modernization.

China is making substantive changes to its military in order to 

carry out this new military strategy. The military transformation is 

evident in the areas of resource allocation, equipment modernization, 

and the development of new capabilities. 
China has been increasing its defense budget at a pace that is 

generally in line with its Gross Domestic Product growth for the past 

several years. The PLA budget grew 10 percent from 2002 to 2003. 

Projections put future budget growth at a similar rate.54 Aggressively 

securing the Spratly Islands will involve the PLA Navy (PLAN). At 

present China’s navy has limited offensive capability. There is only 

one noticeable naval construction program: China is dramatically 

expanding its underway replenishment ship capability. A robust atsea replenishment capability will give China the capability to launch 

limited power projection operations. China has three replenishment 

ships capable of underway replenishment and astern refueling, and 

it plans to double this capability by building three more before the 

end of the decade.55 The rest of the Chinese navy is small compared 

to its ground forces. The PLAN has a modest surface force of 62 

destroyers and frigates, and is planning to build six more surface 

combatants in the next decade. China’s submarine force consists of 

55 conventional patrol submarines and a handful of ballistic missile, 

nuclear, and guided-missile submarines. The PLAN’s amphibious 

force also is small. China has 30 ocean going amphibious landing 

vessels each capable of carrying aproximately 200 troops or 10 

armored vehicles, and possesses a dedicated marine force of three 

brigades that exercises with the amphibious ships. China’s current 

naval capability and its new construction programs indicate it does 

not want to challenge the United States in a conventional, fleet-onfleet, confrontation. However, China is making its existing navy, 

which has no peer in the South China Sea littoral, more expeditionary 

by building a capability to sustain it at sea in support of small scale 

sea control or sea denial operations, as well as relatively small 

(compared to the size of its army) amphibious operations. 

The PLA Air Force (PLAAF) is undergoing similar changes. 

Doctrinally the PLAAF is transforming from a purely defensive force 

to a more capable force, able to conduct both offensive and defensive 

operations. The offensive operations are geared specifically toward 

“winning a ‘local war under high-tech conditions.’”56 China’s Air 

Force is modernizing by retiring large portions of its 1950s and 

1960s air fleet; at the same time it is reinvesting the savings in less 

numerous, more capable, airframes composed of third generation 
Russian made aircraft, such as the Sokhoi Su-27 and Su-30 fighters. 

China also is developing its own electronic warfare, warning and 

control systems, and aerial refueling capabilities to go along with 

its modern air fleet.57 Operationally, the PLAAF has begun routine 

missions over international waters. Chinese military aircraft rarely 

flew missions beyond their coastline before the 1990s.58

China’s new military doctrine and modernization programs 

have been put to use in a series of naval exercises. China conducted 

six amphibious exercises, two naval and air force combined arms 

exercises, one naval logistics exercise and one exercise combining 

both sea and airborne forces, that it termed “offensive” in nature 

in the past decade.59 China has the capability to control the Spratly 

Islands militarily. Its new doctrine and improved military capability 

give it that capability. However, the continued deterrent presence 

of the U.S. military, especially the U.S. Navy, prevents China from 

acting aggressively in the region. China cannot, and could not in the 

near future, given her ship construction program, confront the U.S. 

Navy directly.

U.S. Interests.

U.S. security interests offer opportunities for cooperation with 

China on the security of the global oil supply. U.S. security policy 

promotes the expansion of free markets, and economic development 

around the globe. The protection of free trade and free markets is most 

consistent with China’s desires with regard to the Strait of Malacca. 

At the same time, U.S. security interests conflict with China’s actions 

concerning its methods of achieving a secure source of oil. U.S. 

interests, such as the promotion of democracy and prevention of 

nuclear weapons proliferation, are in conflict with China’s attempts 

at gaining influence in the Middle East. Finally, the United States 

is ambivalent toward oil exploration and production development 

around the Spratly Islands. America wants the International Maritime 

Law of the Sea to govern conflicts over maritime resource rights. If 

the issue erupts into armed conflict, it could lead to considerable 

regional instability. This would affect economic prosperity by 

disrupting trade in the region. It could also affect global oil prices. 
There are three issues involving Chinese dependence on foreign 

oil. The first is the security of the Strait of Malacca, the next is China’s 

view of the U.S. role in the Middle East and how China is attempting 

to gain influence. Finally, there is the possibility that China could 

take unilateral action to secure more domestic oil for iself. All three 

issues require U.S. action.

The security of the Strait of Malacca is where Chinese and U.S. 

interests coincide. Were both parties to come to an agreement over 

the Strait of Malacca, such cooperation could help defuse the two 

issues that the United States and China disagree on. Both the United 

States and China benefit from the spread of a global system of free 

trade, and the safe transit of shipping though the Strait of Malacca is 

critical. The United States, partnering with Singapore, Indonesia, and 

Malaysia, should invite Chinese participation in regional maritime 

security exercises. By demonstrating partnership, rather than a 

Cold War capitalism-against-communism framework, the Chinese 

will not feel threatened by an American military presence in the 

region. Chinese naval assets could then share the burden of security 

operations, leading to a greater understanding of security issues 

between the United States, China, and other South Asian countries. 

There are, potentially, two second order effects to such military 

cooperation. Regional military-to-military cooperation could help 

defuse the Spratly Island issue by promoting closer relationships 

with the countries competing for the islands. Additionally, if the 

United States and China take steps towards cooperating on the 

security of global free trade, they could create a culture of military 

cooperation instead of competition. This spirit of cooperation could 

reduce tensions in other areas, such as the perceived U.S. dominance 

in the Middle East, and in the long term, the Taiwan issue. 

China’s interpretation of U.S. actions in the Middle East is leading 

to further destabilization of the region. This will necessarily result in 

more involvement and a longer and greater presence of U.S. military 

force in the region, precisely what China is trying to prevent. China’s 

aid in the development of Iran’s nuclear weapons program puts its 

policy in direct conflict with stated U.S. national security objectives. 

This fundamental misunderstanding is preventing cooperation on 

what should be a common interest, the continued supply of relatively 
inexpensive oil to the world. Along with the indirect approach of 

cooperating on security in the Strait of Malacca, the United States 

must take up concerted and straightforward negotiations with the 

Chinese with respect to dual use technology provided to Iran and 

other Middle Eastern states. A Middle East that is roughly balanced 

in economic and military power between the various states in 

the region is the best way to remove the American presence. By 

empowering one Middle Eastern state with nuclear weapons, China 

is taking steps to destabilize the region and actually threatens the 

continued supply of cheap oil to the economy. 

The forceful takeover of the Spratly Islands is the least probable 

scenario given the current world situation. However it has the 

greatest probability of destabilizing the entire South Asia region as 

well as the global oil economy. The best way to prevent an aggressive 

act by China is for the United States to maintain a credible deterrent 

force in the Western Pacific, even if the North Korean and Taiwan 

issues are resolved peacefully. A credible U.S. naval presence will 

maintain regional stability and forestall Chinese adventurism. 

China’s dependence on oil presents both challenges and 

opportunities. A secure source of oil is as important to China’s national 

interests as it is to the United States and other industrialized nations. 

It would be hard to overstate oil’s importance to the current regime 

in China. The shared interest in the security of global trade presents 

opportunities for increased cooperation and understanding. China’s 

competition with the United States in gaining influence in the Middle 

East is actually counterproductive to its interests. Straightforward 

U.S. negotiations with China concerning the export of weapons 

technology to Iran are essential to prevent long term damage to 

Middle Eastern stability and Sino/U.S. relations. Finally, the United 

States must maintain a credible military presence in the Western 

Pacific to prevent any attempts at imposing a military solution on 

the Spratly Island issue. Oil dependence on the part of China brings 

its interests more in line with the global community of capitalist 

states. The challenge for the United States is to emphasize how this 

similarity presents opportunities for cooperation, while at the same 

time applying diplomatic pressure and maintaining deterrent forces 

to prevent conflict over the common need for oil. 
ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 5

1. Energy Information Agency, “China Country Analysis Brief,” July 2004, 

available from www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/china.html, Internet, accessed November 

20, 2004.

2. World Bank, “China Data Profiles,” August 2004, available from devdata.

worldbank.org/external/CPProfile.asp?SelectedCountry=CHN&CCODE=CHN&CNA

ME=China&PTYPE=CP;Internet, accessed November 20, 2004. 

3. Energy Information Agency.

4. International Energy Agency, “World Energy Outlook 2000,” Paris, OECD/

IEA, 2000, p. 198.

5. “Total mileage of China’s freeway ranks 2nd in the world,”People’s 

Daily Online, October 2004 [journal on-line], available from english.people.com.

cn/200410/29/eng20041029_162122.html, Internet, accessed, November 20, 2004.

6. ”Chinese Bank to Put 100 Billion Yuan into Road Construction,” People’s 

Daily Online, August 2001 [journal on-line], available from english.people.com.cn/

english/200108/16/eng20010816_77416.html, Internet, accessed November 21, 2004.

7. ”China’s Auto Output, Sales Plunge in October,” People’s Daily Online, 

November 2004 [journal on-line], available from english.people.com.cn/200411/16/

eng20041116_164044.html, Internet, accessed November 22, 2004.

8. British Petroleum, “Statistical Review of World Energy,” June 2004, available 

from www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=2012411&contentId=2018340, 

Internet, accessed November 22, 2004.

9. Energy Information Agency.

10. British Petroleum, “Statistical Review of World Energy.”

11. Chu-Yuan Cheng, Behind the Tiananmen Massacre: Social Political, and 

Economic Ferment in China, Boulder, CO, 1990, p. 13.

12. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner, eds., The Founders Constitution, Vol. 1, 

Chicago, 1987, p. 575.

13. Stanley Rosen, “The Victory of Materialism: Aspirations to Join China’s 

Urban Moneyed Classes and the Commercialization of Education,” The China 

Journal, Vol. 51, August 2003, p. 34.

14. Timothy Brook, Quelling The People, New York, 1992, p. 40.

15. Ibid., p. 75.

16. Cheng, p. 33.

17. Yanli Wang, Nicholas Rees and Bernadette Andreosso-O’Callaghan, 

“Economic Change and Political Development in China: Findings From a Public 

Opinion Survey,” Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 13, No. 39, May 2004, p. 212.

18. International Energy Agency, “World Energy Outlook 2000,” p. 189.
1

19. Ibid., p. 200.

20. John H. Noer and David Gregory, Chokepoints: Maritime Economic Concerns 

in Southeast Asia, Washington, DC, 1996, p. 9.

21. Ibid., p. 79.

22. Colin L. Powell, “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” April 2003, available from 

www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2002/html/19983.htm, Internet, accessed October 6, 

2004.

23. Associated Press, “Recent Terrorist Attacks in Indonesia,” September 9, 

2004, available from from abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040909_368.html, Internet, 

accessed September 24, 2004.

24. Michael Richardson, “Singapore Welcomes US Aircraft Carrier,” 

International Herald Tribune, March 22, 2001, available from www.singapore-window.

org/sw01/010322ih.htm, Internet, accessed February 5, 2005.

25. David M. Finkelstein, “China’s New Concept of Security—Retrospectives 

& Prospects,” October 30, 2001, available from http://www.ndu.edu/inss/China_

Center/PLA_Conf_Oct01/MFinkelstein.htm, Internet, accessed January 9, 2005.

26. Willy Lam, “Beijing’s Reaction to East Asia’s Changing Alliances,” China 

Brief, Vol. IV, Issue 15, July 22, 2004, p. 2.

27. Mokhzani Zubir, “The Strategic Value of the Strait of Malacca,” 2004, 

available from www.mima.gov.my/mima/htmls/papers/pdf/mokhzani/strategic-value.

pdf, Internet, accessed January 9, 2005.

28. Kenneth Lieberthal, Governing China, New York, 1995, p. 76.

29. Deng-ker Lee, “Peking’s Middle East Policy in the Post-Cold War Era,” 

Issues & Studies: A Journal of Chinese Studies and International Affairs, Vol. 30, No. 8, 

August 1994, p. 87.

30. Barry Rubin, “China’s Middle East Strategy,” in China and the Middle East, 

P. R. Kumaraswamy, ed., New Delhi, 1999, p. 108.

31. Kenneth Kaztman, Iran: Arms and Technology Acquisitions, Congressional 

Research Service Report for Congress 97-474F, Washington, DC, The Library of 

Congress, 1998, p. 3.

32. Ibid., p. 4.

33. Shirley A Kan, China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and 

Missiles: Policy Issues, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress RL31555, 

Washington, DC, The Library of Congress, 2003, p. 7.

34. Ibid., p. 9. 

35. Ibid.

36. David E. Sanger, “U.S. Is Punishing 8 Chinese Firms For Aiding Iran,” New 

York Times, sec. I, January 18, 2005, p. 1.
37. Ashok Kapur, “China and Proliferation: Implications for India,” China and 

the Middle East, P. R. Kumaraswamy, ed., New Delhi, 1999, p. 175.

38. Central Intelligence Agency, “CIA World Fact Book: Spratly Islands,” 

November 30, 2004, available from www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/

pg.html, internet, accessed December 14, 2004.

39. Haijiang Henry Wang, China’s Oil Industry and Market, Amsterdam, 1999, 

p. 30.

40. H. Lyman Miller and Liu Xiaohong, “The Foreign Policy Outlook of China’s 

‘Third Generation’ Elite,” in The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the 

Era of Reform, David M. Lampton, ed., Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001, p. 

141.

41. Wang, p. 29.

42. Paul H. B. Godwin, “Change and Continuity in Chinese Military Doctrine,” 

Chinese Warfighting: The PLA Experience since 1949, Mark A. Ryan, David M. 

Finkelstein, and Michael A. McDevitt, ed., Armonk, NY, 2003, p. 25.

43. Mao Tse-Tung, “Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War,” Selected Military 

Writings of Mao Tse-Tung, Peking, 1967, p. 111.

44. Ibid., p. 105.

45. David Shambaugh, Modernizing China’s Military; Progress, Problems and 

Prospects, Berkeley, 2002, p. 64. 

46. Michael Pillsbury, China Debates the Future Security Environment, 

Washington, DC, 2000, p. 262.

47. Shambaugh, p. 65.

48. Pillsbury, p. 259.

49. Ibid., p. 260.

50. Shambaugh, p. 67.

51. Ibid., p. 67.

52. Ibid., p. 304.

53. Allen Carson, “Constructing the Dragon’s Scales,” Journal of Contemporary 

China, Vol. 12, No. 37, November 2003, p. 698.

54. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “The Military Balance: 2004-

2005,” 2004, available from 3.oup.co.uk/milbal/current/pdf/104318.pdf, Internet, 

accessed December 15, 2004.

55. Stephen Saunders, ed., Jane’s Fighting Ships 2001-2002, Coulsdon, United 

Kingdom, 2001, p. 112.

56. “PLA Air Force to Switch Its Defensive Posture,” People’s Daily Online, 

November 15, 2004, available from English.people.com.cn/200411/15/eng20041115_

163994.html, Internet, accessed January 24, 2005.
57. “The PLA Air Force, PLAAF,” China Defense Today, 2005, available from 

www.sinodefence.com/airforce/default.asp, Internet, accessed January 24, 2005.

58. Ken Allen, “PLA Air Force Organization,” The PLA as Organization: 

Reference volume 1.0, James C. Mulvenon and Andrew N. D. Yang, eds., RAND 

Corporation, 2002, available from www.rand.org/publications/CF/CF182/, Internet, 

accessed January 24, 2005, p. 370.

59. Srikanth Kondapalli, “China’s Naval Training Program,” Strategic Analysis: 

A Monthly Journal of the IDSA, Vol. XXIII, No. 8, November 1999 [journal on-line], 

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February 5, 2005.
CHAPTER 6

PREEMPTION AND NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION:

CONFLICTING MEANS TO AN END

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Mills

Much of the discussion about American foreign policy over the past 

several years has centered on whether or not the United States should 

have invaded Iraq preemptively. Regardless of political persuasion, 

or one’s perception of the success or failure of current operations, the 

question persists. It strikes directly at the heart of the issue of whether 

the policy of preemption has supported or detracted from one of the 

highest priority national security objectives of the United States: “to 

prevent our enemies from threatening us, our allies, and our friends, 

with weapons of mass destruction (WMD).”1 There are other policies 

or concepts intended to support this national security objective, 

such as the three pillars of the December 2002 “National Strategy 

to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction”: counterproliferation, 

nonproliferation, and consequence management.2 The currency and 

relevance of this discussion is evident in the ongoing national debate 

about how to deal effectively with the growing nuclear threat from 

Iran and North Korea. Moreover, the September 30, 2004, debate 

between President George Bush and Senator John Kerry highlighted 

proliferation of WMD as the gravest threat to U.S. national security. 

Both candidates emphasized the issue throughout their debate.

The aim of this chapter is to argue that the policy of 

nonproliferation and the newly elevated and explicitly articulated 

policy of preemption represent, in fact, conflicting objectives and 

that the friction caused by this policy mismatch hinders the strategic 

attainment of the stated national security objective of preventing 

enemies from threatening the United States and its allies with WMD. 

In so doing, the chapter will distinguish between hostile nation-states 

and nonstate actors (e.g., terrorist organizations and drug cartels), 

because, while both represent enemies or threats, the policies of 

preemption and nonproliferation ostensibly aim at nation-states. 
Specifically, a preemptive attack against any terrorist organization 

will occur physically on the sovereign territory of some nationstate. The same logic applies to the policy of nonproliferation, which 

demands strict control and accountability of state-produced or statecontrolled nuclear material to prevent it from falling into the hands 

of terrorists. 

The scope of this chapter, however, will remain limited only to 

the policies of preemption and nuclear nonproliferation. It will not 

attempt to answer whether the invasion of Iraq was justified or not, 

or if that act has made the United States more or less secure. Nor will 

it discuss non-nuclear WMD, counterproliferation or consequence 

management. While the methodology of this argument rests largely 

on facts concerning nuclear proliferation, which some might 

dispute as circumstantial and without direct linkage to the policy of 

preemption, the reality, as John Adams suggests, is that “facts are 

stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, 

or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and 

evidence.”3

Preemption, Imminence, and Intelligence—Connecting the Dots.

The right of “. . . preemption, defined as the anticipatory use of 

force in the face of an imminent attack, long has been accepted as 

legitimate and appropriate under international law.”4 Why, then, 

has this policy proven so controversial for Americans and become 

the centerpiece of foreign policy debates in the United States? And, 

if it has become a commonly accepted principle, many question why 

the United States found it necessary to reiterate explicitly the option 

in its current “National Security Strategy” by stating “we will not 

hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right to self-defense 

by acting preemptively.”5 First, the renewed emphasis by the United 

States on the concept of preemption came largely in response to the 

threat posed by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11). 

As President Bush stated prior to his February 2005 visit to Europe, 

“September the 11th caused us to change our foreign policy.”6

Secondly, theorists generally have accepted the right to preemption 

as applying only in situations of imminent self-defense. However, 
in the case of Iraq, imminence, based on intelligence reports, has 

proven difficult to justify. As the September 2002 “National Security 

Strategy of the United States of America” stated, the warnings of 

armies forming along borders no longer obtain. “We must adapt 

the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of 

today’s adversaries.”7

With the benefit of hindsight, there is much discussion on whether 

future commentators will view this expansion of the definition of 

imminence as a legitimate reason for a preemptive attack. As the 

absence of WMD in Iraq highlighted, the determination of this new 

definition of imminence, based on conflicting and potentially faulty 

intelligence, is difficult to verify. Not withstanding the Monday 

morning quarterbacking that has transpired since the failure to 

discover WMD in Iraq, the degree of imminence is proving equally 

difficult to ascertain in Iran and North Korea. Iran claims it does 

not have, and is not developing, nuclear weapons. The head of the 

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed El Baradei, 

supports this contention. He stated in February 2005 that there “have 

been no discoveries in the last 6 months to substantiate claims that 

Iran is secretly working toward building a bomb.”8 U.S. intelligence 

sources, however, claim that Iran is using its nuclear power program 

as a shield to produce weapons.9

Assessment on North Korea’s nuclear program also is uncertain. 

On February 10, 2005, North Korea announced for the first time that 

it had nuclear weapons and would not return to the six-nation talks.10

In response to North Korea’s claim, Robert Zoellick, nominated to 

be the next deputy secretary of state for the United States, stated 

on February 15, 2005, that North Korea’s announcement might have 

been a bluff.11 He suggested that they actually may not possess any 

nuclear weapons at all. This suggestion further clouded the already 

murky picture provided by various intelligence agencies, each having 

its own assessment of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development 

program. “Defense Intelligence Agency analysts believe North 

Korea may already have produced as many as 15 nuclear weapons 

. . . the CIA lowballed the estimate at two to three bombs, while 

the Department of Energy analysis puts it somewhere in between.”12

So, while Iran claims it is not developing nuclear weapons, the 
United States claims that it is, and when North Korea claims it has 

developed nuclear weapons, the United States asserts that it may 

only be bluffing. 

These contrasting intelligence estimates about both Iran and 

North Korea, and the intelligence failure in Iraq, will make it difficult 

to determine and assert the degree of imminence that must form the 

basis for future preemptive attacks. The need to protect sources and 

methods of the intelligence used to obtain information that is the 

basis for determining the imminence of a threat further complicates 

proving the reliability and sufficient level of imminence. Although 

many agree that the warnings of armies forming along borders no 

longer pertain and that one must adapt the concept of imminent 

threat to the capabilities and objectives of current adversaries, 

reliably determining the degree of imminence to garner the necessary 

domestic or even international support for future preemptive action 

will be increasingly problematic.

Regardless of whether or not the United States exercises its 

self-proclaimed right to preemptive attack in the future, clearly 

its preemptive action in Iraq has had an effect on the international 

community. The prospect of the world’s only superpower acting 

preemptively has proven distressing not only to its enemies, but 

even to many of its allies. Given the context of the attacks of 9/11, 

the U.S. Government interpreted its stated policy of preemption 

as a notice served to both friends and foes—a notice unheeded by 

Saddam Hussein that thereby led to his downfall. The interesting 

question is what message has this sent to both state and nonstate 

actors that either currently possess or are trying to acquire nuclear 

weapons. Has this policy discouraged nuclear proliferation or has 

it accelerated it? Has it served the United States well in the area of 

nuclear nonproliferation?

Developing Nuclear Capability—A Cost/Benefit Analysis.

Before answering these questions, one must examine two facts that 

have driven some nations to begin developing a nuclear capability. 

First, nations possessing nuclear weapons have never attacked each 

other. Nuclear weapons have proven an effective deterrent between 

nation-states. Nuclear optimists argue that offsetting nuclear weapon 
capabilities are stabilizing, because they make war too costly.13 Akin 

to the democratic-peace theory of international relations, which 

posits that democracies do not attack each other, there appears to 

be an unwritten nuclear-peace theory based on the precedent that 

countries with nuclear weapons have not attacked one another. 

Second is the fact that nations with nuclear weapons receive different 

treatment on the international stage than those which do not possess 

them. Their importance is greater and their status elevated in the 

international community. This historically has been true going back 

to the establishment of the permanent United Nations (UN) Security 

Council, the members of which were coincidentally also the first five 

nations to possess nuclear weapons. In the days of the Cold War, 

nuclear weapons equated to prestige, power, and development. 

The 1967 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty . . . divides its signatories into 

two categories: nuclear weapons states (NWS) and non-nuclear weapons 

states (NNWS). Only those states that had developed and tested nuclear 

weapons before the treaty were included in the NWS category. These are 

the USA, USSR, Britain, France and China, who are also the permanent 

members of the UN Security Council, the so-called P-5.14

Despite the attempts by the P-5 to institutionalize what some 

termed nuclear apartheid, other nations have developed nuclear 

capability and eventually produced weapons. In subsequent years, 

Israel, South Africa, India, and Pakistan (for a combination of reasons 

to include national security, power, and prestige that nuclear status 

afforded), all developed nuclear weapons. The power and status that 

nuclear weapons states demanded in the international community 

only served to entice countries such as Iraq, Libya, Iran, and North 

Korea, each determining that the risk was worth the reward. 

They all know that India, Pakistan, and Israel joined the nuclear club 

without ever accepting the rules laid out in the Nuclear Nonproliferation 

Treaty. Even after India and Pakistan set off tests in 1998, the sanctions 

America imposed were relatively modest and short-lived. As soon as 

America needed Pakistan’s help after the September 11, 2001, attacks, 

the country was transformed from nuclear outlaw to “major non-NATO 

ally.”15
Iran and North Korea are the most recent examples of countries 

willing to accept the risks of developing nuclear capabilities. They 

represent countries which few would discuss or consult, if they did 

not have nuclear development programs. With nuclear development 

programs, however, they have become the subject of intense 

diplomatic negotiations, each being offered a variety of incentives 

to disband its nuclear capability. They know that these overtures 

would not be forthcoming except for their burgeoning nuclear 

development programs. They also understand that, while nations 

that acquire nuclear weapons historically have been the recipient of 

punishment from other countries or the international community, 

to date, the tools for enforcement have not included military force. 

There is growing fear that the system for preventing the spread of 

nuclear arms may be eroding irreversibly, signaling that a quiet, lowscale arms race may be taking shape.16 “If you don’t do anything with 

a big cheater, what are the middle and future cheaters to think? The 

list could include Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, Taiwan or Brazil, 

even Indonesia and Sudan.”17

Based on these realities, it would appear logical for nations to 

conclude that attack, from the United States or another country with 

nuclear weapons, is less likely, if they possess their own arsenal. 

One could also deduce, based on the invasion of Iraq, on history, 

and on America’s reassertion of a policy of preemption, that nationstates are vulnerable to preemptive attack while developing nuclear 

weapons, but less likely to confront an attack after they possess 

them. Part of the America’s justification for attacking Iraq was that 

it was important to do so before Saddam Hussein acquired nuclear 

weapons. (U.S. intelligence believed that he possessed non-nuclear 

WMD, but was still in the process of developing nuclear weapons.) If 

this is true, then it is logical for nations possessing nuclear weapons 

to keep them, and countries in the process of developing nuclear 

weapons to accelerate their efforts. “Our demolition of Hussein 

was supposed to cow the others into submission. As it happens, the 

invasion apparently had the opposite effect. North Korea and Iran 

may have deduced that the greatest danger is not building nuclear 

weapons.”18
Nuclear Proliferation or Modernization?

There is reportedly sufficient enriched uranium and plutonium in 

the world to fuel at least 100,000 nuclear warheads. Eight countries 

currently possess nuclear weapons and two countries (North Korea 

and Iran) either have newly developed nuclear weapons or are close 

to having that capability.19 “More than 31,000 nuclear weapons are 

still maintained by the eight known nuclear powers a decrease of 

only 3,000 since 1998. Ninety-five percent of these weapons are in 

the United States and Russia, and more than 16,000 are deployed 

operationally.”20 Moreover, terrorist organizations have been trying 

for at least a decade to acquire the knowledge and material to build 

some form of nuclear weapon. Osama Bin Laden, who has spoken of 

acquiring nuclear weapons as a religious duty, has been at the forefront 

of such activities.21 There have been many treaties, agreements, and 

initiatives, which, taken collectively, aim at reducing the amount of 

nuclear material and number of nuclear weapons nations possess, 

preventing any other nations from acquiring nuclear weapons, and 

safeguarding or destroying weapons grade material to prevent it 

from falling into the wrong hands. To date these efforts have had 

mixed results.

The United States is arguably the leader and most active proponent 

of global nuclear nonproliferation. Its national security strategy and 

strategy to combat WMD make clear an intention to exercise global 

leadership on the matter. To this end, the United States took the lead 

in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Eleven countries agreed 

to that initiative in September 2003 in an effort to prevent nuclear 

material from being illegally transported, produced, or sold.22 A 

number of experts have heralded this cooperative effort as effective. 

Moreover, the United States has pledged to reduce the size of its 

nuclear arsenal significantly. These cooperative and conciliatory 

efforts at global nuclear nonproliferation, however, stand in contrast 

to ongoing efforts by the United States to modernize its current 

nuclear arsenal and develop new tactical nuclear weapons and its 

reluctance to ratify, after already signing, the Comprehensive Test 

Ban Treaty.

Other countries with nuclear weapons appear to have taken 

similar steps toward modernizing their nuclear weapons capability. 
1

While it may, or may not, be the case that they are following the 

U.S. lead on nuclear weapon modernization, the United States 

cannot, based on its own efforts, legitimately condemn such nuclear 

modernization plans. For example, Russia currently is producing 

a new SS-27 Topol-M, a road mobile version of the SS-27 with a 

7,000-plus mile range, a next generation intercontinental ballistic 

missile (ICBM) with a payload of 4,400 kilograms and up to 10 

warheads, and new Borey-class nuclear-powered submarines, each 

of which will carry 12 surface-to-land ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with 

multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs) and a range of more 

than 8,000 kilometers.23 In addition, France has a detailed nuclear 

weapons modernization plan through 2015.

24 Not surprisingly, 

China, India, and Pakistan, have all outlined their plans to go 

forward with nuclear weapons modernization. The end result has 

been that, while there may be some promise of reduction in numbers 

of nuclear weapons from all these countries (mostly of antiquated 

systems already requiring disposal), there has been a simultaneous 

commitment to continue modernization and production of newer 

and more advanced weapons.

While nuclear weapons modernization plans pose a potential 

danger, the reaction in Russia is perhaps the most disturbing. 

Estimated to still have as many as 35,000 nuclear warheads,25 Russia 

has, in light of the nuclear weapons modernizations discussed above, 

all but abandoned its previous commitment to disarmament. Despite 

early success and years of work under the Nunn-Lugar Treaty, the 

majority of its Cold War arsenal remains inadequately guarded and 

questionably accounted for.

For years the Ministry of Atomic Energy has blocked U.S. officials from 

helping Russia secure parts of its sprawling nuclear arsenal, including 

some 600 metric tons of bomb-grade fissile material and up to 25,000 

warheads . . . The Ministry of Defense reported installing only about onethird of the 76 miles of perimeter fencing that the United States began 

providing in 1997 for warhead storage sites at 52 separate locations. 

Meanwhile the Department of Energy has finished installing security 

improvements at only 13 of 133 building sites in the nuclear weapons 

complex. Overall the United States has been given access to only 35 of 133 

nuclear weapons complex buildings.26
This poses the real, if not realized already, danger of nuclear 

material, technology, or weapons being stolen by or sold to state 

or nonstate actors. During the February 16, 2005, Congressional 

testimony, senior intelligence officials, quoting a National 

Intelligence Council report, made this danger clear. The report 

stated that “we assess that undetected smuggling has occurred, and 

we are concerned about the total amount of material that could have 

been diverted or stolen in the last 13 years.”27 The report also noted 

that Russian authorities could not have recovered “all the [nuclear] 

material reportedly stolen.”28 This material, in the hands of terrorist 

organizations, would represent the most significant of threats to U.S. 

national security.

Preemption’s Effect—Nuclear Deterrence or Incentive.

The most obvious success in countering such a threat was the 

discovery and break up the Abdul Qadeer Khan network, followed 

by Libya’s announcement that it was abandoning its nuclear weapons 

program and allowing verification by international inspectors who 

can now access its facilities. This action immediately followed the 

U.S. liberation of Iraq and the capture of Saddam Hussein. American 

policymakers hailed Libya’s announcement and actions as the 

premier example of the policy of preemption furthering the cause 

of nuclear nonproliferation. While Saddam Hussein’s fall certainly 

influenced Mohammar Qadafi’s decision, he was as much, if not 

more, influenced by the realization that international law enforcement 

efforts had compromised Libya’s nuclear development program. 

Given the options, he decided it was in his best interest to announce 

a unilateral abandonment of Libya’s nuclear weapons program, 

rather than confront an international community with irrefutable 

evidence of his designs and the resulting consequences. “Caught in 

the act, Libya was forced to publicly reveal it had worked secretly to 

build nuclear as well as chemical weapons. Qadafi, concerned about 

his legacy and an economy hit hard by sanctions made the starling 

announcement in December 2003.”29 In this way, Qadafi figured he 

could muster some semblance of international prestige, while at the 

same time negotiating a deal that ended years of sanctions against 

Libya for its role in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet that killed 270 
people in Lockerbie, Scotland.30 Even with Qadafi’s declaration that 

he would cooperate with international inspectors, many suspect that 

he still has not been entirely forthcoming.

While the policy of preemption’s effect on Libya’s supposed 

nuclear disarmament is arguable, it is difficult to argue that 

preemption has yet to produce positive results in North Korea and 

Iran. North Korea shows no indication of slowing or stopping its 

nuclear weapons program. Most reports agree that it currently has 

between six and eight nuclear weapons and continues its effort at 

extending its missile range capability.

North Korea is an economic basket case that desperately sells whatever 

it has to whomever will pay . . . it is known as ‘Missiles R Us,’ having 

sold missiles in the last decade to Iran, Libya and Yemen . . . It is actively 

constructing a 200-megawatt reactor and a 50-megawatt reactor. On this 

path, when North Korea is able to produce additional nuclear weaponsuseable material, or indeed bombs, nothing will prevent it from becoming 

“Nukes R Us” for terrorists and other proliferators.31

Given the nuclear weapons modernization efforts of other countries 

with nuclear weapons, North Korea argues that international efforts 

aiming to disarm it are hypocritical. Moreover, North Korea seems 

to take an odd sense of pride in the prestige that it demands from the 

United States and other nations, a prestige which derives solely from 

its possession of nuclear weapons. The symbol of power that nuclear 

weapons provide singularly backs up its status and legitimacy in 

the world. Lastly, North Korea has been the subject of international 

punishment using all elements of power with the exception of one—

the military. The North Koreans understand the concept of nuclearpeace theory and assume that the best way to prevent a preemptive 

attack is to cling stubbornly to a nuclear capability.

Iran is in a different situation. Believed not yet to have nuclear 

weapons, some have alleged that it is dangerously close to possessing 

its first nuclear weapon. It also announced recently that its missiles 

can range Europe.32 In its case, it appears the policy of preemption, 

as executed against its neighbor Iraq, has accelerated its nuclear 

proliferation efforts, not deterred them. One could argue that the 

preemptive attack on Iraq did not influence Iran’s ambitions, and 

the Iranians would have proceeded with their nuclear development 
program, even if the United States had not invaded Iraq. The relevant 

question, however, is whether the policy of preemption has, in any 

way, deterred its nuclear proliferation. 

While it may still be too early to ascertain, the evidence suggests 

otherwise. Iran appears to be following the same model as North 

Korea, the implementation of which was seemingly hastened by 

Saddam Hussein’s fate. Iran now receives international attention 

similar to North Korea’s. Visited by international diplomats and 

offered a variety of quid pro quos, it has more bargaining power in 

the international community now than ever before. Iran also learned 

that it is most vulnerable to preemptive attack at present, while it 

is developing nuclear weapons. It also is aware that, if history is 

any indication of the future and the nuclear-peace theory proves 

true, the possession of nuclear weapons minimizes the likelihood of 

preemptive attack. The policy of preemption with regard to Iran has 

not deterred nuclear proliferation, but appears to have accelerated 

its nuclear weapon development.

This development in Iran is especially dangerous, given its 

support for radical Islam and associated terrorist organizations. This 

is the most likely nexus of WMD and terrorist organizations. Having 

stated that, there is no evidence that the policy of preemption has 

deterred terrorist organizations’ efforts to acquire nuclear material, 

knowledge, or weapons. In fact, because they already have attacked 

the United States, most in the West would consider an attack on 

these organizations as a retaliatory attack and not a preemptive 

attack. Terrorists understand that they will be attacked if located, so 

the threat of preemption is moot. 

The effect of this preemptive policy has only been evident on 

nation-states that possess or are trying to develop nuclear weapons 

and on those that support terrorist organizations. For those countries 

with nuclear weapons, the preemptive precedent, based on imminent 

threat set by the United States, already has been cited as justification 

for possible preemptive strikes. Shortly after the Beslan massacre, the 

chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces declared that Russia 

will “take all measure to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the 

world.”33 Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov echoed this shift 

in policy; he “also defended Russia’s right to carry out preemptive 

strikes outside Russia.”34 The situation between India and Pakistan, 
two countries with nuclear weapons, is now more dangerous with 

this preemptive precedent. Using the same logic that the United 

States expressed in its justification for its policy of preemption, it is 

plausible that Pakistan or India may determine that a preemptive 

strike is justified and necessary at some point in time to ensure its 

own national security. 

The policy of preemption has only hardened North Korea’s 

resolve to retain its nuclear capability and provided justification 

for its claims of self defense. North Korean Ambassador to the UN 

Han Sung Ryol claimed as much in an interview on February 20, 

2005, when he stated, “We have no other option but to have nuclear 

weapons as long as the Americans are trying to topple our system. 

If the United States withdraws its hostile policy, we will drop our 

Anti-Americanism and befriend it. Then why would we need nuclear 

weapons?”35

In Iran, the rhetoric also has grown increasingly hostile. Hassani 

Rohani, the secretary general of Iran’s Supreme National Security 

Council, announced on February 6, 2005, that there was nothing the 

West could do to make it scrap its nuclear program, and that Iran 

would retaliate in the event of an attack by America or Israel: “We 

will definitely accelerate our activities to complete our [nuclear] fuel 

cycle.”36 This statement points toward an accelerated effort to achieve 

what Saddam Hussein was unable to accomplish. “Apparently, 

they (the Iranians) have reached the conclusion they need the bomb 

more than ever to keep the United States out of their business and 

out of their country.”37 These developments, particularly in light of 

the global nuclear modernization plans, suggest that preemption is 

working at cross-purposes against the policy of nonproliferation. 

The most successful recent effort at nonproliferation has been the 

Proliferation Security Initiative, which has international support and 

has the committed leadership of the United States. This is the type 

of commitment and leadership from the United States required in all 

nonproliferation efforts.

Conclusion.

The facts suggest that the policy of preemption, while not being 

surrendered as a principle of self-defense, should not be explicitly 
written into subsequent U.S. National Security Strategy and used as 

policy doctrine. It is well-understood by the rest of the world that 

the United States has the power and will to exercise that right when 

it determines that imminent self-defense is necessary. Moreover, 

as most national security professionals have accepted nuclear 

terrorism as the gravest threat to national security, the United States 

should make real and tangible efforts in the global reduction of 

nuclear weapons and material, beginning with the ratification of the 

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. 

Others will see these nonproliferation efforts as sincere only if 

the United States stops its modernization and development of new 

nuclear weapons and declares a unilateral reduction of its nuclear 

arsenal. This will not weaken national security. On the contrary, 

such action would provide the United States and the rest of the 

international community additional and legitimate leverage to 

reduce the threat from state actors which possess nuclear weapons, 

weaken and delegitimize those state actors trying to acquire 

weapons, and reduce the amount of nuclear material becoming 

available to nonstate actors. This increased emphasis on nuclear 

nonproliferation and deterrence will better serve the U.S. efforts 

to achieve its national security objectives. While preemptive action 

in Iran, North Korea or some other part of the world may well be 

necessary, American policymakers should view this option only 

as a choice of last resort and not a specified policy for achieving its 

national security objectives. These recommendations would reconcile 

the current friction between the conflicting policies of preemption 

and nonproliferation and further the U.S. realization of its national 

security objectives.

ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 6

1. George W. Bush, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of 

America,” Washington, DC, September 2002, p.1.

2. George W. Bush, “National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction,” 

Washington, DC, September 2002, p. 2.

3. John Adams, “Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre 

Trials,” December 1770, available from www.quotationspage.com/quote/3235.html, 

Internet, accessed October 10, 2004.
4. Michael E. O’Hanlon, Susan E. Rice, and James B. Steinberg, “The New 

National Security Strategy and Preemption,” Policy Brief #113, December 2002, 

available from www.brook.edu/comm/policy briefs/pb113.htm, Internet, accessed 

October 6, 2004.

5. Bush, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” 

p. 6.

6. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Bush Seeks To Begin A Thaw In Europe Still Cool To 

Him,” New York Times, February 20, 2005, p. 1, available from ebird.dodmedia.osd.

mil/ebfiles/e20050220353122.html, Internet, accessed February 23, 2005.

7. Bush, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” 

p. 15.

8. Dafna Linzer and Glenn Kessler, “IAEA Head Disputes Claims On Iran 

Arms,” Washington Post, February 16, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/

e20050216352324.html, Internet, accessed February 16, 2005.

9. Ken Silverstein, “Senator Urges White House To Join Talks On Iran,” 

Los Angeles Times, February 14, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/

e20050214351792.html, Internet, accessed February 14, 2005.

10. “North Korea Admits Having Nuclear Arms, Quits 6-Nation Talks,” Baltimore 

Sun, February 10, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20050210351051.

html, Internet, accessed February 14, 2005.

11. Joel Brinkley, “U.S. Official Says North Korea Could Be Bluffing On Nuclear 

Arms,” New York Times, February 16, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/

e20050216352314.html, Internet, accessed February 16, 2005.

12. Knut Royce, “Debating North Korea Nukes,” Long Island Newsday, February 

16, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/e2005021635417.html, Internet, 

accessed February 16, 2005.

13. Chris Gagne, “Nuclear Risk Reduction in South Asia: Building a Common 

Ground,” Nuclear Risk Reduction in South Asia, Michael Krepon, ed., New York, 

2004, p. 43.

14. M. V. Ramana, “The Indian Nuclear Bomb—Long In The Making,” available 

from members.tripod.com/~no_nukes_sa/precis.html, Internet, accessed February 16, 

2005.

15. David E. Sanger, “Nuclear Reality: America Loses Bite,” New York Times, 

February 20, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil.ebfiles/s2005502200353077.html, 

Internet, accessed February 23, 2005.

16. James Sterngold, “Experts Fear Nuke Genie’s Out of Bottle,” San 

Francisco Chronicle, November 22, 2004, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil.ebfiles/

s20041123339120.html, Internet, accessed November 23, 2004.

17. Sanger.
18. Steve Chapman, “The Looming Nuclear Danger,” Chicago Tribune, February 

13, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil.ebfiles/s20050214351642.html, Internet, 

accessed February 14, 2005.

19. Reuters, “The New Nuclear Nightmare,” Chicago Tribune, August 29, 2004, 

available from ebird.afis.osd.mil.ebfiles/s20040830315836.html, Internet, accessed 

August 31, 2004.

20. “Current Time,” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September/October 2003, 

available from www.thebulletin.org/media/current.html, Internet, accessed August 

31, 2004.

21. Reuters.

22. “The Proliferation Security Initiative,” available from www.state.gov/t/np/rls/

other/34726, Internet, accessed October 6, 2004.

23. “Russian Nuclear Forces, 2004,” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, July/

August 2004, available from www.thebulletin.org/issues/nukenotes/ja04nukenote.html, 

Internet, accessed August 31, 2004.

24. Bruno Tertrais, “Nuclear Policy: France Stands Alone,” The Bulletin of Atomic 

Scientists, July/August 2004, Vol. 8, available from www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/

ja04/ja04tertrais.html, Internet, accessed August 31, 2004.

25. “Russian Nuclear Forces, 2004.”

26. Justin Bernier, “The Death of Disarmament in Russia?” Parameters, Summer 

2004, p. 89.

27. Bill Gertz, “Goss Fears WMD Attack In U.S. ‘A Matter Of Time’,” Washington 

Times, February 17, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20050217352536.

html, Internet, accessed February 23, 2005.

28. Ibid.

29. Bill Gertz, “Libyan Sincerity on Arms In Doubt,” Washington Times, 

September 9, 2004, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20040909318899.html, 

Internet, accessed September 9, 2004.

30. Dafna Linzer, “IAEA Cites Doubts On Libya’s Uranium,” Washington Post, 

August 31, 2004, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20040831316172.html, 

Internet, accessed August 31, 2004.

31. Graham Allison, “The Specter of Nuclear Proliferation,” Los Angeles Times,

February 17, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20050217352582.html, 

Internet, accessed February 23, 2005.

32. Reuters, “Iran’s Missiles Can Now Hit Europe, Ex-Official Says,” Washington 

Post, October 6, 2004, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20041006326619.html, 

Internet, accessed October 6, 2004.

33. Dave Montgomery, “Russian Antiterror Plan May Involve Raiding 

Neighbor,” Miami Herald, September 30, 2004, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil.

ebfiles/e20040930324923.html, Internet, accessed September 30, 2004.
34. Ibid.

35. Bob Drogin, “North Korea Urged to Resume Talks,” Los Angeles Times, 

February 20, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil.ebfiles/e20050220353148.html, 

Internet, accessed February 23, 2005.

36. Alec Washington, “Iran Challenges US Over Nuclear Programme,” 

London Daily Telegraph, February 7, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil.ebfiles/

e200507350303.html, Internet, accessed February 14, 2005.

37. “Bush Doctrine Gets A Nuclear Reaction,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 

February 13, 2005, available from ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20050214351832.html, 

Internet, accessed February 14, 2005.
CHAPTER 7

NATO:

STILL RELEVANT AFTER ALL THESE YEARS?

Colonel Gregory C. Kraak

OVERVIEW

One commentator on European affairs recently noted, “During 

the Cold War, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) provided 

the proper linchpin of American—and West European—security 

policy, and served as a useful, even fundamental deterrent to Soviet 

military might and expansionism. However, NATO’s time has come 

and gone, and today there is no legitimate reason for it to exist.”1 In 

contrast, the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) 

states that “NATO must develop new structures and capabilities to 

carry out [its] mission under new circumstances.” It then proposes 

to “expand NATO’s membership to democratic nations willing and 

able to share the burden of defending and advancing our common 

interests.”2

This represents two divergent views on a complex and contentious 

issue. This chapter will assess whether NATO still represents 

a relevant alliance, given the dissolution of the Soviet Union and 

emergence of the European Union (EU), and will provide, among 

a number of alternatives, a logical and appropriate course of action 

for the United States to adopt for its future NATO policy: expand, 

contract, or dissolve the alliance.

BACKGROUND

The end of World War II in 1945 brought new optimism to a 

war-weary world. After two world wars in the span of less than 30 

years, many believed the nations of the world finally would be able 

to coexist peacefully without fear of the next war to end all wars. 

The establishment of the United Nations (UN) in 1945 represented 
1

an expression of hope for the possibilities of a new global security 

arrangement and for fostering the social and economic conditions 

necessary for peace to prevail.3

But the turbulent and often shaky relations during the war between 

the powers of the Grand Alliance (the United States, Great Britain, 

and the Soviet Union) were a precursor of troubled times ahead. A 

new empire was rising under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, and 

the Soviet Union now stood in direct opposition to the free world 

and democratic ideals.4 At the same time, Harry S Truman achieved 

election as President in his own right in 1948. His new administration 

placed much of its emphasis on domestic spending in the form of his 

version of the New Deal. The Fair Deal focused spending primarily 

on housing, schools, and national health insurance. To pay for these 

programs without increasing taxes or running a deficit, Truman 

trimmed military spending.5

Europeans, already threatened and distrustful of Soviet 

intentions, found themselves equally alarmed by the sudden inward 

shift towards domestic issues by the United States. They feared that 

the perception of an isolationist America might encourage Soviet 

expansionism by sending mixed signals. To reassure European 

concerns and demonstrate unity through collective defense against 

military aggression, the United States and 11 other nations created 

the NATO alliance in April 1949. From its inception, NATO’s primary 

purpose was to demonstrate America’s resolve to defend Europe 

against a Soviet attack. The alliance achieved this goal successfully 

for over 40 years until the Cold War ended with the disintegration of 

the Soviet Union in 1991.

In the wake of the Cold War’s end, NATO has expanded twice: 

in 1999 to include the former Warsaw Pact countries of Hungary, 

Poland, and the Czech Republic; and again in 2004 to include Bulgaria, 

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. These 

eastward expansions have swelled membership to 26 nations (Figure 

1). They also have not gone unnoticed in Moscow. NATO’s latest 

expansion in 2004 extended its reach to within 160 kilometers of St. 

Petersburg and fueled suspicions within the Russian government, 

despite assurances from the West, of NATO’s peaceful intentions.
Belgium

Bulgaria *

Canada

Czech Republic #

Denmark

Estonia *

France

Germany

Greece

Hungary #

Iceland

Italy

Latvia *

Lithuania *

Luxembourg

Netherlands

Norway

Poland #

Portugal

Romania

Slovakia *

Slovenia *

Spain

Turkey

Key:

# joined in 1999

* joined in 2004

Figure 1. NATO Member Countries (2004).

But while NATO membership is still much coveted throughout 

Europe, the evolution of the EU, founded as the European 

Community in 1957, serves as a counterbalance to NATO, at least 

from an American perspective. The members of the EU finalized 

and agreed to the treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in 

June 2004. The intent of this new constitution is to create a political 

and economic alliance among the 25-member nations (19 of which 

also belong to NATO—see Figure 2), and ultimately to develop a 

military arm as well. The constitution also includes the appointment 

of a foreign minister to oversee a combined, single foreign policy for 

all EU members. Clearly, as the EU continues to grow, it emboldens 

its members and provides a degree of independence that they have 

not often enjoyed within the U.S.-dominated NATO alliance.

NATO’s future, therefore, is at a crossroads, and the United 

States must reevaluate its position in European affairs in light of the 

new roles of Russia and the EU. The fact that the United States is not 

a member of the EU increases the potential for NATO/EU friction. 

Consequently, the United States must determine what its future 

interests in Europe are and develop a new strategy that pursues 

expansion, contraction, or dissolution of NATO.
Joined EU Joined EU

Country NATO Member Country NATO Member

United States 1949 No Czech Republic 1999 Yes

United Kingdom 1949 Yes Bulgaria 2004 Applicant

Belgium 1949 Yes Estonia 2004 Yes

Canada 1949 No Latvia 2004 Yes

Denmark 1949 Yes Lithuania 2004 Yes

France 1949 Yes Romania 2004 Applicant

Iceland 1949 No Slovakia 2004 Yes

Italy 1949 Yes Slovenia 2004 Yes

Luxembourg 1949 Yes Austria No Yes

The Netherlands 1949 Yes Cyprus No Yes

Norway 1949 No Finland No Yes

Portugal 1949 Yes Ireland No Yes

Greece 1952 Yes Malta No Yes

Turkey 1952 Applicant Sweden No Yes

Germany 1955 Yes Croatia Prospective Applicant

Spain 1982 Yes Albania Prospective No

Hungary 1999 Yes Macedonia Prospective No

Poland 1999 Yes 

Figure 2. NATO/EU Membership (2004).

ANALYSIS

One can use a number of relevant factors to assess NATO’s 

future but the following are key: European goals and objectives, 

U.S. strategic interests, the impact of NATO military commitments, 

NATO-Russian relations, and the political will of selected key nations. 

Although NATO’s future is certainly more complex than just these 

five factors, they nonetheless provide a framework within which to 

discuss the pros and cons of expansion, contraction, or dissolution.

European Goals and Objectives.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union has lessened Europe’s 

dependence on the United States and empowered the EU to move 

beyond a purely economic alliance into foreign and military 

policies. EU members now coordinate more than 80 percent of their 

positions in the UN and a coherent defense identity is emerging 

slowly.6 As a result, Europe’s goals and objectives are no longer 
necessarily consistent, or even compatible with those of the United 

States. This presents a potential schism in U.S.-European relations 

that threatens NATO’s existence and relevance. In a world where 

homeland security, nation-building, and international legitimacy 

are increasingly important, particularly in European eyes, NATO 

at times might seem an anachronistic military defense organization 

constructed to oppose Soviet forces. Thus in some European eyes, it 

retains something of the static cast of cold-war deterrence.7

Many analysts believe widespread hostility toward U.S. foreign 

policy, coupled with the fear of American willingness to use force 

in the Middle East, could help push the EU toward a unity it has 

been previously unable to achieve.8 Increasingly, Europeans are 

more likely to view the key to their future as being more closely 

tied to the EU than to NATO. France and Germany are outspoken 

in their desire to lift EU restrictions on weapons sales to China, over 

the strategic and humanitarian objections of the United States, and 

also reject any future role for NATO in Iraq, although both countries 

have contributed troops to the International Security and Advisory 

Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.

The EU also has recently shown an increased appetite for military 

deployments. It is creating rapidly deployable units of 1,500 troops 

each, with up to 13 units operational by 2007. “Four EU countries—

France, Italy, Britain, and Spain—will each have units with their 

own national troops, and other member states will contribute troops 

to multinational units.”9 The EU deployed troops to Congo and 

Macedonia in early 2003, and recently assumed control from NATO 

over operations in Bosnia. Still, these operations have all been at the 

lower end of the spectrum of military operations, and by host nation 

invitation only. According to an EU council source, the goal is to 

carry out operations such as “humanitarian tasks, rescue missions, 

peacekeeping, and peace enforcement operations.”10 Limiting the 

focus to these types of missions will keep the full burden of response 

on the United States and/or NATO for higher end missions in 

hotspots around the world, if action is to occur at all.

NATO’s future therefore is linked inextricably to the growing 

power of the EU, as that organization’s new constitution clearly 

dictates. Article 40 of that constitution starkly states that, “until such 
time” as the common defense policy materializes, “the participating 

member states shall work in close cooperation with NATO.” It 

makes no provision for cooperation after that time. As a whole, the 

constitution makes clear that NATO ultimately is superfluous to the 

security policies of the EU.11 Thus, if the United States is to remain 

relevant on the European continent, it must identify new means with 

which to do so.

However, while the EU continues to grow, it remains an 

immature and somewhat uneasy alliance which the United States 

could manipulate to achieve its strategic goals. Only three of the 

EU’s 25 members had ratified the new constitution as of February 

2005, clear evidence that consensus within Europe remains elusive. 

Washington’s strong relations with dual EU/NATO members 

Poland, Denmark and Britain also may provide the United States 

with further leverage against the EU’s opposition to NATO policies. 

As long as Washington maintains strong relationships with these 

allies, NATO’s future and relevance seems secure.

U.S. Strategic Interests.

The demise of the Soviet Union left the United States as the 

world’s lone superpower, thrusting global leadership on Americans 

whether they choose to accept this new role or not. The United States 

has adjusted to its new niche and seems determined to retain global 

military and economic supremacy for the foreseeable future. To 

accomplish this, Washington must keep the former great powers of 

Western Europe, as well as Japan, firmly within the constraints of 

the U.S.-created postwar system by providing what some might call 

“adult supervision.”12 By continuing to cultivate NATO, the United 

States maintains a vehicle through which it can maintain relevance 

and dominance in European affairs, as well as a strategic counter to 

the growing influence of the EU. Hidden by all the lofty (and often 

misleading) rhetoric about NATO and transatlantic partnership is a 

simple fact: U.S. policy in Europe aims not only to counter others’ 

bids for hegemony, but to perpetuate America’s own supremacy on 

the continent.13
Impact of NATO Military Commitments. 

Although NATO’s creation aimed at deterring Soviet aggression, 

it has increasingly assumed preemptive, offensive purposes. In 

1995, NATO deployed 50,000 peacekeeping troops to Bosnia to help 

enforce the Dayton Peace Accords, the first true military deployment 

in NATO’s history. Shortly thereafter, the air war in Kosovo in spring 

1999 created a new role for the alliance, one that transformed it from 

a purely defensive alliance into one with offensive capability. This 

new role now tends to support intervention in the internal affairs 

of sovereign states, the domestic policies of which offend NATO’s 

values—even when such states pose no security threat to the alliance’s 

partners.14

President Bush applied this “policy” again during the U.S.-led 

invasion of Iraq in March 2003, as well as in operations against the 

Taliban in Afghanistan. In both cases, there were threats to NATO’s 

members—thus the justification for preemptive military action. Iraq’s 

suspected possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the 

increasingly destructive Al-Qa’ida terrorist network in Afghanistan 

triggered both responses. Thus, these out-of-area operations have 

created a new role for NATO.

On October 15, 2003, NATO inaugurated its response force in 

the Netherlands. This response force, which has now reached initial 

operational capability, combines elite land, air, sea, and special 

operations units into a single force, deployable anywhere in the 

world in 5 days and able to sustain itself for up to a month on a 

wide range of missions.15 It will number 21,000 soldiers once fully 

operational and will provide NATO with a tool to confront threats 

from international terrorism, hostile dictatorial regimes, and rogue 

states. NATO’s main mission of protecting the nations that comprise 

the alliance will remain, but will now focus on new threats, rather 

than the old enemy of the Cold War, the Soviet Union.16

But the NATO response force is neither designed nor equipped to 

handle every NATO mission. Recent operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, 

Iraq, and Afghanistan have required much greater commitments. 

The challenge for the United States is to convince its NATO partners 

to commit military forces commensurate with their capabilities 

in support of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). NATO’s 
26 members have five million men in arms to draw on, but have 

displayed little inclination to commit these forces in any strength to 

NATO’s ongoing missions. While many members have been critical 

of operations in Iraq and refuse to provide military support (85 

percent of the 31 nations’ troops are American—Britain and Poland 

provide the bulk of the rest), they equally have been indifferent to 

supporting operations in Afghanistan, which NATO has supported 

from the outset. At best, NATO will have 8,400 troops under its 

command in Afghanistan in the fall of 2004, or approximately onefifth of the number it dispatched to Kosovo in 1999. The United 

States has some 18,000 troops in the country, but none under NATO 

command.17

NATO introduced the Partnership for Peace program in 1994, 

designed to assist member nations in restructuring their military 

forces to contribute to NATO and global needs. While hailed as 

a success in facilitating the combined training and cooperation 

exercised with the stabilization force (SFOR) in Bosnia and Kosovo 

Force (KFOR), it cannot overcome the current political reluctance of 

a number of members to contribute troops.

NATO-Russian Relations. 

The NATO-Russia Founding Act of May 1997 provided Moscow 

with a “voice but not a veto,” and ensured that Russia would enjoy 

consultation on the key European security issues outside NATO 

territory.18 But the alliance’s new Eastern European members still 

harbor anti-Russian sentiments and view NATO’s true mission in 

historic terms: to deter possible Russian aggression. Some Poles, for 

instance, believe that President Vladimir Putin’s goal is to consolidate 

power in Russia, then recreate the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 

(USSR) and impose domination over Eastern Europe, as Russian 

leaders have done for centuries. For them, joining NATO was the 

only way for Poland to protect itself from this danger.19 Russia, 

however, is equally skeptical of NATO’s intentions. Although 

Moscow’s relatively muted response to the 2004 NATO expansion 

remains in stark contrast to its vocal opposition of 1999, NATO’s 

methodical eastward expansion has created new levels of mistrust 

and suspicion.
Growing domestic uncertainty accompanies Russian insecurity. 

Despite its massive size and natural resources, Russia has major 

economic problems, as well as its own terrorism concerns in the 

aftermath of the terrorist attack on the Beslan school in September 

2004. Whatever its strategic goals, these events might actually serve 

to push Russia towards improved relations with NATO and the West 

as a means to address such concerns. But, while the United States 

and NATO may no longer view Russia as an adversary, neither do 

its member nations yet see Russia as a friend.

Political Will.

The survival of NATO hinges on its member nations and 

prospective members sustaining the political will to support its 

continued existence and reach consensus on events which merit 

military action. The 10-member states admitted since 1999 certainly 

have this will, given that all only recently emerged from behind the 

Iron Curtain and Soviet control. Clearly, these nations are eager to 

reap the benefits afforded by both NATO and the EU, and six have 

already joined both organizations.

The true measure of political will is that which emanates from 

NATO’s core members: France, Germany, Great Britain, and the 

United States. While other partners will exert some influence, the 

cornerstone of any debate over NATO’s future will revolve around 

these four members. Because France and Germany do not share 

America’s central preoccupation—the war on terror—this attitude 

tends to isolate the United States. Moreover, America is a country 

whose power is now so overwhelming as to invite dissent and 

countervailing currents.20 This places even greater emphasis on 

Washington’s long-standing warm and cordial relationship with 

London, which generally has supported American global policies, 

sometimes at the risk of its own isolation. The United States must 

exercise great care in nurturing this special relationship with Britain 

and use that connection judiciously as leverage against EU policies 

which oppose the United States and/or NATO.
OPTIONS

Given these factors, the United States has three potential courses 

of action:

Expand NATO Membership.

NATO has created the Membership Action Plan (MAP) to 

assist aspiring candidates for membership within the alliance. 

Although involvement in the plan does not in any way assure 

future membership, this “probation” provides a clear indicator of 

each nations’ interest and commitment to joining NATO. There are 

currently three countries participating in the Membership Action 

Plan: Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia. Any discussion of NATO 

expansion must begin with these three states.

Albania and Macedonia joined seven other nations in becoming 

candidates in 1999. When NATO expanded in 2004, they were the 

only two of the nine nations not offered membership. While both are 

making significant strides to meet selection criteria, neither currently 

has sufficient resources (as measured by the gross domestic product 

[GDP] per capita—see Figure 3) available to devote towards NATO 

integration to merit serious consideration. Albania spends a paltry 

$56 million on defense and has a GDP per capita of only $4,500. 

Macedonia spends slightly more for defense, $200 million with per 

capita GDP of $6,700.21 Both nations recently have offered to deploy 

small numbers of troops to Bosnia and Afghanistan as a means of 

demonstrating their resolve and willingness to contribute to ongoing 

NATO operations. Neither, however, nor other prospects such as 

Malta and Cyprus, offer the same benefits as recent additions. For 

instance, Poland (1999) has contributed more troops to operations 

in Iraq and Afghanistan than any other NATO member, except the 

United States, Britain, and Italy. In an era in which the United States 

feels that some allies are not doing enough, the “new kids” from the 

previous two expansions have all contributed measurably.

The third Membership Action Plan candidate, however, would 

bring much to the table right now. With a per capita GDP of $10,600, 

Croatia already surpasses the per capita income of many current 

NATO members, including recent additions Bulgaria and Romania,
Country Per Capita GDP Annual Military Spending Military Manpower

Russia $8,900 Not available 30,600,000

Ukraine $5,400 $618 million (1.4% of GDP) 9,565,000

Belarus $6,100 $176 million (1.4% of GDP) 2,164,000

Croatia $10,600 $520 million (2.4% of GDP) 874,000

Albania $4,500 $56 million (1.5% of GDP) 775,000

Macedonia $6,700 $200 million (6% of GDP) 448,000

Malta $17,700 $33 million (0.7% of GDP) 79,000

Algeria $6,000 $2.2 billion (3.5% of GDP) 5,675,000

Morocco $4,000 $2.3 billion (4.8% of GDP) 5,529,000

Source—CIA: The World Factbook, 2004.

Figure 3. Prospective NATO Members.

as well as longstanding member Turkey. Its military budget of 

$520 million surpasses that of every NATO 2004 inductee with the 

exception of Romania. Croatia also offers plentiful manpower in the 

form of 874,000 males fit for military service, and its strategic location 

along the Adriatic Sea and bordering NATO members Slovenia and 

Hungary makes it an attractive candidate. Croatia also has applied 

for EU membership, yet another reason the United States should 

place added significance on Croatian membership.

But the EU has not extended Croatia membership for the same 

reason NATO remains out of its reach: its failure to cooperate with 

the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In 

most parts of the former Yugoslavia, there is limited public support 

for war crimes prosecutions against members of the ethnic majority. 

And at present this is equally true in Croatia. Police assistance to war 

crimes prosecutors and investigative judges remains half-hearted at 

best, in part because police officers often are themselves implicated 

in the commission of war crimes.22

Recently, the Croatian government has finally begun to show a 

willingness to step up and apprehend war criminals. It has recognized 

that its failure to do so is costing it membership in both the EU and 

NATO. But compliance is subjective, and it is uncertain that the 

EU and NATO have the same International Criminal Tribunal for 

the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) compliance standards for Croatia. 

Croatia’s recent actions make EU membership increasingly likely, 

perhaps as soon as 2008. Should Croatia gain admittance to the 
1

EU and not receive an offer of membership in NATO, a potentially 

valuable new ally might devote its national resources and interests 

to EU integration, rather than to NATO. In such an event, the United 

States should prepare to compromise on its ICTY principles and 

actively facilitate Croatian membership into NATO.

Russia also is a potential, albeit unlikely candidate for membership. 

But recent events have strained Russia’s relations with the West and 

provided fresh evidence that a sizeable gap still remains between 

Moscow and Washington. The terrorist school attack in September 

2004 led President Putin to tighten the government’s grip on Russian 

policies. These policies have resulted in new limits on civil liberties 

and threaten to derail, or at least slow, Russia’s crawl towards 

democracy. But failure to extend membership to Russia results in 

other unintended consequences. It draws new lines of division in 

Europe, alienates those left out, and weakens Russians most inclined 

towards liberal democracy and a market economy. In the process, 

it also pushes Russia towards China instead of drawing it towards 

Europe and America.23

A stable and democratic Russia, integrated as a contributing 

member of the Euro-Atlantic community, is clearly in the best 

interests of the United States. But ideological differences still remain. 

The National Security Strategy states, “Russia’s uneven commitment 

to the basic values of free-market democracy and dubious record in 

combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction remain 

matters of great concern.”24 Regardless, inviting Russia to join 

NATO might serve as incentive for the Russians to improve on their 

past human rights record and thereby further speed their nation’s 

transformation into a democracy.

Russian membership might also bolster American leverage 

within the alliance and in particular, against growing EU influence. 

American diplomatic efforts to engage and embrace Russia could 

lead to a powerful partnership between Moscow and Washington 

that, if harmonious, could dominate both NATO and EU policies. 

Furthermore, adding Russia to NATO would neutralize Russian 

nationalist arguments and agendas that view NATO enlargement as 

humiliating and an affront to Russian sovereignty. 

But there are risks associated with such an action. It is not clear 

that any of NATO’s current members want to add Russia to the 
alliance. Former Soviet satellites, including Hungary, Bulgaria, 

Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, as well as the Baltic states, would 

almost certainly oppose it, given their long-standing (and historically 

justified) fear of Russian expansionist intentions. It also is unclear 

whether NATO’s core members, Britain, France, and Germany, 

would support such a move, since Russian membership would 

include an economic cost, and the EU nations might be reluctant 

to spend capital or yield global power to a nation that has proven 

so menacing and distrustful throughout its history. It also might 

commit them to a Russian-Chinese confrontation, which would not 

be to their liking.

From an American perspective, the advantages of Russian 

membership are overshadowed by a hidden cost. The United States 

dominates NATO policies and the alliance in general and is not a 

member of the EU. As such, Washington uses NATO as a vehicle to 

wield power and influence in Europe and increasingly, the world. 

While it might be tempting to add Russian military might and 

manpower to the pool of available resources for the GWOT and other 

NATO-sanctioned military missions, one cannot be sure that Russia 

would be any more supportive of NATO’s military commitments 

than many current members (i.e., Germany and France). In fact, from 

a Russian perspective, it seems more likely that the Russians would 

seek to marginalize U.S. influence and oppose U.S.-led positions. 

As a result, reduced American influence in NATO might offset the 

trade-offs gained through membership (Russian democratization 

and stability) and thereby seriously undermine U.S. policy goals and 

objectives around the world.

Ukraine is another possibility for NATO membership and merits 

close attention. The presidential election of pro-NATO candidate 

Viktor Yushchenko in December 2004 places Ukraine on the path 

towards the West and away from Russian influence. The United 

States and NATO should be willing to reach out to Ukraine and not 

yield to Russian threats and rhetoric. NATO membership should be 

a mere formality, since Ukraine already is contributing militarily to 

operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, unlike many current NATO 

members.

But adding Ukraine to NATO, with its growing military power 

and lengthy geographic border with Russia, almost certainly would 
galvanize new Russian opposition. Russian Defense Minister Sergei 

Ivanov recently said his government would find any U.S. and 

NATO attempts to further expand their influence into the former 

Soviet sphere deeply worrisome. He then added that Russia sees 

no sense in further NATO enlargement.25 The timing of his remarks 

seems clearly influenced by the Ukrainian election results. Still, the 

advantages of a pro-western Ukraine are far greater than the risks 

associated with Russian opposition. Therefore, NATO should seek 

to extend membership to Ukraine as soon as practical.

Belarus is situated directly north of Ukraine. Like Ukraine, it shares 

an eastern border with Russia. It also shares a history of fraudulent 

elections. President Alexander Lukashenko has established a de 

facto dictatorship of rigged elections, state-controlled media and 

persecution of opponents. Belarus, already dependent on Russian 

subsidies, is set to adopt the ruble as its national currency in 2005.26

The U.S. State Department and the Organization for Security for 

Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) both declared the 2001 election 

undemocratic and continue their refusal to recognize the Lukashenko 

regime. The impact of this Western isolation has been to push Belarus 

even closer to Russia. Should NATO move to include Ukraine as 

a member, it might trigger further resentment from Belarus, as its 

fourth neighbor joins the alliance (Latvia, Lithuania and Poland 

are the other three). Despite this risk, Belarus simply is not a viable 

candidate without free and fair elections with recognizable results. 

Clearly a nation that cannot adhere to the will of its people is not 

worthy of NATO membership. Furthermore, like Albania and 

Macedonia, it offers little in the form of economic or military means 

to justify inclusion.

Expansion of NATO should not remain limited to Europe. The 

alliance also should look to the south and evaluate the potential of 

nations along Africa’s northern rim, specifically Algeria and Morocco. 

Although neither is ready at present for NATO membership, both 

exhibit strong potential for the future and their geographic locations 

along the Mediterranean make them even more attractive. Both have 

cooperated with NATO recently and show a willingness to join, or 

expand their roles, in the GWOT. 

Algeria has agreed to begin training and other programs with 

NATO as part of a process to ensure interoperability and common 
language. NATO also recently designated Algeria as its most 

promising partner in the Middle East region.27 As coalition forces 

chase terrorists from within Iraq and Afghanistan, their next 

destination may well be Africa. Algeria already has a long history 

of combating terrorism from within and may offer new insights 

into successful techniques employed in the past that might prove 

successful against al-Qa’ida and other terrorist groups.

Although Algeria is a promising potential partner with military 

resources and spending that dwarfs most current NATO members, 

it is not at present a serious candidate for NATO membership, nor 

has it given evidence that it seeks to become one. Algeria opposes 

many of NATO’s policies, as well as the U.S.-led military presence 

in Iraq. But even if Algeria were never to join NATO, it might be 

a willing partner in the GWOT, which ultimately serves American 

strategic interests and objectives.

Morocco is another potential new ally. President George W. Bush 

recognized Morocco as a major non-NATO U.S. ally in June 2004 and 

acknowledged the country’s support in the U.S.-led war on terror. 

Moroccan authorities have arrested about 2,000 people in cases 

linked to terrorism since their country suffered a suicide attack in 

Casablanca in May 2004.28 Its key strategic location, opposite Spain 

across the Strait of Gibraltar and bordering both the Mediterranean 

Sea and Atlantic Ocean, provides additional incentives to 

membership. But some current NATO members might take a dim 

view of the aggressive measures the Moroccan government has 

implemented in combating terrorism. Human rights groups have 

complained consistently that these measures have gone too far and 

that the rule of law must be honored and followed in all instances. 

At this point, therefore, Morocco and Algeria seem better designed 

to serve as valuable non-NATO American allies in the GWOT rather 

than NATO partners.

Contract NATO or Maintain Status Quo—No New Additions.

In light of NATO’s recent expansions, contraction is not 

politically feasible. None of NATO’s current members have given 

any indication that they wish to withdraw from the alliance and the 
prospect of “voting out” existing members is counterproductive and 

would serve no political or strategic purpose. The real question is 

whether maintaining a status quo of 26 members will help NATO 

survive or result in it being outflanked by the EU.

Whether it knows it or not, NATO currently finds itself in a race 

for new members with the EU, over Croatia in particular. For now, 

only Croatia has aspirations to join both organizations, but with the 

increased benefits afforded by globalization, it is inevitable that other 

nations will pursue the same course. Resisting further expansion, 

therefore, could eventually hasten NATO’s irrelevance, as emerging 

candidates shunned by NATO direct their attention instead to the 

open arms of the EU.

The obvious advantage for current members in maintaining the 

status quo is that they maintain their political base of power within 

the alliance. Each new member gains a voting interest in the alliance 

and therefore its own “piece of the pie.” Old Europe members, such 

as France and Germany, rightly view new members as potential 

competitors for prestige within the alliance and, given their stated 

views and positions, would certainly prefer expansion of the EU 

(which both currently dominate), especially if it serves a dual purpose 

of thwarting NATO.

It is therefore imperative that the United States and its non-EU 

NATO partners (including Canada, Norway, and Turkey) continue 

to explore new ways for NATO to maintain its relevance and not 

serve as a billpayer for EU ambitions. Clearly, maintaining the status 

quo is a recipe for irrelevance and if adopted, the United States and 

NATO are likely to watch the EU overtake its position in Europe and 

the world.

Dissolve the Alliance and/or Create a Replacement for It.

Dissolving NATO, favored by many, would mitigate the risk 

associated with NATO enlargement and ease Russian concerns. 

The rise in prominence of the EU would make it ideally suited to 

fill the vacuum generated by the death of the alliance, and it seems 

increasingly likely that many nations in Europe would embrace 

a future free of U.S. interference and intervention in Europe’s 

affairs. A more balanced relationship between the United States 
and Europe, and a European security order that is more European 

and less Atlantic, holds out the best hope for preserving a cohesive 

transatlantic community. As the 21st century progresses, America 

must become Europe’s partner, no longer its pacifier.29

Although the EU seems resigned to accepting NATO’s continued 

existence for now, it is unlikely that it can fully replace NATO’s 

military capabilities in the near future. The EU’s military capability 

remains limited to the support of small scale missions, such as 

Macedonia and Bosnia, and it possesses neither sufficient military 

enablers (i.e., logistics, strategic lift capacity, intelligence), nor the 

political will and consensus necessary to take on missions on a larger 

scale. Even NATO’s harshest critics acknowledge its military utility 

for the foreseeable future, in support of the GWOT, in general, and 

out-of-area missions such as Afghanistan, in particular.

A new alliance of like-minded nations with common values may 

be more applicable to today’s needs. The GWOT provides the mission 

and purpose: defeat radical fundamentalists worldwide. A new 

alliance would be suitable, at least from an American perspective. 

A GWOT-focused alliance could begin with all of NATO’s current 

members, then extend membership to Ukraine, Russia, and any other 

nation around the world committed to defeating terrorism. Such an 

alliance would be relevant to today’s needs and therefore acceptable 

to the United States. It would also provide a vehicle through which 

other like-minded nations could channel their efforts to defeat 

terrorism, in the form of its extended new membership.

But such an organization might result in a 21st century version 

of the UN. The UN would certainly oppose it and rightly see such a 

new, global alliance as a threat to its own existence. Any new alliance 

would face the same challenges as NATO currently does, namely 

gaining consensus and garnering UN support before any action can 

be taken. Furthermore, the addition of Russia to either a new alliance 

or NATO itself would provide Moscow with power similar to what 

it enjoys on the UN Security Council, where the Russians frequently 

achieve their aims through possession of their veto authority.

From an American perspective, the United States would sacrifice 

significant power and control over European and global affairs by 

dissolving NATO or replacing it with a new alliance. Washington 

sees NATO enlargement as a mechanism to exert even greater 
influence overseas and in particular, as a tool to stifle Russian 

ambition and influence. Given the GWOT’s focus and open-ended 

commitment, the United States seems destined to rely even more 

heavily on NATO for offensive military operations in the future. 

Therefore, dissolving or replacing NATO currently is not acceptable 

to America’s international interests.

RECOMMENDATION

NATO is still relevant, from an American perspective. It enables 

Washington to continue to dominate European affairs and remain 

an active player in Europe. Furthermore, continued expansion is 

prudent and beneficial to most of its members, the United States in 

particular.

NATO should extend membership to Ukraine under Presidentelect Yushchenko, as soon as it applies. NATO also should extend 

membership to Croatia once its government adheres to the 

principles of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former 

Yugoslavia, or when the EU extends a membership offer, whichever 

occurs first. Croatia combines a strong military, growing economy, 

strategic location, and commitment to NATO’s core principles that 

are impossible to overlook. The reluctance of many current NATO 

members to contribute to the GWOT makes the addition of these 

two nations even more appealing. Both also have the resources 

and political will to contribute to NATO immediately. Although 

Ukrainian membership would risk further antagonizing Russia, the 

potential benefits outweigh these risks. In fact, NATO’s continuing 

eastward expansion might provide sufficient pressure to convince 

Russia to return to the path of democratic reforms, a prerequisite for 

consideration of Russia as a potential NATO partner.

Current American policy centers on the defeat of global terrorism 

and as such, the United States should aggressively engage Russia 

through diplomacy as a partner in this endeavor. The terrorist attack 

in Beslan in September 2004 has resulted in Russia now being added 

to the growing list of nations victimized by terrorism. The time is 

ripe for the United States and Russia to join forces in fighting terror 

around the world, although Russia so far has refused to cooperate 

with such overtures.
As NATO continues to grow, it should expand further to include 

other like-minded nations committed to battling terrorism. But in 

seeking new partners in the GWOT, America should set aside the 

idealistic notion that all nations must share its values. Promotion 

of human rights and advancement of democracy are noble causes, 

but Americans should not naively insist that every nation become 

a mirror image of themselves. Encouraging Russian behavioral 

changes through incentives such as the World Trade Organization, 

NATO, and the EU represents an intelligent strategy, but today’s 

threats make it more important for the United States to have allies 

that share its national security policies than its democratic goals and 

ideals.

The United States needs NATO—for now. Although NATO’s 

mission is no longer to deter Soviet aggression and Russia is no longer 

a legitimate threat to European peace and prosperity, Washington’s 

influence continues to ensure that NATO’s focus closely parallels its 

own strategic interests. Expanding NATO to include nations which 

will stand by America against terrorism is not just feasible, acceptable, 

and suitable, it is absolutely necessary to ensure the United States 

remains relevant in global affairs and retains its status as the world’s 

predominant power.

ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 7

1. Steven E. Meyer, “Carcass of Dead Policies: The Irrelevance of NATO,” 

Parameters, Vol. 33, Winter 2003/2004, p. 83.

2. George W. Bush, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of 

America,” Washington, DC, The White House, September 2002, p. 25.

3. Karen A. Mingst and Margaret P. Karns, The United Nations in the Post-Cold 

War Era, Boulder, CO, 2000, p. 2.

4. Charles M. Kuyk, “NATO’s Evolution: Maintaining Relevance,” Strategy 

Research Project, Carlisle Barracks, U.S. Army War College, April 10, 2001, p. 1. 

5. Ernest R. May, American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68, Boston, 1993, 

p. 3.

6. Andrew Moravcsik, “Europe Takes Charge; Sure NATO is Relevant. But the 

Real Transatlantic Work is Being Done over at the European Union,” Newsweek, 

July 5, 2004, p. 27.

7. Ibid.
8. Marc Champion and John Carreyrou, “Europe Surveys Its Options After 

Bush’s Victory,” Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2004, sec. A, p. 12.

9. Cybercast News Service, “European Union Agrees on Rapid Reaction Force,” 

CNSNews.com [journal on-line], available from www.cnsnews.com/ ViewForeign 

Bureaus.asp?Page=%5CForeignBureaus%5Carchive%5C200411%5CFOR20041125a.

html, Internet, accessed January 27, 2005.

10. Ibid.

11. Jeffrey L. Cimbalo, “Saving NATO From Europe,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83, 

November/December 2004, p. 114.

12. Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne, “NATO: At 50, It’s Time to 

Quit,” The Nation, May 10, 1999, p. 15.

13. Ibid., p. 17.

14. Ibid., p. 16.

15. NATO Update, “Response Force Ready For Missions,” NATO Update,

available from www.nato.int/docu/update/2004/10-October/e1013a.htm, Internet, 

accessed December 16, 2004.

16. “NATO Response Force—Proposed Rapid-Reaction Military Force,” ArmyTechnology.com, available from www.army-technology.com/contractors/missiles/nato.

html, Internet, accessed January 14, 2005.

17. Jackson Diehl, “NATO’s ‘Myth’ in Afghanistan,” Washington Post, July 5, 

2004, sec. A, p. 17.

18. Paul E. Gallis, “NATO Enlargement: Pro and Con Arguments,” Library of 

Congress: Congressional Research Service, 1998, p. 2.

19. Dmitry Shlapentokh, “Is NATO in Trouble?” Contemporary Review, March 

2003, p. 152.

20. Roger Cohen, “Much of World Views U.S. As Chest-Thumper,” Startribune.

com, available from startribune.com/stories/484/5131406.html, Internet, accessed 

December 12, 2004.

21. “The World Factbook,” Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 

January 2004, available from www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/, Internet, 

accessed December 11, 2004.

22. HumanRightsWatch.org, “Justice at Risk: War Crimes Trials in Croatia, 

Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro,” available from www.hrw.

org/reports/2004/icty1004/3.htm, Internet, accessed January 14, 2005.

23. Kenneth N. Waltz, “NATO Expansion: A Realist’s View,” Explaining NATO 

Enlargement, Robert W. Rauchhaus, ed., London, 2001, p. 30.

24. Bush, p. 27.

25. Bakutoday.net, “Russian Defense Minister: Moscow Wants No Further 

NATO Expansion,” available from www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=11995, Internet, 

accessed January 14, 2005.
26. Editorial, “More Straight Talk,” The Washington Post, September 17, 2004, 

sec. A, p. 26. 

27. “NATO Cites Algeria as Model Partner,” WorldTribune.com, available from 

216.26.163.62/2004/eu_algeria_11_30.html, Internet, accessed December 16, 2004.

28. BBC News, “US Rewards Morocco for Terror Aid,” BBC News, available 

from news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3776413.stm, Internet, accessed December 16, 2004.

29. Charles A. Kupchan, “The Origins and Future of NATO Enlargement,” 

Explaining NATO Enlargement, Robert W. Rauchhaus, ed., London, 2001, p. 147.

CHAPTER 8

ECONOMIC AND MILITARY IMPACT OF CHINA’S 

GROWTH IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION

Lieutenant Colonel Pierre E. Massar

For to win 100 victories in 100 battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue 

the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.

Sun Tzu

According to two experts: “In the 21st century, the Asian-Pacific 

region threatens to supplant Europe as the region of paramount 

national security interest to the United States.”1 If that is so, then 

the key question U.S. policymakers must address is: What should 

America’s main national security policies be in this critical region 

of the world? The purpose of this chapter is to analyze current East 

Asia policy critically within the context of assessing U.S. national and 

security interests in the region. It will identify several main national 

interests in the region, emphasize key issues, and recommend policy 

choices to advance U.S. interests. It will suggest that the United 

States must actively engage itself in East Asia with determination, 

foresight, and clarity. This chapter will begin with an examination of 

the environment the United States must appreciate and understand.

The U.S. National Security Strategy is the defining source of the 

nation’s current strategic outlook. Within this strategic outlook, 

three national interests hold primacy with respect to East Asia: peace 

and stability in the area, Asian economic recovery and viability, 

and the integration of China into a regional security and economic 

framework.2 The U.S. Government characterizes the former two as 

vital regional interests and the later as important. Asian-Pacific peace 

and stability directly supports the American grand strategic goal of 

“work[ing] with others to diffuse regional conflicts.”3 Second, Asian 

economic viability supports “ignit[ing] a new era of global economic 

growth through free markets and free trade.”4 Last, the integration 
of China into a regional security and economic framework, involves 

“develop[ing] agendas for cooperative action with the other main 

centers of global power.”5 In order to better understand America’s 

ability to advance its interests in East Asia, one must first examine 

the external and internal factors that affect those interests.

This chapter will focus on three factors characteristic of or related 

to the region that cannot change in short order. Arguably, the most 

challenging is the proliferation and spread of weapons of mass 

destruction (WMD) within not only the region but also throughout 

the world. The development of nuclear, biological, and chemical 

WMD, along with missile development, are the primary cause of 

various nations in the region seeking to limit American influence, 

and simultaneously, bolstering their own influence and prestige. For 

example, the introduction of a U.S. theater missile defense system 

would have an impact on the United States, South Korea, Taiwan, 

and Japan. 

Furthermore, economic and political challenges caused by the 

1997 Asian economic crisis have at least temporarily challenged 

U.S. interests with respect to regional states that hope to advance or 

modify their economic and political infrastructures. This may result 

in a loss of legitimacy in the political institutions and among leaders 

of the region due to the perception that they failed to appropriately 

manage the crisis with the United States as a tacit and opportunistic 

player. One author has gone as far as to “charge that the crisis allowed 

the United States, through the use of the International Monetary 

Fund, to orchestrate new agenda aims to open Asian markets for U.S. 

transnational corporations to acquire distressed Asian companies . . . 

to break down the traditionally closed financial systems all over 

Asia.”6 He argued that China’s economic issues therefore would 

become more “. . . forthcoming due to currency policies, greater 

foreign direct investment, and increased international debt.”7

Moreover, the developing nations of the region may have further 

challenges, exacerbated by rigid and archaic domestic economic 

systems. 

Lastly, the United States does possess an opportunity to further its 

present and future national security interests. Presently, the United 

States is an integral and balanced partner and provides security in the 
region particularly with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The United 

States possesses real political, economic, and military influence, 

allowing it to advance its interests further due to its long history as a 

significant actor among East Asian states. However, due to its Cold 

War operating practices, its approach all too often has been to favor 

traditional allies and partners. Furthermore, it has not applied this 

influence to promising nations, developing their potential as both 

economic and security interests. The values brought forth from this 

history have helped define the U.S. role and influence, and molded 

the character of the region. What should America’s regional policy 

for East Asia be?

Policy Recommendations.

Such recommendations must capture the dynamic and germane 

characteristics of a region that historically has not received a balanced 

application of American national power. This chapter provides 

three important recommendations. First, the United States must 

even-handedly foster a region committed to cooperation. Second, 

East Asia must accept free trade and commerce—not an easy task 

to accomplish given the deep distrust that exists among the states. 

Third, the United States must employ and integrate the elements of its 

national power actively to create favorable outcomes in dealing with 

the People’s Republic of China. Given these three recommendations, 

how should the United States advance its policy? 

The answer lies with a measured and balanced regional strategic 

approach consistent with the objectives, strategic concepts, and 

appropriate and synchronized application of means. The first specific 

recommended goal must be an even-handed fostering of an East Asia 

committed to cooperation. 

The United States must resolve to improve bilateral and 

multilateral relations with countries in the region and increase general 

awareness of U.S. presence. Americans must be clear on one point: 

U.S. national interests drive its national policies. While there are those 

who believe the current Bush administration “wants U.S. hegemony 

in military power; hegemony in NATO; hegemony in the Pacific to 

contain the growing power of China; hegemony in the World Bank, 
the International Monetary Fund and other international financial 

institutions; hegemony in the Security Council; and hegemony over 

oil supplies from the Gulf,”8 a critical and unbiased national security 

practitioner is one who can analyze and discern fact from fiction, 

conviction from emotion, and truth from fantasy. While it is true that 

the United States currently enjoys considerable influence in Asian 

Pacific regional matters, it is likely that nations within the region 

itself will subject this hard and soft power to growing pressures. 

Therefore, the United States requires a balance of both bilateral 

and multilateral approaches, while at the same time restraining 

its unilateral tendencies. As John Ikenberry stated shortly after the 

events of September 11, 2001 (9/11), “America’s nascent neoimperial 

grand strategy threatens to rend the fabric of the international 

community and political partnerships precisely at a time when that 

community and those partnerships are urgently needed . . . It will 

trigger antagonism and resistance that will leave America in a more 

hostile and divided world.”9 Is there any hope for a true and effective 

multilateral approach to regional issues?

The short answer is yes. While progress to solve the North Korean 

nuclear problem using the six party talks is still inconclusive, the seeds 

of a new multilateralism on the most important security issue in Asia 

already may have begun to germinate. Such an effort, if successful, 

could have an important impact on the region. However, for the full 

impact of multilateralism to occur, “the United States will have to 

pursue multilateralism as more than a tactic to pressure the North, 

and embrace it as a strategy to force a new security architecture in 

Northeast Asia.”10 Furthermore, “hope springs eternal” in diplomatic 

actions in the region. With respect to Korean reunification, during a 

forum discussion sponsored by the Institute of New Asian Order, 

Okazaki Institute of Japan, and the United States Pacific Forum, the 

consensus was “that the Americans were actively stressing that it 

would serve the interests of Korea, Japan and even China for the 

United States to recognize the 21st century order of Northeast Asia 

in its initiatives and to continue to keep U.S. forces in the region.”11

Through pragmatic bilateral approaches, the United States can 

further its interests and position itself to influence events and actions. 

Under the auspices of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, the 
Asia 2025 study states as a key strategic lesson that “[a] more active 

U.S. diplomatic and military effort to strengthen ties with India is 

the corollary to preventing a Sino-Indian alliance that could check 

growing Communist Chinese influence.”12 Furthermore, it suggests 

that the “strengthening of bilateral alliances with Korea, Australia, 

Thailand, the Philippines, and Japan should become central to 

limiting China’s exercise of its power in the South China Sea and 

western Pacific.”13

Moreover, the United States must promote continued market 

and economic reforms within a context of understanding the 

unique characteristics of each country and commensurate with their 

obligations to the well being of the region. With the region “[p]roducing 

60 percent of the world’s manufactured and agricultural goods, it 

is the motor force of the global economy.”14 Given the economic 

leverage the region possesses on the world economic system, one 

can better understand how these nations can pursue diplomatic 

and military interests that may or may not complement U.S. policy 

interests. This leverage, applied both within the region and across 

regions, can be a foundation of stress and anxiety. China’s economic 

surge has produced tension throughout the Asia-Pacific region, and 

arguably, throughout the world. China’s demand for more resources 

and its production of more of the world’s goods already have created 

ripples that are being felt worldwide. With this effect, “China has 

affected the world power-balance so that America’s famously plainspoken 43rd President has been forced to moderate his rhetoric 

toward Beijing.”15 Although China is important in this discussion, 

it alone does not fully illustrate the magnitude of the issue. To only 

name a few, the economic power of Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan 

provide added support to the discussion of this regional and possibly 

global power. 

However, given China’s economic power, one will find the 

economic and related social infrastructure fraught with both archaic 

and inequitable biases. As was evident with the quick and devastating 

economic collapse in the region caused by the 1997 Asian financial 

crisis, the economic underpinnings of many Asia-Pacific nations are 

fragile. Furthermore, as experts look at the almost 13-year recession 

in Japan, they can see financial, economic, and social inflexibilities 

toward the effects of economic globalization. The inability of the 
Japanese to deal with restructuring their domestic economy away 

from the fixation on heavy export, to upgrade the living standard 

of their overworked population, and to adjust their consumption 

patterns, challenges not only their nation, but also hampers and 

lessens its relationship as an influential ally of the United States with 

its international neighbors. 

Americans must participate in confidence-building methodologies 

related to regional issues in order to instill continued trust and 

commitment. This region’s future is both promising, and at the same 

time, potentially injurious to promoting important national interests, 

policies, and programs of the United States. Issues surrounding 

economic viability, present and potential availability and distribution 

of key regional and global natural resources, and historical and 

potential geo-political transforming manifestations could and will 

influence the region for better or worse depending on U.S. actions or 

inactions. 

How can the United States improve bilateral and multilateral 

relations and provide constructive influence in the region? The reader 

must understand that the various actors are prone to situationally 

dependent motives. For instance, while the Chinese may agree to a 

multilateral dialogue with respect to North Korea’s WMD program, 

their approach to nation-state interaction suggests a preference for 

bilateral approaches. This is a result of the tendency of the Chinese 

to distrust alliance-oriented or rigid multilateral interactions with 

extra-regional players. Therefore, America must employ a dynamic, 

balanced, and multifaceted approach to regional issues. The old 

phrase “the only thing constant is change” applies to this tactic. The 

North Korean WMD program directly threatens American allies, 

neutral nations, China, and arguably, the world. Only through a 

sincere, determined, and flexible economic, diplomatic, military, and 

informational approach will this issue truly be resolved, and only 

by using various resources such as food and trade arrangements. 

For instance, some of these are the Asia-Pacific Economic Council 

(APEC), United Nations (UN), and World Trade Organizatioin 

(WTO) auspices; verifiable and proactive internal and external 

North Korean, American, and regional actor diplomatic assurances; 

and firm but restrained regional military posturing of U.S., South 

Korean, Japanese, and Chinese naval, air, and ground forces. 
With respect to promoting continued market and economic 

reforms, the United States must seriously analyze, understand, and 

appreciate the level and composition of each East Asian nation’s 

economic market infrastructure and culture. By consistently 

providing economic assistance and aid to developing nations, 

the United States can leverage appropriate influence to facilitate 

economic change. Reforms through advocating and promoting 

economic recovery and prosperity through APEC, bilateral and 

multilateral trade agreements, minimal use of trade sanctions or 

embargoes, and encouragement of reciprocal and beneficial business 

relationships with American and global corporations will promote 

these reforms. Facilitating UN, WTO, and Commerce Department 

expertise, the United States can assist in improving the fiscal policies 

of nations with developing banking systems. The result would start 

the process to transform regional economic conditions consistent with 

each nation’s capability to accept change. However, and possibly 

more importantly, all the aforementioned actions would assist in 

supporting another regional objective: confidence-building. 

The United States should participate in confidence-building 

methodologies with regard to regional issues that will instill and 

reinforce continued trust and commitment. This will require the 

incorporation of all the elements of national power. The United States 

must promote reciprocal free trade that is equitable and encourages 

regional interdependence. Furthermore, the United States can 

encourage economic actions to facilitate regional solutions to regional 

issues. It must promote continued military exchanges with pivotal 

and influential nations to foster an appreciation of capabilities and 

intent and reduce possible misconceptions. In addition, expanding 

the Cooperative Engagement strategy, especially with China, will 

have significant and long-term benefits for both nations and reduce 

ambiguities, misunderstandings, and misconception of U.S. actions 

in the region. “China loom[s] as a long-term potential challenger 

to the United States in East Asia, but China, like Russia, seem[s] 

much more preoccupied with successfully entering the global 

system than with contesting U.S. leadership.”16 Within a construct 

of engagement with regional actors, to the fullest extent possible 

America should work within the mutual understanding of human 
rights of the populace vs. the individual to foster issues beneficial 

to each. Moreover, the United States must nurture a positive and 

proactive role to facilitate change based on the unique character 

of each sovereign nation. The “one size fits all” approach has not 

and will not provide the desired endstate or promote long-term 

American interests in the region. Therefore, such actions as increased 

emphasis on bilateral and historical multilateral allied regional 

security arrangements and partnerships would alleviate fears of 

waning commitment and unilateralism in regional issues. Resources 

available include the focused and synchronized assets of the State, 

Treasury and Commerce Departments, U.S. Pacific Command, and 

the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to name just a 

few. 

The People’s Republic of China.

The United States must employ and integrate the elements of 

national power simultaneously to create a synergistic outcome in 

dealing with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). No discussion 

about American policy toward the region is complete without a 

thorough understanding and appreciation of the impact and influence 

of Communist China on this area of the world. Arguably, the PRC 

commands an almost hegemonic influence in the area. Neither recent 

administrations have produced a comprehensive regional approach 

that leverages the full implementation of all its elements of national 

power for a regional effect. While the Clinton administration utilized 

some degree of active engagement, it emphasized the economic 

and diplomatic elements of power and was usually confined to 

narrowly focused issues, North Korea in particular. The current Bush 

administration has not improved on this paradigm. Again, Bush’s 

dealings with the PRC primarily are focused narrowly on WTO and 

free trade issues, North Korean WMD development, and on Global 

War on Terror (GWOT) cooperation measures. 

Modern China is undergoing an impressive economic and military 

transformation. Because of this transformation, the United States 

has a difficult task engaging China as a significant trade partner, 

while at the same time containing a possible military and diplomatic 
adversary. This “partner and competitor” dilemma is at the heart 

of the present U.S.-Chinese relationship. Further Chinese economic 

prosperity will require greater access and demand for natural 

resources and markets for their goods. With this prosperity, China 

will enjoy greater global economic and diplomatic influence that 

will demand military focus to safeguard. Furthermore, this greater 

influence will begin to challenge the current Asia-Pacific status quo 

and create tensions in the region, thus requiring an appropriate 

response from the United States and its allies.

The issues concerning the Asian-Pacific region demand action 

more in tune with the past and present dealings with Europe. Issues 

such as collective regional security with the PRC as a stabilizing 

and responsible participant and regional economic integration that 

truly benefit the developing nations are just a few examples of the 

pressing matters facing the region and United States. The famous 

“China will never seek hegemony” statement by then Vice President 

Zeng Qinghong did not resonate or calm fears with many influential 

policymakers around the world.17 These policymakers and political 

actors share a feeling similar to the statement of former Senator John 

Ashcroft when he stated, 

. . . there is a destabilizing force in the Pacific Rim today—and it is not 

the Asian democracies. There is an entity, which through its emerging 

economic and military might, intends to assert its power—and it is not 

the Asian democracies. There is a political system that sees as its enemy 

the free people of the world—and it is not the Asian democracies. No, the 

expansionist force in Asia is Communist China, a country that cares little 

for international law, and even less for the sacred nature of human life.18

As a news periodical editor once wrote, “Bejing has made 

impressive strides in relations with Russia and Central Asia. And 

Jiang, the originator of ‘Great Power Diplomacy,’ has gone beyond 

predecessor Deng Xiaoping’s cautious dictum about world affairs: 

‘Adopt a low profile and never take the lead’.”19 The aforementioned 

was in reference to Communist China’s first participation in a 

formal regional bloc alignment, the six nation Shanghai Cooperation 

Organization (SCO). Combined with the Jiang-Putin summit held 

in Moscow a month later, many observers felt this new initiation 

of non-Western political and diplomatic arrangements “may be the 
1

beginning of a counterweight to NATO and an important pillar of a 

multipolar world structure.”20 Coupled with the signing of the SinoRussian Treaty of Good-Neighborly Friendship and Cooperation, 

there is cause for heightened sensitivity to a more active Communist 

China in world affairs. Furthermore, tied to the possible inclusion 

of more countries such as Mongolia, Pakistan, and India, this “new 

paradigm” can only strengthen the idea of a new dynamic in the region 

and possibly other regions. Without active and positive involvement 

of the United States in a multilateral context, Thucydides’ reasons 

for conflict, fear, interest, and honor will motivate American foreign 

policy, as opposed to understanding, cooperation, and respect. 

The economic component of national power is arguably the 

preferred element in dealing with the People’s Republic. China’s 

trade surplus with the United States has “increased 27.1 percent in 

the first half of 2004, to $68.5 billion . . . and [China]now has the 

largest [trade surplus] of any country in the world,”21 China “alone 

was responsible for 53 percent of the increase in the [U.S.] nonoil 

trade deficit through June 2004.”22 Concurrently, the U.S. trade 

deficit with the rest of the Asia-Pacific Rim has “increased 17 percent 

thus far in 2004 with Japan increasing by 12.5 percent).”23 Thus, the 

United States must borrow abroad to finance its trade deficits, the 

majority financed through long-term government bonds purchased 

by the PRC. With the aforementioned in mind, practically any 

economist might venture to state that the United States trade deficit 

poses potentially great risks for its economy. Furthermore, given “the 

eurozone’s trade deficit with China soar[ing] to EU41.1bn ($48.1bn, 

£28.6bn) in the first 10 months of last year,”Mainland China truly is 

developing as a significant world creditor; a distinction once held by 

the United States immediately following World War II.24

The results of increased American and Western European trade 

deficits are symptomatic of the “rapid decline in the competitiveness 

of U.S. manufacturing industries.”25 Coupled with ongoing trade 

negotiations to “float” its currency which is based on the American 

dollar, China’s intransigence has “also made it more difficult for other 

Asian nations to allow their currencies to rise.”26 It is no wonder that 

the primary topic of discussion of nearly every American official to 

the Chinese is trade-based. As the Chinese economy grows, so will 
their need for basic resources, predominately oil. It will be important 

to watch if China can manage its transition to a market economy 

with broad-based growth successfully as either an authoritarian 

regime or possibly as a developing democratic nation. The problem 

lies in China having no history of democratic traditions. Without a 

doubt, economic factors are important to the well-being of all nations; 

however, the military aspects can ultimately be the final arbiter of 

long-term prosperity and security.

According to John Gershman, “[i]t is by now virtually conventional 

wisdom that Asia is the critical area of strategic focus and military 

operations for the Pentagon. China will be pegged as the only likely 

‘peer competitor’ around which U.S. strategic doctrine in the first 

quarter of the 21st century will be oriented.”27 Notwithstanding the 

current focus on the GWOT, the United States must look beyond this 

war to issues that may endanger its security with other state actors in 

the near and not so near future. In the Asia 2025 report, the authors 

projected that China will be a threat whether it is strong or weak, 

stable or unstable. Gershman stated, “A stable and powerful China 

will be challenging the status quo in Asia constantly. An unstable and 

relatively weak China could be dangerous because its leaders might 

try to bolster their power with foreign military adventures.”28 These 

possible “foreign military adventures” cause considerable worry 

among both military and political leaders. As one might expect, 

even challenging the status quo can have significant repercussions 

within the region both for the United States and between Asia-Pacific 

regional actors. 

For the past 60 years, the most notable tension in the region has 

been the American relationship with Taiwan. While the United States 

officially advocates the “One China Policy,” the Mainland Chinese 

are apprehensive about its application. Their eventual goal is to 

assimilate the “lost province” into Greater China. Diplomatically, 

this could be an option, if both state actors could come to some 

mutual consensus and arrangement. In this arrangement, China 

prefers a bilateral arrangement with the United States while the 

Americans prefer an informal multilateral relationship to include 

Taiwan. However, as the last 60 years demonstrate, the military 

option of annexation could have serious complications for both. One 
only needs to read almost daily to see a China aspiring to develop a 

“blue water” navy to protect its worldwide maritime interests and 

designs on “re-gaining their former status . . . and continu[ing] to try 

to regain Taiwan.”29

While Taiwan is an important issue facing the region, it is not the 

only concern. The Japanese are beginning to react to China’s actual 

or perceived bellicose actions. A recent article provided details on “a 

plan to defend a chain of its southernmost islands in the East China 

Sea against invasion amid rising security concerns about China.”30

Furthermore, in the article, a Japanese official stated, “China has been 

expanding its scope of activities as seen in the case of an invasion 

of Japanese territorial waters by a Chinese nuclear submarine last 

November.”31 The Japanese feel that “China, which has a great 

impact on security in the region, is pushing ahead with enhancing its 

nuclear and missile capabilities in modernizing its navy and air force 

while expanding marine activities.”32 Coupled with North Korea, 

it appears the Japanese are reevaluating the military landscape 

and reacting accordingly. The implications of Chinese action may 

destabilize the region further. Additionally, the United States is 

beginning to reevaluate its posture with similar implications.

For United States, while “China is at least 2 decades away from 

being able to deploy a fully functional carrier and aircraft,” it appears 

China is following a more Mahanian approach to national power.33

As determined by an internal study at the Office of Net Assessment, 

it appears “China is adopting a ‘string of pearls’ strategy of bases and 

diplomatic ties stretching from the Middle East to southern China 

that includes a new naval base under construction at the Pakistani 

port of Gwadar.”34 In summation, the article infers that China is 

building up military forces and setting up bases along sea lanes from 

China to the Middle East to project its power overseas and more 

than likely to protect its oil shipments. The following illustrates both 

the military and bilateral political Chinese efforts underway with 

various countries in the region:

• Bangladesh: China is strengthening its ties to the government 

and building a container port facility at Chittagong. The 

Chinese are “seeking much more extensive naval and 

commercial access” in Bangladesh.
• Burma: China has developed close ties to the military regime 

in Rangoon and turned a nation wary of China into a “satellite” 

of Beijing close to the Strait of Malacca, through which 80 

percent of China’s imported oil passes. China is building 

naval bases in Burma and has electronic intelligence gathering 

facilities on islands in the Bay of Bengal and near the Strait of 

Malacca. Beijing also supplied Burma with “billions of dollars 

in military assistance to support a de facto military alliance.”

• Cambodia: China signed a military agreement in November 

2003 to provide training and equipment. Cambodia is helping 

Beijing build a railway line from southern China to the sea.

• South China Sea: Chinese activities in the region are less about 

territorial claims than “protecting or denying the transit of 

tankers through the South China Sea,” the report said.

• China also is building up its military forces in the region to 

be able to “project air and sea power” from the mainland and 

Hainan Island. China recently upgraded a military airstrip on 

Woody Island and increased its presence through oil drilling 

platforms and ocean survey ships.

• Thailand: China is considering funding construction of a $20 

billion canal across the Kra Isthmus that would allow ships 

to bypass the Strait of Malacca. The canal project would give 

China port facilities, warehouses, and other infrastructure 

in Thailand aimed at enhancing Chinese influence in the 

region.35

 All of these issues concerning China may represent a harbinger of 

things to come: a possible new “Asian Cold War.” All the indicators 

of growing political tensions, territorial rivalries, competition over 

energy resources between Japan and China, and China’s military 

build-up could foreshadow future conditions, if the United States 

does not employ and integrate all elements of national power actively 

to create a synergistic outcome in dealing with the PRC. 
Risk Analysis.

These recommendations are not complete without a discussion 

of the associated risks. Consideration of suitability, feasibility, and 

acceptability are ever-present in this chapter. There are those who 

profess the need for the “United States to lead a new order that 

ensures no new hegemony state emerges that has absolute superior 

strength in the region.”36 While this approach could achieve the 

ends sought, its long-term effects could be much more damaging. 

The following risks need consideration. Primarily, the United States 

must possess the necessary and essential will to implement the 

recommended policy and strategy. Second, intransigence among 

the nation-states of the region in dealing with each other or the 

United States in an unhelpful fashion degrades America’s ability 

to influence resolution and cooperation. Continued population and 

environmental pressures will cause a scarcity of resources that will 

override regional security for national survival. Irresponsible nations 

in the region place short-term desires over long-term stability with 

respect to WMD or continued build-up of conventional arms. 

Conclusion.

If the time has come that “[t]he Asia/Pacific region is the 

geopolitical center of the struggle for world power,”37 then the current 

U.S. ends in the region include Asia-Pacific peace and stability, Asian 

economic recovery and viability, and a regionally integrated China.

The art and science of constructing adequate and effective ways and 

means to achieve these ends are available to us. The United States 

should more decisively and even-handedly foster a region resolved 

to cooperation and dedicated to free trade and commerce for all 

its nations. For the continued security of the United States, “[t]he 

challenge lies in identifying a new grand strategy that captures the 

critical characteristics of the new international security environment 

and identifies appropriate ends, ways, and means for organizing and 

executing the search for security in the post-Cold War world.”38
ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 8

1. Andrew Scobell and Larry M. Wortzel, “The Asian-Pacific in the United 

States National Security Calculus for a New Millennium,” Directive & Lesson Book 

Subcourse 3: Assessing U.S.National Security Strategy, Appendix V Guide to Required 

Resources Lesson 2 East Asia, Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2003, 

p. 19.

2. George W. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States, Washington, 

DC: The White House, September 2002, p. 27.

3. Ibid., p. 1.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., p. 2.

6. Henry C. K. Lui, “China vs. the Almighty Dollar,” July 22, 2002; available 

from www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/720680/posts, Internet, accessed September 

19, 2004.

7. Ibid.

8. Patrick Seale, “Bush Aim is Clear: Assert America’s Global Hegemony,” 

available from www.mafhoum.com/press/sea11mar31.htm, Internet, accessed 

September 21, 2004.

9. John G. Ikenberry, “America’s Imperial Ambition,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, 

No. 5, September-October 2002, p. 31.

10. Dennis Florig, “The Bush Administration, the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, 

and the Future of Multilateralism in Northeast Asia,” available from www.dflorig.

com/ritzarticle.htm, Internet, accessed September 19, 2004.

11. Kim Yong-hui, “US Forces Need to Remain to Deter the Emergence of a 

Hegemony State,” available from kimsoft.com/1997/us-sk1.htm, Internet, accessed 

September 15, 2004.

12. John Gershman, “We Have Seen the Enemy, and It Is China,” Foreign Policy 

in Focus, May 2001, p. 5.

13. Ibid.

14. Joseph Gerson, “Asia/Pacific Peace and Security Issues,” January 1997; 

available from www.fpif.org/briefs/vol2/v2n10asi_body.html, Internet, accessed 

September 21, 2004.

15. James Pinkerton, “The Credible Hulks,” October 29, 2003; available from 

www2.techcentralstation.com/1051/printer.jsp?CID=1051-102903C, Internet, accessed 

September 21, 2004.

16. National Defense University, “Asian-Pacific Regions: Murky Futures?,” 

in Directive & Lesson Book Subcourse 3: Assessing U.S. National Security Strategy, 

Appendix V Guide to Required Resources Lesson 2 East Asia, Carlisle Barracks, PA: 

U.S. Army War College, 2003, p. 3.
17. P. S. Suryanarayana, “China Will Never Seek Hegemony,” May 9, 2004; 

available from www.thehindu.com/2004/09/05/stories/2004090502501200.htm, 

Internet, accessed September 21, 2004.

18. John Ashcroft, “The Theme is Freedom: Reconsidering U.S.-Sino Relations,” 

April 23, 1997; available from www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8514/navy.htm, Internet, 

accessed September 21, 2004.

19. Willy Wo-lap Lam, “Combating American Hegemony,” June 20, 2001; 

available from edition.cnn.com/2001/world/asiapcf/east/06/19/china.russia.willy/, 

Internet, accessed October 18, 2004.

20. Ibid.

21. Robert E. Scott, “Trade Picture,” August 13, 2004; available from www.epinet.

org/content.cfm/webfeatures_econindicators_tradepict20040813, Internet, accessed 

January 22, 2005.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ralph Atkins, “Eurozone Trade Deficit with China Soars,” January 20, 2005, 

available from news.ft.com/cms/s/146853ba-6b52-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8.html, 

Internet, accessed January 21, 2005.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. Gershman, p. 6.

28. Ibid.

29. Edward Roberts, “China in Conflict,” July 2004, available from www.geocities.

com /CapitolHill/8514/china.htm, Internet, accessed October 5, 2004.

30. Agence France Presse, “Japan Maps Plan to Defend Southern Islands against 

Military Attack,” January 16, 2005, available from www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/

afp_asiapacific/view/127625/1/.html, Internet, accessed on January 16, 2005.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid.

33. Gershman, p. 7.

34. Bill Gertz, “China Builds Strategic Sea Lanes,” January 22, 2005; available 

from www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050117-115550-1929r.htm, Internet, 

accessed on January 23, 2005.

35. Ibid.

36. Yong-hui.

37. Gerson.

38. Robert H. Dorff, “A Primer in Strategy Development,” in Directive & Lesson 

Book Subcourse 2: Developing U.S. National Security Strategy, Carlisle Barracks, PA: 

U.S. Army War College, 2003, p. 212.
Cha

TRANSFORMATION OF THE 36TH INFANTRY DIVISION,

TEXAS ARMY NATIONAL GUARD

Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Lee Henry

The events of September 11, 2001 (9/11), have fundamentally 

changed the way Americans look at homeland security. For the 

first time since December 7, 1941, the United States has suffered a 

major attack on its soil, and one launched by an enemy who does not 

represent a nation-state or fight by traditional means. This faceless 

enemy of international terrorism has struck at the heart of America’s 

economic and military power and sent shock waves throughout the 

world. 

Those events have served as a catalyst to drive the Department of 

Defense (DoD) in efforts to transform its forces from top to bottom. 

Moreover, President George Bush has added a new cabinet position, 

the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), first 

under Secretary Tom Ridge. The DHS helped pass the Uniting and 

Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to 

Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act.1 The DoD began 

to change as well. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) became a 

new unified command and conducted Operation NOBLE EAGLE in 

the United States, while Central Command (CENTCOM) conducted 

Operations ENDURING FREEDOM and IRAQI FREEDOM. These 

two efforts led to regime change in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Clearly, 

the United States has engaged its military forces in the Global War 

on Terrorism (GWOT) with no short term victory in sight. 

At the signing of the FY 02 Defense Appropriations Bill on January 

10, 2002, President Bush underlined that:

This nation must have ready forces that can bring victory to our country and 

safety to our people. . . . My administration is committed to transforming 

our forces with innovative doctrine, strategy and weaponry. This will 

allow us to revolutionize the battle field of the future and keep peace by 

defining war on our terms. . . . We will build the security of America by 

fighting our enemies abroad, and protecting our folks here at home. And 

we are committed. . . . to these most important goals.2
Many senior defense leaders took the President’s comments to 

heart and acted to start the transformation process. Not surprisingly, 

transformation became the “vogue” term within the Pentagon and 

DoD. General Eric K. Shinseki, Chief of Staff of the Army during this 

period, already had pushed the Army into change, built around three 

main themes: readiness, people and transformation.3 Shinseki aimed 

at ensuring that the Army would be an equal partner and key player 

in the joint team. The results from Operations DESERT STORM and 

IRAQI FREEDOM reinforced the fact that airpower represents a 

useful tool, but the United States must possess forces that actually 

can occupy ground. That remains the role for the Army.

General Shinseki felt that if the Army were to be relevant in future 

wars, it must transform its existing “legacy force” into an “interim 

force” and then in a final phase, to an “objective force.”4 General Peter 

J. Schoomaker, current Army Chief of Staff, has stayed on the same 

path as his predecessor, but has altered the terminology. Schoomaker 

sees the transformation of forces as a continuum, categorized as the 

current force, the stryker force, and the future force. This Army 

vision looks to technology to enable future capabilities relevant not 

only to today’s GWOT fight, but tomorrow’s as well.

U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY 

AND NATIONAL MILITARY STRATEGY

The 9/11 attacks on United States soil represented the nexus 

for the GWOT. The American response laid the foundation for the 

existing national security strategy. That strategy caused the DoD to 

reexamine its departments from the top down. It has determined 

the course for transformation to enable the DoD to better meet 

asymmetrical threats. There is no department or agency within 

the Department not affected by the need to change or to accept 

modularity. The Army National Guard is one of the many 

organizations within the nation’s strategic reserve that must 

transform itself as well. The Guard has found itself engaged in 

constant operations from 9/11 to the present. Its operations have run 

the span from Operation NOBLE EAGLE to Operation ENDURING 

FREEDOM and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. It has once again 
demonstrated why it is a formidable force worthy of consideration 

as the nation’s strategic reserve.

The national security strategy provides the necessary guidance 

in a format of ends, ways and means for U.S. military forces. As part 

of this guidance, it refers to certain core values for democracy as 

components of its strategic approach. These include the principles 

of political and economic freedom, peaceful relations with other 

countries, and respect for human dignity.5 The ends for these core 

values are the defense of peace, the preservation of peace, and 

the extention of peace. It seeks to accomplish these goals through 

three concepts: strengthening alliances to defeat global terrorism, 

mitigating the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and 

defusing regional conflicts.6 Moreover, it hopes to accomplish these 

concepts through the careful articulation of the elements of national 

power with the underlying theme of readiness and transformation. 

Finally, it aims to accomplish this through intelligence, diplomacy, 

public information, and the military.

From the national security strategy, one can then assess the 

current National Military Strategy in the Quadrennial Defense Review

(QDR), signed on September 30, 2001, by the Secretary of Defense. 

The QDR lays the foundation for a paradigm shift in force planning. It 

proposes a new force-sizing construct to shape the forces specifically 

to:

• Defend the United States;

• Deter aggression and coercion forward in critical regions;

• Swiftly defeat aggression in overlapping major conflicts, while 

preserving for the president the option of calling for decisive 

victory in one of the conflicts—including the possibility of 

regime change or occupation and;

• Conduct a limited number of smaller scale contingencies 

operations.

In doing so, the DoD must maintain sufficient force generation 

capability and a strategic reserve to mitigate risks.7 The 2004 National 

Military Strategy refers to the above force sizing as simply the “1-

4-2-1” sizing construct, which places a premium on increasingly 

innovative and efficient methods.8
1

U.S. ARMY 2004 POSTURE STATEMENT

General Peter Schoomaker has noted the following about the 

challenges confronting the United States: “Our Nation, and our 

Army, are at war. It is a different kind of war, fought against a global 

terrorist network, and not likely to end in the foreseeable future.”9 He 

has laid out the most important core competencies of the Army as 1) 

training and equipping soldiers and growing leaders, and 2) providing 

relevant and ready land power to combatant commanders as part of 

the joint force. He has asserted that the military must remain agile, 

and the Army must develop an expeditionary mindset.10 General 

Creighton W. Abrams remarked after the Vietnam war, when DoD 

only called up 3,000 reservists, that “America should never go to war 

without calling up the spirit of the American people, and you do that 

by calling up the National Guard and the Reserves.”11 This became 

known as the Laird “Total Force Policy” or informally as the Abrams 

Doctrine. 

In order to provide relevant and ready land power to combatant 

commanders, which included global commitments across the 

spectrum of military operations, the Army has mobilized more than 

164,000 reservists of which more than 96,000 were National Guard 

soldiers. They have served the United States abroad in support of 

the GWOT.12 Due to the increased operational tempo for the active 

force, the National Guard has seen an increase in deployments for 

peacekeeping operations to Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sinai, 

and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Despite the increase in its deployments, 

the National Guard is transforming itself as well. For instance, the 

Guard provisionally has organized 18 additional military police 

companies. This reorganization represented an effort to help reduce 

the personnel pressures on the active military police units.

ARMY NATIONAL GUARD 2005 POSTURE STATEMENT

The Army National Guard is unique in that it possesses a dual 

mission that places it under both state and federal governments. As 

a result, the Guard reports to the governors of its respective states 

and the president of the United States. The Guard’s charter is the 
Constitution of the United States. Article 1, Section 8 contains a series 

of “militia clauses” that vest distinct authority and responsibilities in 

the federal government and the state governments. These clauses 

and follow-on legislation have sculpted today’s Guard.13

As of May 2004, the Army National Guard possesses 3,150 facilities 

across 2,700 communities, and totals eight divisions and 17 separate 

brigades, with a total force of 350,000 men and women. By the end 

of fiscal year 2004, the National Guard will comprise 53 percent of 

the Army’s combat, 34 percent of the Army’s combat support, and 

38 percent of the Army’s combat service support. Overall, it will 

possess 38 percent of the Army’s Force structure.14 The National 

Guard will remain, first and foremost, a provider of ready, trained, 

and equipped warfighting units to combatant commanders. As a 

result of the increased operational tempo, the Army Guard must 

change its Cold War training paradigm from “train, alert, mobilize, 

train, and deploy” to a mindset of “train, alert, and deploy,” if it is to 

remain relevant to today’s security challenges. 

Lieutenant General H. Steven Blum, Chief of the National Guard 

Bureau, has begun the transformation from the top by starting with 

how the headquarters does business: In short the Guard will be a 

Joint Force. The National Guard Bureau has reorganized itself from 

three separate organizations into one joint organization, effective 

July 1, 2003. This reorganization flattened administration and made 

it more efficient and capable. It also aligned its staff functions and 

responsibilities with those of the Army Joint Staff and combatant 

commanders. Further staff transformations then took place at the 

state level. The Adjutants General consolidated 162 state headquarters 

organizations into 54, doctrinally aligned, standing joint-forces 

headquarters. In effect, it created a single joint-force headquarters 

in each state for all Army and Air Guard activities on October 1, 

2003.15

To meet the requirements laid out in the Army’s posture 

statement of 2004, the Army Guard will focus on three main themes 

with corresponding subgoals. The first theme supports the conflicts 

in which the United States finds itself engaged, with the subgoals of 

readiness for overseas duty, mental and dental readiness, training 

soldiers and growing leaders, combined arms and joint force-on-
force training, improved recruiting and retention, and diversity 

initiatives and equal opportunity. The second main theme will be 

homeland defense including domestic operations, missile defense 

and continuity operations as subgoals. The last main theme for the 

Guard will be transformation for the 21st century, including force 

balancing and restructuring for high demand and modular units.16

It is the last theme, “transformation for the 21st century” that 

the remainder of this chapter will discuss regarding how the 36th 

Infantry Division, Texas National Guard, will transform itself to meet 

Army goals by 2008. On July 1, 2004, Texas reflagged its division 

from the 49th Armored Division to the 36th Infantry Division. The 

36th Infantry Division traces its lineage back to World War I and 

combat in World War II. As America fights the GWOT, the Texas 

Guard thought it made sense to transform the division into a lighter 

force structure and to bring back the “T Patch” for a division that 

had fought against tyranny successfully. The 36th Infantry Division 

was one of eight Army Guard divisions that began transformation 

long before the reflagging ceremony.

As with most organizational changes, the division generated 

a vision or mission statement. That represents the nexus for the 

changes that the organization used as its litmus test. The Army’s 

Chief of Staff tasked those responsible for force structure design 

to focus on task force modulatiry; the result was a force structure 

consisting of units of employment (Y), units of employment (X), and 

units of action/brigade combat teams. General Schoomaker gave the 

following mission statement for modularity:

MISSION: Create a modular “brigade-based” Army that is responsive 

to the regional combatant commander’s needs, better employs Joint 

capabilities, facilitates force packaging and rapid deployment, and fights 

as a self contained unit in nonlinear, noncontiguous battlespaces.17

Based on the Chief of Staff’s mission statement and Title 32 state 

requirements, Major General Michael Taylor, commanding general 

of the division, developed and published a commander’s intent to his 

staff for use in developing possible force structure courses of action. 

As part of the mission analysis process, the division staff gained 

agreement from General Taylor on the following problem statement: 
“How to place and staff units of the 36th Infantry Division from 

the current configuration into the new configuration of one unit of 

employment, two infantry units of action, one aviation unit of action, 

one support unit of action, and one fires unit of action.”18

In addition to the problem statement, the division staff aimed at 

providing General Taylor additional background information before 

he crafted and issued his commander’s intent. Leaders and Soldiers are 

and will remain the Centerpiece of our force:

• Adaptive and innovative

• Competent with technology and enhanced equipment

• Battle-focused leader/soldier training

• Organized to win the tactical fight.19

Now that the staff had developed a problem statement, collected 

some specific background information, and given it to General 

Taylor, he issued the following commander’s intent, key tasks and 

end state.

Purpose.

The purpose of this planning process is to apply a practical 

solution to restructuring the 36th Infantry Division from its current 

configuration to match Active Duty Force Structure and ensure 

continued viability of the Division for future State Active Duty (SAD) 

missions and Federal deployments.

Key Tasks.

Key tasks were identified as:

• Identifying locations that will demographically support the 

new unit structures.

• Minimizing soldier turmoil by requiring minimal travel and/

or reclassification of Military Occupational Skills (MOS).

• Utilizing existing infrastructure.

• Locating subordinate organizations as close as possible to 

parent HQs.
• Limiting the number of Detachments.

• Attempting to have a presence in all geographic regions of the 

state.

End State.

The 36th Infantry Division now will be reconfigured to one unit 

of employment (X), and five units of action by FY-07, positioned to 

take advantage of existing facilities and demographic support for 

sustainment.20 Once the staff had the approved commander’s intent 

from General Taylor, it had to start the transformation of the existing 

force structure to the proposed configuration. Figure 1 depicts the 

current task organization of the 36th Infantry Division. The division 

comprises the traditional legacy force structure, mainly consisting of 

the M1A1 main battle tank and the M2A0 Bradley fighting vehicle.

Figure 1. “Current” 36th ID Force Structure.
Figure 2 depicts the proposed Force Structure that the 36th Infantry Division will transform 

to by FY-06 per the commander’s intent provided by Major General Taylor.

Figure 2. “Proposed” 36th ID Force Structure.

PROPOSED OPERATIONAL TEMPO 

FISCAL YEAR 2005 AND 2006

The 36th Infantry Division was similar to other Guard units, when 

on 9/11, the nation tasked it to respond to the unknown threat of 

terrorists. Texas responded within hours to the Trade Center attacks 

by mobilizing several hundred soldiers to reinforce security at over 

20 airports in the state. This increased operational tempo has not 

slowed over the past 3 years. Every infantry battalion has mobilized 

at least once, as have most other battalions within the state. As the 

National Guard Bureau continues to respond to the needs of the 

regional combatant commanders, states like Texas have to step up 

and provide crucial support. The following are planned Federal 
Deployments for the 36th Division, which are known at this time. 

Dates are left off for obvious reasons, and unit names will only be 

given if the state’s Public Affairs Officer has released them.

• One brigade combat team (56th) will deploy in support of 

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM—fiscal year 2005. The 56th 

Brigade Combat Team will be the first brigade to go through 

transformation to the unit of action force structure upon its 

return in late fiscal year 2006. The soldiers within this unit 

have received many of the individual equipment upgrades 

from the rapid fielding initiative, but the majority of the 

transformation will conclude on the unit’s return to the United 

States.

• One infantry battalion (+) will deploy in support of Operation 

ENDURING FREEDOM—fiscal year 2005. This infantry 

battalion is organic to the 72nd brigade combat team that 

will complete its transformation after the 56th. This infantry 

battalion, like the 56th Brigade Combat Team, will receive the 

upgraded individual equipment provided through the rapid 

fielding initiative.

• One engineer battalion (368th) already has completed its 

mission rehearsal exercise and has been certified to deploy in 

support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM 4. This battalion will 

support the upcoming rotation of the 42nd Infantry Division.

• One main support battalion will deploy in support of 

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM—fiscal year 2005. Receiving 

equipment issue as well, from the rapid fielding initiative, it 

is currently part of the division’s support command, but on 

its return to the continental United States will be part of the 

sustainment brigade depicted in Figure 2.

• Command and sizeable staff will deploy in support of the 

Balkans operation for Kosovo Forces (KFOR) and provide 

the infrastructure for Task Force Falcon. The deployment will 

start with a train up phase beginning in the summer of 2005, 

continuing with command post exercises—fall, fiscal year 

2005, and culminating with a mission rehearsal exercise that 

will take place overseas in early calendar year 2006.
With the possibility of additional deployments, the above five 

deployments are for the most part set and are the Federal deployments 

that both the division and state staffs are working on at the present 

time. In addition, the transformation and other various State missions 

exist that may come up when called upon by the Governor of the 

state of Texas.

STATE MISSIONS

Unfortunately the majority of the state missions in which the 36th 

finds itself involved cannot be planned, but are inevitable. Like most 

Gulf Coast states, Texas has more than its share of hurricanes, which 

result in heavy rains, inland flooding, evacuations, and support to 

the department of public safety for security missions. Texas military 

forces bring an enhanced capability for the military assistance to civil 

authorities (MACA) equation. The state’s military forces are a selfcontained and self-supporting organization that has the operational 

capability to augment all of the state organizations as well as the 

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Disasters and emergencies, natural and manmade, increasingly 

are capable of causing major casualties and infrastructure damage in 

Texas and the rest of the United States, thus disrupting the day-today operations of the economy and active-duty forces. These events 

represent a significant challenge to civilian governmental resources, 

and the Texas military forces should expect civilian authorities to 

request appropriate consequence management (CM) support often. 

In addition to natural disasters, Homeland Security Policy states: 

“Homeland Security—A concerted national effort to prevent terrorist 

attacks within the United States, reduce America’s vulnerability to 

Terrorism, and minimize the damage and recover from attacks that 

do occur.”21

The support to homeland security is a mission the active army 

has been performing for over 227 years. The National Guard has 

been upholding this mission since its inception over 365 years ago, 

as it traces its lineage back to the first militia forces, even before the 

founding of the United States. Some of the civil support or military 

assistance to civil authorities missions in which the 36th Division has 

found itself involved in this past year (2004) and which it will continue 
to stand ready to support are the impact of space debris, counter 

drug operations, critical infrastructure protection, hurricanes, flood, 

snow storms, chemical incidents, and others.

IMPACT OF STRATEGIC ENDS

Today the 36th Infantry Division is meeting the needs of Governor 

Rick Perry and President George W. Bush. As the “hammer” for 

military force of Texas, the division continues to receive the majority 

of both federal and state missions because of its current force 

structure. Despite current and planned deployments for its military 

forces, Texas has been able to keep 50 percent of the force ready for 

possible commitment to state missions, unlike other states.

The transformation of the 36th Infantry Division into brigade 

sized units will support the mission statement provided by General 

Schoomaker to the modularity task force as well. By transforming 

to 43 brigade-sized units of action, the Army is planning to reduce 

the time frame between rotations of active forces and cut down 

the rotations of Guard units to once every 6 or 7 years. As part of 

the “full spectrum force” concept, the National Guard Bureau is 

proposing a “cycle system,” where a unit will be in the “red cycle” 

and responsible for homeland defense and homeland security for a 

period of 4 to 5 years. Then, that same unit will be part of an enhanced 

pool of units, “yellow cycle,” where it will receive enhanced training 

and resources in anticipation of a possible deployment. The period 

that a unit could be set in the enhanced pool or “yellow cycle” could 

range from 3 to 24 months. After being in the enhanced pool of units 

for the requisite period of time, a unit moves into a “green cycle,” 

where they could or could not “mobilize and deploy” for a period 

of 9 to 18 months. Just because a unit is in this category does not 

necessarily mean that unit would deploy. It means that as a regional 

combatant commander requested a certain force package, a unit set 

in the deployment “queue” would be the first to go. This unit would 

not have deployed for the last 4 to 5 years. Once the period of 9 to 18 

months had ended, whether the unit had deployed or not, it would 

go back to a “red cycle” status and focus on homeland security and 

homeland defense missions for a period of 4 to 5 years. 
With the transformation of the 36th Infantry Division, will come 

several enhanced mission capabilities. Soldiers will have the latest 

in individual protective equipment, communications equipment, 

more wheeled vehicles versus the preponderance of the fleet being 

tracked, leader and senior noncommissioned officer training in a joint 

environment, and units that are capable of working in self-contained 

and nonlinear areas of operation. The ability for Texas military forces 

to provide some level of predictability to the soldiers, their families, 

and their employers is crucial and should be attained at some point 

in the future, once they have completed the transformation. There 

are several enhanced mission capabilities for federal missions and/

or deployments in addition to the above that will transform the 

needs of the active force. Nevertheless, the current transformation 

will provide brigade-sized units of action for the needs of the 

various regional combatant commanders. The ability for combatant 

commanders to have full spectrum forces that are brigade-size units, 

self-contained and deployable into a theater of nonlinear operations 

should provide greater flexibility and more predictability to the 

nation’s Ready Reserve Forces.

The benefits above and beyond the discussed state and federal 

mission capabilities are the ability to enhance skills of the individual 

soldiers so that, upon their return and demobilization, they can get 

higher paying jobs within their communities. Recruiting and retention 

for the Guard could stabilize or gradually increase by having a more 

predictable force deployment schedule like those that are currently 

planned for outside of the continental U.S. rotations in support of 

KFOR missions in the Balkans and multinational force and observers 

(MFO) missions in Sinai, Egypt. 

RECOMMENDATIONS

The 36th Infantry Division should request that the National Guard 

Bureau establish its training requirements and oversight relationship 

to five units of action as soon as possible. As a unit of employment 

(X), the 36th Infantry Division could have training oversight of up to 

five units of action. With the success that the division has had from 

its deployment in support of Stabilization Forces (SFOR 7) and the 
1

close proximity of the 155th (Heavy) unit of action planned for in 

Mississippi, and the 45th Infantry (Light) unit of action currently in 

Oklahoma, it would make sense that those two brigades be a part of 

the oversight responsibility for the 36th Infantry Division as a unit of 

employment (X). 

Next, Texas should do everything it can to get all or part of a 

maneuver enhancement (ME) brigade. The maneuver enhancement 

brigade’s headquarters could come from the personnel who 

currently form part of the division’s engineer brigade headquarters 

and rear area operations center (RAOC). Analyzing the current and 

proposed force structures, it is not clear what has happened to the 

three engineer battalions, one being currently deployed in support 

of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. In addition to the engineer assets 

that normally come as part of the ME brigade, there are one to two 

companies of military police and one company of chemical personnel 

that could leverage the existing personnel that form part of the state’s 

civil support team (CST). In addition, many of the state missions 

could and have required the use of engineer support that range 

strictly from personnel to the use of heavy construction equipment. 

Since the brigade combat teams of the 36th Infantry Division will be 

“light” infantry, the engineer company organic to the brigade troop’s 

battalion (BTB) will be light as well and have only six engineer 

squads and light equipment. Light engineer equipment is useful, 

but the fielding of a maneuver enhancement brigade could provide 

not only combat engineer vehicles for use, but dozers, dump trucks, 

and other pieces of construction equipment that are enormously 

important during consequence management operations. Lastly, a 

military police battalion of one to two companies, normally assigned 

to a ME brigade, could be critical in state consequence management 

missions. These military police unit(s) could be readily assessable 

for the Guard’s Reaction Forces that National Guard Bureau has said 

each state should have in place. In addition, they would be available 

for military assistance to civil authority missions. On the Federal 

side, they could provide additional force protection to the division 

operationally along major supply routes, as well as security missions 

within the sustainment operations area for the division.
CONCLUSIONS

The question is no longer “if” the National Guard will deploy, 

it is more a matter of “when.” One of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s 

key mandates to the services is to find ways to make the National 

Guard more ready and accessible in its federal warfighting role.22

The National Guard Bureau has been working with the Army and 

Joint Forces Command to improve dramatically the way that units 

are mobilized, using the current four-phased process. Under current 

guidelines, it could take several weeks or months to prepare an 

Army Guard unit to mobilize and deploy—compared to the Air 

Guard model, where units deploy in a matter of hours or days.23 The 

National Guard has historically been a “Train, Alert, Train, Certify, 

Deploy force” but it needs to move towards a “Train, Alert, Deploy 

force.” As goes the Army, so must go Army National Guard units. 

Since the Army has decided that the old divisional structure is no 

longer feasible in today’s asymmetrical fight, the Guard has begun 

major changes. The National Guard Bureau will continue to work 

closely with the Army to meet the goals provided by Secretary 

Rumsfeld. Moreover, the Army Guard is a community-based military 

organization and, as such, it can assist cities and towns in times of 

natural or man-made disasters. Guard Soldiers are citizen-soldiers, 

and recognize that they must fulfill dual roles as ordinary citizens 

and as members of the armed forces of the United States.24

The initial priority should be for the National Guard Bureau to 

identify their units in the “full spectrum force model,” which would 

categorize units as a “red, amber or green” deployment force. This 

initial step would have a cascading effect from identification of units 

of action susceptible to a request for forces from regional combatant 

commanders, down to the units within the states expected to support 

state missions for disaster recovery or National Guard reaction 

force/consequence management missions.

To meet the guidance of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 

Texas’ 36th Infantry Division is well on its way in the transformation 

process and will meet the fiscal year 2008 time schedule outlined 

by the National Guard Bureau and Army. The ability for the state 

of Texas to support the division’s transformation will enable the 
state to have more flexibility in supporting both state and federal 

missions. The sooner the National Guard Bureau can identify the 

units in the “full spectrum force model,” the quicker it will provide 

some level of predictability, resulting in the following impacts for 

the individual Army Guard units: First, providing some level of 

deployment time frame predictability could lessen adverse stress 

in a soldier’s family resulting in improved retention and recruiting. 

The support of soldiers families is important not only during 

deployments but in their possible consideration of reenlistment as 

well. Second, predictability or unpredictability gives a positive or 

negative message to the soldier’s community. Finally, and almost 

as important is the positive support the citizen-soldier receives 

from his or her employer. Thus far, the majority of the National 

Guard soldiers deployed have received positive support from their 

employers. The latter, too, have a responsibility to their customers 

and ultimately to their stock holders. The absence of predictability 

over an extended period of time could have a negative impact on the 

Employer Support of the Guard Reserve (ESGR).

It speaks volumes towards the professionalism and passion 

of the officers, noncommissioned officers and all of the soldiers 

of the various units within the 36th Infantry Division when one 

looks at the recruiting, retention, morale, and the amount of time 

required to train up the soldiers to meet the required mission set for 

deployment. Within hours after the events of 9/11, all six brigades 

within the 36th Infantry Division were tasked to provide soldiers 

to support Operation NOBLE EAGLE. This support of soldiers and 

units would last over a period of 2 years through Operation NOBLE 

EAGLE 2. The perspective of this infantry battalion commander 

was that the soldiers arrived to their armories on time or ahead of 

schedule; 90 percent of the deployed soldiers reenlisted upon their 

demobilization or while they were deployed. The 8 percent of the 

soldiers that were lost to the national guard accessed onto active 

duty; while deployed, soldiers took advantage of opportunities to 

get additional noncommissioned officer education schooling and the 

mobilization provided a vehicle for the battalion staff to strengthen 

the family readiness group procedures which unbeknownst to the 

leadership would be utilized a short sixteen months later when the 
battalion would be activated as part of the 56th brigade combat team 

to deploy to Iraq. The transition for a mechanized infantry battalion 

to meet the required security and support operation’s mission set was 

minimal due to the fact that many of the individual and collective 

tasks were part of the mission essential task lists and common task 

training that had been done within the last 6 to 12 months. The unit 

climate surveys of this infantry battalion were conducted by the state 

and showed an 83 percent approval rating for the unit in the areas of 

mobilization process, pay/benefits, family readiness group support, 

and overall satisfaction for the deployment. The most consistent 

request by soldiers was that if they had received more notification 

prior to mobilization it would have enabled the soldier, his family 

and employer more time for administration and coordination for a 

smoother transition onto active duty.

When looking at the effects of the mobilization on a more 

macro level of strength, recruiting, retention, and morale there are 

many similarities as noted in the above infantry battalion’s case. 

For recruiting, Texas and the 36th Infantry Division met their end 

strength goal for fiscal year 2004. Texas recruited 102 percent of 

its end strength and was only one of seven states to achieve this 

accomplishment. When comparing first quarter fiscal year 2005 to 

first quarter fiscal year 2004, Texas is plus 43 soldiers against an 

increased goal for 2005. Soldier retention for the state and division 

for the combat support and combat service support units that 

deployed for Operation NOBLE EAGLE is good. It is too early to 

tell what the retention numbers will be for the units that deployed in 

support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, but initial indications are 

comparable to the Operation NOBLE EAGLE results. Morale is one 

of the intangible categories which can ebb and flow on a daily basis. 

In e-mail message Colonel James K. “Red” Brown, Commander 

of the 56th Brigade Combat Team, stated “. . . that the morale has 

been excellent and the soldiers have been eager to accomplish every 

mission assigned to them in their brief time in Iraq.” 

The morale for the 56th Brigade Combat Team and the infantry 

battalion discussed earlier is and was excellent. There are several 

key factors to the unit’s morale which, in this former commander’s 

opinion, are constant communication up and down the chain of 
command, ensuring that the chain of command is doing the basic 

requirements to take care of the individual soldiers and their 

employers, and making sure that when the soldiers are told that 

they are going home, in fact, they are going home. Solid dates are 

critical in the soldier and families’ psyche throughout the duration 

of a deployment. 

The soldiers of today’s 36th Infantry Division are not unlike 

those who served their nation during World Wars I and II. The 

36th Division, like other Army National Guard units, has a proud 

heritage. Its soldiers realize their traditions rest on the concept of the 

“minuteman militia” of some 368 years ago and they will continue to 

“defend the United States Constitution against all enemies foreign or 

domestic” throughout the 21st century.

ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 9

1. Jose R. Davis, “Army National Guard Readiness: Transforming to Meet The 

Challenges of The 21st Century,” Strategy Research Project, Carlisle Barracks, PA: 

U.S. Army War College, March 19, 2004, p. 1.

2. George W. Bush, “Remarks at the Signing of FY 02 Defense Appropriations 

Bill,” Washington, DC, January 10, 2002.

3. Department of the Army, “The Army Vision,” www.army.mil/vision, Internet, 

accessed August 23, 2004.

4. Ibid.

5. George W. Bush, “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” 

Washington, DC: The White House, September 2002, p. 1.

6. Ibid.

7. Donald H. Rumsfeld, “Quadrennial Defense Review Report,” Washington, 

DC: Department of Defense, September 30, 2001, p. 17. 

8. Richard B. Myers, “National Military Strategy of the United States of 

America,” Washington DC: The Pentagon, May 2004, p. 18.

9. Peter J. Schoomaker, “United States Army 2004 Posture Statement,” 

Washington, DC: The Pentagon, February 5, 2004, p. 1. 

10. Ibid.

11. Robert F. Reel, “Abrams Doctrine Revisited—Letter to Editor,” www.

findarticles.com/p/articles/mi-mOIBY/is_2-80/ai_114698888, Internet, accessed 

November 15, 2004. 

12. Schoomaker, p. 14.
13. Army National Guard, “Constitutional Charter of the Guard,” http://www.

arng.army.mil/history/Constitution, Internet, accessed October 20, 2004.

14. National Guard Bureau, “An Overview of The National Guard—America’s 

State and Federal Military Force,” Washington, DC: May 2004.

15. H. Steven Blum, “Executive Summary, National Guard 2005 Posture 

Statement,” Washington, DC: National Guard Bureau, p. 6. 

16. Ibid., pp. 8-22.

17. John Bonin, “Modular Army Overview: Designing a Campaign Quality 

Army with Joint and Expeditionary Capabilities,” briefing slides with scripted 

commentary, Carlisle Barracks, PA, U.S. Army War College, November 23, 2004.

18. Lee Schnell, “36th Infantry Division UEx/UA COA Decision,” briefing 

slides with scripted commentary, Camp Mabry, Austin, TX, November 2004.

19. Ibid., p. 7.

20. Ibid., p. 25.

21. George W. Bush, “National Strategy for Homeland Security,” Washington, 

DC: The White House, July 2002, p. 2.

22. Blum, p. 3.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., p. 

CHAPTER 10

IN THE AFTERMATH OF OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM:

EUROPEAN SUPPORT FOR THE 

GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM

Lieutenant Colonel John J. Hickey Jr.

Over the last several years, commentators have written much 

about the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Some have raised the 

question of whether this is really a war. They would use the dictionary 

definition that war is “a state or period of open and declared armed 

fighting between states or nations.”1 Since there are no traditional 

states or nations in this conflict, how can the United States declare 

war? The proponents for describing U.S. efforts as a war argue that 

it is “a struggle between opposing forces or for a particular end.”2

The “end” is freedom or liberty. Terrorists want to deny this “end,” 

therefore U.S. policy is to declare war. 

The Prussian philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz, defines war 

as “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”3 He further 

states “war is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, 

a continuation of political activity by other means.”4 For the purpose 

of this chapter, Clausewitz’ view best describes the situation that the 

United States confronts in defining this conflict as a GWOT. Many 

traditional allies perceive U.S. policy as being focused too heavily on 

the military component. America’s European allies generally agree 

on the policy goals of promoting democracy and freedom. Much of 

the international criticism focuses on the U.S. policy of using military 

“means” to compel the enemy, specifically the preemptive strike on 

Iraq. However, U.S. policy for the GWOT is much larger than just 

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF). The potential consequence of 

terrorists using Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) requires a 

balanced strategy, using all instruments of national power. European 

cooperation, specifically the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization (NATO), is still a key element to winning the 

GWOT.
U.S. National Interest.

Before one can define the role of the EU and NATO in post war 

Iraq and the broader GWOT, one must first analyze U.S. global 

interests. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 (9/11), many argue 

the nation’s most vital interest lies in the defense of the homeland. 

Others with a more liberal view would argue that it represents a 

fight for democracy and security for the entire world. The National 

Security Strategy quotes President George Bush: “Our nation’s 

cause has always been larger than our nation’s defense. We fight, 

as we always fight, for a just peace—a peace that favors liberty.”5

Thucydides, when discussing war, stated three causes: “interest, 

fear, and honor.”6 Many conservative Americans believe the United 

States is at war because of honor. Terrorists attacked the nation on 

9/11, and the United States needed to retaliate to defend its honor. 

The problem is that many in the international community believe the 

United States is at war because of interest; specifically the invasion 

of Iraq came as a result of that nation’s vast oil resources. The stated 

policy for going to war in Iraq was the danger of the potential transfer 

of WMD to terrorists. After the U.S.-backed coalition invaded Iraq 

and found no cache of WMD, the international community attacked 

the legitimacy of the war. Many European governments used this 

failure to reinforce their opposition to the original invasion. The 

United States has spent the last 2 years trying to recover from this 

negative information campaign. 

U.S. Policy and Strategy.

On January 20, 2005, President Bush announced in his inaugural 

speech, “. . . survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the 

success of liberty in other lands.” In the same speech, he defined U.S. 

policy as seeking to “support the growth of democratic movements 

and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal 

of ending tyranny in our world.”7 This ideological policy relates 

directly to the American belief in freedom and liberty for all. The 

U.S. strategy to win the GWOT as outlined in the National Security 

Strategy of the United States of America (September 2002) and 

further clarified in the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism 
(February, 2003), represents an aggressive approach to fighting this 

war. The President himself stated, “We must take the battle to the 

enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they 

emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the 

path of action. And this nation will act.”8

The National Security Strategy also identifies the “ways” to 

achieve these goals. These “ways” rely heavily on partnering with 

others: “. . . strengthen alliances to defeat global terrorism and work 

to prevent attacks against us and our friends; work with others to 

defuse regional conflicts; prevent our enemies from threatening us, 

our allies, and our friends with WMD . . .”9 The National Strategy 

for Combating Terrorism stated the objectives in the GWOT as: “. . . 

defeat terrorists and their organizations, deny sponsorship, support 

and sanctuary to terrorists, diminish the underlying conditions that 

terrorists seek to exploit, and defend U.S. citizens interest at home 

and abroad.”10 The Secretary of Defense stated it best, when talking 

about the war on terror, “Victory will require that every element of 

American influence and power be engaged.”11 Is the United States 

using every element of national power to win the war? Should 

the U.S. response include more focus on the European alliances, 

specifically the EU and NATO, to fight the perceived underlying 

causes of terrorism?

Importance of European Cooperation.

European cooperation is critical to the success of the GWOT. The 

attacks on 9/11 highlighted the necessity of sharing information in a 

timely manner. Information is critical to fighting terrorism because 

the other elements of national power depend on its success. If one 

does not know the simple questions of: when, where, why and how, 

it will be difficult to defend against an attack, much less defeat it. It 

is important to remember that many of the terrorists responsible for 

9/11 lived or operated in Europe. This European base was vital to 

their success and remains critical to terrorist networks today from a 

diplomatic, informational, and economic standpoint. 

Europe views the Middle East as important to their security, 

economies and future. Over 13 million Muslims of Middle Eastern 

descent live in Europe.12 Many of these Middle Easterners migrated 
20

to Europe to find economic opportunities. Most of these immigrants 

promote European policies that encourage support for their countries 

of origin.13 This is part of the reason Europeans view the strategy 

for fighting terrorism differently than the United States. The EU’s 

foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, recently stated, “There are old 

wounds in some geographical regions which as long as they are 

not healed will continue to create a fertile ground for terrorism to 

develop. . . .” He specifically cited the “Arab-Israeli” conflict.14 This 

view has led Europeans to focus on some of the causes of terrorism, 

including poverty and job opportunities. Over the last 3 decades, 

the EU worked to find a negotiated settlement to the Arab/Israeli 

conflict. The European premise is a negotiated settlement will help 

solve the underlying ideological and financial support for terrorism 

in the Middle East. 

The National Strategy for Homeland Security describes the most 

immediate and serious threat as “. . . sophisticated terrorist networks 

spread across many countries, linked together by far-flung networks 

of financial and ideological supporters, and operating in a highly 

decentralized manner.”15 Achieving a common understanding with 

European allies is imperative to America’s ability to gain information 

superiority over the global terrorist threat. Europe’s location and 

influence in the Middle East is critical to penetrating these terrorist 

networks. The nature of the threat demands a comprehensive and 

coordinated U.S. and European strategy in the GWOT. 

EU Policy and Strategy Focus.

To understand European cooperation on the GWOT, there is not 

a better place to begin than with the EU. The EU has grown into 

an alliance of 25 nations. When originally formed in May 1950, it 

had only 6 member countries. France proposed the union, whose 

purpose was to create an alliance to integrate Europe and prevent a 

repetition of World War I or World War II.16 The EU today defines 

itself as “. . . a family of democratic European countries, committed 

to working together for peace and prosperity.”17

To better understand the European mentality about armed 

conflict, one must remember that European states have been at war 

with one another for thousands of years. The one thing they have in 
2

common, as German military historian Hans Delbruck noted, is that 

“. . . Europe stands united in this one conviction: it will never submit 

to a hegemony enforced upon it by a single state.”18 Delbruck’s 

statement is significant because it depicts a strategic mindset that 

refused to allow a single authority to upset the balance of power in 

Europe. This mindset drives the European policy as it relates to the 

United States. 

Traditionally, the EU focused on curbing U.S. global influence 

from an economic and political standpoint, while NATO worked 

with the United States on security cooperation. The security situation 

on the European continent often drove policy beginning with the 

rise of the Roman Empire in the third century BC and the First Punic 

War. The rise of Napoleon and the French Revolution reinforced this 

belief, and it culminated with the loss of millions in the world wars. 

Today, with the U.S. position in the world, one can state that much of 

the EU, and ultimately Europeans in general, will resist a single state 

imposing its will on the continent or more importantly the world. 

With this in mind, when developing a global information campaign 

where cooperation is the key, careful consideration needs to be used 

in developing global rhetoric. The statement that one is “either with 

us or against us” conveys an arrogance which sabotages U.S. efforts 

to express its desires to the world. 

The encouraging news in Europe’s cooperation with the GWOT 

is that the EU’s policy of promoting global peace, stability, and 

democracy has much in concert with the U.S. policy. On June 26, 2004, 

the United States and the EU signed a formal declaration to combat 

terrorism. This agreement represents a comprehensive policy that 

includes the information, legal, intelligence, and economic elements 

of national power. Of the seven main points in the declaration, the 

third point is probably the most critical. This point states, “We commit 

to working together to develop measures to maximize our capacities 

to detect, investigate, and prosecute terrorists and prevent terrorist 

attacks.”19 This requires the United States and the 26 member states 

that are part of the EU to share information. Sharing information is 

vital to preventing future terrorist attacks. The other interesting item 

in the declaration is the sixth point, “. . . work in close cooperation to 

diminish the underlying conditions that terrorists can seize to recruit 
2

and exploit their advantage by promoting democracy, development, 

good governance, justice, increased trade, and freedom . . .”20 This 

joint declaration came only 3 months after terrorist attacks in Madrid, 

but almost 3 years after 9/11. The logical explanation for the delay 

is the EU only truly became interested in sharing resources after the 

attack on one of its members. This attack in Spain struck close to 

home and threatened democracy, trade, and freedom in the minds of 

the Europeans. The timing in connection with the Spanish elections 

and targeting a major transportation hub, reinforced the seriousness 

of the threat. All these factors led to an agreement between the EU 

and the United States to share information.

How has this declaration impacted the fight on terror? Has 

the United States seen any EU support for its strategy in Iraq? 

Interestingly, the answer is “yes” instead of the “no” the press often 

reports. The published strategy of the EU for Iraq includes three 

main objectives. These are, “development of stable and democratic 

Iraq; establishment of an open, stable, sustainable and diversified 

market economy; Iraq’s economic and political integration into its 

region and the open international system.”21 The major difference 

between U.S. and EU strategy has been in the selection of “ways” 

and “means” to execute policy. The EU traditionally has emphasized 

economic and diplomatic approaches in executing policy rather than 

military means. 

In Iraq, this economic/financial emphasis is evident with the EU 

pledging 1.25 billion euro and spending 305 million euro in 2003-

04.22 This pledge is relatively small in comparison to America’s 

commitments, but it is shaped by the Europeans negative view 

of the Iraqi War. By contrast, the EU delivered billions of euros to 

the Palestinian Authority in the last decade to promote economic 

development. This demonstrates the European attempt to solve the 

causes of terrorism, while benefiting from the economic trade. The EU 

is winning the diplomatic and informational campaign. The fruit of 

this labor is evident in the sale of European goods and services on the 

Arab streets. Its policy has assisted the EU in establishing economic 

dominance in the region. The EU is the “. . . biggest trading partner 

and donor of development assistance for nearly all the countries . . .” 

in the Arab World.23
2

The latest EU effort has been the development of a military arm 

under the auspices of European Security and Defense Policy. This 

military component started in 1992 with the creation of Eurocorps, 

a French and Germany initiative to develop a European military 

headquarters. In 1993, Eurocorps grew to five nations and started 

its initial NATO coordination. The organization’s rising importance 

came in 1999 when it added a crisis response capability and in 2003 

when it established its out of area deployable headquarters.24 The 

success of Eurocorps has led to a broader EU concept called EU Force 

(EUFOR), which in December 2004 took over responsibility from 

NATO for all peacekeeping operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This 

is a clear policy shift for the EU, which prior to 1993 focused primarily 

on economic and diplomatic matters. The reason for this shift falls 

into two schools of thought. One school feels it represents an attempt 

to separate itself from a NATO dominated by the United States. The 

other school believes its purpose is to take more responsibility for 

European security matters, specifically peacekeeping missions. The 

truth probably falls somewhere in between. Viewing the major policy 

initiatives and critical conflict dates of 1993 (Bosnia-Herzegovina), 

1999 (Kosovo), and 2003 (Iraq), there is a strong argument that 

suggests this shift resulted from disagreements between the EU and 

the United States on policy, specifically when to use military force.

In the broader perspective of the GWOT, this new peacekeeping 

role would be a much welcomed one, if the units assigned to European 

Union Force (EUFOR) were not the same ones assigned to NATO. 

The only real difference between the EU and NATO headquarters is 

the lack of U.S. participation. From a positive standpoint, this is one 

less mission for the United States. Additionally, it takes the burden 

off NATO for the same reasons. When the EUFOR took over the 

NATO Stabilization Force (SFOR) mission in Bosnia/Herzegovina 

in December 2004, this action freed up some NATO staff, including 

U.S. personnel. The long-term implications of the EU’s expansion 

of its charter and what this means for NATO’s future role is yet 

to be determined. The immediate impact in the GWOT is that 

the EU brought immediate relief for U.S. planning and manning 

requirements in Bosnia/Herzegovina. It has allowed NATO to focus 

on other areas, including Afghanistan and Iraq, if not with units, 

then with staffs.
2

NATO Focus. 

NATO is a civil and military organization, founded in 1949 “. . . to 

ensure that the fragile democracies of postwar Europe had a decent 

chance for survival.”25 The organization’s mission was to defend 

Western Europe, with mainly a defensive strategy and posture. The 

original purpose of NATO “. . . was to safeguard the freedom and 

security of all its members by political and military means . . .”26 This 

is still NATO’s stated policy but its success in achieving the goal of 

establishing “. . . a just and lasting peaceful order in Europe based 

on common values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law 

. . .” has evolved into the EU’s playing a larger role in determining 

European policy and security issues.27 The Bosnia/Herzegovina 

SFOR mission and the combating terrorism declaration are two 

recent examples of the EU’s expanding role. The relatively peaceful 

situation in Europe, since the Kosovo Air Campaign in 1999, along 

with the growth in size and independence of the EU are the key 

enablers. 

Europeans agree that their current security situation would not 

have been possible without the U.S. policy and strategy initiatives 

over the last decade. Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, when 

talking about the Balkan wars in the 1990s stated, “Alliance cohesion 

with a strong U.S. role have given clout to our political efforts, and 

forced the warring factions to stop fighting and start negotiating. 

U.S. engagement in European security was essential to our success.”28

The security realities today are different. As U.S. ambassador to 

NATO R. Nicholas Burns has stated, “. . . if NATO is to remain the 

world’s most effective military and political alliance, it must adapt 

its fundamental strategy to the realities of the post-9/11 world.”29 In 

fact, NATO is changing, and its support of the U.S. GWOT policy 

was almost immediate after the attacks of 9/11.

On September 12, 2001, less than 24 hours after the 9/11 attacks, 

NATO members, for the first time in history, invoked Article 5 of the 

North Atlantic Treaty, which states “. . . that an armed attack against 

one or more NATO member countries will be considered an attack 

against all . . .”30 On October 4, 2001, the alliance agreed to eight 

U.S. initiatives to strengthen support for the fight against terrorism. 
2

These initiatives provided immediate assistance in the fight on 

terror and long-term enhancements in intelligence sharing, security 

assistance, and increased basing and overflight options.31 Over the 

last 3 years, NATO policy has enabled the United States to divert 

forces into Afghanistan and Iraq. NATO provided direct support in 

the United States under Article 5 with aircraft, specifically Airborne 

Warning and Control System (AWACS), to supplement U.S. forces 

in the United States. This allowed the diversion of these scarce assets 

to overseas operations in Afghanistan. After 9/11, many NATO 

countries, including Germany, provided security for U.S. bases 

overseas, relieving the burden on U.S. forces to protect these staging 

and training bases. 

NATO clearly has expanded its strategy for the GWOT. Since 

January 2002, when the UN deployed the International Security 

Assistance Force (ISAF) to Afghanistan, it has been under NATO 

command. This was the first NATO operation outside the EuroAtlantic area. The mission has grown from security assistance in the 

Kabul area to the entire country.32 There are definitely challenges to 

NATO expanding out of the Kabul area of operations, but its policy 

and strategy precedents are notable. At the request of the interim 

Iraqi Prime Minister, Ilyad Allawi, NATO established a training 

mission in Iraq. The NATO Training Mission-Iraq is training mid and 

senior level Iraqi security personnel. The mission has grown from an 

original requirement of 75 personnel to its current authorization of 

300.33 With all this international support for the U.S. GWOT, why 

does a negative information campaign continue? 

Initial Success in GWOT Strategy. 

In assessing where the United States currently stands in the 

GWOT, it is important to examine the early operations. The initial 

phase of the GWOT to “disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations 

by use of direct and continuous action using all the elements of 

national and international power . . .” was most successful.34 The 

operations in Afghanistan demonstrated the use of a balanced 

strategy leading an international “coalition of the willing” against 

the al-Qa’ida and Taliban, both the terrorist organization and its 

state sponsor. The United States and its partners won the “war of 
2

ideas: working closely with allies, supporting moderate and modern 

governments, and using effective public diplomacy . . .”35 This is 

evident in the UN Security Council Resolution 1368 that passed 

(including the support from America’s European Allies in both the 

EU and NATO) committing money and troops to Afghanistan.36

There was a demonstrated use of diplomacy in working with the 

moderate governments in Pakistan and Uzbekistan. 

The information campaign complemented the diplomatic element 

of U.S. power by focusing on the key slogans: “. . . not a war against 

Islam . . .” and “. . . not a war against the Afghan people. . . .”37 These 

slogans were credible and brought international legitimacy to the 

operation. The evidence of Taliban support to the al-Qa’ida terrorist 

network and the link to the 9/11 attacks provided the justification 

for the preemptive strikes. The United States used the international 

media to deliver its message or rationale. The humanitarian assistance 

mission in conjunction with Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, is 

a classic example of successful diplomatic, economic, military, and 

information elements of power being fully integrated into operations 

supporting the U.S. objective of winning the “hearts” and “minds” 

of the Afghan people. Diplomacy secured the intermediate staging 

bases and overflight permissions; government and nongovernment 

agencies produced the supplies; the military loaded, flew, and 

dropped the material; the media provided positive information to 

the international community, which reinforced the legitimacy of the 

operation.

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM and Implications on GWOT.

The integration of all elements of national power was missing 

in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. U.S. policy in Iraq has clouded 

America’s broader goals in the GWOT. Many traditional European 

allies and most of the Arab world view U.S. Iraqi strategy as too 

focused on military responses or plans. The National Security 

Strategy describes a cooperative effort amongst allies in combating 

terrorism. This cooperative effort is missing in the Iraqi campaign. 

The invasion of Iraq, without support from the United Nations (UN) 

and the European powers, specifically France, Germany, and Russia, 

casts a shadow over Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. Prior to the war, 
2

the Europeans questioned the U.S. justification for invading Iraq. The 

fact that coalition forces found no WMD damaged U.S. credibility in 

Europe. An overwhelming majority of the European public believe 

that the U.S. policies on Iraq were wrong.38 This should be a concern 

for the United States because all of these countries are democracies. 

Without public support for U.S. policies in Europe and NATO, the 

“coalition of the willing” could quickly turn into an alliance of the 

few. 

In fact, the support and commitment of coalition members in Iraq 

changed because of terrorist attacks and public opinion. The United 

States lost a critical European partner when Spain pulled out of the 

coalition after the Madrid Bombings. Other countries followed Spain 

including Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras. The 

Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, and Hungary have all pulled 

out for various reasons, including public opinion and the continuing 

threat of terrorist acts.39 Reports indicate Poland, Netherlands and 

Bulgaria will pull out during 2005 and a senior British military official 

stated that his country would start pulling out at the end of 2005.40

The latest media reports on the accidental attack by U.S. forces on 

the kidnapped Italian journalist could further divide the coalition 

if the investigation and public relations activities are not handled 

properly. The United States can ill afford to lose the 3,000 Italian 

soldiers over this latest international incident.

This withdrawal of coalition support conflicts with two of the 

United States key National Security Strategy goals for combating 

terrorism: “strengthen alliances to defeat global terrorist, and work 

with others to defuse regional conflicts.” The coalition’s initial 

combat success, which led to regime change, has not yet provided 

the international legitimacy the United States hoped to achieve in 

Iraq. The early mistakes in U.S. diplomacy in gaining support for 

the war and the intelligence failures in not finding WMD continue to 

hamper international support.

Strategy Adjustments.

In 2001, President Bush identified three countries as the “axis of 

evil” in the war on terror. They were Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. 41

The news that Iran, the second “axis of evil,” is developing nuclear 
2

capabilities has presented a dilemma. What strategy should the 

United States use in approaching this development? The President 

stated, “My hope is that we can solve this diplomatically. We are 

working our hearts out so that they don’t develop a nuclear weapon, 

and the best way to do so is to continue to keep the international 

pressure on them.”42 Ironically, the Europeans are leading the 

diplomatic efforts in this endeavor because the United States does 

not have diplomatic ties with Iran. 

The third “axis of evil,” North Korea, has required a different 

diplomatic and informational challenge to tackle the nuclear 

proliferation issue. The United States is working the diplomatic effort 

through negotiations with a group of nations including: Russia, China, 

Japan, North Korea, and South Korea. This diplomatic effort has 

reinforced the Arab perception that the West has a double standard 

in dealing with the presence of WMD. The U.S. rationale for invading 

Iraq was the potential spread of WMD. The Arab question is, since 

North Korea has admitted that they are developing nuclear weapon 

capabilities, why doesn’t the United States attack North Korea as 

they did Iraq? The evidence suggests that limited U.S. military 

means, especially ground troops, are driving an adjustment in U.S. 

strategy. That the United States had to pull out forces from one “axis 

of evil,” the Korean Peninsula, to support another, Iraq, supports 

this conclusion. The inability of the United States to publicly admit 

military limitations reinforces Arab mistrust for Western policy. The 

U.S. information campaign is out of sync with its slogan that “it is 

not a war against Islam.” In the greater GWOT this diminishes U.S. 

credibility and provides adversaries an opportunity to exploit this 

weakness. 

The security situation in Iraq and an inadequate information 

campaign often inhibits other elements of national power from being 

effective. As the EU contends, it is difficult to help in reconstruction 

when the “security situation continues to impose limits on all those 

who want to help . . .”43 The United States has difficulty spending 

its allocation of reconstruction funds because of security issues: “. . . 

Of the $18.4 billion appropriated by Congress in October 2003, only 

$9.6 billion were obligated and $2.1 billion spent by mid-December 

2004.”44 The United States is in the middle of this dilemma with 

many international organizations demanding U.S. military security 
2

while they are reducing or eliminating their presence in Iraq. The EU 

is clearly benefiting from economic trade with Iraq, but is unwilling 

to support security requirements. The recent emphasis on training 

Iraqi soldiers and using economic incentives to bring security under 

regional control, presents the best blueprint for victory.

Successful elections in Iraq and the subsequent positive media 

reports present a window of opportunity. European newspapers 

from France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Britain all provided 

positive reports on the recent elections in Iraq. Belgium’s De Standard 

summed it up best: “It looked like an impossible gamble . . .,” and 

yet this important step in the post-Saddam democratic process “has 

turned out all right.”45 The keys to free elections were the integration 

and execution of all elements of national power. The United States 

downplayed its military presence during the elections. It relied on 

the interim government and Iraqi political leaders to deliver the 

message or information to the people. It used Iraqi and coalition 

security forces around the polling areas for security. The outcome 

was the first democratic elections in Iraq in 50 years. The news media 

reports of the personal stories and the people celebrating in the 

streets did more in one day to rebuild unity of purpose amongst our 

European allies than all the diplomatic efforts have done in the last 

year-and-a-half.

Reassessing Policy. 

The GWOT, specifically as it relates to European cooperation, 

is at an important crossroads. This war represents a number of 

complicated issues. There are many factors to assess, but as Clauswitz 

argued, “The first task, then, in planning for war is to identify the 

enemy’s centers of gravity, and if possible trace them back to a single 

one.”46 It is difficult to narrow this war’s center of gravity to one, 

but if Iraq has taught Americans anything, the “will of the people” 

still represents a crucial center of gravity for the war on terrorism. 

In reassessing the U.S. policy, the first question should be whether 

the United States is winning the information campaign in the Arab 

world. Is U.S. strategy creating or destroying more terrorists? The 

answers were negative several months ago, but recent events in 

Lebanon, Israel, and even Iraq suggest the tide may be turning. 
2

What should the United States and Europe focus on to fight the 

GWOT? The EU Secretary General for Policy and Security Major 

General Solana has stated, “We [(Europeans] believe the problem 

of terrorism must be resolved not only by dealing with its effects 

but also by concentrating on its causes.”47 The causes of terror are 

many. Solving all of them would be a monumental set of tasks, but 

finding a common ground or starting point is not that difficult. The 

Arab/Israeli conflict or more specifically the Israeli-Palestinian issue 

appears to be an underlying problem to peace in the Middle East, at 

least in the Arabs’ and many European minds. As EU Commissioner 

for External Relations Chris Patten stated, “Reforming the Middle 

East does not depend exclusively on progress in the peace process 

between Israel and Palestine, but it is hard to imagine the region 

reaching its full potential without a settlement.”48

Conclusion.

As many in Washington, DC, are coming to understand, the way 

to defeat global terrorism is to focus all national and international 

capabilities against the enemy. This is a war that requires extensive 

information operations. The best information strategy is to attack 

Islamic extremists by reducing their support among the moderate 

Muslim population. To accomplish this, the United States must first 

win the war of ideas. Winning the war of ideas means demonstrating 

U.S. commitment through actions that are political, economic, and 

educational. The United States started down the right path by 

attacking some of the underlying causes of terrorism. The recent 

elections in the occupied territories in Palestine, the cease fire 

between Palestine and Israel, and the successful elections in Iraq 

struck at the core ideology that terrorist hope to deny, freedom and 

liberty. As President Bush has stated, the “momentum for freedom” 

is now. With his February 21, 2005, speech in Brussels discussing 

the American and European alliances, he noted, “The future of our 

nations, and the future of the Middle East, are linked — and our 

peace depends on their hope and development and freedom.”49

The administration’s strategy shift from military heavy “means” 

to a more European diplomatic approach is encouraging support 

for U.S. policies in Iraq and the broader GWOT. The Iraqi elections 
created momentum and energized the international community. 

The United States built from this success by implementing an 

Iraqi reconstruction effort that engages all elements of national 

power. The Department of Defense (DoD) is working diligently 

to transfer interagency issues in Iraq to the State Department. The 

newly elected Iraqi government is providing information and 

communicating its message to its citizens through the media. The 

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is expediting 

the transfer of funds to rebuild Iraq. The reconstruction efforts are 

focused on restoring basic necessities and schools. The labor force 

for reconstruction is primarily Iraqi. The United States and NATO 

military forces priority of effort is on training Iraqi forces to handle 

their own security requirements. In the broader GWOT, the executive 

branch is diplomatically reaching out to the United States’ traditional 

allies in Europe. It was no accident that the first visit abroad of newly 

appointed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to Europe and 

the Middle East. The press reports and publicity on the information 

front is positive. In the GWOT, a U.S. strategy that balances the 

elements of national power ultimately enhances America’s ability to 

gain the information superiority it needs to win the war. 

As Churchill warned America in spring of 1943, “. . . War is full 

of mysteries and surprises. A false step, a wrong direction, an error 

in strategy, discord or lassitude among the Allies, might soon give 

the common enemy power to confront us with new and hideous 

facts.”50 As the United States saw on 9/11, the potential always exists 

for surprise. The last 3 1/2 years have shown the ebb and flow of 

coalition and alliance warfare. It is clear that Europe still remains 

a critical partner in the GWOT. The only way to preclude an attack 

is to obtain reliable and verifiable information. The use of WMD by 

terrorists presents a horrific and terrifying capability. As Americans 

have learned, “winning” the war means attacking the enemy before 

he can attack you. U.S. policy that integrates all elements of national 

power to attack the enemy on multiple fronts and has strong European 

and international support will be the most effective strategy. As 

former Secretary of State Colin Powell stated, “We’re not going to 

win the war on terrorism on the battlefield alone. . . . Good alliance 

relations, trade policy, energy policy, intelligence cooperation, public 

diplomacy, nation-building—all of these are part of our formula for 

victory. ”51
ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 10

1. The New Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary, New York, 1970, p. 565.

2. Ibid. 

3. Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds. and 

trans., Princeton, NJ, 1976, p. 75.

4. Ibid, p. 87.

5. George W. Bush, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of 

America,” Washington, DC, September 2002, p. 1.

6. Michael Howard, “When Are Wars Decisive,” Survival, Vol. 41, No. 1 Spring 

1999, p. 127.

7. George W. Bush, “Presidential Inaugural Speech,” Washington, DC, January 

2005.

8. George W. Bush, “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism,” Washington, 

DC, February 2003, p. 11.

9. Bush, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” p. 

1.

10. Bush, “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism,” p. 11.

11. Allen W. Dowd, “Different Course? America and Europe in the 21st 

Century,” Parameters, p. 73.

12. Shada Islam, “European Union’s Southern Drive,” Yale Global Online, May 

30, 2003, p. 2; available from yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=1738, Internet, 

accessed March 17, 2005.

13. Ibid.

14. “EU’s Solana says causes of terrorism need tackling,” available from www.

eubusiness.com/afp/040904093239.20fu3jty, Internet, accessed February 1, 2005.

15. George W. Bush, “The National Strategy for Homeland Security,” 

Washington, DC, July 2002, p. 10.

16. “The European Union at a glance,” available from www.eu.int/abc/index_

en.htm, Internet, accessed January 24, 2005.

17. Ibid.

18. Peter Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age,, 

Princeton, NJ, 1986, p. 347.

19. “Text of U.S.-EU Declaration on Combating Terrorism,” available from 

www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040626-5.html, Internet, accessed 

January 25, 2005.

20. Ibid.
21. “Iraq-EU relations: a strategy for the medium term,” available from www.

eu.int/comm/external_relations/iraq/news/ip05_723.htm, Internet, accessed September 

23, 2004.

22. Ibid.

23. “Commission statement on the transfer of power in Iraq,” available from 

www.eu.int/comm/external_relations/iraq/news/ip04_817.htm, Internet, accessed 

September 23, 2004.

24. “Eurocorps History,” available from www.eurocorps.org/site/inde.php?langua

ge=en&content=history, Internet, accessed September 23, 2004.

25. R. Nicholas Burns, “The War on Terror is NATO’s New Focus,” International 

Herald Tribune, October 6, 2004, available www.iht.com/articles/542089.html, Internet, 

accessed December 21, 2004.

26. The NATO Handbook, “Office of Information and Press NATO,” Brussels, 

1999, p. 23.

27. Ibid.

28. Tony Blair, “NATO, Europe, and Our Future Security,” Journal of Royal 

United Services Institute, London, March 8, 1999; available www.britainusa.com/

sections/articles_show.asp?sarticletype=1&Article_ID=713&i..., Internet, accessed 

February 10, 2005, p. 4.

29. Burns, p. 1.

30. “NATO’s contribution to the fight against terrorism,” available from www.

nato.int/terrorism/index.htm, Internet, accessed January 26, 2005.

31. Ibid.

32. “NATO in Afghanistan” available from www.nato.int/issues/afghanistan/

index.htm, Internet, accessed January 26, 2005.

33. “NATO’s assistance to Iraq,” available from www.nato.int/issues/iraqassitance/decision.html, Internet, accessed January 18, 2005.

34. Bush, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” 

p. 6.

35. Ibid. 

36. Marianne van Leeuwen, Confronting Terrorism European Experiences, Threat 

Perceptions, and Polices, The Hague, 2003, p. 193.

37. Bob Woodward, Bush at War, New York, 2002, p. 115.

38. Stan Crock, “If You’re Not With Us . . .,” Business Week, September 13, 2004, 

Issue 3899, p. 38.

39. John Pike, “Non-US Forces in Iraq-15 January 2005,” Global Security, available 

from www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat_coalition.htm, Internet, accessed 

February 2, 2005.
40. The ideas in this sentence are based on remarks made by a speaker 

participating in the Commandant’s Lecture Series, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle 

Barracks, PA, AY 2004-05.

41. “Bush: Iran won’t have a nuclear weapon,” Associated Press, September 28, 

2004. available from www.cnn.com/2004/allpolitics/09/28/bush.Tuesday.ap/, Internet, 

acccessed October 6, 2004.

42. Ibid.

43. “Iraq reconstruction: Commission releases EUR 160 million,” available from 

europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/iraq/news/ip04_584.htm, Internet, accessed 

September 23, 2004.

44. Curt Tarnoff, “Iraq: Recent Developments in Reconstruction Assistance,” 

Congressional Research Service, Report to Congress, December 20, 2004, p. i.

45. European Press Review, “Hope for Iraq?,” Deutsche Welle, available from 

www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1474009,00.html, Internet,accessed 

February 10, 2005.

46. Howard and Paret, p. 619.

47. “EU’s Solana says Causes of Terrorism Need Tackling.”

48. Humayun Chaudhry, “EU:’Strategic partnership’,” Makka Times, May 19, 

2004 available from english.aljuazeera.net/NR/exeres/8E49A89B-64B8-403F-8D35-

B21DE7B45E1E.htm, Internet,accessed February 10, 2005.

49. Concert Noble, “President Discusses American and European Alliance 

in Belgium,” February 21, 2005, available from www whitehouse.gov/news/

releases/2005/02/20050221.html, Internet, accessed March 9, 2005.

50. Paul Kennedy, Grand Strategies in War and Peace, London: Yale University 

Press, 1992, p. 66.

51. Colonel Daniel Smith, “Spending Under Fire,” Foreign Policy in Focus, 

March 11, 2004, available from www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0403budget_body.

html, Internet, accessed September 23, 2004.
CHAPTER 11

THE DARK FRUIT OF GLOBALIZATION:

HOSTILE USE OF THE INTERNET

Lieutenant Colonel Todd A. Megill

One of the second order effects of an internet connected world, 

a direct consequence of increasing economic globalization and 

technological diffusion, is that insurgent/terrorist organizations 

which are most against the process of globalization are using its 

infrastructure to target and attack its biggest proponent, the United 

States. As the world’s greatest power and leading engine of change, 

the United States has created through the internet a “virtual global 

commons,” one that anti-American and anti-globalization groups 

increasingly are using to conduct propaganda and plan attacks. This 

chapter will focus on the internet, developed as an agent of economic 

change, and its use by insurgents/terrorists to operate and conduct 

targeting operations employing a similar methodology adopted by 

the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

U.S. National Security, Economic Prosperity, and the Internet.

One of the major goals of the current U.S. National Security 

Strategy is to create and expand the world economy as a means for 

addressing some of the underlying causes of violence around the 

globe:1

A Strong World Economy enhances our national security by advancing 

prosperity and freedom in the rest of the world. Economic growth 

supported by free trade and free markets creates new jobs and higher 

incomes. It allows people to lift their lives out of poverty, spurs economic 

and legal reform, and the fight against corruption, and it reinforces the 

habits of liberty.2

Creating a strong world economy will lead the United States even 

more toward embracing the concept and trends of globalization: 

“Globalization refers to those entrenched and enduring patterns 
of worldwide interconnectiveness . . . it suggests that a growing 

magnitude or intensity of global flows such as that the states and 

societies become increasingly enmeshed in worldwide systems 

and networks of interaction.”3 The process of globalization, though 

initially created by U.S. technical creativity and economic power, is 

now truly a world-wide phenomenon as millions around the world 

contribute their expertise, creativity, and economic capital. 

Globalization isn’t a choice. It’s a reality. There is just one global market 

today, and the only way you can grow at the speed your people want 

is by tapping into the global stock and bond markets, by seeking out 

multinationals to invest in your country and by selling into the global 

trading system what your factories produce. And the most basic truth 

about globalization is this: No one is in charge—not George Soros, not 

‘Great Powers’ and not I.4

Technological advances in telecommunications and computerization leading to the creation of the internet are the leading 

characteristics of the process involved in globalization. “Today’s era 

of globalization is built around falling telecommunication costs—

thanks to microchips, satellites, fiber optics, and the internet.”5 If the 

global movement of goods and services are the lifeblood of the world 

economy, then the internet is the nervous system. It is constantly 

passing, collecting, and storing information that guides and directs 

such economic flows. The movement of information and data across 

the internet is so vast and pervasive in the United States, and the 

industrialized world in particular, that it has become a feature of 

modern life. Air travel, sea travel, land travel, and now virtual 

travel that cross these global commons are the norm. A commons 

represents a shared resource or area with poorly defined boundaries, 

widely used or accessible, with limited supervision or governance. 

The last form of travel has no association with geography, possesses 

no boundaries, and is limited only by access to the World Wide 

Web. The internet is a continually expanding virtual commons of 

information and communication stretching across the globe.

The Impact of a Virtual Global Commons.

The major impact of the internet is that it has evolved into the 

fourth global commons. There is a terrestrial commons of land 
masses, an oceanic global commons that encompasses most of the 

globe, and an aerospace global commons that covers the earth and 

extends upward until the atmosphere ends in empty space.6 The 

internet has created a virtual global commons that extends as far 

as communications can reach and man has a desire to create an 

interface. 

The virtual global commons that the internet provides for hostile 

users is unique and expands the opportunities for insurgency, 

criminality, terrorism, or other violent acts across the globe. There 

is little common agreement on the terms of terrorism or insurgency 

or if the current wave of Muslim fundamentalist extremism is a 

political movement linked to an insurgency or random terrorist acts.7

The use of the internet for violence does not predispose any political 

goal or objective, and so the term terrorist/insurgent is used in this 

discussion. The worldwide internet allows the hostile terrorist/

insurgent to create and/or occupy a “Distributed Sanctuary.” The 

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff defines a sanctuary as: “A nation or area 

near or contiguous to the combat area which by tacit agreement 

between the warring powers is exempt from attack and therefore 

serves as a refuge for staging, logistic, or other activities of the 

combatant powers.”8 The worldwide internet allows an expansion 

of that definition. The refuge or sanctuary no longer has to be near 

or contiguous to the area of combat or operations. 

The linkages provided by the worldwide internet allow the 

insurgents and terrorists to remain removed from the location 

they plan to attack. “The knowledge of how to conduct an attack is 

developed in one country, then that knowledge is combined with the 

raw materials, personnel, and training available in other countries, 

which can include the target country, to create a weapon in the target 

country.”9 Options now exist to divide a sanctuary further, not only 

by location, but by function. 

The world-wide internet allows an organization’s fund raising to 

occur around the globe and its collection to occur in a country that 

looks favorably upon terrorist or insurgent goals. “Al-Qa’ida appears 

to have relied on a core group of financial facilitators who raised 

money from a variety of donors and other fund-raisers, primarily in 

the Gulf countries and particularly in Saudi Arabia.”10 Terrorists and 

insurgents use existing legal and illegal networks to gain financing 
including the use of free trade zones and the informal hawala system 

of currency transfers, including diamonds and gold.11 The monies 

sent to those who are planning operations in another location or 

a nation-state, to locations with weak banking and financial laws, 

allows them to launder the monies collected. 

Money laundering involves disguising assets so they can be used without 

detection of the illegal activity that produced them. . . . This process 

has devastating social consequences. For one thing, money laundering 

provides the fuel for drug dealers, terrorists, arms dealers, and other 

criminals to operate and expand their operations.12

Insurgents and terrorists can reside in a country where they are 

breaking no public laws and can maintain a low profile. In a second 

country or location, other members procure and assemble the weapons 

or explosives for shipment to marry up with the actual attackers in 

yet a third country or location. The terrorists and insurgents attackers 

can then flee or return to possibly a fourth country, the operation 

monitored by the group’s leadership using news outlets and media 

access from yet another country. Finally, the terrorists and insurgents 

can develop the group’s message and disseminate it throughout 

the world through the world-wide internet. Separating the various 

functions of insurgent and terrorist sustainment and operations or 

the phases of the targeting and attack methodology makes it difficult 

for national police or public security organizations to track and/or 

gather evidence of criminal misconduct. “The old police technique 

of tracking illegal activity by watching certain places and peoples 

does not work when communications is carried out on line. “13

As we now know, support networks in Muslim diasporas, especially in 

Europe, have been key nodes in the funding and operations of extremist 

and terrorist groups. Ironically, the activities of these groups have been 

facilitated by the reluctance of Western security and law enforcement 

agencies to monitor the activities of allegedly religious groups. As the 

investigations following the events of September 11, 2001 have run their 

course, it has become apparent that Muslim diasporas in countries such as 

Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland 

have been implicated as important hubs of al-Qa’ida operations and 

recruitment.14
One of the challenges the worldwide internet poses as a global 

commons is that it already exists as an exploitable environment. It has 

the ability to be present or embedded into every aspect of mankind’s 

existence. Thus, insurgents and terrorists do not have to expend 

much time, effort, or money to painfully build up the infrastructure 

for attack or revolt. The painstaking process of building cells, 

organizations, and networks and the risks of communicating with 

them greatly decrease when done remotely. “Even more challenging 

from a security point of view is that the people do not have to go 

out to establish these networks. They do not have to be in the same 

country or even on line at the same time.”15

The internet is such a useful communications and economic tool 

that it is unlikely that a modern society can operate without it. The 

world economy, linked through a global communications network, 

has helped raise the standard of living of millions around the world.16

However, this communications infrastructure also brings change to 

much of the world. For those who do not want change and seek to 

deny it, the internet can become a tool for attacking the very bodies, 

values, and organizations that helped to create it.17 The Internet 

allows for a criminal, an insurgent, or a terrorist to expand his or 

her area of operations and gather the necessary information about 

targets they wish to exploit or attack without a physical presence 

until the actual tactical operation occurs.

Doctrine: Ours and Theirs. 

In the U.S. military, at the Joint level, Joint Pub 3-60, Joint Doctrine 

for Targeting, dated January 17, 2002, promulgates the doctrinal 

underpinnings of the targeting process.18 The six-step process is 

used to define targets for attack in support of combat operations: (1) 

Commander’s objectives, guidance and intent, (2) Target development, 

validation, nomination, and prioritization, (3) Capabilities analysis, 

(4) Commander’s decision and force assignment, (5) Mission planning 

and force execution, and (6) Combat assessment. Within this process, 

the U.S. Army and Marine Corps use the Decide, Detect, Deliver, 

and Assess Cycle (D3A) to support planning and link with the Joint 

Targeting Cycle (see Figure 1).19
2

Figure 1. The Joint Targeting Cycle.

This methodology is similar in many ways to the type of process 

that insurgents or terrorists use in defining, developing, and executing 

their attacks.20 Moreover, the interconnectiveness of modern society 

and the presence of the internet allow the insurgents/terrorists 

to accomplish many of these steps from a distributed sanctuary, 

removed from the actual geographic location or population they 

intend to attack.

Commander’s Objectives, Guidance, and Intent.

In both the U.S. military and insurgent or terrorist organizations, 

there are policy objectives achieved by the application of force or 

the threat of force. Both organizations provide this guidance and 

intent to subordinates in different forms: written documents, oral 

presentations, conversations, and graphics, stories, and pictures.21 The 

internet makes this important step easier, as it allows those physically 

separated to maintain a high level of contact and communication.
There used to be trade-off, they argue, between the reach of a message and 

its richness. A rich, detailed message required a one-on-one conversation; 

reaching out to thousands, for example, through advertising, meant you 

could send only simplistic messages. The tradeoff has now been killed by 

the new technologies: you can have rich, detailed customized information 

flowing from one to thousands or millions.22

The internet allows the communication of a leader’s or commander’s 

intent and guidance to his or her subordinates accurately, without 

the risk of actual physical contact that could lead to identification, 

arrest, or attack.

Target Development, Validation, Nomination, and Prioritization; 

and Capabilities Analysis.

This is the step that involves target selection. The U.S. Army’s 

decide phase in the D3A Cycle is embedded in this, as military 

personnel decide what are the type of targets, where they are, who 

can locate them, and how they should be attacked.23 This is a giveand-take process between intelligence and operations functions. 

A process that debates, assembles, and selects targets for lethal 

or nonlethal attack. Additionally, the evaluation and selection of 

the target results in the identification of the type of attack system 

or methodology likely employed against the nominated target. 

Again, the internet allows the insurgent/terrorist a similar capacity 

to communicate accurately over vast distances and keep track of 

individuals, ideas, and targets. The internet is an interconnected 

assemblage of databases that provides the insurgents/terrorists a 

low-cost, low-risk way of gathering information about their enemies. 

The Al-Qa’ida organization, a recent example of an evolving 

insurgent/terrorist network, uses computers and the internet as a 

matter of course to operate their organization and identify targets.

Al-Qa’ida was a modern army. It was as adept with computers as any 

organization, founded by the engineer son of a construction millionaire 

and staffed largely by middle-class educated males. Intercepting al-Qa’ida 

communications was hard mainly because the organization understood 

information technology so well.24
Expertise with information technology and the internet allows the 

insurgents or terrorists to gather the information needed to conduct 

their planning, targeting, and weaponeering remotely:

Meanwhile, al-Qa’ida operatives used the Internet to scope out targets. 

They downloaded layouts of bridges and buildings from Web sites. 

In the past, collecting this kind of information might require traveling 

around the world. Getting it to someone in the field required undercover 

couriers. Now you could click, get the data, click again, and send the 

diagrams to a temporary, untraceable e-mail address.25

A translation of an al-Qa’ida Training manual gives clear 

guidance to followers and operatives on how to gather information 

and intelligence about an enemy or target:

Any organization that desires to raise the flag of Islam high and 

proud must gather as much information as possible about the enemy. 

Information has two sources: Public Sources: Using public sources 

openly and without resorting to illegal means, it is possible to gather 

at least 80 percent of the information available about the enemy. . . . 

The one gathering the information should be a regular person (trained 

college graduate) who examines primary sources of information 

published by the enemy (newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, etc.). . . . 

The one gathering information with this public method is not exposed to 

any danger whatsoever. Any brother can gather information from those 

aforementioned sources.26

The internet makes it possible for a global insurgency or 

terrorist networked organization to exist. Prior to the invention and 

dissemination of the internet, geography had a great influence on the 

movement of information. The physical distance between members 

made communications and information collection much slower, 

riskier, and more time consuming.

Commander’s Decision and Force Assignment; 

and Mission Planning and Force Execution.

These two phases are intertwined so closely that they can occur 

nearly simultaneously. Now the commander approves selected 

targets, which are then attacked. In U.S. Army doctrine, this is the 
deliver phase of the Joint Targeting Cycle. The U.S. military and 

insurgents and terrorists have a number of ways of attacking the 

target(s), but the U.S. military has the advantage in possessing 

specialized weapons that can afford it considerable target standoff 

and destructive power. Insurgents and terrorists on the other hand 

currently have neither standoff nor destructive capability, but they 

possess their own considerable capability. 

The advance of technology is why we now worry about weapons of mass 

destruction. For the first time in history, a single attacker may be able to 

use technology to kill millions of people. . . . Technology will continue 

to alter the balance between the attacker and the defender, at an everincreasing pace. In addition, technology will generally favor the attacker, 

with the defender playing catch-up.27

The U.S. President has stated in the National Security Strategy, 

“The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of 

radicalism and technology.”28 The internet can serve as a command, 

control, communications, computerization, and intelligence center 

to facilitate lethal attacks. In addition, there is a growing body of 

literature that indicates it could be the actual attack mechanism to 

disable or disrupt certain components of a modern industrialized 

society.29 Again, the insurgent/terrorist need not be physically 

present in relation to the target when conducting such an attack.

Combat Assessment.

The Joint Targeting Process’s final phase, mirrored in the U.S. 

Army’s cycle, is the assessment phase. This represents the estimate 

of the damage resulting from the use of force.30 The U.S. military 

uses intelligence and operational assets to evaluate the damage to 

the target and assess if it has achieved the commander’s desired 

level of effect. If the needed level of effect is not adequate, then the 

target is attacked again. Insurgents or terrorists evaluate a target they 

have attacked in relation to its symbolic and propaganda value. The 

internet greatly facilitates such an evaluation as it grants nearly realtime knowledge of the attack and target impact due to the presence of 

the world media. An insurgent or terrorist attack is big news in most 
of the world, and the immediate broadcasts of images of the attack 

help terrorists and insurgents evaluate their success. In a crude way, 

the sheer amount of reporting on a given attack provides insurgents 

and terrorists with an idea of how successful the organization’s 

attack has been. Monitoring multiple media outlets from around 

the world is easy to do on the internet. It allows the insurgents or 

terrorists to monitor their attack at the same time they advertise their 

activities and promote their views and cause. This then completes the 

targeting process with the organization’s message being enhanced 

or modified. The targeting process begins again with insurgents 

or terrorists looking for new targets to attack. The internet allows 

this targeting process to occur across the globe with the insurgent/

terrorist network being connected by the thinnest web of electrons 

through the internet.

Conclusion.

The expanding use of the internet lies at the heart of the 

globalizing world economy. The interconnectiveness of the financial 

and business sectors around the world is critical to the quality of 

life and standard of living of Americans. The United States, in an 

effort to improve its national security posture, actively promotes 

the global economy as a way to address numerous social evils and 

promote basic human rights.31 The internet is a means of more firmly 

integrating all nations of the world into more interconnected and 

stable political units. This allows increased efficiencies that translate 

into economic improvements. However, the internet brings both 

opportunities and threats. It is a method of improving efficiencies 

and linkages between people and businesses. It also serves as a tool 

for those opposed to the globalized political economy and allows 

them to tap into the fears of dynamic change. Thus, they can carryon a networked anti-American insurgency.

The targeting methodology that the U.S. military uses at the 

joint level is similar at both the operational/strategic and tactical 

levels to how global insurgents and terrorists can now conduct 

their own operations using the internet. The ability to send clear, 

concise, information dense messages across the world enhances the 
insurgents’ security. They no longer have to meet face-to-face to 

encourage members or develop plans. The internet allows individuals 

and small groups with common agendas to make and maintain 

contact easily with each other. The internet serves as a global venue to 

disseminate their message or vision. The internet not only provides a 

highly effective means of organizing, commanding, and controlling 

an insurgent or terrorist network, but also serves as a useful tool to 

collect targeting information. Terrorists or insurgents can conduct 

operational planning, target evaluation, initial weaponeering, and 

a post-attack assessment without physically visiting the intended 

target. This remote targeting process, buried in the mass of traffic 

and data that flows across the World Wide Web, makes it difficult 

for security forces to track insurgent/terrorist activities. The internet 

allows the insurgents or terrorists to expose themselves to a minimal 

amount of risk of capture until the actual execution of the targeted 

attack. After attacking the target, the organization can monitor its 

success nearly instantaneously at almost no cost or risk to itself. 

Finally, the internet allows the insurgents and terrorists to trumpet 

their activities when they chose to do so throughout the world, again 

both quickly and with relative security. 

The internet allows the establishment of a worldwide 

insurgency by non-state actors. Empowered angry young men can 

link themselves together via the internet and become a cohesive 

organization, networked together.32 Insurgents or terrorists seldom 

need to come together to maintain a functional organization. The 

internet allows insurgents and terrorists to remain scattered across 

the globe and hidden in small groups. They need not come together 

to operate, creating a difficult signature for security officials to find. 

The internet is a growing virtual global commons that affords small 

numbers of violent individuals the opportunity and capability to 

carry out a global insurgency and complex, devastating attacks. 

Thus, the expansion of the internet, linked to economic prosperity, 

is a two-edged sword, improving people’s standard of living, while 

at the same time empowering those in violent disagreement with 

the values and concepts it embodies to attack its proponents more 

effectively.
Recommendations.

The internet is here to stay as a major component of the world’s 

economic system and a highly visible presence in the process of 

globalization. The internet’s rapid growth and penetration into all 

aspects of the industrialized and developing world has led it to 

become a part of a new “Virtual Global Commons.” Since the internet 

is now an integral part of world civilization and has the nature of 

open access, there is no way to deny its use to insurgents or terrorists 

for their own criminal and violent agendas. Denying the internet 

as a distributed sanctuary is an impossibility for the United States. 

Attempting to cut the insurgents or terrorists off from the internet 

and its networks, would display a complete lack of understanding of 

its capabilities and operation. A quote from an earlier era illuminates 

the challenge to the United States in combating insurgents and 

terrorists on the internet.

Little minds try to defend everything at once, but sensible people look at 

the main point only; they parry the worst blows and stand little hurt if they 

avoid a greater one. If you try to hold everything, you hold nothing.

Fredrick the Great33

There should be a two-pronged approach in addressing the 

insurgent and terrorist threat on the internet. The first would be to 

manage the risk the internet possesses as an insurgent or terrorist 

command and control and intelligence collection tool. This is the 

classic concept of force protection and physical security. General 

information about a target is probably not deniable to insurgents or 

terrorists. However, the United States needs to deny the insurgents 

detailed information about possible targets. This is a major component 

of the current strategy for defending cyberspace.34 The United States 

is doing this, and it will make the insurgents or terrorist’s targeting 

process more difficult. In addition, the United States government 

needs to continue to harden its own cyber-networks to minimize 

any direct collection or attack on vital network infrastructures 

through possible interfaces with the commercial or civil internet. 

The insurgent and terrorist likely will use the internet as a means to 

launch cyberattacks against selected targets. 
The second approach to addressing a hostile use of the internet 

is less traditional, as it would seek to exploit the insurgents or 

terrorists use of the internet, rather than attempt to deny them 

access. The internet can work for the United States military as well 

as for insurgents or terrorists. The latter exploit the internet, but 

using the internet means that they have to utilize the technology it 

encompasses. The U.S. Government needs to expand and enlarge 

the internet, adding more nodes and infrastructure. By doing 

so, it will attack indirectly, using economic power, the source of 

people’s frustrations and lack of hope that are breeding grounds for 

insurgencies and terrorism. The expansion of the internet will make 

it easier to track and monitor insurgent or terrorist organizations. The 

use of the internet leaves an electronic record, trail, or trace. Skilled 

operators and analysts can trace these links back to insurgents or 

terrorists. The tracking information can then be turned over to more 

classic human intelligence or technical collection for targeting. The 

ability to operate dispersed also makes insurgents and terrorists 

more vulnerable, since they lack the situation awareness and 

protection that massing provides. The distributed, global nature of 

the internet allows the United States to conduct remote collection 

against insurgents/terrorists, while minimizing the risk to its service 

members and increasing the efficiency of more traditional intelligence 

collection. 

Moreover, the U.S. Government needs to encourage expansion 

and use of the internet on a global basis in an effort to deny insurgents 

and terrorists access to unaccountable operational funds. The free 

flow of undocumented currency allows the fusion of criminals and 

insurgents or terrorists to finance operations and suborn individuals 

to provide them information and support. The increasing use of the 

internet as a mechanism for retail and business-to-business financial 

transactions not only avoids the inefficient use of hard currency, 

but it also allows documentation of the financial trail. Tracing the 

financial transactions allows their exploitation by law enforcement 

agencies for arrest or the U.S. Government for military targeting. 

The more financial transactions travel across the internet, the less 

the potential for undocumented currency to become available to 

criminal or insurgent or terrorist organizations, which would limit 

their ability to conduct and promote operations. 
Insurgents and terrorists use the internet as a propaganda and a 

recruiting tool. Through websites and internet chat rooms, they put 

out their message in an effort to influence and recruit. Again, the 

internet should allow the U.S. Government to monitor this process. 

Its representative could then use information operations, promoting 

a dialog by using or hiring religious or political leaders to promote 

moderate viewpoints. Any communications created during this 

dialog would not only work to counter the insurgents or terrorists 

message, but also create other opportunities for active, targeted 

collection.

Finally, the United States, as it continues to promote globalization 

and seeks to transform many federal government organizations, 

needs to maintain a priority of monitoring and researching the 

internet. The relative “newness” of the internet and the distributed, 

nearly chaotic way in which it grows and operates, means that its 

capabilities and effects are poorly understood. Insurgents and 

terrorists are using the internet and constantly evolving their tactics 

and techniques. Although they have adapted their organizations 

to take advantage of the internet, they have not yet evolved into 

“networked” insurgent organizations. The United States needs to 

remain vigilant as networked insurgent and terrorist organizations 

are still in their infancy. Through observation, research, and 

simulation its operatives, in cooperation with the private sector, need 

to understand the capabilities and limitations the internet imposes 

on its opponents. 

The internet offers both opportunities and challenges to the 

United States as it creates and occupies a new global commons. Its 

representatives will need to conduct a sustained strategic campaign to 

operate in this new environment and minimize its use as a distributed 

sanctuary and communications tool for evolving insurgent and 

terrorist organizations. In its pursuit of insurgents and terrorists, it 

needs to make the internet a priority in its strategic endeavors. As 

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur once suggested:

We must hold our minds alert and receptive to the application of 

unglimpsed methods and weapons. The next war will be won in the 

future, not in the past. We must go on, or we will go under.35
The opportunities and challenges the internet contains are great, 

and Americans ignore them at their own peril.

ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 11

1. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America dated 

September 2002 is the baseline federal document outlining the strategic security 

posture for the United States. All other U.S. Government and Department of 

Defense strategies flow from it. 

2. George W. Bush, “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” 

Washington: The White House, September 2002, p. 17.

3. David Held and Anthony McGrew, eds., The Global Transformation Reader, 

2nd Edition, Cambridge, MA, 2003, p. 3.

4. Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, New York, 1999, p. 93.

5. Ibid., p. xv.

6. Wayne Lee, To Rise from Earth, New York, 2000, p. 12. The height at which 

space begins is 121.9 Kilometers; at this altitude, there is no atmospheric pressure 

on an object.

7. John Baylis, et al., Strategy in the Contemporary World, Oxford, 2002, p. 210.

8. Joint Chiefs of Staff, The U.S. Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and 

Associated Terms, New York, 1987, p. 317.

9. Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone, St. Paul, MN, 2004, p. 38.

10. U.S. Congress, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United 

States, The 9/11 Commission Report, New York, 2004, p. 170.

11. Angel M. Rabasa, et al., The Muslim World After 9/11, San Monica, CA, 2004, 

p. 45.

12. Brett F. Woods, The Art and Science of Money Laundering, Boulder, CO, 1998, 

pp. 178-179.

13. Hammes, p. 40.

14. Rabasa, p. 44.

15. Ibid., p. 40.

16. J. F. Rischard, High Noon, New York,2002, p. 29.

17. Friedman, p. 325.

18. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Doctrine for Targeting,” JP 3-60, p. vi, available 

from www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp3_60.pdf, Internet, accessed February 9, 

2005.

19. Ibid, p. C-2.
2

20. C. J. M. Drake, Terrorists’ Target Selection, New York, 1998, pp. 175-182.

21. Norman Wade, The Operations Smartbook-FM 3.0 Operations, Florida, 2002, 

p. 1-50 to 1-51.

22. Rischard, p. 20.

23. JP 3-60, p. C-3.

24. Bruce Berkowitz, The New Face of War, New York, 2003, p. 10.

25. Ibid., p. 11.

26. Walter Laqueur, ed., “Voices of Terror” Manifestos, Writings, and Manuals 

of Al Qaeda, Hamas, and other Terrorists from Around the World and Throughout the 

Ages, New York, 2004, pp. 405-406. The stated second source of information for 

providing the other 20 percent of the needed information on a target is classic 

human intelligence (HUMINT) collection or espionage.

27. Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain 

World, New York, 2003, pp. 88-89.

28. Bush, “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” p. 1.

29. Zalmay M. Khalilzad and John P. White, eds., The Changing Role of Information 

in Warfare, Santa Monica, CA, 1999, pp. 253-281.

30. JP 3-60, p. III-4.

31. George W. Bush, “National Security Strategy of the United States of 

America,” p. 21.

32. Friedman, p. 322.

33. Peter G. Tsouras, ed., The Greenhill Dictionary of Military Quotations, London, 

2000, p. 137.

34. George W. Bush, “The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace of the United 

States of America,” Washington, DC: The White House, February 2008, p. xviii.

35. Peter G. Tsouras, Warriors’ Words: A Quotation Book, London, 1992, p. 222.
CHAPTER 12

A Strag

Enh

Colonel James D. Shumway

Army forces will be organized into modular, capabilities-based unit 

designs to enable rapid force packaging and deployment and sustained 

land combat. . . . key to a Campaign Quality Army with Joint and 

Expeditionary Capabilities.1

General Peter Schoomaker

Chief of Staff, Army (CSA)

Moving beyond the previous division-based structure, General 

Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff, envisions a modular, 

brigade-based force that supports the National Military Strategy, 

emerging joint concepts, and Army strategic planning documents. 

After announcing his “Focus Areas” in August 2003, General 

Schoomaker tasked the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command 

(TRADOC) to develop modular unit designs and operational 

concepts.2 Subsequently, TRADOC’s “Task Force Modularity” 

developed headquarters, combat, and support organizations to 

replace or augment current unit designs.

Modular organizations will be rapidly deployable, agile, 

tailorable, scalable, versatile, and more self-contained than previous 

units.3 Units of Employment-X (UEx) will be the primary modular war 

fighting headquarters, providing many functions which divisions or 

corps currently perform. Units of Employment-Y (UEy) will serve 

as army service component headquarters.4 New designs for infantry 

(light) and heavy (armored/mechanized) brigade combat teams will 

complement the medium Stryker brigade combat team (SBCT). To 

conduct extended land operations, these headquarters and combat 

elements require additional support.

In the past, division or corps level organizations provided this 

support through habitually task-organized units and other mission 

tailored elements. Modular support brigades will provide functional 
and reinforcing capabilities to brigade combat teams, other support 

brigades, UEx, UEy, and various joint force elements. The five new 

support brigade types are: aviation, fires, sustainment, maneuver 

enhancement, and battlefield surveillance. Functional theater level 

brigades will augment or reinforce support brigades with additional 

engineer, military police, intelligence, signal, or other capabilities 

packages. 

The maneuver enhancement brigade will enhance the full 

dimensional protection and freedom of maneuver of supported 

army, joint, and multinational forces. It will not replace theater 

functional headquarters, like engineer or military police brigades, 

but will provide an intermediate multifunctional capability. The 

unit’s design addresses recent developments and modifications in 

operating environment, battlespace configuration, joint concepts, and 

transformation, while it continues to support enduring requirements. 

This chapter will analyze emerging mission sets for this unit design 

and recommend further refinements. The Army must continue to 

adapt and innovate to maintain an edge over potential adversaries 

and meet the challenges of the current operating environment.

Asymmetric Threats, Nonlinear Battlespace, 

and Emerging Missions.

Our position as the world’s leading military power only reinforces the 

imperative for adaptation, innovation, and learning. Emerging powers 

study our successes, efficiently copy our strengths, and tailor their 

capabilities to attack our perceived vulnerabilities. Others develop 

asymmetric strategies and threats that avoid or circumvent our current 

capabilities altogether.5

Brigadier General David Fastabend

On the modern battlefield, fewer adversaries will attack U.S. 

strengths and risk defeat. Wise opponents will follow Sun Tzu’s 

advice to “avoid strength and strike weakness.”6 They will employ 

asymmetric weapons, tactics, and procedures against the perceived 

vulnerabilities of U.S. forces.7 Those forces must still guard themselves 

against conventional threats, as well as improvised explosive devices, 
hostile information operations, opponents who ignore the laws of 

war, and weapons of mass effects and terror. In this environment, 

the enemy is hard to identify and difficult to protect against.

While linearity characterized the great European wars of the 

20th century, the future battlefield will be less well-defined and 

more unpredictable. During the Cold War, the U.S. military divided 

battlespace between enemy and friendly, with distinct forward 

lines and rear areas. Designating contiguous areas of operation 

reduced risk and eliminated vulnerable unassigned areas between 

units.8 Conversely, recent actions, such as the 507th Maintenance 

Company’s unfortunate engagement near An Nasiriyah in March 

2003, blur distinctions between “rear” and “forward” areas. Close 

combat may occur anywhere. The trend continues toward greater 

nonlinearity, highly mobile warfare, and insurgent tactics. The 

current lexicon refers to nonlinear operations as distributed.9 In 

distributed operations, with no adjacent forces, units must provide 

all-around security including their flanks and rear.

Along with changes in threat and battlespace geometry, vagaries 

in operational phasing call for unprecedented unit flexibility. As 

the Center for Army Lessons Learned recently noted, operations 

in Afghanistan and Iraq display the “importance of rapid, fluid 

transitions from major combat operations to stability operations and 

back again.”10 In such a complex environment, special operations, 

civil affairs, psychological operations, and conventional forces must 

work closely together. U.S. military forces must closely cooperate 

with coalition allies, government agencies, host nation authorities, 

and other security forces. Yet in failed or liberated totalitarian states, 

government institutions may crumble as easily as the decrepit 

physical infrastructure.

Modern “come as you are” military operations require units to 

be flexible, multifunctional, and capable of supporting stability and 

reconstruction operations with little notice or preparation. Many air 

defense, field artillery, and other units learned this lesson in Iraq.11

Winston Churchill once cautioned, “Those who can win a war well 

can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good 

peace would never have won the war.”12 Yet this is precisely the 

agility across the range of military operations which this environment 
demands of all types of units. There is little or no demarcation in 

time and space between major combat operations and “Phase IV” 

transition, stabilization, and reconstruction operations.

While not seeking to fight the last war again, this chapter draws 

heavily from lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan. To paraphrase 

Carl von Clausewitz on the proper application of historical examples, 

however contemporary they may be, one must guard against the use 

of unrelated historical references and separate the enduring from the 

irrelevant.13 Important missions emerged during Operations IRAQI 

FREEDOM and ENDURING FREEDOM that were on few standing 

organizations’ mission essential task lists such as: exploiting sensitive 

sites, handling detainees, and protecting critical infrastructure from 

war damage, looting, or sabotage. Acting on a resultant Defense 

Science Board recommendation, the Secretary of Defense tasked the 

Army to develop modular units more able to support stabilization 

and reconstruction missions.14 Maneuver enhancement brigades 

may provide a partial solution. Emerging concepts, both new ones 

and others deeply rooted in history, will frame development of these 

new units.

Application of Joint and Army Concepts 

to Develop Unit Capabilities.

Even before Sun Tzu and others wrote about warfare, commanders 

wrestled with the impact of enemy, terrain, weather, and other 

influences on military operations. Then as now, leaders sought to 

maximize their ability to gain intelligence, protect and sustain their 

armies, maneuver forces to apply overwhelming combat power, and 

exercise command and control. In 413 BC, the Syracusans defeated 

the powerful Athenians in Sicily in what Thucydides called, “. . . the 

greatest reverse that ever befell a Hellenic army.”15 With their mighty 

navy defeated, 40,000 Athenians attempted to break out toward their 

allies. The Syracusans cut the Athenians to pieces with “missiles” 

and nonlinear engagements, while they crossed rivers and moved 

through mountain passes. The Athenians could not maneuver to 

apply dominant force or even protect and sustain themselves. Over 

2,300 years later in Egypt, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, a master 
of maneuver, attacked the British El Alamein line. Over half of his 

forces either guarded or operated supply lines, which extended over 

1,400 miles back to Tripoli.16 Even today, commanders struggle to 

maneuver, protect, and sustain forces. The armed services must 

develop, man, train, and equip forces capable of these essential 

functions.

Under the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development 

System, the joint operations concepts provide a framework to 

develop specific capabilities and “an overarching description of how 

the future Joint Force will operate across the entire range of military 

operations.”17 The joint operating concepts span major combat 

operations, stability operations, homeland security, and strategic 

deterrence.18 The joint functional concepts address command and 

control, battlespace awareness, focused logistics, and protection.19

Maneuver enhancement brigades could perform missions spanning 

all four joint operating concepts and will provide capabilities across 

all five functional concepts. These brigades most significantly enhance 

joint capabilities under the force application, focused logistics, and 

protection functional concepts.

Force application represents “the integrated use of maneuver and 

engagement to create effects necessary to achieve assigned mission 

objectives.”20 Focused logistics seeks to improve transportation 

networks and logistics systems, which are vulnerable to enemy 

attack or disruption.21 The protection functional concept “describes 

how the Joint Force integrates key capabilities to protect personnel, 

information, and physical assets of the United States, deployed 

forces, allies, and friends.”22 The maneuver enhancement brigade 

concept focuses on support to force maneuver and protection, which 

clearly aligns with these joint concepts.

Protection preserves the force’s potential to fight at the decisive 

time and place. Figure 1 displays key protection activities and 

mission capability areas.23 Under the protection functional concept, 

the maneuver enhancement brigade must provide persistent threat 

detection; timely warning dissemination; and layered, active or 

passive, lethal and nonlethal countermeasures.24
Figure 1. Full Dimensional Protection.

Based on joint and Army doctrine, Figure 1 also outlines potential 

maneuver enhancement brigade response measures to ground 

based threat levels I-III.25 All units provide self-defense for bases 

and base clusters. A maneuver enhancement brigade might employ 

a combined arms tactical combat force against higher level threats. 

In accordance with draft Joint Publication 3-10, joint security 

coordinators “facilitate protection of joint bases that support force 

projection, movement control, sustainment, command and control, 

airbases/airfields, seaports, detention facilities, and other activities 

that support the joint force.”26 In this role, the maneuver enhancement 

brigade could oversee area damage control and consequence 

management actions to respond, assist, and restore facilities after an 

attack.

Further defining required unit capabilities are the joint enabling 

concepts for information operations; interagency coordination; 

multinational operations; theater air and missile defense; and 

chemical, biological, radiation, and nuclear defense.27 To meet the 
National Military Strategy’s “Desired Attributes of the Force,” the 

new brigades must be networked, expeditionary, decentralized, 

adaptable, effective, persistent, capable of information/decision 

superiority, and fully integrated with joint, interagency, and 

multinational partners.28

As part of Task Force Modularity, Professor John Bonin of 

the U.S. Army War College, Mr. Clint Ancker of the U.S. Army 

Combined Arms Center, and representatives of various other 

organizations developed the initial protection support unit of action 

(later the maneuver enhancement brigade) concept.29 In August 

2004, TRADOC, through the U.S. Army Maneuver Support Center, 

assigned the U.S. Army Maneuver Support Battle Lab to “develop 

and experiment” with the maneuver enhancement brigade concept.30

The Maneuver Support Center established a general officer working 

group to refine the mission statement, employment concepts, and 

organizational design.31 This group included Maneuver Support 

Battle Lab, military police, air defense, chemical, and engineer school 

representatives and a retired major general “graybeard” advisor. 

Headquarters, Department of the Army, TRADOC, various major 

commands, and other Army agencies conducted a modular support 

force analysis from August to December 2004 to determine unit 

requirements and resourcing for modular support forces, including 

maneuver enhancement brigades.32

The maneuver enhancement brigade concept is shaping and 

being shaped by various ongoing Army concepts and force structure 

initiatives. Some of these predate Task Force Modularity’s inception in 

August 2003. The U.S. Army Engineer School’s assured mobility and 

future engineer force concepts fit well with modular force structure 

development.33 Assured mobility is “a framework of processes, 

actions, and enabling capabilities intended to guarantee the force 

commander the ability to maneuver . . . to achieve his intent.”34

Future engineer force uses a joint capabilities framework to develop 

embedded engineer baseline forces, specialized mission modules, 

and engineer command and control elements.35 The U.S. Army Air 

Defense Artillery School recently updated its air and missile defense 

forces operational and organizational plan and continues to work 

towards an improved joint theater air and missile defense concept.36
Over the past 2 years, the military police school conducted a bottomup force structure review and created more modular internment 

and resettlement units.37 Under Maneuver Support Center direction, 

the military police, chemical, and engineer schools are reshaping 

doctrine to accommodate the modular force structure.

Maneuver Enhancement Brigade Missions and Organization.

Derived from various sources, Figure 2 displays the maneuver 

enhancement brigade’s organization, mission statement, and 

proposed mission sets.38 The brigade supports maneuver and 

mobility, protects forces and critical infrastructure, and mitigates 

effects of hostile action. During major combat operations, the unit 

could serve as a river crossing headquarters, protect the Unit of 

Employment-X (UEx) security area, and reinforce brigade combat 

team functional capabilities. This unit also might oversee stability 

and reconstruction operations, sensitive site exploitation, or 

serve as joint security coordinator for a small joint security area. 

The Maneuver Support Battle Lab and its established Maneuver 

Enhancement Brigade Working Group recognize two major mission 

types.39 In functional missions, the brigade supports other units with 

specific engineer, air/missile defense, military police, chemical, and 

other capabilities. For protection missions, the brigade headquarters 

manages terrain, provides area security, controls forces, and protects 

critical infrastructure, lines of communication, and security areas. 

These mission sets overlap significantly and some distinctions drawn 

between them may seem artificial or contradictory.

The maneuver enhancement brigade provides a flexible, 

multifunctional command and control structure. The only organic 

elements are the headquarters and headquarters company, a network 

support (signal) company, and a brigade support battalion.40 The 

staff includes air and missile defense, engineer, military police, and 

chemical/explosive ordnance disposal planning cells along with 

a small fire support element. If required for air/missile defense 

missions, it may receive a modular technical fire control section.41

The brigade staff must establish communications and maintain 

digital connectivity through Army battle command systems such 

as the air and missile defense warning system. Close coordination
Figure 2. Maneuver Enhancement Brigade Missions and Organization.

with Unit of Employment-X (UEx) staff counterparts is essential. In 

some capacities formerly provided by divisional or corps units, the 

maneuver enhancement brigade staff may supplement the UEx staff. 

Linkage to theater capabilities and reach-back systems will augment 

the limited staffing and partially offset technical shortcomings. 

The maneuver enhancement brigade must rely on the battlefield 

surveillance brigade for intelligence support, the fires brigade for 

indirect and joint fires, and other support brigades for sustainment 

and aviation support. Connectivity is critical. 

Based on the mission, a higher headquarters could assign, attach, 

or place under maneuver enhancement brigade operational control 

a variety of unit types.42 Engineer forces might include combat 

engineering, construction, bridging, route/area clearance, route 

maintenance, and geospatial modules. Military police units could 

provide combat support, internment/resettlement, law and order, 

military working dog, and criminal investigation support. Chemical 
2

capabilities may include reconnaissance, decontamination, biological 

detection, smoke, and technical escort. The mission might requireshort range air/missile defense, explosive ordnance disposal, or civil 

affairs units. The maneuver enhancement brigade can command 

and control tactical combat force maneuver units against Level I-III 

threats.43

Replacing Ad Hoc Headquarters with a Maneuver 

Enhancement Brigade.

Currently, ad hoc headquarters provide command and control for 

missions where no standing headquarters exists, such as area security 

or river crossings.44 Emerging missions call for even more flexible, 

adaptive headquarters to alleviate these ad hoc requirements.

During Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, military police, 

chemical, engineer, civil affairs, and various support units experienced 

command and control challenges. Small, highly specialized elements, 

like biological defense platoons, arrived without their normal higher 

headquarters. “Unanticipated missions” like detainee operations and 

sensitive site exploitation compounded by “force caps and mobility 

constraints” prevented U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) 

from bringing in “doctrinally self-sufficient” organizations.45 The 

CENTCOM staff (e.g., provost marshal and chemical officer) assumed 

“command functions normally reserved for theater level specialized 

commands” for some small units.46 A C3 staff officer commanded 

a task force providing life support and force protection at Bagram 

Air Base.47 In a small theater, like Afghanistan, a properly tailored 

maneuver enhancement brigade could serve as an operational 

protection and maneuver support headquarters to oversee such 

“orphaned” units.

During Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, the 3rd Infantry Division’s 

engineer brigade functioned in some ways like an ad hoc maneuver 

enhancement brigade headquarters. The engineer brigade, 

augmented by an engineer group headquarters, commanded four 

combat engineer battalions, a construction battalion, four bridge 

companies, a terrain detachment, and an explosive ordnance disposal 

company.48 At times, they also controlled an air defense battalion and 
a mechanized task force. This headquarters planned and executed 

four division passages of lines and several river crossing operations 

and also provided traffic control due to a shortfall in military police.49

At Baghdad Airport, the brigade conducted terrain management, 

life support, and force protection.50 With little guidance or notice, 

the unit assisted in initial assessments and efforts to restore power, 

water, and sewage to parts of Baghdad.51 Problems included staff 

personnel shortfalls, insufficient logistics support, and inadequate 

communications. In a similar situation, a maneuver enhancement 

brigade headquarters would have more robust logistics and 

communications, but would lack the engineer brigade’s functional 

planning expertise.

Moreover, during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, the Army created 

an ad hoc headquarters to deal with sensitive site exploitation. 

Sensitive sites possess “special diplomatic, informational, 

military, or economic [DIME] sensitivity.”52 They impact national 

elements of power and usually require interagency coordination 

and augmentation. In May 2003 the Pentagon tracked roughly 

1,000 sensitive sites in Iraq, including 600 suspected weapons of 

mass destruction (WMD) sites.53 The 75th Field Artillery Brigade 

(Exploitation Task Force) employed specialized teams to examine 

sensitive sites.54 Mobile exploitation teams performed detailed site 

analysis, while site survey teams provided direct support to Marine 

and Army divisions. The 75th Exploitation Task Force included the 

52nd Explosive Ordnance Disposal Detachment, 87th Chemical 

Battalion, intelligence assets, and aviation elements. In July 2003, 

the Iraq Survey Group took over, with 600 experts from the Defense 

Threat Reduction Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other 

agencies.55 The importance of chemical, military police, explosive 

ordnance disposal, and related capabilities suggests this could be an 

appropriate mission for maneuver enhancement brigades.

River crossing operations also employ a designated ad hoc 

headquarters. Projecting combat power across large water obstacles 

represents a complex combined arms operation, requiring careful 

planning, effective command and control, and specialized support. 

Under current doctrine, a division level river crossing with multiple 

crossing areas requires crossing-force and crossing-area commanders 

along with crossing-force and area engineers.56 The crossing area 
engineer controls the crossing sites and means (assault boats and 

rafting/bridging equipment), maintains routes, and oversees 

mobility related capabilities.57 The crossing area headquarters 

oversees maneuver support units and provides traffic control, air/

missile defense, concealment (smoke), and crossing area security.58

The mix of engineer, military police, chemical, and air/missile 

defense elements suggests a maneuver enhancement brigade would 

be an appropriate multifunctional headquarters. Combining both 

crossing-force commander and crossing-force engineer functions 

under a maneuver enhancement brigade may entail some risk, 

depending on enemy capabilities and the magnitude of the crossing. 

The crossing is crucial to the tactical plan; it is not just a technical event. 

The Unit of Employment-X (UEx) or division-level headquarters 

must plan and orchestrate brigade combat team maneuver to seize 

near-shore objectives, assault across the river, secure the bridgehead, 

and continue the attack.59 The UEx must synchronize fires, 

intelligence, maneuver, and sustainment. On the other hand, the 

maneuver enhancement brigade can assume a greater role than the 

old crossing-force engineer headquarters for terrain management, 

battlefield circulation, and crossing area protection. If the crossing 

is particularly large or complex, an engineer brigade headquarters 

could assist or assume the mission.

Functional Support to Army Forces.

Maneuver enhancement brigades typically will provide functional 

support to brigade combat teams or other support brigades under 

the same Unit of Employment-X (UEx). For example, heavy brigade 

combat teams require maneuver and protection capabilities such 

as assault bridging or short-range air defense. To support complex 

or extended missions, the maneuver enhancement brigade would 

require theater level assets to augment capabilities. For these missions, 

a functional brigade might provide a more suitable command 

and control headquarters. Assessing the maneuver enhancement 

brigade’s value or liability as an intermediate headquarters must 

consider the complexity of the mission, staff capabilities, the number 

of functional elements (e.g., military police or engineer battalions) 

involved, and other factors.
Maintaining limited and congested ground lines of 

communication across forbidding terrain also presents major 

challenges. The maneuver enhancement brigade might control one 

or more engineer mission forces (battalion headquarters) with a 

variety of engineer mission teams and engineer effects modules.60

These modules could provide tailored combat engineer, horizontal/

vertical construction, mobility augmentation, bridging, and route/

area clearance capabilities.61 Typical supporting tasks might include 

mine and debris clearance, route and bridge reconnaissance, bypass 

construction, and gap crossing.62 When available, military police 

would conduct traffic management and control to include marking 

and signing. 

A maneuver enhancement brigade also possesses some capability 

to conduct initial triage and minor repairs to critical infrastructure. 

However, utility restoration, port repairs, and permanent 

reconstruction missions require immense effort and specialized skills. 

As soon as possible, the maneuver enhancement brigade should 

handoff this mission to an engineer brigade, higher headquarters, 

civil authorities, or other government agencies.63 Engineer brigades 

can coordinate for specialized engineer mission modules, facilities 

engineer detachments, prime power specialists, or other U.S. Army 

Corps of Engineers Field Force Engineering assets. They can reach 

back virtually to Corps of Engineers centers and laboratories using 

“tele-engineering” capabilities.

Acting as a rear area headquarters, a maneuver enhancement 

brigade might oversee area damage control or consequence 

management. Area damage control includes “measures taken before, 

during, or after hostile action or natural or manmade disasters to reduce 

the probability of damage and minimize its effects.”64 Appropriate 

response might require engineer, military police, explosive ordnance 

disposal, chemical reconnaissance, decontamination, civil affairs, 

medical, and logistics elements. A properly task organized maneuver 

enhancement brigade could coordinate and execute area damage 

control over a limited geographic area.

Consequence management entails “measures taken to protect 

health and safety, restore essential government services, and provide 

emergency relief to governments, businesses, and individuals 

affected by the consequences of a chemical, biological, nuclear, and/
or high yield explosive situation.”65 The consequence management 

mission could be domestic, in support of the federal government, 

state, or local authorities, or deployed in theater working with 

host nation authorities with widely varied local capabilities. The 

maneuver enhancement brigade might perform initial consequence 

management actions, before turning the mission over to functional 

theater assets or civilian agencies.

Internment and resettlement operations encompass managing 

detainees, enemy prisoners of war, and civilian refugees. Prior to 

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, the Army planned for 16,000 – 57,000 

enemy prisoners of war and many civilian refugees.66 However, the 

corps military police brigade, two battalions, and eight companies 

deployed late. This left divisional military police companies with an 

impossible mission load, as they attempted to conduct internment 

and resettlement missions, along with high-value asset and area 

security, law enforcement, and main supply route regulation.67 Other 

troops hastily assumed security missions to free military police units 

to handle prisoners of war, detainees, and others. 

In a similar situation, the modular brigade combat team military 

police platoon would conduct initial internment and resettlement 

operations until turnover to military police elements of the maneuver 

enhancement brigade. If appropriately task organized, a maneuver 

enhancement brigade could conduct internment and resettlement 

operations of limited duration and volume until handing off to a 

specialized theater level military police brigade or command.

Protection Missions in the Unit of Employment-X 

Area of Responsibility.

The protection mission set requires the maneuver enhancement 

brigade to exercise command and control over bases and base clusters, 

manage terrain, provide point and area security, and maneuver a 

tactical combat force. There is significant tension between this and 

the functional mission set. As the October 2004 TRADOC emerging 

insights report stated, the maneuver enhancement brigade “currently 

is tasked with two major missions which are each best executed at 

the exclusion of the other.”68 Adapted from various sources, Figure 3 

depicts potential maneuver enhancement brigade geographic areas 

of operations and protection missions.69
Figure 3. Potential ME Brigade Missions and Locations.

As previously mentioned, true “rear areas” may not exist in the 

Unit of Employment-X (UEx) area of operations. Unit boundaries 

are not always contiguous and the maneuver enhancement 

brigade cannot be ubiquitous. Depending on the relative sizes of 

UEx and brigade combat team areas of operations, assigning all 

the unassigned area to the maneuver enhancement brigade could 

stretch limited capabilities and increase risk to an unacceptable 

level.70 Area size, threat situation, tactical combat force composition, 

and functional mission load will constrain maneuver enhancement 

brigade effectiveness. Commanders must assess and mitigate risk. If 

maneuver enhancement brigade elements are unavailable, the UEx 

may divert other forces to provide security. Other units must defend 

themselves, their bases, and surrounding terrain.

The 1st Marine Division Operation IRAQI FREEDOM after action 

report identified a significant military police shortfall to provide 

security and traffic control on the three main supply routes.71 On 

short notice and without prior coordination, the Marines were called 
on to rescue Army bulk fuel tankers near An Nasiriyah. A similar 

3rd Infantry Division after action report noted that, “security of 

lines of communication that extend over 600 kilometers requires 

every soldier to be a rifleman.”72 In the march to Baghdad, V Corps 

committed significant combat elements from the 101st and 82nd 

Airborne Divisions and 2nd Cavalry Regiment to secure lines of 

communication and bases.

To address this issue, the military police school is developing 

a mobility corridor operational and organizational plan which 

describes “a layered and integrated security approach to lines 

of communication security.”73 This concept would focus limited 

security, route clearance/maintenance, and sustainment assets on 

active mobility corridors. Commanders could “pulse” resources to 

“turn-on” an inactive mobility corridor.

In this mission set, effectiveness depends upon route length, 

number of critical infrastructure sites, threat, functional mission 

load, and available military police, tactical combat force, or other 

protection assets. During initial post-hostilities operations in Iraq, the 

available troops could not secure all critical civilian infrastructure, so 

commanders gave priority to militarily significant or sensitive sites. 

Even so, vandals looted many sites before they could be secured. 

Planners must identify and prioritize critical infrastructure security 

requirements. The maneuver enhancement brigade is only part of 

the solution. Every unit must be involved.

The Maneuver Enhancement Brigade General Officer Working 

Group and Maneuver Support Battle Lab categorize air and missile 

defense as part of the “Functional Mission Set” of the Maneuver 

Enhancement Brigade.74 It also fits into the protection mission set. 

The TRADOC operational assessment of October 2004 limited 

maneuver enhancement brigade authority to positioning shortrange air defense systems like the Avenger and the Surface-Launched 

Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile.75 The theater Army 

Air and Missile Defense Command will normally position medium 

and high altitude systems like Patriot. As Brigadier General 

Francis G. Mahon of the Air Defense School suggests, a maneuver 

enhancement brigade does not possess the “system expertise and 

ability to integrate with joint and combined headquarters” (such as 

the Joint Force Air Component Command).76 The brigade’s limited 
air/missile defense staff would find itself challenged to assess the 

threat, site, initialize, and coordinate Patriot systems. Considering 

past problems with Patriot fratricide, it seems prudent to keep 

those systems well-coordinated and linked with the Joint Force Air 

Component Commander.

The mission to detect and mitigate chemical/biological/

radiological/nuclear hazards also straddles the protection and 

functional categories. The maneuver enhancement brigade’s 

capabilities depend upon task-organized chemical assets. The 

brigade chemical section and UEX chemical section must maintain 

communications linkages via digital Army Battle Command Systems 

and the Joint Warning and Reporting System. The maneuver 

enhancement brigade must integrate appropriate capabilities for 

threat warning, planning, active/passive defense, engineering, host 

nation support, and consequence management.77

Combat engineer route and area clearance units and explosive 

ordnance disposal teams often work together to detect and neutralize 

explosive hazards. During recent operations, units established 

mine action centers or mine/explosive hazard centers to maintain 

databases and coordinate actions to deal with mines, unexploded 

ordnance, and other explosive hazards. With the increased threat of 

improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the Army’s IED Task Force and 

Countermine/Counter Booby Trap Center at Fort Leonard Wood 

provide resources and reach back assistance capability.78 The IED 

Task Force provides tactics, techniques, and procedures; intelligence; 

new equipment training and integration; and other support. During 

transition and post-hostility operations, units often clear unexploded 

ordnance and destroy enemy ammunition and weapons caches. Based 

on experience in Iraq, the 3rd Infantry Division recommended at least 

one explosive ordnance disposal company for a division (or UEx) 

zone during major combat operations and two companies during 

stability operations.79 Maneuver enhancement brigades should 

establish a mine/explosive hazard center or similar organization to 

coordinate activities and integrate explosive ordnance disposal and 

engineer efforts.

Special Text (ST) 3-90.15 outlines Tactics, Techniques, and 

Procedures for Sensitive Site Exploitation.80 A task organized 

maneuver enhancement brigade could conduct this mission on a 
limited scale, with appropriate military police, chemical, engineer, 

and other assets. Mobile exploitation teams and site survey teams 

may include 20-40 soldiers with nuclear, biological, and chemical 

reconnaissance, explosive ordnance disposal, criminal investigation, 

human intelligence, and security specialties, as well as technical 

experts from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.81 The brigade 

should form a combined joint military operations center to plan, 

target, conduct intelligence fusion, and coordinate site exploitation 

missions closely with the UEx G-2, effects coordination cell, and 

other intelligence or targeting elements.82 Ultimately the brigade 

would likely turn over the mission to a civilian agency, such as the 

CIA’s Iraq Survey Group or a United Nations/International Atomic 

Energy Agency inspection team.

With civil affairs augmentation, a maneuver enhancement 

brigade’s engineers, military police, security, and other elements 

would conduct civil military operations.83 V Corps established 

these civil-military objectives for Operation IRAQI FREEDOM: (1) 

create a secure environment (establish civil order, eliminate arms 

caches/paramilitary threats, and train security personnel); (2) 

facilitate establishment of local governments (to include leadership, 

infrastructure, bureaucracy, and schools); (3) support economic 

development (identify local and regional economic centers of gravity; 

restore utilities, healthcare, food distribution, and public services; 

and develop commerce and financial institutions).84 Maneuver 

enhancement brigade elements could play an important role in 

achieving some of these objectives. 

A maneuver enhancement brigade might serve as a joint security 

coordinator to oversee security, communications, intelligence, terrain 

management, limited sustainment, infrastructure development, and 

host-nation support for a small joint security area.85 The brigade can 

support other services, special operations forces, and theater forces. 

A maneuver enhancement brigade could support multinational 

forces, if augmented by more robust sustainment assets and a liaison 

team with linguists and foreign area expertise.

The Army provides a wide array of support to other services, 

especially the Marine Corps and Air Force, based on interservice 

agreements and executive agency determinations. This includes 
port operations, engineering, theater missile defense, and enemy 

prisoner of war or detainee processing.86 During Operation IRAQI 

FREEDOM, the Army attached over 2,700 soldiers to the First Marine 

Expeditionary Force. Attached units included five Patriot batteries, 

two engineer battalions, three bridge companies, a military police 

battalion, a chemical battalion, and smaller units.87 The maneuver 

enhancement brigade provides a potential headquarters for units 

supporting other services. The brigade might support a U.S. Air 

Force Aerospace Expeditionary Force with area security, base air/

missile defense, detainee operations, and engineer capabilities.

Despite improvements noted during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM 

and Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, special operations forces 

and conventional forces must better integrate planning, employment, 

battlespace coordination, force tracking, logistics, communication, 

and targeting and fires.88 During Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, 

Army forces secured special operations bases and provided explosive 

ordnance disposal support.89 In Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, 

conventional forces and special operations forces conducted 

integrated operations in both western and northern Iraq.90 Special 

operations forces rely heavily on the Army for base operations, 

force protection, and common services.91 A maneuver enhancement 

brigade might support a special operations group or joint special 

operations task force with area/base security, air/missile defense, 

detainee processing, construction, or other capabilities. Special 

operations units may work with a maneuver enhancement brigade 

during sensitive site exploitation or post-hostilities reconstruction 

and stability operations. 

During Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, the 32nd Army Air and 

Missile Defense Command, the 416th Engineer Command, the 52nd 

Ordnance Group, the 352nd Civil Affairs Command, and other units 

provided theater level protection and related support.92 Maneuver 

enhancement brigades will not replace specialized theater level 

engineer, military police, chemical, civil affairs, or air/missile 

defense brigades, particularly in a large theater. In a smaller theater, 

like Afghanistan, a maneuver enhancement brigade could oversee 

specialized battalion or separate company level organizations to 

perform duties including joint security area coordination, air/missile 

defense, and small scale detainee operations. Maneuver enhancement 
2

brigades must interface with functional theater level headquarters 

for additional resources, unit capabilities, and reach-back technical 

assistance. 

Maneuver Enhancement Brigade Issues and Recommendations.

The Army’s modular support force analysis referenced earlier in 

the chapter established a requirement for 16 maneuver enhancement 

brigades (11 to support major combat operations, one for homeland 

defense, two in strategic reserve, and two for forward presence).93

Clearly, there will not be a maneuver enhancement brigade for every 

UEX, not to mention joint force, special operations, other service, 

and multinational requirements. In November 2004, the modular 

support force analysis recommended resourcing only 12 maneuver 

enhancement brigades (three active, six Army National Guard, and 

three Army Reserve).94 In January 2005, the Army Vice Chief of Staff 

changed that to sixteen brigades (three active, ten National Guard, and 

three Army Reserve).95 Given the plethora of potential missions, only 

three active duty maneuver enhancement brigades would impose 

a considerable limitation and place a larger burden on the reserve 

components to support upcoming missions. On October 4, 2004, U.S. 

Army Forces Command approved the provisional redesignation of 

the 555th Engineer Group as a maneuver enhancement brigade.96

In addition, it appears that the Army will reorganize the 69th Air 

Defense Artillery and 8th Military Police Brigades as maneuver 

enhancement brigades.

A recurring theme in Army discussions is the challenge of 

properly developing a maneuver enhancement brigade commander 

and staff.97 Most maneuver enhancement brigade functional staff 

officers will be captains or majors. Leaders must encourage more 

senior UEX staff officers to provide guidance and mentorship to 

these junior officers. TRADOC has proposed filling developmental 

maneuver enhancement brigade positions with air defense, military 

police, chemical, or engineer officers. With similar multifunctional 

experience in infantry or heavy brigade combat teams, brigade 

special troops battalion commanders may develop into future 

maneuver enhancement brigade commanders.98 Regardless, there is 

a real challenge in developing, selecting, and assigning commanders 
and staff with the broad experience necessary to lead such complex 

organizations effectively. 

Unless the organization focuses on a more specific mission 

profile, brigade training and preparation will suffer. The wide 

range of potential missions requires commanders to set priorities 

and pare down the mission essential task list. The limited number 

of maneuver enhancement brigades will also create challenges in 

developing habitual relationships for training and staff planning 

and coordination. 

The following recommendations address continued concept 

development, experimentation, and training:

1. Continue the vigorous dialogue on maneuver enhancement 

brigade structure and employment between the Maneuver 

Support Battle Lab, TRADOC’s Futures Center, HQDA, 

the various schools, the analytical community, and others. 

Define realistic capabilities and limitations to better frame 

employment concepts.

2. Continue to gather observations and lessons from the 

provisional maneuver enhancement brigade, operational 

assessments, and exercises. Use them to refine employment 

concepts.

3. Train joint and Army planners to understand maneuver 

enhancement brigade limitations along with their wide 

ranging capabilities. In many operations, a functional brigade 

headquarters might be more suitable than a maneuver 

enhancement brigade.

4. Focus maneuver enhancement brigades on fewer specific 

missions during pre-deployment training and preparation. 

If the unit prepares for a hundred missions, it prepares 

for none. Develop a core mission essential task list for all 

maneuver enhancement brigades. Identify other tasks to train 

prior to deployment. Affiliate reserve component maneuver 

enhancement brigades with active UEX headquarters for 

training.

5. Refine the recommended career pattern to develop future 

maneuver enhancement brigade commanders and critical 

staff officers.
6. Develop maneuver enhancement brigade concepts into interim 

doctrine and rewrite related doctrine (e.g., river crossing) to 

reflect modular force units and headquarters.

7. Train maneuver enhancement brigades with joint, other 

services, and special operations forces at combat training 

centers and in-theater exercises to refine concepts and improve 

integration.

8. Continue to experiment with a variety of mission sets during 

simulations, command post exercises, and combat training 

center rotations. Assess staff capabilities to establish cells and 

centers required for special missions in addition to normal 

planning and coordination functions. Determine modular 

augmentation packages required for special missions. 

Maneuver enhancement brigades possess true potential to 

improve the ability to maneuver and protect the joint force in the 

contemporary operating environment. These multifunctional 

headquarters will control essential capabilities, formerly resident 

at the division or corps level, to support maneuver brigade combat 

teams, the UEX, and other support brigades. They may also support 

special operations forces, other services, joint headquarters, and 

multinational forces, and work with other government agencies. 

The complexity and vast array of potential missions, coupled with 

the limited number of active maneuver enhancement brigades and 

other challenges, will constrain their effectiveness. Leaders and 

staff planners must be aware of their limitations and use discretion 

in assigning missions to these units beyond their capabilities. For 

certain missions, the maneuver enhancement brigade may provide 

the ideal headquarters. In other cases, functional engineer, military 

police, chemical, or air/missile defense headquarters might 

represent better choices. A properly task organized maneuver 

enhancement brigade could oversee sensitive site exploitation, 

limited critical infrastructure protection and repair, or provide joint 

security coordination. With many pertinent capabilities, it forms 

a partial solution to the Secretary of Defense’s challenge to create 

modular units that support reconstruction and stability operations. 

This new organization will undoubtedly play a significant role in 
providing joint, expeditionary, and campaign capabilities to support 

the Army Campaign Plan, joint concepts, and the “National Military 

Strategy.”

ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 12

1. Peter J. Schoomaker, “Army Strategic Communications Talking Points,”

Washington DC, November 5 2004, p. 25, available from www.army.mil, Internet, 

accessed January 27, 2005.

2. Peter J. Schoomaker, “The United States Army 2004 Posture Statement,” 

Executive Summary, Washington, DC, February 19, 2004, p. 2, available from 

www.army.mil/aps/04/index.html, Internet, accessed January 27, 2005.

3. Peter J. Schoomaker, “Serving a Nation at War: A Campaign Quality Army 

with Joint and Expeditionary Capabilities,” Washington, DC, April 2004, pp. 10-

11.

4. Task Force Modularity, “Army Comprehensive Guide to Modularity,” 

Version 1.0, Fort Monroe, VA: Training and Doctrine Command, October 8, 2004, 

pp. 1-7 to 1-13.

5. David Fastabend and Robert Simpson, “The Imperative for a Culture of 

Innovation in the U.S. Army: Adapt or Die,” Army Magazine Online, February 2004, 

p. 1, available from www.ausa.org/www/armymag.nsf/0/EB5252A9404F977685256E2

20059F541, Internet, accessed December 31, 2004.

6. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Samuel B. Griffith, trans., New York, 1971, p. 101.

7. Department of the Army, “Operations, Field Manual 3-0,” Washington, DC, 

June 2001, pp. 4-31.

8. Ibid., pp. 4-20.

9. Task Force Modularity, pp. 2-8 to 2-9.

10. Center for Army Lessons Learned, “Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) 

Emerging Observations, Insights, and Lessons,” briefing to the 2003 Infantry 

Conference, Fort Leavenworth, KS, slide #5, available from call2.army.mil/oif/docs/

briefings/EmergingObs_files/frame.asp; Internet, accessed January 15, 2005.

11. Center for Army Lessons Learned, “Chapter 1, Continuous Offensive 

Operations Over Extended Distances,” 3rd Infantry Division After Action Review, 

Operation Iraqi Freedom, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2003, pp. 1, p. 6, available from 

call2.army.mil/fouo/documents/3IDAAR/ch1.asp, Internet, accessed January 15, 2005.

12. Eliot A. Cohen, “Churchill and Coalition Strategy in World War II,” in Grand 

Strategies in War and Peace, Paul Kennedy, ed., New Haven, CT, 1991, p. 67.

13. Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, trans. and 

eds., New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 1993, pp. 199-204.
14. John Bonin, “RE: SRP Draft,” electronic mail message to author, February 

17, 2005.

15. Thucydides, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the 

Peloponnesian War, Robert B. Strassler, trans. and ed., New York, 1996, p. 472.

16. Polygram Video International, “The Battle for North Africa: Prelude to 

Battle,” 57 min., distributed by Time Life Video, 1996, videocassette.

17. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Operations Concepts,” Washington, DC, 

November 2003, p. 4.

18. Ibid., pp. 17-19.

19. Ibid., p. 19.

20. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Force Application Functional Concept,” Washington, 

DC, February 2004, p. 4.

21. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Focused Logistics Joint Functional Concept, Version 

1.0,” Washington, DC, December 2003, p. ii.

22. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Protection Joint Functional Concept, Version 1.0,” 

Washington, DC, December 2003, p. 4.

23. Ibid., pp. 4-5, 8.

24. Ibid., p. 4.

25. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Doctrine for Rear Area Operations, Joint Pub 3-

10,” Washington, DC, November 2000, pp. I-5 to I-7.

26. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Security Operations in the Theater, Draft Joint 

Pub 3-10,” First Revision, Washington, DC, February 2005, p. I-6.

27. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Operations Concepts,” pp. 20-21; and Joint Chiefs 

of Staff, “Protection Joint Functional Concept,” p. 4.

28. Richard B. Myers, “National Military Strategy of the United States of 

America 2004,” Washington, DC, 2004, p. 14.

29. John Bonin, “SRP Topic—ME Brigade Employment,” electronic mail 

message to author, October 4, 2004.

30. Richard Hornack, “Maneuver Enhancement Brigade Information Brief,” 

briefing slides, Fort Leonard Wood, MO: U.S. Army Maneuver Support Battle Lab, 

November 7, 2004, slide #3.

31. Director of Force Management, FM, Army G-3/5/7, “MSFA Resourcing 

Council of Colonels,” briefing slides, Washington, DC, Headquarters, Department 

of the Army, November 16, 2004, slide #1.

32. Director of Force Management, FM, Army G-3/5/7, “TRADOC Issues for 

MSFA Requirements GOSC,” briefing slides, Washington, DC, Headquarters, 

Department of the Army, November 4, 2004, slide #1.

33. U.S. Army Engineer School, “The Future Engineer Force White Paper: 

Projecting the Capabilities of the Engineer Regiment to Meet the Needs of the 
Current and Future Force,” Fort Leonard Wood, MO: U.S. Army Maneuver 

Support Center, April 20, 2004, p. 3.

34. Ibid., p. 9.

35. Ibid., p. 16.

36. Joseph M. Cosumano, “Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going in Space 

and Integrated Missile Defense” ADA Magazine, p. 2, available from airdefense.bliss.

army.mil/adamag/ADA%20Yearbook%202003/SMDC.pdf, Internet, accessed January 

15, 2005.

37. Richard A. Cody, “Adequacy of the Total Force,“ Testimony before the 

U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on 

Total Force, Washington, DC: Department of the Army, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3, 

March 10, 2004, pp. 2-3.

38. Maneuver Support Battle Lab, “Maneuver Enhancement Brigade General 

Officer Working Group,” Memorandum for Record, Fort Leonard Wood, MO, 

September 9, 2004; and Task Force Modularity, pp. 5-20 to 5-22.

39. Hornack, “Maneuver Enhancement Brigade Information Brief,” slides # 4, 

5, 9, 10.

40. Ibid., slides# 9-10; and Maneuver Support Battle Lab MFR, p. 1.

41. Task Force Modularity, p. 5-21.

42. Hornack, “Maneuver Enhancement Brigade Information Brief,” slide# 6.

43. Task Force Modularity, p. 5-21.

44. Department of the Army, “River Crossing Operations, Field Manual 90-13,” 

Washington, DC, January 1998, p. 3-2.

45. John A. Bonin, “U.S. Army Forces Central Command in Afghanistan and 

the Arabian Gulf during Operation Enduring Freedom: September 11, 2001 to 

March 11, 2003,” Carlisle, PA, 2003, pp. 14, 21.

46. Ibid., p. 11.

47. Ibid., p. 8.

48. Center for Army Lessons Learned, 3rd Infantry Division After Action Review, 

Operation Iraqi Freedom, “Chapter 15, Engineer,” p. 1, 7, available from call2.army.

mil/fouo/documents/3IDAAR/CH15.asp, Internet, accessed January 15, 2005.

49. Ibid., p. 7, Topic C.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.

52. Pete Lofy, “Managing Sensitive Site Exploitation—Notes from Operation Iraqi 

Freedom,” Army Chemical Review, September 2003 [journal online], p. 2, available 

from www.wood.army.mil/chmdsd/Army_Chemical_Review/pdfs/2003%20Sep/Lofy.pdf, 

Internet, accessed January 11, 2005.
53. Kathleen Rhem, “Coalition Forces Have Iraqi Mobile Bioweapons Facility,”

Defense Link News, May 2003 [journal online], p. 1, available from www.defense.gov/

news/May2003/n0507.html, Internet, accessed January 15, 2005.

54. Lofy, p. 1.

55. Rhem, p. 1.

56. Department of the Army. “River Crossing Operations,” p. 3-2.

57. Ibid., pp. 3-4 to 3-7.

58. Ibid., pp. 3-3 to 3-7.

59. Ibid., pp. 3-2 and 3-10 to 3-12.

60. Bryan Watson, et. al., “The Future Engineer Force, Projecting the Capabilities 

of the Regiment,” Engineer, January–March 2004, p. 11.

61. Todd Semonite, “Army Modularity and the Future Engineer Force: Update 

for The Chief of Engineers,” briefing slides, Washington DC, Office of the Chief of 

Engineers, U.S. Army, September 23, 2004, slide #33.

62. U.S. Army Engineer School, “The Future Engineer Force White Paper,” p. 

25.

63. Todd Semonite, “Army Modularity and the Future Engineer Force: 

Update,” briefing slides, Washington DC, Office of the Chief of Engineers, U.S. 

Army, January 31, 2005, slide #14.

64. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Doctrine for Rear Area Operations,” pp. III-11 

to III-12.

65. Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Protection Joint Functional Concept,” p. 48.

66. Gregory Fontenot, E.J. Degen, and David Tohn; On Point: The United States 

Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2003, p. 69.

67. Ibid., p. 70.

68. Hornack, “Maneuver Enhancement Brigade Information Brief,” slide #13.

69. Ibid., slide #16.

70. Maneuver Support Battle Lab MFR, p. 1.

71. Center for Army Lessons Learned, “1st Marine Division Observations 

[OIF],” Fort Leavenworth, KS, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, 2003, pp. 1-2, 

available from call2.army.mil/oif/docs/observations/1MarDiv.asp, Internet, accessed 

January 15, 2005.

72. 3rd Infantry Division, “Operation Iraqi Freedom, OIF,” briefing to the 

2003 Infantry Conference, slide #15, available from call2.army.mil/oif/docs/briefings/

InfConf/3rdInf_files/frame.asp, Internet, accessed January 15, 2005.

73. U.S. Army Military Police Center and School, “Mobility Corridor Operational 

and Organizational (O&O) Plan, Version 1,” Fort Leonard Wood, MO, U.S. Army 

Maneuver Support Center, March 15, 2005, p. 1.
74. Hornack, “Maneuver Enhancement Brigade Information Brief,” slide #10.

75. Ibid., slide #13.

76. Brigadier General Francis G. Mahon, Deputy Commandant, Air Defense 

School, “Re: Maneuver Enhancement Brigade Air and Missile Defense Concepts,” 

electronic mail message to author, January 11, 2005.

77. Center for Army Lessons Learned, 3rd Infantry Division After Action Review, 

Operation Iraqi Freedom, “Chapter 23, NBC,“ pp. 1, 6-7, and 11-12, available from 

call2.army.mil/fouo/documents/3IDAAR/ch23.asp, Internet, accessed January 15, 

2005.

78. Louis Weber, “Statement on Training and Army Actions to Meet Emerging 

Threats,” presented to Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, 

and International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Armed 

Services, Washington, DC, Department of the Army, Army Director of Training, 

May 11, 2004, pp. 9-12.

79. Center for Army Lessons Learned, 3rd Infantry Division After Action Review, 

Operation Iraqi Freedom, “Chapter 15, Engineer“ p. 15, Topic D.

80. U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, “Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures 

for Tactical Operations Involving Sensitive Sites, Special Text 3-90.15,” Fort 

Leavenworth, KS, December 2002, p. 1.

81. Lofy, p. 3.

82. Vincent Price, Dale Owen, and Richard Gonzales, “75th FA Brigade: SOSO 

in OIF and BCT at the NTC,” FA Journal, March-June 2004, p. 3, available from 

www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IAU/is_2/9/ai_n6358290, Internet, accessed 

January 27, 2005.

83. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Doctrine for Joint Special Operations, Joint Pub 3-05,” 

Washington, DC, December 2003, pp. II-10 to II-11.

84. Center for Army Lessons Learned, “Targeting for Victory, Winning the Civil 

Military Operations Battle,” CALL Newsletter 03-23, pp. 1-10, available from call2.

army.mil/products/NEWSLTRS/03-23/ch-3.asp, Internet; accessed January 15, 2005.

85. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Doctrine for Rear Area Operations,” Joint Pub 

3-10, p. vii.

86. Fontenot, p. 63.

87. Ibid., p. 64.

88. Arvel Masters and Ralph Nichols, “Special Operations Forces (SOF)—

Conventional Forces Integration,” News from the Front!, Center for Army Lessons 

Learned, November-December 2003, p. 1, available from call2.army.mil/Products/

NFTF/novdec03/sof/sof.asp, Internet, accessed January 11, 2005.

89. William Carty, “Joint Training Must Reflect Combat Realities—Gaps 

Remain in the Integration of Special Operators and Conventional Forces,” National 
Defense, April 2004, p. 1, Available from nationaldefense.ndia.org/issues/2004/Apr/

Joint_Training.htm, Internet, accessed January 11, 2005.

90. Ibid., p. 2.

91. Mark Jones and Wes Rehorn, “Integrating SOF into Joint Warfighting,” 

Military Review, Vol. LXXXIII, No. 3, May–June 2003, p. 7.

92. Fontenot, p. 64.

93. Director of Force Management, FM, Army G-3/5/7, “Army Force Structure 

Operating Force Resourcing Council of Colonels,” briefing slides, Washington, 

DC, Headquarters, Department of the Army, November 15, 2004, slide #10.

94. Ibid., slide #11.

95. Semonite, “Army Modularity and the Future Engineer Force Update,” 

January 31, 2005, Slide #12.

96. U.S. Army Forces Command, “Request to Establish the 555th Maneuver 

Enhancement Brigade, Provisional,” Memorandum for Commander, I Corps and 

Fort Lewis, Fort McPherson, GA, October 4, 2004.

97. Maneuver Support Battle Lab MFR, p. 1.

98. Futures Center, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, “Command of 

Brigade Special Troops Battalion (BSTB) for Heavy and Infantry Brigade Combat 

Teams (BCT)” Memorandum for Director of Force Management, Deputy Chief of 

Staff, G-3, U.S. Army, Fort Monroe, VA, February 15 2005.
CHAPTER 13

STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS 

FOR DEMOCRATIC AFGHANISTAN

Lieutenant Colonel Dave Gerard

The Afghan people are showing extraordinary courage under difficult 

conditions. They’re fighting to defend their nation from Taliban holdouts 

and helping to strike against the terrorist killers. They’re reviving their 

economy. They’ve adopted a constitution that protects the rights of 

all, while honoring their nation’s most cherished traditions. More than 

10 million Afghan citizens—over 4 million of them women—are now 

registered to vote in next month’s presidential election. To any who still 

would question whether Muslim societies can be democratic societies, 

the Afghan people are giving their answer.1

President Bush,

September 21, 2004

Three Weeks Prior 

to Afghanistan’s Democratic Election

On October 9, 2004, over 10 million Afghan men and women 

seized the opportunity to change their nation’s future and voted 

in the country’s first democratic election.2 This landmark event 

represents not only a pivotal turning point for the country, but also 

will have a direct influence in the surrounding South Asia and the 

Middle East regions, as well as far-reaching global consequences 

for U.S. foreign policy and national strategy. The United States, the 

actions of which set the conditions for the election to take place, has 

much at stake in ensuring that its strategy ultimately is successful. 

Following the country’s first ever national democratic elections, one 

key question requires comprehensive analysis and response from 

American policymakers: What is the next step for U.S. Strategy in 

the new democratic Afghanistan? 

In the 3 1/2 years following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 

2001 (9/11), the United States has achieved a number of successes 

in its policy in this impoverished country to include removal 

of the Taliban, denial of sanctuary to al-Qa’ida and other terror 
2

organizations, establishment of a new constitution by the Loya Jirga 

(national grand council), and, most recently and significantly, free 

democratic national elections.3 While these bode well for peace and 

stability in Afghanistan and South Asia, there remain a number 

of underlying issues that, if left unresolved, could result in future 

difficulties for the new democracy, its neighbors, and the United 

States. The dramatic changes in the cultural and political landscape 

of the country that have occurred since October 2001 demand a 

review of current U.S. strategy. 

Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration 

unleashed a Global War on Terror (GWOT) with three specific 

strategic objectives in Afghanistan. These included the destruction 

of terrorist training facilities, the capture of al-Qa’ida’s leadership, 

including Osama bin Laden and his senior lieutenants, and the 

removal of the Taliban from power.4 Although bin Laden is not 

yet in custody, the United States has largely succeeded in meeting 

these objectives. However, new challenges have already emerged 

in the aftermath of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF). The 

purpose of this chapter is to answer the question posed above: What 

is the next step for U.S. strategy in a new, democratic Afghanistan? 

Answering this question requires an updated strategic appraisal of 

Afghanistan’s significance to the broader security strategy of the 

United States, particularly in light of the recent elections and the 

ongoing war on terror that includes combat operations in Iraq. From 

this assessment, challenges emerge that the U.S. Government must 

address if it is to accomplish its goals. This chapter will outline those 

challenges, as well as recommend national objectives for a future 

U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. 

The strategic appraisal process must begin with a review of the 

President’s “National Security Strategy” and the “Strategy for the 

Global War on Terror.” A review of the broader national objectives 

of the United States, contained in those two documents, coupled 

with an analysis of Afghanistan’s internal and external environment, 

should yield a clear vision of U.S. interests and potential objectives 

for the region. The origins of U.S. strategy in these documents, and 

expanded upon since their publication, lies in the fateful events of 

9/11.
REDEFINING U.S. NATIONAL STRATEGY 

IN THE POST-9/11 WORLD

The attacks of 9/11 were among the most dramatic to occur on 

American soil. Previously, only three major foreign incursions had 

occurred within the borders of the United States, the first two during 

the War of 1812 in Washington and New Orleans, and the last, the 

Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Although each had a major 

impact on the national psyche, none produced the civilian casualties 

or national terror that the attacks on the World Trade Center, the 

Pentagon, and Flight 93 caused. Like the attack on December 7, 1941, 

that drew the United States into World War II, the attacks of 9/11 

dramatically changed the course of U.S. policy and national security 

strategy.

President George W. Bush signaled the dramatic and aggressive 

changes in U.S. strategy in a number of statements and press releases 

in the weeks that followed. On September 19, 2001, while meeting with 

President Megawati of Indonesia at the White House, he conducted 

a press conference during which he gave the first indications of his 

administration’s emerging strategy. When questioned by a reporter 

about who he felt may be responsible for the acts of 9/11, the 

President stated: 

I would strongly urge any nation in the world to reject terrorism [and] 

expel terrorists. I would strongly urge the Taliban to turn over the al 

Qaeda organizers who hide in their country. We’re on the case. We’re 

gathering as much evidence as we possibly can to be able to make our 

case to the world about all countries and their willingness to harbor or 

not harbor terrorists.5

The President then expanded his response to include a warning to 

all nations that a coalition was building for a “worldwide campaign 

against terror.”6 He continued to condemn the Taliban regime in 

Afghanistan and expanded his emerging goals to indicate that U.S. 

counterterror objectives would require a global effort to locate and 

destroy terrorists “and those who support them.”7 Clearly, his implication 

was that the way to accomplish these objectives was through the use 

of force, and his repeated reference to the latter was a foreshadowing 

of his emerging controversial strategy of preemption.
Towards a Strategy of Preemption and Democratization.

The President further solidified post-9/11 strategy for Afghanistan 

on October 7, 2001, less than 4 weeks after the terrorist attacks. 

That evening, he addressed the nation to announce that its military 

had begun striking installations and terrorist training camps in 

Afghanistan. The United States had given the Taliban 2 weeks notice 

to comply with three specific demands. It had failed to take action. 

Those demands were to “close terrorist training camps; hand over 

leaders of the al-Qa’ida network; and return all foreign nationals

 . . . unjustly detained.”8 It would soon become clear that the Taliban 

would pay a high price for its noncompliance, and that the United 

States was willing to use unilateral preemption to accomplish its 

objectives. How far beyond Afghanistan Bush would pursue such 

foreign policy was not yet known, but his actions were representative 

of an emerging national strategy.

At this time, the President had not defined his long term 

objectives, other than to state that those nations who condoned 

terrorist organizations were murderers themselves, and the United 

States would bring them to justice. In addition, he reiterated what 

had become an early theme in the evolving strategy: America’s 

anger would not focus on Islam or the citizens of Afghanistan, but 

on terrorists and those who supported them.9 The message was clear, 

however: U.S. objectives would include more than the destruction 

of al-Qa’ida and the removal of the Taliban regime. It also would 

involve establishing a free and democratic government for the 

Afghans. The latter objective certainly was the logical outcome of 

the first two; however, the President had yet to define the strategy 

for establishing democracy in Afghanistan.

National Security Strategy, September 2002.

President Bush further expanded on his evolving strategy during 

his State of the Union Speech on January 29, 2002, with a clear 

statement of two principal U.S. strategic goals.

Our nation will continue to be steadfast and patient and persistent in the 

pursuit of two great objectives. First, we will shut down terrorist camps, 

disrupt terrorist plans, and bring terrorists to justice. And, second, we 
must prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or 

nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world.10

The President’s second objective expanded the scope for the 

GWOT beyond Afghanistan and seemed clearly intended to warn 

Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who consistently had defied the United 

Nations (UN) for over a decade and who, potentially, was in 

possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). If there was any 

doubt about this implied warning, the President erased it later in 

his speech when he named Iraq, along with Iran and North Korea, 

as part of an “axis of evil.”11 This revised strategy would eventually 

find its way into the President’s National Security Strategy. The 

revised national strategy appeared in September 2002 and stressed 

America’s role in championing human rights, defeating terrorism, 

and “expanding the circle of development by opening societies and 

building the infrastructure of democracy.”12

National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, February 2003.

In February, 2003, nearly 18 months after 9/11 and more than 

a year after the fall of the Taliban, the administration published its 

anti-terrorism strategy, appropriately titled, “National Strategy for 

Combating Terrorism.” This document represented an addendum 

to the National Security Strategy and has served as the blueprint for 

the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere to defeat terrorism. The 

30-page document included the nature of today’s terrorist threat, 

America’s strategic intent for the war on terror, and U.S. goals and 

objectives:13

GOAL 1: Defeat terrorists and their organizations;

GOAL 2: Deny sponsorship, support, and sanctuary to terrorists;

GOAL 3: Diminish the underlying conditions that terrorists seek 

to exploit; and,

GOAL 4: Defend U.S. citizens and interests at home and abroad.

Although this strategy aggressively addressed terrorism, it fell 

short of providing the ways and means for achieving the post-conflict 

objectives, or ends, which routinely follow any military action. It 
failed to address the strategic concept of building an infrastructure 

of democracy within either policy document, but that reality 

increasingly became the focus of U.S. strategy over the following 2 

years.

Early in 2005, in several speeches and foreign policy statements 

President Bush demonstrated his resolve to meet his strategic 

objectives of defeating terrorism and expanding democracy. 

Despite divisive rhetoric by anti-war opponents and objections from 

European allies, the President has remained outspoken in his aim to 

pursue terrorists, deny them sanctuary, and encourage democracy in 

regions where existing political conditions contribute to recruitment 

of potential terrorists. In a February 21, 2005, meeting with European 

leaders at the European Union (EU) Summit in Brussels, the President 

declared America’s commitment to the growth of democracy in 

Afghanistan.

Our commitment to democratic progress is being honored in Afghanistan. 

That country is building a democracy that reflects Afghan traditions and 

history, and shows the way for other nations in the region. The elected 

president is working to disarm and demobilize militias in preparation for 

the National Assembly elections to be held this spring. And the Afghan 

people know the world is with them.

14

Clearly, the President aims to continue the American strategy of 

defeating terrorists and democratizing countries susceptible to 

supporting organizations like al-Qa’ida. 

EXAMINING THE REGIONAL ENVIRONMENT 

OF AFGHANISTAN AND SOUTH ASIA

U.S. intervention in Afghanistan yielded a number of secondary 

effects throughout the South Asia region (see Figure 1), some intended 

and expected, others not. While American strategy successfully 

destroyed terrorist training camps and removed the Taliban 

from power, the political, informational, military, and economic 

landscape of Afghanistan and its neighboring countries altered 

significantly. The rapid pace of these changes and uncertain future 

of the transitional government caused American strategy to remain 

primarily reactionary. Democratic national elections in October 
2004, however, represented a landmark event and heralded a new 

era for Afghanistan, the region, and future U.S. strategy. In light of 

this development, an updated and revised strategic assessment is 

essential to develop a new strategy. 

Figure 1. U.S. State Department Map of Afghanistan and the 

South Asian Region.

15

U.S. National Interests. 

Removing the Taliban and destroying terrorist training camps, 

while sound, short-term objectives, did not address the long-term 

challenges of the GWOT, particularly the roots of radical Islamic 

hostility toward America and western culture. In addition to quelling 

terrorism at its roots, the United States has several national interests 

at stake in the region, consistent with marginalizing the influence 
of terrorism. These include improving respect for human dignity, 

encouraging regional cooperation to defuse conflict, enhancing 

global economic growth and cooperation, and expanding the ideals 

of democracy. Each objective forms an integral component of the 

President Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy and has particular 

relevance as well as challenges in Afghanistan.16 An examination of 

the four elements of power within a democratic Afghanistan and 

its interaction with the rest of the South-Asia region underlines the 

extent of these challenges to U.S. long-term strategy.

Political Aspects and Challenges.

U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was the first demonstration 

of the President’s strategy of preemption and democratization. Its 

modus operandi required the forcible removal of a belligerent regime 

by force, along with intensive stability operations to ensure the 

peaceful election of a democratic, representative government. In the 3 

years following 9/11, the concepts applied in pursuit of this strategy 

have evolved in response to environmental changes. The political 

aspects of the current post-election environment still offer a number 

of problems for a successful democracy, but also provide insights 

into a dimension of Afghan culture that can enhance U.S. strategy for 

the entire region. Of the four aspects of strategy discussed herein—

political, informational, military and economic—politics, more than 

any other, provides the foundation for successful accomplishment of 

long term goals. To appreciate the political challenges, one needs a 

firm grasp of the geography, history, and culture of the Afghans. 

Afghanistan is a rugged landlocked country positioned between 

the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. Because of its poverty, 

underdevelopment and remote location, regional experts tend to 

minimize its significance, although it sits astride the historical land 

routes between the Middle East and Asia.17 Because of its central 

location, Afghanistan has seen many invaders enter its borders in 

an effort to conquer its provinces. However, few have succeeded. 

Rugged terrain coupled with fierce resistance to occupation by 

a conglomeration of tribes and ethnic groups, united primarily to 

repel invaders, has made conquest and occupation by outsiders 

particularly difficult.18
The culture of Afghanistan’s population is probably the most 

elusive aspect for foreign analysts who often underestimate its 

complexity. Afghans are uniquely dissimilar; they consist of multiple 

tribes and ethnic groups scattered throughout the country. Their 

loyalties to local issues, customs, and authority generally outweigh 

their desire for a national identity. Their form of localism is unique 

because these same independent, disunified tribes, have historically 

rallied together to attack foreign invaders, most recently the Taliban. 

What these different tribes and cultures share is a common passion 

for independence and freedom in the face of adversity. 

Afghanistan’s geography, history, and cultural aspects have 

shaped its political challenges. Of these factors, localism plays a 

central theme and will remain a definitive part of the culture. Therein 

lays the greatest challenge to political stability: how to demonstrate 

to its localized cultures, the important value of their newly elected 

national government. For democracy to succeed they must view it 

as beneficial, while loyalties, provided previously to tribal leaders, 

must become subordinated to national interests and the country’s 

first representative government.

Informational and Social Challenges.

The newly elected democratic government faces several political 

and informational obstacles in establishing legitimacy and confidence. 

These challenges include overcoming the tradition and loyalties of 

localism, the education of religious and social leaders on the dangers 

of extreme religious fundamentalist, and communicating these 

messages and others of legitimacy over the country’s limited media 

outlets. Although the U.S. Agency for International Development 

(USAID) has assisted in improving media outlets in support of the 

national election, it must do more to overcome hostile influences.19

The battle over hearts and minds pits the newly elected 

government against the hostile Taliban, al-Qa’ida, and other 

extremists, who gain their legitimacy through religious rhetoric. By 

leveraging fundamentalist Islamic views, extremists have gained a 

foothold in Maddrassas and Mosques and spread their messages of 

deceit to recruit from a pool of candidates living in impoverished 

social and economic conditions.
Only by educating tribal, religious, and educational leaders 

can the government overcome the influence of rogue factions on a 

susceptible populous. 

Critical to the education of these leaders, and the population 

as a whole, is the need to substantially improve the limited media 

infrastructure to legitimize the new government. The United 

States and other coalition partners have sent extensive media into 

Afghanistan to provide news to the outside world. However, only 

limited means exist to provide information within the country to 

millions of uneducated and illiterate citizens. The U.S. military has 

made efforts to ensure dissemination of information, but current 

conditions demand greater capabilities.

Military Challenges.

Despite the coalition victory over the Taliban and al-Qa’ida, 

belligerents still threaten Afghanistan’s citizens, the newly elected 

government, coalition allies, and international aid workers. To 

counter this threat, coalition forces have established and trained 

over 20,000 soldiers for service in the first Afghan National Army 

(ANA) and another 25,000 for police service.20 This effort only begins 

to address the continuing struggle for stability and security that 

confronts the nation.

One challenge lies in overcoming delays in fielding the Afghan 

National Army and National Police Force to regions of the country 

outside Kabul. Currently, there are 5,500 NATO peacekeepers 

working under a limited mandate to assist Afghan security forces in 

Kabul, and another 14,000 soldiers in the U.S.-led coalition training 

the Afghan Army and conducting combat operations throughout the 

country.21 Coalition forces are spread thinly throughout the country, 

and are inadequate to ensure peace, security, and order. The need 

for Afghan soldiers and police forces would seem appropriate for 

meeting this challenge. Yet challenges exist here to overcoming 

tendencies toward localism and the loyalty of most individuals to 

tribal militias.

Tribal militias represent another considerable challenge to the 

security and stability of the country. Because of tribal loyalties, many 
citizens continue to support and rely on the militias for security. 

Compounding this problem is the increasing criminal activity by 

tribal leaders and warlords, who see the national government as a 

threat to their power base and livelihood. Their reliance on poppy 

growth and sales has provided an economic boost to many faction 

leaders and tribes, and runs contrary to an emerging security focus 

of the national police and army. Only a strong security presence by a 

nationally recognized Afghan military force can create stability. 

Economic Challenges.

Closely related to the security challenges of Afghanistan are the 

difficulties of economic progress. Two major issues adversely affect 

the country’s economy: the lack of a transportation infrastructure 

and geographic constraints on agricultural potential. By improving 

roads and common utilities and providing Afghanistan’s farmers 

improved agricultural alternatives, the economy of Afghanistan will 

begin to improve.

Without railroads, the only modern methods of overland transport 

are existing road networks, which are in major disrepair after 25 years 

of neglect during war. The lack of roads significantly hampers the 

government in its ability to provide fundamental economic support 

to remote regions. As a result, the population’s loyalty is again more 

susceptible to influence by the local warlords and thugs, who can 

provide some sense of security and economic well-being. Despite 

these drawbacks, some progress has occurred. USAID has assisted 

in rehabilitating 2,500 miles of road, reconstructed 31 bridges and 

has opened up three additional mountain passes over the Hindu 

Kish that had remained impassible for decades.22 This is a good start. 

However, there are thousands of miles of road yet to be restored. 

A second economic challenge is the need to provide agriculture 

technology and enhancements to rural farmers as alternatives to opium 

poppy cultivation. The problem of drug cultivation, production, 

and trafficking in Afghanistan poses a serious security risk for the 

new government, because in many cases regional warlords rely on 

the drugs to provide income to support their interests. The national 

government is not likely to take any decisive action to eradicate 
2

drugs because it may be construed as an attack on the local leader 

and intended to take away this livelihood. Moreover, drugs remain 

an unreliable source of income for a legitimate democracy, while 

exports of drugs to other countries will further remove Afghanistan 

from consideration as a legitimate member of the international 

community. 

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 

(UNODC), Afghanistan became the highest drug producing country 

in the world in 2004 with growth of opium poppy plants more than 

double that of the previous year.23 The heroin producing plant became 

the sole crop produced on more than 131,000 hectares of land.24 To 

his credit, newly elected President Hamid Karzai recognizes the clear 

danger of the increasing opium poppy cultivation in his country. 

During his inauguration speech, he stated, “Our principal promises 

concern the strengthening of the security sector and ensuring 

lasting stability throughout the country, [and] the elimination of 

poppy cultivation and fight against the processing and trafficking 

of drugs.” The cultivation of drugs provides sources of income that 

a democracy cannot and should not rely upon. However, reversing 

this state of affairs will not be easy. 

Rec

The U.S. strategic success in Afghanistan and the South Asian 

region is critical to successful prosecution of the war on terror and 

America’s national security strategy. The focused application of 

available resources is the best way to achieve desired objectives. In 

simplest terms, a recommended strategy must not only address ends, 

or objectives, but should also recommend the means, or resources, 

and ways, or methodologies, to accomplish those ends. For the United 

States to ensure its ability to successfully accomplish its desired 

objectives in Afghanistan, it must prioritize its application of ways and 

means to pursue three major tasks that support the overall objective 

of democratic Afghanistan. These objectives include sustaining high 

levels of security, improving economic conditions, and enhancing 

Afghanistan’s credibility in the region and throughout the world. 
Sustaining Security.

The primary objective to ensure that democracy takes root and 

has the opportunity to flourish in Afghanistan is to provide, at 

whatever cost, the existence of a secure and stable environment. This 

objective is essential for the success of U.S. strategy. First, security 

of the democratic government is essential for its continued rule. 

Any reversion to Taliban rule, or its equivalent, would represent a 

major defeat. Secondly, the Afghan people have lived through many 

invasions. They are skeptical of the long-term commitment of the 

United States, and the best way for Americans to demonstrate their 

resolve is to ensure security. Finally, there is the need for a secure 

and stable environment that encourages international organizations, 

nongovernmental organizations, and private organizations to 

provide aid to, and invest in, this new democracy. Without an 

American presence that ensures and enforces a stable and secure 

environment, U.S. strategy cannot succeed. 

Improving Economic Conditions.

The United States, as the world’s greatest economic power, must 

resolve to make long-term economic investments in Afghanistan to 

demonstrate that commitment. The value of immediate and projected 

long-term U.S. commitment signals a confidence to the international 

community that will encourage other nations to follow America’s 

lead. To be sure, such commitment does not occur without significant 

cost and risk, but the consequences of a failed policy in Afghanistan 

outweigh the alternative. Economic strategy must pursue two vital 

pillars that can bring Afghanistan improved conditions: improved 

infrastructure and agricultural alternatives to opium production and 

marketing. 

The first pillar has not been ignored, but more work is necessary to 

insure an adequate economic future. Without roads, communications, 

and infrastructure, the citizens of Afghanistan will continue to live 

in poverty and remain isolated. By leveraging more international 

assistance, the United States can bring Afghanistan into the 21st 

century in terms of communications and transportation. As the 
government provides these services for its people, it will gain their 

confidence and commitment to support democratic ideals.

The second area requiring attention lies in the area of agricultural 

development. Without alternatives, it is no surprise that farmers in 

Afghanistan would turn to opium poppy agriculture as a source 

of income. The subsequent transport and sale of this drug lowers 

Afghanistan’s reputation in the international community and 

empowers local warlords, whose interests are often inconsistent with 

those of the national government. Advancements in agricultural 

alternatives, through use of chemical stimulants and fertilizers, will 

enhance the ability of the nation’s farmers. Moreover, U.S. technology 

for irrigation and machinery can offer much to remote regions.

International Recognition.

Americans cannot afford to forget Afghanistan. It is a crucial 

ally of the United States, particularly when demonstrating unity in 

the face of terror and the ability to establish democracy in Islamic 

countries. The world must view Afghanistan as a positive example, 

but not a U.S. puppet.

One organization that is well-suited to raise Afghanistan’s 

regional importance, give it more international visibility, and 

demonstrate its potential for economic and social change is the 

South Asian Agreement for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). This 

organization came into existence in 1985; it consists of seven countries 

of the South Asia Region including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, 

Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The mission of SAARC 

is to accelerate the process of economic and social development of 

member states by working together in a spirit of friendship, trust, 

and understanding.25 Afghanistan, along with Myanmar, was not 

considered for membership in SAARC because of its difficult political 

situation at the time. Given its location, emerging prominence and 

inevitable future economic potential with the engagement of the 

United States and the international community, Afghanistan should 

be readily accepted into SAARC.

The SAARC summit held in Islamabad in January 2004 recognized 

the importance of interaction between the citizens of Afghanistan 

and its neighbors as vital to increasing regional cooperation and 
improving the atrocious human rights record established by the 

Taliban.26 The conference also addressed other political issues, 

including the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA), and the 

suppression of terrorism. The active dialogue between these nations 

bodes well for the region and lends support to the national security 

policy goals of the United States, specifically, “strengthen (regional) 

alliances to defeat global terrorism . . . defuse regional conflicts . . . 

and champion aspirations for human dignity.”27

CONCLUSION

To date, the United States has achieved remarkable success in 

its post-9/11 strategy in Afghanistan. In only a few short weeks 

following 9/11, America organized and led a coalition of tribal 

factions and allies to overthrow the Taliban and root out al-Qa’ida 

and other terrorists. Since that time, an international coalition of more 

than thirty countries has conducted security and stability operations 

that set conditions for the free democratic elections that took place 

in October 2004.28 Now that the initial national election is complete, 

the United States must revise its strategy in the new environment of 

a democratic Afghanistan.

Clearly, there is much work in Afghanistan on many fronts. 

A review of American strategy found in the “National Security 

Strategy,” “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism,” and 

recent national security speeches provide focus for identifying the 

most critical objectives of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. There are 

several critical objectives that consistently cut across all aspects 

of U.S. strategy. Of these, three stand out. These are the needs to 

improve security, to provide economic assistance, and to enhance 

Afghanistan’s legitimacy in the region and on the international 

stage. By supporting all three objectives, the United States can realize 

success in pursuing its goals of protecting democracy in Afghanistan 

and enhancing the stability in South Asia and the world.
ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 13

1. George W. Bush, “Policies in Focus,” The White House, www.whitehouse.gov/

infocus/afghanistan/index.html.

2. U.S. Department of State, “Afghanistan: Building a Free, New Society,” 

December 7, 2004.

3. Ibid.

4. Global Security Report, “Operation Enduring Freedom-Afghanistan,” www.

globalsecurity.org/military/ops/enduring-freedom.htm.

5. George W. Bush, “Statement at Photo Op with President Megawati of 

Indonesia,” September 19, 2001.

6. Ibid.

7. George W. Bush, “Speech to Congress,” September 20, 2001.

8. George W. Bush, “Presidential Address to the Nation,” The White House, 

October 7, 2001.

9. Ibid.

10. George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address,” Washington DC, January 

29, 2002.

11. Ibid. 

12. George W. Bush, “National Security Strategy,” The White House, September 

27, 2002, p. 2.

13. George W. Bush, “The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism,” 

Washington, DC, February 2003. 

14. George W. Bush, “Remarks at Meeting of the European Union,” February 

21, 2005.

15. DOS Web Site.

16. Bush, “National Security Strategy,” all pages.

17. To be sure, even U.S. Government agencies that beaurocratically subdivide 

the world into regions treat Afghanistan differently. The Department of Defense, 

for example, includes Afghanistan as part of the U.S. Central Command’s areas 

of responsibility, which includes predominantly the Middle East, while the U.S. 

Department of State includes it in South Asia along with Pakistan, India, and 

others. Also see U.S. State Department Website and how it defines regions.

18. Jeffrey Roberts, The Origins of Conflict in Afghanistan, Westport, CN: Praeger, 

2003, pp, XI-XV.

19. USAID, “Restoring Media,” www.usaid.gov/locations/asia_near_east/

afghanistan/media.html.
20. “Afghanistan: Counter-narcotics and Rule of Law Programs,” U.S. 

Department of State, Testimony of Robert Charles, Assistant Secretary for 

International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs to the House International 

Relations Committee, September 23, 2004, www.state.gov/g/inl/rls/rm/36500.htm.

21. Center for Strategic and International Studies, “South Asia Monitor,” No. 

69, April 2, 2004. 

22. USAID, “Restoring Infrastructure,” www.usaid.gov/locations/asia_near_east/

afghanistan/infrastructure.html.

23. UN Press Release, “United Nations Drugs Office Reports Major Increase 

in Opium Cultivation in Afghanistan,” Press Release AFG/269, SOC/NAR/917, 

November 18, 2004, www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/afg269.doc.htm.

24. Ibid.

25. WEBSITE, SAARC, www.saarc-sec.org/main.php.

26. South Asian Media Net, “Human Rights and SAARC Nations,” by Ashwani 

Kumar Chrungoo, March 19, 2004, www.southasianmedia.net/index_opinion4.

cfm?id=24821.

27. Bush, National Security Strategy, p. 1.

28. Bush, “State of the Union Address.”

CHAPTER 14

AL-QA’IDA AS INSURGENCY:

THE QUEST FOR ISLAMIC REVOLUTION

Lieutenant Colonel Michael F. Morris

“The National Strategy for Homeland Security” designates 

al-Qa’ida as “America’s most immediate and serious threat.”1

Conventional wisdom, reflected in news media; public opinion; 

and government studies, such as the “National Strategy for 

Combating Terrorism,” characterizes the al-Qa’ida menace as 

one of transnational terrorism. Recently, however, some analysts 

have begun to challenge that conclusion. They argue instead that 

al-Qa’ida represents the emergence of a new type of insurgency.2

Assessing the nature of the enemy is a critical first step in the crafting 

of effective strategy. In the case of al-Qa’ida, one must answer three 

important questions to clarify the extent of the danger and further 

hone America’s strategic response. First, does the movement actually 

represent an insurgency? If so, are there, indeed, new elements that 

make al-Qa’ida different than previously encountered insurgencies? 

Finally, what implications do these answers have for the current war 

against Osama bin Laden’s movement? The analysis that follows 

suggests that al-Qa’ida represents an emerging form of global 

Islamic insurgency, the inchoate strategy of which undermines its 

potential to achieve revolutionary goals. Nonetheless, not unlike 

previous failed insurgencies, it possesses both durability and an 

immense capacity for destruction. These characteristics mandate 

a counterrevolutionary response at the strategic level that aims 

to destroy not only al-Qa’ida’s organization, but also discredit its 

ideological underpinnings. 

Terrorism Versus Insurgency: A Distinction with a Difference.

The distinction between terrorism and insurgency is not merely 

theoretical, as the appropriate responses to the two phenomena are 

quite different. Before addressing preferred strategies to counter 
each, one needs to establish how they are alike and how they differ. 

Unfortunately, existing definitions do more to cloud than clarify the 

issues. Neither academic nor government experts can agree on a 

suitable definition for terrorism. 

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) definition focuses on the 

type of violence employed (unlawful) towards specified ends 

(political, religious, or ideological).3 This characterization fails to 

address the argument from moral relativity that “one man’s terrorist 

is another man’s freedom fighter.” In essence, this objection to a 

suitable definition submits that, while violence may be “unlawful” 

in accordance with a victim’s statutes, the cause served by those 

committing the acts may represent a positive good in the eyes of 

neutral observers. In an effort to escape this dilemma, the recently 

recommended (but not yet approved) United Nations (UN) 

definition of terrorism focuses instead on the targets (civilians or 

noncombatants) of violence rather than on its legal nature or intended 

objective.4 Still, the UN and the DoD definitions both sidestep the 

notion of state-sponsored terrorism. The DoD definition cites only 

unlawful violence (thereby making state terrorism an oxymoron), 

whereas the UN definition excludes state-sponsored terrorism and 

deals with state violence against civilians as bona fide war crimes 

or crimes against humanity under the Geneva Convention. More 

importantly for a strategist trying to characterize the nature of the 

threat, neither definition conveys exactly what distinguishes the 

violence of terrorism from that of an insurgency. 

Definitions of insurgency have similar difficulties. DoD defines 

the term as “an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of 

a constituted government through use of subversion and armed 

conflict.”5 Terrorist organizations with revolutionary aspirations 

seem to meet that criterion, and thus the insurgent definition also 

fails analysts in differentiating one from another. Bard O’Neill comes 

closer to distinguishing the two phenomena by including an overtly 

political component in his definition of insurgency: 

A struggle between a nonruling group and the ruling authorities in 

which the nonruling group consciously uses political resources (e.g., 

organizational expertise, propaganda, and demonstrations) and violence 

to destroy, reformulate, or sustain the basis of legitimacy of one or more 

aspects of politics.6
Thus, insurgencies combine violence with political means in pursuit 

of revolutionary purposes in a way that terrorism cannot duplicate. 

Terrorists may pursue political, even revolutionary, goals, but their 

violence replaces rather than complements a political program.

If definitions offer only a partial aid in discriminating between 

terrorism and insurgency, organizational traits traditionally have 

provided another means to tell the two apart. Insurgencies normally 

field fighting forces orders of magnitude larger than those of 

terrorist organizations. Typically, insurgents organize their forces in 

military fashion as squads, platoons, and companies. Terrorist units 

are usually smaller and comprised of isolated teams or cells not 

organized into a formal military chain of command. Insurgent forces 

often are more overt in nature as well, especially in the sanctuaries 

or zones, which they dominate. Terrorist organizations, which tend 

towards extreme secrecy and compartmented cells to facilitate 

security, seldom replicate an insurgency’s political structure. 

One characteristic that does not serve to distinguish terrorism 

from insurgency is the use of terror tactics. Terrorists and insurgents 

may employ exactly the same methods, and utilize force or the threat 

thereof to coerce their target audiences and further the organizational 

agenda. Both groups may threaten, injure, or kill civilians or 

government employees by using an array of similar means. Thus, 

the use of terror in and of itself does not equate to terrorism; the 

former is merely a tactical tool of the latter.7 Lawrence Freedman 

suggests that the terror of terrorists equates to “strategic” terrorism, 

because it is the primary means by which they pursue their agenda. 

However, the terror insurgents employ is more tactical in nature, 

since it is only one of several violent tools such groups wield.8 This 

parsing underscores the point—a variety of agents, including states, 

insurgents, or even criminals, as well as terrorists, may employ the 

same techniques of terror. 

Given the challenges of definition and the shared use of the same 

tactical repertoire, it is hardly surprising that the terms terrorism and 

insurgency frequently appear synonymously. The State Department 

register of terrorist organizations lists small, covert, cellular 

groups like Abu Nidal and Greece’s “Revolutionary Organization 

of November 17,” as well as larger organizations with shadow 

governments in established zones, strong political components, and 
2

well-defined military hierarchies, such as the Revolutionary Armed 

Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Philippine’s New People’s 

Army (NPA).9 Most analysts would characterize FARC and the NPA 

as insurgencies, albeit ones that employ strong doses of terror on 

both opponents and the surrounding populace. Not surprisingly, alQa’ida is also on the Department of State’s list of 37 foreign terrorist 

organizations. In an effort to determine if it belongs there, this 

chapter will employ a third analytical framework to supplement the 

insights offered by existing definitions and traditional organizational 

characteristics.

In the 1980s, French sociologist Michel Wieviorka conducted 

research that determined terrorists find themselves estranged from 

both the social movements that spawned them and the societies 

they oppose. He uses the term “social antimovement” to describe 

the intermediate stage between legitimate social movements and 

terrorism. Antimovements may employ violence, but they maintain 

some association with the parent social movement. It is only when 

that linkage dissolves, a process Wieviorka calls “inversion,” that a 

militant becomes a terrorist. The violence of terrorist actors no longer 

is purposeful—in pursuit of a rational political goal—but replaces 

the parent social movement’s ideology. In essence, this conclusion 

underscores a frequent contention in the literature on political 

violence: that terrorism is the domain of organizations, where the 

strategic repertoire of violence conflates means and ends.10

Importantly, Wieviorka’s construct does not provide a means 

upon which one can hang a consensus definition of terrorism. Instead, 

it offers another means to distinguish terrorism from insurgency. 

Specifically, this theory posits that the degree of linkage remaining 

between a given radical group and its parent social movement 

determines what Wieviorka refers to as “pure terrorism.”11 There is 

a connection between this notion and the broader political nature of 

insurgency, though it is not an angle Wieviorka himself examines. 

Organizations which have not yet inverted, and which maintain 

connections to a significant segment of society, represent not just 

social antimovements, but potential insurgencies.12

Using the three analytical lenses—definitions, organizational 

traits, and Wieviorka’s inversion theory—where does al-Qa’ida fall 

on the terrorism vs. insurgency scale? Certainly al-Qa’ida meets the 
component tests of the various terrorism definitions: (1) unlawful 

(a nonstate actor); (2) political/religious/ideological in intent 

(fatwas calling for the removal of Islamic regimes guilty of religious 

heresies); and (3) targeting civilians (e.g., the World Trade Center). 

It also comprises “an organized movement aimed at the overthrow 

of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed 

conflict,” in accordance with the DoD’s insurgency definition. In 

terms of exhibiting a political component, some have called alQa’ida an armed political party and the extremist wing of a political 

religion.13 The group’s political works include propaganda efforts 

such as the issuance of fatwas, protection and projection of Salafist 

religious infrastructure, and mobilization of grass roots support 

through cooperation with Islamist parties, as well as orchestration 

of favorable media coverage in the Islamic press.14 The al-Qa’ida 

training manual underscores its commitment to both politics and 

violence as a mechanism for change:

Islamic governments have never been and will never be, established 

through peaceful solutions and cooperative councils. They are established 

as they [always] have been by pen and gun by word and bullet by tongue 

and teeth.15

Finally, the terror tactics employed in pursuit of al-Qa’ida’s ideological 

goals qualifies it for either insurgent or terrorist status. 

In terms of traditional characteristics of classic terrorist and 

insurgent organizations, al-Qa’ida turns in a mixed score. It is 

relatively small (< 100 hard core adherents), but in Afghanistan, 

it did train approximately 18,000 fighters, who have subsequently 

dispersed around the world in some 60 countries.16 Of this small 

army (bigger, in fact, than 61 of the world’s 161 armies), perhaps 

3,000 are true al-Qa’ida troops, as opposed to mere beneficiaries of 

al-Qa’ida tactical training.17 The small, relatively cellular structure of 

the hardcore suggests a terrorist organization, while the scope and 

scale of its dedicated, deployed militants indicates a significant, if 

somewhat dispersed insurgency. When al-Qa’ida enjoyed political 

space in which to operate unhindered in Afghanistan, it conducted 

its business in a relatively overt manner as insurgencies usually 

do. Under duress since September 11, 2001 (9/11), it has regressed 
back to a more covert style of operation in accordance with terrorist 

protocol. 

Wieviorka’s precepts suggest that al-Qa’ida has not inverted yet 

and transitioned to pure terrorism. Osama bin Laden’s organization 

stemmed from the political tradition of the Muslim Brotherhood, 

which promised an Islamic alternative to capitalist and Marxist 

models of development.18 Normally, social movements such as 

those represented by the Muslim Brotherhood could compete 

effectively in an environment of democratic elections. In a Muslim 

landscape devoid of free elections, however, alternate ideological 

competitors either die or become subversive to continue the political 

fight.19 Al-Qa’ida represents a version of the latter. While the 

group’s methodology of martyrdom (reflecting the radical ideology 

of bin Laden’s Palestinian spiritual mentor, Abdallah Azzam) is 

apocalyptic from a Western perspective, it is in accord with at least 

a version of the religious tradition of jihad within Islam. Thus, it is 

not a complete departure from its own societal norms.20 Moreover, 

bin Laden’s popularity throughout the Muslim world, the fact that 

the populace among whom his operatives hide, despite the offer of 

large rewards, has delivered to Western security forces neither him 

nor his chief lieutenants, and the relative lack of condemnation of his 

group’s activities by leading Islamic clerics suggests that al-Qa’ida 

has not severed its connection with significant segments of its social 

constituency.21

This grass roots support indicates an organization still in the social 

antimovement phase, rather than a terrorist group divorced from 

the population it claims to represent. Al-Qa’ida has disengaged itself 

radically and politically (perhaps inevitable, given the autocratic 

nature of the regimes it opposes), is hyperaggressive towards those 

it perceives responsible for its political weakness (Jews, Americans, 

and apostate Muslim leaders), and advocates a utopian dream 

promising a powerful yet thoroughly isolated Islamic world. Such 

traits are symptomatic of a social antimovement. Pure terrorism, on 

the other hand, might exhibit the same radical goals and appalling 

acts, but would result in far broader condemnation of al-Qa’ida’s 

agenda than has occurred so far throughout the Muslim world. 

Analysts who conclude that bin Laden is winning the war of ideas 
between the radical and moderate Islamic religious traditions further 

reinforce the counterintuitive determination that al-Qa’ida is not 

(yet) a terrorist organization.22 Such evidence indicates a growing 

linkage between the purveyors of violence and the polity they claim 

to represent. Purposeful political violence committed on behalf 

of a sizable segment of society suggests insurgency. Importantly, 

the judgment that al-Qa’ida has not descended into terrorism is 

not to sanction the group’s horrific conduct or render support for 

its political objectives. Instead, it represents an effort to assess alQa’ida’s current status, accurately portray its nature, and thereby 

help determine how best to combat it. 

Combating terrorism and insurgency requires different strategic 

responses. Certainly, both pose significant threats to the United 

States. Terrorists, in an age of transnational cooperation and access to 

weapons of mass destruction, have the means to unleash catastrophic 

attacks on modern societies that dwarf even the terrible blows of 

9/11. But terrorism, however powerful in a destructive sense, 

remains the province of the politically weak. Terrorists are physically 

and psychologically removed from broad popular support. Because 

terrorists remain isolated from the social movements from which 

they sprang, and their political goals become, over time, more and 

more divorced from reality, it is neither necessary nor possible to 

negotiate with them. They are a blight, like crime, that one cannot 

eliminate but which states must control to limit their impact. Of 

course, states must hunt terrorists possessing the means and will to 

conduct catastrophic attacks not only with national and international 

police resources, but also with all the diplomatic, informational, 

military, and economic instruments of national power. 

However, states must handle insurgents differently, because 

they represent both a political and a military challenge. They 

combine an ideologically motivated leadership with an unsatisfied 

citizenry (the so-called “grievance guerrillas”) into a challenge to 

existing governments. Only a war of ideas can confront and defeat 

ideologies. An integrated counterinsurgency program that enables 

the targeted government to offer more appealing opportunities than 

the insurgents’ (doubtless utopian) vision must peel away popular 

support. Finally, a successful approach must identify and neutralize 
systematically the insurgent strategy’s operational elements. AlQa’ida represents not terrorism, but an insurgency featuring a 

Salafist theology which appeals to significant portions of Muslim 

believers and which sanctifies terror. The next section will explore 

whether the nascent insurgency has the strategic wherewithal to 

enact revolutionary change.

Al-Qa’ida’s Insurgency: A Policy-Strategy Mismatch.

Islamic insurgency is not a new phenomenon. Nevertheless, 

historically, it has not been a successful one.23 Moreover, as Lawrence 

Freedman notes, revolutions that rely on terror as the primary 

means of political violence court strategic failure.24 Does al-Qa’ida’s 

methodology promise a different outcome? The movement’s 

goals are revolutionary. They envision remaking society such that 

religious faith is foundational, social stratification is enforced, and 

the government is autocratic in nature and controlled by clerics. The 

Islamist governments of Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Sudan 

illustrate an approach to the ideal. Al-Qa’ida intends to establish like 

regimes in lieu of apostate Muslim governments such as those of 

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The new Salafist administrations would 

strictly enforce Sharia law and block military and cultural influences 

from the West. Al-Qa’ida’s political objective, then, remains unlimited 

vis-à-vis targeted Islamic regimes. It seeks to overthrow their form of 

government. With regard to the United States, the group’s political 

objectives in the short run are more limited: to coerce America to 

withdraw from the Middle East and abandon its sponsorship of 

Israel.25

While it is important to classify an insurgency’s type and 

understand its goals, the operative question is how the movement 

uses the means at its disposal to achieve its desired ends—in other 

words, what strategy does it employ? It is not enough to have a 

guiding ideology and a susceptible body politic with significant, and 

potentially exploitable, grievances against the existing government. 

In the operational realm, something must connect the two. Without 

this critical linkage, ideologies may produce terrorists and grievances 

may spawn rebellions. But it is only when ideology and grievances 
combine that insurgencies result.26 Understanding how strategy 

effects that combination provides insight into the best ways to 

counter a particular insurgency. Current doctrine identifies two basic 

insurgent strategies: mass mobilization (best illustrated by Mao TseTung’s people’s war construct) and armed action (featuring either 

rural based foco or urban warfare oriented styles).27

Al-Qa’ida exhibits an interesting blend of both insurgent 

strategies. Primarily bin Laden’s movement employs the urban 

warfare version of the armed action strategy. Certainly most of the 

group’s infamous activities have been military rather than political 

in nature. It has not sought to use rural-based military forces to court 

recruits and wage a systematic campaign of destruction against target 

governments. Instead, al-Qa’ida has employed violence against both 

government and civilian targets to create instability and undermine 

the confidence and political will of its enemies. Small, covert teams 

employing creative suicide techniques planned and executed its 

attacks against the USS Cole, the Khobar Tower barracks in Saudi 

Arabia, and the World Trade Center/Pentagon. 

Al-Qa’ida has not adopted a mass mobilization strategy, but it 

does employ some of Mao’s key concepts. The Chinese Communist 

Party’s carefully managed mass line finds its analog in the Islamic 

madrasahs, mosques, and media outlets. These forums publicize 

bin Laden’s philosophy, capture and echo the people’s complaints, 

and conjoin the ideology and grievances in a perfect storm of 

revolutionary fervor. Islamic madrasahs, mosques, and media also 

provide a suitable venue for aspects of political warfare. Bin Laden’s 

attempts to communicate directly with and threaten the American 

people have been neither sophisticated nor effective, but they do 

illustrate an effort to address his enemy’s political vulnerabilities. 

Al-Qa’ida also has proven quite willing to cooperate, in a virtual 

united front, with a long list of otherwise dubious allies including 

Shiite Hezbollah, secular Baathist officials, and Chinese criminal 

syndicates.28 International support for al-Qa’ida is important. Since 

the displacement of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban party, primary 

support comes from countries such as Iran and Syria, as well as a 

host of like-minded state and regional insurgencies and terrorist 

organizations.29
Mao’s prescription for protracted war is also in keeping with 

al-Qa’ida’s brand of Islamic revolutionary war. The mujahedin 

employed long-term guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan to drive out 

the Soviets; bin Laden looks to replicate that success in a similar 

protracted campaign against America.30 In addition to the small 

unit attacks characteristic of traditional guerrilla warfare, the larger 

operations conducted by thousands of al-Qa’ida trained soldiers in 

Afghanistan against the Russians (and later the Northern Alliance) 

indicate that bin Laden does not oppose amassing and employing 

more conventional military power if the time, resources, and political 

space permit. For example, bin Laden’s May 2001 communiqué called 

for the formation of a 10,000-man army to liberate Saudi Arabia.31

When denied the opportunity to fight conventionally, al-Qa’ida 

is willing to fall back on a more limited urban warfare strategy. Such 

a strategy is in consonance with a protracted war timeline, if not 

the ponderous methodology of its Maoist antecedent. Urban warfare 

seeks only to disrupt, not to build a conventional force capable of 

challenging government forces in pitched battles. It subverts targeted 

governments in preparation for the day when military action may 

remove a greatly weakened regime. Regardless of which military 

strategy al-Qa’ida employs, it is apparent that bin Laden has taken 

the long view of history necessary to persevere in a protracted war. 

His religious faith is unperturbed by short-term setbacks or the lack 

of immediate progress in unseating target governments. He sees 

even death in combat as motivational for those warriors who follow 

in the footsteps of the martyred mujahedin.32

While al-Qa’ida does not use the same mobilization techniques 

Mao’s strategy employed, it nonetheless benefits from similar 

operational effects achieved in a different way. The purpose of covert 

infrastructure is to operationalize control of human terrain.33 The 

shadow government provides or controls education, tax collection, 

civil and military recruiting services, public works, economic 

infrastructure development and operation, police functions, and legal 

adjudication. While there is no evidence of an al-Qa’ida equivalent 

to a communist style covert infrastructure as seen in China, Malaya, 

or Vietnam, the radical Islamic religious movement has developed 

a construct that militant ideologues could subvert and employ to 
attain the same ends. One expert notes that religious institutions 

may replicate the parallel hierarchies of covert infrastructure and 

that religious inducement is more compelling to potential insurgent 

recruits than secular ideology.34

The militant Islamist construct that illustrates such a parallel 

hierarchy is a virtual counter state known as the da’wa.35 Grassroots 

social programs comprise this alternate society, which aims at proving 

the efficacy of fundamentalist policies and gradually building a 

mass base that eventually could translate into political power. The 

da’wa includes associations of middle class professionals, Islamic 

welfare agencies, schools and student groups, nongovernmental 

humanitarian assistance organizations, clinics, and mosques. 

These venues advance political ideas and sometimes instigate mass 

protests. Though this overt nucleus of a parallel government has 

developed in nations such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, it has 

not yet attained the revolutionary capacity exhibited by the covert 

infrastructure of a Maoist people’s war. Opposition parties such as 

the Muslim Brotherhood have not been able to leverage this latent 

source of organizational strength into a successful challenge to sitting 

governments. 36 Theodore Gurr observes that the existence of dissent 

options like the da’wa sometimes bleed off revolutionary potential 

energy and actually make successful insurrection less likely rather 

than facilitating its advance.37 The da’wa’s capacity as a conduit for 

Maoist style political mobilization is nonetheless striking.

The strategy of al-Qa’ida is thus a blending of the more familiar 

mass mobilization and armed action strategies. Some of the factors 

that made Mao’s people war strategy effective also are present in alQa’ida’s twist on “making revolution.” The religious foundation of 

al-Qa’ida’s ideology and the devout nature of the societies it seeks 

to co-opt create a novel dynamic with a potentially new way of 

connecting means to ends. So far this potential is unrealized. In the 

modern era, radical Muslims have applied the coercive social control 

consistent with bin Laden’s brand of Islam only following the seizure 

of political power. In Iran, Afghanistan, and Sudan the da’wa did 

not serve as a virtual counter state as shadow governments do in 

Maoist people’s war. But in the future al-Qa’ida may not have to 

replicate Mao’s secular infrastructure because alternate mechanisms 
of control already reside in the target societies. The challenge for 

Islamic insurgents is to transition the da’wa’s capacity for social 

influence into one of alternate political control. 

Whether or not such an evolution proves feasible, al-Qa’ida’s 

armed action approach seeks to achieve its limited political objectives 

against the United States via a military strategy of erosion. That is, 

additional strikes of sufficient magnitude could induce America 

to reconsider its policy options in the Middle East.38 In addition to 

the strategic intent of influencing enemy policy, these attacks also 

serve to mobilize the Muslim world; generate recruits, money, and 

prestige; demonstrate the global capacity to disrupt; and provide 

a forum for a kind of “performance violence” that symbolically 

underscores the righteousness of its cause.39 Failure to harness a 

more potent political component with its military erosion option, 

however, means that al-Qa’ida is less likely to overthrow targeted 

Islamic regimes. The unlimited political objective associated with the 

constrained military means creates a fatal policy-strategy mismatch 

that dooms its insurgency to failure. 40

Thus far this chapter has established that al-Qa’ida’s connection 

to the people in a number of Islamic countries means that its 

methodology is not terrorism but a kind of insurgency. The strategy 

of that insurgency, combining a variety of forms and styles in pursuit 

of both limited and unlimited political goals, demonstrates the ability 

to disrupt on a massive level, but less likelihood of actually enacting 

revolutionary change. The final question is how to modify existing 

policies to better address the peculiar nature of the emerging alQa’ida threat. 

Implications for Counterrevolutionary Policy.

The insurgent nature of the al-Qa’ida threat suggests that the 

United States and its allies must counter the enemy’s ideology, his 

strategy, and the grievances he seeks to manipulate. The Army’s 

October 2004 Interim Counterinsurgency Operations Field Manual, FMI 

3-07.22, mentions all of these aspects of the struggle. Although the 

new manual recognizes al-Qa’ida as an insurgency, it does not speak 

to the unique challenges inherent in battling the first global insurgent 
movement. Some of the traditional counterinsurgency prescriptions 

are difficult to apply to a netted, transnational movement like alQa’ida. For example, “clear and hold” tactics do not work when the 

opponent disperses across 60 nations around the globe. Similarly, 

sanctuary is no longer a state or even a regional problem; with a 

global threat, it becomes an international issue. The scope of the 

challenge increases vastly when potential sponsors include not only 

nations such as Iran, Sudan, and Syria, but also regions in turmoil 

such as Chechnya and failed states such as Somalia.

Unlike extant counterinsurgency doctrine, the “National Strategy 

for Combating Terrorism” does not recognize the insurgent nature 

of the al-Qa’ida threat. Instead the document characterizes al-Qa’ida 

as a multinational terrorist network. Nonetheless, the methodology 

laid out in the strategy incorporates a variety of counterinsurgency 

techniques. These include winning the war of ideas, eliminating 

sanctuaries, interdicting external support, and diminishing 

underlying conditions.41 Interestingly, the National War College 

student report that inspired much of the Global War on Terrorism 

strategy paper, concluded that al-Qa’ida represented an evolution of 

terrorism which the authors dubbed “pansurgency.” The students 

defined this phenomenon as “an organized movement of nonstate 

actors aimed at the overthrow of values, cultures, or societies on 

a global level through the use of subversion and armed conflict, 

with the ultimate goal of establishing a new world order.”42 That 

conclusion was the most important idea in the study that did not 

make it into the National Security Council’s approved Global War on 

Terrorism strategy paper. Doubtless, the National Security Council 

preferred the illegitimacy inherent in the terrorist label rather than 

the ambiguity associated with an insurgent status. 

Greater emphasis on counterinsurgency methodology, however, 

would have improved the national counterterrorism strategy’s 

prescriptions for addressing al-Qa’ida’s ideology, strategy, and 

exploitation of grievances. Addressing grievances is essentially 

a tactical response. The current strategy rightly indicates that 

championing market-based economies, good governance, and the 

rule of law will serve to mitigate conditions that enemies exploit to 

recruit insurgents.43 But experiences in Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, 
2

and Iraq indicate the overwhelming resource challenges inherent in 

such nation building. “Draining the swamp” as a means of removing 

grievances based on poverty, lack of education, poor medical care, 

and culturally induced violence is a generational investment and 

fiscally prohibitive even on a state level, much less in a regional sense. 

Thus, the most effective means to resolve grievances is not through 

development or repair of shattered infrastructure, but via reform 

of the targeted state’s political process. Broadened opportunity 

to participate in the sine qua non of politics—the decisions about 

who gets what—undermines radical Islamic movements’ protected 

status in much of the Muslim world as virtually the only available 

option through which to express dissent. Al-Qa’ida is a religiously 

inspired revolutionary movement, but fundamentally it is political 

in nature.44 Thus competitors offering different solutions for 

extant social, economic, and political grievances most threaten the 

movement’s political potential. In a largely nondemocratic Islamic 

world, however, a move to greater electoral participation is fully 

as revolutionary as the theocratic vision peddled by bin Laden. 

Consequently, it remains a diplomatic and political hurdle of the 

highest order. 

At the operational level, the “National Strategy for Combating 

Terrorism” identifies a number of useful diplomatic, informational, 

military, and economic instruments for use against al-Qa’ida. The 

paper endorses a military strategy of annihilation, but it does not 

identify a defeat mechanism. Against mass mobilization style 

insurgencies, destruction of the covert infrastructure is the preferred 

defeat mechanism. Al-Qa’ida exerts far less control over a targeted 

population because its strategy establishes no shadow government, 

but the organization remains much more elusive as a result. Sir 

Robert Thompson recognized the dilemma posed by insurgencies 

without infrastructure. He noted that either organization or causes 

are the vital factors behind insurgencies; which one pertains dictates 

the appropriate strategic response.45

If Maoist people’s war features organizational strength, then 

the American Revolution illustrates insurgency motivated by an 

idea. The colonies possessed a degree of local government, but 

they lacked the kind of pervasive organizational control that would 
ensure citizens had to support the revolutionary movement. Instead, 

the glue that held the insurgency together was the popular idea of 

political independence. Similarly, al-Qa’ida’s strength lies in the 

appeal of its Salafist/Wahhabian philosophy. This insight suggests 

that al-Qa’ida has no structural center of gravity at the operational 

level. This verdict reflects the amorphous strategy employed by the 

group thus far and reflects its lack of success in either toppling Islamic 

governments or causing the West to withdraw from the Middle East. 

But it also underscores the tremendous potential energy possessed 

by a movement whose ideas appeal powerfully to a sizable minority 

throughout the Muslim world. 

Such an assessment dictates a different kind of response at the 

strategic level. The conflict is one between competing visions of Islam. 

Moderate Islam is willing and able to accommodate modernism; 

radical Islam insists that the religion return to the halcyon days of 

the 7th and 8th centuries. This is a civil war of sorts, and one which 

the West is poorly positioned to referee and ill-suited to encourage 

or end. The contest is not the venue of an information operation writ 

large. Rather, it is the age-old and fundamental debate on religion’s 

role in governance. Each people must make its own choice; Madison 

Avenue marketing techniques and western-style politics are neither 

necessary nor sufficient to sway the result. Instead a sophisticated 

form of political warfare must support and encourage moderate 

governments that champion tolerant forms of the Islamic faith, while 

opposing religious fascism. The “National Security” and “Combating 

Terrorism” strategies mention, but do not stress this war of ideas.46

It deserves more emphasis and attention, because failure in this 

arena will render moot even the destruction of al-Qa’ida. Osama 

bin Laden’s movement is merely representative of the threat posed 

by Salafist theology. Other groups, though less well-known, harbor 

similar political objectives, and the conflict will continue until the 

underlying ideas are rejected by the Muslim umma. The threat posed 

by radical Islam today resembles that posed in 1917 by communism—

a bad idea poised to justify the spread of totalitarianism.47

The strategic challenge is to discredit a fascist religious ideology 

before victim states experience a century of social, economic, and 

political oppression and recognize too late that Wahhabism is 
simply another failed philosophy of government. Key to meeting 

that challenge is to recognize threats as they are rather than as one 

wishes them to be. The present “National Security Strategy” fails this 

charge when it claims the enemy is terrorism rather than the ideology 

that justifies the terror. This analysis confuses the symptom for the 

disease. The real problem is a religiously inspired political ideology, 

the specified end state of which is global hegemony. Al-Qa’ida 

exemplifies this ideology and represents an emerging danger that 

demands a clear policy response. Such a policy should promulgate a 

comprehensive new doctrine encompassing the following elements:

• The United States opposes those nations whose governments 

embrace Salafist jihadist ideology.48

• The United States will seek to contain the spread of Salafist 

jihadist ideology.

• The United States will hold accountable those nations that 

host, sponsor, or support Salafist jihadist groups.

• The United States will support allies (or nations whose 

survival is considered vital to its security) if Salafist jihadist 

nations or movements threaten their sovereignty. 

A doctrine such as this, not unlike Cold War-era anticommunist 

policies, clarifies the national position, while enabling political leaders 

to protect American interests by selectively supporting authoritarian 

allies and/or encouraging political reform. This choice, reflecting the 

persistent foreign policy tension between idealism and realpolitik, 

remains the essence of effective diplomacy. 

Choosing wisely between idealism and realism is challenging 

and important because the militant Islamic threat which al-Qa’ida 

represents is not monolithic in nature.49 Branches of al-Qa’ida and 

organizations similar to bin Laden’s may be different in important 

ways. In the early days of the Cold War, the West thought the 

communist threat was monolithic; time and experience proved that 

it was not. Neither is the Salafist world. All politics are local—even 

the politics of religion. Counterinsurgency strategists must therefore 

evaluate each case on its own merits. While Islamic militants may 

cooperate with each other in a global fashion, the program they craft 
to topple a particular government requires independent analysis 

and a counterrevolutionary strategy that recognizes and leverages 

local conditions. It is also important to remember that insurgency is 

only one way to enact social and/or political change. Revolutions 

also occur peacefully (as the Shah of Iran learned in 1979), via coup 

(as Lenin demonstrated in 1917), or even by the ballot box (with the 

prospect of “one man, one vote, one time” should a totalitarian party 

win).50

Conclusion.

Al-Qa’ida is the most deadly of the more than 100 Islamic militant 

groups formed over the past 25 years.51 The danger it poses flows from 

its willingness to employ weapons of mass effect, its global reach, its 

focus on targeting America, and, most importantly, its revolutionary 

and expansionist ideology.52 The size of bin Laden’s organization, its 

political goals, and its enduring relationship with a fundamentalist 

Islamic social movement provide strong evidence that al-Qa’ida is 

not a terrorist group, but an insurgency. Armed action is its primary 

strategy, but there are intriguing aspects of mass mobilization 

techniques that serve to strengthen its organizational impact and 

resiliency. Elements unique to its methodology include transnational 

networking and a multiethnic constituency.53 Together these factors 

comprise an evolving style of spiritually based insurgency that is 

somewhat different from the Maoist people’s war model which 

underwrites most counterinsurgency doctrine.54

The disparate nature of the threat—in essence a global, but 

somewhat leisurely paced guerrilla war—makes it difficult to focus 

an effective strategic response. But al-Qa’ida’s organizational and 

strategic choices also make it tough for the movement to concentrate 

its power in ways that achieve its political ends. Thus far no targeted 

Islamic government has fallen to al-Qa’ida inspired violence. Nor 

have bin Laden’s attacks compelled or coerced America to alter 

its policies in the Middle East. The resulting contest of wills is 

classically asymmetric. Long-term success for the United States will 

require support for true political reform, a revolutionary cause in 

itself, among autocratic Islamic governments. This path, though 
potentially destabilizing in the short term, holds more promise in 

the long run as radical Islamic insurgents are forced to compete with 

more moderate political rivals in the market place of ideas. 

A clear policy—one that identifies Salafist ideology as the 

problem and enunciates America’s opposition to the politics of 

jihad—is essential. Victory also demands delegitimizing the radical 

Wahhabian strain of Islam that considers the killing of civilians not 

just a useful tactic, but also a religious imperative. This goal, though 

beyond the means of a non-Muslim country to effect independently, 

is the crux of the issue. The rise of Islamic fascism, championed by 

groups such as al-Qa’ida, is the central strategic problem of the age. 

Only victory in the simmering campaign against the emerging global 

Islamic insurgency will prevent that challenge from evolving into a 

much longer and more brutal clash of civilizations. 

ENDNOTES – CHAPTER 14

1. George W. Bush, National Strategy for Homeland Security, Washington, DC, 

2002, p. vii. 

2. According to this school, much of what Ian Lesser, et al., characterize as a 

new form of terrorism in their study, Countering the New Terrorism, Santa Monica, 

CA, 1999, is, in fact, a new version of insurgency. See for example, Anonymous, 

Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of 

America, Washington, DC, 2002, pp. xvii, 24, 279; Paul Rich, “Al Qaeda and the 

Radical Islamic Challenge to Western Strategy,” Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 

46, Spring 2003, p. 46; Thomas R. Mockaitis, “Winning Hearts and Minds in the 

‘War on Terrorism,’” Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 14, Spring 2003, pp. 21, 37; 

James Risen, “Evolving Nature of Al Qaeda is Misunderstood, Critic Says,” New 

York Times, November 8, 2004, sec. A, p. 18; Kimbra L. Fishel, “Challenging the 

Hegemon: Al Qaeda’s Elevation of Asymmetric Insurgent Warfare onto the Global 

Arena,” Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement, Vol. 11, Winter 2002, pp. 286, 

290; John P. Sullivan and Robert J. Bunker, “Multi-Lateral Counter-Insurgency 

Networks,” Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement, Vol. 11, Winter 2002, pp. 353, 

364, 366; Rohan Gunaratna, “The Genealogy of Al Qaeda,” Gaiko Forum, Vol. 14, 

Fall 2004, p. 16; Michael Vlahos, Terror’s Mask: Insurgency within Islam, Laurel, MD, 

2002, pp. 1-28, passim. Only the last of these studies attempts to establish why 

the threat constitutes insurgency instead of terrorism. The others simply assert 

that insurgency is the issue and then prescribe various remedies. Vlahos uses a 

cultural construct to establish the relationship between violence and the political 

movement it serves. He terms the existential negotiation between insurgent 

and regime “civilizational insurgency”—a notion that amounts to a contest for 
legitimacy. Terrorism, then, is not just a type of political violence, but “. . . an 

expression of changing relationships within culture and society,” p. 7. Of note is 

that, with regard to the threat’s status as terrorist or insurgent, Vlahos arrives at a 

similar judgment as this chapter via a different analytical methodology. 

3. “Terrorism—the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful 

violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or 

societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.” 

Department of Defense, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, Joint Publication 

1-02, Washington, DC, 2001, p. 428.

4. The recommended UN definition reads: “any action, in addition to actions 

already specified by the existing conventions on aspects of terrorism, the Geneva 

Conventions and Security Council resolution 1566, 2004, that is intended to cause 

death or serious bodily harm to civilians or noncombatants, when the purpose 

of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a 

Government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any 

act.” United Nations, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the 

Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, New 

York, 2004, pp. 51-52. 

5. Department of Defense, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, p. 207. 

6. Bard E. O’Neill, Insurgency & Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, 

Washington, DC, 1990, p. 13. 

7. The distinction between terror and terrorism is a common theme in the 

writings of Dr. Thomas A. Marks, perhaps the foremost authority on Maoist 

insurgency. See, for example, his exposition on the use of terror by the Philippine 

insurgents of the New People’s Army in Thomas A. Marks, Maoist Insurgency since 

Vietnam, London, 1996, pp. 151-173. 

8. Lawrence Freedman, “Terrorism and Strategy,” in Terrorism and International 

Order, Lawrence Freedman, et. al., London, 1986, p. 58.

9. Audrey Kurth Cronin, Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Washington, DC, 2004, 

pp. 1-3, 22-23, 83-86, 90-92, 96-97.

10. Michel Wieviorka, The Making of Terrorism, David Gordon White, trans., 

Chicago, 1988, pp. 3-41, 61-77. Wieviorka conducted a comparative analysis 

of four sets of terrorist groups. He investigated the nature of the relationships 

among the terrorists themselves, the social movements they originated from and 

the polities they sought to change. Wieviorka determined that the relationship 

between a terrorist and his parent social movement has been destroyed. The 

social movement’s radicalized terrorist descendent has abandoned his roots and 

the people whose message he claimed to champion. Over time, the violence of 

terrorism tends to become more nihilistic and its perpetrators less lucid. 

Wieviorka’s social antimovement construct explains the devolution of 

legitimate social movements (such as proletarian labor or Palestinian nationalism) 

to a state of terrorism. Groups in this in-between status become the antithesis 
of their parent social movement. The antimovements begin to advocate abstract 

notions that no longer reflect the real issues of the original interest group. For 

antimovements, political rivals become threats that must be fought or destroyed 

rather than competed against or negotiated with. Eventually these groups undergo 

radical disengagement from existing political systems. Soon utopian goals mandate 

destruction of existing social compacts in order to erect a new reality. 

Wieviorka asserts that social antimovements are similar in nature to totalitarian 

states and certain religious sects—the combination of which can produce the 

Islamic fascism of the Taliban. The extreme form of such antimovements may

spin off terrorist groups the way Abu Nidal’s cell emerged from the Palestinian 

Liberation Organization (social movement) and Fatah (social antimovement). The 

process by which this divorce occurs is termed inversion. Inversion transitions 

an already separated group from a stance of defensive aloofness to one of radical 

ideological offensiveness; the associated terrorist violence becomes increasingly 

apocalyptic and even self-consuming.

With regard to terrorism’s conflation of means and ends, The Quranic Concept 

of War states it plainly: “Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a 

means, it is the end in itself. . . . Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon 

the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose upon him.” Quoted in Yossef 

Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, Roseville, CA, 1999, p. 

xv.

11. Wievorka, pp. 63, 290, 297.

12. Wievorka, in fact, uses the term insurgency interchangeably with the 

term terrorism in his sociological analysis. The author is indebted to Dr. Thomas 

A. Marks for the insights which application of Wievorka’s theory provide to 

differentiating terrorism and insurgency. 

13. Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al-Qa’ida: Global Network of Terror, New York, 

2002, p. 240; Jason Burke, Al-Qa’ida: Casting a Shadow of Terror, London, 2003, p. 12; 

Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, 

pp. 162-164.

14. Al-Qa’ida has requested Islamic political parties to do propaganda, fundraising and recruiting on its behalf in order to “free a warrior to fight.” Gunaratna, 

p. 226. The term “Salafist” refers to those who seek to copy the way the earliest 

Muslims practiced Islam. “Wahhabi” refers to followers of the eighteenth century 

puritanical Arab mullah Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. As Jason Burke notes, 

“Bin Laden and his fellow extremists are Millenarian, fundamentalist, reformist, 

revivalist, Wahhabi/Salafi and, at least in their rootedness in modernity if not 

their programme, Islamist.” Burke, pp. 38-39. This essay uses both Wahhabi and 

Salafist to describe al-Qa’ida. 

15. Gunaratna, p. 5.

16. Bruce Hoffman, “The Changing Face of Al Qaeda and the Global War on 

Terrorism,“ Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 27, November-December, 2004, p. 

552; Burke, p. 10. 
17. Gunaratna, p. 8. For listings of world army strengths, see “Armed Forces 

of the World,” available from www.strategypage.com/fyeo/howtomakewar/databases/

armies/default.asp, Internet, accessed January 29, 2005.

18. For background on the Muslim Brotherhood, see John L. Esposito, The 

Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? New York, 1992, pp. 120-133. For the Muslim 

Brotherhood’s relationship to al-Qa’ida, see Gunaratna, p. 96.

19. Of 41 countries with populations at least 2/3 Muslim, the annual Freedom 

House assessment lists none as free (protecting both political and civic rights). 

Eight are shown as “partially free,” while the rest are categorized as “not free.” 

Seven of the eleven states listed as most repressive are Muslim. Zbigniew 

Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, New York, 2004, p. 

499. Of the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Bernard 

Lewis credits only Turkey with political, social, and economic freedom. Bernard 

Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, New York, 2003, p. 163. 

When religious dissidents do become subversive due to a lack of political “space,” 

they enjoy some advantages over their secular competitors because even ruthless 

tyrants have difficulty suppressing the religious infrastructure that shields the 

opposition. See Lewis, pp. 23, 133.

20. For the impact Azzam had on bin Laden, see Burke, pp. 68-71. For a 

discussion of al-Qa’ida’s apocalyptic qualities, see Gunaratna, pp. 93-94.

21. Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor who conducted a poll 

of Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and the United 

Arab Emirates discovered that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden tied for 

fourth place on a list of most admired world leaders behind Jacques Chirac of 

France (1st), deceased Egyptian president Nasser (2nd) and Hezbollah’s leader in 

Lebanon (3nd). Telhami agrees there is a battle for hearts and minds afoot. “But, 

unfortunately, things went the way al-Qaeda wanted them to go rather than the 

way the U.S. wanted them to go in terms of public opinion. . . . What we’re seeing 

now is a disturbing sympathy with al-Qaeda coupled with resentment toward the 

United States.” Dafna Linzer, “Polls Showing Growing Arab Rancor at U.S.,” July 

23, 2004, available from www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/articles/A7080-2004Jul22.

html, Internet, accessed February 10, 2005. Some 60 percent of British Muslims 

believe al-Qa’ida is “fighting the right fight,” while 95 percent of Saudi middle 

class and professional men between the ages of 21 and 45 supported bin Laden in a 

2002 poll. Vlahos, pp. 19-20. The 9/11 Commission Report cites similarly negative 

polling data. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United 

States, The 9/11 Commission Report, Washington, DC, 2004, p. 375.

22. Burke, pp. 5-6; Yossef Bodansky, The Secret History of the Iraq War, New York, 

2004, pp. xvi-xvii. The virulent Wahhabi strain of Islam, combining intolerance 

with a call to jihad, is promulgated in particular by Saudi Arabia. That country 

alone established some 1,500 mosques, 210 Islamic centers, and 2,000 madrasahs 

worldwide between 1982 and 2002. This level of proselytizing accounts, at least 

in part, for the increasing popularity of radical Islam and its sanction of political 
violence. Dore Gold, Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global 

Terrorism, Washington, DC, 2003, pp. 12-13, 126. 

23. Henry Munson, Jr., Islam and Revolution in the Middle East, New Haven, CT, 

1988, pp. 104, 125-137.

24. Freedman, p. 65.

25. There are those who argue that al-Qa’ida’s long-term objective encompasses 

nothing less than the destruction of the United States and the West. See Earl H. 

Tilford, “The War on Terror: World War IV,” ROA National Security Report, October 

2004, pp. 37-44.

26. Thomas Marks’ work stresses the critical linkage between the ideology 

of the dissident leadership and the practical grievances of the masses. He sees 

mobilization, orchestrated by covert political infrastructure, as the key operational 

connector between insurgent leaders and their followers. See Marks, Maoist 

Insurgency since Vietnam, pp. 285-288; Thomas A. Marks, “Ideology of Insurgency: 

New Ethnic Focus or Old Cold War Distortions?” Small Wars & Insurgencies, 

Vol. 15, Spring 2004, pp. 107-128; Thomas A. Marks, “Evaluating Insurgent/

Counterinsurgent Performance,” Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 11, Winter 2000, 

pp. 33-34.

27. Department of the Army, Counterinsurgency Operations, Field ManualInterim No. 3-07.22, Washington, DC, 2004, pp. 1-5 to 1-7. Each style exhibits 

strengths that make it dangerous and weaknesses that leave it vulnerable. Mass 

mobilization is best exemplified by the people’s war waged by Mao Tse-Tung’s 

Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Mao’s experience and writings provided, in 

essence, a blueprint for insurgency that has been the most successful and thus 

most widely copied strategy. People’s war emphasizes politics over military 

considerations. Accordingly, Mao’s strategy is designed to build strength in a 

gradual fashion rather than seize power in a lightning strike. Key operational 

elements of that strategy include the mass line, the united front, political warfare, 

covert infrastructure, protracted war, and international support. The mass line is 

a feedback mechanism that translates the people’s complaints into elements of 

the party’s pronounced policy. The united front is a broad assemblage of social 

movements, political parties, and trade organizations that also oppose the existing 

government. The insurgency makes common cause with these organizations 

when convenient and looks to infiltrate and subvert as many as possible in a bid to 

broaden its own base and power. Political warfare—the concerted use of soft power 

(such as propaganda, public diplomacy and subversion of the enemy’s political 

or media elements)—is used to enhance the party’s own political position while 

undermining that of the enemy. Infrastructure is the covert “shadow government” 

that is built and employed to wrest control of the population gradually from 

the existing government. This infrastructure also is the primary link between 

revolutionary leaders and their followers—it is the mechanism by which control 

of the human terrain is forged. Protracted war, perhaps the most well-known of 

Mao’s devices, makes a virtue of military weakness by starting with local guerrilla 

forces and then developing them into larger, more capable mobile formations 
and ultimately regular units that engage the enemy in conventional combat. 

This progression is phased, starting with the strategic defensive, then a period of 

preparation for offensive operations and culminating with the assumption of the 

strategic offensive. International support is the final pillar in the Maoist strategic 

construct. It stresses the importance of external diplomatic, military and economic 

assistance for the insurgency and/or hindrance of the target government. Mao’s 

thoughts on his strategy may be found in Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Military Writing of 

Mao Tse-Tung, Peking, 1967. General overviews of Maoist strategy are available in 

John Ellis, From the Barrel of a Gun: A History of Guerrilla, Revolutionary and CounterInsurgency Warfare, from the Romans to the Present, London, 1995, pp. 177-199; and 

O’Neill, pp. 34-41.

The armed action option subordinates political to military considerations. 

Mobilization of the population and patient development of covert infrastructure 

do not play critical roles in this strategy. Instead, the operational link between 

grievance-inspired followers and ideology-driven leaders is the campaign of 

violence itself in this style of insurgency. Subcategories of this approach include 

rural-based foco insurgencies and urban warfare insurgencies. The former is best 

illustrated by the Cuban revolution. Foco insurgencies are marked by a relatively 

small military force that commences guerrilla operations and recruits additional 

membership via the success of its military strikes. These strikes create new and 

exacerbate existing grievances of the people. O’Neill, pp. 41-45. There is no separate 

party that directs military conduct; instead, in the words of Regis Debray “. . . the 

guerrilla force is the party in embryo.” Regis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution? 

Armed Struggle and Political Struggle in Latin America, New York, 1967, p. 106. Foco

strategies have not been particularly successful outside of Cuba; they lack the 

staying power that mass mobilization provides and have no reserve manpower 

available to tap following catastrophic military setbacks. 

The urban warfare variation of the armed action strategy features raids, 

bombings, assassinations, and sabotage against political and economic targets in 

the target country’s leading cities. The goal is to create chaos and discredit the 

government in the eyes of its people. The population’s loss of confidence in the 

government’s ability to provide the first mandate of its charter—security for 

its citizens—may lead the citizenry to side with the insurgents. This strategy is 

clearly at work in contemporary Iraq. Without an analytical framework such 

as Wieviorka’s, the urban warfare strategy is hard to distinguish from similar 

patterns of terrorism. Palestine in 1947, Cyprus in 1958, and South Yemen in 1967 

provide successful examples of urban warfare. Otherwise, this style has proven 

as barren as its foco counterpart because effective police and security forces have 

been able to either mitigate or destroy urban insurgents. See O’Neill, pp. 45-47; 

Walter Laqueur, Guerrilla: A Historical and Critical Study, Boston, 1976, pp. 343-352. 

Laqueur equates “urban guerrilla warfare” to terrorism, p. xi, but his description 

of the strategy and its development is useful. Moreover, he concludes that the style 

is relatively ineffective due to its lack of an adequate political component, p. 404.

28. Gunaratna, pp. 146-149; Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama 

Bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism, Boston, 1999, pp. 216-219; Through Our Enemies’ 

Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, p. 56. 
30

29. Bodansky, pp. 304, 310, 345-346, 405-406, 426-7, 430, 439. For evidence of 

collaboration with Iraq on the development of chemical weapons, see Through Our 

Enemies’ Eyes, pp. 124, 188-189. Between 1996 and 1998, 10 percent of Osama bin 

Laden’s phone calls were placed to locations in Iran. Gunaratna, p. 12. 

30. Don D. Chipman, “Osama bin Laden and Guerrilla War,” Studies in Conflict 

& Terrorism, Vol. 26, May-June 2003, pp. 155-167; Hoffman, p. 555.

31. Burke, p. 128. For al-Qa’ida’s appreciation of the merits of conventional 

fighting, see Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, pp. 104-105.

32. For the use of terror in support of a protracted war methodology, see Lesser, 

et al., p. 39. On al-Qa’ida’s preference for suicide attacks, see Gunaratna, pp. 91-

92. 

33. The notion of covert political infrastructure as a mechanism to “dominate 

human terrain” is a key insight found throughout much of Dr. Thomas A. 

Marks’ work on Maoist insurgency. See, for example, Thomas A. Marks, “Urban 

Insurgency,” Small Wars & Insurgency, Vol. 14, Autumn 2003, p. 142. For a series 

of case studies on insurgent infrastructure in Thailand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, 

and Peru, see Marks, Maoist Insurgency since Vietnam, pp. 26-34, 96-110, and 

154-169, 189-194, 261-268, respectively. The salient point with respect to Islamic 

insurgency is to what degree infrastructure, or something like it, pertains as a 

viable mechanism for attaining political power. 

34. O’Neill, pp. 77, 93.

35. Da’wa is not to be confused with the Islamic al-Da’wa political party in 

Iraq (a descendent of an Iranian-backed Shiite revolutionary movement founded 

in 1958). Rather, it is a type of Islamic proselytizing that, in effect, has morphed 

into a way of seeking what Emmanuel Sivan calls “‘re-Islamization from below,’ 

the long-term infiltration into society’s every nook and cranny as a way to gain 

eventual political control.” See Emmanuel Sivan, “Why Radical Muslims Aren’t 

Taking Over Governments,” in Revolutionaries and Reformers: Contemporary Islamist 

Movements in the Middle East, Albany, NY, 2003, p. 4. 

36. Abdel Salam Sidahmed and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds., Islamic 

Fundamentalism, Boulder, CO, 1996, pp. 61-66; Sivan, pp. 1-9; Barry Rubin, ed., 

Revolutionaries and Reformers: Contemporary Islamist Movements in the Middle East, 

Albany, NY: 2003, p. 211. More than 20 percent of the Islamic nongovernmental 

organizations (NGOs) worldwide have been infiltrated by radical militant 

organizations. Many Islamic NGOs originally were established and remain 

controlled by these militant forces, which use these organizations as fronts to 

radicalize and mobilize unsuspecting populations. Gunaratna, pp. 6, 227, 239. 

37. Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel, Princeton, 1970, pp. 354-355. 

38. For an assessment of al-Qa’ida’s evolving strategy with regard to nonUnited States targets, see Byrnjar Lia and Thomas Hegghamer, “Jihadi Strategic 

Studies: The Alleged Al Qaida Policy Study Preceding the Madrid Bombings,” 

Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 27, September-October 2004, pp. 355-375. 
3

39. Lesser, et al., pp. 41, 89-90; Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: 

The Global Rise of Religious Violence, Berkeley, 2000, p. 124; Burke, p. 163. 

40. Brad McAlister concludes that al-Qa’ida will fail for another reason—

the inherent inefficiencies of its chosen networked organizational construct. 

Specifically, he posits that the group’s size and complexity are disadvantages 

rather than virtues as usually assumed. See Brad McAllister, “Al Qaeda and the 

Innovative Firm: Demythologizing the Network,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 

Vol. 27, July-August 2004, pp. 297-319. 

41. George W. Bush, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, Washington, DC, 

2003, pp. 21-24. 

42. National War College Student Task Force on Combating Terrorism, 

Combating Terrorism in a Globalized World, Washington, DC, 2002, p. 10.

43. Bush, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, p. 23.

44. Marks, “The Ideology of Insurgency: New Ethnic Focus or Old Cold War 

Distortions?” p. 125.

45. Robert Thompson, Revolutionary War in World Strategy, 1945-1969, New 

York, 1970, pp. 8-9.

46. George W. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 

Washington, DC, 2002, p. 6; Bush, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, pp. 

23-24. The importance of political warfare is a common refrain among both 

counterinsurgent and counterterrorist strategists. The problem is that no one is 

quite certain how to operationalize the concept. See Paul Davis and Brian Michael 

Jenkins, Deterrence and Influence in Counterterrorism: A Component in the War on al 

Qaeda, Santa Monica, CA, 2002, pp. 46-47; and Stephen Biddle, “War Aims and War 

Termination,” in Defeating Terrorism: Strategic Issue Analyses, ed. John R. Martin, 

Carlisle, PA, 2002, pp. 10-12.

47. The Soviet analogy was posed to a Washington, DC, foreign policy 

symposium by General John Abizaid, USA, Commanding General of U.S. Central 

Command, in October 2004. See David Ignatius, “Achieving Real Victory Could 

Take Decades,” Washington Post, December 26, 2004, p. B1. 

48. “Salafist jihadists” is the term employed by General Abizaid to describe the 

generic militant Islamic threat which al-Qa’ida exemplifies. See Ignatius, p. B1.

49. In the days immediately following 9/11, analysts feared that al-Qa’ida 

represented a new type of terrorism: millennial in character, monolithic in nature, 

global in scope, huge in scale, and equipped with weapons of mass destruction that 

would render its challenge more existential than any previously encountered. More 

recent scholarship indicates that al-Qa’ida comprises a relatively small inner circle 

of bin Laden followers, a panoply of loosely linked but similarly motivated spinoff groups, and a guiding ideology that motivates both the original organization 

and its clones. See Burke, pp. 7-17. For a broader overview of the variance resident 

in the Islamic militant camp, see Esposito, pp. 243-253.
3

50. Coups are far more prevalent historically than revolutions wrought by 

insurgency. Walter Laqueur’s dated but still valuable study notes that between 

1960 and 1975, 120 coups took place while only five guerrilla movements came to 

power (three in Portuguese Africa, one in Laos and one in Cambodia). See Laqueur, 

p. 408. The Islamic government in Sudan, for example, came to power via a coup 

supported by the Sudanese army in June 1989. See Burke, p. 132.

51. Gunaratna, p. 240.

52. Bin Laden’s emphasis on defeating America before overthrowing apostate 

Islamic states represents a significant switch in philosophy and strategy from that 

of previous Islamic militant groups. See Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, pp. 170-177.

53. Normally al-Qa’ida’s networking receives the lion’s share of the analytical 

attention, but it is perhaps even more important that the group is one of only two 

multiethnic militant movements formed since 1968. (The other is Aum Shinrikyo, 

another religiously based organization that employs terror in pursuit of its policy 

objectives.) This open door policy enables al-Qa’ida to mobilize disaffected 

Muslims worldwide. Gunaratna, p. 87.

54. Steven Metz first suggested the concept of a “spiritual insurgency.” Metz 

posited that an insurgency’s ideology, goals and strategy are less important than 

its psychological motivation in terms of understanding its character. To that end, 

he coined both “spiritual” and “criminal” as categories of insurgency worthy of 

further study. See Steven Metz, The Future of Insurgency, Carlisle Barracks, PA, 

1993, p. 9. 
3

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ANDREW J. CERNICKY, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, is a 

command pilot and a graduate of the U.S. Army War College Class of 

2005. He currently serves as Chief, Plans Support Division, Strike Analysis 

Branch, United States Strategic Command, Offutt AFB, Nebraska. He 

has served in a variety of command, operational and support positions 

over the past 19 years. Most recently, Colonel Cernicky commanded the 

394th Combat Training Squadron at Whiteman AFB, Missouri. He has 

flown combat missions in the B-52G during Operation DESERT STORM 

and in the B-2 during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. Colonel Cernicky 

holds masters degrees of Military Operational Art and Science from the 

Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Alabama; and Business 

Administration from Louisiana Tech University.

JIM COONEY is a 1989 Graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy after 

which he entered the U.S. Navy Supply Corps. His sea tours include 

Division Officer tours aboard the USS Denver (LPD-9) and USS Ranger

(CV-61), and a Department Head tour aboard USS Dubuque (LPD-8). 

Commander Cooney has been stationed in San Diego, California; Rota, 

Spain; Sasebo, Japan; and Naples, Italy. He holds a Bachelors degree 

in History from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Masters Degree in 

Petroleum Management from the University of Kansas. He is a graduate 

of the U.S. Army War College Class of 2005.

DAVE GERARD is an infantryman and a graduate of the U.S. Army 

War College Class of 2005. Over the past 2 decades, he has served in a 

variety of command and staff positions in light, mechanized, airborne, 

and ranger units, participating in deployments to Haiti, Bosnia, and 

Afghanistan. Most recently, Lieutenant Colonel Gerard served as 

commander of 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd 

Airborne Division, deploying to Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. 

He is currently assigned as the Joint Training Policy Branch Chief in the 

Joint Training Directorate, J7, Joint Chiefs of Staff.

SAMUEL LEE HENRY, a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army National 

Guard, is an infantry officer and a graduate of the U.S. Army War College 

Class of 2005. He has served in a variety of command and staff positions 

in CONUS over the past 22 years. He commanded 2nd Battalion, 142nd 
3

Infantry, 36th Infantry Division in Lubbock, Texas, and most recently 

served as the Technology Team Chief for the U.S. Army’s Improvised 

Explosive Device Task Force at the Pentagon. He currently serves on 

the 36th Infantry Division staff deployed to the Balkans in support of 

KFOR. Lieutenant Colonel Henry holds a master’s degree of Business 

Administration from Touro University, Cypress, California.

JOHN J. HICKEY, JR., a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, is an 

information operations officer and a graduate of the U.S. Army War 

College Class of 2005. He has served in a variety of command and 

staff positions in CONUS, Europe, and Asia over the past 20 years. 

Lieutenant Colonel Hickey also served as the Chief Information Officer 

Joint Spectrum Center, Annapolis, Maryland. He currently serves as 

Chief Engineer, Defense Information Systems Agency, Falls Church, 

Virginia. Lieutenant Colonel Hickey holds a masters degree in Business 

Administration from Jacksonville State University and an undergraduate 

degree in Corporate Finance from the University of Alabama.

BJARNE M. IVERSON is a U.S. Army engineer lieutenant colonel and 

a graduate of the U.S. Army War College Class of 2005. He also serves 

as a Middle East Foreign Area Officer. Over the past 21 years, he has 

served in a variety of command and staff positions in the United States, 

Germany, and the Middle East. Prior to attending the U.S. Army War 

College, he commanded the 70th Engineer Battalion (Combat), 1st 

Armored Division, in Baghdad, Iraq, and then served as the politicalmilitary advisor to the Commander, Combined Joint Task Force-Seven, 

from April 2003 to July 2004. Lieutenant Colonel Iverson currently 

serves as the Chief of Staff, Gulf Region Division, U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers, in Baghdad. He is a veteran of Operations JUST CAUSE, 

DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM, and IRAQI FREEDOM. Lieutenant 

Colonel Iverson is a graduate of George Mason University and holds 

master’s degrees in Middle Eastern studies from Princeton University 

and strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College.

GREGORY C. KRAAK, a colonel in the U.S. Army, is a field artillery 

officer and a graduate of the U.S. Army War College Class of 2005. He 

has served in a variety of command and staff positions in CONUS and 

Europe over the past 23 years. Colonel Kraak commanded 6th Battalion, 

32nd Field Artillery (MLRS) in III Corps Artillery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 

and most recently served as the Chief, Future Force Integration at the 
3

Field Artillery Center at Fort Sill. He currently serves as Chief of the 

Field Artillery Center’s Fires Strategy and Policy Group, Fort Sill, 

Oklahoma. Colonel Kraak holds master’s degrees in National Security 

and Strategic Studies from both the United States Army and Naval War 

College, as well as a Master in Business Administration from Syracuse 

University.

PIERRE E. MASSAR, a lieutenant colonel in the California Army 

National Guard, is an ordnance officer and a graduate of the U.S. Army 

War College Class of 2005. He has served in a variety of command and 

staff positions in CONUS and Europe over the past 20 years. Lieutenant 

Colonel Massar commanded the 540th Main Support Battalion, 40th 

Infantry Division at Bell, California. He will be serving as the Operations 

Officer, 40th Corps Support Group, Long Beach, California. Lieutenant 

Colonel Massar holds a master’s degree in Business Administration 

from The College of William and Mary.

TODD A. MEGILL, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, is a Military 

Intelligence Officer and a graduate of the U.S. Army War College Class 

of 2005. He has served in a variety of command and staff positions in 

CONUS, Korea, and Europe over the past 21 years. He commanded 

the 104th Military Intelligence Battalion/4th Infantry Division at Fort 

Hood, Texas, and in Iraq during OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM, and 

most recently served as the G2, 4th Infantry Division and Task Force 

Ironhorse while in Iraq. Lieutenant Colonel Megill currently serves 

as Director, Intelligence Plans and Special Projects, G8 United States 

Army, The Pentagon, Washington, DC. Lieutenant Colonel Megill 

holds master’s degrees in Strategic Intelligence from the Joint Military 

Intelligence College; Defense Intelligence Agency; and in Military Arts 

and Science from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 

Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.

MARK MILLS, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, is a field artillery 

officer and was a graduate of the U.S. Army War College Class of 2005. 

He has served in a variety of command, staff and foreign area officer 

positions in CONUS and Europe over the past 22 years, to include 

command of the 4th Battalion, 11th Field Artillery at Fort Wainwright, 

Alaska. He currently serves as Director, Fire Support Evaluation 

Directorate at the Army’s Evaluation Center in Alexandria, Virginia. 

Lieutenant Colonel Mills holds a master’s degree in Political Science 
3

from the University of Kansas and in Strategic Studies from the U.S. 

Army War College.

MICHAEL F. MORRIS, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, is 

an artillery officer and a graduate of the U.S. Army War College Class 

of 2005. He has served in a variety of command and staff positions in 

CONUS and abroad over the past 20 years. Most recently, Lieutenant 

Colonel Morris served as the Inspector-Instructor for Third Air Naval 

Gunfire Liaison Company (3d ANGLICO) and as a planner for 1st 

Marine Expeditionary Force in Operation Iraqi Freedom I. He currently 

serves as a Faculty Advisor at the Marine Corps Command and Staff 

College in Quantico, Virginia. A 1985 graduate of the U.S. Naval 

Academy, Lieutenant Colonel Morris holds Master’s Degrees from 

American Military University (Unconventional Warfare), Marine Corps 

University (Military Science), and the U.S. Army War College (Strategic 

Studies).

WILLIAMSON MURRAY is currently professor emeritus of history at 

Ohio State University. He has served as the Harold Johnson Professor 

of Military History at the U.S. Army War College. Dr. Murray is also the 

author and editor of a number of major works, the most recent of which 

is A War to Be Won, Fighting the Second World War, published by Harvard 

University Press.

JAMES D. SHUMWAY is a colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 

and a graduate of the U.S. Army War College Class of 2005. Over the 

past 23 years, he served in various command and staff positions in 

Europe and the United States to include command of the 20th Engineer 

Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division, at Fort Hood, Texas, from 2000-2002. 

Most recently, Colonel Shumway served as a strategic planner in the 

Army Initiatives Group, Headquarters, Department of the Army, 

Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7. He currently serves as Commander, 

Engineer Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Giessen, Germany. Colonel 

Shumway holds a masters degree in Civil Engineering-Construction 

Management from the Pennsylvania State University. 

KEN TOVO, a colonel in the U.S. Army, is a Special Forces officer and a 

graduate of the U.S. Army War College Class of 2005. He has served in a 

variety of command and staff positions in the United States and Europe 
3

over the past 22 years. Colonel Tovo commanded the 3d Battalion, 10th 

Special Forces Group (Airborne)and most recently served as a planner 

in the J-35, United States Special Operations Command. He currently 

serves as Commander, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne). Colonel 

Tovo holds master’s degrees in Military Arts and Science from the U.S. 

Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, 

and National Strategy and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War 

College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.