WASHINGTON -- United States and allied military planners have done a poor job of capturing lessons learned, deluding themselves into thinking that they can dictate the shape of future conflicts, a retired British general told an Association of the United States Army panel Tuesday, Oct. 4.
The consequences of that inability to absorb all lessons from previous conflicts and realistically prepare for future engagements have played themselves out in Iraq, retired Maj. Gen. Jonathan Bailey, currently the director of the Center for Defense and International Security Studies, said during a session on the implications of irregular security challenges.
“Should we really feign surprise that counter-insurgency and nation-building are required in current operations?” he asked rhetorically. “Do assertions of novelty actually mask neglect, because these have surely been the most likely operations for decades. … Actually, we’re making up for lost time. Frankly our whole lessons learned system on this big strategically operational level has failed.”
Fundamentally, Bailey said, western militaries suffer from a century-long delusion that wars can be decisively and quickly won using high technology.
“The First World War was supposed to be over by Christmas, Hitler thought that Barbarossa in June ’41 would be over by December ’41, I bet the gang on day one of the Korean War didn’t know that the Korean War would still be going on in 2005,” he said. “Israel persuaded itself that it had won hi-tech decisive victories in ’67 and ’73 and was uniquely ill-suited to deal with the Intifada when it came.”
The problem leads to a “delusion of willful wishing that wars will be he short, decisive and high-tech,” Bailey said.
“We then design forces for that and when events prove otherwise we are remarkably ill-prepared to face what comes,” he said. “We are unprepared for it logistically: the attrition and casualties, money and political fall-out, we’re just not ready for what is required: enduring operations which have a high attrition of their own.”
The problem is compounded by the notion that coalition forces can achieve or have achieved information superiority, he said.
“Is this realistic? In Iraq today … we do not have information superiority,” he said. “Our forces in Iraq today walk around in specially procured camouflage uniforms that make them distinctive. They have specially procured vehicles which are painted in special military paint so that they stand out from everything around them. Our bases are not unknown to the enemy. They are highly illuminated, well-known, surrounded by defenses and goodness knows what and our locations are not unknown to the enemy. We drive down predictable routes necessarily so our movement is absolutely known to the opposition. By contrast the enemy -- we don’t know what they particularly look like, they don’t wear distinctive clothing to let us know. Their vehicles, goodness knows, the routes they travel, goodness knows, where they’re located, wish we knew.”
The solution, Bailey argued, is not to break the armed forces into small specialized units, but rather to train all the forces to be able to deal with a range of problems.
“The future is uncertain, the actions of the enemy are uncertain, we don’t know what they’re going to throw at us,” he said. “It’s much better to have a single force that can probably do well enough at everything rather than dividing up into specialists. All you’re ensuring is that you’ve got a very small force capable of dealing with whatever it is that comes along. What you really need is a force that can operate across the spectrum of conflict on a continuum of operations.”