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India, the world’s largest democracy has begun the process of voting to select a new government. The elections are a mammoth operation lasting over a month given that there are more than 700 million eligible voters choosing between a plethora of national and regional parties.

The two major national parties, Congress and BJP, have steadily declined in power and influence over the years and have been forced to rely on regional partners to hold together a government. The current ruling power, left wing Congress Party has worked in close conjunction with Washington on terrorism issues and has stayed relatively quiet given its nuclear armed rival neighbor has seriously destablized.

However, if the hawkish BJP were to win, the United States might have to reconstitute its South Asia policy as India might ready to show its teeth to Pakistan. The two nations have fought in several wars since partition including a brief conflict during the late 1990s under the BJP government. It is unlikely that India will immediately change its stance as BJP will face pressure from its allies and Congress, but if India steers away from its current direction and flexes its muscles at its neighbor, Pakistani government will quickly shift its efforts against Taliban to focus on India. This might be huge blow to U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This series on the Battle of Wanat in Foreign Policy is enormously interesting and takes a somewhat rare close tactical examination of a platoon level engagement in the War on Terror.  It’s a seven-part series, but actually makes for pretty quick reading and has some very good analysis/military history for those who enjoy it.  Articles tend to fall into analysis pieces on large scale strategy or action-oriented accounts of combat.  This piece straddles both and, especially from the perspective of an ROTC cadet, has some very good takeaways for military leadership.

Here’s your daily bit of controversy from Thomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco and The Gamble: a proposal to shut-down the service academies and divert the money to expanding ROTC.  The general argument isn’t an entirely new one: basically that the service academies offer second rater non-military educations are exorbidant cost, so their operation simply isn’t justified.  Small Wars Journal compiled some pretty interesting articles in response that put the importance (or perhaps unimportance) in greater perspective. 

Definitely worth taking a look at.

It’s been a pretty hectic week around here, but here are a couple quick stories of interest some of you might have missed:

1) The Obama administration has raised a firestorm of controversy with their recent implication that some lawyers who wrote memoranda authorizing enhanced interrogation techniques could be prosecuted for their work.  This has returned a core part of the debate on torture to the forefront: does torture actually work?  A recent confirmation from the CIA says… well, actually, yes it does.  The CIA  has reportedly confirmed that enhanced interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (including waterboarding) did in fact help foil an apparent plot to attack the US Bank Tower in Los Angeles. 

2) The Pentagon is once again facing very real concerns that security breaches by hackers could materially compromise US combat effectiveness.  Theft of technical data, whether via cyber-attack or old-fashioned espionage, isn’t new and some US adversaries (notably China, the likely perpetrator here) are exceptionally proficient at it.  What is new is an enemy breaching USAF air-traffic control systems and discovering the locations of US military aircraft.  In war, the entire point of military intelligence is to determine the dispositions and movements of enemy forces.  The possibility of a potential enemy uncovering such information over the Internet, with comparative ease, is more than a bit alarming.

For a further analysis of Somalian piracy (with a slightly different perspective), I suggest reading the article Somalia’s Piracy Offers Lessons in Global Governance by Christopher Jasparro, Associate Professor, National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College.

Today’s pirate headline: Somali pirates vow to hunt down, kill Americans

The dangers of a failed state are multi-faceted, ranging from regional power-vacuum to breeding ground for terrorism. It is relatively recent, however, that the utterly imploded state of Somalia began to present the seemingly outmoded threat of piracy. To understand the nature of the modern threat, as well as the recent victory by the US Navy, it is necessary to understand the recent history of Somalia.

Long story short, Somalia isn’t a very nice place to live. There hasn’t been a functional, central government since 1991, when the Somali Civil War broke out. This Civil War was the cause of the instability and ultimate famine that forced international intervention in 1992, during Operation Restore Hope. Many Somalis resented the foreign intervention, however, and there was large scale resistance to the UN presence, culminating in the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 (the famous “Blackhawk Down” incident). After US forces withdrew in the aftermath of the battle, the UN was forced to severely scale-back operations until the UN withdrew altogether in 1995. more

A suicide bomb attack last Friday killed 5 US soldiers and 2 Iraqi police officers in the deadliest attack in more than a year.  This doesn’t seem to be part of a larger trend and it is doubtful that it heralds a new wave of attacks.  It is, however, a reminder that it’s still a war over there.  Things are running well in Iraq, but it’s still dangerous and there’s still fighting.  Just because there isn’t news coverage doesn’t mean there isn’t a war.

As Iraq continues to stabilize and both the Army and Marines continue to refine their counter-insurgency (COIN) abilities, officers in both organizations are beginning to express concerns about the military’s ability to express full-spectrum dominance.  Basically, the problem is this: it is very difficult for militaries to be good at everything.  COIN operations require certain equipment and training apart from what is required to win a conventional battle.  A force that is extremely good at COIN, with a heavy training emphasis on local interaction and a low ratio of “heavy” equipment, such as armor and anti-tank weapons, could be in a good deal of trouble if confronted with a conventional heavy force.  Conversely, a conventional force is somewhat ill suited to COIN operations, as evident from the early days of the Iraqi Insurgency. 

This Washington Post article highlights the problem that as we move further towards an almost exclusive focus on COIN operations, we inevitably lose some of our conventional fighting prowess.  It is still unlikely in the extreme that any major nation will engage us a stand-up conventional fight, but a well-trained, quasi-conventional force, like Hezbollah, can wreak havoc on a force well-adapted to COIN operations, as exemplified in the 2006 Lebanon War.  As the article notes, Israeli forces, well-adapted to COIN in Palestine, took major losses in the fighting.

The outcome of the Lebanon War has divided professionals on the issue.  With the recent, major reductions to the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS), it appears that new conventional warfighting programs will be effectively on hold fo the foreseeable future.  With the present budgetary contraints and the corrent operating environment, this seems like a good decision, but the possibility of a Lebanon-esque “quasi-conventional” fight remains. 

Thomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco and The Gamble, notes on his blog that some within the Army, notably COL Gian Gentile, advocate a flexible, general force capable of conducting either type of operation, but it is unclear how this could be executed.  As the Washington Post article notes, one year between deployments simply isn’t enough time to train in types of warfare other than COIN and a generalized force risks falling into the trap of being a jack of all trades and master of none. 

Exactly what to do at this point is unclear.  The tack that Secretary Gates is taking is clearly a focus on COIN, and is likely a very good option at this point.  The threat of a Hezollah-type enemy and a quasi-conventional conflict remains, however, and it remains to be seen how a US force tailored for COIN would fare.  The possibility of a divided force, that is separate “heavy” forces to deal with conventional fights and “light” forces for COIN operations is possible, but expensive.  It also results in a de facto shrinking of the Army’s available forces for any single mission.  We’ll continue to monitor the debate and report whatever direction is ultimately taken.

NYTimes Magazine posted an excellent piece on the Pakistani President and the difficulties of governing the country. The article raised many of the points being raised by experts around the world: Pakistan may be more of threat than Iran and North Korea because it has five dozen nuclear weapons in its stockpile.

President Obama (and former President Bush) has recognized the centrality of Pakistan in the global effort to combat terrorism as well as the potential danger of the country falling into the hands of the Taliban, who currently control large swaths of land in the ungovernable Northwest Frontier Province. Thus, the administration’s new strategy included a much larger share of nonmilitary aid to Pakistan in efforts to stabilize the country.

However, the strategy does have serious drawbacks. The United States, in return for additional aid, is expecting Pakistan to do more to combat Al Queda and Taliban in the region. However, it is believed that some aspects of the Pakistani military, especially the intelligence service, are colluding with Taliban and other known terrorist groups. In addition the aid might reinforce the view in Pakistan that the embattled Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, is an American puppet.

As the center of American military operations switch from Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan will continue to gain importance in the U.S. agenda and thus it is critical to keep an eye on the situation. Zardari defused the most recent crisis by reappointing the judges who were removed under the Musharaff regime. However, the reappointment might lead to even more serious set of problems that will test the resolve of democracy in the country.

Defense shake-ups from the Obama Administration have long been anticipated, but only now are the likely details of the revisions to force structure beginning to emerge.  At the moment, it appears the Army will face some of the largest changes as the Pentagon prepares to face current and future threats.

One of the programs likely to be cut or severely scaled back will be to the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS).  Secretary Gates has already made it quite clear in the past that he is not convinced of the program’s utility or of it’s exorbident cost.  The real issue here is that FCS is largely designed to enhance the Army’s dominance in a convention war against a conventional enemy, whereas virtually all likely near-future opponents will engage is insurgency style conflicts.  Additionally, while many aspects of FCS are supposed to be completed soon, with the first FCS equipped units fielded in 2015, the entire program has been fraught with so many delays and budget-overruns that it is likely DoD planners are considering very large cuts.

The other major debate is over manpower.  The Army is currently at its authorized strength of 547,000, but many have advocated growing the force to 600,000 or even 800,000.  The ArmyTimes article I linked at the start of this post has a good summary of the issues at hand, and I’d advise giving it a read-through.  Exactly what changes take place and what direction DoD ultimately takes remains to be seen, but it’s likely we’ll see a good deal of news on this in the next couple weeks.