MyDD :: Operations Other Than War (OOTW)

Operations Other Than War (OOTW)

by Gary Boatwright, Sat Dec 04, 2004 at 11:39:53 PM EST

Yesterday I posted a comment to Chris' diary "The Outline of A Case for Aggressive, Interventionist Liberalism" linked text in which I stated that

In his biography, "Battle Ready" by Tom Clancy, Gen. Zinni covers several situations he was responsible for where our military carried out OOTW semi-successfully, but the will to follow through was missing.

I am following up that post with three examples from "Battle Ready" to illustrate that there are options other than adopting an "aggressive, interventionist liberalism". We don't want to be heading the wrong direction when the Iraq backlash occurs.

In his book "The Pentagon's New Map", Thomas Barnett tries to dress his rationale up in trappings that appeal to neo-cons and current military doctrine, but it and Zinni's discussion of OOTW essentially create the framework for making war obsolete. We are spending close to six billion dollars a month in Iraq on a nation building project, and the Bush administration is doing it very poorly. Imagine spending seventy billion dollars a year waging peace instead of $400 billion a year waging war.

The most successful OOTW in "Battle Ready" was Operation Provide Comfort. This was a mission to provide humanitarian relief to the Kurds after the 1991 invasion of Iraq. I wager that most Americans have very little awareness of the extent of this mission or that it proves nation building type military exercises can be successful. I am primarily focusing on the structural and organizational problems and effort that went into making Operation Provide Comfort a success.

Urged on by promises of U.S. military support (that subsequently was not provided), the Kurds had mounted a revolt against Saddam, which Saddam had brutally crushed. ... Just about the entire Iraqi Kurdish population was now pouring over the border, few carrying more than the clothes on their backs, all of them in dire straits. The Turks ... refused to let the refugees down from the mountains; and the harsh winter conditions were threatening to devastate these traumatized mases. ...

When we called the director of operations, this is what we learned: Secretary Baker had spent the day observing the Kurdish refugees, and he was appalled. The refugee situation was developing into a terrible catastrophe. ...

Once this emergency operation was under way, we began planning a more robust resonse.
What do we do? What do we need? We had no experience with refugees and humanitarian problems. They were all totally new to us. How do we craft a humanitarian operation? Already NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) were starting to head into the area. How do we deal with them? Obviously somebody senior would have to go down to Turkey to handle that end. ...

The JTF became a CTF (combined Task Force) with the inclusion of forces from twelve other nations (including Great Britain, France, Spain and Italy). ... A subordinate JTG (JTF Alpha) under Dick Potter's command was responsible for the refugees in the mountain camps and geting them back into Iraq. Another JTF (JTF Bravo) was formed under Major General Jay Garner, U.S. Army, to enter Iraq and secure the Security Zones we were establishing. The Air Forces component was under the comand of Brigadier General Jim Hobson. A Civil Affairs command was formed under Brigadier General Don Campbell; and a Combined Support Command )CSC) for logistics under Army Brigadier Hal Burch. We also put in place a Military Coordination Center (MCC) under Army Colonel Dick Nabb, to work coordination with the Kurds and the Iraqis. There was a DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) team led by Dayton Maxwell, and over sixty NGOs and PVOs (Private Volunteer Organizations) were also working with us. The allied contributions to Provide Comfort were significant. DART, which operates out of the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) is a civilian agency whose mission is to assess and handle foreign humanitarian relief. ...

We pieced together this highly nontraditional, ever-evolving organization on the go. Though some of its components were first-time structures, they met the task. Even so, these strange new structures bothered many older officers. This made me come to realize than nontraditional operations like ours were best handled by younger, more innovative officers who could think outside the traditional and rigid wartime doctrine with which the older officers had grown up. ...

During the same trip, I visited the villages that had been gassed by the Iraquis in 1988 ... a chilling sight. They were not only empty of people, but the Iraquis had left not one stone upon another. The Kurds who'd made their homes there had asked to return; but when we did soil tests, we found dangerous toxic chemical traces that made return impossible. ...

To minimize these problems, we established a Civil-Military Operation Center (CMOC) under Civil Affairs control to coordinate with the NGO, DART, and the UNHCR. ...From the CDC I learned about the nature of diseases--the cycle, the causes, and the treatment ... the conditions that lead to them, the signs that diseases are spreading, and what you have to do to prevent that. This was a totally unique experience ... and it's not an instrument you normally find in the military tool kit. ... I also learned a lot from the teams sent in by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). They are not only fine doctors; they are also culturally sophisticated in dealing with refugees and third world peoples. ...

Provide Comfort evolved into Operation Northern Watch, and continued on for well over a decade until Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

Operation Provide Comfort was successful in spite of the fact that there had been no advanced planning or preparation for the mission. Imagine what could be accomplished if promotions and career paths in the military depended on and were devoted to OOTW instead of massive weapons purchases.

Two other examples that Zinni discusses are Operation Hope and Operation Restore Hope. Operation Provide Hope addressed the problem in the Balkans in 1991 following the break up of the Soviet Union. Zinni comments on this mission that:

It was nevertheless a badly missed opportunity; and much of the turmoil and instability that came afterward in Russia, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere could have been avoided if the nations of the free world and their organizations (like the UN and the EU) had been more farsighted.

All most Americans know about Operation Restore Hope is the story of "Blackhawk Down", which is the smallest part of the mission. A footnote in Zinni's book states that John Hirsch and Oakley have written the best account so far of recent events in Somalia in their book, "Somalia and Operation Restore Hope". (unfortunately out of print) Gen. Zinni's comment on Operation Restore Hope, is:

Leaving Somalia was an emotional moment. We left a lot of sacrifice and dashed hopes on that beach ... but learned significant lessons from the Somalia experience. I am convinced it could have been better had we run this complex undertaking with more skill and thoughtfulness.

PARAMETERS,linked text the US Army War College Quarterly, The United States Army's Senior Professional Journal has links to articles like this linked text and this linked text that discuss "Humanitarian Intervention: Crafting a Workable Doctrine" and "Humanitarian Aspects of Peace". The Army and Naval War College both have committed significant resources to studying OOTW.
Gen. Zinni has given a couple of speeches to the Center for Defense Information. One on October 31, 2002 linked text in which he itemizes conditions for going to war that Bush should have listened to and another on May 22, 2004 in which he itemizes ten mistakes made in the Iraq war. linked text

Let me close this diary with a closing quote from Zinni's book:

Transformation has to include finding better and more remarkable ways to tap into technology, our own brainpower, our training and education, and creative ways of redesigning our organization to make our military even more efficient and more powerful on the battlefield.
But transformation has to go beyond that.
What is the role of the military beyond killing people and breaking things?

Tags: (all tags)

Permalink :: 2 Comments :: Post a Comment

Repost of my comments to previous Diary (none / 0)

We don't need more wars or bigger and better wars or smarter wars. We need a military that is capable of conducting Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW or OOTW). I believe it was General Butler who said, "The military is a great hammer, but not every problem is a nail."
In his biography, "Battle Ready" by Tom Clancy, Gen. Zinni covers several situations he was responsible where our military carried out OOTW semi-successfully, but the will to follow through was missing.

Yugoslavia, Ruwanda, Burundi, Afghanistan and Haiti are all examples of crisis situations where a military solution is inadequate. You cannot bomb a failed nation state into a successful nation state. In addition to failed nation states there are international problems like disease, environmental disasters, narco-terrorists, terroris, genocide, international crime cartels and just plain old nasty dictators where a military solution by itself is not an adequate response.

Thomas Barnett's book, "The Pentagon's New Map" is essential to understand the future of warfare. My diary on Barnett's book is here:
linked text

My diary only covers the highlights of Barnett's book, but it includes a link to Barnett's three hour presentation linked text which used to be free and now costs $24.95.

According to Barnett's blog linked text he will be appearing on CSPAN again on December 9th.

Barnett states flat out that it would only take the military a few years to overhaul their structure if promotions to flag depended on successful OOTW instead of military weapons purchases. What Barnett and Zinni both have in mind is the transformation/creation of a military that utilizes the expertise of the State Department to establish functioning governmental bureaucracies, an enhanced Army Corp of Engineers to build/re-build infrastructure and financial MBA's who can help build an economy from scratch if necessary.

Darfur is a perfect example of a tragedy/crisis that cannot be corrected militarily. At this point in time neither the U.S. nor any other country is equipped to provide the type of combined military, economic and bureaucratic assistance that Darfur requires. (Although a successful OOTW might be possible if we weren't bogged down in Iraq)

Neither Gen. Zinni nor Thomas Barnett are fuzzy thinking idealistic liberals. These are two hard nosed realists with military experience. All it requires is the will to find a better solution than war.

by Gary Boatwright on Sat Dec 04, 2004 at 11:46:34 PM EST

thanks for this (none / 0)

Due to attention deficit disorder,
or is it attention overload,
I'll never read the books.

Greatly appreciate your excerpts
and synopses here.

My interests in foreign affairs --
and the interests of many core
Democrats much darker-skinned
than I -- run to Africa.

I'm convinced that the efforts of
American citizens, liberal groups,
and finally, much belatedly, of the
American government -- helped
to bring an end to Apartheid.

Alas, that may be our only memorable
claim to having helped anybody in
Africa very much.

When things went to hell in
Sierra Leon, with ruthless gangs of
soldier-criminals chopping off
the hands and legs of innocent
people, the UN finally gave
the OK for some intervention.
The British went in with a couple
of planeloads of troops, and
hundreds of years of experience
and professionalism. They
restored order in no time.

Things went to hell and stayed hellish
in Liberia for a decade or more.
The U.S. government did less
than nothing while rapes and murders
were the routine order of the day.

Finally, a group of rebels
advanced on the capital city,
and the situation was about to
get some serious TV time in
the US. So W diverted one ship
with some Marines.
More of them got sick from malaria
than ever went ashore. But eventually,
under the misimpression that possibly
the Americans were actually going
to do something, the worst of the
criminal leaders fled the country.

It's a pathetic record of US policy.

Amazingly, it's my impression that
most Africans still like and respect
America. That could change fast,
of course, within another four years.

by Woody on Sun Dec 05, 2004 at 04:20:28 PM EST

You are not logged in.

In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.

If not, you can make an account right here. It's quick and free.