Hello there readers! Something a little out of the ordinary with this post. I recently completed my MA in Politics achieving a Distinction (oh yeah) and having talked it over with my department they said it was cool if I published my Dissertation on my blog. Anyway, I was surprised when I got a Distinction I have to say, as I had been told was writing a 16, 000 word piece and was then informed via letter that it was actually 13, 000 when I'd nearly finished, so whole swathes of my argument and whole sections had to be gutted, you can probably figure out where from. It also had a noticeable effect on my conclusion which is linguistically muddled but oh well I could of scored much better so who cares.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to comment and I'll answer any questions or argue about anything you disagree with. I was pretty happy with this peice I've only been doing politics for 8 months and didn't know a jot of political theory when I started. Oh I'm not sure if the footnotes will work in Blogger format, don't worry I did sources everything. Enjoy! [There are a few formatting issues from Word to Blogger, so apologises, also not sure if this was the final version so there maybe some spelling errors]
David Hayter
In the light of the 2003 Iraq War and the subsequent nation building exercise is it time to fundamentally reassess strategic thought?
MA in Politics
2009
Word Count: 13, 000
Table Of Contents
| Introduction | Page 3 |
| Literature Review | Page 4 |
| Methodology | Page 7 |
| Military Strategy | Page 8 |
| Intelligence and Planning | Page 16 |
| Decision Making and Interagency Planning | Page 21 |
| Conclusion | Page 26 |
In the light of the 2003 Iraq War and the subsequent nation building exercise is it time to fundamentally reassess strategic thought?
The Iraq War of 2003 is a contentious and widely debated event, analysed in depth from a variety of different angles and levels. Strategy, as a theme, occurs consistently throughout the debate. There is near consensus among analysts, whether their back ground lays in political science, military history or journalism, that the Iraq War represents a failure in strategic thought. Whether it is a lack of planning, bad intelligence or a flawed conceptual basis for the entire undertaking; strategy stands front and centre stage bearing the brunt of the academic backlash. Despite this apparent consensus few works have taken the broader theme of strategic thought and investigated it thoroughly drawing the wider conclusions. Reflecting the nature of the debate (as will be demonstrated in the literature review) the discourse is fragmented; an author who specializes in post conflict nation building for example will point to the strategic failures evident in his area of expertise but outside of a cursory consideration there is no great breadth of analysis. The same can be said of a military historian investigating the aftermath of the tactical campaign. The intention of this piece is to take a bird’s eye view of strategic thought; to explore across the individual disciplines and draw the wider conclusions missed by the specialist studies. Consideration will be given to whether the perceived strategic failure of the 2003 Iraq War was a unique occurrence or whether it was part of wider political-historical trends. The piece will seek to examine what processes caused the failures; whether they were characteristic of the Bush administration or symptomatic of a wider movement in strategic implementation. This will require an analysis of the political and military aspects of the war, the strategic planning process, the motives for war, the decision making process and power structure of the Bush Administration. Strategy will be the central focus as each area is examined. The goal is to draw two key conclusions: first, is the Iraq war symptomatic of the failures of a broader movement in strategic thought dating from the events of the Vietnam War and is a fundamental reconsideration of strategic approach required. Secondly will the Iraq War itself become a departure point in strategic thinking, marking a change in long term direction and trends, or is it a unique occurrence brought together by purely temporal and situational factors.
To achieve these ends the study is set out in several sections. Following the literature review and methodology the wider analysis will be split into different areas of investigation; the development of military strategy, the intelligence and planning process, interagency relations and the decision making process within the Bush Administration plus a conclusion. It is anticipated that the investigation will produce complex and at some points a paradoxical set of findings; it will be the goal of this study to understand these implications and review the way in which strategy is considered. Questions will be posed about the very nature of contemporary strategic thought; is it still fit for purpose? Has it drifted away from the fundamental rules and original theory upon which current practices are derived? Or is the way in which strategy is considered no longer relevant for modern conflicts and for contemporary political structures?
Before progressing to the literature review it is important to define what is meant by strategy and have some understanding of its origins. It should be made clear that the study of strategy itself is an evolving area with new works and interpretations in development. Some question whether strategy exists at all or whether it is itself an illusion. However as this study seeks to avoid being weighed down by such highly specialized debates a simple definition of strategy will be used, with an outline of the early Clausewitzian building blocks upon which modern military-political thought is based. Colin S. Gray presents such a definition in his work Modern Strategy;
“Strategy is the bridge that relates military power to political purpose; In On War, Clausewitz provides an admirably tight and terse definition; “Strategy is the use of engagements for the object of the war”...The cardinal virtue of the Clausewitzian definition of strategy is that it separates those things that must be separated. Anyone who reads, understands, and accepts the Clausewitzian definition will never be confused about what is strategic and what it not: “Tactics teaches the use of armed forces in the engagement”. Armed forces in action, indeed any instrument of power in action, are the realms of tactics. Strategy, in contrast seeks to direct and relate the use of those instruments to policy goals. Clausewitz, therefore, is crystal-clear in distinguishing between action and effect and between instrument and objective”
This Clausewitzian definition has formed the basis of strategic thinking in terms of war making since the nineteenth century. He set forth the notion that political leaders create clear political objectives for a conflict, and it is the job of the military leaders to use tactics or engagements to complete this objective; strategic planning therefore is the bridge between these two areas and shapes the nature of the conflict. The Iraq War sees the lines between strategy and tactics, between the political and the military and between war and peace blur. Post conflict nation building efforts, such as those in Iraq, force the political and the military together. When the objective of war is to transform a state into a democracy the answer to the question of when the war making ends and the peace building begins is no longer so apparent. It will be the suggested in this piece that when the goal is to nation build, the two realms must be brought together, political planning and military planning cannot be considered separate entities. Therefore the interrelationships between the various planning departments must be analysed.
Literature Review
The literature relating to Iraq War of 2003 is wide ranging, analysing the conflict and nation building effort from a variety of angles. This piece is unique as it focuses purely on strategy as it relates to conflict planning and nation building. Placing the piece within the debate is made more difficult by the fact that strategy as a theme is interlinked to several contentious debates. Additionally specialists debate within their own area of knowledge, whereas this piece attempts to examine over-arching strategy issues across academic disciplines. The military aspect of strategy is most critiqued by military historians whilst the nation building strategy is analysed by a variety of authors with different back grounds and areas of expertise. It is therefore best to break down this literature review into several sections centred on the key areas of debate and consensus.
Firstly there is a clear spilt in opinion within the body of work analysing the military strategy. There are military historians who seek to critique the campaign as short sighted and those who wish to characterise the campaign as a remarkable victory. Tim Garden and Paul Wilkinson are examples of the latter view, starkly defending the approach taken “Those critics, who argued that the coalition plan had stalled because Iraqi forces had been bypassed rather than being destroyed piecemeal, demonstrated an alarming ignorance of the well-publicised manoeuvrist approach”. On the other side of the debate Richard Pulman-Loch takes a more considered approach ,similar to that of this piece, suggesting that Garden and Wilkinson’s approach is outdated, short sighted and typical of a “conventional mindset”[4]. It is important that the dichotomy of views should not be characterised too rigidly as a split. Authors, such as Garden, have evolved their arguments as time has passed moving from an analytical approach in 2003 to the “conventional” approach outlined above. Similarly some authors do take a more nuanced approach. These tend to occur not in specialist studies of strategy but in general works, such as Thomas E. Ricks’ Fiasco where points are often astute but remarks tend to be made in passing, rather than based upon a detailed discourse.
The literature on the political side of the debate is more fragmented and specialised, depending on the individual author’s background. Each author seeks to illuminate the “failures” of Iraq in relation to their line of investigation. For example John C. Garnett’s study of Iraq places its focus on the intelligence failures;
“So what went wrong? Basically, many of the assumptions which underpinned the policy of intervention have proved to be mistaken. First, the idea that Saddam’s government was universally unpopular has been show to be false...What has emerged since the end of the war is the fact that Saddam’s ruthless autocracy was much less centralised than western observers believed. Saddam delegated power at local levels to different elites – tribal and religious leaders and businessmen – whose loyalty was guaranteed by a mixture of bribery and fear...it was inevitable that these groups, including Ba’athist loyalists, would emerge as competing sources of authority able to disrupt the process of transition to democracy”
This is a typical frame work adopted by the broad body of literature: the question is posed “what went wrong?” and conclusions are drawn, usually limited to the author’s area of expertise. Placing this piece within the literature is therefore challenging, as the particular study of strategy is inter-related to many of these individual debates. This study will highlight key areas of consensus that are prevalent throughout the wider literature and attempt to add depth of perspective. The conclusion by John C. Garnett for example is typical; the notion that there was an intelligence failure and the Bush Administration was caught by surprise. This conclusion based on the idea that the Bush Administration was given bad intelligence by Ahmad Chalabi is a point of wide consensus and reflected in the works by Ali A. Allawi, David L. Phillips, Peter W. Galbraith, Ali R. Abootalebi and many others. In the analysis of strategy this piece accepts that there is validity to his argument but sees this view point as reductionist and overly simplistic. This study will seek to add nuance to this area of consensus by adding the strategic perspective.
The same can also be said of the conclusion drawn by many of the nation building specialists that the war was a tremendous success but the US failed to win the peace. This notion put forward in Larry Diamond’s work Squandered Victory suggest that a great victory was achieved and the failings in nation building can be characterised as a failure to capitalize on a historic military victory. This conclusion is linked to another area of consensus, the idea that there was “no plan” for the post war situation, Galbraith express this point of view in his work The End Of Iraq;
It did no planning that might have increased the chances of a successful democratic transition in Iraq, nor did it examine the underlying conditions in Iraq to see if it was even possible to build the united democratic state that other Middle East countries would wish to emulate. Because all Administrations thinking about Iraq was based on the most optimistic, scenarios, the Administration never considered the possible impact of failure in Iraq”
Again this piece does not seek to falsify the consensus; instead with its stated goal of re-evaluating strategy, it intends to add depth to these conclusions. Rather than debunk or disagree with the consensus this study intends to add an alternative perspective to the consideration. It will achieve this by subjecting assumptions to a new angle of investigation, seeing if they still carry water or if they need to be re-evaluated. The study of strategy can be seen to interweave the viewpoints, offering a fresh overview.
The final area of debate within the literature on Iraq that needs to be considered is the motives for war. This is the most highly contentious topic relating to Iraq. Whereas other areas demonstrate clear points of consensus or a split between two viewpoints, the debate on the motives for Iraq war is fragmented to the nth degree. This debate is incredibly important to this study as the definition of strategy, outlined in the introduction, makes clear that strategy is tool for achieving a political objective. However when it comes to the Iraq War there is no consensus as to what the political objective was. Some authors defend the rationale put forth by the Bush Administration, for example Steve A. Yetiv puts forward the view that the Iraq War was a reaction to September 11th viewing the US switch from containment to prevention and the goals to remove disarm and replace Saddam Hussein with a democracy as the legitimate war aims. Other authors like Abootalebi suggest that the war was motivated by a neo-conservative mindset that sought to reshape the Middle East through force, spread democracy and gain energy security. While these two points of view represent the main variants in the debate, it is further fragmented. Noam Chomsky suggests that the true motivation of the Iraq War was to further the right wing political agenda and to distract voters with a foreign war who would otherwise “be asking questions about their pensions, jobs, healthcare and other matters”. The suggested motivations range to the extreme, some authors suggesting that Bush Jnr. was seeking revenge on “a guy that tried to kill my dad”. It is important to have an understanding of how broad the debate on the true political objectives of the Iraq War is. The evidence is simply not available to draw any kind of firm conclusion in regards to this debate. Therefore for the purpose of this study the goals set out by President Bush to disarm Saddam of WMDs, to overthrow his regime and to replace it with a democracy will be accepted as the political objectives. The piece would otherwise run the risk of being side tracked and hindered by ambiguity.
Methodology
The methodological approach employed in this study is the casual historical tracing method applied to a single case study. The case study used is the Iraq War of 2003. As a recent conflict, with repercussions still developing, the casual historical tracing method will be used to analyse the events and key contentious issues laying the ground work on which broader theoretical work can be based. Assessing strategy, places this piece largely in the theoretical realm. The process of strategy formation, particularly military strategy is not based on or measured statistically. This study could therefore be considered a plausibility probe, as it seeks to bridge the gap between the highly specialized studies indentified in the literature review and the broader sweeps of generalized strategic theory.
Gathering the evidence for this study exposed both strengths and weaknesses in the sources available. An extensive range of secondary literature was available written from a variety of differing perspectives, stances and academic backgrounds, whose conclusions have been considered and in some cases challenged throughout this piece. Equally swathes of journalistic work were produced on Iraq, from day to day updates on the military progress, to critiques of the motivation for war and broad opinion pieces. The journalistic works were particularly helpful in this study as they often contained quotes and interviews with the key figures forming the Iraq strategy that could be cross referenced with some of the secondary literature to verify their suggestions. In terms of primary material, access was more of a mixed bag. For military strategy, many of the key articles were obtainable, the battle plans, strategies and war games on Iraq from 1999 to 2003 have been made available. It was possible to directly follow the development of strategy across these documents published by the National Security Archive. The only omission was the final battle plan which is still classified, however it was not a major hindrance as it was closely based on the other plans drawn in 2003, with the secondary literature and newspaper reports filling in the gaps. On the political side of the pre-war planning process, the Future of Iraq Project reports were available, as was the intelligence on Iraq’s WMD and chemical weapons capability, linked with a wide ranging number of speeches by the key players George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. However the one troublesome area, in terms of primary sources, concerns interagency considerations. Very few of the documents have yet been published, creating dependence, for the purpose of this piece, on the works of Bob Woodward, Michael Gordon and Bob Trainor which relied on undisclosed and protected sources detailing the inside story of the planning.
Military Strategy
The literature review highlighted a prevailing view that the United States won the war and lost the peace in the Iraq War. While some of the more nuanced works point to the flaws in this assessment it has become one of the enduring critiques of the Iraq war and is a near inescapable turn of phrase. Ali A. Allawi went as far as to entitle his work on Iraq Winning The War, And Losing The Peace however this assessment needs to be reviewed. It is based on the assumption that the United States’ armed forces achieved a great victory, establishing a platform for potential nation building success. Larry Diamond in his work Squandered Victory argues “I have chronicled here what I believe was an American failure in post-war Iraq, a squandering of a decisive, potentially historic military victory”. This conclusion typifies the traditional attitudes towards strategy and war that this piece intends to reconsider. There are two key assumptions that require re-evaluation; first the idea that the United States “won the war” and that the military half of the campaign was successful, and second whether the war and peace (conflict and post conflict) can truly be considered as separate entities. These two assumptions are inter-related.
Firstly, did the US really achieve a “historic military victory” in Iraq? There is no question that the United States armed forces thoroughly defeated the Iraqi army, with remarkable speed and with an incredibly well executed battle plan. Many authors, particularly military historians, lavish praise on this victory describing it as the perfect example of the manoeuvrist approach, which Gardner and Wilkinson explain;
“The campaign in Iraq, with its emphasis on psychological warfare, on the destruction of Saddam’s command and control system, and on the maintenance of operational tempo, has been a classic example of manoeuvre warfare. Manoeuvrism stresses the need to defeat and disrupt the enemy’s will to fight, by taking the initiative, attacking from the least expected direction and by applying constant and unacceptable pressure at the times and places the enemy least expects”
Yet rather than being considered a successful example of a manoeuvrist campaign the Iraq War of 2003 is instead an example of an illusory victory. It was a tactical success and a strategic failure. The goal of strategy was defined at the outset as the use of tactics and engagements to achieve a political objective. The military strategy devised by General Franks and Donald Rumsfeld lost sight of the political object of the Iraq war. The objectives presented for the Iraq war were; to defeat and overthrow Saddam Hussein, to remove the threat of weapons of mass destruction and to rebuild and democratise Iraq. The military strategy completed the first but either miscalculated or ignored the final two objectives. This failure has been simplistically characterised as lacking “boots on the ground” (that the military planners did not bring enough troops for the post conflict phase of the operation). These observations, while accurate, are an oversimplification; the failures run deeper and are more complex.
As an example of oversimplification, one of the main critiques of the post conflict operations in Iraq is that the United States lost control, and that when Saddam Hussein’s government fell a power vacuum was created, leading to a rise in lawlessness, organized crime and looting. These factors seriously impacted on the nation building effort and on the Iraqi people. The view of this piece is that these failures signify not purely the lack of post conflict planning, but are also directly attributable to the military campaign and the strategy employed in the conflict. Rumsfeld and Franks devised a battle plan that required minimal forces to bring about victory in the shortest time frame possible. The battle plan comprised a series of simultaneous attacks in a variety of directions, using “thunder runs” to take or bypass Iraqi towns and cities before quickly moving on to converge on Baghdad. This style avoided a drawn out conflict and effectively decapitated the opponent leading to a sudden victory. The consequence of this approach was that a state wide power vacuum was created as soon as Saddam’s regime fell; the enemy forces were not thoroughly identified, rooted out and defeated. The towns that had been bypassed to reach the communication centre (the capital Baghdad) were left unwatched and allowed to go uncontrolled. This is a clear example of a strategic failure, while victory over the armed forces and regime overthrow was achieved with great ease; no consideration was given to what was to come after the conflict. Ali A. Allawi gives a specific example of the consequence of this approach:
“In Baghdad, with the occupation forces settling in to run the country, the goings-on in the South, or even in Sadr City, were matters of very little concern...Then individuals selected to run these towns had little sensitivity or knowledge about local conditions. In nearly every southern province, as well as in Sadr City, the original administration that had been put in place in the wake of the invasions fell apart, and power seeped to the newly emergent Islamist and their local allies. The failure to establish local control, especially in the larger cities that had been bypassed by the invasion force, was an issue that was to come back to haunt the Coalition, time and again”
The country was left largely unsecured and unmonitored; it allowed for state wide looting and allowed antagonistic groups to gain control and influence on Iraq’s fringe and in the smaller cities. The shortcomings of manoeuvre warfare were exacerbated by the lack of troops on the ground. A common assertion suggests that the United States’ emphasis on a small fast moving force while perfectly suited to defeating the Iraqi armed forces was not appropriate to provide security for an entire nation. Larry Diamond Peter and W. Galbraith explain the consequences of this decision;
“We never had enough troops in Iraq – particularly at the beginning, when it was vital to secure public buildings, streets, and weapons depots; to hunt down the remnants of Saddam’s forces; to seal the borders; and to establish decisive authority. The hapless ORHA administrator, Jay Garner, later conceded, “we did not seal the borders because we did not have enough troops to do that, and that brought in terrorists”
“The U.S. occupation never recovered from the early chaos. As a practical matter, the looting of government ministries and power stations meant it was impossible to restore essential services for months and in some cases for more than a year. As Iraqis sat in their homes idle because their workplaces had been destroyed or there was no power to run their factories – they blamed the occupier”
Considering the two critiques back to back, it becomes clear that the strategic failure goes beyond simply not having enough men. Even with a suggested force size of 400, 000 the nature of the battle plan would have left great swathes of Iraq uncontrolled during the golden hour (power vacuum). The benefit of having a larger number of troops is that it builds in a contingency factor, that when the power vacuum occurred the US would at least have enough capacity to react and counteract the problem. A further flaw in military strategy that greatly influenced the post conflict nation building effort, was by focusing the military strategy on bringing about regime change through a fast war of manoeuvre the US neglected to bring the correct types of troops necessary to control and rebuild a nation. Larry Diamond expands upon this point:
“the need is not simply for enough troops, but for the right kind of troops, equipped with the proper rules of engagement. It does no good to have troops on the ground if they simply stand by and watch...international stabilization missions need to be able to deploy not just a conventional army but a muscular peace-implementation force that is somewhere between a war making army and a crime fighting police force – a rapid-reaction or riot control force
This is a crucial and often overlooked point; the consensus tends to suggest that there was simply a lack of troops but this does not go far enough. As Larry Diamond points out you need a form of military police to control the street, as well as troops with experience in engineering and reconstruction to put the state back together again. General Franks would later concede this point himself suggesting that the US Army did not bring the right tools for the job. This oversight suggests the military campaign was out of line with the political objectives of the war; that strategies were being devised that were not suitable for attaining the goal set out by President Bush to rebuild the Iraqi state and turn it into a democracy.
With failures of the military strategy identified attention turns to the wider implications and three questions arise: How did these failures occur? Are they symptomatic of wider trends or are they unique occurrences? How do these challenge the traditional view of strategy, does the fundamental approach need to be reconsidered? As they are inter-related it is best to start by considering the first two of the three questions. The battle plan drawn up for the Iraq war and the decision to take a small number of men represents the coming together of two separate agendas. Firstly a desire by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to reform the Army and the Pentagon to fit his vision of warfare, secondly a reactionary movement in military thinking following the events of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War had a polarizing effect on the armed forces of the United States; it was an embarrassing defeat and led their military leaders to reconsider doctrine and strategy for future conflicts. The Vietnam experience represented a failure by the United States Army in a counter insurgency operation and its after-effects shaped the approach to Iraq. Rather than retraining the army to specialize in long term counter insurgency campaigns, the United States military decided to change approach; to avoid becoming tied down in long operations and specialize in a fast moving highly technical force. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling elaborates on this point;
“Having participated in the deception of the American people during the war, the Army chose after the war to deceive itself. In “Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife,” John Nagel argued that instead of learning from defeat, the Army after Vietnam focused its energies on the kind of wars it knew how to win — high-technology conventional wars...Despite having been recently defeated by an insurgency, the Army slashed training and resources devoted to counterinsurgency”
The army would not seriously begin to reconsider counter insurgency and asymmetric warfare until 2004. A notion that the United States became experts at winning the battles but not winning wars gained currency. The military planners in the US immersed themselves in the tactical and operational level of warfare and lost sight of strategy. General Tommy Franks the man in charge of drawing up the various military strategies for Iraq is seen as the figure head of this movement in American war planning:
Why would the United States invade Iraq without a genuine strategy in hand? Part of the answer lies in the personality and character of General Franks. The inside word in the U.S. military long had been that Franks didn’t think strategically. For example, when the general staff held an off the record session with officers studying at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, in the spring of 2002 ... ( his reply).... to the classic Clausewitzian question: what is the nature of the war you are fighting in Afghanistan?... he gave the most tactical answer possible..a fine reply for a sergeant....... “He really was comfortable at the tactical level.”
The wider trend within military thinking moving from a broad strategic approach to a highly specialized tactical technology form of warfare was mirrored by a new Secretary Of Defense in Donald Rumsfeld looking to reshape the US armed forces. Rumsfeld looked to redesign the Defense Department and the US Army to be ““light, lean and mean”. Rumsfeld’s transformation of the United States military was at a highly tactical level. The works by Bob Woodward and Michael Gordon reveal the process of drawing up the battle plan showing Rumsfeld pushing for smaller troop numbers and making decisions regarding the tactical minutia. Rumsfeld’s new approach to planning emphasised risk, attempting to achieve victories at minimal possible cost. It has been suggested that he viewed the old generals, and Colin Powell in particular, as plodding and risk adverse. This attitude is reported in Bob Woodward’s Plan Of Attack:
“Rumsfeld’s way was clear, and he was precise about it. “The only way these things can be done well is if risk is evaluated, put on the table and discussed, instead of trying to mitigate it down below at a level where you don’t have the benefit of trading off with and balancing risk”...No one at the lower levels, the colonels, would embrace risk.
These suggestions are borne out in the military strategy for the Iraq war. Rumsfeld had the original invasions plans for Iraq redrawn. The original plans drawn up by General Zinni in 1999 called for a force of 400,000 men and had anticipated many of the strategic dilemmas posed by regime overthrow;
“A change in regimes does not guarantee stability. A number of factors including aggressive neighbours, fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines, and chaos created by rival forces bidding for power could adversely affect regional stability. Even when civil order is restored and borders are secured, the replacement regime could be problematic – especially if perceived as weak, a puppet, or out-of-step with prevailing regional governments. These consequences must not be ignored during political-military planning”
Rumsfeld, in close co-operation with Franks redrew the military strategy for Iraq several times revising the troop numbers down considerably, and completely re-evaluating the Phase IV (post conflict) military role. The commitment started at 240, 000 and would be rapidly scaled back to leave only 5,000 “boots on the ground” by 2006. This is typical of the approach Rumsfeld frequently outlined in public in the build up to the Iraq War, “it would be guided by two commitments. Stay as long as necessary, and to leave as soon as possible” In the same speech he would go on to dismiss the Kosovo template rejecting a long term commitment as “a culture of dependence”. It becomes clear analysing the factors that contributed to the Iraq War strategy that two of the leading planners, Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, who were charged with creating the strategy, became immersed in the tactical aspects of the campaign. Rather than taking the traditional big picture approach to strategy, they focused primarily on low level tactical concepts, losing sight of the political objectives of the action and created a war plan that was not fit for purpose. This can partly be attributed to a wider movement in strategic thinking arising from the Vietnam War, however the military aspects of the strategic failure are also symptomatic of the unique approach of Donald Rumsfeld. In this sense the experience of Iraq can also be viewed as a unique occurrence. Rumsfeld’s approach was in stark contrast to his predecessor Colin Powell and the “Powell Doctrine”. The latter emphasised overwhelming force, only committing forces when necessary with an inbuilt high contingency factor, even if it did little to address the US military’s incompatibility with counter insurgency nation building efforts. The Secretary of Defense will always have a unique influence on the shaping of military strategy therefore in evaluating and interpreting the Iraq War’s impact upon strategy it is possible to detect a confluence between unique influences and wider movements in strategic thinking post Vietnam. Intelligence and the relationship between the Defense Department and other areas of government impact upon strategy will be considered in the next sections to create a clearer understanding of strategy.
The third question posed earlier in the section asked whether the fundamental approach to strategy should be reconsidered. Can the conflict itself and the post conflict environment be considered two separate entities? When does a war really end? Is the war over when the conventional army is defeated: is everything beyond that point to be considered the “peace”? The debate over when a war ends and peace begins is complex, controversial and beyond the remit of this solitary case study. However in attempting to draw conclusions on strategy several of the key considerations from these debates will be discussed. The conclusion drawn in this section fits into the wider debate on when does a war really end. In this context the Iraq War is particularly intriguing as it was presented as a pre-emptive nation building effort. It was an explicitly stated objective of the war to over throw the government of Saddam Hussein and replace it with a new democratic government. Through the analysis of the military strategy it has become apparent that the strategy drawn up for the Iraq war was not suitable for obtaining this objective. The Defense Department and the US Army leaders were focussed on defeating the Iraqi armed forces in the fastest way possible. A strategy was employed and decisions were made that would be detrimental to the nation building effort. This experience raises the question; in a nation building scenario can the strategy for war and the strategy for peace be drawn in isolation?
When General Franks set about forging the strategy for the Iraq War, he focused solely on defeating the enemy, in the most efficient way with the resources available. Franks was a military planner, it is not expected that he would have an intricate knowledge of what is needed to build a democracy. The experts who understood nation building, what to expect, what to do and what not to do, as well as those who have specific Iraqi expertise lay in the State Department. Equally it is unreasonable to expect those civilian planners to a have great knowledge of military tactics and doctrine. In a nation building scenario the line between the political and military becomes blurred. The army is not simply trying to defeat an opponent, it is trying to create a platform upon which peace can be built; equally when the conventional war is over the nation building does not become a wholly civilian affair (the US army seven years later is still tied down in Iraq running security and counter-insurgency operations, the same is true of Afghanistan). General Zinni the man who drew up the original plans for the invasion of Iraq in 1999, spotted this fatal flaw in strategic planning and urged that the basic strategic approach of the US be changed;
“Deliberate Planning Needs To become interagency...Political/Military planning should begin immediately. The dimensions of preparing a post-Saddam policy for Iraq and the region are vast and complex. Early preparation of a political-military plan...should be a priority. The accompanying policy debate will expose a variety of contentious positions that must be reconciled and managed. Key discussion points include benefits and risks associated with various strategic options; information requirements; and the likelihood that intervention will be costly in terms of casualties and resources.”
The leading planner in the United States army was calling for changes in strategic thinking in 1999 before the Bush Administration came to office. This is not a new dilemma; this is a clear example of neither contemporary nor classic strategic thinking being suitable for purpose. The classic idea that military planners plan the war and civilians plan the peace is outdated. When the goal of strategy is to build a nation through war or directly following a war, the concept that the war is one phase and the peace is another, does not match the reality on the ground. The idea that General Franks and the US military plan the war, and the Future Of Iraq Project and the State Department plan the peace, with no interaction between the two is inappropriate. It has been shown how even the most tactical aspects of warfare (the battle plan, troop types) can have large repercussions in the nation building phase. It is therefore suggested that when the political objective blurs the line between military and civilian, between peace and war, the planning process will require interagency co-operation even at the lowest levels. While each conflict and scenario is different, this consideration particularly resonates in nation building and insurgency situations. Richard Loch-Pullan echoes these sentiments calling for a re-evaluation of the fundamental strategic assumptions;
It [the US Army] has an over-reliance on one operational concept regardless of the strategic situation. This is then exacerbated by the poor interagency process and the directions from the National Security Council...The tools of policy need to change as do the associated understanding of strategy...It needs to integrate political and military aspects of conflicts far more closely to see and address the ambiguity that lies at the heart of strategy and modern warfare.
For strategy this means there is a need for political consensus building and an overall strategic direction, and the military providing the means to fulfil this, with the politics permeating every level of military expertise, relying on militarised objectives will not do...Iraq is a particularly interesting example as rather than having the interagency cooperation called for by General Zinni it instead saw the Defense Department take complete control of all aspects of the war.
The role of the Defense Department and the planning and decision-making process within the Bush Administration, highlighted in the last quote from Richard Loch-Pullan, will be thoroughly analysed in a later section. However at this stage of the discourse it is right to point out that Iraq War is a worthwhile study; not only was the interagency approach not taken, the war and peace planning was monopolised by one department of state, with one sole focus and perspective. While this makes the Iraq War somewhat unique, rather than isolating it from the wider strategic debate, the war instead serves to typify the failure of the current narrow conception of strategy. It could be suggested that the Iraq War saw all the failings of strategy focused in one event
Intelligence and Planning for Post Conflict Nation Building
This section examines the claim that there was no plan for the post conflict situation in Iraq. A frequently expressed viewpoint on the “lessons” of the 2003 Iraq War is that the United States did not have a plan. It is argued that the United States undertook a series of near fatal mistakes and oversights, based on bad intelligence hampering Iraq’s progress toward democracy. The emphasis is on a failure of intelligence rather than strategy. It is important to address this critique in relation to the study of strategy. It will be argued that the mistakes in Iraq were symptomatic of a flawed approach to strategy. This section offers a different perspective on the prevailing view that the Bush Administration had neither a plan nor strategy for the post war period.
It is claimed the Bush Administration was not informed of the realities of Iraq and was surprised by the complexities of post conflict nation building. While this argument is not without merit, and certainly reflects some of the failings in Iraq, it is another example of oversimplification. As this view has achieved a weight of consensus among authors, there is a danger that this simple assessment becomes the accepted “lesson” of the Iraq war that deeper, more nuanced, conclusions will remain unexplored. The traditional viewpoint is put forward by Thomas Rick’s in his work Fiasco;” “I saw it all.” But what he never saw was a real plan for Phase IV- that is, what to do after toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime. “There was no real plan...The thought was, you didn’t need it. The assumption was that everything would be fine after the war, that they would be happy they got rid of Saddam.” While this is a fine assessment of the failures of post conflict nation building, it fails to reflect the inherent structural problem that led to there being “no real plan”. It fails to ask the how and why questions. Was there really no planning whatsoever? Was it purely an intelligence failure? Or do the failures run deeper, do the failures lay at the structural, strategic and decision making levels?. Or is it simply enough to accept that the plans were based on bad intelligence, creating a bad plan and it was a one off?
The suggestion that failures were due solely to no planning plus bad intelligence does not hold water. It was shown that in depth war plans were made by General Antony Zinni, dating back to 1999, these clearly outlined the need not just for an interagency strategic approach, but highlighted other potential hurdles for the nation building effort; including anti-Americanism and the dangers of being seen as an occupier, the danger of unsecured borders and the highly religious and fractured nature of the Iraq polity. It is clear that Donald Rumsfeld was privy to this intelligence and Zinni ‘s recommendation, as Rumsfeld had the plan redrawn five times as detailed in Bob Woodward’s account:
“It called for a force of some 500, 000, including six Army and Marine divisions on the ground, and... also allow an extended period of time for a force build-up before the start of offensive military action. The intricate timelines confirmed it would take some seven months to transport and build up the force in the region before attacking Iraq...Rumsfeld pronounced his verdict: “That is insane, that is crazy.” The war plans were improperly designed. “Either it’s world peace or it’s World War III. Either the switch is on or off...We’re not going to do it that way”
This links to the wider movements in military history described earlier. It further demonstrates that on the military planning side there was detailed intelligence, years’ worth of planning and war games on which the Administration could base its strategy. Rather than being unaware of the potential pitfalls of a nation building effort in Iraq the Bush Administration consciously decided to pursue its own vision of strategy. In the following section the power structure and decision making process within the Bush Administration will be analysed and conclusions drawn as to why this approach was taken and what happened to dissenting voices like that of General Zinni.
Examining the political or civilian planning for post conflict nation building it is clear that not only did the Bush Administration employ a great degree of planning but additionally had access to external sources of intelligence outlining the potential dangers of Iraq. The place to start this evaluation is with the Future of Iraq Project. This was a State Department project initiated by President Bush and run by Tom Warrick with the remit of developing a strategy for the post war period. This was no light undertaking; the planning was started in 2001 and lasted through to 2003The project was formed of 17 working groups using 200 Iraqi “experts” at a cost of $5 million. Topics included in planning for the post war reconstruction of Iraq: Transitional Justice, Public Finance, Public Outreach Development, Democratic Principles, Water Agriculture & The Environment, Public Health & Humanitarian Needs, Defence Policy, Local Government, Economic & Infrastructure, Civil Society Capacity building, Transparency and Anti Corruption, Education, Return Of Refugees, Building A Free Media, Foreign Policy, Oil & Energy, Preserving Cultural Heritage. Project contributors included Iraqi experts and Arabists, including exiles with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish backgrounds. It is important to consider the work of this Project, to counter the view that there was simply no plan and poor intelligence. Rather than characterising the Iraq War of 2003 as a one off event, a rare occurrence when the United States completely failed to grasp the scale of the undertaking and was taken by surprise; the work of this Project is evidence that the Bush Administration was aware of the potential difficulties in Iraq and of alternative approaches but consciously decided to ignore them.
The recommendations of the Future of Iraq Project will be considered next. The Project produced a document of wide scope addressing many of the “failures” highlighted in the literature review. The democratic work group covered key debates such as; how to restore Iraqi civil society, whether a military occupation should take place, whether Iraq is more comparable to Germany than it is to Afghanistan, ideas of handing over to the INC, and how to incorporate Iraqi culture into any new government”. They compared possible models, including the experiences of Kosovo. A key conclusion of the discussion on future governance was that the Iraqi people would have to own the transition. The United States could not be seen to be an occupier. The notion of a military government was rejected out of hand by Iraqi experts. The study instead stressed compromise and a consideration of political and cultural sensitivities. The study considered the restoration of power and electricity. The Bush Administration would face criticism for not restoring basic utilities to the Iraqi people after the military operation, creating the perception that America either did not care about regular Iraqis or had made their lives worse. The Future of Iraq project foresaw these problems. The Public Health group named restoring electricity its top priority “immediately after occupation” as did the Economic and Infrastructure work group that made the restoration of the electricity and water grids as their top priority. It should be noted that this is not intended as an exercise in hindsight, the Future of Iraq project was not without flaws; the restoration planning was focused on repairing the damage of the Saddam Hussein regime not the fall-out from the American invasion. This is perhaps symptomatic of the separation of post conflict planning from the war planning, the State Department planners were not connected to the military planning, and there was no Defense Department or US army attaché in the Project. The plans under consideration were made completely independently with no knowledge of what the US Armed forces intended to do, the groups were not privy to battle plans. Drawing attention to the flawed strategic approach highlighted in the previous section; it can be argued that it is a bizarre notion, to draw up two separate strategies to achieve the same end, in isolation, and hope they will compatible in the event.
One of the most common critiques of the nation building strategy was the decision to disband the Iraq army. It is a point of near total consensus that this decision made by Paul L Bremmer III was poorly considered and flawed. What makes the decision making process more intriguing is that the Future of Iraq Project clearly planned and debated what role the Iraqi military would have after the conflict. The Project planned to de-Ba’athify the army, then use local engineers and other Iraqi workers and citizens to help put the army and the new government back on its feet The Project came to the conclusion that the Iraqi army must be separate from political control, and that officers must be chosen based on meritocracy not ethnicity. The point was underlined that the Iraqi army should not be disbanded that it would be a key source of employment and a major tool for the reconstruction of Iraq. For example the Water and Agriculture group foresaw the following role for the Iraqi Army: “Utilize the Iraqi Army (the career army personnel...) in clean up and protection of the environment” This would include everything from “Cleaning up river banks” to “De-mining Battlefields”. The Project also took a softer stance toward ex-Ba’ath party members than the eventual course taken in 2003; suggesting that former officers willing to play are role and to help in the reconstruction should not be rejected, their experience and guidance would be encouraged.
It should be emphasised that there is debate over the Future of Iraq Project. The general consensus suggests it provided a broad, considered approach to post-war planning, although far from a complete strategy, it managed to produce detailed recommendations and outlined the potential pitfalls that lay ahead. However, some critics, like Ali A. Allawi, have instead characterised the Future of Iraq Project as a poorly considered, half hearted, talking shop;
The entire process of planning for a post-war Iraq was mired in ineptitude, poor organisation and indifference. The “Future of Iraq Project” was a half-hearted and unreal attempt to tackle the issues that would confront the overseers of a country with a devastated economy and a dictatorial political culture. Most of the groups dealt with issues on which the participants had no up-to date information, or any immediate experience. The real importance attached to the project was reflected in the State Department’s allocation of single basement office to act as the “control” centre. The lack of clarity about the administration’s true intentions in post-Saddam Iraq may have contributed to the confusion about the plans for the governance of the country”
This is an odd critique, as the Project had a multimillion dollar budget and its meetings were held not in a small office but in various locations across the world. This argument also suggests that the project was not considered seriously. While this assessment may reflect the attitude of the Defense Department , the Project was championed by Secretary of State Colin Powell who pushed for the inclusion of the Projects experts in the post conflict strategising throughout the build up to war. To conclude that the planning for the Iraq War was carried out with “indifference” misses the wider conclusions. The decision makers in the Bush Administration, who would forge the strategy for Iraq, were not simply ill informed, they consciously chose to ignore a broad base of incisive intelligence. Rather than being a simple breakdown in intelligence gathering, major flaws lay at the decision making and strategy making level. The next section of the piece will analyse the decision making process and the interagency relationship in light of the evidence put forward in this, and earlier sections
Aside from the internal recommendations of the Future of Iraq Project plus the existing military battle plans, readily available external intelligence existed. The RAND Corporation, a non profit think tank ,produced a study by James Dobbins that would later be turned into a broader text on America’s role in nation building. The study analysed the past problems of nation building , examined the unique circumstances of Iraq and produced a series of realistic recommendations, outlining the challenges and possible solutions. Dobbins isolated many of the key challenges restoring electricity and water, the dangers of looting and criminality and presented a realistic assessment of the Iraq polity:
“Instead, Iraq was left with no tradition of pluralist democracy. Instead, politics have always been about authoritarian rule and the settlement of disputes by force. Although a sense of Iraqi national identity does exist, this does not override communal forms of identity along ethnic, geographic, tribal, or religious boundaries”
Without examining Dobbins’ recommendations in detail it is important to establish that there was a broad range of considered, accurate, internal and external intelligence for the Bush Administration to base its strategy. The “bad” intelligence will also be examined but it must be noted that the lead planner of the Iraq War, Donald Rumsfeld, was privy to a wide spectrum of information. Therefore the idea that the administration were surprised by what happened in Iraq is misleading; the US government may have been surprised at the failure of an overly optimistic strategy however the post conflict challenges had been forewarned and well briefed. The “mis-information” upon which the United States based its strategy was provided by an Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi. Peter Galbraith explains his importance in his work The End Of Iraq;
“Chalabi...persuaded Cheney and the Pentagon neoconservatives that American troops would be greeted with flowers. Defectors brought in by his State Department-funded Iraqi National Congress provided information about Iraq’s WMD programs that turned out to be false. It was Chalabi who conveniently neglected to mention to his enthralled American officials Iraq’s bitter and religious divisions and other problems that might follow from an invasion”
“Ahmad Chalabi’s role in the events leading to the American invasions of Iraq cannot, in my view, be overstated. If it were not for him, the United States military would not be in Iraq today. This does not make him a con man, as his critics allege. Through a twenty-year cultivation of America’s foreign policy elite, Chalabi made a convincing case for a democratic Iraq and Arab democracy. He certainly spun his information and analysis in a manner maximally favourable to the case for war. On some matters, he may have lied”
It is hard to assess Ahmad Chalabi ‘s exact influence on the war planners as there are no direct sources to reference. However from inside reports and the broad literature there is a consensus that Chalabi played the pivotal role in providing the intelligence upon which the post conflict scenario was planned. The common assertion that the United States believed they would be greeted with flowers as liberators is directly attributed to Chalabi, that he conjured the image that Iraq would be “a cake walk”. However the conclusion to be drawn from this section is that Ahmad Chalabi was one voice among many. The Bush Administration was privy to a broad base of information, the State Department had spent millions of dollars developing a wide ranging and detailed set of recommendations, the US military had planned and practiced extensively for Iraq providing its own reports and assessments, and external Think Tanks had created comparative studies examining Iraq in great detail. The idea that US government was ill informed and was “duped” by Chalabi, is far too narrow a conclusion. The policy makers consciously decided to ignore other intelligence and follow Chalabi’s rosy predictions. The flaws lay not in intelligence alone but in the decision making process, the interagency process completely broke down, key thinkers and experts were phased out, and a broad strategic failure occurred. These factors will be examined thoroughly in the next section of this study, however the conclusion that the Iraq War can be summarised as a one off failure of intelligence is reductionist and fails to highlight key conclusions.
Decision Making and Inter-Agency Planning
One the themes stressed throughout the piece has been that in planning for the Iraq War the Bush Administration failed to create an inter-agency strategy; war and peace were seen as separate phases despite the fact that rebuilding Iraq and creating a democracy was one of the stated political objectives. This separation led to several oversights which when combined with poor planning served to seriously undermine the nation building effort. It has also been shown that despite claims to the contrary the Bush Administration was not taken by surprise by the realities of Iraq. The Administration had access to a variety of intelligence sources and detailed plans that it chose to disregard. It is the aim of this section to examine how these decisions came to be made, how they impacted upon strategy and how and why the interagency strategy making process broke down.
The original war planning for Iraq started with a relatively broad interagency scope. In 2001 the Future of Iraq Project was created within the State department to plan for the reconstruction while the army began drawing up battle plans under Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department. While, as has been shown, there was negligible interaction between the two, there was at least a broad scope. Over time State Department input was phased out completely leaving the Defense Department solely responsible for the war planning. The decision making process within the Bush Administration was based on top down loyalty. Bush gave free reign to his trusted advisors (Rumsfeld and Cheney) and left it to their discretion who to include and exclude in the consultation process. James Dobbins in his article Who Lost Iraq? provides one of the best critiques and explanations of the Administrations power structure;
“From these first drafts of history, one thing already seems clear: neither the president nor the Secretary of Defense relied on structured debate and disciplined dissent to aid his decision-making. Under their leadership, both the White House and the Pentagon used management models that emphasized inspiration and guidance from above and loyalty and compliance from below. In such an atmosphere, individuals within the administration who doubted the wisdom of invading Iraq or the adequacy of plans to occupy and rebuild the country were not encouraged to articulate those concerns. By adopting such a top-down approach to decision-making, the president and the Secretary of Defense denied themselves the more carefully considered proposals and better analysis that a dialectical process of structured debate would have produced”
It will be argued in this section that Dobbins critique does not go far enough. Rather than simply encouraging supporters who shared their vision, the Defense Department actively silenced those with dissenting opinions. This would have serious consequences. Post conflict nation building efforts, are not black and white; the line between the military and political is blurred, the issues are highly complex in scope, arguably greater than in a conventional war, and the post conflict situation is often unpredictable. On the ground in Iraq the army would find itself fighting a counter insurgency campaign after the conventional war had ended, whilst simultaneously it was expected to fulfil a security role and play a part in the reconstruction of infrastructure. A basic black and white approach to strategy is simply not suitable.
Rumsfeld’s relationships with military planners will be evaluated next. Rumsfeld was responsible for shaping the strategy of both the conventional war and the post war phase. The military was largely submissive, interested in carrying out orders and absorbed in tactical issues as was shown in the military strategy section. Paul Yingling went as far as to state “America’s generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy”. While this frank assessment is accurate on the whole it only reveals half the story. General Franks failed in his responsibility to “advise the civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy” but equally Donald Rumsfeld successfully beat down any Generals who attempted to do just that. Two key examples , illustrate this latter statement, the cases of Eric Shinseki and General Antony Zinni. Shineski disagreed with the idea of a small manoeurverist force and based on the Kosovo case study presented alternative proposals as Larry Diamond explains; “The U.S. Army’s chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, advocated a large invasion force (on the order of 400, 000 troops) so as not to be “trapped in an untenable position during the occupation” ”. The central idea being that the US would muster a force similar to Kosovo of one soldier for every tenth person. The Defense Department’s reaction to this dissenting voice was to announce Shinseki’s replacement, thus making him a lame duck; Paul Wolfowitz , Deputy Secretary of Defense, discredited his suggestion in the media referring to Shinseki’s ideas as “wildly off the mark”. As has been highlighted earlier the battle plan and the number of troops taken to Iraq would be two of the lead failings in the operation. General Zinni, who had created the original war plans in 1999 for Iraq and continually critiqued the new strategic approach calling for more troops and greater inter agency cooperation, was rewarded for his advice by being frozen out of the planning process. As Galbraith explains;
“General Tommy Franks, the Central Command combatant commander, who had overall responsibility for fighting the Iraq War, was barred by Pentagon higher-ups from consulting his predecessor, General Antony Zinni. Zinni had done substantial planning for post-combat operations in Iraq, the so-called Phase IV operations. Zinni’s plan which included having U.S. troops provide security, was cast aside as too pessimistic, presumably because it would require more troops than Rumsfeld wanted to send”
This was symptomatic of the relationship between the Defense Department and the army during the Bush Administration. The two most experienced Generals who had a background in war gaming and strategising on Iraq were effectively retired and frozen out. This is arguably the prime example of failure in the strategic approach taken in this period; not only was military and political planning carried out without broad inter-agency co-operation but those offering differing perspectives were ignored or silenced. The relationship between the military and the Defense Department is always in a state of flux, as Administrations come and go the balance of power changes back and forth. While the antagonistic relationship characteristic of this period is unique to the Bush Administration, focused around personalities and situational factors; it is nevertheless possible to theorise more broadly about long term flaws in strategic approach..
Rumsfeld’s relations with the State Department proved to be no better. The work of the Future of Iraq Project was discussed earlier. It was established that a broad range of opinions were canvassed, considered and conclusions drawn. The recommendations made by the Project however were not only rejected, but the Project and the State Department as a whole found itself excluded from post war planning. Those responsible for drawing up strategy opted for the rosier, best case scenario, presented by Chalabi. In Bob Woodward’s work Plan Of Attack he showcases the break down in relations between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld;
“Powell sent over the “future of Iraq” study and the names of about 75 State Department Arab experts who had done the study or who could be included in the vanguard going into Iraq. Heading that team were Thomas Warrick, who had supervised the study, and Meghan O’Sullivan, a sanctions specialist whom Powell very much admired..Later Powell got word that Rumsfeld had kicked Warrick and O’Sullivan out of the Pentagon, ordering them to leave by sundown...Rumsfeld said that as they got into post-war planning, the work had to be done by those who were truly committed to this and supporters of the change and not those who have written or said things that were not supportive”
Larry Diamond elaborates further “The same almost theological determination to go to war no matter what, and the same unshakable confidence in the inevitability and speed of America’s triumph, drove the Pentagon’s decision to ignore the entire Future of Iraq Project, to ban its coordinator, Thomas Warrick, from the post-war occupation”. What appears to have developed within the Bush Administration is a rigid command structure. Only those who believed in the agenda were allowed to participate. Generals were retired and banned, and the Secretary of State and his experts were kept at arm’s length, and out of the strategising process. This is typical of an old and outdated approach to strategy. An idea that war planning is done strictly by the military and the Defense Department, based on a line of strategic thought that suggests for the military to best function and achieve its goals it requires a clear and focused command structure, and minimal interference to avoid becoming bogged down and slow moving. It is clear that Donald Rumsfeld set out his agenda to have a fast, light moving force, which would maximise risk to achieve great rewards. Those who had a different approach or highlighted the dangers for the post conflict situation were phased out.
Post conflict planning was sidelined as best case scenario predictions were accepted; this reflects Rumsfeld’s risk friendly approach. That approach is not completely without merit, the US Military did achieve a remarkably quick and casualty free victory over the larger Iraqi forces but the approach was anti-strategic. The whole planning and decision making process employed in the build up to the war was best suited to conventional warfare (where the goal is simply to defeat the enemy). Post war planning assumed simplicity when in fact situational factors were highly complex. The planning maximized risk and minimized contingency. Ultimately this is where the notion that there was “no plan” for the post war scenario gains the most traction. The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (OHRA) headed by Jay Garner, planned for the post war without the aid of State Department experts, and planned primarily for a humanitarian crisis that did not materialise. OHRA was overwhelmed by the task of controlling post war chaos and building the new Iraq state, Jay Garner was replaced by Paul Bremer III. This is one of the key strategic failings. Earlier it was argued the Defense Department and the US military had lost sight of the political objectives, becoming obsessed with winning the battle rather than the war. This shows a detachment from a fundamental principle of strategy, however it can equally argued that one of the keys to successful strategy is to have a strong top down direction. While the Bush Administration made its goals clear, the involvement of the President appears to have been minimal. Some would go so far as to suggest it’s better to have the wrong strategy (for example a military occupation) but to persecute that strategy to the fullest of your ability than to be half hearted and directionless. The Bush Administration seemed to encapsulate two key conceptual strategic flaws, it created a strategy not suited to achieving its political goals, and no clear direction or approach was taken the post conflict scenario. Galbraith expands upon this point;
“The president did not decide whether to turn power over to an interim Iraqi government or to have the United States run the country in the manner of the post-war occupations of Germany and Japan. For a month after the fall of Baghdad the administrations pursued both policies simultaneously. When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld chose an administrator for Iraq, he picked a retired diplomat with no experience of the country and gave him two weeks to prepare for the assignment”
The administration of Paul Bremer III made several of the most highly criticised decisions of the reconstruction (to thoroughly DeBa’athify the civil service and ban the Ba’ath Party, to disband the Iraq Army, and to postpone elections). This was symptomatic of a flawed strategic approach at the conceptual level, because the recommendations of the late 90s had been ignored; the war and peace were treated as separate entities. Decision making was essentially made on the fly, Bremer had to make his decisions based on on-the-job reports. He was not privy to a depth of pre war planning or the advice of State Department experts. This is perhaps the clearest example of an outdated strategic and decision making approach. The conventional war fighting was planned years in advance in isolation, aside from planning for a humanitarian crisis, it was decided the post war plan could be determined as events progressed. It could be argued there is logic to this approach as post war scenarios are unpredictable and the ability to react is perhaps more valuable than a detailed strategy. However while this argument has some validity, it requires a considerable level of contingency to be built into the planning, ironically even a reactionary approach requires a deep level of strategic preparation. If it is decided to take the final decisions on the ground strategic foresight is required to ensure requisite tools are in place to carry out these reactive decisions. However the endemic failings in the inter agency relations and the lack of cross departmental planning, meant that this approach could not be successfully employed by Paul Bremer.
Conclusion
The aim of this piece was to reconsider strategy in a post conflict nation building scenario, using the Iraq War of 2003 as the case study: to analyse how this recent conflict fitted into a broader understanding of strategy and to understand whether the perceived strategic failings were unique to the situational factors surrounding the conflict or whether they were symptomatic of flaws in traditional approaches to strategy. The Iraq War of 2003 was an intriguing case study leading to somewhat paradoxical conclusions. It has been argued that the strategising process employed by the US government suggests both a need for a reconsideration of traditional strategic approaches as well as a re-assertion of some of the most fundamental principles. It was demonstrated in the military and civilian war planning sections that the Bush Administration lost sight of the fundamental principles of strategy; that “strategy is the bridge that relates military power to political purpose”. The Defense Department under Donald Rumsfeld failed to carry out this role as “the bridge” between the political objective and the tactical tools. Instead the lead planners became absorbed in the tactical issues, troop numbers and how they would defeat the enemy. The political objective was neglected; instead of the Defense Department keeping the military in check and ensuring its plans were suitable to achieve the political goals of the war, it became absorbed in low level tactics and lost sight of the bigger picture. This was exacerbated by the US military who in reaction to the quagmire of the Vietnam War had become pre-occupied with conventional warfare and tactical issues. The strategic approach needs to be rebalanced and the most fundamental definition of strategy needs to be reasserted. When planning a military operation or a post conflict reconstruction, those in charge of strategy must take the role of the guiding hand, in between the objectives and the tactics. This sentiment is echoed by Thomas Ricks’ damning critique;
Ultimately, however, the fault for the lapse in the planning must lie with Rumsfeld, the man in charge. In either case, it is difficult to overstate what a key mistake this lack of strategic direction was – probably the single most significant miscalculation of the entire effort. In war, strategy is the searchlight that illuminates the way ahead. In its absence, the U.S. military would fight hard and well but blindly, and the noble sacrifice of soldiers would be undercut by the lack of thoughtful leadership at the top that soberly assessed the realities of the situation and constructed a response.
Additionally, certain traditional strategic approaches need to be reconsidered. For over ten years , the military have been calling for a reconsideration of how nation building efforts are approached, arguing that tradition notions of having the Army plan the military operation and the civilians plan the peace, in isolation from one another, was outdated. Furthermore the idea that the war ends when the opponent’s army is defeated no longer matches the reality on the ground. The post conflict nation building scenario is too complex for such a black and white approach. The military and political are thrown together, and it has been shown how the most miniscule of tactical decisions, for example to bypass a city to avoid being tied down and taking casualties, can impact upon the political reconstruction of a nation. A greater interagency cooperation is required at the lowest possible levels, from the broader strategy to the smallest tactical minutia. An army commander cannot be expected to have a nuanced understanding of political reconstruction nor a State Department official to have an in depth knowledge of military tactics, so the two have to work in close co-operation to meet the challenges of the nation building scenario. The analysis of the Iraq War has shown how difficult this can be to achieve, as there is always likely to be interagency conflict and internal rivalries as well as the individual personality factors in play. Iraq is unique in that the personalities and approaches involved concentrated the worst manifestation of these potential flaws together into one case study, however rather than making Iraq an inappropriate case study; it instead serves as a warning of the potential dangers that await if these fundamental flaws are not addressed. Timothy Garden echoes this conclusion in his purely military analysis of the Iraq War;
“There is a tendency to examine military lessons as they apply to the combat phase. It is already clear that the post-conflict work is just as important as the fighting. Any lessons from this campaign will need to address both aspects. While smaller troop numbers may be right for manoeuvre warfare, they may be insufficient for securing the peace at the end of hostilities. Targeting policy will be affected by the desired end-state from which to begin rapid rebuilding of essential services. This war may be the time to extend the military doctrine from fighting to rebuilding the nation, and determining the optimum approach”
While such a detailed and complex planning process may be hard to achieve it reflects the intricacies and difficulties of defeating a nation through war followed by the designing of a democracy. It is not a light undertaking. If the United States is to attempt another such operation it will need to address these tough strategic considerations, Post Vietnam the US Army and Defense Department spent the best part of forty years avoiding the tough questions. It remains to be seen whether Iraq prompts a serious reconsideration of these issues, or whether mirroring the post Vietnam response, approaches develop at a tangent avoiding fundamental questions. There is evidence to suggest that Iraq is part of a broader strategic failing, to side step the issues once more, or to dismiss the Iraq case study as a “one off” could be potentially perilous.
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David W. Lesch, The Middle East And The United States, Westview Press (New York 2007).
Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy The Logic Of War And Peace, Harvard University Press, (Massachusetts, 2003).
Kishore Mahbubani , The Case Against the West, Foreign Affairs, (May/June 2008).
Mohammad Mahmoud Mohamaedou, Iraq And The Second Gulf War State Building and Regime Security, Austin and Winfield (London 1998).
Carrie Manning, Political Elites and Democratic State Building in Iraq and Bosnia, Democratization, Vol. 13, Issues 5, (December 2006).
Michael J. Mazarr, George W. Bush, Idealist, International Affairs, Vol. 79 Issue 3 (May 2003).
Dominic McGoldrick, From 9/11 to The Iraq War 2003, Heart Publishing (Portland 2004).
Wolfgang Merkel, Democracy Through War?, Democratization, Vol. 15, Issue 3 (June 2008).
Robert W. Merry, Sands Of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition, Simon & Schuster, (London 2006).
Jonathan Monten, The Roots Of The Bush Doctrine: Power, Nationalism, and Democracy Promotion in US Strategy, World Politics, Vol.29, Vol.4 (Spring 2005).
James Moore, Bush’s War For Reelection: Iraq The White House And The People, John Wiley & Sons, (New Jersey, 2004).
John Mueller, “The Iraq Syndrome”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84, Issue 6, (December 2005).
Williamson Murray & Major General Robert H. Scales Jnr., The Iraq War: A Military History, Harvard University Press, (Massachusetts, 2003).
Goerge Packer The Assasin Gate: America In Iraq, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (London 2005)
Walter Posch, Looking Into Iraq, Challillot Paper, no. 79, (July, 2005).
Geoffrey Record & W. Andrew Terrill, Iraq & Vietnam, University Press The Pacific, (Honolulu, 2004).
Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, The Penguin Press, (New York, 2006).
Marky Perry and Alastair Crooke “How to Lose the War on Terror: talking with Terrorist Asia Times”, March 31 2006.
Strobe Talbott, War In Iraq, Revolution In America, International Affairs, Vol. 79 Issue 5 (October, 2003).
Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Simon & Schuster, (New York, 2004).
Bob Woodward, State of Denial, Simon & Schuster, (New York, 2006).
Bob Woodward, Bush At War, Simon & Schuster, (New York, 2003).
Antony Zinni, Understanding What Victory Is, Proceedings, (October 2003).
Primary Sources:
Donald Rumsfeld, “Rumsfeld’s Rules”, The Wall Street Journal, (January 19th, 2001). http://analects-ink.com/weekend/020308.html.
George W. Bush to Tony Blair, “President outlines the threat”, www.whitehouse.gov .
www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz.html
Future Of Iraq Sources: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/20020430.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Overview.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Water,%20Af%20and%20Envt.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Public%20Health.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Defense%20Policy%20and%20Institutions.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Economy%20and%20Infrastructure.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Transparency.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Education.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Transitional%20Justice.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Democratic%20Principles.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Local%20Govt.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Civil%20Society.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Free%20Media.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/FOI%20Oil.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/20020000.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB163/iraq-state-03.pdf
State department report on the CPA http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB163/iraq-state-05.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/doc02.pdf
CIA’s paper on Iraq’s weapons of Mass Destruction http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/doc01.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/doc02.pdf
Defense Department report on Iraq http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/doc03.pdf
Select committee report on Iraq http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/doc12.pdf
Pre war troop figure commitment expectations http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/Tab%20K%20-%20page%2010.pdf
CENTCOM Timetable for Iraq http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/Tab%20B.pdf
CENTCOM war plans Phase I-IV http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/Tab%20C.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/Tab%20I.pdf
The Hybrid Plan for Iraq http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/Tab%20I%20-%20page%2012.pdf
Speech by George W. Bush, Cincinnati October 7th 2002, http://www.al-bab.com/arab/docs/iraq/bush2002b.htm.
Speech by George W. Bush, Cincinnati October 7th 2002, http://www.al-bab.com/arab/docs/iraq/bush2002b.htm.
“The Downing Street Memo” www.downingstreetmemo.com/memo.html
Donald Rumsfeld, “Beyond Nation Building”, 11th Annual Salute to Freedom, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, New York City, Friday, February 14, 2003. http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=337.
USCENTAF report, 30 April 2003.http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA422709&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
Zinni Original Phase IV planning, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB207/index.htm
Donald Rumsfeld, Daily Briefings On Iraq, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/mar2003/t03202003_t0320sd.html.
Memo titled “Iraq Contingency Planning” from Lorne W. Craner, Arthur E. Dewey and Paul E. Simons to Under Secretary of State Dobriansky http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB163/iraq-state-03.pdf.
Memo from Jack Straw To Tony Blair 2002, http://downingstreetmemo.com/docs/straw.pdf.
http://www.international.ucla.edu/bcir/print.asp?parentid=11162.
Inteview with General Zinni on the CBS programme 60 minutes. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/60minutes/main618896.shtml.
http://www.internationalreportingproject.org//seminars/2004/fall/anthony_zinni.htm.
Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, And Missions For Military Forces In A Post-Conflict Scenario, 2003. http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB182.pdf.
Newspaper Articles:
Kurt Achin, "Post-War Chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan Shows US Needs Better Reconstruction Strategy, Says Former CENTCOM Commander," The Johns Hopkins University International Reporting Project, Fall 2004.
Eric Boehlert, "I'm not sure which planet they live on", salon.com. http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/10/17/zinni/index.html.
Madeline Brand & Guy Raz, “Confirmation Hearings Begin For Robert Gates”, National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6581475.
Leslie Evans, "Straight Talk from General Anthony Zinni,", University of California at Los Angeles Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations, 14 May 2004.
Dan Froomkin, “How Bush Uses His Generals”, Washington Post, (July 16th 2007) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/07/16/BL2007071600891_pf.html
Francis Fukayama, After Neo-conservatism, New York Times, (February 19 2006). http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/magazine/neo.html.
Eric G. Kail, Winning The Enduring Victory At The Operational Level, Naval War College, unpublished paper, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA422771&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf.
Vernon Leob & Thomas E. Ricks, “Rumsfeld's Style, Goals Strain Ties In Pentagon”, Washington Post, (October, 16th 2002). http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32170-2002Oct15.
Dave Moniz, “Ex-Army boss: Pentagon won't admit reality in Iraq”, USA Today, (June 2nd 2003). http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-06-02-white-usat_x.htm
Interview wth Laurie Mylroie, “Gunning For Saddam”, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/mylroie.html.
Thomas Ricks, "For Vietnam Vet Anthony Zinni, Another War on Shaky Territory", Washington Post, 23 December 2003.
Eric Schmitt, Pentagon Contradicts General On Iraq’s occupation force size, New York Times, (February 28th 2003). http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/167/35435.html.
Eric Schmitt & Joel Brinkley, “The Struggle For Iraq”, The New York Times, (October 19th 2003). http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/world/struggle-for-iraq-planning-state-dept-study-foresaw-trouble-now-plaguing-iraq.html.
Peter Slevin & Dana Priest, Wolfowitz Concedes Iraq Errors, Washington Post (24th July 2006). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37468-2003Jul23.html.
James Dobbins, Who Lost Iraq?, Foreign Affairs, (September/October 2007).
