Force structure, grand strategy and forcing the issue

There has been murmurs in the background for a need for a 'new outlook' by America to the 21st century, especially in the area of war fighting. On that I hit on an interview by Hugh Hewitt with Thomas Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map (transcript here). Now, in my current state of scattered mentality actually reading any lengthy work is highly difficult. Keeping theme and continuity of ideas for analysis more than a bit of a problem. So I cannot render full and valid judgment on the book and ideas as-is, which will lead me astray, no doubt. So be it, I will cope with my lacks if you can put up with them.

From the interview however comes this part from Mr. Barnett late in the interview:

Well, you know, it’s the reason why, and I know you’re a big defender of blogs, because I saw your interview with Joe Rago, it’s the reason why I started a blog, quite frankly, when the book came out back, the first book, back in April of 2004, so I could get a dialogue with a wide array of people, because I know it’s not easy. I mean, we lived in kind of hedgehog times in the Cold War, you know, the hedgehog knows one big thing, the fox knows many things. Well, knowing one big thing in the Cold War was enough. You know, containment, mutual assured destruction, let the Soviets size our forces. We discovered on 9/11 we’re not living in a hedgehog world anymore. You’ve got to deal with multiple players, multiple types of players, multiple regions, you know, all sorts of dynamics involving economics and other things. It is a complex world. It requires complex explanations. But I believe it’s essential that we raise a generation of not only informed citizens, but frankly a generation in the national security community of real strategists, real grand strategists, people who think about war within the context of everything else, not just war within the context of war, but within everything else we call globalization, because we’ve outsourced the job of grand strategies to journalists, and op-ed columnists, and that’s just not doing the job.

Now, to me this sounds familiar and placing that familiarity may help give it context. Because he is hitting close to home, but also straying far from the mark in that summation. Two things are being juxtaposed as a necessary foundation to come to terms with a new outlook on the world here: 1) Understanding that there are dynamics between inter-related problems, and, 2) an informed citizenry. And where has this been heard before? Well, this is a good start, I should think is this article in The Revolution (some cleaning up of extraneous characters that appear in the original as undefined text are shifted to their implied approximates):

The principles that people should be 'both red and expert' and that the non-professional should lead the professional are crucial for the development of socialist society and the advance to communism. These principles embody a very important understanding:

Each sphere and discipline in the arts, sciences, etc., has its own particular features and concerns, and thus it is necessary for people to apply themselves to and continually learn more about the particular characteristics, contradictions, and laws involved. But at a deeper level, there is a unifying outlook and methodology that can and should be applied to these various fields and disciplines. As Mao Tsetung explained, Marxism does not re-place but does embrace all these spheres.

These principles also give expression to the fact that all these realms can and must be the concern of, and be taken up by, not just a few people specializing in them but by the broad masses of people and ultimately by society as a whole. This is essential so that inequalities in society can be overcome and work in all these spheres can be marked by and benefit from the broadest, most diverse and lively engagement and wrangling, and at the same time can serve the people and the cause of emancipating humanity and continually enhancing our ability to know and change the world.

Yes, we have heard this before in the past and it continues to be a mantra of all of those looking to change the world for 'the better'. To get a better world you must change the people! Hopefully not as often as the oil change in one's car. Be that as it may this has been an ongoing theme of Socialism as far back as Marx, where the proletariat were still using 'feudalistic ways' of looking at the world. To get this well educated proletariat one did, indeed, have to teach them and that worked out so well for Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro that they rose the level of society up to the point where no one wanted to work as there was no recompense to the individual. Trotting out the need for 'complex understanding' is a prescription for long-term apathy as everyday folks do not want to be bothered with it.

That has, unfortunately, gotten all of those wonderful Socialists and Communists and Revolutionaries so entrenched in the education system that actually trying to get people to make *sense* of history is damned difficult. Exposure to this 'real world' via 'real jobs' is a harsh wake-up call and the pressing necessities of life are the great 'scouring pad' to the mind of ridding most people of the precepts of 'class warfare' and such as the 'right' way to view history. Further, trying to do this from the top-down has failed as that is the exact, current methodology being used on the Federal level to fund education. To get out of the starting blocks one really does need to ensure that the starting blocks haven't been replaced with jello blocks and quickly painted over. That first push off is one more down than forward and the face on the cinderblock track is a rude awakening to the state of the world. So to press this agenda forward first requires dealing with the People you have, not the ones you *want*.

I have severe problems with any agenda that intends to 'educate the masses' be it in socialist dialectic or the fundamentals of grand strategy.

Now, Mr. Barnett does have an interesting idea that the current state of the Armed Forces is that of a 'great first half-team' but that there is no great emphasis on the 'second half'. Here is the excerpt on that from Mr. Barnett:

...So the notion that you can call all the post-war operations, and all the small stuff, and all the special operations, and all that stuff lesser included, meaning stuff you don’t really buy for, train for, optimize for, just stuff you assume you can handle if you’re good at the big war. That’s not good enough anymore, because we’ve seen we can whip traditionally echelon arrayed opponents, conventional militaries. But then we come under the gun in the insurgency. So again, we’ve got a first half team in a league that insists on keeping score until the end of the game, and our enemies are smart enough to know I’m not going to fight the first half team, that tremendous war fighting force. I’m going to wait until the Americans go into peacekeeping mode, and then I’m going to kill two or three a day, and that’s how I’m going to drive them out.

And this, too, has a familiar ring to it as it has been heard before. I will take some excerpts from The Strategy of Technology by Stefan T. Possony, Ph.D.; Jerry E. Pournelle, Ph.D. and Col. Francis X. Kane, Ph.D. (USAF Ret.) in Chapter 8 - What Kind of War Is This?, which offers some insight into the near term future of the post-Cold War world 1997 (updated from 1988 text, but only partially):

In this book we do not discuss the political and organizational aspects of a strategy for small wars, but we want to make clear that these are far more important than military operations in wars of the Vietnam type. Military efforts are defensive maneuvers in "wars of national liberation;" the offensive against the guerrilla must be conducted by nonmilitary means.

Examples of offensive action in counterinsurgency are: training of police; training of administrators; detailed plans for improvement of routine administrative services; recruitment and training of police intelligence officials such as in the Special Branch in Malaya; economic aid programs coupled with military action to defend the resulting improvements; codification of laws; road and communication net construction coupled with sufficient military protection. The role of the military is generally defensive in all cases.

This does not mean that there is no place for military offensives, but these are tactical, designed to break the enemy's hold on territory. Actual pacification requires something more flexible, and a great deal more permanent, than an army.

And then a bit further on there is this key insight:

American surrender in Viet Nam did not mean the end of the problem; the war for South East Asia still continues. It will still take many years to end the conflict and bring peace in that region. Military force is still required to halt Communist aggression.

In addition to their actions in Vietnam, the Communists opened limited operations in the United States designed to sap our will and convince us that resistance to their war of "national liberation" was futile. It takes no great number of enemy agents to exploit discontent with a mismanaged war. Guerrilla operations are mainly a contest of will, not power, and anything that softens the will to resist can be used as a weapon in the struggle.

In actuality, the terms guerrilla war and limited war are or can be semantic traps. By attempting to fix the conflict at some point of the scale of conflict intensity, politicians also fix the limits of weapons that can be used without escalation. It should be fairly obvious, however, that strategy cannot be chosen by abstract categories. The decision as to which weapons to employ, assuming that one intends to engage in a conflict at all, is a military decision, although it has strong political and diplomatic overtones. It is not true that limitations on weapons to be employed are the only possible limits on conflict. An equally important limit is the theater or area of conflict; another is the objective sought.

That is why the current context of so many wanting to call Iraq a 'Civil War' and, thus, unwinnable is something that is defeatist in its outlook. By trying to fixate on a term, which implies a coherent opposition with government and control of territory with regular armed forces, those using that term are describing something that does not exist on the ground in the current situation in Iraq. By using the emotional overtones of that language, however, those using it are trying to defeat the United States via that use. What the United States is currently engaged in is an attempt to keep the larger conflict against Transnational Terrorism contained within a geographical area so as to remove broader support for terrorist cells globally and concentrate money, manpower and effort within the Middle East as a whole. As of yet no one in the Political Elite, including the President, has cited this as a major reason for actually staying in the Middle East and Iraq.

This leaves the field open to the 'blood for oil' folks, who even on that level miss the mark of the necessity of regularity in the oil business for National and International reasons of economics. Somehow a global depression due to a dictator, be he secular or religious, gaining control of the Middle Eastern supply points for petroleum, either directly or via threat and extortion, really are things the Western world would not want to see happen as the worst effects of it would be in the Third World, where modern technical capability would dry up and global problems of starvation ensue. So I guess those folks chanting 'no blood for oil' prefer that the deaths happen upon the poor and destitute of the world and like death tolls in the millions annually due to such a happening. No blood may be spilled, but the corpses pile up just the same. And that short-sighted chanting is used to erode what is, essentially as pointed out in 1997, a war of willpower, not fighting.

In opening the section on the US and Small Wars, the authors give us this:

The United States has a strong interest in keeping small wars under control: we simply cannot allow the Communists to take over countries and thus to strengthen their overall capability and influence in the worldwide Protracted Conflict. We must also make it plain that a U.S. guarantee is worth something, and not merely a paper promise. U.S. guarantees to otherwise unimportant allies must be kept, lest our most important allies cease to rely on our promises.

Any war the US gets into, then, requires long-term and long-ranging commitment to ensure that promises given are kept. There are no such things as unimportant allies. The US, to honor its commitments to itself and its Friends and Allies must actually demonstrate, fulfill and enhance them over time to ensure that 'No Ally is Left Behind'.

When America loses the will to keep such commitments, we see that no good comes of it:

A strategy of small wars has the advantage of making small gains over the short run which over a protracted period produce a composite of large gains in power and position.

In Asia, our loss of Vietnam gave the Soviets access to the military installations we built there. This greatly increased their capability to operate on the Asian/Pacific Rim.

In our own hemisphere we have seen two vital small wars, Cuba and Nicaragua, which have improved the Soviet global geoposition. As we lost each of them, we rationalized that they didn't matter. An "agrarian reformer" drove an "oppressive dictator" from power in Cuba, and "peace got a chance" to ratify the control by a Soviet creation in Nicaragua. We have yet to awaken to the Soviet exploitation of those advances which have given them bases for military applications, including potential use of nuclear weapons.

So for those who decried the loss of American soldiers to defend a Nation that we, as a Nation, had committed ourselves to, put at risk and danger those that did depend upon us and gave rise to an impression of a weak America that would oppose no one, anywhere because *nothing* was worth the loss of American blood. The hard work of the Reagan Administration to counter the Nicaraguan regime, put in place an information offensive against it and hold it up to its words of democracy by giving it harsh scrutiny during an actual election cycle forced it from power. Against an enemy that mouths words of sweetness about liberty and democracy, they can be used to stuff those words right back at them. In our current world, however, that has gone by the wayside and *no* lovely platitudes on liberty and democracy are given by current enemies.

What is interesting reading this chapter is that the emphasis placed on the DoD to 'get with it' for small wars and MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) conflict have paid high dividends in the most effective use of combined arms in urban conflict that has been witnessed in history. The days of the 'run and gun' in the streets or the bitter room-to-room fighting for months on end is gone, along with the very high casualty rates that attend them both on the military and civilian side. To get at the enemy you no longer need devastate a city but, instead, actually *get the enemy* and be done with it. Defining just who the enemy actually is, however, is still problematical and set via political terms, not military ones.

With that said there is also the problem of insurgents operating from 'sanctuaries' of the then Communist regimes, but the concept has general application:

In dealing with this strategic issue in the late 1980s the American strategist of technology had to face a new constraint -- Viet Nam. Viet Nam meant for him that no US forces could be involved in meeting strategic requirements at the "lower end" of the spectrum of conflict. But if the troops involved could not employ the high technology equipment developed for the "higher" levels how can high tech be brought to bear? The answer lies in applying the products of high tech and not necessarily advanced conventional munitions. In other words high technology command and control can be the "force multiplier" which can make low tech forces effective.

First of all, assassins, guerrillas and insurgences operate from sanctuaries. That was very clear in the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s. Cuba, Syria, Iran, North Korea trained and equipped them, as did the USSR. That was not as evident in Central America, but the Soviet-sponsored guerrillas attack El Salvador from a sanctuary. With the consolidation of power by the Communist Nicaraguan government Nicaragua became a sanctuary for attacks on all its neighbors. Similar situations prevailed in Angola, Ethiopia, the Philippines to name a few.

Consequently, the essential step is to have continuous surveillance of such sanctuaries. There is another sanctuary from which to conduct the necessary surveillance -- space. Space is a new ingredient to military operations. It may seem strange to say that in the fourth decade of the space age, but from the point of view of technological strategy the reality is that space and space technology have not yet been applied to the entire spectrum of warfare, let alone small wars.

The applications of space can be all-pervasive. They can be made in all functions supporting all types of warfare, not just surveillance, but navigation and position location, geodesy, weather, communications and data relay, surveillance across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and eventually weapon delivery.

It was this drive during the 1990's that actually did deliver more and more precision guided weaponry that can be delivered during all weather circumstances that started to change the way warfare was being conceived. What grew up, however, was a space 'guidance system' via the GeoPositioning System and air-breather platforms that were completely automated to give continual and flexible surveillance over an area of interest. This dream of the 1980's allowed what the authors typified as a "multiplier" that would make low tech forces effective. That is an apt description of the Afghanistan campaign which I looked at in Fighting the Wizard Wars:

I remember watching a Special Forces soldier working in Afghanistan during the opening of that conflict against the Taliban. He was there with just one other soldier and had met up with a Northern Alliance member that led him into a town (and I do forget which one) where the Taliban was going to make a stand. Together they found a local sympathizer who would lead them to the top of a house so that he could point out Taliban strongholds and buildings. He would point to one and say 'That is an armory that they use'... one soldier would nod looking out with his binoculars, while the other was using a transmitter.

As the local finished pointing, a puff of smoke arose from the building. The man looked at the soldier, amazed. He pointed to a schoolhouse that the Taliban had taken over.

It, too, saw a puff of smoke within a minute.

The man started pointing... here... and there... there... the governates house... that barricaded street...

Again and again and again and again explosions and puffs of smoke arose...

The man stopped pointing. The soldier asked what was wrong. The man responded, 'Those are all the places they WERE'.

The soldiers packed up, went off with their Northern Alliance compatriots to the next man that knew where some Taliban might be...

To the Afghani who was doing the pointing, it was magic. He was directing fire against those that had oppressed him. He did not care about laser rangefinders, automated coordinate uploads, small diameter bombs, Global Positioning System... the effect was...

Magic.

That is the effect of having a "force multiplier" in the modern age. By the time the US had regular ground troops in Afghanistan, US Special Forces had leveraged air supremacy and accurate GPS guided weapons to remove Taliban strong points and shift the battle from its years of stasis to a running victory for the Northern Alliance. The 'hot part' of small wars is something that the US has been training for with nearly a decade behind it by the time Afghanistan was invaded, and the weapons had advanced so beyond that of the Gulf War that a new type of warfare came to the forefront.

The authors of SoT go on to look at the downside of small wars:

Small wars, particularly those against guerrillas and insurgences, cannot cause casualties among the population being defended. In other words, in order to defend the sheep, friendly forces must eliminate the wolves hiding among them without killing the sheep. That has proven to be difficult in El Salvador, for example, where the Soviet sponsored guerillas have tried to destroy the infrastructure, power plants, bridges; have used assassination, kidnaping, and threats against the civilian populace; and have tried to "fade away" among the local populace to avoid capture.

Guerrillas can plant land mines which kill civilians; governments cannot. Government forces cannot use advanced munitions which have multiple warheads and hundreds of bomblets to carry out carpet, indiscriminate bombings of guerrilla-held areas. Air-delivered munitions must be placed with great accuracy. NAVSTAR GPS can be crucial to such accuracy, but local commanders must exercise judgment when calling for such air support and avoid collateral, unwanted civilian casualties.

And then a bit later:

The most fruitful avenue for the strategist of technology lies in applying the products of high technology satellite and space systems to command and control of friendly forces. The automated battlefield developed for higher intensity wars can have its counterpart in low intensity conflict in small wars. Real-time data, data integration, expert systems, displays, and real-time command and control can be spin-offs of developments of high intensity conflicts to small wars.

Which is a chilling rendition of what the US is being treated to by its own media. Every insurgent attack is shown in bloody details and the fault is put on the US Armed Forces and *not* upon the insurgents. And heaven help you if you accidentally get a civilian killed while going *after* insurgents. Yes, if you are getting hit from all sides and there are civilians present, the US Armed Forces are forced to actually consider the effects of bringing in something like a helicopter gunship, while the enemies have no problem in using area effect weapons, like grenades, or shooting indiscriminately with automatic weapons. But the solution of rapidly using and applying high technology was seen as yielding large possibilities in the grand strategic realm. With new tools comes new ways of looking at situations and the removal of some old obstacles and new ones coming to the forefront.

What could not be helped by the authors of SoT, however, is that this technology will not remain static globally. Thus, this conclusion, while correct in one realm is not operable over the entire realm of conflict:

We can cope with this threat because we are technologically superior. Technology devised to implement a well-thought-out strategy can give us the weapons that make small wars as unprofitable as other forms of violence.

The authors, at that time, were in the seat of all the Military strategists as seeing no 'end game' to terrorism. Without a way to create a valid end-state, in conception, terrorism would remain marginalized as a tool of Nation State warfare. That said, just to stick on the Nation State side for just a bit longer, we have the 'division of forces' concept by Mr. Barnett which has a known end-point: constabulary forces.

And a look at that from Jerry Pournelle is helpful, in an email response to Francis Hamit:

As I have said many times, good soldiers do not make good constables. Constabulary troops are important.

The Romans employed Praetorians: double strength Legions superbly trained and equipped, elite units able at least in theory to defeat larger numbers of other troops including standard Legions.

Legions, able to stand up to anything else in the world. Over time, though, some Legions became permanent occupation forces, staying in their regions and intermarrying, settling there on discharge. Benet's Last of the Legions, and Kipling's poem on that subject say much about that.

Auxiliaries who were locals (there were also specialists who served as what amounted to mercenaries with regular units). Think of these as native constabulary.

Now in practice things weren't this clear cut, but the concepts are easy enough to understand.

In the modern world, constabulary do not need Abrams tanks capable of single shot kills miles out of range of any conceivable enemy tank. Constabulary won't be fighting tanks, or organized stand up units of any kind.

Dirty shirt blue cavalry policed the West. When the Plains Indians had the capability to fight actual pitched battles, Nelson Miles's infantry defeated them in the Winter War. After that, the cavalry served as constabulary. Custer found out what happens when you throw constabulary cavalry against superior numbers of an organized force. (Yes, I know, it was a near thing, and Custer had prevailed with a bold charge in the War, and "the only tactics he ever knew was to ride to the sound of the guns." The point is still valid: he led constabulary cavalry against an organized force that chose to stand and fight. That is a job for the real army.)

If the US is to be a competent empire -- that is, to impose government on other people regardless of their wishes or consent -- then we will need constabulary as well as soldiers.

Marines, interestingly, can be both, although Marine units can't prevail against heavy armored units. But then they shouldn't be used that way to begin with. The Marines have been our traditional force for imposed government (Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Monroe Doctrine enforcers in general; Small Wars)

What Mr. Barnett is proposing, then, only has a few historical precedents in US history. While the US Marine Corps has, indeed, been used as constabulary, we come face to face with the sorts of results one gets overseas, as is the case in Haiti 1915-34 (H/t to Greg Cochrane over at Chaos Manor Mail). The term 'Nation Building' may have been recently coined, but in conception it has been around for some time, most asserted by President Woodrow Wilson. Here is the Executive Summary lead-in for the work itself:

Thesis: The first United States Occupation of Haiti, after a slow start, made a great variety of capital improvements for Haiti, made changes in the Haitian political system, and refinanced the Haitian economy, none of which had much lasting impact on the Haiti people once the occupation was terminated.

Background: The United States occupied Haiti originally to restore public order in 1915. It's self-imposed mandate quickly expanded to reestablishing Haitian credit in the international credit system, establishing good government and public order, and promoting investment in Haitian agriculture and industry. After a slow start, marred by a brutal revolt in 1918-20, the United States Occupation of Haiti was reorganized and began to address many of the perceived shortcomings of Haitian society. Its international and internal debt was refinanced, substantial public works projects completed, a comprehensive hospital system established, a national constabulary (the Gendarmerie [later Garde] d'Haiti) officered and trained by Marines, and several peaceful transitions of national authority were accomplished under American tutelage. After new civil unrest in 1929, the United States came to an agreement to end the Occupation before its Treaty-mandated termination in 1936. Once the Americans departed in 1934, Haiti reverted to its former state of various groups competing for national power to enrich themselves. Almost all changes the American Occupation attempted to accomplish failed in Haiti because they did not take into consideration the Haitian political and social culture.

Recommendation: Before the United States intervenes in foreign countries, particularly in those where nation-building improvements are to be attempted, the political and social cultures of those countries must be taken into consideration.

In other words: don't get involved unless you are ready to adapt to the people, culture and politics there and work something out. Here, unlike the period after the Philippine-American war, the US attempted to actually figure everything out and failed, due to a political view that wanted set ends and had not the means to adapt to those ends. In the post-Philippine Moro conflict, geographic isolation and actual help from locally trained troops proved to be a huge advantage as the individuals involved did not want to *lose*. In Haiti, with its highly corrupt political system, multi-faceted political system and a few individuals who see themselves as 'Great Leaders', one winds up with an unstable solution short of dictatorship and actually reforming the Nation is something that decades of work cannot overcome if one does not take the actual on the ground problems into consideration.

Of further worry is the fact that Iran has been setting up terrorist organizations in a blended mode of terrorism/military unit that attempts to morph between the two at need. Even though they do well at neither terrorism or military organization, any constabulary having to face them will have to face a threat that goes from individuals to small unit tactics at will. This has been the long term work done in Lebanon, Iraq, South America and Chechnya. This is highly worrying as the last constabulary that had to actively go out against such forces in a similar, long running conflict was the US Cavalry. Here the concept of lightly armed constabulary to go after the Native Americans proved to be troubling as regular Army Cavalry units could stand up against those forces that gathered in a warlike situation, but Gen. Custer demonstrated that when the enemy shifts in an instant, all previous tactics go out the window and sticking with them can prove lethal to one's unit when it is of Constabulary form.

Even if the US did, somehow, form a non-Imperial Constabulary Force, it would be as ill-equipped as modern police forces are to deal with actual non-State based terrorist threats. Against home-grown non-State terrorist threats the UK in Northern Ireland, the US in Waco, Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City, Spain with ETA, and Peru against Shining Path have only had limited success in foreknowledge of attacks, finding groups and properly dismantling them. Decades of long, hard work can yield some results, but there is an attendant death toll to garner those results. In this era where 'every death is a tragedy' except for the tens of millions killed by Communists and the millions dead due to ethnic cleansing globally, standing up a long term Constabulary Force is not something the US has done on a frequent or successful basis.

The reason for that, and Mr. Pournelle did allude to it, is that no matter how much you teach Americans about global politics, economics, ethnic differences, societal differences, and means and modes of geostrategic operations, the concept of Constabulary Forces has this nasty ring to it. The ring of Empire.

Thus I find the concepts necessary for Mr. Barnett's reasoning to have a few basic presumptive flaws to it, before you even get to if it is a 'good thing to do'.

First is the education component. To get Americans a classical education with rich background in conflict, democracy, tyranny, empire, economics, and technology, is something that the current school systems are failing at. Pushing that agenda onto the National stage may be necessary, but this cannot be a 'top-down' push from the Federal government. That is, in actuality, anti-democratic and totalitarian in conception. Also you will have a hard time getting teachers who do *not* have an agenda to push via their training, and would want to actually teach underpinnings of world history and how it works in place of the more 'modern' and socialist notions of class warfare guiding things. And the work by socialists to get *their* agenda in place is bad enough and *that* needs to be rooted out FIRST. The Internet can do many things, but change millions of individual's perception of things based on limited education in the actual world history may not be one of them. If you turned it into a 'get rich quick' schema, however...

Second, is the divide between regular forces and constabulary forces. Part of the major effectiveness of the combat forces is that they are now strongly integrating INTEL as part of everyday operations. It is no longer the INTEL folks just getting feeds and then sending out requests and waiting for replies, and the combat folks trying to figure out what the mission is about and why they are being distracted from it. Today there is a much better integration in active operations that regular forces and INTEL units now cooperate, share information and cross-help each other with valuable insights from both the INTEL and 'on the ground' side. It is becoming less of 'one leading the other' and more a cooperative effort to incorporate the needs of both into ongoing operations. Lightly armed constabulary would require that same level of integration if not HIGHER for the fact that they would *not* have tanks and Strykers and armored vehicles galore. The defense of knowing your enemy cannot be underestimated and to put that at peril for the regular forces by diluting the INTEL side or over-extending it is a non-starter. That entire section on the integration of constant surveillance now has ground troops and INTEL folks doing that work and sharing data. That is damn hard work to train for and expanding the *training* operations to take on a constabulary force with different force outlay and goals requires re-thinking the training to more properly target those needs. After a decade or more of hard work integrating surveillance, INTEL, MOUT, training and doctrine, the *last* thing anyone wants to do is stand up light constabulary forces that will *also* require police and forensics training.

Third, and finally, the very conception of a Constabulary Force has a certain acid taste to it based on historical precedent. When the Marines got handed this task in Haiti, the multiple, conflicting directions by the political class in the US and the multiple problems of trying to deal with Haiti all worked against each other. While infrastructure and training were put into place, the basic culture that was being worked with was never properly addressed. Political goals that are not firmly established and adhered to over time usually lead to bad military solutions when those goals are morphing again and again. In the Philippines the differences in ethnicity, geographic isolation and local support made huge differences in an insurgency that lasted a decade. Mind you, the latest version of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front are claiming lineage, but there is only cultural and not direct command lineage that can be claimed. Finally the forces of General Custer are a very, very harsh reminder to what happens when a foe suddenly changes tactics and outlook at the spur of the moment. Today, modern non-State and State based terrorists are training for that work, so that one never knows if it is just a few guys setting up a bomb, or a light infantry trap with a kill zone you are walking into.

Lets leave the Imperial ideas to the Enemy.

So it can be ground into dust for good and all.

Oh, and how to go after these folks waging illegitimate war?

Use their own concepts against them and do it *better* than they ever will and on a scale they cannot match.