6 April 2011
The current US and NATO operations over Libya are the first working example of the emerging “Gates Doctrine,” named after US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Secretary Gates has been making the rounds of the US service academies and speaking on the future role of each service. Gates says that joint operations between the US Air Force and the US Navy will be the primary manner of US overseas military intervention in the future. After Iraq and Afghanistan, Gates believes that any Secretary of Defense who advises the president “to …send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined’…”
Expected to retire by the end of 2011 after four consecutive years on the job, having served both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Gates delivered the benefit of his knowledge and experience on the subject of the future role of the army to the entire corps of cadets at West Point, where the United States Military Academy is located.
The Gates doctrine is important to Canada because it is as either a member of NATO or of some US-led coalition of the willing that Canada’s military force will be deployed on an overseas contingency operation. The kind where fighting is done. Even now, a Canadian general is in command of the NATO operations over Libya, after NATO took over enforcement of the no-fly zone over Libya from a joint USAF – USN operation called “Odyssey Dawn”. Canada has a squadron of CF-18 Hornet jets in the NATO operation, and a pair of them actually shot-up something on the ground in Libya.
It is a matter of government policy whether the CF will be deployed as peacekeepers or as warfighters. But it is widely acknowledged that it is as warfighters that the CF must have the capability to be if the CF is going to be effectual at either peacekeeping or warmaking.
Gates does not foresee a major war, or “high-end conflict” as he called it, for the United States in the future. He foresees, instead, complex and “unstructured” wars. He pointed out that currently, beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, the US faces “terrorism, terrorists in search of weapons of mass destruction, Iran, North Korea, military modernization programs in Russia and China, failed and failing states, revolution in the Middle East, cyber, piracy, proliferation, natural and man-made disasters, and more.”
He deprecates the likelihood of a “head-on clash of large mechanized land armies.” Nevertheless, “[t]he need for heavy armor and firepower to survive, close with, and destroy the enemy will always be there, as veterans of Sadr City and Fallujah can no doubt attest.” [And, one may add, Op MEDUSA.] “…one of the benefits of the drawdown in Iraq is the opportunity for conduct the kind of full-spectrum training – including mechanized combined arms exercises – that was neglected to the meet the demands of current wars.”
Gates believes that the “strategic rationale for swift-moving expeditionary forces, be they Army or Marines, airborne infantry or special operations, is self-evident given the likelihood of counterterrorism, rapid reaction, disaster response, or stability or security force assistance missions.” But this does not mean that the US Army will “turn into a Victorian nation-building constabulary – designed to chase guerrillas, build schools, or sip tea.”
America’s potential enemies will try to frustrate her traditional advantages, in particular “our ability to shoot, move, and communicate with speed and precision.”
Examples of how the US military is adapting to meet non-traditional challenges Gates cites as the ‘Advise and Assist Brigades’ and the Green Berets. The doctrine for the former was created within the time frame of a few months, while the latter was created based upon the experience of a single US officer, Russell Volckmann, who, rather than surrender, created and led a guerrilla force against the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II.
The continual challenge for Canada’s senior commanders is to keep the army strategically relevant for future operations. If Canada is going to play, as she seems heading towards, a bigger role in NATO contingency operations, then the army needs to be trained or at least readily adaptable to the kinds of operations Gates foresees.
However, the Canadian Regular Force for lack of money has not held brigade-sized maneuvers which involved tanks and artillery (never mind air power also) in nearly twenty years. And while some development has taken place in the realm of special operations, many questions need to be settled before the government can be content in this capability. The first of these is liability under Canadian and international law of the soldiers and the government officials who authorize and conduct a special operation.
The essential attribute of the Canadian army of the future is adaptability. The officers and soldiers need not only to be trained in a core of essential skills, but to be quick to adapt to changing circumstances, to improvise solutions, and to overcome impediments. The army needs to possess modern and capable equipment, and it needs to possess it in reasonable volume. It needs doctrine sufficient, at a minimum, for a mechanized brigade to operate independently, and logistical doctrine to sustain that brigade semi-independently, on an overseas expedition. Senior officers need to be able to command at the division and corps level within a NATO structure, and be able to serve as staff within a US-controlled structure.
At the same time, the army cannot become an excessive burden on the budget. The army should not get wrapped around the axle on equipment specifications, which drives up costs and often makes the specified equipment less adaptable. The army needs to grow out of its addiction to credentialism, the mindset it spawns, and the inflexibility it creates.
Given the likely size of the Regular Force in the future, the army needs to ensure that its reserve force is of a kind that with six months’ work-up training reservists are able to fill operational roles within an overseas contingency force.
Canada is not likely to take a leading role in any overseas contingency operation as a force generator in the foreseeable future. To be strategically relevant in the future, the Canadian army needs to be able to fill roles in a force structure of the kind the United States would devise, if for no other reason than to possess the credibility to perform other taskings internationally.
The indecisiveness of the first application of the Gates Doctrine may cause the principle to be tossed under the bus sooner rather than later. In that event, the US, NATO, and Canadian ground troops will see more action in the future than Gates means them to have.
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