Standard Warfare May Be Eclipsed By Nation-Building

But as the Army struggles to define its long-term future beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, some critics within the military warn that the new emphasis on nation-building is a dangerous distraction from what they believe should be the Army's focus: strengthening its core war-fighting skills to prepare for large-scale ground combat.

The critics challenge the assumption that major wars are unlikely in the future, pointing to the risk of high-intensity conflict that could require sizable Army deployments to North Korea, Iran, Pakistan or elsewhere. "All we need to do is look at Russia and Georgia a few months ago. That suggests the description . . . of future war is too narrow," said Col. Gian P. Gentile, an Iraq war veteran with a doctorate in history who is a leading thinker in the Army camp opposed to the new doctrine.

"I don't think the Army should transform itself into a light-infantry-based constabulary force," Gentile said. Instead, he said, "the organizing principle for the U.S. Army should be the Army's capability to fight on all levels of war."

Civilian officials and nongovernmental groups voice a different concern: that the military's push to expand its exercise of "soft power," while perhaps inevitable, given the dearth of civilian resources, marks a growing militarization of U.S. foreign policy.

"When the military is handed the task of stabilizing an area, that means doing everything. That's not really what we want to have happen," said Beth Ellen Cole, a senior program officer at the Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations of the U.S. Institute of Peace who worked on the manual. However, she said, "we are in an unfortunate situation where the civilian side is not resourced or equipped to do these things."

Some nongovernmental organizations raised concerns about the potential blurring of roles when the military carries out relief operations, saying it could compromise their independence and impartiality in the eyes of local citizens, and make relief workers targets of attack.

The organizations also objected to early drafts of the manual that suggested the military had an obligation or right to intervene in fragile states. "They referred to humanitarian NGOs as partners of the military," said James Bishop, vice president of Humanitarian Policy at InterAction, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations. "We said we did not want to be described as such."

Nonetheless, civilian government officials and NGO representatives including Cole and Bishop credit the Army for inviting them to take part from the beginning in shaping the doctrine, and for incorporating their suggestions. "They left the pen up to us for key sections," said Matthew A. Cordova, deputy director for civil-military affairs at the State Department's reconstruction and stabilization office.

Michael Hess, assistant head of the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development, said, "The military understands and we understand that if we don't work together, your chances of achieving success are diminished."

Still, bureaucratic unrest surrounded the writing of the Army stability manual, Leonard said, pointing to disputes over questions such as whether to the document should enshrine "democracy" as a goal of stability operations, a move that was ultimately rejected. "It was constant debate and argument," he said.