After Iraq, Questions About Training Foreign Armies

We knew this was inevitable. The pendulum could swing, although the author notes that it may not.

It is unlikely that the Iraq crisis will put a damper on partner-building initiatives, although critics will certainly try to make a case that the Iraq effort, like others, backfired on the United States, said John R. Deni, professor of national security studies at the U.S. Army War College. "Sometimes U.S. objectives for what we hope to see other countries achieve are not going to mesh up very well with what they want," Deni said. "But I still think security cooperation is going to be the primary means through which we exercise our military power over the next five to seven years."

Building partner capacity is the cornerstone of U.S. Special Operations Command's vision of its future. SOCOM Commander Adm. William McRaven has been a forceful advocate of partner-capacity building programs. 

Although the U.S. track record in this area is mixed — some countries take the tools and lessons the United States gives them and use them to subjugate their political competitors — the military is a strong believer in building up allies, Deni said. "Despite Iraq, I’m not ready to say this is a bad tool in the toolkit."

But I think people need to be realistic about training foreign forces. It is not a silver bullet but many who have latched onto it since 9-11 really have no understanding of the complexities and risks. 

This is an interesting comment. 

In private discussions, SOCOM officials said the command's new "campaign plan" mirrors the Obama administration plan the president outlined May 30 in his West Point commencement speech. The problem with current efforts, a senior military official said during a recent industry gathering, is that they are short term. "We need persistent presence," the military official said. "We are hoping we will have the resources. We’ll see what happens with this budget."

The Iraq debacle could dampen the enthusiasm for training foreign armies, although the official pointed out that Iraq's special forces have been more effective because SOCOM made sure they had an equal balance of Sunnis, Shias and Kurds.

So the President has bought into the SOF Campaign Plan? (and campaign plan should not be in quotation marks above which implies to me the author thinks it is not real or a valid plan). If there is an approved and resourced strategy and campaign plan then forces should be able to be deployed to have persistent presence. However, persistent presence is not the end but only the start - it is all about what we can achieve with that persistent presence.