CMR: balance maintained by the divide

CMR is a multifaceted topic with issues at many levels, the major branches of which regard the military’s relationship with the civil population of the state, the military’s function within the state, and the military’s relationship with the civilian government of the state who in turn strives to manage the first two facets in accordance with the values and needs of the state. Often these facets are conflated in debate which in incorrect. Each has issues and solutions that interrelate in various ways but should be considered in turn. As such, I intend here to take a cursory look at the first – the military’s relationship with the civil population. I think we can generalize the second – that the military’s function is to leverage its capabilities to meet state objectives throughout the world – for our purposes here. This is a topic deserving of more depth later as the U.S. military struggles to find its place in the world for the coming decades. The third I’ll discuss at a later date.

CMR Basics

Huntington describes the CMR as the friction between the military’s function and society’s norms:

The military institutions of any society are shaped by two competing forces: a functional imperative stemming from threats to a state’s security and a societal imperative arising from social forces, ideologies, and institutions dominant within the society. Military institutions which reflect only social values may be incapable of performing effectively their military function. On the other hand, it may be impossible to contain within society military institutions shaped purely by functional imperatives. The interaction of these two forces is the nub of the problem of civil-military relations.

He establishes this interaction as the conflict of conservative Military Realism with society’s American Liberalism.  Military Realism encompasses a worldview of “permanence, irrationality, weakness, and evil in human nature” and “stresses the supremacy of society over the individual and the importance of order, hierarchy, and division of function.”  American Liberalism is opposed to this Realism and is defined by five tenets (taken from both Huntington and Michael Desch’s chapter in American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era):

1. indifference to international affairs,
2. application of domestic solutions to international affairs,
3. objectivity in international affairs,
4. ambivalence about war, and
5. distrust of military institutions.

These were not meant to describe the differences between political parties (the only difference between the parties may only apply to the fifth tenet). Liberal versus conservative instead denotes the fundamental differences between the American society as a whole (and the philosophical foundations of the American government) and the institutional worldview of the military mind required to effectively wage wars. This is not unlike other dichotomies proposed by others such as George Lakoff, de Tocqueville, or Herbert Spencer. The “interaction of these two forces” is in reality the clash ideals of individuality and democracy against the ideals regimented and hierarchical life.  Huntington asks the million-dollar question (on page 346 of the Belknap/Harvard edition printed in 2003): “how can a liberal society provide for its military security when this requires the maintenance of professional military forces and institutions fundamentally at odds with liberalism?”

Most of Huntington’s work centers on how the government of the state balances its security with its philosophy. Writing in the mid-1950s, he provides three options to the question above:

1. Cut military forces to the bone, isolating military institutions from society, and reducing military influence to negligible proportions. This maintains the purity of an American Liberal society at the expense of national security.
2. Accept increased military authority and influence but to insist that military leaders abandon their professional outlook and that military institutions be reformed along liberal lines.  This is good for society at the expense of military effectiveness.
3. Society adopted a more sympathetic understanding and appreciation of the military viewpoint and military needs.  This is good for the military but drives society to abandon its liberal heart. 

Interestingly, over 50 years after this was written and following both the transformation to an all-volunteer force and over 10 years of war, America has essentially taken the path of all three options in part. A purely professional force is by nature small. It is a force isolated to garrisons located throughout the country in places where (generally) not a lot of civilians live. Military influence in both political life and international affairs has increased. Society has adopted a more sympathetic appreciation of the military need. And yet military influence has not been reduced to negligible proportions, military institutions and philosophy has not liberalized, and society has not adopted a more sympathetic understanding of the military viewpoint.   

The result of this amalgam solution is a highly professional and effective military that enjoys nearly extensive (if not unlimited) support of that all important element of the Trinity: the people. The military keeps its Realism and society keeps its Liberalism. The political power of military elites is certainly concerning and is no doubt at least partially a result of the support the military enjoys from the population in contraposition to the popularity of civilian government institutions. I think it is important to make the distinction that military elites have not sought out (as a rule) the power and influence they exercise but instead have filled a role they have been asked to fill. (Would retired generals publically support candidates if the political parties did not seek their support for the benefit of the candidate? I do not think so for the most part.) I firmly believe that if military elites are not asked to fill those roles in the future that they will gladly abdicate them to civilians.

What This Means Today

In summation, we are in a situation there is a general balance of the military’s function with society’s norms. In my mind any imbalance is correctable and within an acceptable order of magnitude.  In spite of this and with regard to the people’s relationship with the military, a number of pundits and officials have declared at civil-military challenge or even a crisis, centered upon society’s lack of understanding of the military and their non-participation in military affairs. For example, Admiral Mullen stated in September last year that the “eroding” connection between the military and the people is a “very bad outcome for America […] an outcome that this democracy could not [stand] to have its military essentially detached from its people.”  While not calling for a draft yet, Mullen suggests it may be required in the future to bridge this population-military divide. Similarly, in the past two weeks both Tom Ricks and Stanley McChrystal have made calls for a return to compulsory service and a draft, respectively. Without delving into the particulars and bureaucratic issues of Ricks’ proposal (another topic altogether), both men have argued that compulsory service or a draft would ensure all (or at least more) Americans have “skin in the game” when making decision of war and peace.

However, and it’s a big however, none of these three have explained the consequences of current system to society or the military. What is the effect on society and the military if there is a detachment between the two? What is the result of only having only 1% of the population with “skin in the game”? Most superficially it seems the answer is unfairness.  It is not fair that only a few are waging war for 10 years. It is not fair that, in spite of extensive support, civilians do not understand what the military goes through. But I ask again: what is the consequence of this unfairness?  How does fairness result in a more effective military? How does this perception of fairness interact with American Liberal mores upon which our society is built?

A draft, or compulsory service, may bridge this divide between the military and the people, but that divide may be natural and necessary.  Intermingling these two elements of American society more than they currently do could potentially result in fundamental changes to either element by which they would not benefit. American Liberal philosophy is one of the things that make America great in other endeavors (principally with regard to social and economic constructs). Adding conservative Military Realism has the potential to adversely affect the acceptance of this societal philosophy. A wider-ranging exposure and subsequent understanding of military culture could potentially increase the influence and power of military elites beyond current levels, creating a new (and real) crisis of CMR (See, WWII – which is also an example of the military ceding its influence when it wasn’t need anymore). Conversely, the forced infusion of Liberalism into Military Realism could potentially erode military effectiveness due to the extent that military effectiveness is dependent upon its conservatism (See: draft, Vietnam War).  It is possible that the two conflicting forces could reach equilibrium, but equilibrium in CMR is rarely realized historically and there is no reason to assume that it would in this case, especially considering the potential risks to society and the military.

Leaving aside such issues as what the draftees would do, how their services are paid for, the creating of large bureaucracies to manage the process, a draft or similar course of action threatens civil-military relations more than any existing divides between the people and the military. It would be great if the people understood the military or felt some of the pain the military has felt during the past decade (it would only be fair were it so…). Not only is this understanding or fairness not necessary, it has a greater potential to upend the relative CMR balance we currently enjoy instead of fixing a different “crisis” altogether. The divide that does exist serves a purpose: it maintains the integrity of society and the effectiveness of the military. Simply put, we can have a divide or we can have an imbalance.  I choose a divide because I can get over the “unfairness” of it. Society or the military may take a long time to recover from an imbalance created for ill-advised or unsubstantiated reasons.

Why can't we do math AND strategy?

By now everyone's familiar with the dismissive turn of phrase Bob Gates used to blow off the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction commission: "In terms of the specifics they came up with, that's essentially math, not strategy." The defense-defenders love this one, and they've deployed it aggressively: basically every recommended cut to a defense program or the defense topline is derided as "math, not strategy."

Hey, it's a good line. It's probably the same thing I'd say if I were the SECDEF. But it's wildly irresponsible for the Pentagon to say "hey, it's not us, we're doing our part!" as Gates did back in November:

"If you cut the defense budget by 10 percent, which would be catastrophic in terms of force structure, that's $55 billion on a $1.4 trillion deficit," Gates said. "We are not the problem."

(By that logic, shouldn't GE be saying "if you cut the F136 engine, which would be catastrophic in terms of Ohio jobs and the assured reliability of the Joint Strike Fighter, that's $2.9 billion (pdf) on a $553 billion defense budget. We are not the problem"?)

Secretary Gates wants to have his cake and eat it, too: he wants to dismiss critics of his cuts by saying the recommendations are based on strategy, but push back on those calling for deeper cuts by talking about math. But a responsible defense budget and a responsible federal budget must take both considerations into account: math and strategy. If ADM Mullen is right and the national debt really does pose the greatest threat to national security, then isn't the "math" part really, really significant? Strategy, after all, is inseparable from math: strategy is fundamentally about choices, about maximizing benefit with limited resources. The SECDEF said it himself just two years ago!

The United States cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything. The Department of Defense must set priorities and consider inescapable tradeoffs and opportunity costs.

Gates's defenders -- and I'm one of them -- will say "but the Department already has set priorities, and this budget request is based on the real requirements of supporting our national security strategy!" And when it comes down to it, I probably agree with him on this one. Beyond this justification, Gates has to defend the requested figure out of simple adherence to his word: he told the service secretaries and chiefs that they'd get their savings back if they found fat to cut; if those dollars instead come out of the topline, just wait and see the foot-dragging when the next round of service-identified "efficiency" cuts comes around.

But just as expected, people aren't happy: conservative commentators, China hawks, the defense industry, and most of their buddies on the Armed Services committees think that $553 billion is just an irresponsibly paltry sum, while peaceniks, budget hawks, and proponents of other vulnerable spending programs are tearing their hair out at the seeming invulnerability of the defense budget. Add to that latter group the New York Times editorial board, which yesterday did its level best to oversimplify the issue and generally aid confusion and misunderstanding. On the subject of the EFV's termination, they wistfully bemoan the $3 billion already wasted -- as if anything the SECDEF might do could get it back. On the Joint Strike Fighter, they note a doubling of per-unit cost while arguing vaguely that "it should be cut back" -- apparently failing to absorb the irony of recommending action that will further increase cost-per-plane. And on the Osprey and Virginia-class sub, they argue for program cuts or cancellations based on oversimplified and outdated operational rationales.

And that's not even the worst part. Try this one on for size:

The Pentagon needs to jettison the ancient formula that guarantees each service its accustomed share of taxpayer dollars. Air and sea power that can be readily mobilized are vital to American security. But for a decade, the Army and the Marines have been pushed to their limits while the Navy and the Air Force have looked for ways to stay useful and justify their budget shares. 

Updating the formula to reflect a more realistic division of labor would wring significant savings from the Air Force and the Navy while protecting the Army and the Marines from the multiple combat tours that have strained service members and their families over the last decade.

I hear a lot about this "ancient formula," but I've never had it adequately explained to me. That said, let's stipulate that there is such a formula for ensuring each service gets its annual share of the budgetary pie; might it not be the case that this makes good sense? After all, you can't turn the entire Defense Department around on a dime, as Secretary Gates has learned, nor should it be easy to do so. This isn't just a matter of institutional interests and inertia  (though those are at play, too), but of preventing the crises of today from fundamentally destabilizing the kind of steady-state modernization that underpins the U.S. military's global freedom of action and deterrent functions.

But back to the editorial -- let's look at exactly what the two paragraphs above really say: "Air and sea power that can be readily mobilized are vital to American security... [but] a more realistic division of labor would... protect the Army and Marines from... multiple combat tours." Uh, what? This is really almost impenetrable. Presumably the writers mean to say that budget shares should more realistically reflect the actual intra-Departmental division of labor over the last several years (not "a more realistic division of labor"), and that cuts to the Navy and Air Force's budgets would allow for an increase in land forces end-strength and result in extended home-station dwell-time for Army and Marine units. But there are a number of very significant problems with this line of reasoning.

1. The suggestion that the Navy and Air Force have had to "look for ways to stay relevant and justify their budget shares" is based on two serious misunderstandings: the first is that air and sea forces' true value should be found in tactical utility in combat rather than strategic deterrent and guarantor of access, and the second is that "looking for ways to stay relevant" is a bad thing rather than an important driver of institutional adaptation. 
2. Calls to shift funding from expensive, sophisticated, long lead-time weapon systems to personnel accounts and other investments in land power force structure fail to acknowledge that high-end technical solutions cannot simply be purchased when needed, but are the end-result of sustained investment in the defense industrial base and commitment to developmental technologies.
3. Further end-strength increases will put additional strain on an already troubled recruiting base and increasingly challenge the Army and Marine Corps to build soldiers and Marines from suboptimal raw material. On top of that, absent significant reform to Tri-Care and military benefits, expansion of the active-duty rolls will carry with it the very same long-term fiscal commitments that are helping to cripple serious efforts at deficit reduction in the domestic portion of the federal budget.
4. If you listen to senior leaders in both the Defense Department and the broader United States government, manpower-intensive land wars aren't on anybody's top-five list of efficacious foreign policy solutions. U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan are about to start coming down, so what sense does it make to start budgeting for a larger Army and Marine Corps?

This editorial exhibits the very worst tendencies of both budget-cutters and budget-growers: bath math, bad reasoning, and an absence of strategic judgment.

Things aren't as simple as any of the factions in the budget debate want to make them. Beware of those who bring math or strategy, but not both.

Does the 2011 National Military Strategy fail to satisfy the requirements of U.S. law?

As you may have noticed, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff released the 2011 update to the National Military Strategy a week ago today. I've seen it asserted that the Chairman is required to review the strategy every two years, but only required to publish a new one when changes are necessary; I can't locate that provision in the law, but I might be missing something. (I've been going through Title 10 over the last couple of days. Don't ask. 10 U.S.C. Sec. 153 (d): "Not later than February 15 of each even-numbered year, the Chairman shall submit to the [Congressional defense committees] a report containing the results of a comprehensive examination of the national military strategy.") In any event, this is the first NMS to be published since 2004.

I sat down and read the NMS the morning it came out, and I'll admit that I wasn't terribly impressed. But I didn't write about it, because frankly there's just been too much going on. And that may be exactly what the Chairman and the SECDEF were hoping: that everyone would be too busy to really look at the thing. Not only does it suffer from many of the same failings as the National Security Strategy (namely: failure to actually be a strategy), but it seems to me that it fails to satisfy the statutory requirements that bear on the CJCS. So I'm going to go through the bit of the U.S. Code that specifies what "each report on the examination of the national military strategy" must include and just take a quick glance at whether or not that happened. You with me?

(A) Delineation of a national military strategy consistent with [the NSS, the QDR, and the SECDEF's required reports]

Ok, yes, we have a document called "the National Military Strategy." I'll let lawyers decide whether its not actually being a strategy is a violation of the spirit of the statute, but we'll give them a pass on this one.

(B) A description of the strategic environment and the opportunities and challenges that affect United States national interests and United States national security.

There is definitely a section entitled "Strategic Environment" (section II, page 2). Let's ignore the fact that it's merely a restatement of the same specious vagaries about "demographic trends," "nonstate actors," "weapons of mass destruction," "global commons," etc. that appear in every "strategy" or operating concept published by the Department; we'll give 'em two for two so far.

(C) A description of the regional threats to United States national interests and United States national security.

This wholly absent from the document. Threats are simply not discussed outside such vague assertions as "states with weak, failing, and corrupt governments will incresingly be used as a safe haven for an expanding array of non-state actors that breed conflict and endanger stability" -- and that's in the "strategic environment" section. The NMS does deal with several geographic regions individually in the section detailing the third "National Military Objective," to strengthen international and regional security. But this bit lays out U.S. goals and priorities in each of the regions, not "a description of regional threats."

(D) A description of the international threats posed by terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and asymmetric challenges to United States national security.

Again, there is no description of these threats, but merely an assertion of them as a feature of the "strategic environment." The word "asymmetric" is used only once in the document, in the context of desired U.S. space capabilities: "Joint Forces will... maintain symmetric and asymmetric capabilities to deter adversaries [in space]," which doesn't even make any damn sense. (What is an "asymmetric capability"? Here I feel compelled to paraphrase Conrad Crane and note that there are only two types of warfare: asymmetric and stupid. But asymmetric capabilities? Can anyone give me an example?)

(E) Identification of United States national military objectives and the relationship of those objectives to the strategic environment, regional, and international threats.

As noted above, the NMS does identify four "National Military Objectives": 1) Counter violent extremism; 2) Deter and defeat aggression; 3) Strengthen international and regional security; and 4) Shape the future force. It's not clear to me that the document identifies or explains "the relationship of those objectives to the strategic environment, regional, and international threats," seeing as threats are basically not identified at all, but this provision of the law could probably have been written more clearly.

(F) Identification of the strategy, underlying concepts, and component elements that contribute to the achievement of United States national military objectives.

This is what the entire middle section of the document is meant to accomplish, but it's a pretty poor show. I don't see a lot about underlying concepts (except "leadership") or component elements, or really much of anything beyond "this is what we want to do" without a whole lot of detail on the "how."

(G) Assessment of the capabilities and adequacy of United States forces (including both active and reserve components) to successfully execute the national military strategy.

If I've never read a National Military Strategy in my life and I'm trying to imagine what it should look like from reading the law, this is the section I'm going to focus on. Strategy -- as we've discussed many times -- is about means, ways, and ends. Objectives, of course, are the ends. Concepts of operation and force employment are the ways. Capabilities and resources are the means. You work backwards from what you need to accomplish (ends), figure out the mechanisms through which those things are accomplished (ways), and then identify and budget for the necessary tools (means). So yeah, an assessment of the adequacy of your capabilities is pretty freakin' important to understanding the risk you accept when implementing a particular strategy. More on that in a second.

(H) Assessment of the capabilities, adequacy, and interoperability of regional allies of the United States and or other friendly nations to support United States forces in combat operations and other operations for extended periods of time.

Probably shouldn't shock us that there's no assessment of partner forces' ability to support U.S. operations when there's not even an assessment of U.S. capabilities.

(3)(A) As part of the assessment under this subsection, the Chairman, in conjunction with the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commanders of the unified and specified commands, shall undertake an assessment of the nature and magnitude of the strategic and military risks associated with successfully executing the missions called for under the current National Military Strategy.

This is a separate subsection of the bit that pertains to the NMS; it's not something that is mandated for inclusion in the report, but a task the Chairman is expected to perform as a part of the broader review process. There's nothing that says he has to put the results of this assessment down on paper, but it sure would be nice to know, huh? Of course, in order to perform an assessment of strategic and military risk vis-a-vis the current strategy, you have to have a real strategy, right? You have to have clearly outlined missions, right? As should be pretty plain by now, that seems to be a bridge too far.

So what did we get? Well, we got plenty of meaningless boilerplate like "Leadership is how we exercise the full spectrum of power to defend our national interests and advance international security and stability." We got a restatement of a whole bunch of vague principles of national security and military force. We got a paean to the power of the interagency. We got a potentially meaningful hint that the outgoing Chairman sees a need to rebalance our military posture in favor of traditional missions and away from the sort of manpower-intensive land wars represented by current operations. But we didn't get real strategy. Here's how the document concludes:

This strategy is derived from a thorough assessment of the strategic environment and how to advance our national interests within it. It describes how the Joint Force will redefine America’s military leadership by enabling whole-of-nation approaches to address national security challenges. It calls for a broad portfolio of leadership approaches – facilitator, enabler, convener, and guarantor - to address problems that are truly international in nature. Our leadership approaches magnify the capabilities we possess, making them just as important to assuring favorable outcomes. Our ability to lead will determine how well we advance America’s interests through this strategic inflection point.

Um, right. So we use leadership to assure our interests. Which we advance to assure our leadership. Uh, and so on.

Congress should really be outraged about the whole thing. Presumably they enact laws for a reason, and they should either insist upon their satisfaction or take them off the books. Do I think this disappointingly shallow public-relations document represents the entirety of the U.S. military's efforts to think through global challenges, develop appropriate capabilities, and do the real scutwork of strategy development? No, I don't. But the weakness of this statutorily-mandated review is emblematic of a bigger, more meaningful failure in that regard, and the failure of Congress to perform due oversight helps to perpetuate that failure.

The Civil-Military Divide: Interesting but not Dangerous (UPDATED)

There has been a growing chorus that the divide between the U.S. military and the American people is widening and this is bad for our nation. Yesterday, Admiral Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added his voice to this cause as the keynote speaker for the National Defense University's Conference on Military Professionalism. The transcript is somewhat hard to follow - being quite literal - and it seems his remarks were driven by bullet points, not a script. But there is no mistaking his main point: there is a divide between the people their military, that divide is growing, and that is a bad and dangerous situation.

I would agree with the Chairman that there is a divide of sorts between the people and the military. The population of our all-volunteer force is a relatively tiny percentage of the nation's populations, a case made by ADM Mullen. This is exacerbated by the military's recent and intensive experience in combat in South and Southwest Asia. So yes, less than 1% of the population is bearing the brunt of these wars, often with extreme physical and mental damage to the participants. But the reality is that we couldn't afford to send more troops to these war zones, so what does it matter that only 1% experience them? This is the type of statistic where I nod my head and say, "Noted. So what?" There doesn't seem to be much of a solution there to rope in the rest of the populous into the effort, save a draft (which you know I'm against) and increasing taxes (a solution that rests with the Congress and is a hot political topic).

Is the divide growing? That is debatable, because it unmeasurable. Military posts are usually somewhat secluded from main populations centers (other than all the places in and around DC) - mainly because the land was cheap to purchase and not for security reasons. You can't physically move the military further from the population and in fact with overseas base closures, more will be brought back to the U.S. If the divide is measured by the percentage of the population in the military, in the course of force resizing, then the divide would grow. On the other hand, we'll begin to withdrawal from wars that have been the primary fissure between those under arms and those not, so that may stem any growth in the divide. I don't think that a growing divide has been or can be proven.

Which gets to my main point. If there is a divide and it is growing (or not), what makes that so dangerous to either the military or the nation? There are plenty of discrete populations of Americans who are essential to the maintenance of the nation who by the same standards of ADM Mullen would be considered divided from the nation they support. The first that come to mind are police (roughly the same percentage of the population as the uniformed services and charged with maintaining the law and order of a 300 million-person country) and the Congress. With a small share of the population and important and unique functions (often dangerous for the latter and apparently also for the former), why is no one talking about the divide with the police and Congress and how dangerous that is?

To me, there is a divide. It exists and it may or may not be growing. But I do not believe that it is dangerous for our nation or its survival. The military will always maintain its appropriate subordination to the government which is formed by the people. I do not see, nor have seen legitimate arguments, how a small professional military that does its job separate from the public at large will upset that arrangement. What other dangers could there be? I, for one, cannot identify any others. The military has always borne the brunt of wars - it is their job after all - and I've yet to see how that is dangerous for our society. It seems to me that it is as it should be.

UPDATE: While I've been thinking that isn't much recourse or point to connect the general population with military more than there already is, I left out the most important part of the discussion: the Guard and Reserves. True civil soldiers (and Marines/Airmen/Sailors/etc). And they're in just about every community in the country. For those of you that suggest that people need to be in touch with their military in order to be better informed on the conflicts in which the U.S. engages (the utility of which I do question for the most part), I come back to a comment I made yesterday. If you don't want to deploy the Guard and Reserve to a conflict, you shouldn't be in that conflict. To my mind, that's where the connection is: in the Guard, Reserve, and their communities - and I don't see how or much need to expand beyond that.

This is my current line of thinking. I need we to have a serious debate about this beyond the normal vacuous statements usually made and really think about what the problem really is (or if there is one), what can be done about it, what the aims of those actions would be, and if the costs are worth it. Otherwise, to be perfectly frank, I'm just hearing platitudes.

"We cannot continue to dismiss actions by North Korea as 'more of the same'"

So says Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). The question that immediately leaps to mind is something like "ok, so then what should we do?"

The Washington Post is making a big production out of the fact that Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen refused yesterday to call North Korea's sinking of a South Korean warship (which cost 46 sailors their lives) an "act of war." The Post's Anne Flaherty pressed the two on the subject during yesterday's press conference, using the words "act of war" in no less than three separate (leading) questions:

SEC. GATES: Anne.

Q Does the United States consider the sinking of the South Korean warship an act of war? And seeing as the United States has vowed to defend South Korea, what do you plan to do about it? What are your options?

SEC. GATES: Well, first of all, we certainly support the findings of the Korean -- the South Korean investigation. We obviously are in close consultation with the Koreans. The attack was against one of their ships. And we will -- naturally they would have the lead in determining the path forward. They've laid out some paths forward, and we will be consulting very closely with them as we move ahead.

ADM. MULLEN: I spoke to my counterpart yesterday. And we've been engaged with them since the incident, not just from here, but also Admiral Willard in PACOM, as well as, obviously, General Sharp. And we are all focused on that region, the stability in that region -- that needs to be sustained -- and at the same time very focused on supporting our strong ally in the Republic of Korea.

Q But could you say whether or not you agree that -- with the South Koreans that it is in fact an act of war? And can you go over some of the options that you have to
respond?

SEC. GATES: I think that -- I think basically what we've said is about all there is for us to say. We accept the findings and support the findings of the investigation. The Republic of Korea has outlined several paths forward, and we will be consulting very closely with them going forward.

Q Admiral, could you address that too, please? It's clearly an act of war, isn't it?

ADM. MULLEN: Again, I think the secretary -- we've said all we want to say on this right now. Certainly we're concerned about it. We've supported them. We've helped them in the investigation and we agree with the conclusion. They're a great friend and great ally, and we'll continue to do that.

Which makes one wonder exactly what the newspaper's trying to accomplish beyond getting a flashy headline like "SECDEF: KOREA SHIP SINKING 'ACT OF WAR'", right?

Leaving aside the pretty obvious answer to why the press would be interested in inflammatory, provocative, and frankly dangerous pronouncements from senior policymakers, what about the real substance of all this: how does this all shake out? Obviously the U.S. response is conditioned on what the South Koreans decide is necessary, but what would the Jim Inhofes of the world have us do?

How does South Korea defend itself against the aggressive actions of a nuclear-armed neighbor? Does anybody believe that a sort of tit-for-tat, you sink ours, we sink yours kind of reaction is going to accomplish a whole lot, or make something like this less likely in the future?

Seeing as we've all pretty much decided that the North Korean decisionmaking process and apparatus is entirely obscure to us, I'm not going to bother wondering out loud what the hell the DPRK gets out of something like this. Is retributive action necessary to avoid setting some sort of pussified precedent, to avoid emboldening Kim Jong Il and whoever else is running stuff up there to push even harder?

Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) says "we cannot allow North Korea to take the lives of 46 South Korean sailors with a torpedo attack and pretend it didn't occur," and I'd tend to agree with him. But that doesn't get us any closer to figuring out what we do instead, and I don't have any bright ideas.

Are we winning in Afghanistan?

Skeptical as I am about terms like "victory," I actually do believe the frequently asserted axiom that "in counterinsurgency, if you're not winning, you're losing." Adm. Mullen's been pitching that one for a while -- at least since September 2008. So it's a fair, now that the strategy and resources have shifted, to ask the Chairman if his opinion has changed.

Q Do you still believe that the U.S. is not winning in Afghanistan and is therefore losing?

ADM. MULLEN: When I said that, the main -- which was September '08, I think -- the main thrust of that statement was to get to the underresourcing effort -- the underresourcing of the Afghanistan campaign and to be very clear about that, which it had been and certainly I think even more so, as General McChrystal showed up, than I had understood at the time.

So the main focus was there.

I think that what -- with the strategy, with the resources, with the leadership with a focus on the people, as is indicated in this operation, that we can succeed there. It's going to take some time, and I think it's going to be hard.

Q But just on the winning or losing question, what would you say today?

ADM. MULLEN: I haven't -- I mean, I'm just -- I haven't -- I haven't really made any assessment with respect to that. I think we're headed in the right direction. We got the right leadership, the right strategy, the right resources. And I think we can succeed.

I've got to be honest with you: I think that's a pathetic answer.

He hasn't really made any assessment with respect to that? Had he made an assessment in the fall of 2008, or was he just speaking off the cuff?

Is he telling us now that he wasn't saying anything about whether we actually were winning or losing, but that we had not created conditions conducive to victory by adopting the right strategy, prosecuting the most effective operational approach, and contributing sufficient resources? ("The main thrust of that statement...", etc.) Because that, to me, is a totally different question.

As far as I can tell, the honest answer should be something like "I thought we were losing then, and a big part of the reason is that we didn't have the right approach, the right people, or the right troop numbers. Now we do, but it's going to take some time to turn it around. So where I would have told you before that we were losing and needed to make some dramatic changes to start winning, right now I'd just say that yes, we're still losing, but we've made the necessary changes and are waiting for events to bear that success out."

Of course, that's not me talking, and that's not my opinion. That's just what I think would constitute an accurate reflection of Adm. Mullen's true opinion and not some mealy-mouthed question-begging -- that is, assuming that the only reason we were ever losing was because of resources and strategy, and assuming that every listener agrees.

And so I pose some questions to the online commentariat:

1. Are we winning in Afghanistan?

2. What conditions would constitute a "win"? (Please be specific. If you think we are winning, then how much more winning to we have to do before we call it a win? If you think we're not winning, then what do we need to change to start?)

Larry Korb: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

"Generals should be guided by truth, not politics," he tells us. (Well, actually, the headline writers at the Washington Post came up with that, but I'm pretty sure that's how he feels.) The op-ed probably should've been titled "Hey Mullen, you're an asshole!", but I'm not sure he could get that past the editors.

In his Dec. 27 column, ["An admiral who found the center," op-ed], David Ignatius distorts the proper role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He glosses over Adm. Mike Mullen's professional failures, particularly on Afghanistan and his handling of the firing of Gen. David McKiernan.

Ignatius is wrong to argue that any military officer, especially a member of the Joint Chiefs, is supposed to find the center of the political spectrum. An officer has a responsibility to give the president and Congress his or her best military advice, whether that is embraced by the right or the left, whether it is popular or unpopular.

Ok, he's on reasonably safe ground so far. "Best military advice," free of ideological bias, etc etc. Agree with that, sure, but you're crazy if you think that four-stars can avoid politics all together: they'd cease to be effective if they didn't know how to handle Congress, the media, and the public. But yeah, the CJCS ought not be tailoring his military advice based on the ideology of the president, so we can generally agree here.

Things get dicey when Korb starts talking about Mullen specifically (and by "get dicey," I mean the op-ed turns into a hit-job):

What about Mullen? In late 2007, when Congress asked him about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, Mullen shrugged it off. "In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must," he told the House Armed Services Committee. Was that his professional opinion, or was it the policy of President George W. Bush, who gave short shrift to Afghanistan because of his obsession with Iraq? Is that what the combatant commanders were telling him? The answer is no.

About the same time, according to reports, Gen. Dan McNeill, then U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told President Bush in a videoconference that he needed at least 30,000 more troops to stem the advance of the Taliban, particularly in the south. This position was endorsed by Adm. William Fallon, chief of U.S. Central Command. Did Mullen support this? In fact, when the White House told McNeill not to go public with the request, Mullen did not complain, nor did he tell Congress. We learned about this because journalist David Sanger interviewed McNeill for his book "The Inheritance."

Ignatius wrote that Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended replacing David McKiernan as U.S. commander in Afghanistan because McKiernan did not answer an important question during a video briefing for the secretary of defense. Really? What was the question? According to The Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran," front page, Aug. 17, 2009], the questions concerned reconstruction and counternarcotics, and they were asked before the Obama White House completed its first review of the war in Afghanistan. How could McKiernan answer the question satisfactorily when he did not know whether he would receive the 30,000 additional troops he had first requested in April 2008 and did not know where President Obama was going to come down on the issue? Mullen wanted McKiernan replaced because he wanted someone to take the fall for the fact that he and Gates had been derelict in their duty on the situation in Afghanistan for several years.

Can we take a second to parse Korb's argument here? This seems to be the framework:

1. Generals should avoid being political and/or tailoring military advice to political trends
2. Adm. Mullen's "best military advice" should have included recommendations to shift resources from the Iraq campaign to Afghanistan
3. The relevant combatant commander (Adm. Fallon and then GEN Petraeus at CENTCOM) would have prioritized Afghanistan over Iraq
4. GEN McKiernan's "best military advice" was dependent on political decisions by the president in a way that Adm. Mullen's was not or should not have been
5. McKiernan was fired because Mullen was trying to cover for his own failures and those of Secretary Gates

This is roughly it, right? Well, it looks pretty stupid when it's laid out like that, doesn't it? Just in case it doesn't, let me elaborate.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense serve at the pleasure of the president, which is to say that they are responsible for formulating the plans and policies necessary to execute the president's overall foreign and security policy vision. The Constitution created a system of checks and balances on presidential power, but let's be clear about something: the Chairman is not meant to be a competing power base. He is not meant to be a check on the president. He's around to provide technical expertise in assisting the president in policy formulation. (If you don't want to take my word for it, go check out Title 10, Section 153 of the U.S. Code: functions of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Who's "distort[ing] the proper role of the chairman" now?)

The CJCS does provide an assessment of the risks associated with the current National Military Strategy, but this hardly seems like an opportunity (or especially a requirement) to say "Iraq is a bad idea, shift these troops to Afghanistan!"

It's also entirely possible that Adm. Mullen viewed successful prosecution of the war in Iraq as a higher priority than escalation in Afghanistan, difficult as that may be for Lawrence Korb to imagine! LTG McNeill may have wanted more troops -- as the commander of the Afghan theater, I have little doubt that he believed this was the most important mission and the best possible use for those soldiers. Adm. Fallon may even have agreed. But Mullen's job was not to transmit directly the opinions of COCOM or theater commanders -- lord knows those guys had plenty of access to the president -- but rather to provide his best military advice. Why should we believe that he didn't?

Meanwhile, Korb rips Mullen and the Secretary for being impatient with McKiernan's failure to address questions they asked about his plans for Afghanistan because a resource request had not been answered yet. So the theater commander is permitted to base his plans on the strategic decisions of the president (or, perhaps, only this president) but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense must offer advice that is willfully ignorant of or indifferent to that presidential guidance? That's pretty absurd.

And finally, Korb just goes balls-out and slanders Adm. Mullen: the latter was covering, Korb tells us, for "the fact that he and Gates had been derelict in their duty on the situation in Afghanistan for several years." Well, I think I've shown you that Mullen was not, in fact, "derelict in his duty" as prescribed by law. It seems manifestly irresponsible to accuse the president's senior military advisor of scheming and dishonesty, firing a respected 30-year veteran to distract from his personal failings. Seems like a dick move to me, not to mention being entirely groundless.

P.S. This is the same Lawrence Korb who I heard on NPR a few months ago ("now we bring you foreign policy expert..."!) repeatedly referring to the Iranian president as "Ah-ma-dee-ne-di-jad." That's one too many syllables, slick.