Review Essay - Linking Strategy and Tactics

	From Storm to Freedom - America’s Long War with Iraq,  Written by: John R Ballard,  US Naval Institute, Annapolis, 2011,  ISBN 9781591140184, 352 pp,
	Surging South of Baghdad - The Third Infantry Division and Task Force Marne in Iraq 2007–2008,  Written by: Dale Andrade,  US Army Center of Military History, Washington DC, 2010,  ISBN 9781780390253, 429 pp,
	In the Gray Area - A Marine Advisor Team at War,  Writen by: Seth WB Folsom, US Naval Institute, Annapolis, 2010, ISBN 9781591142814, 256 pp,

Reviewed by: Jim Molan

Most Australians, even those that watch the news, have a mental picture of wars and conflict that is shaped more by Hollywood and our iconic battles than today’s realities. This leads to a reasonable expectation that wars are still declared, battles fought, and victory or defeat occurs. Such an attitude reflects how the experience of modern war in Australia is limited to very few Australians, mostly in the military and some in the national security function of government. Even our Vietnam veterans have a perception that sometimes confuses as much as clarifies, especially in regard to our major ally, the United States.

In complete contrast, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, talks about ‘persistent conflict’, a term that most Americans would probably understand. The United States has been at war with Iraq as a single discontinuous conflict in various campaigns for two decades. Several million Americans have served in that long war, many have died. The cost is high, and there are many stories to be told. Those who get their literary intake through a Kindle reader will be aware that there are more books on the war in Iraq than any one reader who has anything approaching a life, could download, read and digest.

By any measure, the Iraq war has been long and contentious, but that is even more reason why it should be studied. In mid 2011 with the final pullout of US troops from Iraq only six months away and levels of violence at historic lows, it may be now possible to put this long war into some initial perspective. Three books have just been published that try to provide that perspective, covering the long term, and two of the three major functions of modern conflict: the warfighting and the training of a local force. The other function not covered discretely is probably civil affairs.

John R Ballard is the typical American writer on military affairs, a Marine officer, a combat veteran and a scholar. His book, From Storm to Freedom – America’s Long War with Iraq, published by the Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland in 2010, gives the long and detailed perspective.

Dale Andrade is a Senior Historian at the US Army Center of Military History, an institution which provides ‘an awareness of history’ to the US Army. His ongoing task is to write the official history of Army combat operations in Vietnam 1969 to 1973. He has now taken the time to write Surging South of Baghdad – The 3rd Infantry Division and Task Force Marne in Iraq 2007–2008, published in 2010.

Lieutenant Colonel Seth W B Folsom is a serving soldier who first fought in Iraq in 2003 and wrote about it in an acclaimed book titled The Highway War. He returned to Iraq in 2008 as the team leader of a Military Transition Team (advisers/mentors/trainers) with an Iraqi battalion and has now written In the Gray Area – A Marine Advisor Team at War, published by the USMC Naval Institute Press Annapolis, Maryland in 2010.

From Storm to Freedom is the book that everyone with an interest in or responsibility for military affairs should read. Of these three books it should be read first. It is, however, a challenging read as it concentrates on the strategic interactions between the United States and Iraq and the key matching operational decisions, rather than where most of us are more comfortable—at the soldiers’ level. As such, it covers a lot of ground. It is the most comprehensive volume on the US war with Iraq that I have seen, looking at the war from the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait until 2010.

However, because it looks at such a broad canvas, it may tend to revert to broad generalisations that are just not true. In covering the years that General George Casey was commander (2004–2006), Ballard says that the ‘Casey Strategy’ (based on building Iraqi security forces) was built on two misconceptions: that the Iraqi police were professional; and that the Iraq army was demobilised but available for recall. Because of these misconceptions, Ballard contends, Casey’s strategy failed and led to the need for a surge.

From personal experience, this was patently not the case. At the time the strategy was being formulated, Casey knew perfectly well that the police were a disaster and the army did not exist. We saw that manifest every day. Regardless of the success or failure of his strategy, these two ‘misconceptions’ were not the basis. With insufficient troops to ideally establish security first and then to build Iraqi security forces, Casey had little choice but to try to do both together. It was less than successful and the early attempts at quickly devolving security to new Iraqi units had to be reversed. Until this had failed, the Bush Administration was not prepared to consider deploying significantly more troops. Once it had failed, more troops became a possibility.

It may be unfair to go from a particular case to the general in assessing this book, but if nothing else it should remind us to remain sceptical as we read history, especially history of recent events. I did enjoy the book; it is written in a crisp style, and it is the first that I have read covering the entirety of this conflict.

The next book on my list looks at the consequence of Casey’s insufficient troops, the surge. None of us should forget that by its nature, the now common military technique of ‘surging’ is in some sense an admission of failure. We surge because we misappreciated either the number of troops that were initially needed, or the nature of the conflict.

Surging South of Baghdad is a tactical level history of the troops that were sent to Iraq for the surge, and deployed to the south of Baghdad. It is well set in a strategic and operational context, and it is written from firsthand experience because Andrade accompanied the 3rd Division to Iraq as their historian. In its style and unrelenting detail, it reminds me of the two ‘On Point’ publications from Leavenworth’s Combat Studies Institute. This is a more comfortable read for we tactically oriented Australians, telling the detail of the large scale tactical operations in the southern Baghdad Belt. Counterinsurgency requires the full range of operations that a military is capable of, and the 3rd Division provided them all. The surge troops were experienced, well equipped and highly motivated, and so were tremendously effective. In the second year of the war, we lusted after another formation such as this. Had this level of effort been applied earlier in the conflict, one can only dream of the result. Andrade’s book deserves a good read. I am sure it will form a large part of the future official history.

Lieutenant Colonel Folsom’s book In the Gray Area – A Marine Advisor Team at War brings us to the lowest tactical level with his fine description of advising the Iraqi army in 2008. This was after the surge had its effect, and the Iraqi army was taking over responsibility for the security of its own country. Yet the Iraqis were hardly more ready for that responsibility than they were in 2005 and 2006 when Casey tried to push them into the maelstrom that was central Baghdad. It should not take the repetitive failures of the Libyan rebels to remind us that it takes a long time to form an army of even basic competence, and it is something that we should never take for granted as military budgets across the world are slashed. Folsom is the kind of person that can work across cultures, not easily because nothing is easy and little is even understandable. But he can only do this because he has years of solid military experience behind him. As someone who has spent many years working intimately with foreign militaries, I could identify with much of this book and thoroughly enjoyed it. It stands well beside the young Bing West’s 1972 classic account of Marine advisers in Vietnam titled The Village. Our mentors in Uruzgan province will strongly identify, and we now wait for their books.

Three books, three very different views of the same war, but with much in common. The underlying theme of each book is the misalignment of strategy and tactics, manifest in inadequate resources allocated to conflicts. But it was ever thus. I strongly recommend these books because I strongly recommend study of the Iraq war. For soldiers it is a bonus to their daily lives. For the commentariat and the security studies industry, it is essential, because many of them fail to realise, except in their rhetoric, the criticality of the link between strategy and tactics.