General Tommy Franks on Coalition Warfare
Editor's Note
Coalition warfare has a history that stretches back at least as far as the Trojan War. Homer’s epic, The Iliad, details how easily the members of coalitions can fall out over matters of policy or clashes of personality. Australia’s military history is deeply rooted in coalition operations. The very first mission of the Commonwealth’s armed forces, the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force’s successful seizure of German New Guinea in late 1914, was a coalition operation with both French and British participation. From that time onwards, Australia’s armed forces have never engaged in a military operation that was not part of a wider coalition effort.
In this candid interview, General Franks, the former Commander in Chief of US Central Command (CENTCOM), gives his perspective on some of the problems of coalition warfare as he experienced them during operations in the war on terror between September 2001 and July 2003. After he stepped down as Commander of CENTCOM, General Franks wrote American Soldier, which is a memoir of his experiences as the commander of the US-led, multinational coalition campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. This article is based on the edited transcript of an interview with General Franks recorded by Dr Russell Parkin of the Land Warfare Studies Centre on 9 September 2004 in Tampa, Florida.
Dr Parkin: Sir, had you worked much with Australians before 2001?
General Franks: I worked with Australians on and off over the years in many field exercises. I had also served for several years in Korea and had come across Australians in many different meetings and war games. I was aware of Australian activity with US Pacific Command (PACOM). However, until the war in Afghanistan there was not any specific operation in which I was involved with Australians—just a long period of mutual cooperation.
Parkin: What expectations did you have of the Australian forces, the SAS (Special Air Service Regiment), and other Australian Defence Force units who joined CENTCOM after 11 September?
Franks: The Australians were very competent, well-trained and well-equipped troops. The planning staff, in particular, was excellent and very responsive. As a staff they never, if I may use an American expression, ‘jump off half-cocked’. The forces and their command elements were thoughtful and responded rapidly to anything that the Australian National Command Authority demanded of them. Generally, you can bet that the Australians will produce exactly what they say they will produce. As a result, I had, and continue to have, a very high level of confidence in Australian military personnel.
Parkin: That sort of confidence must be a very important consideration when you are dealing with a very large coalition such as the one you built within CENTCOM?
Franks: That is absolutely true. There are times when political circumstances will require caveated responses. What I found in every case when a caveated response was necessary was that [CDF] General Peter Cosgrove would tell me, ‘This is what I think we will do but I will not know this until a certain point in time’. He was right in every case. I spent a good deal of time on the telephone with Peter [Cosgrove] from the very early days of our planning for operations in Afghanistan and then again throughout the lead-up phase to operations in Iraq. I thought of Peter Cosgrove as a friend and I thought of the Australian Government as an ally that has never wobbled throughout the course of the global war on terror.
Parkin: Did this high level of confidence at the political and strategic levels translate through to the operational and tactical levels?
Franks: Definitely. All the way down to the tactical level I found the same situation. The ‘flash to bang’ time for planning by the Australians for the conduct of tactical- or operational-level missions was always very quick and efficient. The commitments made were always solid and the Australians showed up when and where they said they would, whether we were talking about naval power, air power or special operations. They never disappointed me.
I found that the best practice for the United States was to ‘plug and play’ with different military organisations in accordance with their own proclivities and training regimes. The example that I have given many people is that of the Afghanistan operation, Anaconda. During this operation, it was necessary to conduct close-in-work in the Shahi Kot Valley. Although it was mostly conventional work, it was still found necessary to form bands that provided an interdiction capability along major infiltration routes. The Australian SAS were exceptionally good at this task. They possess some incredible tactical skills, and sniping is not the least of these. The Australians conducted several interdiction operations that were among the most highly effective actions that we conducted in Afghanistan. So, from top to bottom I liked working with the Australians in Afghanistan and Iraq. Australia had a very competent military force. There was never any confusion; there was never any bullshit.
Parkin: What kind of impact did the rotation of forces by coalition members, not just the Australians, have on your operational capability?
Franks: The coalition—if you count all the aspects of it—amounted to sixty or seventy nations. Then there were twenty or thirty nations that were actively involved in providing forces. I had to try to figure out how to get the best balance, realising that the needs of each nation are going to be a little bit different. There is no armed force on this planet that is just going to send someone to war and say what we in America said during World War I: ‘We’ll come home when it’s over, over there’. Nations require force rotations because they may need to conduct other military tasks. You Australians have been involved in other things at the same time you were doing [Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom].
For example, when I told Peter Cosgrove that, for the sake of continuity, I did not want to have all the special operators from Australia change at the same time that we were doing a force rotation with our US special forces, he was understanding. He never took what I would call unilateral action or presented me with a fait accompli. He understood the value of continuity, but balanced it against Australia’s own national requirements. In every case it was a consultative arrangement, and I appreciated that approach. Peter [Cosgrove] kept me—I hate the word—’sensitive’ and he kept me well grounded. We would have short conversations and get right down to the issues involved.
Parkin: From your perspective, does the US do coalition warfare well? For example, in CENTCOM you really don’t have much choice about working with other nations because the command doesn’t really have assigned forces.
Franks: I think that the US CENTCOM’s approach to coalition warfare is far beyond any other capability that we have in our country. This is not only because of the nature of the global war on terrorism; it goes back to the days of Operation Desert Storm when it was also necessary to build a coalition. Over the course of time CENTCOM has learned how to perform that task. It is one thing to manage various tactical inputs—five infantry divisions or three air entry points—in operations. Most of the commands in the American military can do that type of activity. It is a different matter when you are managing contributions that are not only tactical, but in many cases strategic, to the nations that are providing capabilities. The only organisation that I know of that the United States has a good understanding of, and a lot of experience in doing coalition operations with, is CENTCOM.
It is probably because the CENTCOM commander, going back long before me, is as comfortable dealing with a head of state as he is dealing with a pure military problem. This is a characteristic of the command. CENTCOM is not at all like operating in a NATO environment. There is no nineteen- or eighteen-nation umbrella organisation. What you find in CENTCOM is a set, or an aggregation, of bilateral arrangements. If you go to NATO it’s like going to the United Nations, where they vote in blocs. When CENTCOM works with a coalition, in a sense it’s much easier because its commander can go directly to Australia, or directly to [Prime Minister] Tony Blair in the United Kingdom, or the Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia. In my view, this ability makes it possible to build a strong coalition.
I think it is also healthy to recognise that the contribution from Australia and the contribution from Bangladesh are not going to be at the same level. What I found is that, at McGill Air Base [CENTCOM Headquarters in Tampa, Florida], not everything needs to come from United States Central Command. By working closely together, each of the senior national representatives comes to realise the strengths and shortfalls of the other coalition members. It is this kind of cross-talking within the coalition that is truly remarkable. It is unlike anything I have ever seen and I am not sure whether anything like it has ever existed before. For example, if you take a country such as Jordan, which offers troops but not the means to move them, then you soon find from the cross-talk between senior national representatives that there is a country that is willing to provide the aircraft necessary to move the Jordanians.
Such cooperation is very powerful. I have pushed my own Government and will continue to push it in order to plan on building a standing coalition within CENTCOM’s region because it seems to be a problematic area for the world. Over the past three years the United States has created a sort of standing coalition, and I predict in the future it will remain that way. I think we will probably wind up at some point with a standing coalition of between seventy to ninety nations. But it will take time for some nations to appreciate the value of such a coalition. Initially they are likely to use liaison officers who can come in and watch the dialogues that occur. When the various liaison officers come to understand that there are not going to be any Soviet-style demands on particular countries to produce troops or materials, then the political leaders will make their own decision to become a part of the coalition. At this point relations become more permanent, and you find one nation after another beginning to take out leases on houses around Tampa for their senior national representatives. That is what I think is the future for a coalition in this region, and it is unlike any that has ever been built before.
Parkin: To what extent do you think that the political conditions necessary for this kind of coalition to develop were the result of the attacks of 11 September 2001?
Franks: Partly the coalition was related to the events of 9/11 and its aftermath, and partly to the natural proclivity of the present American administration under the President [George W. Bush]. One reason I have become a little more political lately, more than I ever have been before, is that I have seen first hand how the President does business. The President is a pragmatist; he does not necessarily care whether the Secretary of State or some general is doing the work with various countries and their heads of state. This is a different situation from having a more bureaucratic style of leadership that wants the State Department to handle foreign affairs and the Defence Secretary to handle defence matters. This administration, in the person of George W. Bush, will look at a group of people and ask who has the right connections. As a result you would find Central Command doing State Department diplomacy. On other occasions CENTCOM conducted purely military matters, leaving [Secretary of State] Colin Powell to work the diplomacy. It is an interesting time in American history, and I have always thought that I was blessed beyond most people to be part of it. If President Bush decided that I had the knowledge and connections, he had absolutely no compunction in saying, ‘Well, go there and figure out access, basing, staging and overflights’. That’s a very interesting circumstance for a military officer.
Parkin: You obviously found that kind of flexibility useful in achieving your tasks?
Franks: Correct. It is the nature of CENTCOM. In many ways CENTCOM is a different kind of command from Pacific Command. The latter is much more rigorously organised. But in CENTCOM, when you’re involved in one war and one crisis after another, then the approaches that follow need to be very flexible. What that means is that one takes what coalition assets are offered and then attempts to figure out the battlefield mosaic that makes everybody a player. Every member contributes in accordance with what is in the best interests of both the receiving nation and the providing nation. I had, I must confess, a great deal of trouble with people in Washington on that very point.
I will never forget the first conversation that I had with people in Washington right after the attacks of 9/11. There was great consternation and I would receive calls from Washington saying, ‘Give us a list of how many tanks, ships and aircraft you want and we will go to countries around the world and get them’. My response was to say that the first step was to get nations to sign up to the proposition that terrorism is a factor today and that we’re going to have to fight it. Once people sign up to such a proposition then they will be what I call willing. That’s where the term ‘coalition of the willing’ came from. It took me about ten days to sell the notion of a coalition of the willing in Washington. I said that, when nations stated they were interested in being members of a coalition of the willing, the next step was for Washington to invite them to send a representative to Tampa, Florida. I predicted that we would eventually have somewhere between fifteen and one hundred nations involved. I told Washington that some nations will just walk in and tell us, ‘What we have is four mess kits and one old boat’. But CENTCOM will figure out a way to make them a contributing member of the coalition. This is where [Colonel] Michael Hayes became closely involved as the Chief of Staff of CENTCOM. Almost immediately we found the necessary real estate for coalition members and started hooking up house trailers in parking lots. It was as in the movie Field of Dreams, ‘if you build it [the village], they will come’.
Parkin: Did you ever feel that it was a lot of work when all you might get was a small contingent or just political or moral support?
Franks: It does not make any difference what size or kind of contribution a nation gives. The first rule of statecraft is that every nation on this planet will do what it perceives to be in its own best interests. The United States of America has commitments, so does Australia and so does Saudi Arabia. In the United States we get ourselves into trouble when we have an expectation that Australia ought to provide 3000 people.
If you dampen expectations and accept what a nation believes can be afforded, then I have found that there has been honest, open and transparent dialogue between coalition leaders. In every case in which we took this approach there was mutual respect in the process of building an effective coalition. Where there was not transparent dialogue, and for example when the US Government made its own demands, there were friction points. In the case of Australia, I thought it [the size of the ADF contingent] was perfect. I knew the size of your armed forces and I looked at Australia’s commitments in naval and air power, for special operations across a very small conventional force. I was never disappointed that Australia was doing militarily just exactly what it believed it could afford.
There is a consistency about the British and the Australians that one can count on. It would be easy, in a very simple world, to expect that to be the model. I do not think, however, that we can do that in the United States; we have to be intellectually malleable. We have to appreciate the fact that there are two issues in every country. One is the relationship between the leaders and the outside world. The other is the relationship between the leaders and the people of that country. It would be a little too simple to condemn—quote—‘Old Europe’ and praise New Europe. It is easy for me to praise the Ukraine and condemn the French. But you need a longer sweep of history just to isolate this thing [the war in Iraq] before you try to ‘grade people’s papers’. In some cases, I think the United States is not good at making such assessments and there is no easy recipe available. I think the best assessments available are in CENTCOM because it is an organisation that is more understanding of the character of military contributions.
Parkin: Yes, historically coalition warfare has always been a great challenge.
Franks: As I have said in my book [American Soldier], it is a good thing that wars are not more convenient because we would have too damn many of them. If it were easy for Prime Minister Howard to wake up one morning and use the military without political effect or impact, then he might be tempted to do it too often. The same is true of President Bush. Politicians need to be uncomfortable with the use of military force. There is a certain discomfort involved in making the decision to go to war, not the least of which is when our children come home dead.
Parkin: Thank you for your time General, I know you’re very busy.
Franks: I have tried to give you an overall impression of a coalition. And within a coalition there always exist some alliances. One would never want to underestimate the power at every level of the alliance between the United States and Australia.
