LESSONS ENCOUNTERED

How System Attributes Trumped Leadership
to focus on the wars right in front of them, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Effectively waging war on our enemies on those battlefields would also
require successfully waging war on the Pentagon itself. 294
Gates wanted the Pentagon to embrace preparedness for irregular warfare and
institutionalize niche capabilities for the same. 295 It has yet to do so, and in
that regard, the MRAP case is a “tell-tale” event. It sends a clear warning signal
about the Pentagon’s capacity for adaptation and fielding equipment in
response to nimble adversaries, particularly in nontraditional mission areas
such as irregular warfare.
Civil-Military Administrative Capacity
Another critical capability recognized as necessary for success in Afghanistan
and Iraq was the wide range of civil administrative skills necessary for improving
governance. 296 These skill sets ranged from overseeing development
projects to training police forces to advising local politicians on how to run
fair elections. As Stephen Hadley notes, in the decades following Vietnam, the
United States reformed its military forces until they were the best in the world,
but it “did not make a similar effort to develop the capabilities we need to do
post-conflict operations.” The military’s small civil affairs force is mostly in the
Reserves, and it is insufficient to need. So these “largely civilian capabilities”
must be tapped elsewhere in the U.S. Government and private sector. However,
“we have not developed a systematic way to identify, train, exercise, deploy,
do lessons learned, and improve” these capabilities. “We just haven’t done it.
And so every time we have one of these, whether it’s Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq,
or the 2011 Arab Awakening,” we start from scratch. 297
DOD, operating with a downsized and professionalized post-Vietnam
military, does not want to take on these responsibilities. At the same time,
it recognizes the importance, so it wants others to do them. When it became
clear that other countries, international organizations, and nongovernmental
organizations were unwilling or incapable of providing the requisite capabilities
for civil-military administration, a huge effort was mounted to have the
Department of State provide them. When it became clear State could not do
so, or at least not quickly and in sufficient quantity and quality, DOD argued
it should assume responsibility for some mission-critical civil-military duties.
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