My review
In her book "The Mission", Diana Priest is a Washington Post journalist who looks at the activities of the American military employed in waging war and keeping the peace around the world. She covers selected light forces and outlines the US military regional commands, major players in the US government's dealings with the rest of the world. The book reviews the employment of the US Special Forces in such locales as the Balkans, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Columbia, and Indonesia. She believes the United States military is very good at monitoring and disrupting threats to the west but it is not so accomplished at nation building. The journalistic treatment vividly illustrates an in-depth picture of the soldiers on the ground and the challenges they face interpreting fluid local situations with sparse and conflicting guidance from their leadership. It is an exposition of the immense military strength and resources of the US, which is always being pulled in many directions.
The author's thesis is that the American government uses the worldwide presence of the US military as part of its every day foreign policy. If there is trouble in a hot spot, it is often the military that reports the first inklings of the problem and it remains a key player throughout the resolution. The suggestion comes through that age old state to state trade in arms, money and the influence these bring, is thriving between Washington and the rest of the world â “ external to the UN. This, she notes, has been going on since well before the first Gulf War in 1991 but it has accelerated since then and is not subject to as much public debate as one might expect. The lack of public comment, she suggests, may be the real root cause of the inability to resolve certain policy goals â “ such as a perceived open ended commitment to Iraq which does not have the support of enough players to share the burden with the US.
The US military was not always on the front pages of the media and the frontlines of confrontation. In the cold war there had been a well-established diplomatic process that melted away with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 after which she writes that the US diplomatic service had been de-emphasised. In its place the Special Forces and the Regional Commanders in Chief (CINCs) were given increased roles to maintain government-to-government contacts and engage in low-level conflict resolution in over 125 countries around the world. Washington did not have, in short, a diplomatic vision but instead may have relied more on its long experience as a practitioner of containment. It was very easy to employ forces to achieve a local resolution but challenging to dis-engage.
The American military leadership did not think the Bush administration of 2000 had a comprehensive world plan. The State Department proposed an economic program in support of countries that might otherwise harbour anti-American elements, but it was over ruled. In the author's view, it was easier to call up the military for a quick fix. The Bush team inherited an active program of engagement. President Clinton was wary of foreign involvements and came late to the idea of engagement on the recommendation of Madeline Albright after the first Gulf war relief efforts in Northern Iraq. This approach had seen previous Secretaries of Defence travel the Middle East and South Asia building bi-lateral alliances. Secretary of Defense William Perry who served from 1994 â “ 1997 brought the policy of the CINCs representing the far-flung interests of the US up to date. Although Perry saw a role for the CINCs, these types of pseudo diplomatic activities are dependant on sponsorship and when Perry resigned, his successor, William Cohen, did not pursue it as strongly.
The writer suggests that as Cohen paid less attention to the diplomatic circuits the military paid more and tried to maintain an American influence to counterbalance the decline of the Soviets and their client states. Local tensions sprouted into brushfire conflict and alienated Washington, which took a hands off approach versus one oriented to engagement. According to her, as late as the summer of 2000, the US had no focused approach to the area we currently see them operating in â “ Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan.
Donald Rumsfeld felt any advice to maintain engagement was old think. In turn the Republicans proposed reductions in military activities that had gained much public exposure in the Kosovo War of the late 1990s. One interesting aspect of "engagement" with light forces was that it was considered too costly by the incoming Bush administration. Relations with foreign governments would have to encourage local solutions rather than reliance on US assistance. As a result, engagement was on the chopping block but this was resisted by the CINCs as they saw it as an unofficial pathway back to potential hotspots if the conflict in the east flared up again.
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld changed his mind after seeing the results of the attack on the Pentagon at first hand. Whereas he had once called them the Kingly CINCs who had to be put in their place - he was now part of the civil military team that was about to prosecute the campaign against the Taliban and the Iraqis. After a quick review it was a seen that plans in hand were not relevant to an attack of the type they had sustained. However, the light forces that had been a key part of the engagement model were well suited to taking the fight to the Afghanistan and wherever else they may be needed. Rumsfeld was now paving the way to war as the earlier Bush government retrenchment ideas were replaced by support from the US in exchange for support of the US. We quickly see the book is an introductory policy critique followed up by well-done reporting that highlights their attractiveness as policy options.
We are taken on a trip across the regions with General Zinni who has a "mission" to stay in touch with the regional rulers and provide small unit exchanges for local Special Forces. He conducts training paid for by foreign governments and hosts people-to-people seminars aimed at showing foreign government representatives how the west (the US) thinks. Zinni and fellow CINCs are a modern link to the world for the elites of emerging countries. They lend low-level help in every day problems of developing countries, offset these aid programs with arms sales, and collect intelligence on the regions where the CINCs conduct business. These descriptions suggest friendly engagement and assistance assumed an eventual resumption of operations against a threat nation in the region. Despite the friendly relations built up by General Zinni we see him disappointed when his good friend Pervez Mushareef, Army Chief of Staff in Pakistan takes the presidency. Washington's influence only went so far before the events of 9/11 since change comes slowly and may continue to be limited.
The period she covers is from 1998 to 2002 and this coincides with the end of the Clinton program and the start of the Bush administration. Her writing style was to hold herself as a fly on the wall. As such, the latter half of the book is a very readable blow-by-blow of the mechanics of putting a war-shattered region back together again. She follows American Special Forces soldiers who live in communities throughout Kosovo and shows the daily challenges they face ensuring the basics of life â “ food, fuel, and shelter are available, and town hall meetings help to overcome the lingering political animosities of the conflict. While the combatant forces may have been driven back to their barracks the suspicions and prejudices of civilians is a complicated minefield that the US forces in Kosovo had to navigate through. She demonstrates very convincingly that the success of the US forces was based on their low level leadership.
While the men and women of the military can deliver aid and comfort, they are still human. We follow a case where they have to deal with the sexual abuse and murder of a young girl, which they resolve very vigorously, and they evict Albanian squatters from Serb houses in the same spirit. They deal with heavy-handed Serb and Albanian gangsters filling the gaps left by the power vacuums of local government. In short â “ they are the interim government and order starts to appear. The senior command, curiously, comes across as dis-connected. After outlining the success due to their "robust" tactics we see the local commander, BGen Ricardo Sanchez, send a Battalion Commander, and several of his company and platoon officers out of the theatre at the end of their tours with unsatisfactory performance reports. His reason was they were too close to the locals. Its interesting to note that it was the same General Sanchez who was criticised for being too aggressive with Iraqi detainees at the Abu Graib prison when she suggests he was playing politics by downplaying the threats the soldiers of the occupation force faced on a daily basis.
The mention of General Sanchez brings up an interesting dichotomy â “ of the four CINCs that are profiled â “ three seemed engagement oriented and one was ready to use the heavy hand of the military. General Tony Zinni at Central Command after the first Gulf war rode camels with the Sultans. General Charles Wilhelm in Panama with focus on Columbian drug interdiction embraced the new Sandinistas. Admiral Dennis Blair in the Pacific responsible for Indonesia and East Timor lectured rogue elements of Indonesian Armed Forces when Washington dropped the ball. General Wesley Clarke in the Kosovo War was ready to bring in brute force. All except Clarke were more attuned to political realties; they could operate in Washington or their client areas. The first three did not face an active conflict while Clarke did, but he did not have the ear of his leadership. When the American government was confronted by a request from its own Supreme Commander to deal forcefully with the Serbs â “ it sent a signal of less confidence in Wesley Clarke and brought him home early. General Zinni's dealings with the leadership of the Far East show that it is a tribal region and that relations are paid for in military goods and airfields. He too, could deal locally but had difficulty sustaining the attention of Washington in the region. General Wilhelm's tenure in Panama is shown at the end of US dominance of the Canal Zone and possibly a rise in the assertiveness of the Panamanians and the growth of local democracy. Where once the US Commander set the tone of Central American relations we see him as being ignored by the emerging governments of the region. This contrasts with the lack of influence the US government has with controlling the inflow of cocaine. At the same time â “ it did not recognise the morass of East Timor. Without diplomatic balance, the result in Iraq may have been eerily predictable.
Donald Rumsfeld has employed American Special Forces as the primary response to the challenges he faced as opposed to heavy conventional forces. It eliminated the problem. The Secretary had reservations with the estimates of troops he would need in Iraq once they had gained the upper hand and finished active fighting. Priest argues that by assuming their use of military force would bring stability they missed a chance to defuse the environment because they did not capitalise on reconstruction and alliances before they took offensive action. On one hand, this seems reasonable, as pacification is the real skill of the greater armed forces. This presupposes that there is a period of stability after the hostility phase of conflict ends, which is clearly not the case. The military should have been able to step back after the major fighting had concluded. The asymmetric nature of the insurgency that neither she nor the US military seems to have foreseen â “ has ensured that the handover to a more peaceful state of affairs entirely â “ is delayed for the present.
In 2003 the trend of military vs. diplomatic solutions continued and Priest suggests that Washington had not come to grips with the next steps in Iraq. It knows the military but is not comfortable with economic assistance and alliances. At the same time Iraq situation must have presented a diplomatic puzzle to all who analysed it. The idea is simple â “ in an optimistic view when the US threw out the Saddam government an opposition was assumed to be waiting. It seems that the Stalinists of the Desert had effectively eliminated the "take charge Iraqi." On a greater plain her view that Washington regularly mis-reads cases similar to those she brings forward highlights the challenge of a super power seeing the world in the correct focus. Donald Rumsfeld's initial hands off approach was corrected, but then all the planners can see is an open-ended commitment that they may not have wanted in the first place. Left to themselves, local solutions far from the view of the west often meant ethnic cleansing such as in Kosovo and East Timor and have not been well received in Washington. With Washington disengaged â “ it cannot encourage or coerce regional rivals in constructive directions.
