Via Spencer Ackerman, Robert Gates gives his evaluation of the challenges facing the U.S. military. You should read the whole piece, but there are two related paragraphs I want to highlight. The first, noted by Spencer:
Where possible, U.S. strategy is to employ indirect approaches -- primarily through building the capacity of partner governments and their security forces -- to prevent festering problems from turning into crises that require costly and controversial direct military intervention. In this kind of effort, the capabilities of the United States' allies and partners may be as important as its own, and building their capacity is arguably as important as, if not more so than, the fighting the United States does itself.
The second:
The recent past vividly demonstrated the consequences of failing to address adequately the dangers posed by insurgencies and failing states. Terrorist networks can find sanctuary within the borders of a weak nation and strength within the chaos of social breakdown. A nuclear-armed state could collapse into chaos and criminality. The most likely catastrophic threats to the U.S. homeland -- for example, that of a U.S. city being poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack -- are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states.
Despite the fixation on countries like Iran, the real threat, Gates seems to be saying, comes from nations like Pakistan (although Gates doesn't mention it by name, it's the most obvious nuclear-armed state that "could collapse into chaos and criminality"). Some folks in the military-wonk community have expressed concerns that success in modernizing the military for counterinsurgency would result in leaders being more eager to use it. But Gates here seems to be saying that we won't (or shouldn't) be using COIN for invading other countries and tamping down insurgencies, but for strengthening our allies' capabilities in fighting terror.
At the same time one could come to the conclusion, based on Gates' argument, that a stable non-democracy is better than an unstable democracy. This was once a pretty established conservative foreign policy viewpoint, but obviously it changed somewhat since Bush made democracy-promotion a centerpiece of his administration. But one of the things that makes me as skeptical as Tim Fernholz (who still owes me a dollar) about Obama giving a speech in the capital of an Islamic country is that there's no way to reconcile this policy with support of oppressive but stable regimes. That is, if Gates' view is the Obama Administration's view, which I assume it is.
--A. Serwer
