Pentagon seeing new keys to victory

A Pentagon paper, which is making the rounds to senior officials and was provided to the Globe, says that in the age of US military supremacy, "security = all else + defense" -- a recognition that military power is only one item in a list of social, political, and economic tasks that are as

important to victory, or even more so, than bombs, missiles, and guns. "War is more than combat, and combat is more than shooting," said retired Navy Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski, director of force transformation for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Cebrowski's office produced the paper.

While overwhelming military power will remain the pillar of national defense, officials are reaching the conclusion that the United States needs to place significantly more emphasis on ways to consolidate its victories, which now seem almost assured given the unmatched superiority of American land, air, and sea forces.

But achieving the kind of political victory that has proved elusive in Iraq and Afghanistan -- where popular and guerrilla opposition has raised concerns that the US invasions ultimately could end in defeat -- will depend on a much more holistic approach to war, strategists say.

The Pentagon report says a major element of success is the mastery of "social intelligence" by soldiers, diplomats, and aid workers schooled in the process of stabilizing chaotic societies, and possessing a working knowledge of local culture and customs.

"We must be able to look and operate deeply within societies," the paper says. Also described as critical are close relationships between the United States and international civilian and military authorities who will ultimately be responsible for securing the peace.

New, more specialized military units will have to be established to work with substantially beefed-up civilian agencies such as the State Department and US Agency for International Development, officials say.

Among the steps being considered in national security planning circles, according to senior defense officials, is the creation of a "standing force" separate from the modern military that is trained and equipped with different skills and equipment that can be applied to post-combat environments, such as in Iraq.

Some of the hallmarks would include civil affairs professionals with geographic areas of expertise, psychological operations troops designed to hone an effective message to the indigenous population, and nonlethal weapons such as crowd control devices that reduce the number of civilian casualties.

Many of these specialties already exist in the US military.

But "their existence does not constitute a capability until you organize for that. The military has to get good at that," said Cebrowski, who believes such a force must be treated on par with traditional combat forces. "You can't make them stepchildren. Their value is the same."

Indeed, these forces must be involved from the beginning to ensure that military victory is not followed by a post-combat lull in which enemies can detect US vulnerabilities and plot to unravel the strategy for victory.

"They have to exist before you do the planning for the combat phase," said Cebrowski, former head of the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. "You have to plan for it all in advance."

Such thinking, which has been the subject of academic papers and policy conferences for a number of years, breaks with decades of Pentagon emphasis on prevailing in combat, but it can be viewed as a natural outgrowth of the increased use of US troops as peacekeepers.

"When for 40 years you are dealing with the prospect of having to survive a global war with the Soviet Union, you focus on that because the outcome is in doubt," Cebrowski said.

"All the people that grew up during those times are now the people who are in leadership positions," he said. "You can then end up with a military ethos that says: `I am going to combat, I am going to win; that's what I'm focused on. I am going to make it as fast as possible and come out the other side.' "

For the United States to sufficiently recalibrate its approach to war, the civilian side of the US government must assume a greater role in securing US interests, thus reducing the provocative presence of troops, specialists said. Cebrowski said the new vision "presumes there is a civil structure in the United States, probably not in the Department of Defense. You are going to have the right kind of civilians to catch the ball."