Next-War-Itis: Debate on Strategy

A Pentagon Battle Over ‘The Next War’ (Los Angeles Times)…Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel, July 21, 2008
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Some resist Gates’ focus on guerrilla, not large-scale, fighting.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr … like many officers across the military, believes the armed forces must prepare for a large-scale war against technologically sophisticated, well-equipped adversaries, rather than long-term ground conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan.

In public speeches and private meetings, Gates has chastised many commanders as ignoring wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while they plan for speculative future conflicts.

“We should not starve the forces at war today to prepare for a war that may never come,” Gates said in a stinging address last month, one of a series he has delivered. Gates even has coined a term for what he sees as a military disorder: “next-war-itis.”

“I think that nation-state and conventional war is in a state of hibernation,” said Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, who commanded U.S. forces in Fallouja in 2004. “I don’t think it’s gone away, but the most likely threats probably today are not going to be conventional or from another state.”

Mattis argues that the current fight is not an interlude.

In the middle of the debate is Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Mullen has asserted that the military must find a balance between conventional and irregular wars.

The center of gravity in this war has always been the Iraqi people. And when you talk to them, as I have over the past three and a half years, you realize that victory is at hand. They no longer live in fear. Despite sectarian conflicts that are now political rather than military in nature, the feeling of Iraqi nationalism is palpable. Yes, they are Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds, but they are also Iraqis. Just like we are Floridians and New Yorkers, but also Americans.