Abstract
This selection of articles written, mainly, by commanders on the ground becomes even more important reading as we move towards the post-Afghanistan era of 2015 onwards. What can we find to guide the next generations of commanders? It is rare to find such self-critical analysis and frank assessment of the direction given from more senior military and political leadership. The relative successes recorded here of Northern Ireland, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone quickly give way to the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan. And the military perfectionists are given a reminder of national and international political realities in Desmond Bowen’s pithy chapter (23, pp. 273–80) covering the political-military relationship on operations.
The circumstances of the operations analysed are of wars of choice, except Northern Ireland and the initial involvement in Afghanistan, which were conducted amid increasing controversy and decreasing legitimacy; add to this an air of short-term planning both for the campaign and the resources deployed and employed to prosecute the campaign. The first part of the title of Justin Maciejewski’s chapter (13, pp. 157–74) lays this bare ‘“Best Effort”: Operation Sinbad and the Iraq Campaign’. The fact that almost all these operations were conducted in a coalition of military forces adds to the disconnected ambitions and actions with which the commanders on the ground must contend. And they had to deal with real-time media coverage that was ready to question national interest and widen the gap between the military and the societies that they come from and represent.
What does come across clearly, and almost unanimously, is that the commander on the ground must deal with the issues confronted daily and does not have the opportunity to measure things against a strategy, especially where that strategy is less than clearly articulated, be that by omission or commission. Graeme Lamb makes this point come to life in his typically thoughtful but amusing chapter (12, pp. 143–56). So this book gives some very useful advice as to what the commander on the ground must think about. But what is to be thought is left open, as it should be, because all wars are indeed different. And the old adage of not planning for the last war remains sound.
But it is all too easy for commanders on the ground to express their frustrations with the lack of clarity in direction and paucity of resource. Many of the contributors to this book went on to hold the highest posts in the UK Ministry of Defence, and their contributions to another book from that perspective would make a fascinating and complementary volume. It may take a little time for it to appear, not least to avoid too much being edited out on the ground of national interest.
Most would likely conclude from this book, and if it comes to pass its sister edition examining the same conflicts from the military strategic level, that conflicts with limited aims and a short duration offer the best chance of a satisfactory conclusion. But that is not what the future is likely to offer.