Future of military operations

ILLUSTRATED: A peek into the military operations of the future. Democrats ought to campaign on promoting this change in the military.

A New York Times article out today lays a blueprint for how the Army and Marines ought to operate in the future. It describes integrating anthropologists with civil affairs and special forces doing nation building. This is the essence:

Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon program that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her team’s ability to understand subtle points of tribal relations — in one case spotting a land dispute that allowed the Taliban to bully parts of a major tribe — has won the praise of officers who say they are seeing concrete results.

Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division unit working with the anthropologists here, said that the unit’s combat operations had been reduced by 60 percent since the scientists arrived in February, and that the soldiers were now able to focus more on improving security, health care and education for the population.

“We’re looking at this from a human perspective, from a social scientist’s perspective,” he said. “We’re not focused on the enemy. We’re focused on bringing governance down to the people.”

People talk about "boots on the ground" as being the most important thing. That is the most important military component. Ultimately, war is about geopolitics, and governing requires the trust of the people with the authorities. That needs to be understood in the future by the military and State department.
I hope Democratic Presidential candidates start proposing this as a model as I have suggested here, here, and here.