[inaudible discussion] good afternoon, welcome to the Heritage Foundation and our lewis layman auditorium. We join white house join us on the heritage. Org web site and those chinaing us on cspan booktv in the future. Those here inhouse we ask that courtty heck that our mobile devices of various sort have been silenced or turned off. Those watching online, youre welcome to send questions or commentses at any time. Simply email us as speaker heritage. Org and we will post the program on the heritage home page for your future reference as well. Welcoming our guests today and leading our program is dakotawoods, Senior Research fellow for defense programs and our center for national seps defense, mr. Wood served our nation for two deck theyd u. S. Marine concerned, including strategic analyst for the commandants of the marine corps and the office of the offers of net assessment. Upon retirement he helped organize the National Biosurveillance integration statement at the department of homeland security, for five years he served as a senior fellow at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments after which he was strategist for the u. S. Marine Corps Special operations command. Join me in welcoming dakota wood. [applause] thank you, john. Its a real pleasure today to have you all here and to heave dr. Crane from carlisle where the took he hyperloop, the fastest run to d. C. So were glad that travel wasnt interrupted. We always try to do something artful with an introduction but i couldnt do anything but to draw from pure biographical description and go over his brown. Its remarkable. Currently serves as chief of Historical Services at the Army Heritage and Education Center in carlisle barracks, director of the u. S. Army military history institute, you sack a trend here. Served with Strategic Studies Institute for several years. On the war congress from 2000 to three and held the general doug Lars Macarthur chair of research. Also healed the aero space studies and. All this followed a 26year career in the u. S. Army, connect with nine years as a professor of history at the u. S. Military academy. Holds a bachelor degree from the military academy and is masters and doctorate degree phenomenon stan understand university. The u. S. Army war college. By my account hes authored 11 books or mono graphs since the year 2000. I dont know whether theyre hobbies you might have we have at least 11 of them. Civil war, world war i, world war ii, korea, vietnam, and then his most recent war, a lot of historical stuff and putting it in modern context counterinsurgencying extra and the environments in which that holds here in the modern day context. Named one of news weeks people to watch 2007 for his leading work on counterinsurgency and an army title but i ignore that, as a former marine, retired marine. November 2008 named international archivist of the year by the stone foundation, and just recently in 2016, the selected to receive the society of military history Samuel Elliott morrison prize for a lifetime contributions to the field of military history. So its a real mother to have dr. Crane with us. We look forward to your insights on where we have been and where were at and possibly where were going in counterinsurgency [applause] thank you very much. Fasten your seatbelts. I have 30 slides to go through and i will leave time for questions. What im trying to do is it late and not satisfy. So buy copies of the back and its a lot cheaper than i can get so it i highly recommend if youre interested, its a good deal out there. This is a image of the book, the other picture there is outside the embassy in baghdad. That sign struck me as fairly interesting, gives a sense of the atmosphere over there. I often wonders who was walk neglect embassy drink while they were armed. Obviously need be warning signs about it. How i got into this, the term cassandra in oz, cassandra was a figure from greek mythology who was cursed to tell truth to power and never get heard, and i got involved in a number of things in the early years of this millennium, the red one on the right was the piece i did, avoiding vietnam, where i talked about the arm ya response to vietnam which is not to learn how to fight the wars betunder but to figure out how to avoid these kind of wars and i quote in 2002 we need to revisit counterinsurgency doctrine. This one on the left is i was put in charge of an Army War College team to come up blink tree build iraq for the mayor of baghdad, in late 2002 when the army thought though would bee in charge of reconstruction. The day we fish issue ilk the report and delivered it was the day that second rumsfeld createdded the office of reconstruction under their general and nobody was interested now studies so we left it to the army staff. We sent to the planners in kuwait, and they used it to help develop their plan so we all know how that came out and we came much more famous for being ignored than we were for what the plan would have done if people paid attention it to. Because of that, when the time came to rewrites counterininjure send si doctrine my west point class made David Petraeus asked he to be part of the team do that. General mattis for the marine corps. Were really furniture that this time in the history hover toes two servicers they can pull two combat leaders out of the bar and put them in positions to really revise the training and education for she wases to bring them into the 21st century and war fighting. The general petraeus motto, his engine of change, which is the big idea is you send people out to the field, you get your lessons as fast as you and can you bring them back into the training system. Get them to collect the bring Leader Development and doctrine. I used to tell people you can see my position in the engine of chiang i. Used to tell people i was one tooth on weeing cog. I can call him david, classmate, but there were we had a number of arguments during the promulgation and development of the doctrine. We knew who was the boss and i won a few but not as men as not as many as he did. The whole idea is to create a learning organization for modern warfare, both economy general matis were doing that for the army and ma corps average very atypical process to develop to the doctrine. We did it in less than a year which is light speed for anybody dealing with military doctrine. That was because he had general petraeus as the champion, we went around the normal bureaucratic avenues to get around. We had a big tent, number of contributors from all they ever world involve in this. It was a joint army marine effort, true armymarine efforts. Each chapter hood an arm and and marine corps author for it. We had a sarah soul from the center for human rights, in the initial vetting conference. People from human rights commune, people from academia, the media, when we had our major vetting conference we had jim fowler there and george packer, tom ricks was involved. We trade to get a lot of people involved in giving us ideas how to better fight these kind of wars average lot of help from think tanks, rand, a number of others like that, who also gave us their input. But in the end it was going to be the army and marine corp authors that sat down and figured out the final form of this. With some input from general osers. General pet trace pet trayus read every word we did. Massaged everything help was the last guy who look eight before i went out to general review to the forces. Still have ptsd over whats called petraeus pronoun. Have to make sure what the this or it refers back to the antecedent and precedent nightmare but i tell the story, he says im not that hard. Yes, you are. The intent of the manual was to be applicable to counterinsurgencies anywhere at any time but the 2006 version especially was shaped very much by iraq. That just because general pet trayous now he was going to iraq but the input from the soldiers and ma flense field giving us their idea was shaped very much by iraq. So the 2006 version of the doctrine, this verse mach manual that is aimed at iraq. It was different from a normal focus on combat. Very population centric. Your had to protect the population first. And eventually people need to accept the government was legitimate. The main gwen is legitimacy, legitimate governing authority. Still of the kill and capture people. A lot of force involved. But you have to be careful how you apply it in a mosaic war that differences from village to village, valley to valley, city to city, and wont win the war with military force alone. You cant kill yourself to victory in these kind of wars. It takes a team effort, not only your own interagencies and also the home host nation has to win a lot of its own war as well. Intelligence gathering is more cultural anthropology. You have to understand our societies work, economies work, how policies work, jenner roles. A very different kind of intelligence process. And you have to think campaign design. Unlike the old days, when people and the army in the 70s i knew who the enemy was, the next soviet motorized regiment coming over the hills. Might be going back to those days. Im not sure. The way you fought the war in the 70s, beat the first echelon of the soviet and the second echelon came and you nuked them but you knew who the enemy would be. In modern wars you dont. The first step before you can plan is to figure out the problem set. A much different kind of warfare and you have this process called campaign design, which we introduced and which is now involved in all of our doctrine. You have youre fighting a set of enemies, not an enemy. So you have to disaggregate your enemies and deal with each one differently. Perceptions are more important than reality in this kind of war. What people think you do is more important that what you do. You have to manage information. And a big the dominant theme of the whole doctrine was learn and adapt. You head to learn and adapt fastest than your enemy did. The dominant approach was we talk all right. Its expensive, time consuming but very effective and things called lines of effort. And again, a point ill make again later, much of what is called counterinsurgency is just modern warfare. As much as we anyway not like counterinsurgency at not going away because modern warfarer is not going away. This is where i talk about lines of effort. This is lines of warfare in a diagramment you have a a whole set of operations going on. Not just combat operations. Its also the Host Nation Security forces, developing restoring essential services, develop going governance and Economic Development all parted of what it takes to be victorious in these kind of wars because youre trying to change peoples altitudes. Youre trying to get more people to support the government than dont. This is not hearts and mind coin. Hearts a minds is very much a social science approach, you make everybody love you. We realized we were doing the doctrine there ire parts of the name you have to grab sometimes to get people to do what you want them to do. Theres a bunch of coercive things as well as use you carrot and stick both. You change behavior and change attitude. You want the get the public to sport the governing authority, and everything is wrapped in information operations. Everything you do has an information reaction. You have to deal with that as well. This is modern warfare in a simple diagram. It looks like on the ground. This is general mattis plan in Anbar Province with the marines early in the iraq campaign. He identified his problem set as three different enemies, three different insurgencyies. In an bar there were three different enemies, a tribal incentury generalsive with the sunni tribe, incentury general i from people we through out with the baath edicts in 2003, and then there was a group from al qaeda. The foreign fighters. And the idea was, had to deal with each of those separately. The sunni tribes were wanter dotted get back into society so attracted with jobs. The baathists want told get back into the government and could be attracts by political compromise, the foreign fighterred have to be killed or captured. As we know what happens in Anbar Province, evandally we get the sunni tribe to kill the al qaeda guys. They turn. We turn the tribe to come to our side and they help us take out the foreign fighters. Thats the way these kind of wars can e tend to go. Now, we had a number of battles within we had internal battles and external battles to get the doctrine done. One of them was numbering the manual. The manual is fm324. Initials numbering for the manual was fm3 pot 722 which meant it was the 22nd cad gore under civility operation. Showed up and said this is among the team we talk about it, and we said counterincentury ginnie differs from. Praying beaut level of violence involved and needed its own category inwent to the campaigns arms director atsaid i wouldnt change the number on the manual. It was like monk could walk into the vatican and said i wouldnt rearrange the owes test. Testament. They said the whole system win collapse. Two likedder general pet petraeus had the same idea. When he made the suggestion it was great idea so the number changed. This is the only manual you find any u. S. Government inventory with a reference bibliographyy of civilian works, recommend reading we were told we daytona because that implies government endorsement of civilian work. That war the lawyers together us that but when general pet trace asked petraeus asked they gave him a different answer. Reading level. Army doctrine is women an eight grade reading level, not because soldiers are stupid. The idea is its going to be read quickly and absorbed quickly. The argument i made this is being written for battalion staffs and above, college graduates, they can read a heard tex so it is the reading is up to 12th grade level. So good it has been used as a College Textbook at a number of universities. Adder i had number of professors claim to men we then mall ewan was revises the 20 she war losing their best textbook and want to us change its. This is a time of abu ghraib. Got resolved because of the mccainfeingold the Bottom Line Congress passed the regulation that the rules for us, and another army manual became the standard so we didnt have to deal with it. A real tough nutted to deal with. We had a big debate with the Human Rights Community on that and decided we would not allow any gray areas in any kind of morality. No torture no waterboarding, then the manual basically took a very hard line on that and eventually reinforced by what congress came up with. The air power appendix. We needed an appendix on air power nice ground guys need to understand the air roll better. Marines didnt want to do it. Force it it down peoples throats. Weaponnt waded to get air force involved. They posed their own appendix the first thing they talked about was the air force controlling off air pair. Want to get marines crawling off the ceiling, tell them youre going to think airplanes airplane. We had to do a referee between tharies store and marines how that would be. In the end the marines were probably right do more harm than good with that. The air force still im kind of an antichrist for putting them in the appendix. Theyre lucky that guy that. Werent going to get anything if the marines had their way but that the air force interested in this and have done some pretty good things since. Same thing we they ever Army Intelligence center. They were uneasy got them to come onboard but delayed in the manual two months and because of that ralph peters had a chance to write a nastieder toal that called the manual womeny womeny womeny. We had a big debate between ralph peters and were changed seven sentences in the manual. When the manual came out in december, ralph peters called this the most improve government publication of the last depp decade. They went back to hate us it again later when the next book came out but he actually supported. The last one was the paradoxes. This is my idea to put in the manual, which is now a nato manual. Just to get people to realize a did kind of war and have to think about it different and there are some possible dilemmas to face in how you use force and how you you conduct it. Sometimes in order to protect your force you cant lock yourself in four Forward Operating base. Have to get out and patrol, take some risks. You have to provide the People Security and they have to see you out there. Sometimes the more force you use, is used, the less effective. It doesnt pay to kill five insurgents when the backlash creates 50 more. Have to be careful. Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction. Some of the best weapons were consistent do not shoot. Sometimes ball last and dollars are more effective than butlls and bombs. If a tactic works this week ick might not work next weeks, or this prones, might not work in the next. Why not in the enemy is learning and adapting, too you have people involved in war and theyre continuing to change. So, you have to understand that if you something works now, might not work in the next village. When the enemy finds a good tactic in iraq it shows numb afghanistan a month later. The enemy is communicating as well. Its a learning and adapting kind of article you have to be. In the last one, many important decisions were nod made by generals, because initially written as most important decisions are note made by generals. Guess who has the last say in the development of any doctrine manual. The generals. So they changed that. But at least i kept it in and they changed most to many. But i get to another point later that my revision, my thoughts about the process after watching the doctrine in action, thatses in yesterdays that the most important decisions are not made by any kind of soldier at all. Criticisms. People didnt like the doctrine. Only called military malpractice, says the only way to do counterinsurgency is the way the nazi did against the russians. Make the people fear you more than the incentury sundays. Were not going fight that way, especially the cn era. Number of people say that i was really spiesed, got invited to give a presentation at nyu. And i walked into the conference and the conference is entitle didnt del me the name. The conference is counterinsurgency, the new imperialism didnt realize we are we are doing that. But there some that see this as brutal and just a way for to others have argued that if civil wars are different than counte