APRIL 10, 2003
WAR IN IRAQ
"If You Cannot Be Loved, Be Feared" | That's just one of the lessons historian Ralph Peters sees in Baghdad's fall -- a U.S. triumph that shows "preemption has been vindicated"
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Ralph Peters may be as close as the American military gets to a Renaissance soldier. He's certainly not one to mince words. The former lieutenant colonel served in the infantry and Army intelligence and holds a degree in international relations. With a razor-sharp analytical style and a historian's grasp of warfare, he has emerged as a leading exponent of the 21st century military. It's a U.S. fighting force that Peters believes will be leaner, faster, smarter, and more lethal than anything seen before.
And increasingly, he contends in books such as Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World and Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?, it's a military that will be called on to intervene in seething hot spots against global terror networks and Third World tyrants armed with weapons of mass destruction (see BW Online, 4/10/03, "Two Myths of the War in Iraq"). On Apr. 7, Peters took time out from meeting with U.S. Green Berets to talk to BusinessWeek's Washington Bureau Chief Lee Walczak. Here are edited excerpts from their conversation:
Q: In the early days of the Iraq war, some military analysts insisted the U.S. went to war against Saddam Hussein without enough armor. What's your take?
A: If we had more ground troops, taking Baghdad would have been easier. And with another mechanized division in place, we would have secured Baghdad and be moving on [Saddam's ancestral home of] Tikrit by now. So more ground troops would definitely have helped. But the Army and Marine units that [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld once scorned as superfluous have managed to pull his cookies out of the fire in Iraq with a strong performance. The plan wasn't perfect, but they adapted well.
Q: Are you referring to Rumsfeld's head-banging with the military Establishment over his vision of a slimmed-down fighting force?
A: I see Rumsfeld as a brilliant yet tragic figure. He could have been the great Defense Secretary we needed to transform the military. But his arrogance undermines his effectiveness. He thought the Iraq war could be done on a shoe-string because of high technology. But in the end, [Central Command General] Tommy Franks managed an ill-tempered compromise on troop strength, and that proved sufficient.
Q: What about Rumsfeld's influential No. 2, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz? Many opponents of the war see him as a master strategist plotting future interventions...
A: I see Wolfowitz as a kind of sober visionary who gets it right. He gets into trouble when he strays into tactics.
Q: Both men are associated with the doctrine of Digital War -- basically, using America's technology advantage to gain a decisive edge on the battlefield. Has the experience in Iraq supported the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz vision?
A: The strategic air campaign disappointed us. We bombed [a leadership bunker in] Baghdad, but the results on the regime weren't decisive. When air power turned to supporting the troops, its effectiveness soared.
High-tech weapons are great, but the Iraq war really demonstrated the need to have balanced forces. The technology that worked best was not the flashy strategic stuff, but the enhanced battlefield communications that permitted the Army, Air Force, and Marines to talk to each other. Close air support in Iraq, for example, worked better than it has before.
Q: Do you think the Secretary of Defense has absorbed this lesson?
A: I'm not sure Rumsfeld learns very much. He will view all this as vindication. For instance, in his dealings with generals, he could have listened to them and made them feel a part of plans [to modernize forces]. Instead, he called them yesterday's men and sent them out of his office. That was just stupid.
Q: So what will happen to Rumsfeld's campaign to overhaul the military and reduce reliance on Cold War weapons?
A: Our military is at austere levels. This war will prevent Rumsfeld from cutting troop strength further.
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Copyright 2003, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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