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As an ex-squid, I should probably hate Marines. But the smartass in me has always liked them: Notwithstanding their hoo-rah, “kill kill” reputation, the jarheads have a greater tolerance than most military organizations for nonconformity, innovation, and out-of-step thinking. See also: “semper gumby.”
Nowhere has this tendency been more evident than in counterinsurgency: The Corps was making its bones in Latin America, China, and Vietnam as local consensus-builders and well-diggers while the Army was still seekin’ and destroyin’. Hell, I even wrote a (not-yet published) book on the subject (PDF). And it was the Corps who lobbied hard to shift their troops from Iraq to Afghanistan a few years back to tackle the Taliban-AQ insurgency head on.
So it was a little shocking to hear Navy undersecretary Bob Work say Tuesday that the Corps is looking to abandon COIN, go unmanned, and resume “its naval character” after Afghanistan.
What gives? Is this innovative service, which gave us gung-ho, really advancing to the rear…to embrace an amphibious assault role that Defense Secretary Gates thinks is outdated? Does it also mean that the Marines, like most Americans, are wary of being in Southwest Asia for much longer?
In his speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Work assured listeners that this wasn’t a retreat from Afghanistan. “All of the changes are going to be conditions based on what happens in Afghanistan,” he said. “If we’re still hard in the fight then the Marine Corps will stay focused on that fight. But we’ll at least be thinking about what the Marine Corps might look like.”
And Lord, what thoughts: The “post-Afghanistan Marine Corps” will get back to its “naval roots,” pushing amphibs, drones, more ships, and lighter gear, according to Work.
New equipment…hmm…you could simply read this as a cry for more defense dollars for the Corps, of course. But even so, it’s a radical departure from what the Marines were doing in Anbar province, and what they continue to do in Marjah and thereabouts. When Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children appear to spurn future planning for the fight we’re in — Afghanistan, Pakistan, et al — for the fights we had on Saipan and Tarawa, it ought to raise eyebrows all around.
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The Marine Corps leadership is wiley and clever. They’ve seen the COIN boat is sinking already, and they also note that COIN is hard and expensive. So much easier to go to what they do best – short term, littoral operations, using the Navy as a basis of operation. They won’t admit to that but I’ll lay money on it.
But where do the Marines stand on the movie versions of “The Gambler?” Maybe they were just exhausted by the time “Playing for Keeps” rolled around.
I don’t know if I buy that the Marines will actually return to a more naval form, even if Work says they want to, because — as he notes — this has been said before and hasn’t really happened. But it is interesting to have anyone at that level already talking about post-Afghanistan restructuring, you’re right. Interesting and strange.
Well, they can make all the plans for the future they want, but there’s at least a better than even chance that events and technological advances, particularly ballistic missiles and space-based weapons will render large scale naval operations and force projection untenable. Without carrier-based air, a contested amphibious assault against a country with modern arms would be a disaster…
I also don’t buy it–I think the core capabilities and missions of the USMC have changed significantly since the US first invaded Afghanistan in 2001; with the subsequent invasion of Iraq two years later, the move to mobile ground operations pushed further into semi-static FOB/OP operations has shifted the focus of the Marines away from that original purpose.