America’s soft power military

Your humble blogger has been fascinated by Bob Gates' efforts in recent years to reorient U.S. foreign policy away from the conventional use of force.  In today's Boston Globe, Bryan Bender looks at how Gates' efforts are trickling down into the uniformed service branches.  The surprising answer is... it's trickling down one hell of a lot:  Having learned the limits of force in Iraq and Afghanistan, US military strategists are rewriting decades-old military doctrine to place humanitarian missions on par with combat, part of a new effort to win over distrustful foreign populations and enlist new global allies, according to top commanders and Pentagon officials. The Defense Department is implementing a series of new directives to use the American arsenal for more peaceful purposes even as it prepares for war, including a little-noticed revision this year to a document called "Joint Operations," described as the "very core" of how the military branches should be organized. The effort illustrates a growing recognition that, to combat radical ideologies and avert future wars, the Pentagon must draw more heavily on its deep reserves of so-called soft power - its ability to set up medical clinics in a remote part of the world, for example - to balance the more traditional "hard power" of military force, according to more than a dozen US military officers in several regions of the world and planners inside the Pentagon. "Things have changed significantly," Jerry Lynes, a retired Marine Corps colonel who is now chief of education and doctrine for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview. "We have taken our traditional principles of war and added to them." The changes have already translated into new military operations. When a US military team arrived by helicopter in Cambodia's rural Kampong Chhnang Province in late May, the imam from the local mosque spread the word and hundreds of locals descended on the Americans. But it was not confrontation they sought. It was free healthcare. The Friendship Clinic, offering primary and vision care, dentistry, a women's health center, and medical training, was part of a first-of-its kind humanitarian mission called Pacific Angel by the Honolulu-based 13th Air Force. The story also highlights another oddity:  while the Pentagon is making this adjustment, they'd really like a different agency to take the lead:  [W]hile the change in emphasis is generally accepted as a positive development, some are also warning that the military risks taking on nonmilitary missions that should be the purview of the State Department and other civilian agencies. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who has called for greater emphasis on diplomatic and economic tools to further American interests, warned in a speech this month about the "militarization" of American foreign policy and repeated his calls for building new civilian capacity for strengthening fragile states. Others have also cautioned against using the military to perform jobs better suited to civilians, such as democracy building and development aid. "Our [foreign] policy is out of whack," said Kenneth Bacon, a former assistant secretary of defense who now runs Refugees International, a nonprofit organization. "It is too dominated by the military and we have too little civilian capacity." I'm sure many will blame the Bush administraion for this state of affairs -- but I think what's going on here is the result of how the foreign policy budget is authorized.  Congressmen are happy to authorize more defense spending, because that's easier to justify to their constituents, particularly those constituets whose livelihoods are tied into the military.  Authorizing civilian spending on foreign policy, however, just looks like a handout to other countries -- it's much easier for Congress to say no to that authorization, and look fiscally prudent in the process.    The long-term effect of this skew, however, is that the military is organizing and running an ever-greater share of foreign policy operations.  Lest anyone think I'm ranting against the armed forces, I'm trying to say that they don't want this responsibility.  They're stepping up because no other agency possesses either the resources or the willingness to act.  Until and unless budget and operating authority are reallocated in the executive branch, this 'militarization' of foreign policy is not going to stop.  And, irony of ironies, it's the military that most wants to stop it.