Why the Army should fire generals and promote captains

By Adrian Bonenberger, Published: February 21

As Army leadership ponders who and what to cut from its budget, the first groups in the crosshairs are the junior and mid-level officers. This is a logical step: To wage counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army expanded its fighting force, and now it’s time to draw down. What isn’t logical is that other ranks will largely get a free pass.

The Army, and the military overall, would be better served by retiring some of the generals, colonels and senior lieutenant colonels, and promoting the best captains, majors and junior lieutenant colonels into those roles.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Army stood at 480,000 soldiers. Over the next decade, it ballooned to 565,000 soldiers in 2011 and has since shrunk back to 528,000. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last summer that the Army needed to reduce its numbers to as few as 380,000, the lowest since before World War II. It seems likely that the Pentagon will adopt this number as its target for 2020. These cuts will overwhelmingly fall where the recent growth occurred: younger soldiers and officers, nearly all of whom joined to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Unconventional Deterrence Strategy

Mindaugas Rekasius
Naval Postgraduate School 
June 2005

ABSTRACT 

This thesis examines a largely unexplored area of deterrence theory – unconventional deterrence. Unconventional deterrence is defined herein as “persuading the opponent not to attack, via threats of unconventional warfare, such as guerrilla resistance and terrorism.” It treats terrorism as a punishment strategy, through which the one deterring threatens to punish the aggressor’s population. Guerrilla warfare is a denial strategy, through which the one deterring threatens to protract a war and deny the aggressor his political objectives. This study questions the underlying hypothesis of deterrence theory which says that the balance of the opponents’ military capabilities is the basic determinant of successful deterrence. Rather, the hypothesis here is that the deterrer may deter the aggressor from attacking by adopting a strategy that makes the aggressor’s military superiority irrelevant. The present thesis focuses primarily on relatively weak states. Unconventional deterrence is explored as a means for a weaker state to deter a considerably stronger opponent.

This thesis discusses the requirements for successful deterrence, and the peculiarities of unconventional deterrence. As well, the dynamics of small wars are explored in order to unfold a paradoxical phenomenon: the possibility of an underdog’s victory in war.  Two  case  studies:  (1) the  Vietnam  War  of  1964-73 and (2)  the Afghanistan War of 1979-89 – are explored as examples of the weak denying the strong their objectives.

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