John Nagl continues to be the country's hottest ticket for military intellectual thought (How many 0-5s have managed to do op-eds for the Times and the Post within a four week span?), and today's New York Times indicates that he has found his main initiative. Ever since last June's CNAS paper outlining his vision of a Foreign Advisory Corps, TSK has been waiting for a public airing of the idea. We've been teased for months by allusions to it in editorials by Max Boot and Nagl himself, but today's piece is the first to elaborate upon the proposal and offer a detailed layman explanation. The Colonel Killebrews of the world may argue that we don't need a FAC, but the hard truth is that Nagl has more star power than anyone who has come out in opposition to the proposal. As always, bureaucratic inertia is the biggest obstacle to a true Corps of advisors, but it seems the MSM is willing to give Nagl a platform to make his case.
"Too much of that statement still rings true today. In the long term, we need to institutionalize our ability to field advisers and provide effective military assistance to allies. As it stands now, the troops we train at Fort Riley do their tour and are then moved back into conventional roles, while the embedded training teams are demobilized. This is as senseless as if in World War II we had decided that the First Infantry Division, which had gone ashore in North Africa and Sicily, was to be disbanded and replaced on D-Day with a division that had no experience landing on hostile ground. What we need, even after the Iraq and Afghanistan missions have ended, is a standing advisory corps of about 20,000 troops that can deploy wherever in the world we need to get our allies up to speed."
One final note: If you read the end of the CNAS paper, you'll notice that Nagl leaves the door open for a Corps that expands beyond twenty thousand soldiers. In the op-eds, though, the number is presented as an implied end strength. I suspect this is a political move on Nagl's part to forestall more opposition from stone-age military commentators, and if so, I approve. Nevertheless, students of COIN should keep in mind the possibility that the op-tempo of a FAC will almost certainly demand an expansion, should the idea ever gain acceptance among the Army brass.
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While it's nice to get a fresh perspective from a young white guy (instead of old white guys), I think Nagl has got to get more hard-nosed and realistic. The idea that the Army is going to create a permanent corps of 10,000 by scraping off the existing branches is a non-starter. I remember the howls of protest when the Army created the Acquisition Corps (which, as the GAO report findings suggest, was and remains badly needed).
His endorsement of remaining in Iraq for another decade is also naive. It may be necessary for mission success, but if the option is not politically viable or supported by the public, it fails two of the three Clausewitzean participants in military strategy. He has star power but not the lock of academic logic.
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