Occupation and Governance: the New Face of Operational Art

Publisher Marketing: The United States and many other countries are engaged in the Global War on Terror using all the elements of their national powers. Much of the diplomatic, economic and perhaps some of the military actions take place behind the scenes and often through proxies. Even so, given historical precedent and the plethora of rogue and failing states in existence today, future large-scale military intervention in some areas is virtually inevitable. A multinational military coalition is presently struggling to stabilize Iraq two years after initial occupation and governance operations met with limited success. This modern operation stands in sharp contrast to the notably successful occupations of Germany and Japan more than half a century ago. If these types of operations are inevitable, but the US military has lost some proficiency in their execution, it is incumbent upon professional soldiers to discover and remedy the problems. The purpose of this monograph is to identify the effects required to execute a successful stability and reconstruction operation following a kinetic combat operation, determine the shortcomings in current doctrine's ability to plan for those effects, and make the recommended changes to remedy the problem. Historical case studies on the occupations of Germany and Japan as well as the more recent operations in Iraq provide insight into the requirements for the success of the occupation forces. These requirements, juxtaposed with a survey of both past and present occupation and governance doctrine, provide a basis to analyze the effectiveness of the current doctrine. This monograph concludes that although the national goals and objectives are generally accomplished in the occupation and reconstruction phase of an operation, current doctrine encourages planning from the perspective that the kinetic combat phase is decisive. Additionally, the specific doctrine dealing with occupation and military governance is fragmented and diluted in a number of the Joint and Army doctrinal manuals. The remedy to the problem is to rewrite the capstone manuals placing emphasis on planning the post-combat or occupation phase first, as the core of the campaign. Then plan all the other elements, from the combat phase to the inevitably required humanitarian assistance, as enabling operations that support the decisive occupation phase. Additionally, the military must consolidate and publish occupation and governance doctrine in a single source publication similar to those published by the War Department prior to and during WWII.