Major combat and restoration operations: a discussion

On Dec. 17, 1989, at Fort Bragg, N.C., the operations officer of the 7th Special Forces Group (1) asked a desk officer on the staff of United States Army's 1st Special Operations Command to send a message to the "highest levels" to call attention to a serious flaw in the U.S. plan to invade Panama. The operations officer explained that there was no synchronization between the plan (code-named Blue Spoon) to destroy the Panamanian Defense Force, or PDF, and the plan (code-named Blind Logic) to restore the government of Panama under the democratically elected President Guillermo Endara.

The operations officer predicted chaos: The destruction of the PDF, he contended, would engender a government of Panama that would have no Army or police (because the Army was the constabulary), no customs service, and no navy or coast guard. In addition, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega had so corrupted the government that few government agencies would be able to function after the cessation of his gangster-like regime.

The action officer sent a message stating the operations officer's concerns to the U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. As a result, on Dec. 19, the day before the invasion, the J5 of the U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, was designated as the skeleton around which the new government of Panama would be formed.

The J5 staff rapidly read and digested the plan for Blind Logic. Staff members held hurried meetings, and on Dec. 20, after the invasion, the staff decided that its primary effort had to be to jump-start the new Endara administration. U.S. forces began providing security training to Endara's guard force, and the elements of the J5 that would be working to return power and water to the Panamanian legislative palace began moving into the building.

In the meantime, the work on prisoner-of-war facilities and other pillars of restoration languished. Within days of the invasion, planners from Psychological Operations, or PSYOP, and Civil Affairs, or CA, reinforced the J5. In addition, with no prior force listing or force preparation, and with virtually no notice, CA units and the 7th SF Group arrived to facilitate the transition to peace. In January 1990, the operation was named Operation Promote Liberty. Elements of SF remained in Panama until December 1990 to ensure that democratic institutions would take root.

After the invasion, when the U.S. Army Special Operations Command submitted its lessons-learned to the Center for Army Lessons Learned, one of the major lessons was the need to plan effectively for the transition to peace.

John T. Fishel best captures the unorchestrated transition to peace in Panama in the premier examination of the issue, The Fog of Peace: Planning and Executing the Restoration of Panama. (2) Fishel concludes that without a long-term vision and a strategy for the restoration of Panama, the major combat and restoration operations were less than optimal successes.

Describing the effects of the restoration, a Panamanian businessman credited the J5 with accomplishing the necessary tasks: "You got the police working--not too well, but working. Second, you got the government ministries working." A quote from a woman on the street a year after the invasion is more pessimistic: "The government has done nothing. It seems that we were mistaken about Endara. Now we are worse off than before. The streets are full of thugs; you can't sleep in peace. There is more unemployment than before; and this situation affects everyone and everything."

Fishel summarizes the failure to synchronize major combat operations and restoration in Panama with the following comments. In light of current conditions in Iraq, Fishel's comments appear to remain valid.

* There is an absolute requirement for articulating political-military strategic objectives in terms of clearly defined end states.

* U.S. government and civilian agencies must develop the capability to conceive strategy in terms of ends, ways and means. Until such a capability is developed, the military will have to take the lead in organizing the strategy-development process.

* Unity of effort in the interagency environment can be achieved only if all critical government agencies are included in the contingency-planning process. Even the combat phase of the contingency plan will require input from the State Department and other agencies, but the civil-military operations, or CMO, phase certainly will demand very heavy participation, particularly from the State Department; the Agency for International Development, or AID; and the Department of Justice.

* A campaign plan for linking the strategic and operational levels is absolutely necessary. The military must take the lead in developing a full-fledged campaign plan that will include CMO through the termination of the campaign. A major part of the CMO planning will involve the hand-off from the military to the lead civilian agency. The follow-on campaign may well be State Department's or AID's lead, with the military serving in a support role for both planning and execution.

* Both the commander of the civil-military-operations task force, or COMCMOTF, and the US. military support group failed to be fully effective in orchestrating CMO in Panama because they were wholly military. An interagency organization for conducting restoration operations is required. Such an organization must work directly for the U.S. ambassador. It must be an addition to the normal country team, and much of its membership needs to be military.

* There are serious costs to operational capability if the total-force concept is not exercised as intended. The bottom line is that the use of the Reserve call-up authority must be made routine.

* Critical to the effective massing of forces in restoration operations is adequate funding and a sense of urgency. In the immediate aftermath of combat, operational funds must be used for restoration purposes. This source of funding should not be terminated solely for budgetary reasons. Long-term funding from appropriations requires that the executive branch have a well-developed plan for convincing the Congress to pass the required legislation with a real sense of urgency.

In light of Fishel's observations and the lessons learned from Panama, one might wonder why planning for Iraq did not fully include the transition to peace. The restoration phase of the plan was termed Phase IV. Reportedly, (3) the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a report, entitled "Operation Iraqi Freedom," that listed several problems in obtaining a smooth transition to peace in Iraq:

* Planners were not given enough time to put together the best blueprint for Phase IV.

* Troop formations for Phase IV operations were designated too late and flowed into theater too late.

* Planning for Phase IV was not initiated early enough.

* Ongoing revisions of plans for combat operations limited the planners' focus on Phase IV.

The recurring problem of "Phase IV" integration may be a holdover from the Cold War planning scenario. The objective under the Cold War model was to survive the onslaught of Soviet weapons of mass destruction and stop the Red Army short of its objectives in Europe. Since both sides of the conflict would be going for the jugular and national existence itself might be an issue, reconstruction was an afterthought. The survival of Western democracy and of our nation was the paramount measure of success. Figure 1 illustrates the Cold War planning process.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Operations Just Cause and Promote Liberty in Panama and Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the Middle East, as well as the crumbling of the Soviet Union, made apparent that the bipolar world was evaporating and that only one superpower would remain. This meant that the U.S. and its allies or coalition partners would, in most conflicts, be assured of military victory. That reality gives us certain superpower luxuries in the planning process. One of those is that we can afford to be compassionate and to spend significant resources in determining what we do not want to destroy--from economic infrastructure to cultural centers.

Secondly, certainty of victory allows planners to look well past the firing of the last bullet in order to determine Phase IV end states. Therefore, planners should attempt to plan reconstruction first, and then use reverse-sequence planning to determine appropriate supportive major combat operations (Figure 2).

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Lastly, some in Europe have suggested that the U.S. is the world's only"hyperpower." Hyperpower planning could conceivably envelop the info sphere and the entire globe. It could focus on new global and regional equilibriums as end states, identify preventive strategies, and potentially significantly change major combat operations and reconstruction activities in support of the interagency derived end states (Figure 3).

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Regardless of the scenario, it is clearly time for military planners to become more holistic and to look well beyond major combat operations as they define "success."

Notes:

(1) The author.

(2) John T. Fishel, The Fog of Peace: Planning and Executing the Restoration of Panama (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College) 15 April 1992.

(3) Rowan Scarborough, "U.S. Rushed Post-Saddam Planning," Washington Times, 3 September 2003.

Major General Geoffrey C. Lambert is commanding general of the JFK Special Warfare Center and School. He previously commanded the U.S. Army Special Forces Command, which provided SF units for operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, the Philippines and Colombia. He has been an Infantry and Special Forces officer, and he has held the additional specialties of foreign area officer and Civil Affairs.

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