Field Manual 3-07, Stability Operations: Upshifting the Engine of Change

THE RELEASE OF Field Manual (FM) 3-07, Stability Operations, in the coming months will acknowledge and stress the criticality of the "whole-of-government" approach essential to achieving sustainable success in an era of persistent conflict. This approach is the key to operating in the uncertain future before us. The new doctrine will also represent a number of important firsts. It will be the first stability doctrine-service or joint-to answer the immediate needs of the force already actively engaged in ongoing operations. It will be the first doctrine of any type to undergo a comprehensive joint, service, interagency, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental review. It will also mark the first time any service has attempted to capture and define a national approach to conflict transformation in doctrine, and to do so with the broad support of the agencies, organizations, and institutions that share in that approach. The publication of FM 3-07 will fill a critical void in our knowledge base at a key moment in the history of our Army and our Nation. At a time when we find ourselves engaged simultaneously in the Middle East, the Far East, and Latin America, the new manual will provide the intellectual underpinnings needed to deal comprehensively with the uncertainty, chance, and friction so common to operations conducted among the people. A Brave New World The forces of globalization and the emergence of regional economic and political powers are fundamentally reshaping the world we thought we understood. Future cultural and ethnocentric conflicts are likely to be exacerbated by increased global competition for shrinking natural resources, teeming urban populations with rising expectations, unrestrained technological diffusion, and rapidly accelerating climate change. The future is not one of major battles and engagements fought by armies on battlefields devoid of population; instead, the course of conflict will be decided by forces operating among the people of the world. Here, the margin of victory will be measured in far different terms than the wars of our past. The allegiance, trust, and confidence of populations will be the final arbiters of success. America actually possesses a rich and proud history of success and learning in wars among the people-what we recognize today as stability operations. However, from our colonial roots, when Congress appointed military commissioners to negotiate peace treaties and land purchases with Native American tribes, to our contemporary experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, our most enduring tradition has been an inability or unwillingness to institutionalize the lessons of those experiences. In a cruel twist of fate, the answers we so desperately sought in recent years were collecting dust on bookshelves half a world away; the distant lessons of a remarkably successful Vietnam-era civil-military program sat largely forgotten, save by those few who had lived those experiences. CORDS: A Classic Approach to a Modern Challenge At the height of the Vietnam War, we faced an enemy who hid among the people. That enemy had evolved from the one first confronted by American ground forces in 1965 to become a complex mix of guerrilla forces, political cadre, and conventional regulars. In a few short years, the enemy had adapted, changing from a strategy focused on mainforce engagement to one that stressed insurgency, guerrilla tactics, and, most important, patience. The enemy had learned the hard-fought lessons of jungle warfare against a better equipped, technologically advanced opponent. By the time General Creighton W. Abrams assumed command of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) in the summer of 1968, the enemy had evolved, and so had the war. Two years earlier, General William C. Westmoreland, Abrams's predecessor as MACV commander, had recognized that a fundamental shift in effort would be necessary to achieve any lasting degree of success. …