A battalion's worth of good ideas

The "surge" of U.S. Military unit in Iraq, coupled with an attachment to classic counterinsurgency rule, has gone a long way toward improving security there. Finally, though, success must be handled by the Iraqis themselves. As recent operations in Basra have shown, they have an increasing desire to operate independently - but not yet commensurate capacity to do so. The key to their success rests mostly with a small group of American military advisor who live and fight aboard foreign military unit.

In a address last fall to the Association of the United States Army, defence Secretary Henry M. Robert Gates argued that the most important military constituent of what the Pentagon calls the "long war" against radical extremists will not be the fight we do ourselves but how we "empower our spouse to defend and govern their own state." This is something we know how to do, although we often move too slow in shift the load of fight from our own troops to those we are trying to help.

Based on American experiences in Korea, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, El El Salvador and now in Iraq and Islamic State of Afghanistan, an advisory strategy can help the Iraqi Army and security forces beat Al Qaeda and protect their state. (Obviously, these are my personal views, and do not represent those of the U.S. Army.)

nevertheless, doing so will require America's land forces to provide at least 20,000 armed combat advisers for the continuance of the wars in Iraq and Islamic State of Afghanistan - soldiers specially equipped and trained to help foreign forces bear a greater share of the armed combat load.

unluckily, America's armed forces did not have the advisory capacity it should have had after major armed combat operations ceased. The first effort to create a new Iraqi Army was farmed out to buck private contractors. When that attempt failed, and it became clear that the assistance needed to help the fledgling Iraqi Army far exceeded the capability of the U.S. Army's Special Forces, regular army troops were called on to fill the gap. Given their lack of training, these soldiers did remarkably well, but it was always a stopgap measure.

Fortunately, the advisory effort has been improved in the last couple of years. Since 2006, all U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force adviser training has been centralized at Fort Riley, Kansas, under the army's First Infantry Division, where I lead one of the training battalions engaged in this effort.

Graduates deploy in 10- to 16-person teams that embed with Iraqi and Afghan security forces, assist in their training and accompany them into combat. Not only does this give those foreign troops exposure to our tactics, it also provides a critical link to American artillery, air support and logistics during operations.

Still, we have not seen the urgency the mission requires. Doctrine - a standard enumeration of the purpose of a military organization and how it will accomplish its goals - is still nonexistent for the adviser mission. Organization is inconsistent, for example, with most Afghanistan teams consisting of 16 soldiers with no medic, while most Iraq teams contain 11 soldiers, including a medic. The fact is, both types of teams are too small for the tasks they have been assigned, and many consequently have been augmented on the ground by regular troops on an ad hoc basis.

This is simply because not enough advisers are being produced - just 5,000 per year. We are going to need ever more experienced, trained advisers as the size and complexity of the Iraqi and Afghan police forces and armies grow and as the combat burden increasingly shifts to them.

Part of the problem is institutional. We have a spotty history in terms of helping allies fight for themselves. Advisers who live and fight with a struggling "poor cousin" local army often do their dangerous and sometimes frustrating work out of sight of the brass, and it can be a career-killer for ambitious young officers.

In Vietnam, the advisory effort got off to a slow start and was too often neglected in favor of U.S.-only operations. Only after Washington committed in 1969 to so-called Vietnamization at the direction of President Richard Nixon did advisers get the resources and recognition they deserved, and by then it was too late.

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 do their tour and are then moved back into conventional roles, while the embedded training teams are demobilized. 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.