FM 3.07: Stability Operations is Released

On Monday the Army released Field Manual 3.07: Stability Operations, the third in a series of revolutionary doctrinal publications. It follows FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency and FM 3-0: Operations.

Taken together, these three manuals represent the direction today's Armed Forces are moving. They are in direct response to Department of Defense Directive 3000.05, which states, "Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support. They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DoD activities including doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and planning."

In the Foreword to FM 3.07, Lt. Gen William Caldwell IV (about whom I wrote last week, because of his support for blogging) writes:

America's future abroad is unlikely to resemble Afghanistan or Iraq, where we grapple with the burden of nation-building under fire. Instead, we will work through and with the community of nations to defeat insurgency, assist fragile states, and provide vital humanitarian aid to the suffering. Achieving victory will assume new dimensions as we strengthen our ability to generate "soft" power to promote participation in government, spur economic development, and address the root causes of conflict among the disenfranchised populations of the world. At the heart of this effort is a comprehensive approach to stability operations that integrates the tools of statecraft with our military forces, international partners, humanitarian organizations, and the private sector.


These words echo the message that Defense Secretary Gates has been espousing for some time, which I believe wholeheartedly.

My only regret about these new publications is that they are not Joint. The complexity and fragility of Stability Operations demand that all the players on the team use the same playbook; Unity of Effort is essential. Unfortunately, doctrinal debates have caused a rift between the Army and Air Force. The Air Force was slow to write counterinsurgency doctrine, and to the best of my knowledge, only a few Air Force officers have seriously engaged with the Army in the doctrinal discussion. Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap is the most prominent, but his conclusions stand in stark contrast to the Army's new body of doctrine and are being hotly contested. If anything, the debate about the Air Force's role in counterinsurgency suggests how fractured our joint team really is. The Air Force now has AFDD 2-3 Irregular Warfare, which is a welcome development, but it uses different terminology and models than the Army for classifying conflicts. It focuses primarily on airpower's contributions to irregular warfare, and gives comparatively little attention to the overall strategic framework of stability operations. The Army and Air Force would benefit from sitting down together and writing a common playbook.

Now that these manuals are in print, the challenge is organizing our Armed Forces accordingly. Writing on Small Wars Journal, John Nagl says, "Doctrine drives the way we organize and train our forces, educate our leaders, and select and promote our people. The Army now faces the difficult task of implementing significant changes in all of those areas to build the military we need for the 21st century." We have a long way to go, but I'm encouraged by the strong leadership and intellectual vigor among senior leaders that have produced these publications.