Changes to military strategy, in time for the next war.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 01 April 2008
• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

* It is a Pentagon cliche that the military is always preparing for the last war.

Iraq is far from over, but the Defense Department--and notably the Army--already are rewriting military doctrine so that forces are adequately trained and ready for another Iraq-like conflict years or decades from now.

Just during the past year, a new Pentagon policy and a revamped Army operations manual have officially made nation-building and post-war reconstruction primary duties for the military.

These so-called "stability operations" are now on equal footing with traditional combat, which means the Pentagon expects the military services to train and equip forces for such missions.

The Army's recently published field operations manual, the FM3-0, constitutes a major endorsement of this new policy. It is the guidebook that the Army probably wished it had written a decade ago, so it would have been better prepared to cope with the chaos and violent insurgency that followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Although it could take years to turn this new policy into actual changes to the military's force...