Foreign policy ambition overlooks war lessons.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: DEFENSE WATCH

* Preparations may soon be under way for pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq. But don't be looking for a peace dividend any time soon.

The military in fact is gearing up for a big buildup. It plans to remain engaged in a "long war," according to the Pentagon's national security strategy. The Obama administration has endorsed a major expansion of ground forces, and a surge in military capabilities to conduct "irregular" warfare against non-state actors. A key component of this strategy is the U.S. military's competency to help rebuild failed states and to train those countries' armies so they can fight their own insurgencies and keep terrorists at bay.

By accomplishing these ambitious goals, the military in theory would shape the world so as to prevent future Iraq-like fiascos or another 9/11.

Critics are questioning, however, whether the interventionist worldview embraced by President Barack Obama and his top advisors ignores the lessons that should have been learned in recent years. They contend that this approach to foreign policy perpetuates the notion that the military can be a jack of all trades and overlooks the fact that armed forces have a limited capability to influence events.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged that much when he advocated last year for a "diplomacy surge" and asked Congress to pour money into the State Department so it can help the military with nation-building duties. Gates also has decried the over-militarization of U.S. foreign policy. But that is exactly what the nation's defense strategy continues to embrace.

Retired Air Force Col. Chet Richards, a military analyst at the Center for Defense Information, says the incoming administration is falling into the same traps that have gotten the United States in trouble in the past: namely, the use of military force to attempt to solve problems that are inherently social, economic or political. Both in Iraq and Afghanistan, initial successes against third-rate military opponents dragged on into separate occupations that have no end in sight.

As the United States prepares to escalate its military presence in Afghanistan, both uniformed and civilian officials readily have admitted that this is a war that cannot be won by force alone. Just last month, one of the U.S. commanders there, Col. Jeffrey M. Haynes, struck a pessimistic chord when he said that the U.S. strategy was too focused on chasing bad guys, while what's really needed is to rebuild the nation so that...