Soft power: U.S. defense strategy to pay more attention to fragile states.

• Author: Rusling, Matthew
• Position: Defense Strategy

The new American way of war, says Defense Secretary Robert Gates, will be to prevent costly and controversial military interventions. That will be achieved not by being isolationist, but by helping governments in weak nations root out terrorists.

"Let's be honest with ourselves," Gates said in a speech to the National Defense University. "The most likely catastrophic threats to our homeland--for example, an American city poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack--are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states."

It is not yet dear, however, exactly how the Defense Department will execute this form of preventive warfare. If the U.S. military will be in the business of helping to strengthen weak states and in the process root out terrorists, how will the military organize, train and equip forces for these missions?

The inauguration of a new Africa Command last month was put forth as proof that the Pentagon is serious about applying "soft power" in areas of the world considered to be safe havens for terrorist groups. A new 208-page stability operations field manual published last month by the U.S. Army is yet another indicator that the military will effectively be in charge of nation-building efforts that in the past had been regarded as the purview of the State Department.

The manual, known as FM 3.07, was intended to provide guidance to both military and civilian agencies, said Army Gen. William Wallace, head of the Training and Doctrine Command. He said the manual was co-authored with "interagency partners," primarily the U.S. Agency for International Development (USMD) and the State Department.

"It's our expectation that that manual will become a handbook for both uniformed personnel and non-uniformed personnel that are operating in one of these contemporary operational environment situations," Wallace told reporters. "We developed the manual specifically to bridge the gap between the acronyms and lexicon of the interagency and the acronyms and lexicon of the military so that instead of talking past each other we're talking with each other."

Gates noted that the United States is not likely to repeat the "forced regime change followed by nation-building under fire" of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it may encounter "similar challenges" elsewhere. He suggested that only by understanding the dangers that could arise from insurgencies and failed states can the United States avoid being blindsided in the future.

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