Leviathan/SysAdmin inevitable

REPORT: A New Division of Labor: Meeting America's Security Challenges Beyond Iraq, RAND, May 17, 2007

The Leviathan-SysAdmin breakdown between the power-projecting Air Force and Navy and the boots-on-the-ground Army and Marines is both inevitable and years in the making.

It's just the way it's going to be, as this RAND report argues.

The SOF segment is always tricky: the civil affairs stuff and mil-mil is very SysAdmin, but the real trigger-pullers of SOF (and we're talking dozens, not hundreds) will be very Leviathan like in their application, as we saw recently in Somalia.

You can call that stability ops if you want, but it's just targeted killing or warfare fought strictly on the level of individuals.

Comments

[Lane Brody]

Mr Barnett if the Army and Marines go to sys admin does this not assume we will not fight a capable army again? Furthermore, how does the Army's binary brigade structure function in a sys admin role?

I recall that at one point you advocated a leviathan force in part as insurance against a potential competent enemy. Has your thinking evolved on this subject?

Italy's response to it's 1930's colonial wars was to go to a binary division which did not serve them well in the real war they fought in the next decade. How is it possible that the US Army is repeating this same mistake? In any case how does a fixed modular brigade fit in with sys admin? Did not you at one time advocate a large brigade of 4 batt with attached aviation and eng batt?

Finally I believe you are mostly correct vis a vis SOCOM and sys admin but a lot of the training SF does is oriented towards roles that might be seen as sys admin. Many of the forces trained will end up with missions of border security and/or peacekeeping.