The return of Kennedyism

One of the curiosities of President John F. Kennedy is that he envisaged the central role of Special Forces in modern military operations as a stealthier, lighter and more agile instrument, while still beginning what led to a mass infantry occupation of Vietnam.

For a few simple reasons, mostly the costs, distress and domestic political opposition generated by America’s present wars, it looks as though the first part of Kennedy’s vision may offer us something. Special Forces working in the shadows might be the future of the War on Terror, while COIN done by hundreds of thousands of uniformed folk will be less attractive to policymakers.

Of course, the US is probably already doing this, with rough folk in the shadows, under the radar, killing, disrupting or hunting radical Islamists all over the globe, or training others to do so in Africa or Asia.

This may represent the best way to compromise in the future between industrial strength occupations that cost too much blood and treasure, and the other extreme of occasional Clintonian punitive war from a distance, with the odd missile fired into the odd training camp/building/embassy, or even the legalist utopian alternative, of issuing writs and bringing to trial jihadists who know they are at war even if we do not.

Of course, we need to think hard about the grand, world-historical solutions to radical Islam, warlordism and other dragons, such as democracy promotion, or poverty reduction, or whatever other panaceas are on offer.

But in the meantime, in the spirit of more modest but more effective measures that contain the symptoms and make the world decidedly unsafe for our enemies, a new Kennedyism would prove more affordable, more precise and as a result, more humane.
It may be that Robert Kaplan, for all the eccentricities of his view of Balkan ghosts and ancient hatreds and his relaxed attitude to atrocities on the frontier, was onto something early with this:

In the future, military glory will come down to shadowy, page-three skirmishes around the globe, which the armed services will quietly celebrate among their own subculture.