The Rising East
14,000 U.S. troops
in Thailand reflect new
level of complexity
in Asian policySattahip, Thailand >> America's wars in Asia, which at one time were relatively simple military operations, have gotten immensely complicated. That's the reason 14,000 American soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen are training in Thailand today.
Complexity is the name of the new game. The U.S. leader in the exercise here, Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, who commands the Third Marine Expeditionary Force on Okinawa, must not only plan and execute a conventional maneuver, but also cope with myriad political demands and pressures in a drill code-named Cobra Gold.
The main purpose of what is known as a command post exercise is to train the generals and their staffs in complex operations, to make decisions, plans and orders while under demands coming from every direction. Gregson and his staff are split off from the troops running around in the bush or on the beaches training to execute those decisions and orders.
The scenario envisions an attack on Country X by its neighbor, Greenland. Under a United Nations resolution, troops from Whiteland, Blueland, and Singland are deployed to separate the combatants, compel the Greenlanders to withdraw, and generally to restore peace. The fake names are but thin cover for the United States, Thailand and Singapore.
Gregson operates in a coalition with a Thai general as his boss and a Singaporean general as his immediate subordinate; the staff includes officers from all three nations. They must deal with political leaders and diplomats from all three capitals. The United Nations secretary general has a special representative on scene.
Imagined into the scenario are 200,000 refugees and displaced persons who have been crammed into eight camps under the most appalling conditions. Representatives of 10 relief agencies add demands for helping victims of the notional war.
The enormity of the humanitarian disaster and efforts for relief threatens to overwhelm the roads, ports and airfields of the nation under attack.
Terror compounds the confusion. In the training scenario, an American business executive has been assassinated, four relief workers have been kidnapped and the aggressors have been using refugees as human shields. Gregson must mount a non-combatant evacuation operation to get American diplomats and expatriates out of this stricken nation.
All of this goes on under the scrutiny of the American, Thai and international press and television, plus the inquisitive eyes of observers from 14 nations, including China.
Maj. Gen. Clive Milner, a retired Canadian army officer with extensive experience in complicated peacekeeping operations like this, says: "This is probably the most complex operation, not just military operation, but any kind of operation that mankind could devise. Milner plays the role of the special representative of the U.N. secretary general.
Most of the non-military aspects of this war game have been fashioned by the Pacific Command's Center for Excellence in Disaster Management & Humanitarian Assistance, which invited Milner and the representatives of the relief agencies to take part. Peter Leentjes, another retired Canadian army officer, is the project manager.
The contrast of the complicated operation here with earlier wars in the real world is vivid. In World War II, U.S. armed forces were focused on the unconditional surrender of a clearly defined enemy in the Pacific: Japan. The Korean War saw U.S., South Korean, North Korean and Chinese forces fight up and down the peninsula in a conventional war first of maneuver and then of trench warfare not unlike World War I.
Things became more complicated in Vietnam, where the enemy was elusive, the front lines indistinct and the political aspects of the struggle paramount.
A North Vietnamese colonel once acknowledged to an American colonel that the United States had won every battle in that conflict. "That may be true," the Vietnamese colonel said. "It is also irrelevant."
The Gulf War saw a return to simplicity. The United States and its allies massed the land forces in Saudi Arabia, then swept north and east into Iraq to liberate Kuwait. It took six months to assemble the forces, several weeks of aerial bombardment to subdue the Iraqis, and 100 hours to crush Saddam Hussein's army.
Although a logistic nightmare, even the war in Afghanistan has been comparatively simple. American warriors have relied on an ingenious combination of high-tech and field expedients in which they raced across the arid Afghan wastes on horseback to put laser beams on targets that were struck by B-52 bombers 20,000 feet overhead.
Richard Halloran is a former correspondent
for The New York Times in Asia and a former editorial
director of the Star-Bulletin. His column appears Sundays.
He can be reached by e-mail at rhalloran@starbulletin.com