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introduction to the University of Michigan Press edition Next Generation Doctrine Janine Davidson In October 2004 I spent a week interviewing and observing soldiers from the 1st Brigade Combat Team (BASTOGNE) of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The Division had spent the past year in Iraq, where it fought in the initial invasion and then conducted postcombat stability and reconstruction operations in the northern city of Mosul. By the time I visited that fall, they had been home less than six months and were already beginning predeployment training for their second rotation. This time they would spend a year in Kirkuk, where they would try to stabilize one of the most dangerous and politically volatile regions in the country. Before redeploying to Iraq, the commanders at every level from brigade to platoon would swap, giving new officers a chance to lead. One afternoon, I attended a change of command ceremony for one of the companies. As I listened to the outgoing captain address his soldiers for the last time, I was struck by the list of accomplishments he recounted from their shared year in Iraq. It was not the numbers of enemy captured or killed or other traditional acts of military bravery that this young officer seemed most proud of—although there were those stories to tell too. Rather, his list was about the schools his soldiers had built, the markets and health clinics they had opened, and the relationships they had built with local Iraqis. These were the things he had learned that would win the peace. They were not, however, the tasks for which he or his soldiers had trained before the invasion in 2003. The soldiers I met that week were eager to share their experiences. Some admitted to having been dismayed and frustrated following the major combat phase, when they were required to stay in theater to reconstruct the country. Wasn’t that someone else’s job, they asked, perhaps a task for the Department of State or the United Nations? Others—many of whom had served in the Balkans in the 1990s—quickly began to apply some of the lessons they had learned there in working with the civilian population. All were proud of the way they had adapted on the fly—and all were determined to deploy better prepared this next time around. Former chief of staff of the Army General Gordon Sullivan used to say, “Soldiers only eat when they are hungry, and then they eat everything in sight.” The soldiers I met were hungry for knowledge as they prepared to redeploy. Where they found formal doctrine wanting, junior officers started an online community of practice, called “companycommand.com,” where they shared their experiences from the field and on the training grounds. They downloaded training materials from the Center for Army Lessons Learned and from each other to update their predeployment programs. They shared reading lists about everything from Iraqi history and culture to economic development, military governance, peacekeeping, and counterinsurgency. Their experience would inform the next generation of military doctrine and reflect their realization, hard earned in the field, that in the complex 21st century conflict environment, American soldiers needed to be prepared for a full spectrum of tasks, not just major combat. The real life experience of these soldiers informs this field manual, and it was with soldiers’ needs in mind that the writing team, composed of practitioners with deep field experience as well as a formidable grasp of current best practice, produced the handbook that follows. next generation doctrine It is no coincidence that this field manual was written by a member of this new post–Cold War generation with the help of a large community of practitioners and experts, both civilian and military. The career of the lead author, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Leonard, included deployments with the 101st Airborne Division in the first Gulf War and later during the invasion and aftermath in Iraq. He also was a graduate of the Army’s elite School of Advanced Military Studies and was involved in the Balkans, the domestic response to the 9/11 attacks, and operations in Afghanistan. This long experience prepared him well for his new task as doctrine writer. Steve understood firsthand that the Army’s ability to adapt on the fly would only take them so far: he had been there. For true success in stability operations, there needed to be a whole-of-government effort in which civilians and military had a common...

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