After the Countercoup: Advising the Imperial Armed Forces of Iran
Abstract : Iran in the 1950s was in the cross hairs of the Cold War power struggle between the United States and the USSR. Strategically located, Iran became critical to the foreign policy endeavors of the Eisenhower Administration in the Middle East. After the decision to force Mohammed Mossadeq to retire as Prime Minister, the United States gave more than $700 million in mutual security assistance to the Shah of Iran from 1953-1959. In addition to the money, the United States faced the challenge of transitioning the Iranian Armed Forces from an organization used by Iranian monarchs to quell unrest in the major population centers into a collective security partner with a trained and equipped military that could fight a defensive campaign against a possible Soviet invasion. A Military Assistance Advisory Group was created and advisory efforts began. Iranian history, international rivalries, and the strategic constraints of continuous interference from policy makers in Washington and the Shah's embellished interests for Iran weighed heavily on the effort. This case study discusses the strategic context of Iran in the 1950s, the national-level deliberations regarding the importance of Iran and the amount of assistance it required from the United States, and whether or not the USSR was deterred from intervening in Iran due to the United States' demonstrable commitment there. The case study attempts to inform future policy makers as to the roles and organizations necessary to conduct foreign internal defense and advise the militaries of allied nations. Success or failure at advisory operations can have strategic consequences.
The Pentagon and the Presidency: Civil-Military Relations from FDR to George W. Bush
mation from liberal to neocon ideologue (George H. Nash); and Commentary’s third generation of neocon thinkers and policy makers (John Ehrman). Ultimately, the underlying burden of the book is to explain two astounding ironies in Commentary’s history: First, how did a magazine, initiated by a cluster of alienated liberal intellectuals on the Left become, decades later, the voice of a neoconservative movement and set of ideas on the intellectual and political Right? Second, how did a supposedly independent Jewish magazine, led essentially by Jewishly illiterate and anti-establishment Jewish intellectuals divorced from Jewish interests and institutions, become launched and sustained by the American Jewish Committee, a pillar of the Jewish communal establishment? And how did this magazine come to represent and vigorously defend core Jewish interests such as Israel, American Jewish rights and opportunities, and the repudiation of anti-Semitism? On these questions, Nathan Abrams’ essay on the beginnings of Commentary and its relationship to the American Jewish Committee, Glazer’s critical participantlobserver memoir on the early years, Wisse’s offering on how Commentary’s defense of Jewish interests in the 1960s adumbrated its subsequent neocon transformation in the 1970s, and Nash’s article rooting Podhoretz’s neoconservative transformation in his reaction to the extreme anti-Americanism of the Left are absolutely pivotal and compelling. In sum, the growing scholarly and memoir literature on American conservatism and neoconservatism has been significantly enhanced by this collection, whose focused attention to Commentary magazine, its public policy impact and intellectual legacy, has resulted in a book accessible to scholars and laypeople alike.
OPERATION MOUNTAIN LION: CJTF-76 in Afghanistan, Spring 2006
FOLLOWING THE COLLAPSE of the Taliban in Afghanistan and its escape into Pakistan in 2002, remnants of the group were forced to focus their efforts on mere survival. However, aided by funds from illicit opium growers and abetted by criminals and Al-Qaeda survivors, they began to infiltrate back into Afghanistan in an effort to re-engage the coalition and revive the conflict. By 2006, attacks were increasing against Afghan Government officials and security forces as the Taliban undertook a determined effort to regain influence and power. This was the situation coalition forces faced in Afghanistan in February 2006 after 10th Mountain Division assumed command of Combined Joint Task Force 76 (CJTF-76). To thwart the Taliban and its allies and support Afghanistan's continued progress toward something resembling a democracy, the task force systematically and successfully undertook Operation Mountain Lion, a campaign built upon a "clear, hold, build, and engage" strategy. A brief survey of CJTF-76's development and employment of this model is offered here in the hope that it will aid others in designing campaign plans for similar circumstances. Background Combined Joint Task Force-76's mission was to support the conditions necessary for growing a moderate, stable Afghan Government capable of controlling its territory. To aid the task force in accomplishing its mission, planners analyzed Afghan political, military, economic, social, infrastructure, and informational (PMESII) factors. Combined with predeployment training in religion, tribal influence, language, and other cultural concerns, this analysis increased the force's ability to comprehend the human terrain of Afghanistan and address the motivations behind friendly, enemy, and noncombatant behavior. Having analyzed its mission and situation and developed its clear-holdbuild-engage counterinsurgency model, CJTF-76 implemented tiiree simultaneous, synchronized, synergistic lines of operation (LOOs): security, governance, and reconstruction and development (RD intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); and maneuver capability. It could also employ healthy nonlethal capabilities in pursuit of governance and RD a coherent, detailed strategy was his metaphorical score; and the CJTF staff and subordinate units were his orchestra. The audience he played to, and whose response he constantly had to monitor and evaluate, consisted of friendly, neutral, and enemy forces in the CJTF-76 battlespace. To achieve harmony among the task force players required a score with four essential parts. The first part, "clear," aimed to separate the insurgents from the population they depended on for support. The task force planned to clear by targeting and eliminating the enemy's key leaders and eradicating his weapons and ammunition caches. Also key was CJTF-76's goal of inserting the most competent Afghan Army or police forces between the enemy and the population as quickly as possible, to begin cultivating popular confidence and trust in the new Afghan Government. These initial tasks would prove particularly challenging in the rugged terrain and primitive infrastructure of eastern Afghanistan. The second part of the CJTF-76 commander's score was "hold." During "hold" operations, coalition forces were to develop capacity to make the new indigenous security forces and government credible and permanent. To do this, CJTF-76 had to- * Establish combat outposts to extend combat power throughout the area targeted for a holding operation. …