【外交政策 20140508】美国陆军的未来

满仓

【中文标题】美国陆军的未来
【原文标题】Portrait of the Army as a Work in Progress
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】Rosa Brooks
【原文链接】http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/08/portrait_army_work_in_progress_regionally_aligned_forces_raymond_odierno]

美军在后后911时代自身的改良既方向模糊又矛盾重重，但这恰恰是它出彩的地方。



科威特沙漠在下雨。

这里本不应下雨。倾盆大雨瘫痪了交通，淹没了兵营，艾瑞夫江基地中的军车浑身湿透，淹在水中，这是美军在科威特最大的军事基地。科威特面积比新泽西稍小，驻扎着8000多名美军士兵，是除阿富汗、德国和韩国之外最大规模的美军海外集结地。

“那么，你们这些人在这里做什么？”在军营中宽敞的星巴克咖啡店里，我问坐在一旁的一位年轻士兵，“我是说，在科威特你们的任务是什么？”

他局促不安地耸了耸肩：“问倒我了，女士。我这个级别的人回答不了，我只是想不被淋湿。”

“我们不问原因，我们只会避雨。”旁边的一个中尉打趣道，他小心翼翼地给手中的焦糖拿铁盖上盖子。

在“下士战略”（译者注：美国海军陆战将军Charles Krulak提出的一种战争理念，在纷繁复杂的局势中，基层指挥官有重大的决定权。类似于“将在外军令有所不受”。）的年代中，“问倒我”显然不是面对记者问题时正确的回答，但这无疑是诚实、直率的。伊拉克战争结束了，阿富汗战争也接近尾声，华盛顿在想尽一切办法削减支出，美国军方则在尽量明确、捍卫它的角色和任务。

美国为什么要在和平的科威特驻扎8000多名士兵？更宽泛一些的问题是，为什么一个致力于制止战争的国家需要在全球维系一个庞大的陆军规模？海军和空军利用他们的高科技小玩意，是否能比50万泥腿子在未来更好地制止武装冲突呢？

陆军参谋长雷蒙德•奥迪尔诺将军认为他可以回答这些问题。无论驻扎在科威特的士兵是否知道这些问题的答案，他们都是他野心勃勃重塑陆军计划中的一部分。

在奥迪尔诺看来，陆军的未来是“区域武装联盟”——与特定战区指挥官保持长期合作的陆军部队。这些区域联盟武装——简称RAF，陆军习惯把所有词语都变成首字母缩写——将接受大量的当地语言和文化训练，让他们在军方所谓的“各级别冲突”中发挥更大的作用。

强调RAF的原因在于，在文化层面更能与当地融合的士兵可以更好地在冲突爆发之前识别出各种迹象，以便于更及时、更有效地“干预”——也就是让形势更有利于美军。这些行动包括影响当地居民、与当地领导人建立友好的关系、加强双方军事合作等等。如果冲突已经爆发，了解当地文化的士兵可以更好地洞悉敌人意图，与当地居民开展更加有效的合作。

奥迪尔诺在2012年3月写到：“在近期的一系列武装冲突发生之前，人们普遍认为只有少数部队才需要文化意识，比如特种部队。”而大部分常规军队驻扎的地点都没有考虑文化因素。因此，一个步兵旅有可能在韩国驻扎一年，伊拉克驻扎两年，之后在德国呆上几年，然后又是阿富汗。这样的军队管理体制显然是在假设军事技能中并不包括文化因素——当地的居民只不过是背景噪声。

奥迪尔诺曾经在伊拉克指挥美军部队，与他这个年龄段的指挥官们一样，他发现了军事技能中文化层面的真空。在最近一次采访中他对我说：“我们到达那里时，对伊拉克和中东地区的局势一无所知，我实在不想再发生这种事。”美国领导的盟军轻而易举地击败了伊拉克的军队，但由于缺少对当地文化、语言和政治的了解，美国处理紧急情况的能力大打折扣。与此同时，美国的很多成功都取决于千辛万苦掌握的当地知识。了解萨达姆•侯赛因的派系和家族关系，后来被证明是找到其藏身之处的关键因素。

区域武装联盟的概念说明奥迪尔诺担心伊拉克和阿富汗的教训可能会在全球重演。美国并不知道未来哪种威胁最致命，以及威胁会出现在哪里。所以在奥迪尔诺看来，防范风险最好的方法是美军与所有地区的武装力量结盟。

在动荡不安的后后911时代重新思考军队的角色，是一个大胆、颠覆性的尝试——把一个笨重的庞然大物变成一个灵活、具有地方特色、机动、精通各地文化的武装力量，一个毛泽东式，而不是俾斯麦式的队伍；一个劳伦斯式，而不是巴顿式的队伍。

行政部门和国会山那些主张削减军费的人正在磨刀霍霍，这种情况下考虑改变的策略是明智的。奥迪尔诺在2013年美国陆军协会年度会议上说：“很多人认为随着科技进步，我们可以解决所有有关战争的问题。我坚决反对这种说法……复杂环境中人与人之间的互动，是未来成功的关键所在。”

这番话背后的台词是：海军和空军可以随心所欲地自夸他们那些精密复杂的系统，但是你在航空母舰的甲板上，在无人机模拟驾驶舱内，无法建立人与人之间的关系。关系的建立和维护需要把人安置到全世界各地——只有陆军有充足的人力做到这一点。

尽管如此，奥迪尔诺面临着巨大的障碍。有些来自外部，其它军方机构、国务院、白宫和议会远未确定他的提议。但也有一些障碍来自内部。在任何一个庞大的官僚机构中，试图改变某些长久延续的模式必然会带来紧张、困惑和拖延——陆军绝对是不折不扣的大官僚。

就像一个老掉牙的笑话：

－ 换一个灯泡需要几名精神病医生？
－ 一个就够，但是灯泡必须要愿意被换掉。

奥迪尔诺知道，如果要让陆军有存在的意义，就必须要改变。

但问题是，它愿意改变吗？

奥迪尔诺回忆，在他2010年到2011年指挥现在已经解散的联合部队司令部期间，地方军队指挥官一直在抱怨他们不知道具体可供调遣的陆军部队有哪些，而且永远得不到他们需要的战备组合。

在区域武装联盟出现之后，《陆军时报》在2013年6月撰文称：“所有军队布署方面的安排都将发生改变。”对指挥官来说，RAF将营造一个他们可以随意调遣的、可靠的陆军资源。对士兵来说，“语言、区域特征和文化方面的培训将是最大的变化”。

陆军一开始把RAF概念具体化，是在堪萨斯州中部的一个小地方。2012年在雷利堡，第一步兵师第二装甲旅作战小队——“刺刀旅”——被任命为陆军第一个区域武装联盟。这支旅和它下属的几千名士兵与美军六个全球司令部中最小、成立时间最短的非洲司令部“联盟”。（其它5个司令部是欧洲司令部、北方司令部、南方司令部、太平洋司令部和中央司令部。每个司令部管辖该地区所有的军事行动，也就是中央司令部管辖美国在阿富汗所有的军事行动，无论涉及到陆军、空军、海军和海军陆战队员的力量。）



堪萨斯的刺刀旅搞不清楚与非洲司令部“区域联盟”是什么意思，也不知道如何提升他们的社会文化知识。旅长自己想了一些办法，他们在附近的堪萨斯州立大学找到一些非洲裔学生和非洲问题专家，请他们帮忙为即将去非洲服役的士兵开发一些课程。

培训课程很短，大约只有一个星期，但刺刀旅开始于2013年春天的非洲任务周期也不长。这支旅整体还驻扎在堪萨斯州，只不过每次派遣少数士兵与非洲军方合作。20几名雷利堡的士兵在尼日尔帮助培训来自马里的联合国维和部队；几百名士兵参加南非的军事演习；两名狙击手在布隆迪短暂执行任务等等。

这根本谈不上是“浸淫”当地文化，但陆军内部的高层官员认为刺刀旅的试验大获成功，他们于是加速其它陆军部队与各地战斗司令部的联盟。

2013年底，陆军高官发表了一份详细的资料公布区域武装联盟理念。10月份召开的美国陆军协会大会是每年现役高层军官的会议，其中多次出现有关RAF的演示和讨论。陆军人力指挥官发放的小册子中写到，区域武装联盟将确保陆军“‘预防——改变——成功’的模式在现实中完全可行。人与人之间的关系至关重要”。

一份类似RAF的宣言出现在2013年秋天一期季刊《参数》中，由陆军战争学院出版。由三名陆军战略部军官执笔的这篇文章，承认“几乎没有人了解陆军参谋长雷蒙德•T•奥迪尔诺所提出的概念和目标，也没有人真正想去实现它”。但作者认为区域武装联盟在“一个由传统和非传统威胁组成的、不断变化的战略环境中”是极为重要的。成功执行各地区的军事任务，“需要了解RAF即将被布署地区的文化、地理、语言和军事情况”。

在军队外部，RAF除了有几篇媒体的报道之外，几乎没有引起任何关注。报道也主要表达的是礼貌，掺杂了一些困惑。（《纽约时报》的文章标题是“美军在堪萨斯为非洲制定细致的反恐战略”。）然而在另一方看来，RAF进一步证明了美国的邪恶、霸权野心。

Nick Turse近期在《国家》杂志上发表一篇文章，控诉“非洲司令部仅仅透露了行动的一小部分信息，而把行动内容、时间和地点的大部分信息保密。”但是他也说“未曾披露过的美军在非洲的军事行动显示”，2013年，刺刀旅“在28个非洲国家参与了128项行动”，这都是陆军区域武装联盟过程的一部分。“还有很多很多内幕”，包括美国训练非洲的政变策划者和军事罪犯。“美军的非洲司令部参与了庞大的军事行动，我们等着更多的信息透露出来。”

Antiwar.com网站编辑Jason Ditz警告：“雷蒙德•奥迪尔诺将军的区域武装联盟计划让美国有能力在全球各地快速布署军队……并确保有足够的军队和国家参与进来，但问题是他们恐怕需要在有空的时候考虑下战争的目的。”

军方官员不认为RAF代表更多的军事干涉行为。美国中央司令部指挥官詹姆斯•特里将军告诉我：“在经历了12年战争之后，我不希望战争延续到我孙子那一代。如果我们正确地达成区域武装联盟的目的，如果我们成功地转型，或许可以避免未来的武装冲突。”

奥迪尔诺同意这个观点。他说，RAF是“阻止冲突”的前提条件，他比大部分人都能更好地理解战争并不是一盘冷酷的棋局，因为在伊拉克战争中伤亡的数万名士兵中，就有他的儿子托尼。2004年他的车队遭到火箭弹袭击，他失去了左臂。

尽管如此，我们也完全可以理解为什么人们在思考陆军的区域武装联盟计划时稍感不安。即使它不代表美国的霸权主义野心，从逻辑上推论，RAF也的确说明陆军高官把整个地球当作战场。

大部分美国人认为，所谓和平就是远离军事。但是在军方看来，和平只不过是“阶段0”——“全面冲突”的6个阶段中的第一个。

在阶段0，冲突尚未出现，军队的角色应当是协调未来可能出现冲突各方的态度，与他们建立关系、收集信息、施加影响力。如果冲突即将出现，军方进入阶段1——震慑，也就是“为接下来的作战任务进行战备”。如果震慑失败，阶段2的“掌握先机”开始，从而进入阶段3的“主导”或者“在战斗中生存”——希望如此。在一切顺利的情况下，接下来是阶段4“稳定”，军方恢复当地的安全和生活秩序。阶段5，军方重建公民社会。一切完成之后，我们又回到阶段0。

专业的酒鬼会说：“总有个地方的时间是5点。”在奥迪尔诺和其他高级军官看来，RAF的概念就是总有个地方是阶段0。实际上，在任何一个时间，几乎所有的地方都是阶段0——那为什么不在所有地方都开展区域武装联盟呢？

在科威特的艾瑞夫江基地——美国中央司令部的前锋营——持续不断的雨水似乎给所有人都带来了忧郁和迷惑。人们低着头在泥泞中跋涉。

科威特沙漠一片贫瘠，单调乏味的兵营和办公楼也无法改善其景观。驻扎在科威特的士兵目前还可以拿到战时津贴（据说会持续发放到6月底），艾瑞夫江看起来就像一个战区的基地——营地被多层铁丝网和混凝土障碍物围绕，出入口有荷枪实弹的卫兵把守。我听说科威特官员极少前往艾瑞夫江基地，这里实在没有什么可看的。而且，层层布防的保卫措施似乎也说明这里不欢迎东道主国家。科威特人把艾瑞夫江和其它基地称为布艾琳营，意思是“美国监狱”。

或许因为汤姆•维科尔特上校仅仅是在参观，他是艾瑞夫江基地中唯一兴致勃勃的人。维科尔特在南卡罗拉纳州肖恩空军基地服役，负责中央司令部的运作。他也是在中央司令部内部积极倡导推进区域武装联盟的人。

维科尔特热情地和我握手。我们在艾瑞夫江基地与他的团队座谈，他自信地对我说：“很多人在想，RAF这东西又是一个新花招吧？但答案不是的，它是真实的……我想说‘我们很早就开始设计RAF了’。我们还会继续做下去，而且越做越好。”

维科尔特说，RAF的目标是“提升伙伴军事作战能力”，也就是五角大楼所谓的让盟军有能力与美国军队协调作战——或者说得更直白一点，让盟军去打那些美国避之唯恐不及的仗。美国更好地加强盟军和合作伙伴的军事力量，它就能退得更远，让伙伴们自己去维护地区和平。

承认这是RAF主要目的的并非只是维科尔特一个人。非洲司令部公共事务办公室在2014年2月发表的一篇文章引用一位陆军少校的话：“帮助非洲让他们可以帮助自己，这样我们就不用参与进来。”

对RAF的这种理解与左派所认为的帝国主义侵略理论相距甚远，而且远非那种美国决定在更多国家采取干预政策的理论。与此恰恰相反，这表明一个筋疲力尽的帝国想方设法要卸下世界警察的重担，尽快把这个责任交付给别人。但是，这种理念似乎与奥迪尔诺心目中最初的想法也完全不同。

维科尔特解释说，中央司令部的运作围绕中东和中亚地区（包括伊拉克和阿富汗），RAF在这里必须采取“大规模、工业化的行动”。他信誓旦旦地说，文化和语言培训可以让中央司令部的军队与当地建立“互信的关系”，进而“提升协调性，减少不可预知性”，并且让“美国政府高层领导人更好地理解地区实际情况”。

当被问到改良后的中央司令部文化培训是什么样子时，维科尔特有些坐立不安：“其实……我们这里没有培训，我们正在让陆军司令部安排。但是，我们有中央司令部的互联网接口，可以提供视频培训……每个人都有一个电脑中的阿凡达，让士兵亲身感受文化的力量。所有士兵都必须参加这个培训。”

我问，我能看一看这个培训模块的样板吗？维科尔特说，可惜不行，“模块尚未开发完成”。

我在科威特城的一家餐厅中遇到一位当地的生意人，他问我在这里做什么。我简单地解释说，我在为一篇报道收集资料，美军如何与科威特人建立更深层次的关系。他很着迷，说：“太好了！我还不知道科威特有那么多美军士兵！”

不管有没有RAF，我遇到的大部分美军士兵似乎同样不知道科威特还有那么多科威特人。如果说进入艾瑞夫江基地难上加难，那么离开艾瑞夫江也不是件容易的事，士兵绝不可能凭借一时兴起就到科威特城中去逛一逛。向艾瑞夫江的门卫解释我是一名记者不是军方成员完全没有用，他们必须看到公共事务部的随从拿出签字的授权书，才同意我离开。

艾瑞夫江基地后勤部指挥官克里斯托弗•尤班克上校告诉我：“我们尽量鼓励人们了解科威特，每周五我们都有一个小时的文化课程，所有离开基地的人都必须参加。”这就是“O6出门批准”——上校以下军衔的人离开基地前都需要上校签字审批。

我坚持要离开艾瑞夫江基地采访一些科威特人，这让公共事务部的军官有些吃惊，甚至有点不知所措。

我问她：“在你的工作中，会与科威特人打交道吗？”

她皱了皱眉：“这个星期我还试图与科威特人联系，但他们没有回应我。”

或许这也无所谓。第二天晚上，我们出席了科威特前副总理穆罕默德•沙巴•艾尔-塞伦•艾尔-沙巴王子举办的宴会，他是科威特统治家族的成员，也曾经是驻美国大使。宴会上有多道科威特传统美食。我的部队随从疑心忡忡地翻弄盘子里的虾。

她咕哝着：“我们应该去麦当劳，我不喜欢传统食物。”

穆罕默德王子的儿子沙巴•穆罕默德•艾尔-沙巴听到我们的对话，走过来。他是2007年第一个毕业于美国西点军校的科威特人，现任科威特一家陆军情报机构的官员。“你们经常离开基地吗？”

她说：“不常离开。”

沙巴说：“啊，我看得出来。”

不仅仅是我的随从，除了高层军官，我遇到的普通士兵绝少有机会与科威特人和科威特军人直接接触。一位美国使馆的官员曾经说：“美军士兵在这里非常低调，这是明智的。科威特各阶层都认为美军的出现很有帮助，部分原因就是轻易见不到他们。”

不管明智与否，这似乎与奥迪尔诺最初的设想——陆军要进行“人与人之间的互动”，并且“了解文化和社会环境”——大相径庭。驻科威特的大部分陆军军官都把“区域联盟”与培养伙伴军事力量、训练当地军队，以及改善协同工作关系划等号，而不是增强文化融入感和扩大“改革”行为。

在科威特，有关RAF话题的讨论总是伴随着概念和术语的混乱。中央司令部战略副参谋长格雷格•加文达上校说：“我们不训练科威特人，那是海外军售部的事情，与中央司令部伙伴行动不是一回事。我们的目标是协调行动，不是让当地人具备更强大的军事力量。”

几分钟之后，维科尔特告诉我，中央司令部指挥官特里在试图阐明区域武装联盟“效果的衡量方式”，重点是“我们在盟友国培养了哪些新能力，我们为海外军售部提供了哪些帮助”。负责训练和演习的杰克•麦肯纳上校又站出来解释“盟友关系需要高层官员的介入”，而“训练仅仅是战术和协调性方面的问题，这就是我们的成果——战术训练关系。”

几个小时之后，陪伴我的公共事务人员把我叫到一边，澄清：“不要写我们训练科威特人，这个措辞不准确。我们不训练，也没有说过训练，这不是训练。”

词义上的含混表明对区域武装联盟更广泛意义上的困惑。一位驻扎在科威特的高级军官一口气问出了一串问题：“每个士兵都会被区域联盟吗，还是仅仅部分士兵会？我们的目的是培养伙伴军事能力，还是有更深层次的目的？如果我们要接受语言和文化的培训，那么这将是全面的学习，还是仅仅几张演示的内容？他们需要了解普通人的生活，还是哪些高级军事将领的思维？每个士兵的整个军事生涯都需要被‘联盟’，还是他所在的部队被联盟？如果是部队，这对建立专业、稳定的关系有帮助吗？”

只要RAF的概念不被澄清，大部分美军士兵只能选择一个最保守的含义：“RAF的意思就是‘与当地军事机构合作一些事情’。”


陆军参谋长雷蒙德•奥迪尔诺将军是“区域武装联盟”的主要运作者。

如果说奥迪尔诺的目的之一是利用区域联盟来加强与盟友的关系，科威特这个例子既展示了其价值所在，也体现出一些局限性。美国与科威特的关系多年来颇为紧密，但也有挑战。

陆军1-44防空营指挥官毛里斯•伯耐特上校说：“这就像一场延续了几十年的婚姻。”伯耐特的士兵与科威特其它部队的士兵不同，他们可以频繁接触科威特军队，包括非正式的社交场合。他说：“年轻士兵接触其它文化绝对是件好事，但是……对科威特人来说，这有些一成不变的乏味……他们没有积极性每次都来参加我们的训练。”

几十年的合作关系未能消除两个国家之间的分歧。奥巴马政府近期抛出的战略中心向亚洲“转移”的计划，让很多中东人猜想美国是否会降低对这个地区事务的参与度。华盛顿对阿拉伯春天含混的回应也未能消除这种疑惑。

穆罕默德王子手里拿着一杯石榴汁，哀叹：“美国人似乎要撤走了，这很令人担心，你们似乎对中东失去兴趣了。”他用责备的眼光看着我的陪同人员，而她却渴望地盯着大门。“你们只喜欢速战速决，就像伊朗的核谈判。但你们真的明白自己所做的事情吗？”

科威特大学政治科学系主任阿卜杜拉•艾尔-塞西更加直截了当：“美国领导力太弱了。看看陷入混乱的伊拉克，再看看埃及，你们甚至都不敢说那是政变。叙利亚？你们还打算忽视多少次大屠杀？你们撤离了巴基斯坦——这让我们怎么理解？”

美国驻伊拉克大使马修•图勒对这种措辞早已习以为常。他对我说：“地区形势在不断变化，谁也不知道未来是什么样子，科威特人担心自己国家被美国仅当作是一个停车场，他们想要真正的盟友。”由于担心被美国抛弃，科威特人迫不得已与其它大国开展军事外交，包括俄罗斯和中国。当然，这给美国在当地的工作带来了更多麻烦。

但是，如果说疑神疑鬼的科威特人让急于深化关系的陆军军官面临挑战，那么奥迪尔诺的区域武装联盟理念在本土也遭到了挑战。当被问到对于RAF的观点时，图勒皱起嘴唇：“其实，在美国我们每天都有很多的新概念出现……我鼓掌欢迎陆军的这套新想法。”他小心翼翼地说：“区域武装联盟的想法，呃，应该说压倒了国务院出现的其它一些计划。”

换句话说，国务院或许并没有奥迪尔诺对于陆军“全球负责、区域介入”的热情。很多外交人士认为发展文化和地区性的专业知识与合作关系是他们的工作，不是陆军的工作。

奥迪尔诺说：“他们总是担心外交政策的军事化。”他说他正在计划与国务院的高层官员沟通，“我们打算告诉他们，我们不是在引导外交政策，我们是一个可以利用的工具……我们可以完成很多人道救援和救灾任务，我们可以提供医疗、工程支持，甚至建造基础设施。所以，这不仅仅是战斗能力，而是一系列更广泛的概念。”奥迪尔诺最后乐观地说：“我想一旦我们把事情讲清楚，他们会理解的。”

奥迪尔诺的确需要国务院的介入。手握可怜预算和1.2万名外交官的雾谷（译者注：美国国务院的戏称）绝无可能与拥有100万现役、预备役军人和民兵的陆军对抗。但是毕竟没有总统的介入，进入其它国家的权力由国务院通过大使馆来掌控。如果陆军希望与其它国家进行军事活动或者演习，首先需要美国使馆的批准，还需要使馆帮忙与当地国家商谈签证事务。通常情况下，使馆对这些事不怎么在心。“中央司令部作战部副参谋长约翰•罗伯特将军说：“他们不像我们一样把这样事看得非常重要。”

区域联盟武装概念还遭到了国会山的质疑，立法者用RAF的成本和可持续性质问奥迪尔诺。由于缺少资金，论军在未来5年将失去10万名士兵，有机会执行地区任务的士兵数量就更少了。而且，正式的文化、地区和语言课程也价格不菲。陆军司令部指挥官丹尼尔•埃利恩在2013年说，萎缩的资源已经让很多被安排RAF任务的部队无法完成整个课程的学习。

奇怪的是，负责开发美军区域武装联盟计划的人，根本就不是美国陆军军官，而是一名英国陆军交换官员——詹姆斯•拉蒙特上校。或许这也不那么奇怪。尽管拉蒙特不了解美军内部的文化的官僚机构，但每个英国军官都有劳伦斯情节，而且英国人多少都了解一些帝国内部存在的危险。

我坐在五角大楼拉蒙特没有窗户的办公室里，说我自己实在无法参透这些术语，搞不懂RAF对陆军到底意味着什么。没有人能回答最基本的问题：哪支部队已经区域联盟，哪支还没有，谁将被联盟？

拉蒙特是有关RAF的文章《参数》作者之一，他叹了口气，显然曾经接到过太多类似的问题了。他说：“我们面临最大的一个问题在教育方面。”

他强调一件事，RAF并不仅仅针对战斗旅，还针对“全部陆军部队”，包括现役军、预备役和国民警卫队。所有的军事人员，包括专业人士、工程师、后勤而人员都包括在内。“陆军所有的部分都在某种程度上要区域联盟。”拉蒙特认为，让各个区域的作战部队“更好地了解”当地情况，RAF将“彻底改变陆军运作的模式”。

是的，我说，但最终达成的状态是什么？与我交谈过的每一个人都对RAF的概念有不同的理解。我对拉蒙特说，有的人把它看作一个长远的转型规划，陆军将变成一个更灵活、更了解当地文化的部队；有的人认为它是帝国主义干涉行为的工具；还有的人，用一位前五角大楼官员的话来说，认为这是“另一个陆军的无用功”——用相对有效率的方法培养伙伴军事力量，只不过换个时髦的名字。

拉蒙特有些不快。他提醒我，RAF是一项尚未完成的工作，不可避免还存在很多问题。多少文化培训才算足够？地区培训需要深入到什么程度才能确保与部队的灵活性保持平衡？战斗旅最是培养文化专业最恰当的单位吗？内政部和情报部是不是更适合做培训？陆军是否需要把“前期布署”思维转变成“前期出现”思维——也就是短期、小规模的海外作战任务？

在奥迪尔诺提出RAF概念的两年多之后，依然有很多问题无法回答。

最终，区域武装联盟计划的未来，不仅仅取决于奥迪尔诺和其它陆军高官是否能说服其它军种、国务院、白宫和议会，使其启动（或者别让它碍事），更重要是取决于是否能在陆军内部成功推销RAF的概念，并且开发出一个具有连贯性、可执行性的计划。

这就需要顶层管理者澄清RAF的战略基础。区域武装联盟表示整个时间都是潜在的战场吗？美国决定淡化自身世界警察的角色吗？RAF是否表示美国的撤退？


美国士兵和南非部队在一场提升协调作战能力的演习中。

奥迪尔诺似乎有时候倾向于把RAF定义为“在任何地方做任何事情”。2014年4月3日，他与陆军部长约翰•麦克休共同向参议院武装服务委员会提交了一份联合声明。他们断言，陆军“是全球相应、区域参与的战略地面部队”。它“随时准备出征，具有极强的战略适应性……拥有作战能力和灵活性的强大组合，强化了美国的外交政策，是美国回应敌对行为的最有利武器。”它必需要“在全世界范围内有能力迅速反应，采取全方位的军事行动，包括维护稳定和介入战争。“

然而在其它一些时间，RAF似乎体现出美国缓慢撤退，着重于国内事务的假设。对于一个焦虑不安、财政陷入困境的世界警察来说，撤退唯一的方式就是抓紧时间为盟友建立相对强大的军事力量。正如中央司令部副总参谋长罗伯特说说：“我们发现阶段3和阶段4的费用极为昂贵，大部分美国人都知道我们需要为前期预防性的措施投资，就像为我们的汽车和房屋购买保险。那么我们为什么不在全球投资建立合作伙伴的军事力量呢？这是最经济的做法。”

这两种方向其实都有其合理性，也可以被执行，但是陆军必须选择一种。就像科威特政治科学家塞西所说：“你可以在所有地方进行区域武装联盟……但是如果没有明确的策略，一切都是白费。”

真是这样吗？

在一个没有长远、连续性战略的国家中，或许认为陆军混乱的区域武装联盟概念是个需要解决的问题，本身就是错误的。或许，RAF模棱两可的内容就是它的策略——不是全球意义上的策略，而是政治官僚意义上的策略。

想想陆军岌岌可危的状态。削减预算威胁到这支部队，孤立主义情绪试图边缘化地面作战部队，政客们反复强调美国不会再介入任何地面战争、占领任何国家、参与大规模的重建工作。海军和空军暂时占据了优势地位，他们的战争没有鲜血，只有高科技；没有污泥，只有电脑代码和无人机。

但是政客和公众意见总是反复无常，不难想象钟摆早晚还是会荡到另外一边。在无数的冲突介入需求中，陆军依然会占据上风：阻止冲突、击败敌军、反恐战争、反游击战争、维和行动、情报作战——多线同时作战。而且还要赢得人心、发展当地经济、提供人道援助。

当前，陆军被告知它的服务不再被需要了，但是奥迪尔诺和其它陆军高官知道，他们随时有可能接到任务，同时完成若干项看似不可能的任务。从这个意义上讲，RAF含混的定义能让它被很多选区的人们所接受。

受部队转型威胁的陆军中层军官，可以利用RAF最基本的概念得到安慰，他们只需要多做一些加强当地合作伙伴军事力量的工作。其它部队可以认为RAF可以更好地了解区域动态，这可以帮到他们。地方战斗指挥官可以更清晰地看到队伍和装备的资源情况；国务院可以得到工程师、医疗专家和救灾工具来支持美国的外交政策；国会山的新孤立主义者可以认为RAF让美国逐渐退出世界警察的位置；新保守主义和理想自由主义者可以认为美国加强了全球的军事介入力量和影响力——所有这一切都不需要大幅增加预算。

与此同时，RAF也的确让陆军的灵活性和文化知识得到了一些提升。拉蒙特说：“我们一直怀有信心，或许不能达成最终的目标，但与目标逐渐接近也让我很满意。”他的身体语言其实在说，已经有了一点点进步。

从一个切实可行的计划角度来看，区域武装联盟内部充满了矛盾。但是作为奥迪尔诺保护他心爱的陆军免受华盛顿刮来的飓风影响而采取的狡猾策略，RAF是绝顶精明的。



原文：

The service's plan to revamp itself for the post-post-9/11 world is ambiguous and rife with contradiction. That's what makes it brilliant.

It's raining in the Kuwaiti desert.

It's not supposed to rain here, and the downpour is snarling traffic, flooding barracks, and leaving military vehicles sodden and afloat at Camp Arifjan, the largest U.S. military base in Kuwait. Smaller than New Jersey, the country is home to more than 8,000 American soldiers -- the largest concentration of deployed Army personnel outside Afghanistan, Germany, and South Korea.

"So what are you guys doing here?" I ask the young private next to me in line at the camp's spacious Starbucks. "I mean, in Kuwait. What's your mission here?"

He offers a sheepish shrug. "Got me, ma'am. That's above my pay grade. I'm just trying to stay dry."

"Ours not to wonder why, ours but to try and stay dry," quips the lieutenant standing nearby, carefully maneuvering a lid onto his overflowing caramel latte.

In the age of the strategic corporal, "Got me!" is of course the wrong answer to journalistic queries. It has the distinct virtue of honesty, however. With the Iraq war over, the war in Afghanistan winding down, and Washington desperate to cut costs, the U.S. Army as a whole is struggling to define -- and defend -- its role and mission.

Why does the United States have over 8,000 soldiers stationed in peacetime Kuwait? More broadly, why does a country so seemingly determined to avoid another land war need a large standing army, with troops all over the globe? Won't the Navy and the Air Force, with their high-tech toys, be better suited to the conflicts of the future than the Army's half a million grunts, with their rucksacks and muddy boots?

Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army's chief of staff, thinks he can answer those questions, and whether they know it or not, the soldiers stationed in Kuwait are part of his ambitious effort to reimagine the service.

To Odierno, the Army's future lies in "regionally aligned forces": Army units that will have long-term relationships with particular combatant commands. These regionally aligned forces -- or RAF, since the Army instinctively acronymizes everything -- will receive substantial region-specific linguistic and cultural training, making them more effective across what the military calls the "spectrum of conflict."

The idea underlying RAF (pronounced "raff") is that more culturally attuned soldiers will be better equipped to identify brewing conflicts before they get out of hand, enabling more timely and effective "shaping" -- that is, activities to make conditions favorable for U.S. military success. Such efforts can include influencing local populations, establishing friendly relations with local leaders, strengthening military-to-military cooperation, and the like. If conflict does break out, more culturally sophisticated soldiers will better understand the enemy and work more effectively with the host population.

"Before the most recent set of conflicts," Odierno wrote in March 2012, "it was generally believed that cultural awareness was only required in select Army units, such as Special Forces." In the general-purpose force, most units were deployed without regard to building up regional expertise. Thus, a brigade could find itself in South Korea one year, Iraq two years after that, Germany a few years later, and then in Afghanistan. Implicit in this force management system was the assumption that military skills exist largely in a realm outside culture -- that local populations are mostly just background noise.

Like others in his generation of officers, Odierno -- who spent several years commanding U.S. troops in Iraq -- learned the hard way that military skills don't exist in a cultural vacuum. "We went in there with a complete misunderstanding, regionally and inside Iraq, of what was going on," he told me in a recent interview. "I don't ever want that to happen again." The U.S.-led military coalition easily defeated Iraq's conventional forces, but lack of cultural, linguistic, and political understanding consistently hampered U.S. efforts to comprehend the insurgency. Meanwhile, many U.S. successes in Iraq hinged on painstaking efforts to acquire local knowledge. Mapping clan and family relationships turned out to be key to identifying Saddam Hussein's hiding place, for instance.

The regionally aligned forces concept represents Odierno's effort to lock in the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan on a global scale. The United States doesn't know which threats will prove most serious in the future or which parts of the world they will come from. So to Odierno, the best way to hedge against risk is for the Army to align forces to every geographical region.

It's a potentially transformative attempt to rethink the Army's role in the uncertain post-post-9/11 world -- to turn a clumsy, industrial behemoth into an agile, regionally engaged, globally responsive, and culturally savvy force, one that's more Mao than Bismarck and more T.E. Lawrence than Patton.

For the Army, it's also smart marketing at a moment when budget-cutters in the executive branch and on Capitol Hill are sharpening their knives. "There are many people that believe that through technology advancement, we can solve all of the issues of warfare," Odierno said at the 2013 annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army. "I absolutely reject that concept.… Human interaction in a complex environment is key to our success in the future."

There's a not-so-subtle subtext to his words: The Navy and the Air Force can brag all they want about their technologically sophisticated systems, but you can't build human relationships from the deck of an aircraft carrier or the simulated cockpit of a Predator drone. Building relationships requires putting human beings on the ground in regions all over the world -- something only the Army has the manpower to do.

Nevertheless, Odierno faces formidable obstacles. Some are external: It's far from certain that the other military services, the State Department, the White House, and Congress will buy into his vision. But many obstacles are internal. In any large bureaucracy, efforts to change long-standing practices can generate anxiety, confusion, and foot-dragging -- and the Army is nothing if not a bureaucracy.

It's like the old joke:

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?  

Only one, but the light bulb has to want to change.  

Odierno knows that if the Army is to remain relevant and useful, it needs to change.

But does it want to?

When he commanded the military's now-defunct Joint Forces Command from 2010 to 2011, Odierno recalls, the military's geographic combatant commanders complained that they never knew precisely which Army forces would be made available to them and that they couldn't count on being able to access the precise mix of capabilities they needed.

With the advent of regionally aligned forces, declared the Army Times in June 2013, "Everything you know about deployments is about to change." For commanders, RAF would create a reliable source of Army troops that they could draw upon at will. For individual soldiers, "[T]he immersion in language, regional expertise and culture training will be the big difference."

The Army's efforts to operationalize the RAF concept started small, and in the middle of Kansas. At Fort Riley in 2012, the 1st Infantry Division's 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team -- "Dagger Brigade" -- was designated the Army's first regionally aligned brigade. The brigade and its several thousand soldiers "aligned" with U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the youngest and smallest of the military's six geographic combatant commands. (The other five are European, Northern, Southern, Pacific, and Central commands. Each coordinates activities in its region for all the military services; thus, Central Command controls all U.S. missions in Afghanistan, regardless of whether Army, Air Force, Navy, or Marine forces are involved.)

Gen. Raymond Odierno, chief of staff of the Army, is the brains behind the concept of regionally aligned forces, or RAF.

In Kansas, Dagger Brigade struggled to figure out what it meant to be "regionally aligned" with AFRICOM. With no template for how to increase their sociocultural knowledge, brigade leaders got creative: They scrounged up African students and Africa experts at nearby Kansas State University and enlisted their help in designing a training course for troops preparing to deploy.

The training course was short -- roughly a week long -- but so were the brigade's regional deployments, which began in the spring of 2013. The brigade as a whole remained in Kansas, sending small units off for a few weeks at a time to work with African partner forces. Two dozen soldiers from Fort Riley helped train Mali-bound U.N. peacekeeping troops in Niger; several hundred Dagger Brigade soldiers conducted exercises in South Africa; two Fort Riley snipers conducted a short-term mission in Burundi; and so on.

It was hardly an "immersion" in local cultures, but within the Army, senior officials deemed Dagger Brigade's initial experiment a roaring success, and they accelerated the alignment of other Army units with the other geographic combatant commands.

In late 2013, senior Army officials also launched a full-court press to publicize the regionally aligned forces concept. The October meeting of the Association of the United States Army, the highest-profile gathering of service personnel each year, featured multiple presentations and discussions on RAF. Regionally aligned forces will ensure that the Army's "'Prevent -- Shape -- Win' Strategy is operationalized in the human domain," proclaimed a handout distributed by the service's manpower command. "People-to-people relationships matter!"

A RAF manifesto of sorts also appeared in the autumn 2013 issue of Parameters, a quarterly journal published by the Army War College. Written by three officers in the Army's strategy division, the article acknowledged that "few understand the basic elements of the concept, or the goals the Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA), General Raymond T. Odierno, wants to achieve with it." But the authors argued that regionally aligned forces are essential "in a changing strategic environment characterized by combinations of nontraditional and traditional threats." Successfully carrying out regional missions, they wrote, "requires an understanding of the cultures, geography, languages, and militaries of the countries where RAF are most likely to be employed."

Outside Army circles, RAF generated little interest beyond a few media mentions. Most were respectful, if slightly bemused. ("U.S. Army Hones Antiterror Strategy for Africa, in Kansas," the New York Times reported.) On the left, however, RAF has been viewed as further evidence of the United States' sinister, hegemonic ambitions.

A recent article by Nick Turse in the Nation charged that "AFRICOM releases information about only a fraction of its activities … preferring to keep most information about what it's doing -- and when and where -- secret." But, he continued, "[p]reviously undisclosed US Army Africa records reveal" that, in 2013, Fort Riley's Dagger Brigade took part in "128 separate 'activities' in twenty-eight African countries" as part of the Army's regionally aligned forces effort. "So much else … remains in the shadows," Turse wrote, including, he suggests, U.S. training of coup plotters and war criminals. "It remains to be seen just what else we don't know about US Africa Command's exponentially expanding operations."

On Antiwar.com, news editor Jason Ditz warned that "Gen. Raymond Odierno's 'Regionally Aligned Forces' plan [gives] the US the ability to quickly deploy troops anywhere on the planet.… [W]ith enough troops and enough countries involved, the question of what wars and where can be worked out at their leisure."

Army leaders dismiss the notion that RAF is a sign of growing interventionist bellicosity. "After 12 years of war," Lt. Gen. James Terry, commander of U.S. Army Central (ARCENT), tells me, "I don't wish another protracted conflict on my grandkids. If we get regionally aligned forces right, if we get the shaping right, we can hopefully help prevent another conflict."

Most Americans think of peace as a time in which the military is more or less irrelevant. But to the military, it is merely "phase zero," the first phase on the six-phase "spectrum of conflict."

Odierno agrees. RAF, he says, is premised on the "need to prevent conflicts." And he has better reason than most to understand that war isn't an impersonal game of chess: Among the tens of thousands of soldiers killed or grievously injured during the Iraq war was his son Tony, who lost his left arm in 2004 when his vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Still, it's not hard to understand why some might feel a flicker of unease when contemplating the Army's plans for regionally aligned forces. Even if it doesn't reflect hegemonic U.S. ambitions, the RAF concept, taken to its logical extreme, does suggest that senior Army officials view the entire globe as a potential battlefield.

Most Americans think of peace as a time in which the military is more or less irrelevant. But to the military, it is merely "Phase Zero," the first phase on the six-phase "spectrum of conflict."

In Phase Zero, a period without active conflict, the military's role is understood as shaping the character of possible future operations by building relationships, collecting information, and influencing local actors. If conflict looms, the military enters Phase 1, deterrence, which is characterized "by preparatory actions that indicate the intent to execute subsequent phases of the operation." If deterrence fails, Phase 2, "seizing the initiative," begins, leading -- it is hoped -- to Phase 3, "dominance" or "sustained combat operations." If successful, this is followed by Phase 4, "stabilization," in which military forces restore basic security and services. In Phase 5, the military works to restore civil authority. These tasks completed, we once again circle back to Phase Zero.

"It's always 5 o'clock somewhere," says the dedicated drinker. The RAF concept suggests that to Odierno and other senior Army leaders, it's always Phase Zero somewhere. In fact, at any given time, it's Phase Zero almost everywhere -- so why not have regionally aligned Army forces everywhere?

At Kuwait's Camp Arifjan -- the forward headquarters for ARCENT, which is the Army component supporting U.S. Central Command -- the persistent rain seems to carry with it a general sense of malaise and confusion. People slog grimly through the mud, heads down.

The Kuwaiti desert is bleak to begin with, and the scenery isn't improved by the drab architecture of military barracks and office buildings. Soldiers stationed in Kuwait still get combat pay (though this is scheduled to end in June), and Arifjan looks like a base in a combat zone, surrounded by multiple layers of barbed wire, concrete barriers, and entry points operated by heavily armed guards. Kuwaiti officials rarely visit Camp Arifjan, I'm told -- there isn't much worth seeing. And in any case, the elaborate security measures don't create a welcoming atmosphere for host country partners, who refer to Arifjan and the other local base, Camp Buehring, as "the American prisons."

Perhaps because he's only visiting, Col. Tom Weikert is a pleasant exception to Arifjan's gloom. Weikert is based out of Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, where he works in operations for ARCENT. He's also cheerleader in chief for ARCENT's efforts to implement the regionally aligned forces concept.

Weikert greets me with an enthusiastic handshake. "A lot of folks are wondering if this RAF stuff is just a new hood ornament," he tells me confidingly as we sit down with his team at Arifjan. "But the answer is, it's not! It's real.… I like to say, 'We were doing RAF before it was cool.' But we're going to be doing even more, and we're going to be doing it better."

RAF's goal, says Weikert, is "building partner capacity." That's Pentagon-speak for giving friendly militaries the ability to fight effectively alongside U.S. forces -- or, better still, the ability to fight the fights that America would prefer to avoid. The more the United States can strengthen the militaries of its allies and partners, the more it can step back, letting its partners manage their own regional security.

Weikert is not alone in assuming that this is RAF's primary purpose. A February 2014 article produced by AFRICOM's public affairs office quotes an Army major on the virtues of the concept: "By helping Africans help themselves, it means that we don't have to get involved ourselves."

This version of RAF is rather different from the left's conspiracy-theory vision of unbridled imperialist aggression. Far from suggesting a United States determined to become ever more interventionist in an ever-expanding list of countries, it suggests, on the contrary, an exhausted empire struggling to hand over its global-cop responsibilities to others, as rapidly as possible. But it also bears little resemblance to the version of RAF that seems to lie at the heart of Odierno's ambitious initial vision.  

Weikert explains that in Central Command's area of operations, which encompasses the Middle East and Central Asia (including Iraq and Afghanistan), RAF will have to be "large scale and industrial strength." Still, he assures me, culture and language training will enable ARCENT forces to step up their efforts to "build trust-based relationships," which will, in turn, "improve interoperability, reduce unpredictability," and give "U.S. senior leaders a better understanding of the region than they would otherwise have."

Pressed on what the improved ARCENT cultural training will entail, Weikert looks a little uneasy: "Well … we don't do the training here. We're asking [Army Forces Command] to set that up. But," he adds, brightening, "we'll have an ARCENT Internet portal, which will offer video training.… Everyone is going to have a computer avatar, and the avatar will take each soldier immersively through the culture. That training will be required for all soldiers."

Can I look at a sample training module, I ask? Unfortunately, no, says Weikert: "The modules have not been developed yet."

At a Kuwait City restaurant, I run into a local businessman who asks what I'm doing in the country. Oversimplifying, I explain that I'm researching an article on U.S. Army efforts to develop deeper relationships with Kuwaitis. He's intrigued. "Excellent!" he says. "I did not know that there were still many thousands of American soldiers in Kuwait!"

RAF or no RAF, most of the American soldiers I met seemed equally unaware that there are still many thousands of Kuwaitis in Kuwait. If entering Camp Arifjan is a formidable endeavor, exiting Arifjan is harder still: Soldiers can't just decide on a whim to wander around Kuwait City. On several occasions, I wasn't sure I'd be allowed to leave myself. Explaining that I was a visiting journalist rather than a member of the military cut no ice with Arifjan's gate guards, who only agreed to let me out when my public affairs escort produced signed memos authorizing me to move around freely.

"We try very hard to encourage people to get to know Kuwait," Col. Christopher Eubank, commander of Arifjan's area support group, tells me. "We offer an hourlong cultural briefing every Friday. It's mandatory for anyone leaving the base." So, unfortunately, is an "O6 Departure Approval Memo": Everyone below the rank of colonel needs signed authorization -- from a colonel -- to leave the base.

Even the officer who runs Arifjan's public affairs office seems surprised, and more than a little disconcerted, when I insist that, yes, I really do want to leave Arifjan and interview some Kuwaitis.

"In your own work, do you partner with the Kuwaitis?" I ask.

She frowns. "I tried to partner with the Kuwaitis for the first time just this week, but they haven't gotten back to me."

Perhaps it's just as well. The next evening, we attend a banquet hosted by Kuwait's former deputy prime minister, Sheikh Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family who has also served as ambassador to the United States. There's an elaborate buffet with dozens of traditional Kuwaiti dishes. My escort pokes suspiciously at some shrimp.

"We should have stopped at McDonald's," she mutters. "I don't like cultural food."

Overhearing this, Sheikh Mohammad's son, Sabah Mohammad Al-Sabah -- who, in 2007, became the first Kuwaiti to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and who now serves as a Kuwaiti Army intelligence officer -- comes up to us. "Do you get off the base much?" he inquires.

"Not much," she admits.

"Ah," says Sabah. "I can tell."

My public affairs escort was hardly unique. Except at the senior-most level, few of the Army personnel I met seemed to have much direct contact with either the Kuwaiti people or their Kuwaiti military counterparts. As one senior U.S. Embassy official tactfully put it: "U.S. troops keep a very low profile here, which is very wise. Across the political spectrum in Kuwait, there's agreement that a U.S. military presence is desirable and good. This may partly be because the U.S. military is virtually invisible."

Wise or not, it seems a far cry from Odierno's original vision of an Army committed to "human interaction" and "skilled in understanding … cultural and social environments." For the most part, Army officials in Kuwait seem to equate "regional alignment" with efforts to build partner capacity, provide training to host country militaries, or simply improve interoperability, rather than with enhanced cultural understanding or broader "shaping" activities.

In Kuwait, conversations about RAF are replete with both conceptual and terminological confusion. "We don't train the Kuwaitis," explains Col. Greg Gaweda, ARCENT's deputy director of strategy and effects. "Training is only done in conjunction with foreign military sales. That's separate from the partnership activities undertaken by ARCENT. Our goal is interoperability, not building a better capability for the host."

A few minutes later, Weikert informs me that Terry, ARCENT's commander, is trying to develop "measures of effectiveness" for regionally aligned forces, focusing, among other things, on "what new capabilities have we built in partner nations and what new foreign military sales have we contributed to." Then Lt. Col. Jack McKenna, who works on training and exercises for ARCENT, jumps in to explain that "partnership involves senior leader engagements," while "training is much more tactical and focused on interoperability -- that's what we're building, with these tactical training relationships here."

One senior officer rattled off a list of questions: "Will every army unit end up being regionally aligned, or only some? Is this about building partner capacity, or is this supposed to be about something deeper? If we’re going to get language and cultural training, will it be extensive or just a few hours of powerpoint slides?"

A few hours later, my public affairs escort takes me aside to issue a clarification. "Don't write that we do training for the Kuwaitis. That's not the right term. We don't do training. We don't say training. It's not training."

The semantic confusion highlights the broader confusion about the role of regionally aligned forces. One senior officer stationed in Kuwait rattled off a list of questions for me: "Will every Army unit end up being regionally aligned, or only some? Is this just about building partner capacity, or is this supposed to be about something deeper? If we're going to get language and cultural training, will it be extensive or just a few hours of PowerPoint slides? Are we trying to get to know ordinary people or just focusing on senior military leaders? Will individual soldiers be 'aligned' throughout their careers, or is it units that will be aligned, and if it's just units, does that really help build up expertise and relationships?"

As long as the RAF concept remains vague, he concluded, most Army personnel will opt to give it its lowest-common-denominator meaning: "RAF will mean 'doing some things in conjunction with host nation militaries.'"

If one of Odierno's goals is to use regional alignment to strengthen relationships with partner countries, Kuwait highlights both the value and limits of long-term engagement. The U.S.-Kuwait relationship has been close for many years, but at times its sheer length presents unique challenges.

"It's almost like a marriage that's gone on for decades," comments Lt. Col. Maurice Barnett, commander of the Army's 1-44 Air Defense Artillery Battalion. Unlike many Army personnel based in Kuwait, Barnett's soldiers have frequent contact with their Kuwaiti counterparts, including informal social contact. "It's really great for our young soldiers to be exposed to another culture," he says, "but … it becomes sort of boring and mundane for the Kuwaitis.… They don't always have a lot of motivation to come train with us."

And decades of cooperation haven't eliminated all frictions between the two countries. Recent talk in the Obama administration of a "rebalancing" toward Asia has left many in the Middle East wondering whether the United States plans to reduce its engagement in the region, a fear that hasn't been eased by Washington's uncertain response to the Arab Spring.

"The U.S. appears to be in retreat," Sheikh Mohammad laments over a glass of fresh pomegranate juice. "It's wavering and distracted. You seem to have lost interest in the Middle East." He casts a reproachful eye toward my public affairs escort, who's gazing longingly at the door. "All you want are quick fixes, like this [nuclear] deal with Iran. But do you even know what you are doing?"

Abdullah Al-Shayji, chairman of Kuwait University's political science department, is also blunt. "There's a complete lack of [U.S.] leadership," he scolds. "Look at Iraq, which is descending into chaos. Look at Egypt, where you can't even call a coup a coup. Look at Syria: How many massacres will you ignore? You're leaving Afghanistan -- what message does that send to us?"

Matthew Tueller, the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait and a career diplomat, is used to such gripes. "The region is changing and no one knows what will happen, and the Kuwaitis are surrounded on three sides by aggressive, expansionist neighbors," he tells me. "They want to know that we don't just regard them as a parking lot. They want to be true partners." Fearing U.S. abandonment, the Kuwaitis have taken pains to strengthen military relationships with other powerful states, including Russia and China. This, of course, only adds to the relationship-building difficulties for the United States.

But if crotchety, jaded Kuwaitis present a challenge to Army officials anxious to deepen relationships, other challenges to Odierno's vision of regionally aligned forces come from closer to home. Asked his opinion of RAF, Tueller purses his lips: "Well. Within the United States, we have so many centers for ideas to come through.… I applaud the Army for developing this new concept. That said," he adds delicately, "the regionally aligned forces idea will, ah, bump up against other ideas coming from parts of the State Department."

In other words, the State Department may not share Odierno's enthusiasm for an Army that is "globally responsive and regionally engaged." Many diplomats think it's their job, not the Army's, to develop cultural and regional expertise and relationships.

"Their concern is always the militarization of foreign policy," admits Odierno. But, he says, he's planning more outreach to senior-level State Department officials. "What we're trying to tell them is, we are not conducting foreign policy -- we are an instrument available to you … and we can do a lot of humanitarian assistance, disaster relief. We can do medical support, engineering support that builds things. So it's not just combat capabilities; it's a broader array of things that we can bring." Odierno concludes optimistically: "I think once we lay it out for them they'll understand."

Odierno needs to bring the State Department around. With its puny budget and its 12,000 foreign service officers, Foggy Bottom can't hope to compete with the Army's nearly 1 million active-duty soldiers, reservists, and guards. But absent a presidential override, it's the State Department, through embassy personnel, that controls access to foreign countries. If the Army wants to conduct partnership activities or exercises in a particular country, it first needs a green light from the local U.S. Embassy. It also needs embassy help negotiating with host countries over visas -- and sometimes, the embassy doesn't seem to negotiate very hard. "They don't always see this as high priority as we do," laments Brig. Gen. John Roberts, ARCENT's assistant chief of staff for operations.

The regionally aligned forces concept also faces some skepticism on Capitol Hill, where legislators have grilled Odierno on RAF's costs and viability. Absent more funding, the Army is set to shrink by more than 100,000 soldiers over the next five years, leaving fewer troops available for regional missions. What's more, serious cultural, regional, and linguistic training is costly; Gen. Daniel Allyn, head of Army Forces Command, said in late 2013 that dwindling resources have already prevented most newly assigned RAF units from going through their full planned training cycle.

Oddly, the U.S. Army's day-to-day point person for developing the regionally aligned forces construct isn't a U.S. Army officer at all, but a British Army exchange officer, Col. James Learmont. Or maybe it's not so odd. Although Learmont lacks an insider's understanding of U.S. Army culture and bureaucracy, every British Army officer has a bit of T.E. Lawrence in his DNA -- and the British know a little something about both the seductions and the perils of empire.

Sitting in Learmont's windowless Pentagon office, I explain that I'm finding it remarkably difficult to penetrate the cloud of jargon and pin down what RAF really means for the Army. No one even seems able to answer the most basic questions: Which Army units are regionally aligned, which are not, and which are slated to be regionally aligned in the future?

Everyone I speak to seems to have a different understanding of what RAF is. Some see it as a long-overdue transformation of the whole army into an agile, culturally sophisticated force; other see it as a tool of imperialist intervention. Still other see it, in the words of one former pentagon official, as "another giant army nothing-burger."

Learmont -- who co-authored the Parameters article on RAF -- sighs. He obviously gets these questions a lot. "One of the biggest problems we have is the straightforward education piece," he tells me.

For one thing, he insists, RAF isn't just for combat brigades. RAF encompasses "the Army total force," including the active-duty force, the Army Reserve, and the National Guard -- and it includes specialized personnel, such as engineers and logistics experts. "Everything the Army's got is in some way regionally aligned." With its emphasis on giving the service a "better understanding" of each region, says Learmont, RAF will constitute "a fundamental shift in how the Army is doing business."

Yes, I say, but to what end? Everyone I speak to seems to have a different understanding of what RAF is -- and what it isn't. Some, I tell Learmont, see it as a long-overdue transformation of the whole Army into an agile, culturally sophisticated force; others see it as a tool of imperialist intervention, or at least imperial overreach. Still others see it, in the words of one former Pentagon official, as "another giant Army nothing-burger" -- just a slightly more efficient effort to build partner capacity, with a fancy new name.

Learmont looks unhappy. RAF, he reminds me, is still a work in progress, and it's inevitable that lots of key questions remain. How much cultural training is enough? How can specialized regional training be balanced against the need to keep the force flexible? Are brigade combat teams going to be the right place for developing cultural expertise, or should most of the cultural expertise reside in the enablers -- the civil affairs units, the intelligence units, and so on? Does the Army need to shift from thinking about "forward deployments" to "forward presence" -- shorter, smaller, cheaper missions overseas?

More than two years after Odierno unveiled the RAF concept, those are a lot of unanswered questions.

Ultimately, the future of regionally aligned forces will depend not only on the ability of Odierno and other senior Army leaders to persuade the other services, the State Department, the White House, and Congress to get on board (or at least get out of the way). It will also depend, most crucially, on their ability to explain and sell RAF within the Army itself and to develop a coherent, implementable plan for moving forward.

Doing this will require top leaders to clarify RAF's strategic underpinnings. Does the regionally aligned forces construct reflect an assumption that the whole world is a potential battlefield and a conviction that the United States should double down on its role as the world's policeman? Or is RAF a form of U.S. pullback?

A U.S. soldier and South African troops take part in a training exercise designed to enhance interoperability.

At moments, Odierno seems to lean toward the "do everything everywhere" version of RAF. On April 3, 2014, he submitted joint testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee with Secretary of the Army John McHugh. The Army, the two men asserted, offers "globally responsive, regionally engaged strategic land forces." It is "decisively expeditionary and strategically adaptive … possess[ing] a lethal combination of capability and agility that strengthens U.S. diplomacy and represents one of America's most credible deterrents against hostility." It must be "capable of appropriate and rapid response anywhere in the world and across the entire range of military operations, from stability operations to general war."

At other times, however, RAF seems to reflect the far more modest assumption that the United States needs to retrench and look inward, coupled with a conviction that for a weary, financially strapped global cop, the only viable route to retirement involves an intense but time-limited investment in building the military capacity of allies and partners. As Roberts, ARCENT's assistant chief of staff for operations, puts it, "We've learned that it's really expensive to be in Phase 3 and 4. Most Americans get that we need to invest in preventative maintenance for our equipment or in insurance on our cars and houses. So why don't we do that globally by investing in building partner nation capacity? It's the way to save on costs way down the road."

Either of these visions could be defended and implemented, but the Army needs to pick one. As Shayji, the Kuwaiti political scientist, puts it, "You can have all the regionally aligned forces you want … but none of this does any good if you have no strategy."

Or does it?  

In the context of a country that itself has no coherent grand strategy, maybe it's wrongheaded to view the murkiness of the Army's regionally aligned forces construct as a problem that needs to be solved. Perhaps, in fact, RAF's very ambiguity is strategic -- not in the global sense, but in a bureaucratic sense.

Consider the Army's precarious institutional position. Budget cuts threaten the service, and rising isolationist sentiment risks marginalizing ground forces, as politicians insist that America won't be fighting any more land wars, occupying any countries, or engaging in large-scale nation-building. The Navy and the Air Force have gained temporary preeminence by offering an appealing fantasy of bloodless, high-tech conflicts fought not with mud and blood, but with computer code and unmanned drones.

But politicians and public opinion are notoriously fickle, and it's easy to imagine the pendulum eventually swinging back the other way. It's easy to imagine the Army again being subjected to a range of conflicting demands: prevent conflict; fight an enemy army; and conduct counterterrorism operations, counterinsurgency operations, stability operations, and information operations -- and do it all at once, while also winning hearts and minds, developing local economies, and providing humanitarian assistance.

Right now, the Army is being told that its services are no longer much needed, but Odierno and other senior Army leaders know that at any moment they could again be asked to accomplish half a dozen impossible things at the same time. In that context, RAF's ambiguity enables the concept to be sold in half a dozen different ways to as many different constituencies.

Midlevel Army officers threatened by the possibility of transformational change can be soothed by the lowest-common-denominator version of RAF, which requires little more from them than a slightly enhanced focus on building partner capacity. Other services can be sold the version of RAF that focuses on gaining a better understanding of regional dynamics, which will help them as well. Geographic combatant commanders are offered a more predictable source of troops and capabilities. The State Department is offered engineers, medical experts, and disaster relief tools to support U.S. diplomacy. Neo-isolationists on the Hill are offered a version of RAF that enables gradual U.S. disengagement from the role of global cop, while neoconservatives and liberal idealists are offered the promise of enhanced global engagement and influence -- all without the need for substantially higher budgets.

Meanwhile, RAF does enable some incremental shifts toward greater Army flexibility and cultural sophistication. As Learmont puts it, "We've not lost sight of the vision. We may not get there, but I'd be satisfied if we get mostly there." Or even, his body language suggests, a little bit of the way there.

Evaluated as a clear blueprint for change, the regionally aligned forces construct is rife with contradictions. But evaluated as Odierno's canny effort to protect his beloved Army from the fickle winds that blow through Washington? It's brilliant.

吕枫叶

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大汉子民

浅水游