the future of warfare

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1222/073.html
"The Next Disaster"
by Jesse Bogan, Kerry A. Dolan, Christopher Helman and Nathan Vardi
December 22, 2008
Forbes Magazine

The article is about the possibility that drug cartels will destabilize the Mexican government, leading to a failed state. I want to connect this with what we've done in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the moment, the wars, especially the Iraq War, are wildly unpopular. It is my content, however, that if Iraq emerges as a stable, relatively democratic state, then the verdict of history will be rather different. Indeed, it strikes me as a seminal event in history: that one nation attacked another, more or less unprovoked, toppled the government, and managed to replace it with another, stable one. A government not propped up by outside force, or coasting along on corruption, but a real nation-state.

In other words, the idea of nation-building would be a valid one (albeit a fantastically difficult and expensive one). The Army would not just be about fighting, but about something much broader: about a total reformation of a political territory.

(of course, this all depends on a good outcome in Iraq).