cc  >> Margaret Lewis: Oh,  you are so good.  You're all quieting down so  nicely.  I'm Margaret Lewis, executive  director of the Wisconsin  Academy of Sciences, Arts and  Letters, and we're just so  delighted that you're all here  this evening to join us for our  Wisconsin 2050: Pioneering the  Future Academy Evenings series  presentation tonight called  "Warfare and Public Perception  in 2050."  Tonight's presentation is made  possible by the Pleasant Rowland  Foundation and our generous  sponsors, the Wisconsin Alumni  Research Foundation, the Evjue  Foundation, M&I Bank, and the  University Wisconsin Madison  Chancellor's Office and our  media sponsor Isthmus Publishing  Company.  We thank them for their support.  Tonight, we also offer special  thanks to the Wisconsin Veterans  Museum, and director Michael  Telzrow is here with us tonight.  Michael, do you want to stand,  raise your hand?  (applause)  The Veterans Museum  has made it possible tonight to  provide a live webcast of our  Academy Evenings presentation.  And I'd also like to thank our  ongoing media partners who are  here tonight making this  presentation available to all  parts of the state, Wisconsin  Public Television, and Jon  Miskowski is here.  Raise your hand, Jon.  Madison City Channel 12 and  Portal Wisconsin.  We're grateful for all their  support. 

 And, as always, our Wisconsin  Academy Evening presentations  are intended to provide a forum  for the exchange of ideas on  many different topics and we  hope that the discussion will  continue after tonight's  presentation.  I encourage you to send us your  thoughts and comments, and for  our viewers watching live this  evening, please email your  questions to  questions@WisconsinAcademy.org.  And they will be included with  the questions that are asked  from the live audience here  later in the presentation.  Also, everyone should have  received a yellow card when they  arrived.  I hope you'll please fill those  out, and we will enter you in a  drawing for "Uncommon Defense"  that John Hall wrote about  the Blackhawk War.  These cards help us know other  speakers and topics that you'd  like to hear from and how you  heard about this presentation so  that we can get future  information to you, and also to  figure out how to make the best  use of our marketing dollars.  So thank you, very much,  for helping us out with that.  And you can just leave those  cards on the table on your way  out or with one of our staff  people.  If you like what you see here  tonight, we also hope that  you'll consider becoming a  member of the Wisconsin Academy.  And you can do that very simply  by filling out one of the  envelopes that you'll find  around or on your chair or on  your way out. 

 It's just $25 and we welcome you  to participate in any of our  programs.  One of these is the James  Watrous Gallery for Wisconsin  artists.  It's on the third floor in the  Overture Center.  Another is Wisconsin People and  Ideas magazine.  Wisconsin People and Ideas this  month does have an article about  Vietnam veterans.  A woman veteran on the front.  And some information about the  LZ Lambeau event coming up in  May.  And you can receive information  about that on your way out.  But we'd surely welcome all your  participation in welcoming home  our Vietnam vets.  Before we welcome UW Madison  history professor Jeremi Suri,  who will introduce our speaker  tonight, I'd like to tell you  just a few, share with you a few  academy related announcements. 

 First of all, our James Watrous  Gallery that I mentioned is  opening a new gallery selection  called "Selected Visions:  An Exhibition of Artwork by the  2010 Wisconsin Arts Board  Visual Arts Fellows"  this Sunday from 2:00 to 5:00.  So you're all welcome to come to  that reception.  The lieutenant governor will be  there, as well as the arts board  director George Tzougros with  short comments.  And on May 11th we will welcome  Harvard University economics  professor emeritus Jeffrey  Williamson for his Academy  Evening presentation called  "Why Third World Migrants  Will Disappear From  the United States by 2050."  Should be very interesting.  And that's right here, again, on  May 11th at 7:00.  So now it is my pleasure to  introduce a great friend of the  Wisconsin Academy who was  instrumental in bringing John  Hall to UW Madison and to us  tonight.  Jeremi is the Gordon Fox  professor of history at UW  Madison where he teaches  American foreign relations, the  history of the US since the  Civil War, and comparative world  history.  I think you may have seen or  heard him several times through  Academy Evenings events.  He is a distinguished teacher  but also a noted essayist and  author.  His most recently published  works include the 2007  "Henry Kissinger  and the American Century"  from Harvard University Press,  "The Global Revolutions of  1968," and I think his latest is  maybe an introduction he wrote  to the new Historical Society  Press book "Wisconsin  Vietnam War Stories:  Our Veterans Remember."  Please help me welcome Jeremi  Suri. 

 (applause)  >> Jeremi Suri: Well,  welcome everyone.  It's really a great pleasure for  me to be here at many levels.  First of all because I'm so  excited about the community that  we have built in Madison, it  preexisted my birth, but  certainly the community we've  built over the last few years of  people in all walks of life who  are interested and seriously  engaged with issues of policy,  politics, social change and the  military, in particular.  Many people, when I travel  around the country, have this  image of Madison as being a  place that's anti-military.  And nothing could be further  from the truth.  Madison is not anti-military or  pro-military.  Madison is engaged in the most  central debates and discussions  in our society today.  And those debates and  discussions center upon what  should the role of the military  be in our society, what role  will the military play, and what  should all of us as citizens  think about the role of the  military in our society?  No questions could be more  central.  No questions could touch more  parts of our lives.  No questions could be more  important for all of us to think  about. 

 And I am so proud and feel so  privileged to be part of a  community that includes, of  course, the university, but also  includes the Veterans Museum, I  think one of the best veterans  museums, if not the best, in the  country, a state historical  society which is second to none,  the Wisconsin Academy for the  Arts, and various other  contributors to this broader  dialogue.  And I've had just a wonderful  privilege in getting to know all  of you.  John Hall is, I think, someone  who is going to now help us  bring this community to the next  level.  He is someone who brings  enormous talent, passion, but  most of all he brings a    Wisconsin connection to these  world historical issues, as  well.  John Hall was born in Wisconsin,  raised in Wisconsin, when he  came out for his interview to  Madison, I realized he knew more  about Wisconsin than I did.  So he was selling me on  Wisconsin as much as I was  selling him on Wisconsin.  When he graduated from high  school, John had the choice of  coming to the University of  Wisconsin, Madison or going to  West Point, and he chose to go  to West Point knowing that he  would come back to Madison one  day.  Went to West Point, had a very  distinguished career in the  army, and along the way, while  doing his full-time job in the  army, also received a PhD at the  University of North Carolina  Chapel Hill which was, until  John Hall's hire, the best  military history program in the  country.  Now it is the second best  military history program in the  country.  (laughter)  And John hall has done,  I think, already so much  on this campus to energize the  way we think about these issues. 

 Among other things, he has not  only produced, I think, one of  the most important books  written, not just on the Indian  wars and the Blackhawk War in  particular, but on the long  history of counterinsurgency.  Getting us to think about how  the counterinsurgency issues we  feel and look at today have a  history, a long historical tale  and a number of important  lessons to teach us about how we  think about contemporary  problems, contemporary  challenges and most importantly  where we're going in the future.  This book I recommend to anyone  who's interested in contemporary  issues, as well as those from  the 19th and 18th century.  John is already teaching  incredibly popular courses to  large numbers of undergraduates,  as well as graduate students.  He's been actively involved in  all sorts of events including  student organized events, and  some of the students who have  organized these events  themselves are in the room, and  I actually want to acknowledge  them as well.  They've really taken it upon  themselves to organize their own  activities designed to build  awareness among students about  the importance of these issues.  Nothing could be more in the  Wisconsin Idea tradition.  So I just want to ask Allison,  Courtney, Brendan and anyone  else I've missed in the room  just to stand up so we can  acknowledge all of you as well.  (applause)  Nothing could be a greater sign  of John's immediate impact  than the fact that students  are motivated not only  to take his classes but then to  organize their own discussions  about the issues he raises in  his classes.  The last thing I want to say  about John Hall before I finally  turn it over to him, is I want  to say that what I love most  about working with John and what  I think is the best attribute he  brings to our community is John  is it not someone who stakes out  strong polemical positions  because they sound good  or because he feels he has an  obligation to one way or  another. 

 He is someone who I think is  devoted to the highest of all  pursuits, which is the pursuit  of truth, and we should remember  that's what this is all about.  Truth is hard to reach and we  might not agree on it.  But John is someone who enters  into issues from the Blackhawk  War to the contemporary wars  we're fighting in Afghanistan  and Iraq with a desire to learn,  with a desire to understand,  with a desire to avoid simple  statements and categories, and a  desire to get at the deeper  issues.  And I hope that can be an  inspiration to all of us tonight  and to all of our students and  relatives and friends.  So please join me in welcoming  John Hall.  (applause)  >> John Hall: That's a tough act  to follow.  (laughter)  I think that was the show  right there.  Notice he did all of that  with no notes.  I would not be able to introduce  myself to that extent...  (laughter)  Without notes. 

 And also on the basis to that  introduction I should point out  a caveat.  You will hear me shortly speak  of an apathetic American public.  On the basis of Jeremi's  comments, I'd like to clarify,  I'm not talking about any of you  because clearly you are engaged,  and he makes a valid point about  the extent to which the citizens  of Madison do engage  thoughtfully in these issues.  And it is one of the things that  I most appreciated about the  area and one of the things that  drew me back here.  So thank you to Jeremi for those  kind remarks.  Thank you also to Margaret Lewis  and Ronnie Hess and the  Wisconsin Academy for inviting  me to be here with you this  evening.  And thanks to Jon Miskowski and  to Mik Derks and Wisconsin  Public Television for permitting  me to show you a brief clip from  the upcoming television series  Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories.  But I'll get to that in a  moment.  Finally, I'd like to thank all  of you for being here this  evening.  It's wonderful to see so many  people interested in these  issues, and, actually, now that  I've said that, I have to return  one other thing that Jeremi  said. 

 The students that Jeremi singled  out for praise, he's too humble  by half.  He has motivated those students  to spend their time to initiate  student organized activities,  and it's Jeremi Suri that  deserves a round of applause for  making his students...  (applause)  For making his students  as interested in these issues  as they are.  I do have a lot of students here  tonight, but I forced them to  come here.  (laughter)  This is a mandatory class  for them.  Last week I had the honor of  introducing Dr. James Willbanks  before he spoke at the Wisconsin  Veterans Museum.  But before I took the podium,  the director of public programs  there took a moment to stump for  this lecture I'm delivering this  evening.  When Dr. Willbanks heard the  topic, "Warfare and Public  Perception in 2050," his eyes  brightened and a wry smile  creased his normally stern face.  He leaned over to me and  whispered, "And what do you know  about that?"  (laughter)  This, it occurred to me,  is a very, very fine question.  And it took a moment before I  gave him the only reply I could  muster, "At least as much  as anyone else."  And thus, I'd like to begin  this evening with the humble  disclaimer: I am a historian. 

 More specifically, those of you  that have seen my book, the last  thing that I researched in depth  took place in 1832.  More specifically, I'm an  historian with an abiding  mistrust of those who would  style themselves futurists, if  for no other reason than so many  of them have a categorical  disregard for the past.  The wisest of them constrain  their prognostications to the  relatively near future or the  almost formulaic advance of  technology.  But I have been asked to speak  to you this evening about  warfare and public perception.  Topics that defy linear  modeling.  And to do so, in the year 2050  which is well beyond what  military concept developers  would regard as the foreseeable  future.  A lot can happen in the span of  40 years, as a retrospective  consideration of any such span  in American history can attest.  But I will draw your attention  to two such spans in particular.  That which began in 1970 and has  just concluded and that which we  are about to enter and will end  in 2050.  You will note that each of these  periods is punctuated by  conflict. 

 The Vietnam War, the current  conflicts in Iraq and  Afghanistan, and the  hypothetical war of the future  that provides the premise for  this lecture.  If, as mark Twain purportedly  said, history does not repeat  itself, but rather rhymes, we  ought to closely examine the  first stanza before  hypothesizing about the next.  And this first stanza is,  of course, dominated by the  legacies of the Vietnam War.  Legacies so powerful that they  have profoundly influenced the  world in which we live today,  and, I argue, are certain to  affect the world of 2050.  Where history's rhymes to adhere  to a symmetrical structure, we  might anticipate that the  current wars in Iraq and  Afghanistan will, at least as it  pertains to war and public  perception, exert a similarly  powerful influence on the next  40 years.  But I doubt it.  Indeed, I anticipate that the  so-called lessons of the Vietnam  War will exercise a stronger  influence on war and public  perception in 2050, if  indirectly, than will the likely  lessons garnered from the  ongoing wars in Iraq and  Afghanistan.  It is very hard to overstate the  significance of the Vietnam War  on the US military and its place  in American society.  No particular organization was  more affected than the US Army.  When it deployed in large  numbers to Vietnam in 1965, it  was arguably the best peacetime  army the nation had ever  assembled. 

 By early 1970, it was a  miserable shadow of its former  self.  Demoralized and disowned by the  society that had sent it to  fight a war that it came to  regret.  The war shattered the proverbial  backbone of the army, its  noncommissioned officer corps.  And the ending of the draft in  1973 meant that the ranks were  to be filled initially by the  hardest of hard luck cases.  The army perceived several  lessons from this harsh  experience, but the most  significant of these amounted to  an affirmation of George  Marshall's observation that a  democracy cannot fight a seven  years war.  Although offered in the context  of the Second World War, no one  in the army of 1973 would have  disagreed.  Consoling themselves that they  had never lost a battle,  military leaders ascribed their  defeat to politicians, who would  not permit them to pursue a  strategy of annihilation against  North Vietnam, and to an  American public that lost its  will and abandoned both South  Vietnam and the troops who had  served there.  Over the course of the 1970s and  the 1980s, the army gradually  rebuilt and redefined itself in  response to these convictions.  Disavowing 20 years of  hard-earned experience, the army  forswore irregular warfare,  nation building, and any  activity that evoked the  slightest memory of Vietnam.  Instead, the army rededicated  itself to confronting the Soviet  Union in conventional maneuver  warfare on the plains of western  Europe. 

 While this contest, thankfully,  never came, preparation for it  occasioned a professional  renaissance within the army.  While successes in Grenada and  Panama helped restore confidence  to the force, the stunning, if  exaggerated, success of  Operation Desert Storm seemed to  vindicate the reformers'  efforts.  And, according to some  observers, at last exorcised the  ghosts of Vietnam.  In reality, the first Gulf War  deified these spirits,  transforming them into the holy  trinity of Vietnam lessons.  Limited protracted wars are  obscene, the American people are  fickle, and conscripted armies  are inferior.  Already this new religion had a  doctrine drawn up during the  Reagan administration by defense  secretary Caspar Weinberger and  national security adviser Colin  Powell reflecting the prevailing  sentiments of military leaders.  At the time, the  Weinberger/Powell doctrine  amounted to a foreign policy  checklist designed to keep the  US military well away from  anything remotely resembling  Vietnam.  Military action should be only  used as a last resort and only  if there's a clear risk to  national security by the  intended target.  The force, when used, should be  overwhelming and  disproportionate to the force  used by the enemy.  There must be strong support  from the campaign by the general  public, and there must be a  clear exit strategy from the  conflict in which the military  is engaged. 

 In sum, this doctrine affirmed  the Marshall rule, democracies  cannot wage protracted wars.  Aside from the ill-fated Marine  intervention in Lebanon, the  Reagan and George HW Bush  administrations generally  adhered to this doctrine.  Which wasn't so much a policy as  it was wishful thinking on the  part of military leaders.  This much became clear when Bill  Clinton and Madeleine Albright  assumed the direction of US  foreign policy.  Choosing to ignore its  constabulary traditions, the  army, in particular, protested  its employment in seemingly  open-ended peace keeping  operations in the Balkans, Haiti  and the horn of Africa.  In arguing such missions eroded  the war fighting readiness of  the force, army leaders were not  only proclaiming, we don't do  windows, but standing by  convictions born of the Vietnam  War.  As late as 1998, retired US Army  Colonel Harry Summers, perhaps  the most famous of the Vietnam  veterans to assert that the US  never lost a battle in Vietnam,  applauded the Naval War College  for designing its curriculum  around these convictions.  As we sloughed off the false  doctrines of atomic war and  counterinsurgency, he preached  to a receptive choir, we came  back to the basic trade that  we're in, conventional war, and  becoming masters of that  profession.  Thus, the US military that  invaded Iraq in 2003 was perhaps  the most awesome conventional  fighting force ever assembled.  And one that was willfully  unprepared for the conflict that  unfolded over the summer of  2003. 

 Far from vanquished, the ghosts  of Vietnam influenced every  aspect of Operation Iraqi  Freedom.  Having, in Summers' formulation,  returned to its basic trade and  strength in conventional war,  the military only belatedly and  awkwardly undertook the  counterinsurgency and stability  operations demanded by the  circumstances.  Even then, however, commanders  were certain that the American  people would tolerate neither a  protracted war nor casualties  among US troops.  An unfortunate consequence of  this belief was the  prioritization of force  protection over most other  concerns.  Resulting in additional civilian  casualties and what some have  derided as FOB-centric, or  forward operating based-centric,  warfare in which US forces  hunkered down in their fortified  compounds rather than  establishing a visible enduring  presence among the civilian  population.  As Iraq descended into chaos in  2006, the Senior US Commander  General George W Casey remained  faithful to the lessons of the  Vietnam War, a conflict which,  incidentally, had claimed the  life of his father.  Worried that repeated  deployments were breaking the  force and convinced that the  American people would not  tolerate an open-ended troop  presence in Iraq, Casey  emphasized the training of Iraqi  forces with an eye to  withdrawing sooner rather than  later.  Derived from the army's  institutional memory of Vietnam,  Casey's views were hardly  unique.  But George W Bush was prisoner  neither to the perceived lessons  of Vietnam nor to public  opinion.  And he rejected what he regarded  as a strategy for defeat. 

 Desperate for alternatives, he  turned to political scientists  and historians who recognized  that, while Americans are never  fond of casualties, they are  willing to bear this cost if  they deem the ends worthwhile  and achievable.  Were George Bush to salvage any  sort of success from the mess in  Iraq, US forces would have to  expand and intensify their  operations even at the risk of  incurring more casualties.  Although missteps by al Qaeda  and Iraq certainly played into  American hands, the events of  2007 largely vindicated this  view.  In February 2007, the Bush  administration replaced Casey  with General David Petraeus,  who, as one of the army's  foremost advocates of  counterinsurgency, represented a  rebuff to the army's high church  of conventional warfare.  With 20,000 additional troops,  Petraeus pushed US forces out of  the FOBs and into the streets,  where in conjunction with Iraqi  security forces, they restored  stability.  For US forces, April, May and  June of 2007 were among the  deadliest months of the entire  war.  But as the president's advisers  had said, Americans were willing  to tolerate this sacrifice if it  produced results, which it did.  Those hoping that Petraeus'  September 2007 report to  Congress would provoke a  dramatic reassessment of the war  were disappointed.  Although a vocal minority  disrupted the proceedings and  most Americans continued to  profess to oppose the war, the  overwhelming majority of the  American public was apathetic.  Through its successful surge  gambit, the Bush administration,  which had urged Americans to go  shopping and take vacations even  as it prepared to go to war,  bought itself not popular  support but a renewed round of  apathy. 

 The war outlasted his  administration and continues to  this day, exactly seven years  and one month from its  commencement.  That final month mocking George  Marshall's maxim about  democracies and long wars.  Perhaps no group has been as  surprised by this turn of events  as the uniformed military.  For all of the comparisons to  Vietnam, opposition to the  ongoing conflicts has been  remarkably subdued.  This has less to do with the  perceived merit of these  ventures than it does with two  hugely important facts.  First, American battle deaths  have been remarkably light, and  second, those who have died have  been volunteers.  As of earlier this month, 4,378  American service men and women  have died in Iraq.  Nearly a quarter of these due to  accidents or causes other than  hostile action.  Eight and a half years in  Afghanistan have thus far cost  1,026 American lives.  A quarter of these, likewise,  attributable to non-hostile  causes. 

 All told, this amounts to seven  fatalities every four days, or  approximately one percent of the  United States' annual death rate  due to pneumonia.  For the bereaved and a  conscientious few, these deaths  are intolerable.  But for a society of over 300  million people, such a casualty  rate is sustainable in  perpetuity.  And as the surge experiment  suggested, the raw number of  casualties is less important  than the public perception of  whether the sacrifice is bearing  dividends.  Indeed, as US casualties have  risen over the past few months  in Afghanistan, so, too, has  public approval for the Obama  administration's handling of  that war.  But, of course, only a tiny  fraction of this approving  public is actually bearing the  cost of these wars.  Having convinced themselves that  the Americans would not suffer  casualties in a protracted war,  the military leaders discovered  that these people were perhaps  less attentive when their own  sons and daughters were not at  risk of bodily harm.  By September of 2007, success or  failure in Iraq hinged not on  the forbearance of public  opinion but on the stamina of  the all volunteer force.  Tragic though they were, losses  due to enemy action posed less  of a risk to America's military  capability than retention and  recruiting shortfalls.  The most pronounced warnings  that the army was breaking came  from the senior leaders of this  force, who successfully lobbied  for an expansion of the regular  army and continued to seek ways  to operationalize the reserve  component. 

 At no moment, however, did the  military seriously entertain  proposals from some democrats to  re-institute the draft.  Barring a cataclysm, we will not  witness conscription in the  United States over the course of  the next 40 years.  Charlie Rangel notwithstanding,  most politicians realize that  reelection and conscription do  not belong in the same sentence.  Perhaps more importantly  however, the professional  military is steadfastly opposed  to re-instituting the draft,  thanks in large part to its  selective institutional memory  of the Vietnam War.  To the army in particular, the  phrase "draftee army" evokes  images of the army of about 1970  when drug abuse and racial  tensions wracked the ranks and  officers lived in fear of their  own men.  Never minding that a draftee  army won the Second World War  and that the all volunteer force  of the mid-1970s was one of the  worst peacetime armies in  American history, military  leaders have convinced  themselves that a draftee army  is categorically a bad army.  Yet these same leaders would  like to have their cake and eat  it too.  If they don't want the ranks  swelled by conscripts, they want  more Americas to consider a  career in the military.  If they do not want Americans  protesting the war, neither do  they want Americans ignoring it.  Indeed many resent that they are  making sacrifices on behalf of  an unengaged population. 

 And a popular lament among  troops today is that the United  States is not at war at all,  rather the army and the Marine  Corps are at war, America is at  the mall.  But what they do not realize is  that this is an inevitable  consequence of the social  bargain made between American  society and its professional  military over the last 40 years,  the enduring legacy of the  Vietnam War of which I spoke in  my introduction.  By the end of the Vietnam  debacle, the American people  refused to be made party to wars  they did not support.  And military leaders resented  that their sacrifices had been  squandered by a fickle and  unappreciative public.  The advent of the all volunteer  force that year represented  something of a divorce between  these two parties.  But with the passing of time,  passions cooled, permitting  reconciliation with the nation's  Vietnam veterans who had endured  first abuse and later neglect.  When in 1980 Ronald Reagan  declared the Vietnam War a noble  cause, he addressed a crowd of  veterans, but he spoke on behalf  of an increasingly contrite  American public.  The same year, Congress  authorized the construction of a  Vietnam Memorial on the National  Mall in Washington, DC.  Dedicated in November 1982, the  Wall is as much of a reminder of  the breach that opened between  the United States and its  service men and women as it is a  memorial to those who toiled and  perished in Vietnam.  Wes, could you go ahead and show  the clip please?  >> Got through that unscratched,  which amazes me to this day. 

 Come home and the war,  after '68, got terribly  unpopular among the people.  That was a hard thing to go  through.  Screaming the standard  "baby killer" and "you should  have died in Vietnam" for doing  what we considered our duty.  All us 18-, 19-, 20-year-old  Marines and soldiers and airmen  and Navy guys, we didn't know  about the damn politics of the  thing.  Most of us hadn't been old  enough to vote hardly, you know?  I hate to say it about my  country, but at that time it was  not a good place to be if you  were in the military.  So I asked for orders back to  Vietnam.  >> Got a saying, don't mean  nothing, don't mean a goddamn  thing.  Suck it up.  Don't mean nothing.  Don't mean a damn thing. 

 Don't put a meaning on it.  You put a meaning on it, you  start thinking about it.  You start thinking about it, you  start feeling.  Suck it up and move out.  And the purpose was to get us  through, to emotionally and  physically survive it.  We called it the Nam, "The Nam,"  and "the world."  That was the real world.  This was the surreal world.  This was not real.   This isn't the world.  This is not the world that I  want to live in. 

 That's the world.  But I just didn't fit.  >> The footage you just watched  is from Wisconsin Public  Television's upcoming series  Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories,  which will premiere this May in  conjunction with LZ Lambeau,  organized by the Wisconsin State  Historical Society, Wisconsin  Department of Veterans Affairs,  and Wisconsin Public  Broadcasters, LZ Lambeau will  provide Wisconsin's Vietnam  veterans the homecoming ceremony  they never received.  That Wisconsin is hosting this  event eight and a half years  into a pair of unpopular wars  often compared to Vietnam, is  telling.  And it goes a very long way  toward explaining why the United  States has been able to sustain  these two conflicts this long.  Abandoned and disowned by their  own generation, service men and  women of the Vietnam era  purchased, for subsequent  generations of American  warriors, the goodwill of an  American public that,  consciously or otherwise,  nurses a guilty conscience over  the sins of the past.  Thus, the phenomenon unique to  the United States is current  conflicts.  The individual who opposes the  wars but supports the troops.  For some, this is anathema.  At best he is presumed to be  confused or misled. 

 At worst, insincere and  disingenuous.  But the fact is such convictions  are entirely compatible with the  prevailing social contract  between the public and the  professional military.  In return for a clean conscience  and a guarantee that they will  never be compelled to serve, the  American people have offered  their professional warriors an  unconditional, if often  superficial, show of support.  It's a tremendous bargain.  Your average American needs to  do nothing more than click on I  Support the Troops on Facebook  to expiate the sins of the past  and go about his daily routine.  Because neither he nor his  children will be called upon to  fight or die overseas, he  needn't worry too much about the  prudence or justice of the wars  there.  He is, as George W Bush directed  and the troops allege, at the  mall.  But there's a good chance he  drove to the mall in a mini van  adorned by a yellow ribbon  sticker that says, I support the  troops.  As one Iraq veteran apprized me,  it is literally  the least he can do.  (laughter)  Of course, many Americans  do more than wave the flag. 

 And through their taxes, most  Americans, whether they like it  or not, put their money where  their patriotic mouths are.  Pursuant to this social  contract, today's men and women  in uniform are the most  handsomely compensated in  history.  And they receive world class  healthcare.  Which, even opponents of  ObamaCare, have to admit is  administered successfully by the  US government.  With justification, veterans  advocacy groups maintain that  these benefits are insufficient,  and Congress dutifully and  routinely agrees.  If constituents don't want to  hear about conscription, it  seems, they are generally quite  willing to foot the bill for the  alternative.  This, then, is the lasting  legacy of the Vietnam war.  A highly professionalized all  volunteer force almost  unfettered by public opinion.  And American people so removed  from the formulation of American  military strategy that few have  an opinion worth offering  anyway.  This legacy is all but certain  to outlast the current conflicts  in Iraq and Afghanistan and  carry forward to our speculative  war of the future. 

 Indeed, I expect that the  social, technological, and  military developments of the  next 40 years will exacerbate  this gap and further numb public  sensitivity to the employment of  armed force.  But before moving on, I should  mention two important  repercussions of the current  conflict that will also manifest  themselves over this span.  The first is visible already,  the second discernable only as  an outline at the moment, but it  will exert more and more force  as we approach 2050.  In the former regard, I'm  speaking of the US Army's full  body embrace of the very mission  set that it generated after  Vietnam.  Counterinsurgency, security  force assistance, and other  forms of stability operations.  This is a remarkable  development, and it's one that I  would not have anticipated as  late as 2004 or 2005.  Only as it became clear that  George Bush's will to stay in  Iraq was stronger than the  American people's will to get  out of Iraq did the army  rededicate itself to this once  despised craft.  For two reasons I doubt very  much that the army will drift  back to an entirely conventional  mindset as it did at the  conclusion of the war in  Vietnam.  The first, I've already touched  upon and that is an uncommitted  American people who are more  willing to tolerate these time  and labor intensive operations  than were their Vietnam era  counterparts.  Second, the contemporary and  future operating environments  offer no alternative but to be  competent in such operations. 

 Simply put, the Soviet Union is  no more, and no new boogeyman  is likely to pose an exigent  conventional threat to the  security of the United States in  the foreseeable future.  The US Navy and the US Air  Force, whose incredibly  expensive pet projects depend  upon such threats, may beg to  disagree with me, but few  analysts really believe that the  usual suspects, China or a  resurgent Russia, will have  either the ability or the  interest to engage the United  States conventionally for many,  many years.  Rogue nuclear powers, like North  Korea or potentially Iran, pose  a far more likely threat but one  that confounds conventional  military capabilities rather  than calling for their  expansion.  In any event, these are but two  of the more familiar threats in  a world that the US Joint Forces  Command predicts will be  characterized by uncertainty,  complexity, rapid change, and  persistent conflict.  In these regards, the future  will differ very little, it  seems to me, from the past 200  years.  But whereas the United States  formally built its military  forces to confront those of  other nation states in the  traditional domains of land,  air, and sea, today's capability  developers are giving  unprecedented attention to  non-state actors and cyberspace.  While few are willing to concede  that conventional warfare is a  thing of the past, the most  recent Quadrennial Defense  Review argues that the United  States' most likely enemies in  the future will, quite wisely,  attempt to avoid symmetrical  confrontations with the US  military.  In addition to the state actors  already mentioned, these include  terrorist organizations such as  al Qaeda, quasi state actors  like Hezbollah, and  transnational criminal  organizations that will  increasingly complicate  distinctions between war and law  enforcement.  Each of these threats is  supposed to flourish in the  areas that the US perceives to  be ungoverned or under-governed  spaces.  And the US military is now  working diligently to develop  the capabilities to bring order  and stability to the dark  recesses of what Thomas PM  Barnett has called the  non-integrating gap,  but what you and I  probably know better  as the mess created  by European colonialism. 

 Thus, in one of the greatest  ironies of the past decade, our  military has enthusiastically  supported the election of a  presidential candidate largely  because he pledged to get the US  military out of the business of  nation building, only to see  that president launch the most  ambitious nation building effort  in US history, and then watch  the military accept this mission  as a core competency.  In a complete reversal of its  stance from the Clinton years,  the military not only now does  windows, it advertises, asking  Congress for more money so that  it can become the best window  washing outfit in the business.  Indeed, while the 2010  Quadrennial Defense Review  shifts emphasis away from  conventional warfare toward  counterproliferation, cyber  security, and homeland security,  it also calls for enhanced  capabilities in exactly the  sorts of operations that the US  has been conducting in Iraq and  Afghanistan.  If you think these wars have  exhausted American enthusiasm  for similar adventures, I'd urge  you to think again.  In the Obama administration's  vision of the near future, the  US military must be able to  simultaneously conduct a major  stability operation, a long  duration deterrence operation in  a separate theatre, a medium  sized counterinsurgency mission,  and extended support to civil  authorities in the United  States, simultaneously, mind  you.  This is not to suggest that  either the military or the  American people have an  insatiable appetite for such  ventures, which continue to  strain the all volunteer force,  as well as the US Treasury.  But neither have the ongoing  wars scarred the American psyche  to the extent that the war in  Vietnam did.  And there is little reason to  believe that another 30 years  will have to pass again before  some administration sees fit to  employ the capabilities the army  is now developing.  Simply put, there is no  compelling evidence to my mind  that the US suffers from an Iraq  syndrome.  Quagmires are only really  troublesome when entire nations  have to walk through them. 

 In the meantime, however, the  seductively cheap and easy  alternative to nation building  is counter-terrorism.  Rather than attempting to  inoculate ungoverned space  against extremist actors,  counter-terrorist efforts are  aimed more simply at eradicating  the actors who take root there.  Regardless, technological  advances are likely to render  both approaches more and more  acceptable to the public and  thus, less subject to public  scrutiny.  In broad terms, technology will  enable transparency, precision,  and casualty mitigation.  In every instance undermining  the foundations of incipient  antiwar movements.  Excuse me.  When it comes to transparency,  I'm going to go out on a limb to  some extent and predict that in  the next 40 years the US will  turn the corner when it comes to  winning the propaganda war, vis  a vis its enemies and domestic  opposition.  At least since the Vietnam War,  many in the military have  despaired of ever winning this  battle, which seemed unalterably  and unfairly tilted in favor of  an enemy who could lie with  impunity and realize great PR  dividends in the process.  While nearly everyone agrees  that the US has been losing the  information battle in the  strategic context, two schools  of thought have emerged  regarding what to do about it.  Whereas members of the first  school, which include the likes  of Donald Rumsfeld, advocate  resurrecting Cold War style  information agencies through  which the government would  direct and shape the strategic  narrative, members of the newer  school realize that any  government efforts to manipulate  this narrative are ultimately  self-defeating. 

 Their prescription is remarkably  straightforward.  Say what you mean, and do what  you say.  The merits of this approach are  so obvious that it has worked  its way into military concepts  for future information  operations.  What is less obvious is how the  new media and the proliferation  of handheld video cameras can  facilitate this approach.  Most of you are probably aware  of the controversy that recently  erupted over the release of gun  tape footage from a 2007  incident in Baghdad during which  a pair of AH-64 attack  helicopters killed a dozen men,  including a Reuters photographer  and his driver.  In the light of this recent  scandal, to say nothing of Abu  Ghraib, it may be difficult to  conceive how digital images can  possibly help enhance the  military's public image.  But I would draw your attention  also to the dashboard cameras  mounted on police cars these  days.  A comparison, I regard, as  particularly instructive as the  line between war and  international law enforcement  figures to fade in the years  ahead.  Initially, few officers  appreciated the cameras, which  seemed to invite unwanted  scrutiny.  But despite a few exceptional  cases, the dashboard cameras  have proven to be tremendous  assets to law enforcement  professionals who now have video  evidence to help them refute  frivolous allegations of  harassment or abuse. 

 In those instances in which the  cameras actually capture  untoward behavior by an officer,  it facilitates swift and  appropriate remediation by his  superiors, thereby helping to  preserve the faith of the  public.  Already some US troops carry  cameras on their weapons and  helmets, and it is not  inconceivable that, by 2050, you  may see the television show  "Grunts" take its place beside  its Fox forbear, Cops.  More significantly however, such  footage will provide both  accountability and transparency.  Thereby reducing the  creditability of alternative  narratives.  In Vietnam, the military learned  the dangers of providing unduly  optimistic assessments.  In Grenada it learned that it  was better to work with the  media than to keep the media at  arm's length.  And in the current conflicts,  the military is slowly learning  that there is no substitute for  the truth, told in full and as  soon as possible.  For generations, commanders have  told their subordinates bad news  doesn't get better with age.  The maxim applies to democratic  societies no less than to  infantry battalions.  And in the era of instantaneous  communications, he who tells the  truth first will win. 

 Now I'm not so naive to believe  that our government will, in the  next 40 years, develop the  unprecedented habit of telling  the truth, the whole truth and  nothing but the truth.  But I do think that it will  become much more adept at  managing the strategic narrative  through disclosure rather than  through deceit.  This is a positive trend, no  doubt, but it's also one that  may serve to diminish public  scrutiny over time.  Simultaneously, technology will  enable greater and greater  degrees of precision, thereby  reducing the incidence of bad  stories that will attract  competing narratives in the  first place.  I'm speaking primarily of  noncombatant fatalities,  especially those incurred by US  air strikes, which presently  provide opponents of US  operations the most compelling  evidence in support of their  case.  Estimates as to the number of  civilian casualties incurred in  Iraq and Afghanistan are highly  contentious, with some groups  placing the number of fatalities  in Iraq alone at over one  million.  But for the purposes of this  discussion the actual awful  number is less important than  the sad fact that most Americans  simply do not care about  civilian casualties among the  indigenous populations of other  countries.  If public tolerance for friendly  casualties is generally low,  its willingness to accept what  we euphemistically refer to as  collateral damage, is  correspondingly high.  Thus, the conservative backlash  against Stanley McChrystal's  tightening the rules of  engagement in Afghanistan in an  effort to reduce the incidence  of civilian casualties.  To some, this suggested that  McChrystal was valuing the life  of an Afghanistan civilian as  equal to or greater than that of  an American soldier or Marine, a  valuation that most Americans,  frankly, find offensive. 

 Whatever the true number of  civilian fatalities in either  theatre, it has been  insufficient to sway public  opinion which remains  overwhelming concerned with  friendly casualties.  Indeed, Americans' enthusiasm  for advanced military technology  has long been associated  with their reluctance to  shed the blood of their youth.  Given a choice, Americans would  almost always rather send a bomb  than a battalion, a missile in  the place of a man, and while  this method of warfare has  helped preserve American blood,  it has wrought a terrible toll  among enemy combatants and  civilians alike.  In the conventional battlefields  of the past, commanders  attempted to limit civilian  suffering out of strictly  humanitarian principles but  regarded collateral damage as a  regrettable, necessary cost of  achieving victory.  But in the performance of  stability operations, civilian  casualties tend to push victory,  whatever that may look like,  further and further beyond  reach.  Thus, on grounds both moral and  practical, the US military has  developed a vested interest in  minimizing civilian casualties.  Ironically, it will do so  through the advancement of the  same military technology that  has made collateral damage so  common in the first place.  This prognostication, coming at  a time when controversy over  predator drone strikes in  Pakistan is peaking, may strike  you as incongruous, but I'll beg  you to notice that the  controversy, which has as much  to do with CIA involvement as it  does with civilian casualties,  has done nothing to diminish the  practice.  To the contrary, the present  administration has intensified  drone operations over the  federally administered tribal  areas of Pakistan, and the US  aims to replace fully one-third  of its manned aircraft with  drones by 2015.  With this level of investment  and the aforementioned  imperative of minimizing  collateral damage, we can expect  future generations of UAVs to  carry precision munitions  capable of unprecedented  precision and accuracy. 

 As of the early stages of World  War II, bombers struggled to hit  the right city let alone the  target they were aiming for  within that city.  By 2050, UAV drivers will be  able to identify and kill  specific individuals while  leaving their traveling partners  unscathed.  All of this will, of course, be  recorded and selectively  released to the public to  preempt claims of innocent  civilian deaths by the  opposition.  Ultimately, savvy public affairs  and precision munitions will  further erode the currency and  urgency of the American antiwar  movement, which to this day  suffers, fairly or otherwise, by  association with the  mistreatment of the nation's  Vietnam veterans.  A future president who wishes to  flex American military muscle  will be less concerned with the  ever vigilant antiwar lobby than  with maintaining the quiescence  of an increasingly uninterested  American people at large.  And in this regard, he will  benefit tremendously from the  robotics revolutions described  so well by PW Singer.  For, in the grand scheme of  things, reduction of collateral  damage is but a happy side  effect in the continuous drive  by the US government and the US  military to replace manned  vehicles, aircraft, and vessels  with unmanned systems.  These initiatives are designed  to provide the services with  enhanced capabilities not  possible in manned platform, to  extend the operating day,  robots, mind you, don't need to  take naps, and above all to take  US service men and women out of  harm's way.  Despite a certain sentimentalism  that insists upon the  indispensable human pilot, there  are few good reasons why, by  2050, an air force fighter or an  army tank need contain any  beating hearts.  The synthetic brains in these  systems will not run on blood  but digital data. 

 Incredible amounts of data  demanding what figures to be the  Achilles heel of this high tech  fighting force, continuous  uninterrupted access to  cyberspace.  As I've already alluded, age  old problems will continue to  exist beside these novel ones.  And most defense analysts  predict that ground forces of  the future will spend a lot of  time stabilizing fragile  governments and advising their  militaries.  These will remain, as they have  been, manpower intensive efforts  that will invite American  casualties and, by extension,  increased public scrutiny.  But once again, technology, in  this case medical, will exert a  countervailing force.  Over the course of the past 200  years, advances in military  medicine have paid humble  dividends.  Even with the advent of  antibiotics and later helicopter  evacuation, the died-of-wounds  rate in America's 19th and 20th  century conflicts hovered  between 25% and 30%.  And the contemporary conflicts  in Iraq and Afghanistan, this  rate is down to 11%.  And 95% of wounded troops who  make it to aid stations will  live.  Indeed, traumatic care in the  field is now so advanced that  your chances of surviving  certain kinds of wounds are  greater in Helmut Province,  Afghanistan, than in  Door County, Wisconsin. 

 These advances in medical  technology are wonderful and  certain to continue.  But they do come at a cost, both  fiscal and moral.  The former are easier to  tabulate, at least in the short  term.  In its 2010 request for  department of defense funding,  the Obama administration has  requested $47 billion for  healthcare alone.  And projects this cost to  increase by five to seven  percent annually in the years  ahead.  Outside of the DOD budget, the  administration has requested an  additional $110 billion, a 12%  increase over the fiscal year  2009 budget.  If these figures strike you as  large, bear in mind the  relatively low number of  casualties the US has suffered  in these wars.  Presumably, the US can bear such  costs now, but will it be able  to do so when the next big  shooting war erupts, our  hypothetical war of the future.  By then, as Oscar Goldman once  said of Steve Austin, we really  will have the technology to  rebuild you.  But how many $6 million men can  the US actually afford?  In accordance with the social  contract I mentioned earlier,  there's no limit. 

 We'll spend whatever it takes to  restore our wounded warriors to  a functioning role in society.  So long as we suffer only a  handful of casualties a day,  this is all well and good.  But when the next major conflict  erupts and the US suffers tens  of thousands of seriously  wounded casualties, will it be  able to uphold its end of the  bargain?  Some technophiles will tell you  that such a conflict will never  again occur, but their  ideological forbears said much  the same thing in the past, and  we have, after all, already in  the last century fought two wars  to end all wars.  I'm not optimistic.  But perhaps we should not worry  too much about hypothetical  future casualties when we have  to worry about the very real  moral and long-term costs  associated with the casualties  from the ongoing conflicts.  As the died-of-wounds rate has  fallen, the number of seriously  wounded who survive has risen  commensurately.  Thus far, over 37,000 men and  women have been wounded in Iraq  and Afghanistan.  Many of them grievously.  And many more suffer  psychological wounds that have  yet to manifest themselves.  An estimated 10% to 20% of all  Iraq and Afghanistan vets have  suffered some sort of traumatic  brain injury. 

 And many times more, exhibit  signs of post traumatic stress  disorder syndrome.  Whereas, the more easily  comprehended and weighed number  of combat fatalities has  dwindled, the more abstruse  costs of physical and mental  wounds has grown.  The government is not unaware of  this problem.  In 2008 Congress directed  secretary of defense and the  Veterans Administration to  partner with the national  academies to assess the  long-term physical and mental  health costs associated with the  wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But their task is complicated  tremendously by the fact that  when it comes to cognitive and  psychological wounds the demand  for services and compensation  typically lags 30 years or more  beyond the cessation of  hostilities.  Certain to be astronomical, we  can not now appreciate the human  and fiscal costs of the wars in  Iraq and Afghanistan.  If American support for wars  ultimately hinges on the bottom  line of combat fatalities or  deaths, advances in military  medicine may in fact obscure the  actual costs of a conflict until  it's too late to consider these  costs in the decision to go to  war in the first place.  You will, no doubt, recall the  great hullabaloo over the  photographing of flag draped  coffins returning to Dover Air  Force Base.  One party to this debate  maintains that photographing  this solemn event is  disrespectful to the fallen and  their families.  The other camp maintains that  the public needs to witness this  spectacle in order to bring home  the awful costs of war. 

 But the enduring costs of these  conflicts are not on display at  Dover or at Arlington but at  Walter Reed and other medical  facilities providing care to the  grievously wounded.  Even antiwar activists seem to  concur that photographing these  wounded warriors is in poor  taste, and in 2006 a political  cartoon depicting a quadruple  amputee invited a firestorm of  protest.  Out of a combination of respect  for the wounded and their  families and discomfort with  confronting their broken and  sometimes grotesque bodies,  Americans are largely content to  omit the wounded from our  considerations of the cost of  wars.  Not party to the social  contract, casualties among  private defense contractors and  indigenous proxies, both  fixtures of the battlefields of  the future, do not figure into  this equation at all.  Like Goldman Sachs' toxic  assets, they and the  psychologically wounded have  been moved off of the books and  largely beyond the scrutiny of  the shareholders.  If and when the auditors come,  they will do so to write the  history of what went wrong.  It will be far too late to  consider whether their  sacrifices had been prudent in  the first place.  In conclusion then, I would  offer that we reconsider the  merits of George Marshall's  observation that democracies  cannot wage seven years wars.  To the extent that Americans  have agreed with this  assessment, they have viewed it  as a regrettable constraint that  limited the strategic operations  available to the US presidents  and policymakers.  In the wake of the Vietnam War,  however, these presidents and  policymakers seemed to have  slipped the yolk, despite  congressional efforts to rein in  the executive branch's  prerogative to wage war. 

 These efforts were ultimately  ineffective because they were  misplaced.  There was indeed a problem of  checks and balances, but it had  little to do with the US system  of government.  Far more significant was the  unbalancing of the Clausewitzian  trinity of governmental reason,  military creativity and popular  passion.  Theoretically, at least,  democracies ought not go to the  war in the absence of the last,  passion, which, by Marshall's  formulation, has a shelf life of  seven years.  But when confronted by abstract  and distant threats during the  Cold War, US presidents found it  difficult to sustain popular  passion without resorting to  fear mongering.  Thus stoking the fire, a  succession of US presidents  escalated America's involvement  in Vietnam only to face the  wrath of an American public that  came to resent that it had been  manipulated.  Afterward, the people vowed  never again, and the government  consented to popular withdrawal  from the trinity.  This was not the denouement  sought by the military, which  would have instead preferred to  only be sent to fight in wars  that were genuinely popular.  But it was a godsend for  interventionist-minded  presidents like George W Bush.  Rather than disproving  Marshall's rule, the wars in  Iraq and Afghanistan have  qualified it. 

 Democracies in which the  citizens are called upon to  contribute to the common defense  might not to be able to fight a  seven years war.  Democracies in which the people  are not required to make such  sacrifices are another matter.  This is not described, the case  in which the people are made to  bear the burden has not  described America since 1973,  and it is unlikely to describe  the United States until the next  big war comes, which, in the  interest of ending this lecture,  I project will occur in 2051.  (laughter)  (applause)