The U.S. military and the generation of neoconservative security intellectuals who dominated the Department of Defense during the six-year tenure of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were obsessed with making dramatic mega-leaps in military technology to maintain a global technological superiority. This was the "War Made New" concept, as expressed in the title of Max Boot's book on the subject.

Since Rumsfeld was evicted from office at the end of 2006, the continuing failures of his team to get any grip on the relatively small, though ferocious Sunni Muslim insurgency in central Iraq have served to somewhat discredit these theories among U.S. planners, though many military techies had already attached their reputations and future careers on such hugely expensive projects as the now-embattled Future Combat Systems program.

With the Democrats taking over the executive branch of the U.S. government, the emphasis is changing to a so-called holistic approach in which diplomatic and social initiatives take center stage. This is welcome as far as it goes. But the fact remains that liberal defense intellectuals in the United States, as much as conservative ones, do not want to consider greatly increasing the combat strength of the U.S. armed forces. And they all refuse to acknowledge that for sustained counterinsurgency campaigns and any long-term effective border defense, large numbers of standing troops relative to the total population and area of territory being defended remain essential.

Even the military intellectuals who advance the Fourth Generation theory of warfare are reluctant to emphasize the importance of putting on the ground large numbers of troops and police armed primarily with light weapons. This kind of "solution" is not remotely "original," "elegant" or intellectually exciting or challenging. It is also costly and it is very unpopular for the United States and major Western European or Northeast Asian democratic nations because it would require soaking up a disproportionate number of soldiers -- as the United States found in Iraq -- from small-size military establishments.

Nevertheless, Russia eventually won its long conflict in Chechnya, Israel defeated the very formidable Second Palestinian intifada, Britain effectively won its long 30-year war with the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, and Saudi Arabia defeated a serious challenge from al-Qaida in the first half of this decade precisely by doing just that.

All these governments deployed exceptionally large numbers of troops and other security forces to provide more effective protection to their population, and to lock down key regions and cities right after any terrorist attack took place.

Gen. David Petraeus, the outstanding U.S. general specializing in counterinsurgency war in recent times, used the same technique, even though he had far more limited resources to work with, to make his "surge" strategy work in Baghdad and Central Iraq over the past two years.

The major democracies of North America and Western Europe look likely to face increasing threats over the next decade from domestically generated insurgencies and terror campaigns. They are going to find, as the Indians, the Israelis, the Russians, the Saudis and the British have before them, that there is no substitute for having lots of troops on the ground armed with cheap and simple weapons. When it comes to providing basic security for threatened areas and populations, there really are no short cuts.

Part 7: The flexibility that large ground forces supply

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