An earlier post had suggested that the outlines of an Obama doctrine — of “persistent engagement” — are emerging. The following  Ares report, lending weight to the observation that “war” is now to be called “engagement” and the sense of extended duration is to be described as “persistent” or “consistent”, is relevant to this discussion:

Taking the Bite Out of “Era of Persistent Conflict”
Posted by Paul McLeary at 6/2/2009

In counterinsurgency, and in the attendant fight for public perception, words matter. So it’s surprising that for the past several years, plenty of people both inside and outside of the military have been tossing out the phrase “era of persistent conflict” to describe the complex mix of military/counterinsurgency/humanitarian/capacity building operations that they envision the United States will be conducting in over the next several decades.

The term, however, always struck me as a little too “kinetic” for what military and civilian agencies will actually be doing on the ground in the majority of cases: providing economic assistance, training police and military units, providing health services, paving roads, etc. This isn’t to say that there won’t be combat—American troops will be fighting, and dying, in Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come—but to make it all about “persistent conflict,” which sounds more like an issue with pestilence than anything else, while failing to take note of things like inoculation and veterinary services just doesn’t do the job of fully capturing the range of things we’re now calling Overseas Contingency Operations.

That’s why a simple two-word phrase that the Joint Forces Command’s Gen. James Mattis uttered yesterday is so important. During a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mattis chucked the old term and instead described an era of “consistent engagement” rather than “persistent conflict.” In fact, putting the two side by side makes the latter sound even more tone-deaf than it already does, doesn’t it? While the change in wording changes absolutely nothing operationally, it takes some of the at-the-point-of-a-gun attitude out of the “era of persistent conflict” and implicitly gives more weight to the importance of the advisory and assistance missions that the United States and its allies will perform in the upcoming years. The word “engagement” hardly precludes combat, but it also brings into the fold activities that will hopefully make combat, at certain times and in certain places, unnecessary.