America's traditional means of projecting power abroad is growing "increasingly obsolete" and its billion-dollar military hardware could be as ineffectual against future threats as the heavily fortified Maginot line was in defending France against the Nazis, a senior Pentagon adviser has warned.
In a wake-up call to US military chiefs, Andrew Krepinevich, a leading architect of the counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, argues that the Pentagon is ill-equipped to counter rising powers such as China, hostile states such as Iran, the threat from irregular forces such as Hezbollah, and terrorists such as Al-Qaeda. It is also wasting billions on weaponry that could be outdated before it rolls off the production line.
In an interview, Krepinevich said the military, like many bureaucracies, was in danger of "drinking its own bathwater" and discounting new challenges, including the proliferation of precision-guided weapons and threats from space and cyberspace. Last week Robert Gates, the defence secretary, rewarded him for his prescience with a seat on the influential defence policy board at the Pentagon.
Aircraft carriers, navy destroyers, short-range fighter aircraft and forward bases such as Guam and Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean are becoming increasingly vulnerable to technology and tactics being developed by America's rivals, Krepinevich argues in the July issue of Foreign Affairs...
More at The Times.
The Pentagon's Wasting Assets - Andrew Krepinevich Jr., Foreign Affairs.
The military foundations of the United States' global dominance are eroding. For the past several decades, an overwhelming advantage in technology and resources has given the US military an unmatched ability to project power worldwide. This has allowed it to guarantee US access to the global commons, assure the safety of the homeland, and underwrite security commitments around the globe. US grand strategy assumes that such advantages will continue indefinitely. In fact, they are already starting to disappear.
Several events in recent years have demonstrated that traditional means and methods of projecting power and accessing the global commons are growing increasingly obsolete -- becoming "wasting assets," in the language of defense strategists. The diffusion of advanced military technologies, combined with the continued rise of new powers, such as China, and hostile states, such as Iran, will make it progressively more expensive in blood and treasure - perhaps prohibitively expensive - for US forces to carry out their missions in areas of vital interest, including East Asia and the Persian Gulf. Military forces that do deploy successfully will find it increasingly difficult to defend what they have been sent to protect. Meanwhile, the US military's long-unfettered access to the global commons - including space and cyberspace - is being increasingly challenged.
Recently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates argued in these pages for a more "balanced" US military, one that is better suited for the types of irregular conflicts now being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, he also cautioned, "It would be irresponsible not to think about and prepare for the future." Despite this admonition, US policymakers are discounting real future threats, thereby increasing the prospect of strategic surprises. What is needed is nothing short of a fundamental strategic review of the United States' position in the world - one similar in depth and scope to those undertaken in the early days of the Cold War...
More at Foreign Affairs.
Obama's Strategic Blind Spot - Andrew Bacevich, Los Angeles Times opinion.
'Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders?" During the bitter winter of 1914-15, the first lord of the Admiralty posed this urgent question to Britain's prime minister.
The eighth anniversary of 9/11, now fast approaching, invites attention to a similar question: Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to choke on the dust of Iraq and Afghanistan?
A comparable failure of imagination besets present-day Washington. The Long War launched by George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11 has not gone well. Everyone understands that. Yet in the face of disappointment, what passes for advanced thinking recalls the Churchill who devised Gallipoli and godfathered the tank: In Washington and in the field, a preoccupation with tactics and operations have induced strategic blindness.
As President Obama shifts the main US military effort from Iraq to Afghanistan, and as his commanders embrace counterinsurgency as the new American way of war, the big questions go not only unanswered but unasked. Does perpetuating the Long War make political or strategic sense? As we prepare to enter that war's ninth year, are there no alternatives?
More at The Los Angeles Times.
US Armed Forces Stretched Thin - Richard Halloran, Washington Times opinion.
Today, US forces are smaller and stretched even further around the world. The US base at Bagram, Afghanistan, for instance, is halfway around the world from the center of the 48 contiguous states near Lebanon, Kan. On any given day, about one-third of the armed forces are deployed abroad.
Moreover, on Independence Day, America's military stretch was aggravated by national political and economic turmoil. In its 233rd year, it would seem the nation is badly in need of retrenchment - not a retreat into the isolation of yesteryear, but a step back to take a deep breath, reflect a bit and sort out priorities...
In foreign policy, priorities really need sorting out. Precedence should go to long-neglected relations with Canada and Mexico and, by extension, Central America. With 5,000 miles of undefended Northern and Southern borders, the United States must have friends across those borders.
Beyond that, the United States should give priority to alliances with Britain, Australia and Japan, the island nations off the Eurasian land mass. India, the subcontinent cut off from Eurasia by mountains, desert and jungle, is a likely candidate to be added to that group. Israel, with which the U.S. has long had special ties, rates high priority.
More at The Washington Times.
Comments
Andrew Krepinevich is one of the smarter strategic thinkers around. You can quibble about some of the threats or scenarios he has chosen, but the underlying logic is sound. Strategy and policy need to connect means and available resources. This is more of an art than a science. One of his central points is that we should be constantly searching for comparative advantage and seek to exploit that advantage. We should also recognize where the foe has an advantage and seek to negate that advantage.
His point on G-RAMM is valid. As his Foreign Affairs article states, our near monopoly on guided weapons will unavoidably be lost. We need to understand and prepare for the consequences of this eventuality. Planning is a continuous process and does not stop at the end of the QDR. If you have not thought through the challenge and developed CONOPS for dealing with it, you will undoubtedly be caught flat footed.
There is always going to be a tension between providing for todays forces as they fight todays wars while building the next military. You have to do both. The emphasis and balance may change base don available resources, but neither can be ignored. This issue is particularly acute with US ground forces. The Secretarys cancelling of the ground based component of FCS is an exemplar of this tension (also an example of poor acquisition practices).
A comment on allies. Due to the nature of the challenges we face we need more of them. The problem is that few seem willing to answer our call. Current ops are man-power intensive, and our traditional allies are not likely to do more here. Demographic trends are not in our favor. Perhaps it is time to seriously relook at our relationships with countries like Turkey, India and Indonesia. The have manpower.
Alliances should be the modus operandi of US policy but unfortunately we do not realize we must drain the pool to get rid of the alligators first. Too many US politicians believe that fear should be the tool to intimidate countries to do bidding they may not want to do and that is no longer a factor! Now everybody and their neighbour has weapons of some sort, or, they rely on weak borders to sow discord and no one bats any eye!
Now even the positioning of US troops in Iran and Afghanistan is dangerous with no backup from anywhere and potential allies of the past refusing to partner with US based on past behaviours.
It is policy from the past that got us where we are today so it is better to back track and see where we messed up and correct said mistakes. No amount of space age weaponry can do that if we fail to separate the forest from the trees.
My comment is based upon the Times interview. I was not able to access the FA article.
If you were to look at the past 60 years of American history the fact that aircraft carriers can be sunk in all sorts of ways, forward bases are vulnerable, ships defenses can be swamped, daily volleys of missiles can make life hell for the people, amphibious assaults are hard and if you want them to succeed you had better have a lot of power, your communications can be disrupted etc.; all these things are a real shock. If you were to look at only the past 60 years.
If you were to look back 70 years, these things don't seem so shocking. They seem normal, obvious even. I always find it curious that these things that were taken for granted in 1945 are sometimes viewed as alarming new developments. Alarming they may be but they aren't new.
Maybe one remedy is just as old fashioned, plan for losses and have a production line going.