It is inevitable that observers will have their gripes with a few parts of JOE. Here are mine:
1) JOE's discussion of the U.S. government's disastrous budget trends is spot-on and I would not change a word of it. The discussion of global trade and financial imbalances is, however, off the mark and could have been much more useful, especially as they relate to emerging international tensions.
JOE says,"Furthermore, chronic trade and currency exchange imbalances in the global economic system (see graphic below) have exacerbated both U.S. current account deficits and overall government indebtedness such that the amount of U.S. government debt held by foreigners has grown from 1.3 trillion to 3.5 trillion dollars representing some 40% of total U.S. debt. Large exporting nations accept U.S. dollars for their goods and use them both to build foreign exchange reserves and to purchase U.S. treasuries (which then finance ongoing U.S. federal operations)." JOE implies that because U.S. households consume too much (like the federal budget deficit, evidence of a moral failing), mountains of U.S. dollars, in the form of U.S. Treasuries, have thus ended up in the hands of the Chinese government and others around the world.
This makes for a good morality tale. But JOE gets the economics on this point mostly wrong and in doing so misses the real security issue. The actual direction of causation is in the opposite direction to what JOE implies. Following a path proven over many decades by its Asian neighbors, China has grown its economy through export promotion. A key to promoting its exports has been to keep the yuan-dollar exchange rate low, which makes Chinese products cheap for U.S. consumers. It does this by printing yuan and buying dollars, investing the proceeds in U.S. Treasuries. This is the same economic strategy nearly all Asian economies have used since the 1950s to gain access to the U.S. market. Thus the buildup of Chinese (and others) foreign exchange reserves is a partial cause, and not a consequence, of U.S. trade deficits.
What should JOE have said instead about global capital flows? Something like, "National governments that use exchange rate manipulation strategies to promote their exports can create large and destabilizing imbalances in the global financial system. These imbalances, the result of explicit policy decisions, can have harmful secondary effects in interest rate and equity markets, exacerbating boom and bust cycles. In addition they can disrupt labor markets, creating social tensions which could heighten trade and diplomatic tensions between countries." There is the straight line between economics and international political friction JOE should have discussed.
2) JOE said (p. 40), "In the year 2000, the PLA had more students in America's graduate schools than the U.S. military, giving the Chinese a growing understanding of America and its military." Citation please?
3) In its discussion of China (pp. 39-42), JOE spends much space discussing China's possible intentions. This is important and worth discussing. But why is there almost no space given to discussing trends in China's military capabilities? It would have been useful for a JOE written in 1995 or 2000 to discuss the trends in China's short and medium range ballistic missiles and tactical aircraft. As a result of those trends, Taiwan may no longer be able to defend its airspace, meaning that it may now have to switch to an irregular warfare defense. Similarly, try to imagine a British Admiralty JOE written in 1890 or 1900 that avoided discussing trends in German warship construction. One would wonder what the purpose of the document was.
4) Finally, I believe JFCOM should have used Part V to more aggressively promote the concept of experimentation. JOE does mention experimentation in the Concluding Thoughts (p 72). But a major theme of JOE is to expose the shortcomings of forecasting and to address the need for more effective adaptation. One of the best ways to hedge forecasting risk and to enhance adaptation is to expand the use of experimentation. Experimentation is a major focus of JFCOM. JOE was an opportunity to highlight this aspect of JFCOM's mission and to explain how the government could make greater use of experimentation to cope with an uncertain future. JOE missed this opportunity.
In sum, JOE is a worthy survey of global trends. I think it bypasses a few sensitive issues and misses a chance to promote experimentation. But it is well worth reading.
Comments
Part I of "understanding the current and developing environment" was to acknowledge the on-going general trend of great power cooperation, interdependency and peace.
Part II of this critique served (1) to describe what is needed to ensure that this paradigm continued (China, Russia and India must be successful in their capitalist/market experiments), (2) to explain why this was necessary (to ensure that these great and rising powers did not fail or revert back to deviant state status) and (3) to announce, in general terms, what this actually entailed (providing for China, Russia and India's success becomes the burden of the world).
In Part III today, we can begin to address how this effects our military forces.
The military forces of the United States and our allies -- in combination with the other instruments of power of these nations -- have been, and will be, employed to help adapt and transform "the rest of the world" (primary the more problematic and "difficult" regions) such that they might better be able to accommodate and service the needs of the great and rising powers.
On this mission (being able to adapt and transform "the rest of the world," such that it might better be able to meet the needs of the great and rising powers), is thought to rest (1) the continuation of the current great power peace and (2) the continued improvements being made in other areas of the world through globalization.
As I have noted above, the first and most important consideration in viewing the new Joint Operating Environment is to note the current trend of great power interdependency, cooperation and peace.
The second most important consideration re: the JOE, is to understand the central problem with this new paradigm.
By essentially betting the fate of their nations (and by extension, the lives and well-being of the citizens of the world?) on capitalism and market economies, the (nuclear-armed) great powers of China, Russia and India have become (1) our primary burden and (2) the primary burden of the rest of the world.
Essentially, our principal task -- and the primary task of the rest of the world today -- is to make sure that China, Russia and India succeed in the new capitalist/market experiments.
Why?
Because lacking this (success), then we might expect to see these nations slip back into communism -- or something much, much worse -- to wit: "failed" great power states, with massive amounts of "loose" WMD.
Thus, the "stakes" re: the New World/New International Order.
In consideration of Robert C. Jones' challenge -- to try to understand the current and emerging environment -- and to develop new approaches accordingly,
Should we consider these important facts:
a. Today there would appear to be no imminently dangerous and threatening great power rivalry as in the past.
b. Indeed, no great power is likely to be able to challenge the United States in the first third of the 21st Century.
c. The trend today is for all the great powers to often work together to achieve common purposes.
d. For example: Today there are no great powers actively supporting the current insurgencies; all the great powers appear to be working together to defeat these enemies. This would seem to be a matter of great significance.
e. The political objectives of the United States seem to have changed also -- from trying to "contain" a dangerous rival in the latter half of the 21st Century -- to, today, working hard to accommodate and provide for the needs of its former great power enemies.
Should this rather unique, important and rare context (to wit: great power peace), be what we should be focusing on -- and viewing as a central guidepost (with appropriate hedging, of course) -- for looking at the way forward?
An overall goal and objective being: to preserve, build-upon and profit from the current great power peace.
Wilf and Robert, points well taken but beyond what you've noted Robert that no one else in the US government will do this sort of thinking and produce serious documents like this, I think we should realize that no one else is going to, perhaps for the foreseeable future. Much of the rest of our government simply is not serious, and this is largely because the class of people they are drawn from, aren't serious.
I think this bodes ill for the country in the long run, but what else is there to do?
Does anyone really believe that China is going to let its economy be destroyed by declaring war on us? Most likely, all of its trading with Canada and Western Europe would stop as soon as it declared war on the U.S., so even if those nations did not join us in a fight against China, the Chinese economy would certainly fail it depends on the rest of the world to consume.
Likewise, will the U.S. declare war on China?
If you answered yes to either question, please explain.
Even during the Cold War, you could fly a direct flight on an airliner from the U.S. to Moscow without any problem. Today, you can do the same to Beijing, even from Taipei. Yet you can not fly from the U.S. to Pyongyang or Tehran direct. That should give you a hint who we should be concerned about.
I think the greatest threat China poses is that it could displace us as an economic powerhouse and arms seller to the rest of the world...
The Chinese want to make money. And they aren't going to make money if they start a world war with some of their biggest trading partners.
WILF raises a fair point, not one I completely agree with, but a fair point all the same.
The military is indeed filling a vacuum of policy to ceate a basis for planning and force development. Sort of a grand strategic level set of assumptions required in the absense of facts to move forward with planning.
The irony is that it is quite arguably an outdated family of policies that contributed to the US's current degree of involvement in the violent instability emanating from the Middle East; yet we have the policy and diplomacy types so busy developing capabilities to engage the symptoms of those short-comings(PRTs, COIN, CT, etc) that they are largely ignoring the much larger and more important project of understanding the current and emerging global environment and developing new approaches that are more relevant to 2010 rather than 1955.
So why is USJFCOM producing this? Becuase it is needed.
I too, however, would like to see DoD get out of the lead for US foreign policy. No good can come from that over the long run.