In Tough Choices: Sustaining Amphibious Capabilities' Contributions to Strategic Shaping, a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Maren Leed and Benjamin Moody analyze the value amphibious operations currently make to America's "strategic shaping" strategy. As the debate over the EFV showed, amphibious capabilities are expensive and compete with other defense priorities. In their report, Leed and Moody assert that calculations that look for savings in the amphibious budget should take into account the cost it would take other substitute forces to perform the strategic shaping or "Phase Zero" missions currently performed by U.S. amphibious forces and the risk assumed by no longer performing those shaping missions.
Resources for the Leed-Moody report included numerous interviews with a variety of military officers and diplomats, along with examinations of unit records, post-deployments briefs, and command histories. In the preparation of the report, the authors assessed the importance and impact by geographical region of various shaping activities (humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, partnership activities, and regional assurance and deterrence operations). Similarly compared were the regional importance of the various attributes of amphibious capabilities (breadth, visibility, responsiveness, scalability, persistence, mobility, etc.).
Leed and Moody recommend that decision-makers in the Pentagon adopt an opportunity cost model when contemplating force structure reductions. In addition to standard cost and risk considerations, such a model would also consider the costs shifted to other capabilities by a force structure decision and the risks assumed from foregoing strategic shaping activities.
In addition, listen to this 6:38 audio summary of the report delivered by Maren Leed.
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Comments
My initial reaction to 'strategic shaping' was to put my fingers down my throat "...oh great, yet another buzzword..." but...on reflection...perhaps it is the noun that goes with the verb 'countering irregular activity' i.e. we conduct strategic shaping to counter irregular activity in order to prevent war/conflict...?
I know that 'countering irregular activity' as a doctrinal term hasn't really got much traction in the US - so far - but it is broader than the 'countering irregular threats' that the USMC was using around 2006-7 and from which it is derived. The concept is that by countering those activities (for irregular perhaps also read destablising) that negatively affect the stability of a area of interest and in which may lie the seeds of conflict, we can head off many conflicts before they actually erupt. Many of the tools employed in C-IA (an unfortunate acronym, I know) are by definition not military in nature, or where they are are being employed in a non-warlike manner and include those that Mr Haddick lists in his post above...
All off-topic from putting a value on an amphib capability...sorry...I'll now return you to the normal service while I read the full report.
Carl, I guess I should have defined "strategic shaping" up front. According to the report, it refers to non-combat activities designed to prevent war through deterrence, relationship-building, training partner forces, by responding to crises and disasters, etc.
I wonder how many books there are about Nelson, Nimitz, and Cochrane that focus only on their "strategic shaping activities" and not on their combat campaigns. If there are any, there might be period definitions of the term in them.