Are We Promoting Our Grand Strategy?

This post is less an attempt at proposing a position than at provoking discussion. Militarily the United States has an enormous amount on its plate. We continue to have more than 130,000 troops in Iraq. In accordance with the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration with the Maliki government, that number will decline until all U. S. forces depart Iraq no later than the end of December, 2011.

In addition we have 36,000 soldiers in Afghanistan. If Gen. McChrystal’s request for additional troops is satisfied, that number will double.

That’s really just a small part of the complete picture. We have hundreds of military bases in dozens of countries around the world. A good point of departure for determining where U. S. forces are and how many are deployed is here. Our bases range in size from the mammoth bases in Germany, Okinawa, and Korea, each with tens of thousands of U. S. military personnel, to small facilities like the one we keep in Peru with a relative handful of U. S. personnel.

Altogether this provides the United States with an ability to project force unparalleled in human history. Our military spending is commensurate with that and by nearly any reckoning we spend more on our military than any other country. Indeed, our spending exceeds that of the next fourteen largest spenders by a considerable margin, 41.5% of all military spending.

Whether we should be spending that much or will continue to spend that much is a matter of lively, sometimes bitter, discussion. Although I think its a reasonable subject for discussion, that’s not the question I’d like to raise here. My hydra-headed question is does our degree and manner of projection of force promote our grand strategy?

The obvious purpose of our military is to defend our country. Americans differ on just what that means. Some Americans believe fervently in defending our country if we’re attacked but they limit their support of the projection of force to just that. I won’t mince words: I think that’s foolishly limited. If there is one lesson we should have learned over the last 150 years of our history, it’s that we don’t want to fight a war within our own borders and in my view construing defense so narrowly that it’s limited to defending ourselves when we are attacked at home makes that prospect more likely rather than less. That does mean that we must remain willing to fight our wars in our people’s countries.

Other Americans believe in a much more expansive of defense, a view in which nation-building and the promotion of democracy including with the use of force is seen as part and parcel of our national defense. I see Gen. McChrystal’s emphasis on counter-insurgency and nation-building in Afghanistan as the latest manifestation of that view.

I’m equally skeptical of that view. I believe that it seriously underestimates the difficulty of the task and overestimates the patience of the American people in supporting it. I also think that our very ability to project force uniquely disqualifies us for the task of nation-building. Our power alone will cause other people to be suspicious of us and our motives.

I’d like to see both the military and civil arms of our foreign policy aligned towards advancing the neoliberal agenda we’ve pursued since the end of World War II. In my view our grand strategy should promote free trade, the free flow of capital, and the free flow of information and we should de-emphasize military force in our relations with other countries. Just as our navy promotes the freedom of shipping traffic on the seas, our State Department should continue to negotiate bilateral free trade agreements. In my view, too, some arm of the federal government whether military or civil needs to take the free flow of information on the Internet much more seriously than we currently seem to.

I think we should maintain our navy as consistent with those objectives and reduce the size of our army and air force.

In dealing with the challenges immediately at hand, I’d like to see us withdraw our forces from Iraq faster than we’re doing now and, if possible, negotiate some sort of lasting military commitment to the country on our part. I’d like to see us take a view of Afghanistan more along the lines of Rory Stewart’s, an approach with both military and civil aspects but which requires our taking a longer view.

Rather than continue this meandering post, I’m going to stop here. I welcome your comments and your views on whether we are successfully promoting our grand strategy and just what that strategy should be.

16 comments… add one
  • steve Link

    I think we actually have about 63k troops in Afghanistan at about $6 billion a month. Another 40k will raise that to $10 billion per month. That is for a force probably not big enough for real COIN. I think the economics have got to hit home soon. Corn had a nice piece on that…

    http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/312-corn.pdf

    As to your larger issue, I think I am probably in agreement if I understand your POV. Give that Russia is not a real threat other than its nukes, we should greatly decrease our presence there. While Europe has some allies, it is an economic competitor. They should pay for their own defense. South Korea makes many times more the N. Korea. There is no reason why they cannot pay for their own protection and man their own military.

    Beyond that, maintaining the Navy is key as there is no credible threat to us that would not have to cross an ocean to fight us here. This means we need more shallow water capability as we do face problems within our own hemisphere of an asymmetrical nature. The troops that we reclaim form Europe and Korea (Japan should mostly be a staging base) should be partially cut but probably half should be shunted into highly mobile small wars units. While we do not face any existential threats, our open borders insure future attacks by small groups. This will probably best be handled by small unit responses rather than invasions.

    Lastly, I think we should start discussions with the international community about the appropriate response to attacks from small groups given sanctuary within a country. We need international agreement that under those conditions that country cannot claim sovereignty if it has provided a home for the attackers. Further, if a large scale attack is needed to rout out such a group, the invading country should no longer have to rebuild the offender. Go in, get the bad guys, leave.

    Steve

  • I do think it’s time to think seriously about this. We’re still coasting on lessons learned in WW2 and the Cold War (and its hotter episodes in Korea and Vietnam.)

    We and our allies are so completely dominant that there exists no nation, or realistic combination of nations, who can challenge us militarily except within their own borders.

    I think the problem with the more activist point of view — one that I’ve generally endorsed — is not that we lack the capacity, or even all the aspects of will. I think we lack a particular component of will: ruthlessness. Situations that might be resolved by a year or two of ruthless application of force are now turned into futile, long-range nation-building projects. The days when we would burn or nuke entire Japanese cities full of civilians in order to minimize our own losses are over.

    It’s hard to say that’s a bad thing. But it changes the equation.

    We could decimate the mountain tribes of Afghanistan. We have the power to slaughter them, destroy their villages, drive them into refugee camps or across the border. We choose not to do this, we choose not to be ruthless, so we are left with decades-long commitments, wars not of attrition but of patience.

    How do you out-wait a person who is in his own ancestral home? How do you change the culture of a people that is not only pre-modern but medieval? The days of Ilium and Carthage and Hiroshima seem to be over, for now at least. Time to adjust to the limits we seem to have decided to impose on ourselves.

  • One of the issues I didn’t manage to work into my post was one of the issues I think most needs discussing: what’s the disposition of ungoverned territories? That’s the way I see what actually happened on 9/11: an NGO mounted an attack on us using ungoverned territories as a base of operations. They’re still hiding out in ungoverned territories, using a nominal state as cover.

  • Brett Link

    I won’t mince words: I think that’s foolishly limited. If there is one lesson we should have learned over the last 150 years of our history, it’s that we don’t want to fight a war within our own borders and in my view construing defense so narrowly that it’s limited to defending ourselves when we are attacked at home makes that prospect more likely rather than less.

    It depends. There’s no real threat of a Great Power war that might draw us in or cut us off from major trading partners (as in World War 2), or ideological threat that might undermine national security and home and isolate the United States (as in the Cold War). The main actual threats to the territory seem to come from unconventional assaults, and those aren’t necessarily a matter of the military.

    I’m equally skeptical of that view. I believe that it seriously underestimates the difficulty of the task and overestimates the patience of the American people in supporting it. I also think that our very ability to project force uniquely disqualifies us for the task of nation-building. Our power alone will cause other people to be suspicious of us and our motives.

    I agree. I think we could take a few notes from the Chinese in most of their dealings, who seem to focus on getting the best economic deals with various countries while working with whatever government happens to be in power.

    In my view our grand strategy should promote free trade, the free flow of capital, and the free flow of information and we should de-emphasize military force in our relations with other countries. Just as our navy promotes the freedom of shipping traffic on the seas, our State Department should continue to negotiate bilateral free trade agreements. In my view, too, some arm of the federal government whether military or civil needs to take the free flow of information on the Internet much more seriously than we currently seem to.

    These are the same goals I think should be at the core of US policy, and that arguably were for most of US history. If you look back to American foreign policy near the beginning of our country, a big part of it was being able to trade freely without interference from other powers.

    I think we should maintain our navy as consistent with those objectives and reduce the size of our army and air force.

    If it’s that, I might reduce the US Navy by one or two carrier groups, down to mainly serving as a platform for projecting a certain degree of force and air power (like if we were called upon to help South Korea deal with a North Korean assault, or to protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion), and for keeping the seas open. I probably wouldn’t shrink the Navy a lot, though – the Navy has played a major role (and often the dominant role) in American security for centuries.

    As for the Air Force, you could probably shift it back towards more of a “strategic bomber” role to serve as a mechanism for the US nuclear deterrent (although keeping a certain number of fighters for homeland defense, as well as some in certain strategic air fields like in Europe and Southeast Asia), while drastically increasing the size and scope of Naval Aviation. It all depends on how many air bases you keep in operation overseas – if it’s few to none, then you could do the above, since the carrier groups would be your main method of projecting force anyways.

    I agree with the “shrinking the Army” bit. I’m not sure what you would do with the Marines – I’d probably keep them around as a kind of “rapid-reaction/leg-breaker/rescue” force in case we needed to get a certain number of troops somewhere really quickly without a long-term commitment. You’d probably also have to keep an amphibious component active in case we ever got into a situation where we had few bases to deploy and had to seize territory (like in the Korean War).

    In dealing with the challenges immediately at hand, I’d like to see us withdraw our forces from Iraq faster than we’re doing now and, if possible, negotiate some sort of lasting military commitment to the country on our part.

    We could probably take a combination of aid/logistical support, giving them a small degree of monetary aid and selling them weapons.

    While Europe has some allies, it is an economic competitor. They should pay for their own defense.

    Agreed. In fact, I think the US could play a possible role in encouraging a move towards a “European” military force in terms of guaranteeing EU security. That would hopefully take some of the cost off us. At the same time, we could probably downgrade our protection to that of “nuclear shield”, meaning that we’d nuke a country back if they nuked Europe, or launched a major conventional invasion.

    Further, if a large scale attack is needed to rout out such a group, the invading country should no longer have to rebuild the offender. Go in, get the bad guys, leave.

    That seems unlikely to happen. Aside from the whole “humanitarian” issue (as in people screaming “You just flew in and blew up their country, and then left it in chaos – what type of monster are you?”), this would touch on some very sensitive issues of national sovereignty.

    That’s the way I see what actually happened on 9/11: an NGO mounted an attack on us using ungoverned territories as a base of operations.

    That’s a real bear. For obvious reasons, we can’t invade every potential messed-up country that might be housing international terrorists – and that’s on top of the dispersion of the decision-making process (a significant part of the actual attacks were plotted in Hamburg, Germany within the terrorist cell).

    I’m curious as to what the European perspective is on this, particularly that of Great Britain and Spain. Both have had to deal with terrorist attacks and occasional bombings from groups trying to pressure them (the ETA in Spain, and the IRA plus other groups in the UK) over a long period of time.

  • Brett Link

    To add one more thing-

    I think it’s important to recognize that we can’t just mass-produce tons of equipment in the way that we did in World War 2 anymore. Nowadays, most military hardware comes from specialized production lines with a massive variety of complex components (particularly electronics), and it takes a long time to get those lines in production to meet our needs (that’s why it took so long to produce the Strykers and armored humvees to protect against IEDs).

    What this means is that if you want to be an actual producer of your own military equipment, then you need specialized industries producing the stuff, and a military that uses it. At the very least, the US should probably keep stockpiles of equipment that are periodically updated in case we find ourselves in World War III.

  • PD Shaw Link

    I don’t think we can have a grand strategy that doesn’t touch on the various schools of foreign policy thought that Mead discussed. In particular, I think you dismiss the Wilsonian wing too easily. A solely commercial foreign policy would limit the U.S., which can’t “out-China” China through increased flow of commercial goods. Particularly in the Middle East, there are few products outside of the energy sector, in which freer trade would result in foreign policy benefits to the United States. In particular, if we want to continue operating militarily in Afghanistan, I think we need to continue pushing the Afghan government in a liberal direction to maintain legitimacy in the country and at home.

    The Wilsonian position needs to take account of realities, which are that human rights advances they prefer are privileges of strong states. You have to deal with the unsavory compromises of increasing the strength of the state first, preferably through assisting liberal elites. I don’t think you can be concerned about ungoverned territory without addressing the issues of governance which are Wilsonian concerns. (Unless of course, you wish to increase the ungoverned status by complete disregard of sovereignty)

  • Brett Link

    A solely commercial foreign policy would limit the U.S., which can’t “out-China” China through increased flow of commercial goods.

    Why not? We have immense trade volumes with the rest of the world. We could focus our foreign policy around trying to maximize US economic possibilities abroad, and in terms of keeping free trade open. That might require a degree of callousness on our part (we’d have to deal with governments that we don’t particularly like from a moral stand-point), but it’d be cheaper, and certainly no one could accuse us of meddling (plus we’d be less likely to get involved in stupid foreign policy “crusades”).

    Particularly in the Middle East, there are few products outside of the energy sector, in which freer trade would result in foreign policy benefits to the United States.

    You sure about that? It’s a growing market, with plenty of people who could potentially buy American goods (and, of course, there’s always military hardware, which every government and their dog usually wants to buy).

    You have to deal with the unsavory compromises of increasing the strength of the state first, preferably through assisting liberal elites.

    You want Wilsonianism to deal with state-building and formation like Realism? That sounds unlikely. As for elites, “liberal” is a point of view, and I’m curious as to what you define as “liberal elites” (are the corrupt government officials in Kabul “liberal elites”?).

  • I don’t see it as dismissing the Wilsonians so much as compartmentalizing them. I have no problem with optimistic idealistic objectives. I question whether they should be implemented by the military.

    I would rather see NGO’s as the primary outlet for optimistic idealistic energies as they have been historically and I would like to see Defense and State with a formal policy in relating to them.

    I should confess that I don’t have a Wilsonian bone in my body. We pessimistic idealists tend to be more compatible with pessimistic realists (Jacksonians) than with Wilsonians.

  • PD Shaw Link

    Brett:

    1. I am merely suggesting that the Middle East, which is roughly on the opposite of the world, is not going to have a lot of products for which the United States is a natural market and vice versa. Using trade and commerce to effect change in this region is going to be stymied by the reality that the natural trade patterns are more likely to go to places like China and India, which doesn’t provide much opportunity for the U.S. to influence events. Perhaps I’m arguing that the United State can project military might to obscure points on the globe, but maybe not more subtle forms of influence.

    2. I see Wilsonianism as primarily concerned with issues of governance. This can be through international organizations — Wilson thought that international organizations formed along democratic principles would naturally strengthen the United States hand over other internally non-democratic countries. It can be through violence — Wilson saying that the U.S. would invade Mexico until they elected good leaders. I’ve not read Mead’s book, so I may be getting the accepted definition of Wilsonianism wrong, but my view of this strain of thought is that it is one in which sees foreign governance as responsible for many conflicts and moving foreign governments towards more enlightened forms would not merely be altruistic, but in the material best interests of the United States. I disagree with the notion that Wilsonians are entirely unrealistic; otherwise, we would have invaded Saudi Arabia after 9/11.

    I believe even autocratic/monarchal rulers can be “liberalizing.” I suspect Karzai is about as liberal as we can expect from Afghanistan. The main issue is that the state is weak and traditionally has relied upon compensatory measures to get obedience from the periphery or other interests groups.

  • For a quick sketch of how Mead uses the terms Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, Hamiltonian, Wilsonian see here. Basically, in his taxonomy Wilsonians are optimistic idealists, historically springing from the missionary tradition.

  • Brett Link

    I would rather see NGO’s as the primary outlet for optimistic idealistic energies as they have been historically and I would like to see Defense and State with a formal policy in relating to them.

    Same here. I think the State Department ought to offer additional funding to NGO or coalitions of them, provided that their programs have specific goals and plans to achieve them (AIDS and vaccination programs are a good example of that). I might also have the shrunken Marines do training in protection of and distribution of emergency aid – that really came in handy after the 2004 Tsunami, and it’s basically humanitarian goodwill and support for little cost.

    I should confess that I don’t have a Wilsonian bone in my body. We pessimistic idealists tend to be more compatible with pessimistic realists (Jacksonians) than with Wilsonians.

    Me neither. While I have some humanitarian tendencies (I think it helps the US to be seen funding some humanitarian efforts, provided they are effective, and it builds up good will), by and large I’m pretty pessimistic and skeptical of the Wilsonians’ idealism about international law (which I see as a series of bilateral agreements based on tit-for-tat), global governance, etc.

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