At RealClearWorld Phillip Orchard of Geopolitical Futures outlines U. S. military strategy as delineated by the latest National Defense Strategy report:
The Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy articulated a profound shift in U.S. strategy, but one that has long been underway: Great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.
According to the NDS: “The central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security is the re-emergence of long-term, strategic competition by what the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers. It is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions. Long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia are the principal priorities for the Department, and require both increased and sustained investment, because of the magnitude of the threats they pose to U.S. security and prosperity today, and the potential for those threats to increase in the future.â€
He goes on to highlight those challenges I can’t help but be skeptical.
Over the period of the last 20 years the Pentagon has been preparing for, longing for, pining for near-peer high-tech warfare. Many present general officers have spent their entire careers promoting programs for such a war. Solutions intended for that sort of warfare haven’t been as effective in dealing with the actual problems we’ve faced which have been largely facing small groups of variously trained irregulars with improvised equipment. We haven’t had casualties due to superweapons but due to IEDs.
Rather than preparing for near-peer high tech war we need to be doing much, much more to avoid such a war. And, although I’m not a military strategist I’ll assert with some confidence that our future challenges are unlikely to be what the Pentagon wants to prepare for.
I wouldn’t say it’s pinning or at least unjustified pinning. The Pentagon, in this case at least, is doing what it should be doing. A few points:
– We have defensive treaties with many countries around the world and, like it or not, those treaties are aimed at protecting allies from the likes of Russia, China, North Korea, etc. The Pentagon would be grossly negligent not to plan and prepare for those potential military commitments.
– Conversely, the Pentagon can’t plan for wars of choice except in the most general sense. The “sort of warfare” we’ve been fighting is one where efficient lethality isn’t a critical factor. And the truth is we’ve adapted well to this sort of warfare, the problem has not been a lack of lethality but a lack of a coherent and achievable strategy.
– The refocus of our efforts away from existential conflicts with near-peers to incoherent insurgencies in third-world shitholes has had negative effects on our ability to fight high order warfare effectively. It’s high time, IMO, that we rebalance our training, tactics, readiness, and capabilities to be better prepared for those sorts of conflicts.
– Finally, military resources are controlled by Congress. Whenever a new NDS comes out, Congress ignores it and funds what they want to fund. Remember the “pivot to Asia?” In practice, not much happened, particularly on the military side. So with this new NDS the Pentagon can, at most, reprioritize some discretionary resources. Congress isn’t going to care and this NDS will only last as long as the present administration does.
And this isn’t to say the Pentagon isn’t a mess and doesn’t need reform – it desperate does. Which is why I’ve said that Congress isn’t doing what it should be doing, which is pushing more reforms onto the Defense Department. It needs something akin in scope to Goldwaters-Nichols at least.
At first hand I’ve encountered generals who’ve spent entire careers advocating particular weapons systems and, once they’ve retired, pitched the same weapons systems, working for a defense contractor. I think that we can defend ourselves and live up our treaties without so much focus on near-peer high-tech opponents.
China’s military isn’t a near peer. Although it has more ability to project power than it did a decade ago, it’s still mostly pointed inwards. IMO we’re overhyping the Chinese threat. The Chinese’s sending construction crews to build bases on uninhabited shoals is aggressive and it’s threatening to, say, Japan but clearly our overwhelming military superiority isn’t deterring it now. Why would refocusing our attention on more high tech gear deter them? Un der the unlikely eventuality of war with China, the Chinese will almost certainly use unconventional warfare. Our efforts against them in that sphere have been pathetic and it isn’t due to lack of spending. It’s due to basic inability and using the wrong methods.
Russia’s military is a near peer but where is it threatening us? Quite to the contrary we’re threatening them. IMO we should be working on better relations with Russia rather than alienating it.
The idea that a conjoined Russian-Chinese military will march side by side to war against us is far-fetched in the extreme. They’re more likely to go to war with each other than with us (I think that’s got to be one of Russia’s greatest fears) and anybody who knows anything about either country knows it. It hadn’t occurred to me until just this moment but one of China’s objectives on the Korean Peninsula has to be to be a wedge between the North Koreans and Russians. Russia was NK’s most reliable patron for years and is still a major trading partner.
While I agree that we should concentrate heavily on avoiding wars, I think Andy has it right. We have spent so much time since we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq concentrating on Small Wars, that we have neglected preparing for larger conflict against state actors. We should be prepared to handle either contingency, and be flexible enough to adopt to the unexpected. (A lo of that, IMO, has even more to do with training than equipment.)
Steve
I don’t disagree with that.
I agree with what you say about generals and the procurement process. But in my mind that problem doesn’t mean we shouldn’t focus our defense efforts on those countries with the potential to do the most damage to the United States.
Also, it isn’t just about weapon’s systems but also about training, organization, allocation of forces, force structure, Command-and-control, etc.
As far as China goes, they should not be underestimated and we certainly should not ignore the fact that they are specifically orienting their military capabilities to fight the US. They aren’t preparing to fight Vietnam or the Philippines over the SCS, they are preparing to fight the US military.
I have long agreed with you that we shouldn’t antagonize Russia, but we still have defense agreements that are squarely aimed at them and it would be irresponsible to be ill-prepared should, God forbid, a conflict come in the future.
It goes back to the core purpose of any military force which we’ve lost sight of in our stupid pursuit of regime change and armed democratization around the world.
I have seen it reported that every wargaming of direct conflict between the U. S. and Russia has ended in a nuclear exchange if the rules of the wargame don’t explicitly preclude it.
Probably true but that didn’t stop our conventional forces from orienting our capabilities to counter the Soviets during the Cold War and garrisoning our forces around the world to deter the Soviet threat – real or perceived. It’s always been thus. There are sound reasons to consider China and Russia in our military preparedness unlike, say, India.