Wishful Thinking on War

...The Armed Forces of the Future The panel's report rests on the premise that a "revolution in military affairs" (RMA) is now occurring and that we therefore need to begin to field a "revolutionary" new force...

...First, we are unlikely to have the support of allies at the necessary levels to deal with Iraq...

...The Germans taught both what the RMA really was by inflicting catastrophic defeats on them in 1940...

...It does not follow, however, that we face no threats to our national interests, or that those threats are not powerful and dangerous, as the last month and a half with Iraq has made clear...

...Unfortunately, the underlying passivity of the panel's report dictates a course that practically ensures that we will not have the military power—and therefore the will—to shape a reasonably stable world...

...In fact, the defense-panel report inadvertently makes clear that the defense procurement system must be revamped...

...If we follow the panel's suggestions, we will sacrifice our ability to deal with current and near-future crises in favor of vague promises of a revolution to come...

...Frederick W. Kagan is an assistant professor of military history at West Point...

...If we do not maintain strong enough armed forces even as we modernize, we will not be able to oppose regional aggression in Iraq or elsewhere...

...The National Defense Panel report admits that we are only at the beginning of an RMA, but goes confidently on to predict that information technology will make it possible to "disperse the fog of war...

...Second, the determination to maintain the capability of fighting two nearly simultaneous regional wars does not result from "Cold War thinking," but rather from a rational evaluation of America's responsibilities...

...But the two-MRC strategy is not predicated on a hostile Iraq and a hostile North Korea...

...The report ignores the critical role the United States can and should play in shaping a future that suits us...

...We cannot afford to step back from the world, focusing on domestic security and domestic concerns while preparing the armed forces of the future...

...it is predicated on the simple fact that a one-MRC capability is, in fact, a no-MRC capability...

...Military Academy, the Army, or the Defense Department...

...In time, our continued withdrawal from the international scene may create the very peer competitors that we most fear, in the form either of large national states or of coalitions that oppose our interests...

...the nature of the current RMA is still unclear...

...But RMAs are not brought about by social, economic, or technological changes...

...It does not say, however, what that army will look like, because it cannot...

...The report suggests that we "hedge" and ensure that we are prepared for all contingencies by developing and deploying the Information Age armed forces that will do the trick...

...The Present Danger The panel's recommendations rely on another false assumption: that "we are in a relatively secure interlude following an era of intense international confrontation...

...It is now too early to create the army of 2020...

...This National Defense Panel issued its report last week, to considerable hoopla and acclaim...

...It is true that we face no threats from any "peer competitor" as we did during the Cold War, and that no state or coalition of states can plausibly menace the survival of the United States as the Soviets once did...

...But that is the wrong way to plan...

...And above all, we will not be able to make clear to would-be aggressors that we will defeat them...

...Indeed, the defense-panel report itself unwittingly makes the case for the urgent necessity of maintaining a two-MRC capability: The "two-theater war concept is predicated on the belief that the ability to fight more than one major war at a time deters an enemy from seeking to take advantage of the opportunity to strike while the United States is preoccupied in another theater...

...But so is maintaining our national security today and tomorrow—and, even more important, shaping a future in which American forces are unlikely to be tested...

...Technology is important, yes...

...Relying on a Buck Rogers vision of future Information Age warfare, the report takes for granted that we are at the beginning of a "revolution in military affairs" based on developments in information technology...

...The French and the British were not stupid—they were just wrong...

...We should decide that a "chronic crisis" in 2020 is an unacceptable outcome and that "shaped stability" is essential...

...We need to spend less time hoping for transformations and instead have the courage to think the unthinkable: This may be a period of relative peace and "strategic pause," but, still, we need to spend more money on defense...

...A previous period of apparent "strategic pause" illuminates this problem...

...The perception of our weakness will itself encourage more dangers...

...With this sensible thought in mind, Congress established last year a group of experts to provide an independent evaluation of the Pentagon's vision of the future of America's armed forces—particularly as expressed in the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review, released earlier this year...

...Second, even a cursory glance at the American force structure shows that we do not have the capability to fight both North Korea and Iraq at the same time...

...To accept the notion that we are in a period of "strategic pause" and security, and that we can "take risks" now in order to field the forces necessary in 2020, is to abdicate America's world responsibilities and to jeopardize our security...

...These cuts would be on top of the 30 percent reduction that America's armed forces have already suffered over the last decade, a reduction that has stretched our capabilities thin...

...In short, we will fail to shape a stable future, ensuring that our armed forces, whatever they look like in 2020, will see a lot of action...

...The Germans succeeded by combining new technologies with existing forces, which they then shaped by a new doctrine into a devastating weapon...

...In pursuit of this mythical capability, the panel demands that we slash readiness and manpower to pay the cost of fielding a new Information Age army...

...As a result, the French bought the wrong tanks and developed the wrong organization and doctrine, while the British relied on bombers, ignoring their ground forces almost completely...

...The views expressed here are his alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S...

...We will not be able to restore and maintain stability in critical regions like Bosnia...

...But the French and the British guessed wrong about what the RMA would bring...

...The report asserts that we have entered a period of "strategic pause," in which we will face only relatively small and manageable challenges to our security in the near future...

...They occur when one or more nations find a way to exploit these changes through doctrine, organization, and strategy, to transform war...

...The United States is the only power that can shape stability, and this fact needs to drive our defense strategy...

...For any system that requires us to know precisely what war will look like and what systems will be needed in 2020 is bound to fail...

...We will not be able to reassure allies like South Korea and Japan that they are secure...

...It ignores the fact that if we keep our armed forces strong even as we transform them, we can do better than prepare for the next war: We can deter it...

...Above all, it is by no means clear that the world will get safer as time goes on, as the report appears to assume...

...In each such crisis, America would be faced with an unacceptable alternative: either fight one conflict with no reserves and no ability to deter or defeat another, opportunistic foe...

...The panel points out that current U.S...

...The need for such a capability has been reinforced by the current tension with Iraq, which reveals that our armed forces are already too thinly stretched to deal comfortably with even one MRC...

...force modernization is critical...

...But the most dangerous misapprehension in the report is that, if we can manage the Korean situation diplomatically and the Iraq situation with the support of allies, the need for the two-MRC capability will vanish...

...In the first place, although developments in technology, and information technology in particular, are changing war, it is by no means clear what war will look like at the end of those changes...

...An incorrect image of the RMA had become fixed in the minds of political and military leaders alike...

...In the two decades between World War I and World War II, few military thinkers doubted that tanks and aircraft would transform war fundamentally—some spoke even then of a revolution in military affairs...

...The report defines an RMA as "a discontinuous change usually associated with technology but also representing social or economic changes that fundamentally alter the face of battle...

...Its report concludes that the current force structure has the combat power to fulfill this mission "with the support of allies," a dubious proposition...

...Presidents cannot be expected to deploy so high a proportion of our armed forces to one conflict that they are left with nothing in case trouble arises elsewhere...

...We are in danger of making a similar mistake now...

...Is this so...

...or, more likely, fight in defense of important interests in important regions...

...It belittles the notion that America's armed forces should be prepared to fight two nearly simultaneous "major regional contingencies" (MRCs), a notion that has driven American strategic planning since the Gulf War...

...policy—that of maintaining the capability of engaging in two nearly simultaneous MRCs—has its origins in the need to contain both Iraq and North Korea...

...As long as budget constraints require that modernization in the future come at the expense of force structure in the present, no "transformation strategy" can work...

...The report is fundamentally misguided...

...And third, there can be no such thing as a "strategic pause" for the United States...

...Shaping the Future In contemplating the future, the panel considers four likely scenarios of international relations, ranging from the worst, "chronic crisis," to the best, "shaped stability...

...It argues that we should downsize our forces even more in order to pay for the "transformation strategy" that alone, it claims, will produce the armed forces we must have in 2020...

...Our allies, fearful for their own security when we no longer seem able to guarantee it, will begin to rearm, triggering fears among their competitors and instability in critical regions...

...If we lose this deterrence capability, we are more likely to fight major wars sooner than 2020...

...We are in serious danger of repeating the French and British mistake of the interwar years by buying the wrong machinery and relying on the wrong systems...

...Unfortunately, the panel's report is also unencumbered by reality...

...The panel was supposed to consider the future "unencumbered by Pentagon policies, Congressional constituencies, or budget constraints...