Future Shock: Reducing forces is a dangerous road to go down.

National Review Online ^ | June 10, 2002 | Mackubin Thomas Owens

[xsysmgr]

If we are to believe recent news reports, the Secretary of Defense is close to making a serious force-planning decision that could do severe harm to the nation's ability to defend its interests throughout the world. According to a story by Rowan Scarborough in the June 4 Washington Times, Rumsfeld plans to reduce U.S. Army force structure from its current mix of ten heavy and light active-duty divisions to eight or fewer light divisions. The Army's heavy forces — armor and mechanized infantry — would be transferred to the National Guard and Reserve.

This plan goes far beyond the Army's own transformation strategy, which calls for replacing difficult-to-deploy heavy forces with medium-weight, wheel-mobile combat brigades supported by an advanced gun system. There is a heroic assumption at work here: that traditional ground combat is a thing of the past, and that future U.S. power will be based on precision strikes delivered by air or space assets, perhaps coordinated and directed by a handful of special-operations-forces (SOF) soldiers.

TRADITONALISTS, STRATEGIC MONISTS & TECHNOPHILES
Not too long ago, employing terms coined by Samuel Huntington, I made the argument that the ongoing defense debate involves three groups: the traditionalists or strategic pluralists; the strategic monists; and the "technophiles."

The traditionalists or strategic pluralists argue for balanced forces capable of meeting threats across the spectrum of conflict. They argue that the geographic position of the U.S. and its global interests requires a variety of forces, strategies, and weapons capable of carrying out joint, expeditionary operations — in conjunction with allies if possible, but alone if necessary.

The U.S. Army and the Naval Services should be counted among the traditionalists. Both departments argue for a force structure not substantially smaller or differently balanced than the one that exists today. The Naval Service argues that Navy and Marine forces can help shape the security environment and reassure allies, while the Army contends that land power has a strategic role to play if the United States is to remain a great power.

The strategic monists argue that the U.S. should invest in a single, strategically decisive capability. The "air power can do it all" argument is a form of strategic monism. This version of strategic monism maintains that air power (and increasingly, space power) is not only the necessary, but also the sufficient cause of strategic success in conflict, both today and tomorrow. In other words, air and space power are capable of achieving decisive victory independently of other arms.

Closely related to the strategic monists are the "technophiles," who contend that a "revolution in military affairs" has so completely changed the nature of warfare that many of the old truths no longer hold. Such technophiles as the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William Owens (no relation), argue that the U.S. must do what is necessary to ensure its dominance in military technology, even if it means accepting a substantially reduced force structure.

One does not have to denigrate the importance of air power or technology to believe that the strategic pluralists have a far stronger argument than either the strategic monists or the technophiles. To pursue the air power or technology paths at the expense of a robust, balanced force structure is to invite strategic failure.

The strongest argument against the current version of strategic monism is that it has been tried before and found wanting. During the Eisenhower administration, U.S. strategy and force structure were based on the "New Look," the centerpiece of which was long-range strategic air power. This focus resulted in strategic inflexibility: The U.S. largely lacked the ability to respond to threats at the lower end of the spectrum of conflict.

The "New Look" showed that, though air power is crucial to both deterrence and war-fighting, it lacks nuance. Air power is either on or off. Thus, its threatened use in situations involving less than vital interests lacks credibility. Accordingly, it is not always politically useful. In addition, adversaries were able to develop "asymmetric" responses to the dominant nuclear capability of the U.S., e.g., "peoples' wars" and "wars of national liberation." These deficiencies led to the replacement, in 1960s, of the "New Look" by the strategy of "flexible response."

Unfortunately, Secretary Rumsfeld's rumored Army plan smacks of both strategic monism and technophilia. It is based on the idea that control of the "high ground" of air and space renders land power obsolete. The evidence for this seems to be the campaigns in Kosovo and Afghanistan. But these are thin reeds upon which to hang future U.S. force structure.

THE POWER & LIMITS OF AIR POWER
Take Kosovo. For most of the 77 days during which NATO pummeled Slobodan Milosevic, the pundits were declaring that Kosovo proved what the "experts" already knew: that air power could not win wars by itself. But when Milosevic folded, many erstwhile skeptics jumped on the air-power bandwagon. The same advocates who had loudly lamented that air power wasn't getting a fair test because it was being misused were now quick to join in the victory chorus.

But there was sleight-of-hand taking place. The air-power theory "vindicated" by Kosovo was not the new doctrine of "global strike" touted by air-power advocates: the overwhelming use of air power to effect the systemic paralysis of an adversary. It was rather the discredited approach of the past, a war of attrition designed to break the will of the people. The distinction between these two doctrines of air power is important.

Ever since the dawn of the air age, advocates of air power have claimed that the airplane made it possible to achieve rapid victory in war. In the aftermath of World War I, for instance, the Italian airman Guilio Douhet argued that air power made quick victories possible because air fleets could fly over the stalemated battlefield to directly strike the enemy's strategic centers of gravity — causing systemic paralysis of the enemy's war-making capacity and will to fight. Billy Mitchell, the American air-power prophet, argued along similar lines. The Air Corps Tactical School, the organization that developed air-power doctrine for the U.S. in World War II, made subtle changes to the general approach of Douhet and Mitchell but continued to adhere to the main principle.

While strategic bombing of Germany and Japan played a significant role in the defeat of the Axis powers, the actual performance of air power fell short of the vision advanced by the air-power advocates. During World War II, strategic bombing, far from achieving a rapid decision, degenerated into a relentless war of attrition, not unlike war on land or at sea. At a tremendous cost in terms of air crews, the Allies ground down the industrial and population centers of the enemy. Nonetheless, the populations of countries subjected to sustained air bombardment exhibited a resilience unanticipated by the prophets of air power.

In the aftermath of the Gulf War, the argument was advanced that air power now possessed capabilities and doctrines that finally made it possible to fulfill its original promise: Stealth and precision now enabled the simultaneous attack of entire "systems," in order to achieve debilitating effects and paralysis. In other words, new technologies, and the operational concept of parallel warfare, made it unnecessary to rely on the old strategies of annihilation or attrition.

This was the air-power claim going into Kosovo. How closely did the actual application of air power against Yugoslavia match the new air-power paradigm? Stealth and precision indeed reduced the number of sorties necessary to attack important targets. This had two salutary results. On the one hand, only two NATO-manned aircraft were destroyed, and no pilots or crews were lost to hostile action — an amazing record for a 77-day campaign. On the other, civilian casualties were low, especially when measured against ordnance delivered and targets destroyed.

But the operational requirement to minimize aircraft losses and allied casualties dictated the strategic shape of the air war. NATO aircraft flew at high altitudes and avoided strikes against Serb ground forces in Kosovo to preclude losses. Thus the nonexistent NATO casualties were achieved at the cost of thousands of Kosovars butchered by Milosevic's forces — and nearly a million refugees.

And the fact remains that insofar as air power prevailed against Yugoslavia, it did so the old fashion way: by punishing the civilian population of Yugoslavia — not by killing them in large numbers as in World War II, but by destroying the infrastructure upon which they depended. This was not paralysis, as promised by the advocates of parallel war. It was attrition. The Kosovo case illustrated the main problem with the "air power can do it all argument:" for air power to work the way its advocates say it can requires policy makers to ignore political constraints.

Afghanistan reinforced the perception that air power can do it all, albeit with the help of SOF. But there are substantial dangers to generalizing about such wars. First, it may reinforce among certain American politicians the belief that "immaculate wars" are the wave of the future, leading to the misuse of military power. Second, both conflicts were special, not general cases. What happens in the future, if the U.S. and its allies do not possess a comparable power differential over an adversary?

The point is not to denigrate air power. Air power has emerged as the necessary, if not the sufficient, cause of success in war. Not even the most vociferous advocate of "boots on the ground" would deny that air power provides tremendous leverage. No one I know would prefer to fight a war without the air supremacy the U.S. possesses.

Richard Hart Sinnreich — a retired Army colonel whose column for his hometown newspaper in Oklahoma is often picked up by the Washington Post — recently provided a critique of the strategic monists and technophiles. He pointed out that the services have been among the most vigorous proponents of change. Where the in-house service reformers differ from their critics is in the "unwillingness [of the former] to bet the military farm on capabilities that have not yet migrated off the drawing board, and in many cases are unlikely to do so for some considerable time to come. In the meantime. Current weapon systems are aging. Among those convinced that no enemy more capable than the Taliban is on the horizon, the disposition is to let them age or scrap them altogether, and concentrate instead on so-called 'leap ahead technologies that will pay off, if they do, only in the future.

MISSION: TRANSFORMATION
There is no question that the Army must undergo a substantial transformation if it is to remain strategically relevant. Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki has been pushing hard to transform his service to a more adaptable, more easily deployable force capable of a greater range of missions than the current Army, but he faces a difficult job. An important part of the resistance he faces is cultural. According to one online account, posted by a mid-grade officer, the Army has tied itself culturally to the theory and practice of Second-Generation War. This focus centers on requirements to mobilize heavy forces for massive wars of attrition in Western Europe — what the Germans used to call Materialschlacht... [Thus] the Army's high-cost offensive crown jewels — armor and mechanized infantry unit — have trouble getting out of the Fulda Gap — psychologically as well as physically. One unidentified Army wag summed it up well. ...'We have the world's fastest strategically immobile Army.'

Not too long ago, I argued in the Wall Street Journal that Secretary Rumsfeld's decision to kill the Army's Crusader artillery weapon was correct. One reason for doing so is that its weight puts it at odds with Gen. Shinseki's vision of a more rapidly deployable force. Another is that it is not sufficiently transformational. It would be coming online at about the same time as the Army is scheduled to transition to its future combat system (FCS).

But if the reports about the secretary's plans for the Army are correct, Mr. Rumsfeld's rationale for killing the Crusader was based on nothing less than the belief that standoff and precision-strike weapons, delivered from the air or from space, will always provide a substitute for land power in future combat operations. This is the perspective of a strategic monist, and it is wrong.

The fundamental flaw that characterizes both the strategic monist and the technophile is their certainty that they can predict the future. As Loren Thomson of the Lexington Institute recently observed, "much of what transpires under the rubric of transformation is actually grounded in implicit assumptions about future threats." But the future isn't knowable. The fact is that since 1940, the United States has suffered at least one strategic surprise every decade. "So any concept of transformation that proposes sweeping programmatic changes based on a presumed understanding of future challenges is likely to go wrong. There are simply too many possible threats, and the very act of preparing for some reduces the likelihood that those are the ones we will face."

We should be very skeptical of anyone who claims we can know the future well enough to eliminate or substantially reduce certain capabilities, such as land power. Strategic pluralism and balanced forces have provided a hedge against uncertainty in the past and, as such, have served the interests of the United States well. We should not use special cases such as Kosovo and Afghanistan to justify a return to the strategic monism of the 1950s to the detriment of overall U.S. security.

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