COMMENTARY Strategic thinking and
sausage-making By Ehsan Ahrari
Looking at the current debates inside the
Beltway and the Pentagon over the future of the
2005 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), one gets
dismayed about the similarities between strategic
thinking and sausage-making.
The QDR is a
congressionally mandated requirement for the
Pentagon to conduct a comprehensive review of its
strategy and weapon systems every four years. The
2005 QDR is also important because the strategic
environment under which it is being conducted is
more settled in terms of terrorist threat than the
one that existed at the time of the preparation of
the 2001 QDR. But that is not to say that the
current QDR, once it is done, will satisfy most
defense experts.
The tedious nature of the
process itself often becomes an obstacle in the
way of the participants' capabilities to see the
forest for the trees. How would the emerging QDR affect
America's military strength or
preparedness? Which type of warfare concerns -
conventional versus asymmetric - would surface as
the dominant aspect of America's future
force-building and weapons systems?
The
September 11 terrorist attacks had given the
promoters of asymmetric warfare inside the
Pentagon a temporary edge between 2001 and now.
Purely from the perspectives of war-fighting, the
US won two wars - in Afghanistan and in Iraq -
with lightning speed. The controversy related to
Afghanistan was that the United States moved on
too quickly to invade Iraq. The stabilization (or
nation-building-related) operations in Afghanistan
had been barely started. For any stabilization
operation to succeed, the remnants of al-Qaeda and
the Taliban forces had to be eradicated. However,
that was not to be.
One of the chief
controversies related to Iraq was that there were
virtually no preparations for the stabilization
operations. Critics say the lack of such
preparation alone has caused ample antagonism
among the Iraqi populace toward the US invasion,
which would have been unpopular to begin with in
Iraq under any circumstances.
Two types of
realities emerged regarding the stabilization
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In
Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance
Forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
became a visible force in such operations.
Besides, the al-Qaeda and Taliban-related
insurgency has yet to become a serious challenge
to the stability operation. Consequently, it is
hard to tell whether the approach to stabilization
in Afghanistan is applicable to any future
operations.
Regarding Iraq, the US
military did not implement elaborate
stabilization-related endeavors. However, it is
hard to argue that this is the only reason why
Iraq remains so turbulent today. It is possible
that Iraq is boiling because of the Sunni and
al-Qaeda-dominated insurgency also draws its
strength and support from the disgruntled Sunni
population of that country. Even the Shi'ite side
of the Iraqi population periodically manifested
its anger about foreign forces. However, the
Shi'ite insurgency has not emerged as a major
challenge to the American or Iraqi forces.
In general, the US military has become
overly sensitive about the significance of being
ready for stability operations and has even
developed an elaborate doctrine-based template to
conduct them in the future. However, the most
serious challenge to that template is the role of
the potential for insurgency in future operations.
One thing that the US military is not addressing -
maybe because it is too much of a sensitive issue
right now - is that it cannot develop a template
for neutralizing (or to use military jargon,
pacifying) future insurgencies.
The
insurgency of the information age, unlike
insurgencies of the past, has proved itself to be
too deft in publicizing its side of the issue and
its own capabilities, thereby avoiding all chances
of demoralization within its ranks. Thus, the
counter-insurgency theories related to the British
experience in Malaya in the 1950s and elsewhere in
Africa, or even America's own experience in South
Vietnam, may not be as helpful as their current
promoters have been portraying them to be.
In addition, the Iraqi insurgents -
especially the suicide bombers - have presented
America's war-fighters with a virtually unsolvable
puzzle. How do you fight and defeat a corps of
fighters that is so eager to die? About the only
logical way to keep their zeal for suicide at a
low level is to develop a campaign of public
diplomacy. But that is an entirely separate issue,
and is not part of the QDR debates.
As
much as the US military has become cognizant of
making the stabilization operations an integral
part of its future campaign plans, there is no
guarantee that the sui generis nature of
future military operations would not undermine
them by creating different and sui generis
challenges of their own.
The emphasis of
the promoters of conventional warfare during the
2005 QDR debates might be gaining a slight edge in
their argument that the US military preparedness
has placed too much stress on asymmetric warfare.
It is about time, they argue, that the focus be
shifted to fighting conventional wars. They point
to the Pentagon's recent annual report on China's
military preparedness, issued in July of this
year, as ample reason to worry about the emergence
of potential enemies that would pose challenges to
America's security by using conventional warfare
tactics.
At least for now, it appears,
both sides - the promoters of asymmetric warfare
preparedness as well as the promoters of
conventional warfare readiness - have a good
chance of not losing their argument in a major
way. In all likelihood, the 2005 QDR will
incorporate the war-fighting concerns of both
sides.
Looking at these two types of force
preparedness from Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld's own views on military transformation,
both sides can build their cases by focusing on
two of his ostensibly contradictory priorities.
Rumsfeld wants a small and highly mobile army and
wants to rely on the navy and the air force to
supplement lethal force from the air and from over
the horizon in future operations. His emphasis for
a mobile army, along with America's "lily pad"
basing strategy (which is focused on using small
military bases in different regions of the world
on a "need-to-use" basis) favors the argument of
those who prefer to see the focus of future force
buildup and preparedness on fighting small and
asymmetric wars. At the same time, Rumsfeld's
emphasis on an equally pronounced role of the navy
and air force can be used to build an argument for
increased expenditure in conventional
war-fighting.
Consequently, the promoters
of the interests of the navy and the air force are
busy overplaying the "China threat" card. The air
force is promoting the expensive F/A-22 fighter
jet because of China's increasing air power. By
the same token, the advocates of the navy are
making a case for building more ships and
submarines, pointing to increased activities of
China to build submarines and even aircraft
carriers. The fact is that Chinese air and naval
power will not be a threat to US forces for the
next 20 years, considering the enormous
significance the US military attaches to
maintaining its forces at the cutting edge,
backing up that emphasis by constantly spending
large sums of money in military research and
development.
Given these realities, the
QDR debates are really about which military
service will emerge as a winner or a loser over
the next four years. For the overall fighting
capabilities of the US military, these debates may
not be too critical, since they never
deleteriously affect the overall strength or
preparedness of America's military. Considering
that transnational terrorism will be with us for
quite awhile, ample attention will be paid in the
2005 QDR on asymmetric warfare. At the same time,
conventional warfare will also capture attention
and resources, but with due regard to Rumsfeld's
preferences for the use of a small force without
negatively affecting its lethality.
Ehsan Ahrari is an independent
strategic analyst based in Alexandria, VA, US. His
columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online. He
is also a regular contributor to the Global Beat
Syndicate. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.
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