Asia Times: ANALYSIS: Bush's lone military superpower vision


	February 16, 2001	atimes.com

Editorials

ANALYSIS
Bush's lone military superpower vision (Part 1 of 3)
By Uwe Parpart
Editor, Asia Times Online

After watching a display of simulated missiles stream toward the United States at Norfolk, Virginia, Naval Air Station last Tuesday, US President George W Bush vowed to work with Nato allies to confront the threat of nuclear weapons.

At the headquarters of Allied Command Atlantic, Bush had stood before three large video screens displaying high-tech war games conducted jointly by the United States and Nato, directed from the command ship, USS Mount Whitney, 50 miles off the Virginia coast. Then, at an outdoor rotunda ringed by the flags of the 19 Nato nations, he said he was committed to working in unity with US allies on defense, whether against missiles or extremist attack, and on peacekeeping: "I'm here today with a message for America's allies. We will cooperate in the work of peace, we will consult early and candidly with our Nato allies, and we'll expect them to return the same ... Nato is the reason history records no World War III, by preserving the stability of Europe and the trans-Atlantic community. Nato has kept the peace and the work goes on." US Navy personnel and diplomats from Nato states based in Washington attended.

The Bush message was multi-purpose: to make clear once again that the new US administration will proceed with National Missile Defense (NMD) development, but also to allay fears of US unilateralism. "In diplomacy, in technology, in missile defense, in fighting wars and, above all, in preventing wars, we [in Nato] must work as one ... The defenses we build must protect us all," the president said.

Plans for US national and Theater Missile Defense (TMD) are embedded in Bush's broader "new strategic vision" which, he said at Norfolk, would "challenge the status quo" and "redefine war on our terms". To begin to realize this vision, Bush is redirecting US$2.6 billion from the $310 billion defense budget for next year to research. But beyond pay increases for military personnel, no immediate rise in the defense budget is envisaged. Prior to that, a "top-to-bottom" review of the military, including its strategy, missions, modernization priorities and nuclear weapons arsenal is to be carried out, an initial take on which has been entrusted to Andrew W Marshall, the little known, but to security policy insiders legendary, 79-year-old director of the equally little known Office of Net Assessment in the Department of Defense (Pentagon).

Marshall is an unconventional military thinker and a controversial figure in defense circles for his outspoken criticism of some of the traditional pillars of US strategy and procurement policy. He has questioned the usefulness of the new F-22 fighter, the crown jewel of the Air Force's acquisition program, and has called the Army's heavy tanks and the Navy's aircraft carriers possible deathtraps that ought to be phased out before they prove to be the horse cavalry of the 21st century. But Marshall has a long and close association with new Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and there is a great likelihood that major conclusions of his review will become part of the new US military strategic doctrine and weapons programs.

The initial Marshall review is on an extraordinarily fast track. It was ordered on February 6 and is to be wound up by the middle of March - not next year, but this year - lasting a total of six weeks. In this short period of time, Marshall and his team are to conduct a broad analysis of America's likely future adversaries and the nature of future wars and to determine how many conflicts the US should be prepared to fight at once and what forces will be required to do so. But Marshall is arguably the man best prepared anywhere to carry out this daunting task. He started his career in 1949 as a nuclear strategist at the Rand Corporation, has served as a civilian Pentagon official since 1973, and since the late 1980s has headed numerous major studies on revolutions in military affairs (or "RMAs" in Pentagon-speak).

In mid-1993, he finished the first US assessment of an emerging military-technical revolution (MTR). Marshall began to favor the term "military revolutions" to describe the kinds of transformations he foresaw based on his reading and appreciation of the writings of Marshal N V Ogarkov, the 1980s chief of the Soviet General Staff. In 1984, Ogarkov speculated that "the emergence ... of automated reconnaissance-and-strike complexes", including qualitatively new electronic control systems and very accurate, long-range munitions, will "make it possible to sharply increase (by at least an order of magnitude) the destructive potential of conventional weapons, bringing them closer to weapons of mass destruction in terms of effectiveness". Then, in the wake of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Russian observers concluded that the "integration of control, communications, reconnaissance, electronic combat, and delivery of conventional fire into a single whole" had been "realized for the first time". Marshall has been on that general tack ever since and more recently has integrated notions of information and "cyberwarfare" into his thinking.

As for identification of potential US adversaries in the post-Cold War period, Marshall's focus has been on China. In 1999, he sponsored war games and analyses concentrating on threats in Asia generally and from China specifically. "Most US military assets are in Europe where there are no foreseeable conflicts threatening vital US interests ... The threats are in Asia," he wrote at the time. And the "Asia 2025" study concluded that the view that Chinese-American relations might evolve gently and fruitfully had to be rejected: whether strong or relatively weak, "China will be a persistent competitor of the United States ... A stable and powerful China will be constantly challenging the status quo in East Asia. An unstable and relative[ly] weak China could be dangerous because its leaders might try to bolster their power with foreign military adventurism."

Sound familiar? It was one of the themes of George W Bush's major campaign speech on US foreign policy. Similarly, Marshall is responsible for much of the contents of a Bush speech on military policy delivered at the Citadel military school in September 1999. What Bush advocated in 1999 is now being implemented.

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