Military Doctrine

The fiscal 2011 Department of Defense budget proposal totaling $707 billion has just been presented to Congress. At the end of the Clinton Administration the DOD budget was running around $300 billion. Things have changed for us since 9/11/01. Among the changes is an effort to revise standard US military doctrine.

During my high school years - I graduated in 1949 - the immediate Post World War II world was fracturing into blocks. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) extended its zone of control westward into Central Europe and by 1948 had made clear that its hegemony included the Baltic states, eastern Germany, a part of Austria, and Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. A civil war in Greece was brought to an end with the Communists losing and Communist unions in Italy were also unsuccessful in assuming full political power. But Communist control over Europe was a close thing and in 1949 in response the US spearheaded the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to support western European defense collaboratively against the threat posed by the USSR. It gave up control over Iranian Azerbaijan, but the USSR fully occupied the formal Imperial territories of Central Asia and Siberia, including those southern Kurile islands that had belonged to Japan. The USSR's client states included North Korea and it was an early supporter of the Chinese communists. In sum the USSR was a major international power with a strong military presence.

The year 1949 also saw the forced departure of the Nationalist Chinese Government from mainland China to Taiwan. The People's Republic of China as the political manifestation of the Chinese Communist Party assumed control of the mainland and was not a friend of the United States. This became abundantly clear when the PRC intervened in the Korean conflict late in 1950 with harsh consequences for the US forces engaged. Another large, if impoverished, international power had thus come into being, and also one with a large military establishment.

Thus early on in the post WW II environment the US found itself confronted with serious potential enemies capable of engaging in war to the east and to the west. Resulting US military doctrine was to prepare to conduct two major wars simultaneously. Equipment procurement, force levels and force positioning were all tailored to meet this requirement. As part of a general "containment" policy to keep its enemies from expanding, the US entered into war against the North Vietnamese communists, who initially were supported mostly by the USSR but later by the PRC. During the period of the conflict, 1962 - 1975, the US was careful, perhaps too careful, not to risk an open intervention by the PRC.

A decade or so after US departure from Vietnam world conditions were changed. The USSR had engaged in a war in Afghanistan that was failing and simultaneously highlighting the failure of its economy to keep pace with the west. China and the US had diplomatic relations and Premier Deng was pushing China to get rich, which could only be done by attracting foreign investment and export markets.

The USSR abandoned Afghanistan in 1989, the government changed and in 1991 the USSR imploded. Not only did the satellite states of Eastern Europe become truly independent and non-communist, but Socialist Republics like Belorus, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the "Stans" of central Asia also became independent. The European boundaries of the successor state, the Russian Federation, were pushed eastward to limits not seen in 300 years. Today's Russia is resentful and strives to restore some of its lost glory as an international power, but its population of 141 million, and declining, and it economic dependence on oil and sales of other commodities, shielding a weak industrial base make very unlikely that Russia can or will mount a serious military threat to Europe. This suggests that NATO may well have lost its validity: thousands of battle tanks rumbling across the plains of northern Europe are now, I think, pure fantasy.

In contrast to the USSR, the People's Republic of China has, especially since the late 1990's, become the 800 pound gorilla of the global economy. A large number of its 1.3 billion people are not poor, as attested by 2009 automobile sales of around 11 million vehicles, and its emergence as the world's largest exporter and soon to be second largest national economy can only reshape global order. Incidentally, its holdings of a trillion dollars in US debt instruments implies a serious interrelationship between China and the US which neither side can discount in policy decisions.

So Defense Secretary Robert Gates' pitch that the two war scenario no longer holds and that US military doctrine needs to adjust is surely based on a logical reading of today's world. We now have close to 200,000 troops engaged in combat over a wide swath of the middle east without a single battle tank or self-propelled long range cannon employed. The single most important cause of death to American forces is the improvised explosive device put together from cheap ingredients in isolated houses and hidden alongside roads used by our forces. We are obviously engaged in asymetrical warfare.

That China represents a potential, if not actual threat, to its neighbors if not directly to us, is sound doctrine. But what the current situation requires is not lots of supersonic jets, immense tanks, nuclear powered battle cruisers but auto-piloted drones, helicopters, armored but agile combat vehicles and an emphasis on small force operations. There also has to be a focus on community outreach and civil government. So a military doctrine of preparation for maybe one war and a lot of anti-insurrection brush fires would seems logical.

Unfortunately logic runs into politics. Every item and services procured by the DOD involve somebody's congressional district. National interest and logic be damned! Members of Congress will fight tooth and nail to preserve every bit of cash flow destined to their respective districts. And this ignores all those "earmarks" that tailor additional funds for truly "special interests". To be fair, not only politicians resist change but senior members of each of the military services look askance at changes in relative status in total funding flows, threats to funding of strongly desired new systems or equipment and threats of a reduced role in future military operations. Everybody guards their turf!

Secretary Gates and allies were successful in the 2009 budget cycle in sharply reducing expenditures for the F-22 fighter plane. It was a tough battle that they barely won. This year's targets for removal include an alternative engine for the F-35 at a cost of a billion or so and $2.5 billion for new C-17 transport planes the USAF says it doesn't need. Small potatoes in a 700+ billion budget, but every bit counts. The "military-industrial" complex has fewer major players these days what with mergers among the giants, but its capacity to battle for money from Congress remains unparalleled.

Progress in reforming US military doctrine will not doubt be slow but it is clearly necessary.