II: FOUR ESSENTIAL MISSIONS

America’s global leadership, and its role as the guarantor of the current great-power peace, relies upon the safety of the American homeland; the preservation of a favorable balance of power in Europe, the Middle East and surrounding energy-producing region, and East Asia; and the
general stability of the international system of nation-states relative to terrorists, organized crime, and other “non-state actors.” The relative importance of these elements, and the threats to U.S. interests, may rise and fall over time. Europe, for example, is now extraordinarily peaceful and stable, despite the turmoil in the Balkans. Conversely, East Asia appears to be entering a period with increased potential for instability and competition. In the Gulf, American power and presence has achieved relative external security for U.S. allies, but the longer-term prospects are murkier. Generally, American strategy for the coming decades should seek to consolidate the great victories won in the 20th century – which have made Germany and Japan into stable democracies, for example – maintain stability in the Middle East, while setting the conditions for 21st century successes, especially in East Asia.

None of the defense reviews of the past decade has weighed fully the range of missions demanded by U.S. global leadership, nor adequately quantified the forces and resources necessary to execute these missions successfully.

A retreat from any one of these requirements would call America’s status as the world’s leading power into question. As we have seen, even a small failure like that in Somalia or a halting and incomplete triumph as in the Balkans can cast doubt on American credibility. The failure to define a coherent global security and military strategy during the post-Cold-War period has invited challenges; states seeking to establish regional hegemony continue to probe for the limits of the American security perimeter. None of the defense reviews of the past decade has weighed fully the range of missions demanded by U.S. global leadership: defending the homeland, fighting and winning multiple large-scale wars, conducting constabulary missions which preserve the current peace, and transforming the U.S. armed forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs.” Nor have they adequately quantified the forces and resources necessary to execute these missions separately and successfully. While much further detailed analysis would be required, it is the purpose of this study to outline the large, “full-spectrum” forces that are necessary to conduct the varied tasks demanded by a strategy of American preeminence for today and tomorrow.

HOMELAND DEFENSE. America must defend its homeland. During the Cold War, nuclear deterrence was the key element in homeland defense; it remains essential. But the new century has brought with it new challenges. While reconfiguring its nuclear force, the United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself. Of all the new and current missions for U.S. armed forces, this must have priority.

LARGE WARS. Second, the United States must retain sufficient forces able to rapidly deploy and win multiple simultaneous large-scale wars and also to be able to respond to unanticipated contingencies in regions where it does not maintain forward-based forces. This resembles the “two-war” standard that has been the basis of U.S. force planning over the past decade. Yet this standard needs to be updated to account for new realities and potential new conflicts.

CONSTABULARY DUTIES. Third, the Pentagon must retain forces to preserve the current peace in ways that fall short of conduction major theater campaigns. A decade’s experience and the policies of two administrations have shown that such forces must be expanded to meet the needs of the new, long-term NATO mission in the Balkans, the continuing no-fly-zone and other missions in Southwest Asia, and other presence missions in vital regions of East Asia. These duties are today’s most frequent missions, requiring forces configured for combat but capable of long-term, independent constabulary operations.

TRANSFORM U.S. ARMED FORCES. Finally, the Pentagon must begin now to exploit the so-called “revolution in military affairs,” sparked by the introduction of advanced technologies into military systems; this must be regarded as a separate and critical mission worthy of a share of force structure and defense budgets.

Current American armed forces are ill-prepared to execute these four missions. Over the past decade, efforts to design and build effective missile defenses have been ill-conceived and underfunded, and the Clinton Administration has proposed deep reductions in U.S. nuclear forces without sufficient analysis of the changing global nuclear balance of forces. While, broadly speaking, the United States now maintains sufficient active and reserve forces to meet the traditional two-war standard, this is true only in the abstract, under the most favorable geopolitical conditions. As the Joint Chiefs of Staff have admitted repeatedly in congressional testimony, they lack the forces necessary to meet the two-war benchmark as expressed in the warplans of the regional commanders-in-chief. The requirements for major-war forces must be reevaluated to accommodate new strategic realities. One of these new realities is the requirement for peacekeeping operations; unless this requirement is better understood, America’s ability to fight major wars will be jeopardized. Likewise, the transformation process has gotten short shrift.

To meet the requirements of the four new missions highlighted above, the United States must undertake a two-stage process. The immediate task is to rebuild today’s force, ensuring that it is equal to the tasks before it: shaping the peacetime environment and winning multiple, simultaneous theater wars; these forces must be large enough to accomplish these tasks without running the “high” or “unacceptable” risks it faces now. The second task is to seriously embark upon a transformation of the Defense Department. This itself will be a two-stage effort: for the next decade or more, the armed forces will continue to operate many of the same systems it now does, organize themselves in traditional units, and employ current operational concepts. However, this transition period must be a first step toward more substantial reform. Over the next several decades, the United States must field a global system of missile defenses, divine ways to control the new “international commons” of space and cyberspace, and build new kinds of conventional forces for different strategic challenges and a new technological environment.

Nuclear Forces

Current conventional wisdom about strategic forces in the post-Cold-War world is captured in a comment made by the late Les Aspin, the Clinton Administration's first secretary of defense. Aspin wrote that the collapse of the Soviet Union had “literally reversed U.S. interests in nuclear weapons” and, “Today, if offered the magic wand to eradicate the existence and knowledge of nuclear weapons, we would very likely accept it.” Since the United States is the world’s dominant conventional military power, this sentiment is understandable. But it is precisely because we have such power that smaller adversarial states, looking for an equalizing advantage, are determined to acquire their own weapons of mass destruction. Whatever our fondest wishes, the reality of the today’s world is that there is no magic wand with which to eliminate these weapons (or, more fundamentally, the interest in acquiring them) and that deterring their use requires a reliable and dominant U.S. nuclear capability. While the formal U.S. nuclear posture has remained conservative through the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review and the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, and senior Pentagon leaders speak of the continuing need for nuclear deterrent forces, the Clinton Administration has taken repeated steps to undermine the readiness and effectiveness of U.S. nuclear forces. In particular, it has virtually ceased development of safer and more effective nuclear weapons; brought underground testing to a complete halt; and allowed the Department of Energy’s weapons complex and associated scientific expertise to atrophy for lack of support. The administration has also made the decision to retain current weapons in the active force for years beyond their design life. When combined with the decision to cut back on regular, non-nuclear flight and system tests of the weapons themselves, this raises a host of questions about the continuing safety and reliability of the nation’s strategic arsenal. The administration’s stewardship of the nation's deterrent capability has been aptly described by Congress as “erosion by design.”

A new assessment of the global nuclear balance, one that takes account of Chinese and other nuclear forces as well as Russian, must precede decisions about U.S. nuclear force cuts.

Rather than maintain and improve America’s nuclear deterrent, the Clinton Administration has put its faith in new arms control measures, most notably by signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The treaty proposed a new multilateral regime, consisting of some 150 states, whose principal effect would be to constrain America's unique role in providing the global nuclear umbrella that helps to keep states like Japan and South Korea from developing the weapons that are well within their scientific capability, while doing little to stem nuclear weapons proliferation. Although the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, the administration continues to abide by its basic strictures. And while it may make sense to continue the current moratorium on nuclear testing for the moment – since it would take a number of years to refurbish the neglected testing infrastructure in any case – ultimately this is an untenable situation. If the United States is to have a nuclear deterrent that is both effective and safe, it will need to test.

The administration’s stewardship of the nation’s deterrent capability has been described by Congress as “erosion by design.”

That said, of all the elements of U.S. military force posture, perhaps none is more in need of reevaluation than America’s nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons remain a critical component of American military power but it is unclear whether the current U.S. nuclear arsenal is well-suited to the emerging post-Cold War world. Today’s strategic calculus encompasses more factors than just the balance of terror between the United States and Russia. U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals – from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq – and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force. Moreover, there is a question about the role nuclear weapons should play in deterring the use of other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological, with the U.S. having foresworn those weapons’ development and use. It addition, there may be a need to develop a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets of military requirements, such as would be required in targeting the very deep under-ground, hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries. Nor has there been a serious analysis done of the benefits versus the costs of maintaining the traditional nuclear “triad.” What is needed first is a global net assessment of what kinds and numbers of nuclear weapons the U.S. needs to meet its security responsibilities in a post-Soviet world.

In short, until the Department of Defense can better define future its nuclear requirements, significant reductions in U.S. nuclear forces might well have unforeseen consequences that lessen rather than enhance the security of the United States and its allies. Reductions, upon review, might be called for. But what should finally drive the size and character of our nuclear forces is not numerical parity with Russian capabilities but maintaining American strategic superiority – and, with that superiority, a capability to deter possible hostile coalitions of nuclear powers. U.S. nuclear superiority is nothing to be ashamed of; rather, it will be an essential element in preserving American leadership in a more complex and chaotic world.

Forces for Major Theater Wars

The one constant of Pentagon force planning through the past decade has been the recognized need to retain sufficient combat forces to fight and win, as rapidly and decisively as possible, multiple, nearly simultaneous major theater wars. This constant is based upon two important truths about the current international order. One, the Cold-War standoff between America and its allies and the Soviet Union that made for caution and discouraged direct aggression against the major security interests of either side no longer exists. Two, conventional warfare remains a viable way for aggressive states to seek major changes in the international order.

Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait reflected both truths. The invasion would have been highly unlikely, if not impossible, within the context of the Cold War, and Iraq overran Kuwait in a matter of hours. These two truths revealed a third: maintaining or restoring a favorable order in vital regions in the world such as Europe, the Middle East and East Asia places a unique responsibility on U.S. armed forces. The Gulf War and indeed the subsequent lesser wars in the Balkans could hardly have been fought and won without the dominant role played by American military might.

Thus, the understanding that U.S. armed forces should be shaped by a “two-major-war” standard rightly has been accepted as the core of America’s superpower status since the end of the Cold War. The logic of past defense reviews still obtains, and received its clear exposition in the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, which argued:

A force sized and equipped for deterring and defeating aggression in more than one theater ensures that the United States will maintain the flexibility to cope with the unpredictable and unexpected. Such a capability is the sine qua non of a superpower and is essential to the credibility of our overall national security strategy….If the United States were to forego its ability to defeat aggression in more than one theater at a time, our standing as a global power, as the security partner of choice and the leader of the international community would be called in to question. Indeed, some allies would undoubtedly read a one-war capability as a signal that the United States, if heavily engaged elsewhere, would no longer be able to defend their interests…A one-theater-war capacity would risk undermining…the credibility of U.S. security commitments in key regions of the world. This, in turn, could cause allies and friends to adopt more divergent defense policies and postures, thereby weakening the web of alliances and coalitions on which we rely to protect our interests abroad.

In short, anything less than a clear two-war capacity threatens to devolve into a no-war strategy.

Unfortunately, Defense Department thinking about this requirement was frozen in the early 1990s. The experience of Operation Allied Force in the Balkans suggests that, if anything, the canonical two-war force-sizing standard is more likely to be too low than too high. The Kosovo air campaign eventually involved the level of forces anticipated for a major war, but in a theater other than the two – the Korean peninsula and Southwest Asia – that have generated past Pentagon planning scenarios. Moreover, new theater wars that can be foreseen, such as an American defense of Taiwan against a Chinese invasion or punitive attack, have yet to be formally considered by Pentagon planners.

The Joint Chiefs have admitted they lack the forces necessary to meet the two-war benchmark.

To better judge forces needed for building an American peace, the Pentagon needs to begin to calculate the force necessary to protect, independently, U.S. interests in Europe, East Asia and the Gulf at all times. The actions of our adversaries in these regions bear no more than a tangential relationship to one another; it is more likely that one of these regional powers will seize an opening created by deployments of U.S. forces elsewhere to make mischief.

Thus, the major-theater-war standard should remain the principal force-sizing tool for U.S. conventional forces. This not to say that this measure has been perfectly applied in the past: Pentagon analyses have been both too optimistic and too pessimistic, by turns. For example, the analyses done of the requirement to defeat an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia almost certainly overestimates the level of force required. Conversely, past analyses of a defense of South Korea may have underestimated the difficulties of such a war, especially if North Korea employed weapons of mass destruction, as intelligence estimates anticipate. Moreover, the theater-war analysis done for the QDR assumed that Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein each could begin a war – perhaps even while employing chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons – and the United States would make no effort to unseat militarily either ruler. In both cases, past Pentagon wargames have given little or no consideration to the force requirements necessary not only to defeat an attack but to remove these regimes from power and conduct post-combat stability operations. In short, past Defense Department application of the two-war standard is not a reliable guide to the real force requirements – and, of course, past reviews included no analysis of the kind of campaign in Europe as was seen in Operation Allied Force. Because past Pentagon strategy reviews have been budget-driven exercises, it will be necessary to conduct fresh and more realistic analyses even of the canonical two-war scenarios.

In sum, while retaining the spirit of past force-planning for major wars, the Department of Defense must undertake a more nuanced and thoroughgoing review of real requirements. The truths that gave rise to the original two-war standard endure: America’s adversaries will continue to resist the building of the American peace; when they see an opportunity as Saddam Hussein did in 1990, they will employ their most powerful armed forces to win on the battle-field what they could not win in peaceful competition; and American armed forces will remain the core of efforts to deter, defeat, or remove from power regional aggressors.

Forces for ‘Constabulary’ Duties

In addition to improving the analysis needed to quantify the requirements for major theater wars, the Pentagon also must come to grips with the real requirements for constabulary missions. The 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review rightly acknowledged that these missions, which it dubbed “smaller-scale contingencies,” or SSCs, would be the frequent and unavoidable diet for U.S. armed forces for many years to come: “Based on recent experience and intelligence projections, the demand for SSC operations is expected to remain high over the next 15 to 20 years,” the review concluded. Yet, at the same time, the QDR failed to allocate any forces to these missions, continuing the fiction that, for force planning purposes, constabulary missions could be considered “lesser included cases” of major theater war requirements. “U.S. forces must also be able to withdraw from SSC operations, reconstitute, and then deploy to a major theater war in accordance with required timelines,” the review argued.

The increasing number of ‘constabulary’ missions for U.S. troops, such as in Kosovo above, must be considered an integral element in Pentagon force planning.

The shortcomings of this approach were underscored by the experience of Operation Allied Force in the Balkans. Precisely because the forces engaged there would not have been able to withdraw, reconstitute and redeploy to another operation – and because the operation consumed such a large part of overall Air Force aircraft – the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that the United States was running “unacceptable” risk in the event of war elsewhere. Thus, facing up to the realities of multiple constabulary missions will require a permanent allocation of U.S. armed forces.

Nor can the problem be solved by simply withdrawing from current constabulary missions or by vowing to avoid them in the future. Indeed, withdrawing from today’s ongoing missions would be problematic. Although the no-fly-zone air operations over northern and southern Iraq have continued without pause for almost a decade, they remain an essential element in U.S. strategy and force posture in the Persian Gulf region. Ending these operations would hand Saddam Hussein an important victory, something any American leader would be loath to do. Likewise, withdrawing from the Balkans would place American leadership in Europe – indeed, the viability of NATO – in question. While none of these operations involves a mortal threat, they do engage U.S. national security interests directly, as well as engaging American moral interests.

Further, these constabulary missions are far more complex and likely to generate violence than traditional “peacekeeping” missions. For one, they demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations, as the failure of the UN mission in the Balkans and the relative success of NATO operations there attests. Nor can the United States assume a UN-like stance of neutrality; the preponderance of American power is so great and its global interests so wide that it cannot pretend to be indifferent to the political outcome in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf or even when it deploys forces in Africa. Finally, these missions demand forces basically configured for combat. While they also demand personnel with special language, logistics and other support skills, the first order of business in missions such as in the Balkans is to establish security, stability and order. American troops, in particular, must be regarded as part of an overwhelmingly powerful force.

With a decade’s worth of experience both of the requirements for current constabulary missions and with the chaotic political environment of the post-Cold War era, the Defense Department is more than able to conduct a useful assessment to quantify the overall needs for forces engaged in constabulary duties. While part of the solution lies in repositioning existing forces, there is no escaping the conclusion that these new missions, unforeseen when the defense drawdown began a decade ago, require an increase in overall personnel strength and U.S. force structure.

Transformation Forces

The fourtsh element in American force posture – and certainly the one which holds the key to any longer-term hopes to extend the current Pax Americana – is the mission to transform U.S. military forces to meet new geopolitical and technological challenges. While the prime directive for transformation will be to design and deploy a global missile defense system, the effects of information and other advanced technologies promise to revolutionize the nature of conventional armed forces. Moreover, the need to create weapons systems optimized for operations in the Pacific theater will create requirements quite distinct from the current generation of systems designed for warfare on the European continent and those new systems like the F-22 fighter that also were developed to meet late-Cold-War needs.

Although the basic concept for a system of global missile defenses capable of defending the United States and its allies against the threat of smaller and simpler ballistic missiles has been well understood since the late 1980s, a decade has been squandered in developing the requisite technologies. In fact, work on the key elements of such a system, especially those that would operate in space, has either been so slowed or halted completely, so that the process of deploying robust missile defenses remains a long-term project. If for no other reason, the mission to create such a missile defense system should be considered a matter of military transformation.

For the United States to retain the technological and tactical advantages it now enjoys, the transformation effort must be considered as pressing a military mission as preparing for today’s theater wars.

As will be argued more fully below, effective ballistic missile defenses will be the central element in the exercise of American power and the projection of U.S. military forces abroad. Without it, weak states operating small arsenals of crude ballistic missiles, armed with basic nuclear warheads or other weapons of mass destruction, will be a in a strong position to deter the United States from using conventional force, no matter the technological or other advantages we may enjoy. Even if such enemies are merely able to threaten American allies rather than the United States homeland itself, America’s ability to project power will be deeply compromised. Alas, neither Administration strategists nor Pentagon force planners seem to have grasped this elemental point; certainly, efforts to fund, design and develop an effective system of missile defenses do not reflect any sense of urgency. Nonetheless, the first task in transforming U.S. military to meet the technological and strategic realities of a new century is to create such a system.

Creating a system of global missile defenses is but the first task of transformation; the need to reshape U.S. conventional forces is almost as pressing. For, although American armed forces possess capabilities and enjoy advantages that far surpass those of even our richest and closest allies, let alone our declared and potential enemies, the combination of technological and strategic change that marks the new century places these advantages at risk. Today’s U.S. conventional forces are masters of a mature paradigm of warfare, marked by the dominance of armored vehicles, aircraft carriers and, especially, manned tactical aircraft, that is beginning to be overtaken by a new paradigm, marked by long-range precision strikes and the proliferation of missile technologies. Ironically, it has been the United States that has pioneered this new form of high- technology conventional warfare: it was suggested by the 1991 Gulf War and has been revealed more fully by the operations of the past decade. Even the “Allied Force” air war for Kosovo showed a distorted version of the emerging paradigm of warfare.

Yet even these pioneering capabilities are the residue of investments first made in the mid- and late 1980s; over the past decade the pace of innovation within the Pentagon has slowed measurably. In part, this is due to reduced defense budgets, the overwhelming dominance of U.S. forces today, and the multiplicity of constabulary missions. And without the driving challenge of the Soviet military threat, efforts at innovation have lacked urgency. Nonetheless, a variety of new potential challenges can be clearly foreseen. The Chinese military, in particular, seeks to exploit the revolution in military affairs to offset American advantages in naval and air power, for example. If the United States is to retain the technological and tactical advantages it now enjoys in large-scale conventional conflicts, the effort at transformation must be considered as pressing a mission as preparing for today’s potential theater wars or constabulary missions – indeed, it must receive a significant, separate allocation of forces and budgetary resources over the next two decades.

In addition, the process of transformation must proceed from an appreciation of American strategy and political goals. For example, as the leader of a global network of alliances and strategic partnerships, U.S. armed forces cannot retreat into a “Fortress America.” Thus, while long- range precision strikes will certainly play an increasingly large role in U.S. military operations, American forces must remain deployed abroad, in large numbers. To remain as the leader of a variety of coalitions, the United States must partake in the risks its allies face; security guarantees that depend solely upon power projected from the continental United States will inevitably become discounted.

Moreover, the process of transformation should proceed in a spirit of competition among the services and between service and joint approaches. Inevitably, new technologies may create the need for entirely new military organizations; this report will argue below that the emergence of space as a key theater of war suggests forcefully that, in time, it may be wise to create a separate “space service.” Thus far, the Defense Department has attempted to take a prematurely joint approach to transformation. While it is certain that new technologies will allow for the closer combination of traditional service capabilities, it is too early in the process of transformation to choke off what should be the healthy and competitive face of “interservice rivalry.” Because the separate services are the military institutions most attuned to providing forces designed to carry out the specific missions required by U.S. strategy, they are in fact best equipped to become the engines of transformation and change within the context of enduring mission requirements.

Finally, it must be remembered that the process of transformation is indeed a process: even the most vivid view of the armed forces of the future must be grounded in an understanding of today’s forces. In general terms, it seems likely that the process of transformation will take several decades and that U.S. forces will continue to operate many, if not most, of today’s weapons systems for a decade or more. Thus, it can be foreseen that the process of transformation will in fact be a two-stage process: first of transition, then of more thoroughgoing transformation. The break-point will come when a preponderance of new weapons systems begins to enter service, perhaps when, for example, unmanned aerial vehicles begin to be as numerous as manned aircraft. In this regard, the Pentagon should be very wary of making large investments in new programs – tanks, planes, aircraft carriers, for example – that would commit U.S. forces to current paradigms of warfare for many decades to come.

In conclusion, it should be clear that these four essential missions for maintaining American military preeminence are quite separate and distinct from one another – none should be considered a “lesser included case” of another, even though they are closely related and may, in some cases, require similar sorts of forces. Conversely, the failure to provide sufficient forces to execute these four missions must result in problems for American strategy. The failure to build missile defenses will put America and her allies at grave risk and compromise the exercise of American power abroad. Conventional forces that are insufficient to fight multiple theater wars simultaneously cannot protect American global interests and allies. Neglect or withdrawal from constabulary missions will increase the likelihood of larger wars breaking out and encourage petty tyrants to defy American interests and ideals. And the failure to prepare for tomorrow’s challenges will ensure that the current Pax Americana comes to an early end.

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